Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

I thought today would be a good day to list a few upcoming features for Riuva. Why? Today’s the official 1st anniversary of this website! It’s been a long one year with lots of interesting milestones. As I look through my 500++ posts, I feel all choked up with tears. Ok that was a huge lie. I basically realised that I wrote a hell lot more in the past and used 50 percent more brain power than what I do now. And many of you readers are relatively new, so may have missed some epic posts sunken in the archives now.

So for today, it shall be a brief lookback and then a future directions explanation.

2006-03-03 was the first post. Ever. Oh, so 24th is not my anniversary. Whatever, it seems to be the day when I registered Riuva.com. How did I come up with such a name? My then-colleague, a webmaster with a busty girlfriend, had watched Genshiken with me and I wanted a Genshikenish name. And thus, Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts was born. I used it as my msn handle for a while and it confused the hell out of my non-otaku friends, who thought I was into this fancy new-age hobby called "Unicultural Visual Arts". I must say it’s an awesome name, despite the U and V always confusing people. I get tonnes of hits on google for www.rivua.com.

On the same day, I blogged five times. It was mainly copypasta of previous reviews I wrote on a private forum (while at work). So officially, my first ever figure review was of OVERMAN KING GAINER. And I didn’t possess a digicam back then. LOL. Btw, this Overman King Gainer figure now rests in DRMCHRSO’s home.

2006-03-07 saw the exciting Champions League match between Chelsea and Barcelona. I’m a rather avid football fan (SOCCER to you Americans) and blogged on this. Back then I don’t think I was listed on any aggregator.

2006-03-12 was the day my digicam arrived. It was the Fuji finepix Z2 and I christened it Speed Grapher. I got added on Blogsuki. On the same day. That’s right folks, I was once on Blogsuki! Amazingly, for a blog only 10 days old with only rotten articles. Why? Because back then, absolutely nobody blogged on figures properly. It was always a little side mention like on Moy or Darkmirage’s site, mainly about their purchases. It was a tappable niche. Obviously times have changed and for the better. We have Super "Figure Jesus" Rats, Adun and a lot of others.

2006-03-14, I wrote my first editorial. A rant about a disease called the Shounen Sickness. It was also my first post on Blogsuki.

2006-03-15, the first anime review was posted - Yomigaeru Sora Rescue Wings. It was a massively long rambling rave about how great the series was. It’s fucking good, the series I mean. Oh my writing was like, old man fart. In other words, not very good.

2006-03-19: I planned out several new features, as I gained experience. Most of these were illfated though creative. Check it out, new bloggers and see if you can improve on them. I was fucking n00b. I didn’t know html and inserted every picture one by one on the Rich text editor. I spent 5 hours on each post. The pictures were tiny and numerous like cockroaches. I didn’t know Photoshop had a batch tool. My layout was shit, that grey orange crap some of you may remember.

2006-03-22: The first of the Girl Power series of articles, Sawachika Eri was the girl championed, followed by Yakumo in a couple of days. This was the first post that received links on forums (Thanks Swampstorm of Wannabe Fansubs). And man, they were crap articles but still are featured on the School Rumble Wiki of Wannabe.

2006-03-28: First music review and lyrics translation. It was Yoriko’s Break the Cocoon and man, was it a bloody good song. The review of ONE song was like, a thousand words. I really did write a lot back then.

2006-03-29: And yes, I posted about 3 times per day in the first month. Anyway, the first and only Mecha Madness post featured the DOMINATOR of Overman King Gainer. Please read it! Most of these old posts have not received enough LOVE for the effort I put into it.

2006-04-03: The red mecha family is born. I had a red mp3 player called Cocoon. After Break the Cocoon. It was broken cos it was made of glass. Funky design by LEMON (YEAH IMPZ LEMON). Also had a red hard disk and a red camera, all the same colour scheme. Btw I lost the Cocoon somewhere in the arid plains of Australia. Lupus, Waterfall and other Aussies, if you find it, send it back.

2006-04-05: The very first photoshoot! It featured Al Azif of Demonbane and I didn’t know what was WHITE BALANCE back then. My god, fucking n00b. I also didn’t know what "focus" was. Btw the shoot was taken with a combination of a Nikon D100 with some macro lens and my Z2. This Al is now the property of MistaYoh.

