This month: Shopping Guides and Miyazaki!

I won't bore you with the details of what I do at work. Suffice it to say that, if I didn't have to work, I could probably do a lot better job on this column month in and month out. But with a project coming due and me pulling overtime, I had to find a more reasonably sized topic. I decided on two.

Shopping Guides

An example of a simple page that's more than a dull listing of store locations is the . Reading this page is like reading a tour guide, with an in-depth writeup for each store. Actually, what's missing from this site is the dull stuff, store addresses, phone numbers and hours. The addition of that would make the site a little more useful. However, it does have photographs, something I'll harp on later.

The has a better balance of the dull, but necessary, basic info combined with a short, but sufficient, writeup for each store. Links to store websites and email addresses are given where available. The site covers the entire nation of Canada, with stores organized by province and city.

One of the most attractive shopping guide sites, design-wise, is . Part of a much-larger anime site, this single page gives a review of thirteen stores in the area, with each store's logo and address at the top of each review. Nice, but photographs would be helpful. More on that later.

The is interesting in that it marks sites that sell bootleg merchandise, to assist the otaku idealist, I suppose. There are multiple pages, one for each major area of New York, but some of those pages will give you nothing more than an apology that they know of no stores in that area yet. You can access the pages by clicking on a map of the city. The Anime Alliance spokesgirl says "If you squint really hard, you might be able to figure out which subway to take".

has no graphics at all, but is a great site to visit if you're planning a trip to SoCal and don't want to waste money. The focus of this site is prices, and the page for each store advises you on what to buy and how much you can expect to spend. Detailed directions and parking advice are extremely helpful. I swear, the next time I head west for Anime Expo, I should print out some of these pages and take them with me. The "Quick Comparison" page lists some of the best stores to visit by category of merchandise.

But by far and away my favorite of all the shopping guides was , a detailed shopping guide to the Los Angeles area. Now, it breaks a couple of rules, with big fonts and unnecessary background images, but it makes up for it with great writeups for each store, and photographs! Photos, photos, photos! Here's a picture of the store during the day! Here's what it looks like at night! Here's a picture of the shopping plaza the store is in! The number of photos varies from store to store, but every store I clicked on had at least one picture.

Why do I care so much about pictures? Simple. If I'm looking for a store in an unfamiliar location, whether I have detailed directions or not, I'm going to have to find it with my eyes. It makes me so much more comfortable to have a picture of what I'm looking for. For one thing, it prevents me from having to drive five miles under the speed limit examining the sign of every storefront. A picture of the place allows me to eliminate 90% of what I'm driving by.

Here are a few more shopping guides that deserved a mention:

Miyazaki sites

I suppose we should start with sites related to the latest big movie. Before I mention any sites, what do you think of the new Turnpike format as debuted on the Turnpike's Princess Mononoke Page? It sure surprised me. It's a bit of an improvement over the old format, don't you think? Now there's the task of converting all the existing pages, something I don't envy Jei having to do.

My first mention for Princess Mononoke pages goes to two good pages at once, Nausicaa.Net's Mononoke Hime Page and Mononoke Hime/The Monster Princess. I rather have to mention both simultaneously, since the pages link each other's content and you can find yourself browsing one after having started on the other. Both sites have good character pages. For those of you nervously following Mononoke's US success, check out the "box office" page, which tracks the box office figures, number of screens, and per screen average for each week the film has been in circulation. The CD section is good as well. I think I need to get the soundtrack, now that it's available in the US for non-import prices.

There are a couple of less-serious Mononoke sites worth a look. is one of many "adopt a pet" sites scattered throughout the 'Pike. The reader is encouraged to place an image of a Mononoke anime animal on his or her page and register it. is a shrine to Lady Eboshi, but go to the "Playroom" page for some wacky stuff, including a Princess Mononoke drinking game and part of the script for the movie written in "the language of pants".

Finding good pages for Miyazaki is difficult, since most of his works are movies, and movies seem to inspire much fewer good pages than TV or OAV series. I found a few, though. (Hey, have I ever let you down?)

There can be no doubt that the royal emperor of all Miyazaki sites is Nausicaa.net. This site is not devoted just to Miyazaki, but to his production studio, Studio Ghibli. Anything you could possibly want to know about any work by Hayao Miyazaki, or his cohort, Isao Takahata, or by Ghibli in general, chances are you can find it here. This is one of those sites you can lose yourself in for hours. It is enormous.

There are a couple of other interesting sites related to Studio Ghibli. One is . This site is devoted to tracking the adaptations of Ghibli works around the globe. Little icons give you quick details on the adaptation, including a pair of scissors to indicate adaptations that have been edited from the original. The other site I'd like to mention is the , a day-by-day work diary of an employee of Studio Ghibli. It is an often fascinating look into the animation business. The one thing sorely missing from this site is a real homepage. I'd like to know who this individual is and what his specific duties are. Instead, all you find on the homepage is links to the diary entries.

As for pages related to individual works, let me run some past you.

And that'll do it for this month. Mail call!.