Spring 2011 anime - Nichijou

What the hell did I just watch? I mean that in a good way. While looking at the list of anime airing this season, I didn't see much catching my eye at first glance. I forgot what exactly drew me to giving this a try, but I eventually watched it when someone recommended it. I already had it ready to watch by that point, so I decided I'd give it a watch. The art style of it is cute, it's something I noticed within the first few minutes. I forgot  about what the description for this series even was by the time I watched it, so I was expecting..well, just an ordinary life! What I got instead was...

(On a side note, I've no idea why that youtube clip has the video mirrored, was it really like that in the subs?)

I didn't know what to expect and was pleasantly surprised. It has that "lolwut" humor, but I feel it does it in a right way. It's like an ordinary slice of life on drugs. It kinda reminded me a bit of when I watched the first episode of Cromartie Highschool, though it's obviously not as manly. It's like I'm watching a normal slice of life...but tripping on acid while watching it! Okay, most of the scenes so far aren't that out there, but they do a nice job in making the strange seem completely normal.

Nichijou follows around the every day life of different people, switching between a cute loli professor with a cute robot maid, a group of friends in school, and even (what seem to be) one shot skits every now and then. In the school setting we get the three above seeming like the main trio, with a few other reoccurring faces around the school.

You will never have your prince charming ride up to you on a goat and wish you a happy new year.

Look at these eggheads, what the hell are they doing?

Then there are the (extremely cute) scenes following a cute loli professor (was her name even mentioned?) and her robot. No, seriously these two are disgustingly adorable, I could want an entire spinoff series of just these two. Hakase (I'll call the loli that for now) at first reminded me of Becky from Pani Poni Dash, maybe it's the outfit and eye color, along with hair colors that are only a bit off from one another.

From the opening of the series, there's probably a few other characters that we only received a glance of in the first episode that will get their own spotlights later on. I'll be keeping an eye on this series. I wasn't expecting it, and I'm glad it was a nice little surprise in a season where not much catches my attention at first glance. I'm not sure how popular this series is so far, but if you haven't given it a watch yet and are in the mood for some slice of life comedy, I say give it a shot.

Okay, this is a bad pun, I'm sorry.

I feel I'm a bit late to the party. I've had essays to keep me busy, so haven't gotten around to seeing anything this season aside from this. I have Kaiji and EP2 of this ready for tomorrow's viewing pleasure though. There's also some blog tags I have open that I haven't gotten around to reading yet either, that'll probably be for me to read on the bus ride to class tomorrow. Ah, but I have an essay due this weekend as well. Ah, whatever. I'll just take it easy as always.

Hope you guys can take it easy as well.

~ Kirari ミ★

Translation patch of Quartett! is out

 Dunno how many of you were waiting for it, but the translation for Quartett! is out. When I first saw the thread on /jp/ I thought it was a troll thread, and assumed the translation project died long ago, but I guess I was wrong, and in for a surprise this morning. The translation can be found at http://charlotte.is.moelicious.be/ (very nice address, I know). I really like the soft art style in it, and I already know the music is really nice and soothing. I guess I'll be using day reading this, whenever my download finishes.

~ Kirari ミ★

Oyasumi Punpun!

Here's something unexpected. I picked up this manga today because I've heard about it from multiple sources. Oyasumi Punpun (Goodnight Punpun) starts out as a cute and funny story with a quirky looking main characters. At first the series seems like it'll be a gag story with the surreal imagery shown. In fact, it even looks like it'll be a kid's story because of the main character, but the story actually dives into some rather real issues. It's a coming of age story about a kid that learns soe of the harsh realities of real life. The story itself is filled with lots of symbolism and metaphors, but you don't need to read deep into the story to enjoy it. Despite the main character and his family being simplistic figures, the overall art style of the manga is really well done. Asano Inio is a really great artist, that can really go into detail and draw some nice panels in his comics.

As I said, it's a coming of age story. It goes into some rather depressing topics about human nature and such, and I feel it's something that some here can relate to in one way or another. I spent most of my day reading this, with breaks in between. I'm currently up to about chapter 45 as I type this, with a tab right next to blogger opened with my current page.

I'm definitely recommending this to anyone looking for a new manga to pick up. I have a hard time writing about stuff without spoiling it, and I feel my "review" doesn't really touch on what really makes the story feel good. I came for the cute Punpun humor and stood to see what becomes of poor little Punpun as the years pass.

~ Kirari ミ★

First look at Winter 2011 anime

So I have been watching a few shows this season, starting with 4 so far. It's a larger start than I had last season, though I did end up finding some shows late last season that I enjoyed. This time around I had 2 anticipated titles and 2 titles I thought I'd try out because they seemed interesting. The series I picked up just because they seemed like they may be interesting are Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka? and GoSick. I was anticipating Madoka because of the staff involved with the project, and anticipating Kimi ni Todoke because I've enjoyed the 1st season a lot.