2006-04-12: This is a bloody EPIC post. MUST READ. I spent a long time (ok a day) coming up with a way to make figures more fun. It was a combination of Warhammer and Mageknight, and aptly titled "Figure FIGHT!" But it didn’t catch on. Back then, everyone said I would pwn them in terms of quantity. Not anymore I presume. Let’s play some Figure Fight!!! Cmon!! On the same day, I had my first nice-looking banner and launched my official logo. Both designed by my friend, Gabriel.

2006-04-16: The first post that I incurred the wrath of Jason Miao. I did an analysis of GONZO and he hated the company while I was a a fan of it.

2006-04-20: First people focus article that saw Kobayashi Jin, the mangaka of the excellent School Rumble, pictured in his full glory. He’s a hermit and doesn’t have any pictures except this one, taken by a Wannabe forummer on his visit to Hawaii. He looks like Harima.

2006-04-21: I discarded the amazingly rotten orange and gray layout for K2. Have been using it since, with only minor tweaks in width and a few banner and background changes.

2006-04-23: Experienced the PVC hell of LEANING for the first time ever. Holy shit. But I quickly set it back to normal.

2006-04-27: There was a big ruckus on Nanashi fansubs’ Eureka seveN subbing. They were so amazingly slow despite already having the script and some guy called Bizarro took them and released his own subs though still crediting Nanashi. 36 comments was the highest ever then as Riuva covered the conflict like a good journalist.

2006-04-28: I was feeling bored and came up with a "Classification and Study of Episode Titles". Seriously. Sasa thought it was a very intellectual post. I thought it was pure smoke and mirrors.

2006-04-30: I finished Eureka seveN. The earth shook and pussies trembled in a collective orgasm of comics proportions. It was that good. Proof? The 94 and still increasing comments on my total rave and spoilerful postseries shoutabout.

2006-05-02: My best articles are not written by me. I merely summarise or reproduce others’ works lol. This one is a MUST READ albeit really long like Tripeman’s penises. Seiyuu are SLAVES not Stars. Find out the truth about the Japanese anime industry NOW. This is by far my most linked post ever, with many anime veterans and n00bs alike shocked at the revelations.

2006-05-05: Following a rant by Jason Miao on how everyone was doing episode reviews and nothing else (lol this works in cycles. Happens twice a year), I wrote an innocent article on tips to diversify one’s blog. It was aimed to make blogs more interesting. But the little fucker decided that he didn’t like the article as it showed "impure intentions" or whatever. And promptly kicked Riuva out of Blogsuki without actual explanation why until repeatedly prompted politely. I don’t think I ever wrote out the full story but my immediate response was an emo post. LOL. Shit, it looks funny now.  And after I got emo, another emo post followed.
And that was the end of the Blogsuki saga. It’s funny now but considering how much effort I put in at first, it was insulting for a person to kick this blog, or anyother one in that large cull, based on his own personal bias. Oh, btw, I wrote back six months later to Miao, citing that his reason for kicking me were null since the site has improved a lot. And he went like, don’t try to befriend me just to get back on blogsuki, I won’t fall for it. What a little prick. For a while there was huge Jason hate in the blogger crowd but I guess it’s all in the past. Just a bit of drama for you new readers lol.

2006-05-06 was the first time I openly expressed my love for headphoned girls. Btw, my wife wears headphones. She’s very hot in them. This shows my theories were completely spot on.

2006-05-08: An analytical post on Anime Combat Mechanics. This was actually pretty well written, considering the complete shortage of proper prose in this blog. Read it.

2006-05-20: This period I wasn’t on any blog aggregator so I had the freedom of posting personal posts. And at this point, I was really really vexed about my future career path. I was thinking of going overseas for college. But somehow over the course of the year, I came to realise that for what I wanted to study, there wasn’t of a point. UC Davis is probably one of the few colleges outside Singapore which has a superior FST course to NUS and I didn’t want to go to America. I would’ve been too close geographically to Miao. LOL just joking, he lives in California btw. And now that the wife is here, I doubt I would want to leave her. So it’s a local university then, at least for the first four years, with hope for one exchange programme.

2006-05-21: My first outdoor figure review. This was taken after I saw Dannychoo.com, and realised that I didn’t have to trouble myself with indoor setups when the sun is godly. The first few ones didn’t turn out too good but there was rapid improvement I guess.

