Anime — Saikano

This was billed as a real weepie, and good with it. So I even ordered it from the States (only to find an R2 release was in the works). And I was prepared to forgive the sketchy animation style.

Alas, this series fails and fails hard. In trying to be tragic, it falls heavily into melodrama, and ham overacting. The subtlety of emotion is akin to that of a flung house brick, so after a few episodes I was sitting there, numbly waiting for something really heart-rending.

Alas, while my eyes might have moistened a bit during the first few episodes, by the time we came to the tragic death of a close friend towards the end, I was thinking "Just get on with it.", and it continued to over-egg the pudding all the way to the very end.

Nowhere near as good as the buzz suggested.

Anime — Maria-sama ga miteru + Mari-mite Spring

Slice of life at a Catholic girl's high-school, centred on the doings of the student council, with the highest drama being about matters of etiquette, in the main — the girl who seems to be dating too many different men (who turn out to be her brothers); or the one who is found to have a set of Buddhist prayer beads, rather than a rosary (like fibbing to get into a church school here). No magic, no martial arts, no fan-service, save the occasional shoulder or ankle, or sisterly hug.

In contrast with the hyper-kinetic action of other titles, this is quite calm, and about the people, and, in the second series, the matters of succession, as the third-years graduate, and everyone else moves up one place in the council hierarchy.

This is definitely a series that deserves its high reputation. It's also one that on the face of it doesn't sound like my sort of thing at all, but just sort of clicked.

Anime — Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito

Finally mopped this one up, after having d/ld it a while back. Having chosen the more active Miyuki fansub, I did have to suffer appalling literal romanization, like "Ririsu" and "Jiru" for Lilith and Jill.

Generally a harmless piece of ecchi, if a little incoherent given the world-book hopping background, but what the hey, it has some bad-ass sword fighting, too. And knowing the dud ending in advance helps it from being too much of a let-down.

Perfectly fine for whiling away a wet winter evening.

Anime — Kemonozume

One of the autumn's titles that didn't get much attention, perhaps because of the unusual animation style, with a lot of rotoscoping for backgrounds, and an almost European feel to the character design, except in occasional bursts of nigh standard anime look in the intro vignettes to most episodes.

The basic premise is that there are man-eating monsters who usually live concealed in human form; and there is a clandestine society of hunters who act to keep society at large free from predation. The heir to the society falls for a girl — but you guessed it, she's a Flesh Eater. Cue, one would think, Romeo and Juliet with martial arts mayhem. But no.

If there is anything that this builds on, it is Nietzsche's line about being wary of fighting monsters, lest one becomes one as well. Factions splinter, divisions blur, and things start falling apart as the intermittently happy couple try to stay ahead of pursuit. And by falling apart, I mean descending into serious madness, of one of the most messed up and depraved villains gets close to succeeding in dragging the whole world down with him.

Definitely 18-rating stuff, but definitely one of the more original titles of 2006. It's not every day your hero fights to freedom while bound naked (but for handy censoring blur) to a chair.

What I did on my holidays

Much like n molesworth, I've been doing a lot of "did 0" and "mucked about". A chance to rest has been good, especially after starting the holidays with a filthy drive in fog to go to pay for the newly installed carpet in my den, and continued discomfort from the tooth that's been playing up these last couple of months. At least that has settled down a bit now, even if it doesn't yet feel ready for prime-time when it comes to chewing.

I now have a nicely fitted out and de-cluttered den, sufficiently de-cluttered that Karen can come in in her wheelchair and watch stuff with me; and we've even managed to clear and sort the spare room enough that that's accessible and the bed could be used. Admittedly there's still stuff to sort, and a lot of jumble waiting a chance to offload, but there is progress.

And all the usual seasonal things happened, the dinner with college friends on Sunday, and this year, none of the trauma we had last year.

Winter

Hard frost, and lots of it today. Hard work scraping the wind-screen to get a peep-hole, while running the engine; and the edge of the passenger side had only just about defrosted by the time I got to work. This will have put a stop to the still busily flowering fuschias in the font garden.

Plenty of wild-life crossing the road on the way home; a hare on the bridge over the new dualling of the A428, and a muntjac on the descent into Bourne.

Ouch

The last six weeks have gone roughly : toothache, fever, toothache, cold, tooth with abcess, root canal work part 1 of 3. Not fun. Not much enthusiasm to blog either. Just retardedness on ephemeral chat boards.

[Now playing - Planet Rock]

Milestones

16666 on the drive for the weekend

[Now playing - Planet Rock]

Milestones

Just passed the 16000 mile mark as I parked.

And the first frost of the season — very late.

Reasonably Unique

With "Steven" I get this

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 6 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Steven		Gilham
There are 1,172,877 people in the U.S. with the first name Steven. Statistically the 26th most popular first name. 99.74 percent of people with the first name Steven are male. Names similar to Steven: Stephen Steve		There are 1,560 people in the U.S. with the last name Gilham. Statistically the 18372nd most popular last name. (tied with 468 other last names)

With Steve, the number drops to 2!

Anime — Planetes (ΠΛΑΝΕΤΕΣ)

Good, but not as good as the manga. Some extraneous comedy and office life stuff was added, and the Dream part of it downplayed.

Anime — Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (ひぐらしのなく頃に)

Interesting, occasionally gruesome — and if you don't realise that it was based on a popular game, slightly confusing with the reboots — mystery/horror anime. Very difficult to describe without much spoilerage, beyond the initial premise of the initial lead character being an outsider, new to a remote and insular rural community, where there are a lot of odd goings-on, and creepy little girls.

It had one “hardly bear to watch” sequence involving fingernails.

Anime — Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and ditto. A's

I tried this series out because of the on-going buzz about it on /a/, like —

It is made of high-speed, high-powered aerial combat, a touch of fanservice, massive explosions and major amounts of win. Despite the name, it's only a Magical Girl anime for the first three episodes of the first series. Then it becomes great. Then it becomes awesome at episode 7. Then it becomes legendary from the start of the second season.

and it did not disappoint. And if you need more inducement, there are also delightful magical devices speaking Super Engrish as well.

One of the nicer touches about it is that Nanoha is one of the more sensible, level headed, and yet nice characters around, from business-like talks with her parents when she tells them she has to go away and do her magical girl thing for a while, to the way she seriously befriends people. And by people, I mean Fate-chan, and then the Velka Knights from series two.

Nature Notes

Fog again, like yesterday. And, driving into town, just coming into Barton, a fox loping across the road in such broad daylight as there was, stopping to look at me as I went past.

Memetic Hazard

Memetic Hazard
Originally uploaded by Arenamontanus.

Anders of http://www.aleph.se/ has designed a neat set of forward looking hazmat style signs. This one ought be stamped on pretty much any viral ideology, especially the geopolitically active macho ones.