So I got an awesome certificate in the mail today. It said that I am "recognized by Newgrounds.com, Inc., for outstanding contributions to the community."

SWEET.

Sorry for the documentary hiatus---I've been having some software issues.

Also. If anyone's attending the Brawl tournament in Mission Viejo, CA this Sunday... see you there and wish me luck.

For the few people who actually enjoyed Behind The Flash, I've got a special treat for you: Video interviews with your favorite Newgrounds flash artists about their Comic-Con experience.

These were taken in the lobby of a nearby hotel, on Egoraptor's camera. I'm sorry for the audio quality/volume issues; I haven't really done much filming before so I'm kind of new to how that stuff works.

PART ONE (Afro-Ninja, RubberNinja, Ido Tal, The-EXP, Anigen, Super Flash Bros)

PART TWO (Super Flash Bros - cont'd, Redmongoose, CZ-Backlash, Egoraptor, and the Penicorn)

PART THREE (Hans Van Harken, Danomano, Rtil)

Before anyone even starts thinking about conspiracy theories... this is what it is. I interviewed the people who were there hanging out on Sunday night. Some of the artists talked more than others, so yes, some of the interviews are longer. Also some people had to leave early to catch a taxi or plane (like poor Afro-Ninja) so their interviews are short. I assure you that there is no conspiracy involved. :P

and here is a special picture preview

[edit] My NG name is now officially changed to Rina-chan so everyone can remember it easier (I can't tell you how many complaints I got about people trying to type in KagomeHigurashi but hey I made it in high school when I first joined NG... thank you Tom!

Hey guys! I updated my reel since I'd like to think my general voice range has improved.

http://suzumiya-haruhi.net/voice.mp3

Hope you enjoy ;D

Also... my PM box has been flooded as of late, so if you have a voice request for me, PLEASE send me an e-mail at midori.ninja@gmail.com or else I probably won't see your message in a timely manner. Thanks!

{PS. First 10 minutes of the Newgrounds documentary have been mixed and it sounds amazing so far. I really can't wait to finish it! Be sure to check out the trailer if you haven't already.}

I met LOTS of Newgrounders at Comic-Con today~ Annnnd I finally got to meet the man himself, Tom Fulp!

OH AND I MET THE ASHKIN SKRIP 3.0 KID. If you don't know what that is, check out the video from last year on Luis's Comic Con post. We all recognized him from the videos and Tom was prepared for him right away haha. I also got to witness the fated real life meeting of Rtil and Egoraptor, and one kid called his friend on his cell phone to tell him about how he met me and Kirbopher. (Yeah, there was a big up-the-butt Charizard at the Pokemon booth... it was pretty amusing.)

But most importantly...THE CASTLE CRASHERS DEMO. They had multiple stations set up, and... guess what guys, I get to officially announce it now: I do the voice for all the little princesses that get kidnapped during the game. So yeah, it was pretty damn cool to be standing there at the booth and hear my screams every few minutes xD;;;; (I have another exciting secret but I can't say anything about that til after the game comes out...!)

Here are some other people I met/hung out with---
Everyone from Project DCK
The Super Flash Bros
RubberNinja
Hans Van Harken
Tom's beautiful wife April
Dan Paladin
Bob
ChannelCat
Anigen
CZbacklash
Cronjow
Jimtopia
Redmongoose

annnnd other people I'm probably forgetting at the moment. Right now ChannelCat and Egoraptor wanna play some Brawl so off to go hook up the wii ~

I'll be at Comic-Con Wednesday through Sunday to meet a bunch of Newgrounders. I'll probably be hanging around the Newgrounds area for most of the con, so it shouldn't be hard to find me.

Looking forward to meeting everyone who's going!

PS. lol thread of the day

I WANNA BANG DAVID HAYTER HURR HURR

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PLwUJd z9AM
Someone got a video of me making a fool out of myself at his panel the other day! XD I don't care that I'm a huge fangirl... I was just so excited to meet him. Egoraptor's in there too but whoever was filming didn't actually show him on the camera so you just hear his voice.

[Edit to add] My new friend Vince took this picture of me with an awesome Captain Falcon cosplayer who actually turned out to be a fan of Brawl Taunts and quoted it while people were taking pictures of us. I met quite a few Brawl Taunts fans this weekend and felt all SPESHUL hearing Smash cosplayers quote it.

Rina-chan about to get Falcon Punched~!

(and before anyone sends a PM calling me a "FAGGET" for cosplaying, kindly learn to spell and gtfo haha)

First off I want to say I'm sorry I've been really behind on responding to messages and voice requests and doing lines and what not. I will catch up after AX this weekend. Let me just say that being crowded around a Denny's table having dinner earlier tonight with RubberNinja, Egoraptor, Suzy, Nalem, Spanio, Wonchop, Princess Aurora, Adrienne, ChannelCat, Vensy, & Alex = full of win and awesome.

But! Before heading off to the con, I leave you with the trailer for this documentary I keep talking about. I got a pretty good response from both "sides" of the rivalry so I am hoping this will be an interesting and objective look at the situation. People also came up with interesting variations of ideas on solving the problem (or reasons why it cannot be solved) which you'll find out when the actual project is completed.

Click me for the trailer!

The music was done by DoctorAttitude who is an awesome audio portal artist and a good friend of mine.