2006-06-12: One of the weirdest posts ever. I created a Gatekeepers Football Team. Complete with tactics. LOL. It was the World Cup period!

2006-06-15: For a while I really couldn’t think of interesting ideas, so I just kept making lists. And I made good lists! The thing about lists is that you need a logical and systematic personality to make proper ones and I am such. I love to number my stuff and arrange them in point form. Point form should be how everything is written. Feeling bored of anime? Revitalise with this list.

2006-06-17: List of the top 11 manliest men in anime. Back then GAR wasn’t invented yet. IMAGINE THAT. NO GAR. Everyone went, "oh manly man."

2006-06-19: List of awesome ways to confess your love otaku-style. I don’t think I actually used any of them, apologies. I did stuff the non-otaku way. Man, I reread this post and it was really funny. FUNNY!!!

2006-06-22: Concept plans for mascot. Reminds me of how Danny Choo was creating his mascot just a few weeks back. But mine’s all self-done, for better or worse. And the day after, CULT HIT TRIPENILE MANGA MAN LIVES!!! WOOOOOOO.

2006-06-30: OId timers would remember the furore Jason Miao kicked up when he posted about how Japanese bloggers are superior because they use a lot more graphs. This was seriously hilarious. Be it in jest or not, Miao inspired the Graph meme. For a few days after that, many bloggers had a lot of graphs in their posts, most of them totally outrageously and awesome, I was just one of them. The only reason I started reading DRM’s blog was his angry graph post but he has since deleted all his graphs, sadly.

2006-07-08: Remember the Immense first episode of Coyote Ragtime Show? We were raving like lunatics about the first episode and how it was the best thing since slice bread. Or HCGs. I even did a guide to the 12 sisters.

2006-07-10: I went to the Cosfest’06, my first cosplay event in 5 years as a spectator. Awww, I was totally impressed by the overall standard and zeal of the locals. Especially the best cosplay I’ve seen ever in the flesh, Lenneth as Saya. It was really funny how we tracked her down through sheer willpower and courage and then passed her a url to this site, where global anime fans were fanboying over her. She probably got a good ego boost too. Cosfest was also the event I met my now-wife (but she didn’t know I existed, OMG.) who cosplayed as Soi Fong of Bleach, showing off more skin than a naked child. Incidentally, my event report also pissed off ONE FAMOUS FAT YAOI FANGIRL, the now-legendary Rainy.

She accused me of racism, bigotry and a few other smaller crimes, such as raping five puppy dogs and eating their intestines with wasabi. And the resulting flame war was the single most enjoyable moment of my Riuva career. I rushed home to type my long retorts and had a wicked smirk permanantly plastered as I gathered the troops and routed the FYG force. Many fellow Riuvasians joined in the act, and contributed moving essays which led to the downfall of the accursed Rainy. I miss her already. Btw, I would like to clarify that I have nothing against fat, yaoi-loving or black people and in fact, some of my best friends and lovers are yaoi fan girls. And black men. (ok the only black men I know personally are Will Smith and Michael Jordan.)

2006-07-13: Then I started a trivia pursuit. I believe till now, this is the only blog to have done so. I have quite the collection of quizzes on various topics.

2006-07-14: Another list, this time for Otaku’s girlfriends. Read this, wife.

2006-07-26: I reached 100k hits. I had a similar summary. I realised I took 5 months to reach 100k, while is far more than that statophile Impz. But he didn’t have 10 percent of the DRAMA that Riuva provides! LOL. Oh wait, he has the marvellous IMPZCOMICS, some of which are more funny than Jim Carrey and Jack Black’s offspring. I love Impz Comiczz. Keep up the good work, theguysbehindimpzcomics! Oh, hit count now: 577, 892 visitors. In other words, a lot more than then.

2006-07-29: A seemingly innocuous post on "Who Should Fujioka Haruhi Date?" became a fangirl bitchfest. Lesson learnt: Never ever express opinions on series that may incur the wrath of fangirls. Such as Naruto, Ouran and Bleach.

2006-07-30: Project K was started. I gave myself 9 months to look like Kyouya. I failed miserably. GOD WHY?? WHY??

