Archive for the 'Miscellaneous' Category

Year in Review, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Numbered Lists

16 Comments |
December 29, 2009
| Miscellaneous

I’m not even going to talk about the decade. I wouldn’t even know where to start. Six or seven paragraphs of Aria love, I guess. Let’s not go there.

My Ten Favorite Anime Series of 2009

  1. Aoi Hana - Not so much a yuri show as it is a lovely story of friendship and how love exists in so many different forms, to be expressed in so many different ways. And, like everything Shichiro Kobayashi touches, it’s oh so pretty.
  2. Clannad After Story - A fitting finale to the most genuinely touching and engaging of the Visual Art’s/Key adaptations. Tomoya and Ushio in a field of safflowers still makes me cry, no matter how many times I watch it.
  3. K-ON! - A much more charming slice of life series and much better organized 4-koma adaptation than the “too cool for school” crowd would have you believe. The music angle, even if not the ultimate point of the show, makes for tasty seasoning if you’re as into that sort of thing as I am.
  4. Toradora - As a romantic drama, it shines, even despite its hard on for existential philosophizing (a common disease of many light novel adaptations, it seems). Still, the anime series is a well conceived and carefully constructed piece of work that leaves me even more convinced that Tatsuyuki Nagai is truly one of the industry’s brightest new stars.
  5. Hatsukoi Limited - Ah, the innocence of adolescent romance. I’m with Omo. Enomoto x Kusuda get the award for the year’s best couple, rivaled only by Chikura x myself.
  6. Hayate no Gotoku!! - I’ll admit that it took a few episodes before I made peace with the change in tone from the first season, but a plot focused, late-night time slot romcom Hayate no Gotoku is fine, too, you know. If I had a pile of anime to watch on any given night, this always came first.
  7. Kanamemo - I kind of like to think of this show as a low-rent Mahoraba, just with a little less heart-warming and a little more goofiness. And more lesbians. And singing. And hilarious broadcast censorship.
  8. Sora no Manimani - I want to join an astronomy club, too.
  9. Nyan Koi - A perfect example of how a romantic comedy can still do the romance right even when the comedy borders on the absolutely absurd. I’d like to think the production team had as much fun making this show as I did watching it. Seemed like they did, at least. I anxiously await the promised second season.
  10. White Album - I could never really decide if I was laughing with, or at this show. Such was its charm. So utterly fascinating, yet so utterly ridiculous. Touya may have been a gutless douchebag, but he sure did get laid a lot. RESPECT.
  11. Fact of the matter is, I watched a lot of anime this year. A LOT OF ANIME. There are plenty of other shows that deserve praise, like Seitokai no Ichizon, Sasameki no Koto and To Aru Kagaku no Railgun. Then, there are the theatrical releases, like Summer Wars and Kara no Kyoukai. Oh, and oddities like the Candy Boy ONA and Hidamari Sketch specials. And the fourth season of Maria-sama ga Miteru, which I haven’t watched yet (waiting on the R1 DVD release) but will no doubt love once I do.
  12. No, I didn’t watch Bakemonogatari. Or, to be more precise, I didn’t watch more than three episodes. Didn’t do much for me. Sorry.
  13. OMG DON’T GET OFF ON THIS FLOOR.
  14. I already did my homework.
  15. I already did my homework.
  16. I already did my homework.
  17. I already did my homework.
  18. I already did my homework.
  19. I already did my homework.
  20. I already did my homework.
  21. ASK ME HOW I CAN HELP YOU WITH YOUR HOMEWORK.
  22. We’re doing this again next year, right?
  23. Just so you know, I flunked Calculus my freshman year in college. Fuck you, 1996.
  24. Happy New Year!

Full Circle

18 Comments |
September 13, 2008
| Miscellaneous

When watched in proper order, the Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi plays out like a short OAV series followed by a bunch of omake episodes. Suddenly, the jumbled broadcast makes sense.

Not to say, of course, that the show isn’t satisfying when the episodes are viewed in chronological order. It definitely held my attention better. However, I was surprised by how little “happens” in the show; it’s so much more evident when the primary story arc is stuck up front. Beyond that, it’s little more than a slice of life show, and as a whole, it’s clearly a brief introduction to something bigger, deeper and more complex. At this point, I’m just as anxious for a second season as anyone else.

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi is one of a handful of shows I’ve watched in short bursts lately. I’ve already made note of Clannad and ef - a tale of memories, of course, but I’ve also rewatched Kimikiss - Pure Rouge in recent weeks. It was just as good the second time around, if not better. I also finished it off in a single weekend, which was a bit unexpected given the show’s age and length. Then again, I guess it was the same story with Clannad.

I’m gradually coming to the realization that this is the way in which I prefer to watch anime: one show at a time, all at once. Since early this year, I seem to have lost all ability to keep up with new series on a weekly basis, save the odd favorite here and there. And, even then, it’s tough. On the surface, I chalk it up to being busy; I spend far more time thinking about work (and matters of similar weight) when at home than ever before, and I’ve been making an honest attempt to add some flavor and variety to my plate of hobbies and interests. Suddenly, I’m not so much in the mood to keep up with shows like Itazura na Kiss and Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu week after week. But catching up with them in single evening when the mood strikes? That’s simple enough. And a lot more fun.

