And now for something completely different.

• Dasaku.net lives. Formerly Ikimashou.net, Randall’s relaunched the main site to be a lot more functional than it was before — if you’re one of those people like me who can’t afford hosting, a domain name, or both yet want your shiny anime blog, this is the place to go to. Aside from listing dasaku.net’s members and how to contact him, there’s a snazzy application form over at the Apply page that you should look at if you’re interested in a blog that ends in dasaku.net or oniichannoecchi.com, and if you’re wondering about the “rubbish” and “worthless” taglines? Don’t be too bothered — it’s just a play on words, “dasaku” being the pun in mention.

…and I have no one else to thank but you, dear reader.

Has it really been one year? I can barely remember what it was like then, but I’ll spare you the usual wall of text that accompanies reflections like these — until after the cut, of course. What, you thought I was going to let up just because it was my blog’s birthday? Never.

fortunately, on the internet celebrations like these are all but impossible

In view of the nice things that well-meaning people have said and the not so nice things that other, more tragically misunderstood people have said, I guess now would be a better time than any to clear the air on the inaugural Anime Blog Awards, of which I happen to be part of the organising committee. We’ve been railed at countless times, and I’ve kept my silence on the matter for quite some time, so this reply is somewhat overdue.

It also goes without saying that poor Impz has been tearing his hair out about the criticism, a matter I was supposed to follow-up with in a more vitriolic post tearing apart the flimsy reasoning and half-baked arguments, among many others, with massive amounts of logic. However, apathy for the misinformed and procrastination both led to me eventually forgetting about making that post, and just as I was going to write one regarding my nominations for the awards, I figured I’d just kill two birds with one stone by posting about them at the same time.

I’ve never viewed this as a popularity contest, if you ask me. The point for me has always been about the nominations and the accompanying transparency — I care about the results like I did the outcome of True Tears, which is to say, somewhat, but not as much as the process of getting there, and it’s this period that I want to highlight. Think of it as a mini-awards of sorts, my little “Up yours, fags!” to those with their inflated egos and/or popular blogs who haven’t even deigned to see where we’re coming from. Heaven forbid we didn’t consult your Excellencies in our bid to make something that everyone could take part in.

Salutations! Someone says, saturnine’s submerged in subterfuge, surreptitiously silent. Stuff that! You sing, “He’s shot down, shown out, that sacrilegious simpleton! Sic him!” Simple simians! Short on sight, your supplementary smarm spent, I spit on your simpering similes! Separate the slinging of mud, the unsightly spat that sears the ABC from the spick-and-span ABA, spotless and sinless in sobriquet and skill!

Stupidity soars! Satisfyingly servile, your shallow sense of substance and slurs of sexism are secondary. My statement stands! Sentence me not to a slothful and static status! Silence! Stroke not yourself senseless with sordid servings of your shameful and sleazy sweet-talk, but soften up! Stop slobbering over your selves, you sickening sapiens! Study what I am about to submit, and snicker at your superficial sharpness.

Surely, to set this off I stewed it over with my syndicate of staunch and steadfast subordinates who suggested and sanctioned this scheme. We set a stage, a span where I would be slandered for a spell, and spurred each other to simulate a sketch of staggering shock and suppressed sadness. A straightforward and self-explanatory soap that successfully swindled. Softly I swore, “Sufferin’ succotash! The saps were spoon-fed!” We shouted with satisfaction.

So as I slowly scrawl these scribbles to solemnize strife long set in satire, so do I sanctify the salient sense of the savvy jpmeyer. Smug as he simpered in his sanitary sanctuary, he smiled at the silly sarcasm, signalling in a suppressed shot that he saw with sensitivity. Was it a stretch of your supposition to speculate that it was sheer shenanigans? Seemingly. Was it a stock standard, a stale stereotype? I suppose.

Speaking as a seemingly spiteful and sinister superstar whose stature was once sullied, I smirk as I script this. Sob as you seize the societies you once snubbed, and shriek in shame! I’ll sum it up in a singular, succinct and sharp word: Suckers. Substantial sneering aside, I’ll shut the sermon for now, and save you the spiel… you may call me S.

Owen S. Happy April Fools!

P.S.: If you didn’t get it and/or fail at the English language, all the blog drama was a joke.

P.P.S.: Feel enraged, amused, vindicated, cheated, exalted, used, relieved, or any combination of the above? Feel free to leave a comment.

P.P.P.S.: Yes, I did have a nice good laugh. GIGO.

P.P.P.P.S.: A hearty thanks to everyone involved, especially those like NovaJinx, Extrange, mellow and IcyStorm who had so much faith in me. Much thanks goes to the ABC, and more importantly CJ for being the one to cast the first stone. Special mention goes out to all the attention whores and two-faced cretins of lesser intelligence who took this occasion to unwittingly bash me, and the ABC by association, doing what this Chinese proverb calls “adding oil to fire”. Best Xanatos-gambit-cum-idiot-pogrom ever.

