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.

Happy Valentines Day — belated if you’re in the Eastern hemisphere — to all you ronery and non-ronery people out there. In choosing to do this joint feature I figured that a certain someone would be just the girl for the job, considering how she’s posted twice on Tokyo Marble Chocolate before this, and with such passion and eloquence, too.

But what’s the point, you say, in covering something that’s already written to death about, and much earlier on, too? It’s quite simple — aside from being suitable Valentines fodder, it also has two very different sides to the same story, with the girl’s and the guy’s sides showing off distinct perspectives. Naturally, it’d only make sense to have two bloggers of the relevant genders covering it from their respective angles, which is rationale behind this little feature.

There’s also the relatively more sombre tone of TMC that I found to be its selling point. While Valentines Day is famous for glorifying the union of the couple and all its romantic trappings, I wanted to take the road less travelled in writing about those who once had a significant other, and TMC fit the bill. It’s all well and good to have someone to make presents and profess your undying love for, but for those single by choice, those who aren’t exactly eager to get into a new relationship after the trauma of a past love, this is for you.

It’s official: three out of five blogs approve of Fuuko’s reappearance in episode 12. The other two were just grumpy old men who couldn’t stomach a little of KyoAni’s signature humour (it being an anime-original scene and all). Just kidding, and I’m not talking about the grumpy part either. I’ve already written about why Fuuko’s arc worked for me so we won’t go into the details about why Fuuko supposedly sucks since this works under the premise that, as shocking as it may seem, Fuuko as a character actually did some good throughout the seven episodes or so in which she appeared.

I have it from a very reliable source that Fuuko remains in character, even for the anime-original parts of Clannad like the crane-catching sequence and the classroom/wedding ones, where Nagisa isn’t present. She’s a source of humour throughout her entire arc right up till the end, and KyoAni’s decision to animate her first, essentially removing her from the cast early on, seems like a good decision on retrospect. Why so?

It’s going to be difficult to attempt and write about Gurren Lagann without inevitably degenerating into one of those awestruck rants about its sense of monumental scale, as everything screams BIG, from a given character’s aspirations (”All the stars in the sky are enemies”), to the galaxy-flinging antics of the final episode, to the music (”Do the impossible”), but I’m going to try anyway.

Since my moments are inevitably memorable because they made me shed tears in varying degrees, you’d think it wouldn’t be hard to guess what I’m going to write about here. No, it wasn’t Kamina’s death, although its impact was felt several episodes later and ranks among the best, if not most defining death of 2007. It wasn’t Kittan’s death, which was sad but not tragic. It wasn’t even Nia’s fading away, despite that being a grand send-off for a character I initially had the impression of as being exposition tool/Simon pick-me-up.

It was a sunset. Not just any sunset, mind you, but the sunset first seen in episode 01 as Kamina, Simon, and Yoko break through the surface of Jeeha Village. That sunset was reproduced to amazing effect later in episode 21, and it’s this very scene that made me weep as much as, say, Kanata’s backstory in Lucky Star, or Jun’s farewell to Kana in Bokurano. I’m still wondering what hit me then.

Even if it was in poor taste, you can’t deny that School Days had many great moments in its final episode. While we were all sure of Makoto getting his just deserts, the way in which it was done with a triple combo ensures that whatever you thought about the value of it, their respective ends were tinted with a macabre irony that even Jigsaw of Saw fame would approve of.

This is achieved through the copious amounts of schadenfreude amassed during the course of the story. We go from rooting for the generic male protagonist to get together with the girl he has a crush on to wanting to put the whole bloody lot out of their misery, and SD complies with this deliberately-induced death wish. It seems to me like SD came about as the result of the rise of reality TV in the 90s, and why not?

In an age where we’ve been accustomed to laughing at real people doing stupid and embarrassing things in front of the camera for our amusement and their tentative financial compensation, the idea of fictional people doing depraved and criminal acts for the sake of a few laughs (and compensation on behalf of the production house) seem tame in comparison. The way in which SD escalates into a downward spiral of misery will always be remembered — a slippery slope made flesh. The absolute worst-case scenario in which everything that could go wrong did.

Whenever I write an ef post I usually loop 5cm’s OST over and over again in the background in lieu of a proper ef soundtrack. Like a heroin addict taking methadone, it’s a poor substitute for the wonder of the real thing, but that just goes to show how highly I regard Tenmon for the magic he did in 5cm. The tracks do strike a common chord in terms of the aesthetic he employs, an enchanting and magical lyric that contrasts with the marked realism of ef and 5cm.

Byousoku changed me. I wouldn’t say it was a dramatic change like one would after a profound or disturbing revelation of sorts, but it changed how I looked at relationships, especially those of the type you take for granted in their “could-be” Schrodinger state. I say this due to there being a girl in my life right now that’s taken on an Akari-sque bent lately. I don’t know her all that well, yet I want to; the prospect of my going overseas to a college in the States next year made me think of this — as I wondered today if I should make the effort to draw myself just that little bit closer, I thought of Akari, and Kanae. Of never letting go. A distant person with his sights always fixed somewhere higher. The long-distance heartbreak, of which I’ve known once and would rather do without.

