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

Happy Chinese New Year to those of you descended from the motherland, and may you collect more of those delicious red packets this festive season. I spent the reunion dinner eve in bed, with a majority of the New Year’s Day going towards getting more sleep in view of my erratic nocturnal schedule. While part of me felt like Nobita in that chapter of Doraemon where he decides to spend the first day of the new year in his room with gadgets in lieu of real human company, I figured trying it just this once wouldn’t hurt.

obligatory picture since it’s the year of Yuki Sohma the Mouse

In other news, the discussion over at In Search of Number Nine and a later post by Cameron Probert reminded me that I should stick to this rule in 2008: If comments don’t achieve their required effect after the first one, taking it to a post would be more productive given the growing length.

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.

I picked up Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun. Yes, that Ninomiya-kun with the succubus, not the tragic yet hilarious metafiction in Minami-ke. Now, while I’m certainly not short of shows to blog about or watch this season since I’m keeping up with a grand total of 16, I’m tired of anime blogging. Not in the commonly understood “woe is me, this is a meta post about why I’m burnt out” sense, but in a “this is a post to let you know I’ve not lost it” sense.

I’m sorry CCYoshi, as much as I wanted this to be a counter-culture essay extolling the virtues of fanservice in Ninomiya-kun, there simply wasn’t anything to write about. Which is precisely why I like Ninomiya-kun, in any case:

one distinguishing characteristic of dango society is that they have no distinguishing characteristics

The comments on this post were cute. Specifically, though, I’d like to commend Higevs, Xerox, and lKnight for taking the bait. My mention of “magnum opus” was deliberately provocative, utterly random, though not without careful forethought and really a point I meant to expand on in this post; it was interesting, other post comments aside, to see what the term really means to each of them, and how their taste influenced their criteria for such judgement.

while light shows juxtaposed on serious ones make for hilarity…

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

The basis of harem is pretty simple — one guy, a lot of girls, and plenty of rabu-rabu hijinks in-between. This, unfortunately, is as easy as saying that the basis of shounen is this guy who discovers a drill-shaped key his inner powers one day and goes on to pierce through the heavens save the world. Or saying that the basis of shoujo is throwing one girl into the midst of 10 or so pretty guys and having her come off with her one true love, or that the basis of slice of life is that NOTHING HAPPENS.

what Konata said about tsunderes having twintails was true

This was inspired by the slew of StrikerS episodes (18-24) that yesy decided to release this whole month. Naturally, the idea for a dialogue came to mind due to the mind-blowing, epic quality of said episodes, so I got introspect of transientem and Roxas of a stone and a small ripple to talk about our favourite White Devil.

There should be two other dialogue threads by both Roxas and introspect after this one; part of why I wanted to do this dialogue thing was the lack of attention and/or bad publicity that StrikerS has been getting from the anime blogosphere as a whole. The only blogs talking about them are the episode summary ones, and not a lot of them at that.

I hope to get people thinking with this series of dialogues: are the reasons they’re disliking StrikerS reasonable or sound by any definition? What is the Nanoha series all about? Has the latest instalment in the series really been sucking, or is it just the obtuse English-speaking anime fanbase and their kneejerk reaction to something new? With regards to the last question, I’ve always regarded the latter as being the case, but I digress. On with the discussion.

Nanatsuiro Drops has been an unexpected joy to watch, for as far as I can remember when I finally got it, which was probably around the second episode. Looking past the girly girl fa�ade and what seemed like clich� magical girl trappings, it�s been, like the proverbial child molester, something that�s touched me again and again. Or I could just be waxing lyrical about what�s been advertised, as per its tagline, �First love that encompasses you�.

So this is also an eroge adaptation that I actually like wholeheartedly and unabashedly. It�s really surprising, considering that my views on them haven�t been too favourable, or maybe it�s just the limited sample size I�ve gotten my hands on so far. ND has everything going for it by not harping on the �first love� thing, instead choosing to build on emotions and situations that we can all relate to, and boy, has it been a ride. This is without a doubt, realistic idealism at its best.

I have about nine entries in my feedreader’s Byousoku news bin that I’ve skimmed through briefly for fear of them influencing my review (yeah, you people sure can write). They’re all related to 5cm, but I’ve noticed two things they’ve neglected to point out, and this will therefore constitute most of what I’m going to say, if not all.

Do we take our ability to interpret symbolism and less coherent storylines in anime for granted? How much life experience do you have to have before you can relate to issues like what Byousoku addresses? I say this since I saw 5cm twice; the first time alone, in the middle of the night, and the second time with a group of about eight friends. The contrast between my reactions and theirs were large, to say the least, and I was left wondering if I liked 5cm only due to my exposure to both.

and the collision of your kiss that made it so hard, made it so hard

When I went and asked if anime was deep, or was it just entertainment, dragging my fellow bloggers into the fray, I knew full what I was getting into. The statement, “Is anime deep, or is it just entertainment?” is flawed in that it makes the unstated assumption that it has to be either/or, which means that those reading the statement have to make a stand for one or another.

Of course, this isn’t exactly the case given how we’re rational, thinking human beings. Anime is the term we give to a medium, like cartoon or live-action shows, and therefore there can be no assigning of values to it in the first place. Why then did I go ahead and use such a misleading statement for a topic in the first place? It’s simple — the statement was my little exercise in social engineering and symbolic interactionism.

Blumer, in his coining of the term, basically states that our reaction to objects are based on what understanding we have of them. This understanding is in turn derived from, or comes as a result of the interaction between our fellow men. We take the understanding of an object, and then use or modify them as circumstances see fit.

About this double-feature with Impz over at THAT Anime Blog: For those of you not in the know, there’s all manner of bloggers, about 20 give or take, that can be found over at #animeblogger @ irc.irchighway.net on a fairly regular basis. Now the average age in the channel is anywhere from late teens to early twenties, and naturally, when you put a group of people with that median age together in a space for prolonged periods, fun stuff happen — it’s like a younger, self-absorbed Survivor in action, but with more e/n and angst thrown into the mix.

The topic of elitism came about due to my being bored and wanting to spice things up a little bit. Much like Lelouch and his Order of the Black Knights, I wanted to see how easy it was to bring about revolution discussion, albeit in a very roundabout way, regarding the topic, and what better way to start then by applying the label to myself? Unfortunately, I rubbed all of two people the wrong way in the process, and this is where the fun began.

If rational, level-headed opinions (and sarcasm) offend your conservative, illogical sensibilities, you can still turn back. You don’t have to read beyond this. No one’s forcing you to do anything, no sirree. Exit’s that way.

It’s easy to spin anything. Bet you didn’t know that. The witch-hunting, pitchfork-waving mob gets their kicks from taking things out of context. I blame the rise of a post-modernist society. Because, you know, things should be taken at face value and all that. The importance of looking at something from a structured perspective, or in context, is antiquated fundamentalist bullshit; the new way to go about things is to analyse things on the surface level. Nevermind differing cultural norms, I mean, since it’s being published in my country I must be able to hold it to my own set of personal values, and say things like “I’m fully aware this isn’t part of my culture, but the PERVERTS! How DARE they!”

That’s brilliant reasoning there, if I say so myself.