by Daniel

Last Exit Archives

---

Special Portuguese Edition

Hoo boy. I'm writing a column for Anipike. Ok, lemme crack my knuckles and we'll get going.

If you all remember, awhile ago, Ryan Mathews asked for volunteers to translate his column into different languages. Lately, I had been noticing a huge amount of sites in Portuguese popping up here and there. In fact, one of the best Utena sites I've seen was in Portuguese, so I volunteered. Hey, I like getting large amounts of work, for some odd reason. Mr. Mathews eventually replied, telling me he'd rather I write a small guest picks column, reviewing some sites in Portuguese. Since I'm, well, me, and I never miss an opportunity to write extensive reviews on frivolous anime topics, I agreed. And this is what I'm doing.

But who the hell am I, right? Eh. I'm Daniel, the webmaster formerly known as Keiichi, who runs Routevenus.com. But that's not important, what's important is that I fluently speak English and Portuguese, which is why I'm reviewing these sites for you. But first, I'll make a quick note. There's two different forms of Portuguese; Brazilian Portuguese and Portuguese Portuguese. Brazilian Portuguese comes, obviously, from Brazil, and nowadays is the most accepted form of the language. Portuguese Portuguese is not redundant, it refers to the language spoken in Portugal. It's kind of like British English and American English, only more so.

I suppose, were this a regular guest pick, I'd be including a little blurb here about how I got into anime and how my site was born and whatnot, but alack, this is not a regular guest pick. Besides, the story is long and boring and you don't care anyway.

But I'm digressing, aren't I? Never mind then. On to the sites.

The first and perhaps most famous anime site in Portuguese I'm reviewing is the . This is unquestionably the largest resource for Sailormoon, both the original Japanese version and the Brazilian dub. Let's see... within the BMS walls you'll find a huge fanfic archive, dubbed TV episodes in Real format, a translation of the manga (begun by none other than yours truly), episode reviews, more multimedia than you can wrinkle your nose at, and a helluva lot of information. This site had been completely dead until about two months ago, when the new Memorial version was launched. Now it's all pink and fluffy, but somehow the webmaster managed to use pink in a good way. Don't ask how, it's a challenge.

I told you about a Utena site somewhere in my introduction... but the intro turned out lengthier than I expected so you probably just skimmed it. But I said there was a really good Utena site. And this is it. A Rapariga Revolucionária, or The Revolutionary Girl, is a site in Portuguese (Portuguese, the one from Portugal). The character information pages alone would make an excellent site, but the review of the series itself is very insightful. Great scans, too. This isn't really being updated anymore (last update: 1998), but that's forgivable, considering Utena is over. Go visit it anyway. This site's also very pink. I have an odd aversion to the color, but I'm letting it pass on these sites :p

If shoujo ain't your bag, baby, and you're more of a Dragonball person, fear not. is here. You may have noticed that Brazilians don't have very creative site names by now... One of our flaws. Sad, but true. This page doesn't have any information at all, but it's the place to go if you want multimedia. They've got images, videos, sounds, songs, animated gifs... in short, the whole she-bang. If you're looking for something more information-oriented, they provide some good links.

And, of course, there's the indispensable Eva site. has a very interesting layout, some would say hard to navigate but all you need is some intelligence, really. This belongs to a larger group of Brazilian anime sites called AnimeZone (remember the creative name thing? Yeah.), and it's the largest Eva site in Portuguese I've seen so far. What do they offer, you ask? Ok, so their mp3 page doesn't have any rare mp3s, but there are excellent files, even an Angel Attack game. It's highly addictive, that game is. Then there's your basic image gallery, with a couple of wallpapers and whatnot. The video section here's what I liked best in the site, with a couple of full episodes and mpegs! God I love mpegs. They brighten up my day. Moving on to more textual content, there's basic character info, basic episode info, and basic angel info. And, like every other EVA page nowadays, there's the infamous "Mysteries revealed!" page, where he basically writes a paragraph or two on each term and issue dealt with in the anime. Be sure to visit their main anime wannabe-portal site, Animezone. Small, but it'll be good someday.

I hate Pokemon as much as the next guy, but I had to review this site. There're just so many sites about the damned anime in Portuguese and they all SUCK! Seriously, if you own a Pokemon site in Portuguese and you're reading this, go delete it now unless you're this girl, Yuminha. Yuminha (something like Little Yumi) crafted this basic yet resourceful page. There's nothing in it that makes me go "Wow, this girl is the Pokemon goddess!" but it's the best I could do. The page title is, of course, . *sigh* She has information and some multimedia (Multimedia! Yay!), and a pretty good Pokemon Dream screensaver. Worth a visit if you're into the game.

Yuminha returns with her equally badly named , now with dHTML snowflakes! This time with less multimedia and a lot more information, Yuminha brings us Kenshin's detailed profile, Kaoru's profile and their information together as a couple. She goes on to feature a quick overview of the Meiji epoch, setting of Rurouni Kenshin. There's a reasonable amount of images, and a couple of wallpapers and screensavers. This is a much better site than the first Pokemon one. It's.. fun.

Last sites I will write about are two general anime sites. The first one, , has some veeery specific information on certain titles, such as the producers, directors, cell artists, animation artists, writers, caterers, the works. They also have really good image galleries... the way this site is organized amazes me. He manages to index all these pages on at least four different free servers. Fascinating. I'll have to e-mail him and ask someday. Another interesting general site is . They've a couple of images and all that, but what attracts visitors to this site is the forum. They forum here is very active, and once in a while you'll see editors of respected Brazilian anime magazines post here once in a while.

And here're some honorable mentions....

- Another Sailormoon page worth a visit

- Anyone who hates Ash is a friend of mine.

- A nicely organized site with plenty of fanfictional fun.

- *sigh* the name problem again... a good site nonetheless.

And that's it, gentlemen. It's 3 am and I should be getting some sleep if I want to make it to work tomorrow... but wait... I don't want to make it to work. But... bah, damn me for having a conscience. Thanks for your time! And get ready for the plug! *PLUG* *PLUG*. Thank you *bows*