Genshiken’s relevance to the fandom has been well-noted for some time. Given the truth of its piercing observations and all, you could practically call it a sociological study (participant and non-participant observation as means of methodology, obviously) in otaku, all entertainment purposes aside. No stone’s left unturned: everyone, from gamer to erogamer, cosplayer to fujoshi, manga-ka to doujinshi group — they’re all there. In this we see glimpses of the people behind the passion and fanaticism, and we see reflections of ourselves waving back at us.

The difference between the otaku of the motherland and those of the wide internet expanse don’t go amiss, though. I’d like to think that we’re better off for lacking the very physical presence we’re wont to judge others by; what matters here isn’t how you look or dress or talk, but merely how much anime you’ve watched or manga you’ve read. In other words, it’s easier to reach out and connect with others, and forge a sense of community as a result.

This leads me to my tangential digression, of which I hope you’ll excuse this once. Having the privilege of obtaining not one but two detractors in the short span of 24 hours, I thought I’d deign a little time breaking their arguments into little pieces with the power of logic before heading into the meat of the post, so feel free to skip about two paragraphs down if you’re reading this from the comfort of your feedreader or an incoming link. For the rest of you, gory details after the cut.

The beauty’s in the little things — this is the basis for the “12 moments of the year” series. For those who watch or read for “resolution” rather than “moment”, bad endings ruin their enjoyment of a series. Those who watch them for “moment”, however, don’t bat an eyelid at an ending less than satisfactory. This is why there are those who balk at the prospect of starting on an incomplete series, and also why those who go with the flow and survive on a month-to-month or week-to-week basis come out richer as a result.

Kodomo no Jikan is one of those. I’m not sure that an ending, assuming that KnJ ends eventually, will be one of KnJ’s strengths, even though I’m convinced that Kaoru Watashiya will have it all figured out like she has her main characters. What I’ve discovered this year while reading the manga is the clarity and strength of the messages that she delivers through her art, astute observations of pathos and empathy that are inevitably overshadowed by the pervasive fanservice she employs. For those who care to look beneath the surface, however, there’s gold to be found. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

also, the anime sucks by virtue of it being censored to hell and back, so it’s recommended that you actually pick up the manga or wait for the DVD raws unless you enjoy censorbars and random animal sounds

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.

This is another Anime Blogging Collective� joint blogging effort brought to you by TheBigN, Roxas, CCYoshi, Moogy, Damien, and Martin. As ef is the Lucky Star of the season in that it’s a severely misunderstood anime that’s getting bad press due to badly written, snap judgement opinions that prefer to brand it the misunderstood problem child from a couple of episodes, we thought that a feature like this was severely overdue.

If you haven’t started on this gem of an anime, now would be a great time to do so. A note of interest would be that the seemingly random images only appear for 10% of the time in the first two episodes, before dipping to about 5% in episode 03 and further dropping to non-existent amounts on consecutive episodes. I’ve heard people comment on ef getting better, but it isn’t merely my opinion when I say that it was always good.

I say this on the strength of rewatching the entire series up till episode 06 so far; it’s evidently an anime that’s intended to be viewed more than once. You could say it’s a flaw in that the first two episodes are incoherent on a first viewing but make perfect sense when viewed later, but I’d rather look at it as a strength. It’s undeniably ambitious and artsy in its own idiosyncratic way, but powerfully executed, only underwhelming due to its extensive usage of what seem like red herrings in the beginning, and I hope that this series of posts will clear the air on that, enhancing your enjoyment of the show as a result.

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.

What is �deep�, for starters? Some of my other fellow bloggers, like Martin, Bateszi, TheBigN, Higevs, Hidoshi, and Impz might be able to tell you more about it. There�s a thousand and one ways with regards to how one might go about the issue if one were so inclined as to play the semantics card. Personally, though, what with my distaste for such time-wasting matters and my forte being in English and all, I think it�d be best to assume the dictionary definition.

However, even Dictionary.com has a plethora of definitions as to what exactly makes up the word �deep�. Without context in place, it could mean �grave or serious�, �heartfelt; sincere�, �absorbing; engrossing�, �great in measure; intense; extreme�, or even �profoundly cunning or artful�, were I to choose to apply �deep� with regards to Darker than Black�s literary and artistic value.

Unfortunately, for the sake of sanity (and discussion, I might add), the only definition available that fits would be �not superficial; profound�. Why do I choose to pick on this series of all things, you ask, when I could be extolling the virtues of anime in general or adopting a macro view? I believe that some, if not all of those doing this joint blogging exercise with me are more than up to the task, so I�ll leave it to them for that.

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.