P.P.P.P.P.S.: I got told. Twice.

P.P.P.P.P.P.S.: Other noteworthy posts include Mike’s and CCY’s.

some might consider not getting this to be a good thing, but I beg to differ

While I was cropping, rotating, and resizing headers for the new layout I thought to myself, “How can I make this interesting?” CCY had the idea of incorporating the relevant taglines into his rotating headers, but they weren’t funny. Kabitzin had an equally great idea of inserting a witty, self-referential line into his layout that he occasionally changes, but it didn’t coincide with his headers, and sometimes barely made sense unless he explained it. Then I had a flash of inspiration. Why not use both?

This is a test of otaku knowledge that isn’t as balanced or fair as I’d have liked (because they include Touhou references, even if they’re not particularly hard), but I’m curious to see how far my in-jokes go — popular memes, literary references, medical anatomy jargon and song lyrics among them — they’re all relevant to the image on which the text’s located, and I’m wondering if my readers ever pay attention to them. The filenames may or may not be helpful. Two of them require a dictionary (unless you’re a medical student), and another two require Google (or a decent knowledge of post-/prog-rock song titles). How many did you get, and can you explain the connection between the image and tagline? Answers after the cut.

The problem with anime references or puns is that they usually fall apart quite miserably when you attempt to throw two or more of them together. It’s the sheer futility of making a Yoko Kanno reference in a Nanoha post title (a Venn diagram would easily illustrate the naivete behind this), or stringing together similarities between a not-so-popular mahou shoujo anime and an extremely famous shounen one (on top of a Narnia parallel) that leaves much to be desired, but I try anyway. If you manage to catch both references in the post title, well, consider yourself to have otaku street cred.

if recent episodes are anything to go by, he’s getting there

Just an announcement about my new subdomain: it’s finalised. For those of you who are into that sort of thing, you can now update Cruel Angel Theses on your blogroll to omaemo.dasaku.net. Don’t worry about the RSS feed, since FeedBurner is convenient like that.

like ikimashou.net, gone but never forgotten

The new subdomain name, お前も駄作, or “You are also trash”, came about as an satirical reference to how most of the nastier debates about taste that I’ve either witnessed or been party to usually degenerate into narcissism, where one person’s elevated at the expense of putting another person’s preferences down. It’s all good when done in jest, of course, but it never fails to amuse me whenever it gets serious and sparks fly, hence my reason for choosing it.

Now that I’ve settled on a domain, I’ll finally be able to get around to editing all the pictures and links in my old posts, so expect a possible downtime in the coming week as I fix a few long-standing technical issues, install some plugins, and add a few new headers, among other things. Oh, and The ABC will be doing something for Valentines, but I’m sure you saw that coming. Stay tuned for more details!

I’m sure you’ve heard about how my very first post was inspired by lolikitsune, so we won’t talk ill of the dead. What you probably don’t know about my blog was what or who exactly inspired it. Since the original blog has since been deleted, I’ll use a placeholder in lieu of the real thing, also because the author doesn’t really write the same stuff anymore, so linking to his current one would be rather pointless.

I started reading anime blogs somewhere around the time where the Anime Nano podcast was still alive, and jp’s was the first I started following consistently for its resemblance to what Oscar Wilde would write, if Wilde was an otaku instead of a pederast and dug films instead of poetry. I forgot which post(s) of his struck me as particularly awesome, but I remember telling myself that I would make a blog like his if I ever got around to it. Then Kanon finished airing, and I watched it over three days. Spring 2007 came, along with some of the most utterly retarded opinions about an anime that was to be judged by its OP. My anime blogging began.

I recently discovered while reading Les Miserables that Marius, Book Four, is entitled “The Friends of The ABC”, which this doesn’t happen to reference, unfortunately, but the better you know…

This marks the midway point of the third season since I started blogging. Time sure flies. I caught up with Gurren Lagann till episode 18 today, and there’s something about Simon’s ascent into his much-heralded destiny that reminds me of my venture into blogging: I remember when I made my very first post as a reaction to something lolikitsune wrote about Lucky Star (in an amusing parallel, I should also mention that lolikitsune died like Kamina did), breaking through the roof into the surface of anime blogging in the process.

Eight months have passed, and like Simon and his life underground, much has changed since my early days at Wordpress.com. While I’m not saving mankind from annihilation any time soon, I have gotten to know quite the idiosyncratic group of bloggers, in addition to having founded The ABC, a joint blogging initiative of which this post happens to be party to. Others taking part in this include Roxas, Mike, Ray, Karura, CCYoshi, Martin, Hige, J. Valdez, and Xerox; tj_han too, if you count his tsundere post.