I have received submissions from the following people for my documentary. If you sent something in and you don't see your name on this list, please resend immediately to midori.ninja@gmail.com.

Aeonstars
AniGen
Billy Monks
Chester Kwan
Cz-backlash
DonaldM
Elder99
Gerkinman
Hadouken_dude
Jared Johnson
Jimtopia
Luke
Kenkaku
Kirbopher
Kliff
RabidSquirrel
RPGsrok
Rtil
Squeef
Weirdo
YungJazz

I kind of miss doing regular interviews too. :[ Too bad everything fell through with all the guests and most of the listeners had something the size of Ganondorf's fist shoved up their vaginas. HATING VIDEOGAME PARODIES IS SERIOUS BUSINESS.

Speaking of which. Funny hate mail of the week from Streetbob with an angry face titled "FUCK YOU UP THE ASS!" Intrigued, I opened it to see the following response:

fuck you for makeing "more brawl taunts"

LOL. I guess I did sort of miss the internet.

Updates!

+ New userpage banner was made by Ross aka RubberNinja! He is AWESOME and I'll get a chance to meet him in a couple of weeks at Anime Expo along with Egoraptor and TomaMoto :D If anyone else is planning to go, look for me if you can! I'll be volunteering most of the time but I'll be sure to watch the voice actor idol auditions (I won last year, so this year I'm just going to cheer on Ego and Toma~)

+ Thank you all very much for your support on my decision regarding Behind the Flash. I am waiting to make my final decision as to whether I will ultimately continue the interviews by seeing how people respond to the documentary (which will hopefully be out before July.) If it gets a good response, I may decide to do a few interviews again. If not, then I probably won't bother. We'll see. [I still do have a VERY special video interview planned for Comic-Con if all goes well.]

+ For all the people PMing me begging me for a third Brawl Taunts---I really do appreciate the enthusiasm, but it's not my choice. Kirbopher has got to work on his Parody Rangers movie and wants to put his time and effort into that rather than commissions right now. No, I do not want to write another one and have someone else animate it---this is a project for me and Kirb. Plus, quite a few people have accused us of milking the popularity of the first one in order to get awards so it's probably best to back off for a while there too. I am still always up for helping people out as a writer so if you are a good, motivated artist looking for an idea to animate, send me an e-mail and we can discuss!

+ I've also gotten several PMs asking for my Brawl friend code. I don't do online Brawl---it's too laggy and just ugh. However, if you live in Southern California and have a Brawl get together or tournament I will gladly versus you in person! And to answer this other question I get a lot... I main Peach.

+ I MET DAVID HAYTER AND YOU ARE ALL JEALOUS. It was at the Best Buy midnight launch in West Hollywood and he quoted Metal Gear Awesome and said he watches it :O I didn't get to talk to him for very long but several people cosplayed and I went as the Brawl Taunts version of Peach with the "I <3 Snake" shirt. We weren't allowed to get pictures taken with the guests but I do have a few shitty low-quality pictures from the event here. Oh, and I told him to his face that he's the hottest man alive. But urrrrgh I can't afford a PS3 so I can't play MGS4 yet ;__;

Since so many people asked me about it, I'm just going to say it here. No, I'm not getting "butthurt"; I'm simply expressing how irritated I am at how so many people have to take something fun and lighthearted and always turn it into a ridiculous conspiracy theory.

I'm still doing the documentary. Don't get my wrong---I'm not out to waste people's time, so you can bet I'll produce that. It's just going to be its own project and not a Behind The Flash thing.

The reason I cancelled the actual podcast *for now* is because everyone turned it into a fucking conspiracy game instead of just simply TAKING IT FOR WHAT IT IS. "Rina only interviews her friends. Rina only interviews video game parody artists. Rina only interviews people she wants to do voices for. Everyone she interviewed is part of the popular Newgrounds clique." Etc etc etc. No one could simply accept the fact that it was just something I was doing as a fun experimental project and I didn't have any specific 'pattern' in mind when I selected the guests!

Yes, I got a lot of shit for Brawl Taunts. But I didn't care. Why, you ask? BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKED IT. IT MADE THEM LAUGH. IT ENTERTAINED THEM. And entertaining people makes me feel happy and warm and fuzzy inside. But with Behind The Flash, about 10% of the listeners really enjoyed this and the other 90% said that it was stupid/the guests were stupid/I was stupid/my questions were stupid. Not to mention an 18 page thread making fun of it over at another animation forum, and a rather douchebaggy comment from a certain animator about it the other day via Skype. As if that wasn't enough, my guest bailed out on me and all the other guests I had lined up ended up flaking out or were never available.

Normally, I deal with criticism like an adult and use it to work on bettering my projects, but when there isn't enough support behind something and it's more criticizing/bashing than people saying "Hey, I enjoyed this" it isn't worth it to me to wade through PMs, emails and forum threads talking about how stupid these interviews are. I just can't deal with it anymore, for now anyway.

Honestly, I love Newgrounds so much, so it really pains me to see that trying to do something nice and unique for the community only results people hurling insults back at me instead of ignoring it and going on about their daily lives. I think this AIM quote from a friend of mine summed it up pretty well:

AnimatingGerkin (12:45:48 AM): hurts me to see someone in the community thats actually TRYING to be pro-active give up