2006-08-10: Lenneth, our resident star cosplayer, did a Kino no Tabi cosplay. With terribly inaccurate gun. But who cares, still hot.

2006-08-15: Top 10 Anime one liners. Another list. I love lists.

2006-08-16: First of the figurine science series of articles, where the science behind figurines is explored. Material science is delved into here.

2006-08-17: Interview with Shia and a peek into ODEX. Then, little was known about the enigmatic local anime firm. But since then, through various focal groups and discussions with the head honchos, many of us bloggers have gained first hand knowledge and experience of the anime industry.

2006-08-25: How to sound intelligent in 10 minutes. This is a pretty sarcastic tongue in cheek list but, people actually do it in real life.

2006-08-30: Guide to talking like an Otaku in 10 minutes. I guess this and the above article are mutally exclusive. Btw I found this an awesome article. Shit I’m damn good with lists.

2006-09-16: I got a new camera, the IXUS 800. It’s far superior to the Z2. Far superior. From then on, it was a quantum leap in figurine photography.

2006-09-17: I made my first full length feature film. An impressionistic film noir styled tribute to the completion of the best drama EVA, Honey and Clover.

2006-10-01: The most graphic figure review, where I squished Biker Rei’s tits. This video has had almost 3000 hits. The power of breasts eh? This figure now belongs to Wyred.

2006-10-05: Riuva organised it’s first contest, the Anime (de)Motivational Poster Contest, which there were tonnes of entries. Alafista’s won because his was the first on the voting list. Bastard. And he hasn’t claimed his prize.

2006-10-06: I explained why Girl’s High is a great show with the DIAGRAM OF BADNESS. A must read.

From this point on, I had a lot more figure reviews.

2006-11-03: I did a rather informative guide to CANDY GIRLS, every man’s dream. These Japanese life sized dolls are the epitome of beauty, as seen from the eye of the Nippon beholder. I trust their taste. Half the dolls are lolis. With G cups.

2006-11-08: I showed off my room for the first time. It’s as neat as ORB after the invasion of ZAFT forces in Gundam SEED. OMG I didn’t do a SEED reference did I?

2006-11-13: I hypothesised and proved that no matter how bad the show is, people will watch if the girls in it blush. No shit, it does work.

2006-12-05: My Otousama suffered a heart attack and had to be warded for an emergency bypass. Triple. He ate too much fatty foods! Many thanks to the words of encouragement and blessing by everyone here. He’s fine now. But back to the fatty foods. I need to slap him with three penises.

2006-12-17: I went for the EOY cosplay event and wrote 3 long posts about it. I used the EOS-30D Canon DSLRs there and people gave me respect. Awesome. Part 1 focused on the event, Part 2 the super league cosplayers and Part 3 the others. This was a great event which saw Umehiko, the current SAINT MOTHER of BJORN’S CHEEZE KNIGHTS (whatever that is.), perform her maiden cosplay as Nagato Yuki. And I also met the wife for the second time and actually spoke to her. Something along the lines of, "Could I have a picture?" She was cosplaying as Kimimaro from Naruto.

2006-12-23: Strangely enough, this is a recap post. But a good noobie introduction for those new to anime blogs.

2006-12-24: The guys and I from the 1st Otaku Battalion performed the OP of Code Geass, COLOURS. Or should I say, massacred. It was the first time I sang. Oh the second time was my ill-fated entry for Hung’s Karaoke competition. I "sang" (or moaned, if you prefer) Ichigo Complete.

2006-12-30: I left the ARMY! I became a free man and a civilian! My days as a WAR JOURNALIST were officially over.

2007-01-07: The Nerd Horde Gathers for the first time. All 30++ nerds in one spot. Never before has such an unlikely motley crew assembled for one love - COUNTERSTRIKE. Hikikomoris, doujin artists, Super Robot Fanboys, Moelovers, Lolicons, Trolls, Great Men (like me) all gathered for nothing but a good old fashioned frag fest.

2007-01-08: The very first Riuva Bazaar was launched. I actually prematurely closed the sales, fearing not enough stock to feed demand. Silly me, I still have 2 sets left unsold. LOL. Contact me if you want the Eureka seveN transformable figures.

Ok, I shall do the history up to this point. It was a lot longer than I expected. I’m tired. Shall do the future directions tomorrow. Stay tuned.