Up and Running!

Welcome to The Gundam Spartan: A Canadian Otaku! This is my first attempt at writing an Anime, Halo, and General Sci-Fi blog, so here's hoping I don't screw it up....

Let me start this blog off with the simple question, what is an Otaku?

For those of you who don't know (and I'll assume that most of you do), an Otaku is a fan of Japanese anime, manga, or culture. It's a great hobby for people in Japan or the United States, where there is a large market for Gunpla (Gundam Model Kits) and such products.

However, I happen to live in Canada. And not even in a major city, I might add. Not a city like Toronto or Vancouver, or even a moderately well known place like Montreal or Sudbury, but a small city named Burlington, that most people just drive through and never even notice.

Desolate, isn't it?

Seriously, it's a nice place to live (especially now that the blisteringly cold winter is over), but there's just no market for anime related products around here, mainly because it's such a small city (and because Canada has, like, a quarter of the number of people the U.S. has).

Some "skyscrapers" downtown.

The nearest store that sells Gunpla is a good twenty minute drive away (and that's assuming the highway traffic is under control), which means that, even when I'm ready to buy a new kit, I may have to wait weeks, even months, just to get to the store.

So, the point is, this isn't a news blog. I'm relatively cut off from most of the world where I am, and it doesn't help that I make very little money. I'm not from Japan, and I can't speak (or read) a word of Japanese. So it stands to reason that it's at least a year before I see most new anime series. To tell the truth I've only been able to watch a few Gundam series and a smattering of others, like Appleseed and Last Exile (can't really call myself an Otaku, can I?). At least the situation is improving, slowly....

What can you expect to find here, in that case? To tell the truth, even I don't know yet. But you can expect to see plenty of model kit reviews, action figure reviews, reviews in general, Star Wars, Halo, Gundam, and other Sci-Fi, because that's what interests me the most.

Pretty long first post, isn't it?