Let me start off this post by saying my current internet connection sucks shit, and as such I’ve not watched much of anything over the weekend except the by now infamous Antique Bakery rain scene (lolz). Oh and the new season of Project Runway, not that has anything to do with anime but this certainly does. I’d be more frustrated over the fact if not for my horrendously large pile of manga I’ve been hoarding recently (Bought an 18 volume set of a series yesterday because I’ve only watched one episode of the anime and pretty much liked it it was second hand and only cost 50yen a volume!) despite the loooonnnggggg time it takes for me to decipher moonrunes.

Back to the point, recently (last Saturday. That might also explain the lack of anime I’ve been watching) I’ve started reading the Animal Yokocho manga which is wickedly awesome on so many levels it’ll take a whole other blog post for me to recommend it. So instead, this post will recount A HORRIBLE SECRET BEHIND ISSA AS ADMITTED BY THE MANGAKA IN ONE OF HER NOTES I WISH I NEVER READ.

(Yea, yea, the usual filler post in between what I usually blog. Oh wait, what do I usually blog besides filler posts?)

So if you’re not familiar with Issa from Animal Yokocho, he(?)’s the nice one panda of the bunch that I just happened to choose as the basis of my interweb monicker for no particular reason besides I’m random and I freakin LOVE THIS SHOW (and now the manga =P). Note that I’m in no way like quite dissimilar from the actual Issa from the show, because well, if you can’t read, I have the extra ‘-sa‘ at the end. Hah.

BUT WHAT IS THIS TERRIBLE SECRET I HAVE CHANCED UPON IN THE MANGA WHICH I KNOW WISH I COULD UNKNOW OF???

Well, it was in one of her side notes that the mangaka Maekawa Ryou reveals the origins of her characters’ names. Curious as I was, I had to read what she had to say about what she was smoking it was that made her think of ‘Issa‘ as a suitable name for her panda character. And her reason was…

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Maekawa-sensei just took the name from a band member of DA PUMP.

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Err, okay. But why DA PUMP of all groups?

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Because apparently…

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PUMP -> パンプ　PA-N-PU -> パンダ　PA-N-DA (笑う – LOL)

(If you didn’t see an anticlimax coming, You’re probably new to this sorry excuse of an anime blog)

Well, err, that’s ‘interesting’ to know, I thought at the time (was reading it on the train. Actually I was really thinking that I share the penchant for bad puns as Maekawa-sensei ORZ). Still besides the aww, that’s rather cute/smacks forehead nature of the information, nothing that would make me wish to unread that piece of information, right?

Well, I just looked up DA PUMP (good old Wikipedia), specifically for this ISSA the panda (and to a certain extent myself) is named after, and I kinda lol-ed to read that he’s been singing Kamen Rider OPs (I should probably ask the resident Kamen Rider fan in my dorm XD All I gather is that the more recent incarnation of the franchise is pretty much about the pretty boys and girls – and Tomokazu Sugita voices this bat like thing -_-”). Of course, that not beng enough, I had to take a peek at the guy’s official website.

Dot Dot Dot . . .

Okay, I was stunned for a moment. Actually I’m still kinda stunned now. No offence to Hentona Issa or DA PUMP, but this certainly wasn’t the image I’d conjure up when I think of ‘Issa‘, and well, thanks to that, I’m gonna have a hard time from now on every time I think of Issa the beloved panda… Hell, now I’m thinking I should’ve actually researched the name better when I decided to rip it off -_-”

Again, no actual offence meant to the actual owner(s) of the name, nor to DA PUMP. I’m sure they pump out some really good music (*groans*), I mean they were “the first “boyband” to successfully penetrate the market monopolized by Johnny’s Entertainment.“

*shudders*boyband*shudders*Johnny’s…

Obviously, the only one who’d find this piece of useless information ‘horrible/terrible’ in any sense is my naive/ignorant/overly-dramatic/attention-and-content-starved-blogger self. I still love the name Issa and all, though I just wanted to stress the “-sa” in Issa-sa from now on if you don’t mind…

Err yea, I guess that concludes yet another one of my tl;dr fail filler posts.  Hope you enjoyed it :P

(Please don’t flame me DA PUMP fans >.< *links DA PUMP’s blog to distract any fans who read this*)