Ups and Downs

Bad news: The federal government shuts down Megaupload. My opinion on this is mixed. On the one hand, I understand why they did it — MU enabled people to pirate anything and everything. On the other hand, I'm pissed because like a lot of people, I used MU to access things that I can't legally access, like out-of-print unlicensed anime. On the other other hand, I'm amused at the futility of the action because MU is only one of many many sites like it. This is like when the Japanese publishers nuked OneManga and MangaHelpers — a dozen new scanlation-sharing websites immediately popped up to replace them. Something like this is not going to stop people from pirating.

Good news: I found out that not only is the Sailor Moon manga getting rereleased in English with a better translation, but the Princess Knight manga, the grandmama of shojo manga written by Osamu Tezuka himself, is getting released for the first time in English! And both volumes are, as we speak, wending their way towards my mailbox. Yaaaay!