Top image is from the 2nd episode of Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika, which is a mahou shoujo from SHAFT that has quite an interesting staff working on it. The music is great, the show has that SHAFT trippyness build right into it with scenes that. as many have put it, make it seem as if these girls are being attacked by the Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei opening. I'm not too sure where the story is heading after 2 episodes, and it's a mahou shoujo with a grim feel to it (the writer is the same writer of Nitro+ stories like Saya no Uta). So far it's just Nodoka level of darkness to it, rather than sunshine and lolipops everywhere. Who knows where it'll go from here though, I'll keep watching to see what direction it goes. Interesting to me so far.

Then there's season 2 of Kimi ni Todoke. I wasn't expecting this to come so fast, actually. Not going to spoil anything in case nobody has seen the 1st season. If you're into innocent and cute high school romance with a nice balance of comedy, you may want to check it out. The opening and ending weren't as good as season 1's, but the artwork in them still made me smile because of how cute they were. Drama already starting up from the 1st episode, and I can already tell where it's heading from here.

Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka? Well, what can I say about this show. It's fun to watch. The comedy is nice, the fanservice isn't too distracting (yet), and it doesn't take itself seriously. The main character of this show is a zombie that was reanimated by a necromancer (who seems to be mute, or just dislikes talking) for some reason not explained yet. Nobody knows he's a zombie, he resumed classes after his death and apparently is out to find out who killed him. He meets up with some reject magical girl that uses a chainsaw as her weapon. 1st episode already tells you what to expect from this show, wacky and random humor. The zombie is attacked by some dude in a dark suit that transforms into a giant lobster. The Zombie has to team up with the magical girl to fight him. I'll keep this on my watch list.

Then there's GoSick. Okay, the anime name is written as ゴシック (Gothic) while the official romanization of it is GoSick, so I'll just assume they're trying to play on words since the main character is a gothloli. This show is about some detective loli in 1924 Europe that solves an insanely easy case in the first episode and then gets dragged into something bigger along with some dude that I assume will be her sidekick for the series. I actually don't have much to say about this show so far, it didn't leave too much of an impression on episode 1. I have episode 2 ready to watch, but haven't seen yet. The series may turn into something interesting, it just doesn't jump into the meat of the story from the beginning, so it's too early to really pass judgment on it. The loli is cute though.

Managed to pick out 3 shows I plan to stick with and 1 show in limbo. Of course, like always, I'll end up picking more shows up along the way that didn't seem interesting to me at first, and they may just be my favorite of the season. My classes for next semester are set up so I only have to go to school 2 days of the week, so hopefully that means more free time for me to watch my animu and chip away at my general backlog.

~ Kirari ミ★

Narcissu

Okay, super slowpoke here. I've read the first Narcissu long ago, but it never had too great of an impact on me. I did get a bit sad reading it, but it wasn't anything too emotional for me. I read Narcissu 2 and stopped after a few chapters and have been picking at it slowly whenever I feel in the mood to read some Hospice Tales. I finished the 2nd part today, and I have to say that the last few chapters are soul shattering. I was reading it on the bus and couldn't help crying a bit. Nobody was around, but it's a bit embarrassing to cry in public over a scene. Seriously, those last few chapters...

I'd actually recommend reading Narcissu 2 before reading 1. It's a prequel anyway, so it's not like you'll lose anything. It makes the ending of Narcissu 1 a bit more emotional as well. If you've already read 1 and didn't like it enough to try 2, I'd say you might want to give the 2nd one a chance. It starts off with a pace that's actually a bit slower than 1, so you may think it'll pretty much be the same, and I believe it's actually a little longer than 1. But that's good, because I felt in part 1 you didn't really get to know the characters well enough. You mostly got a vague impression of their personalities, but in part 2 they really go into depth on the characters.

This isn't really a review, just felt like sharing with you guys some thoughts on what I just finished in my backlog. Time to finish something else now. I had an essay due today that I missed the deadline for because of my procrastination and underestimating how much I'd have to do for it. I'll just submit it tomorrow, it's not like I care too much about the grade I get so long as I pass, and 10 points off this essay for being late won't cause enough damage to actually harm my grade.

~ Kirari ミ★

MMO addiction

Why? Maplestory is the only MMO I've ever played. Why is that? Because I'm afraid to try something else and get addicted. Maplestory has given me a fear of MMOs. I will never pick up another one because of it. This game has gotten me to come back to it so many times. Why can't I just quit it? I'm always in a cycle of leaving the game for a few months and then joining back the next time there's a big update, and I always get sucked in to the point where I waste a majority of my day on it.