The quality and quantity of Autumn practically begs for it to be blogged. It’s my hope that I’ll continue to witness many more inspiring seasons such as these, for this season helped me understand many things, among them being that that quality isn’t necessarily better than quantity; prejudice doesn’t help a first impression but rather reinforces existing beliefs; elitism in the face of numerous shows mean that you end up being the social equivalent of Scrooge.

Happy Remembrance Day to those who even know what this is. To be honest, neither did I until I decided to look up November 11 on Wikipedia, having heard it being mentioned once in the Incubus song “A Kiss To Send Us Off”, and then later in Darker than Black as a character name. Apparently today is the end of what was World War I, and Tensai Okamura, the creator of DtB, decided to name a chain-smoking blonde with freezing powers after it.

So I found the Incubus song to mirror DtB’s story very well. In case you’re one of those humourless science students who have problems with lateral thinking, the lyrics basically parallel DtB through the usage of imagery like kisses (Brita), electricity/clouds (Hei), and mention of November 11.

While I personally have no problems making the connection, I thought screencaps would illustrate this point of mine better, so here it is. YouTube of the Incubus song after the cut. Source of the lyrics is here, track #2, which is Incubus’ official site so they’re guaranteed to be accurate.

This post is obviously meant to be inflammatory from the title! I mean, there could be no other reason for using “arrogance”, could there? This post also obviously refers to every fansubber out there and not a select few who are concerned. Please keep that in mind as you read this post, and before you proceed to comment. Take every word I say out of context. It’s not like I tend to be sarcastic on the internet or anything, nope.

I may not agree with what you say, but I�ll defend to the death my right to drill it

Here are some spoilers: Your blog dies in Wordpress 2.3. Or at the very least goes into sudden cardiac arrest, requiring a mouth-to-mouth and a frantic trip to the ER for that quadruple-bypass you’ve been putting off. You might even need to shut down for a couple of days while it lies comatose, like I unwittingly had the foresight to do while upgrading.

Let me tell you, however, that the upgrade, amidst all that blood, sweat, tears, and missing out on reading (and writing) Autumn posts was worth it. I have seen the future of anime blogging, and it is Tags. Spelled with a capital letter. Tags. With bold. Tags. You get the idea. While this might seem like a small matter to some of you who have been using categories for your anime series for ages, the benefits of using Tags were immediately obvious to me.

what goes through my mind everytime I see Gensokyoans(sp) using computers isn’t “oh, they’re using them”, but “why do they suck so much”, since their scope of powers are so hax, you’d think they’d be able to get better rigs

Just a bit of link blogging before I return to the normal schedule (wait, what schedule?). I’d like to think that four whole days away from the PC at camp did my hands good, but a prolonged bout of instant messaging proved otherwise. I can live with the pain, though, seeing how it serves as a good reminder to take frequent breaks and all. Workrave’s helped a lot, too.

It’s always a joy to discover new anime blogs worth your time and effort to read. To my chagrin, ever since I started proactively looking for blogs with both quantity and quality, I’m quite embarrassed to note that my daily reading efforts have been stunted somewhat. Gone are the days of being able to skim through the list of daily entries effortlessly before breakfast, and I have these blogs to blame for adding to my “burden”, although I’m not in the least morose about it.

the concept of relevant/related pictures in my posts are practically unheard of, I know, but in the picture Haruhi’s saying “oh! this is a unique site…”

Numerous spoilers after the cut.

You knew this was coming. Come on. Come on. Only the weak chicken out after a few episodes of “boring” training. I don’t know, maybe the Time-Space Administration Bureau could have invented something called the Amplifying Rapid Growth Hormone during the 10 year timeskip, thus enabling the possibility of an epic battle like Nanoha A’s in the second episode?! The first episode, obviously, would have our four young ones being injected with said ARGH.

It would’ve been lame, though, to see battle after battle at the beginning without any reason to care for the characters’ beam spam and transformation scenes. As a result of the especially long and, according to some quarters, difficult episodes where NOTHING HAPPENS, people began to whine. The only other feasible option would have to be putting the training scenes in flashbacks during the battles, but who wants to see Teana thinking about the time she got her ass kicked by Nanoha for fudging up a battle session right in the middle of war when you can see it first-hand?

I know I wouldn’t. As a result of all that getting to know the new cast during the 10-odd episodes so far, the few battles so far have been gripping. It says something when you cheer silently or burst into loud exclamations at what’s happening on-screen, not because you’re being noisy, but because you care about the characters and what might or might not happen to them. This is also why the battles in Harry Potter 7 were the best ever — it wasn’t so much the writing as it was what was at stake. Anyone could die and faced a very real possibility of being snuffed out as you turned the page.