Mikko showed me this thing, which is one of the most awesome figures I've seen (the glasses are a removable part).

Alright, now for the real point of this post. Student's Vision was the school newspaper for my alma mater, St. Joseph's Academy of Valenzuela (I studied there from 1990-1996 [grades 1-6], and again from 1998-2000 [3rd and 4th year high school]). Anyway in my senior year, around 1999, I was part of the newspaper staff. Originally, I applied for an editorial job, but they gave me an artist job instead.

So anyway, 1999 was the advent of... well, let's say my fondness of anime. In 1999 I began watching Saber Marionette J, and with nothing to compare it to yet, I thought of it as such an awesome storyline. It was the first anime that I ever consistently watched, and it's the anime that lead me to differentiate between Japanese anime and American (or other country's) cartoons.

Moving on, Saber Marionette J began to influence me into a lot of things, among which belong my fondness of Japan (still exists today even if I'm not an anime otaku anymore), and my artwork (especially my style back then).

Anyway, without any further adieu, click here to see a scan of the comic page (back page) of Student's Vision, a comic I drew (circa November 1999).

Just in case, here's a translation of what I wrote on the comic's panels.

Frame 1
Waiter: What would you like to order?
Girl: Order? Hmmm... I can't think of anything. What do you recommend?

Frame 2
Waiter: If it were me, I'd like to eat the delicious Beef Steak.

Frame 3
Girl: You're right! That sounds delicious! Okay I'll order that.

Frame 4
Waiter: Sorry, ma'am, we don't sell that kind of food.
Girl: So that's it...

Anyway I won't make excuses. I didn't speak Japanese back then, and much less could I actually read/write it. I picked up a small book that had a table for kana, and that's it. I was a fan of anime, especially Kenshin, so I copied the kanji from a poster (?) I had or something. On the right side is a horribly spelled attempt at writing Aoshi Shinomori in katakana, but it ended up somehow being Aehoshi Shinamori. I blame the dubbers of the version that we saw on Studio 23 at the time for pronouncing every single name wrong (Kenchee, Cory, Yowshee, Sanosukee, Aehoshee... I think Megumi was the only one among the main cast that didn't suffer that).

When I was in high school, I went by the nickname of Rei (written with the same kanji as in rei gun, because YuuYuu Hakusho was the single most popular show on TV at the time), as granted to me by my best friend, Mark Peralta.

One more thing, as the last thing I'll explain about the paper, is that the paper was most popular for its greetings. So I wrote all sorts of names on the page as service to my classmates (IV St. John was my year/group). In fact, the page behind my comic is an entire sheet dedicated to greetings and shout-outs. And students will spend the better half of the day (and even when they get home sometimes) looking for their names, and the names of people they knew.

This post is pretty long now so I'll end it here. Next time I'll talk about more nostalgic days from my ghetto high school, St. Joseph's Academy of Valenzuela. :) Until then!