Which is how it’s supposed to be, of course. I’ve long been one of those weirdos who doesn’t watch television. I haven’t had cable or satellite service in ages. I don’t even own a pair of rabbit ears. Outside of anime, I have little experience “keeping up” with television shows - or any other form of entertainment, for that matter. It must be in my nature to be overly protective of my free time. You won’t find me on IRC all that often, I don’t do instant messaging, and I don’t have text or e-mail service on my cell phone. I don’t do much recreational web browsing. I don’t read many blogs.

Considering my age, interests, and comfort with technology, you’d be surprised how disconnected I am from it all. And the distance only increases with age. I figure I’m only five years away from spending my weekends in a forest alone, penning haiku on old napkins…

The morning calm
as the sun slowly rises
Smells like mustard

I’m exaggerating, of course, but the message is clear: I’m not really all that suited to keeping up with much of anything day after day, week after week. Unless it’s of particular importance, that is (I’ve only taken five days of vacation in the past year, after all). So, my falling off the weekly anime watching and regular blogging wagon in recent months was to be expected. I expected as much, at least.

But, you know, there are a lot of passionate anime fans outside of Japan who don’t do the weekly anime watching song and dance. Prior to the age of digisubs and raws on demand, it was normal to watch what was available when time allowed and the mood struck. If you think about it, this whole, “oh noes, my backlog is out of control because I can’t keep up with all thirty-six shows that are airing this season,” nonsense is very much a new paradigm of anime consumption. It’s something a lot of anime fans fret about. It’s something I used to fret about.

To hell with all that.

State of the Union

28 Comments |
July 4, 2008
| Miscellaneous

I turned 30 yesterday. To celebrate, I went to bed early.

Today, I bought a Wii. I’ve been wanting one for ages, but not so much that I was willing to camp out somewhere or get friendly with a pimply faced game store clerk in order to procure it. When I woke up this morning, however, I thought to myself, “This is my lucky day.” I found one at the first store I visited. Go figure. I haven’t bought any games yet, but I have played several rounds of golf.

I still need to sort through all the news coming out of Anime Expo this weekend, but most of what I’ve heard so far has been positive. The Hayate no Gotoku license is a nice surprise. So is Funimation swooping in and casting Phoenix Down on everything in sight. I’m anxious to hear their plans for finishing out the Kanon release.

The second season of Da Capo II was actually pretty good. More on that later.

Anyway, I’m going to commemorate the birth of this fine nation by getting drunk and watching some Hidamari Sketch. In the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson, “I swear upon the altar of God that Yoshinoya is hot.”

Amen.

Tomorrow, The World!

12 Comments |
May 14, 2008
| Miscellaneous

The secret to being a successful anime blogger is proper planning.

Stock Footage

18 Comments |
February 23, 2008
| Miscellaneous

I’ve got my hands full at work at the moment, so blogging will continue to be light for the next week or so. Here’s a menagerie of… stuff…

I rewatched Gunparade March for the third time recently. I have to thank Omo for turning me on to the show way back when; it’s one of the few series I’ve bought on DVD sight unseen. Despite being riddled with a lot of annoying little imperfections, it’s a perfectly enjoyable show with a strong cast of characters. It’s also structured in such a way as to be fun to watch in large doses. That combined with its relatively short length makes it an easy rewatch.

One thing that I noticed this time around that I hadn’t noticed in the past was that Kenji Kawai was responsible for the show’s score. Now I know why I always loved the background music.

On the gaming front, I see that Gust and NIS are bringing Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis across the Pacific at the end of March. Since the game looks to be the successor to Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm - which I enjoyed quite a bit - I’ll be sure to buy it.

You may remember that I was working my way through Persona 3 not too long ago. The reality is, I haven’t touched the game since before Christmas, and my desire to continue is pretty much non-existent at this point. To be honest, I don’t have time for marathon gaming sessions, and while the mission based nature of Atelier Iris was such that I could play for an hour or two on occasion and actually accomplish something, the same amount of time in Persona 3 often feels like a complete waste of effort. Persona 3 is a good game, and I’d like to finish it, but it’ll have to wait.

Changing topics, my recent foray into live action Japanese dramas has resulted in an interesting discovery. The computer I use for fansub playback is older than dirt and thus isn’t all that useful for watching h264 or 720p encodes. I’ve been putting off replacing it for some time now, as it handles standard encodes marvelously, but with h264 really catching on with fansub groups, I figure it’ll be only a year or so before I simply have to do something, whether I like it or not.

Anyway, on occasions when I’ve watched h264 or 720p encodes, I’ve found that lag issues don’t really kick until about twenty minutes into an episode. Since the average anime episode only runs a few minutes longer than that, I’ve been able to make do, but with live action drama episodes running twice as long, it becomes an issue. It was during an episode of Hotaru no Hikari, however, that it dawned on me: if the processor simply wasn’t up to the task, why would it always wait twenty minutes before giving up the ghost? Clearly, whatever the problem was, it was a function of time.

Turns out, it was a temperature issue. Monitoring the temperature of the processor while watching an episode, I found the lag would always kick in once it reached a certain level. And it would usually take about twenty minutes to reach that level. My suspicion is that the processor intentionally throttles back at that point to prevent damage. Hence, the lag. Thankfully, I found that simply pausing playback for ten minutes once per episode in order to let things cool down made all the difference in the world. I’m glad I figured that out; now I can explore potentially cheaper cooling options without throwing a bunch of money at a new computer.

Although, I’d probably be better off just replacing the computer and being done with it. After all, I can get a nice little Core 2 Duo machine for under $500.

Finally, as thanks for reading this far, here’s Nanoha getting her ass kicked.

That’s all I’ve got.