It's not like the game is particularly amazing or anything. In fact, I wouldn't say it's too great at all, and there's better things I could be doing with my time. And yet, I always find myself coming back to it and I always find myself playing again every few months. For years I've been like this, on and off this game. What is it exactly that's keeping me hooked on it? I know I'm not the only one that came back recently though. A lot of quit players are coming back due to the largest update Maple has ever received being released this week. Still, I can't help but feel I'm some sort of druggie. No matter how hard I try to quit, I always "accidentally" check up on some Maplestory news, and if I see something interesting it may be enough to pull me back in. How am I supposed to finish my backlog when I'm busy grindan my characters all day? How am I supposed to make room for my Japanese studies when I'm too busy killing cute possessed teddy bears? I mean, I could download the Japanese version and play with Japanese players, at least then I'd be able to study Japanese while I play. But I already have too many characters established in the Global version (AKA North American) version of the game. I don't want to start from scratch.

The customer service is crap, the gameplay ins't exactly innovative or spectacular, it takes up way too much time, there's so many negative points about it. I just keep coming back. Once I log in, I already know that there's no turning back, because I'm going to want to check out the new features added into the game and get stuck again.

;_;

~ Kirari ミ★

Video of the week #6

Panty and Socking Touhou. This was made a lot faster than I thought it would take.

In other news, my pile of work is starting to slow down. I was able to look at some of your entries today, but I haven't gotten to catch up to some of your latest ones. You'll be seeing me comment on a daily basis again tomorrow, as I'll have everything done by then.

~ Kirari ミ★

Presentation in Japanese class

So today I had the Japanese presentation I mentioned before. I decided to just go with manga, it's not like it's so strange for an Asian to like that stuff anyway (in fact, it's kind of expected of us). But I just went into detail about how it's very nice for practicing Japanese and such. I brought seven Japanese volumes of Yotsubato! and 5 English, along with 3 Japanese and 2 English Mirai Nikki volumes. I also brought in Welcome to the NHK!, but only 1 volume since I only have 1 volume in Japanese for it.

Everything was fine. Most people were just reading their presentations from their paper about generic stuff you can tell was paraphrased from wikipedia anyway. But after I went apparently there were more lively people. One girl in the class, the only one that makes it really known she's weeaboo, did an embarrassing presentation on maid cafe's. 

But hey, whatever. I sat through the presentation and didn't say a word. My professor had a face on that looked as if even she was uncomfortable hearing a presentation on a topic like that. A little after some other Asian girl did her presentation on Kanmen Rider. She was pretty damn into it, and even brought some merchandise that others probably wouldn't care much about, but I knew were actually rather expensive. She also made a few of the items herself, apparently from cosplaying. It wasn't a bad presentation really.

Then there was some dude that did his presentation on Japanese game shows, and I was thinking that was such an obvious topic with tons of flexibility. Probably would have been a nice topic for me to pick as well, but too late now.

After class ended my professor asked to borrow some of my Yotsubato! volumes. She said she liked Azumanga but never got a chance to read Yotsubato! yet.

So it was pretty fine. I just hope I didn't raise any flags for people to come rushing at me. I think I did a pretty good job not making it seem like some kind of obsession and making it seem more like something interesting to use to help me study (which is kinda is anyway).

~ Kirari ミ★

Sanae Challenge! Fusion

Alright, so here's a game most people seemed to have overlooked in the C78 rush. This won't really be a review, since I just started it myself so haven't gotten the feel for it. It's a sequel to Sanae Challenge, but I've never played the original! 

Moving on, the premise of this game is that you're Sanae and you're defeating Kedama and sealing up the places they're coming from. Sanae has two forms of attacks: shooting stars, and creative a vacuum to suck everything up (her most useful attack). Sanae can also walk and float in the air, which is a bit awkward to control at first but not too hard when you're used to it.

Okuu comes along mid-level and decided to help Sanae out. She mostly kicks on her own, but I can't get her to do much more. I know there's a way to activate her nuclear blasts and such, but I'm not sure how. I'll read the manual for it later, I guess. The in game dailogue goes too fast and there's too much for me to actually read.

That big percentage thing that's near the top of the display bar is actually your health. It's constantly going down, like a timer, and also goes down when you get hit. You refill it every time you seal one of those dark hole thingies that these little critters are coming out of. When you reach 1505, you can press attack and jump at the same time to activate God Mode, which increases Sanae's attack, gives her more range, can kill the fuzzies rather than knocking them out, and also gives her invincibility.  

And, of course, there's boss fights at the end of each stage.

Unfortunately, I stuck too much right now to beat Nitori ;_;

The music in this game is pretty cute too. Just like the artwork. Did I mention the artwork? Look at those cute sprites, just look at em. This game has so much cuteness in it, I'm about to look for the spritesheet so I can make icons out of their cuteness. 

But back to the music, it has some pretty cutesey mixes of Touhou themes you'd expect. I haven't heard much since I'm not past the 1st stage yet, and I'm too stubborn to look at other playthroughs and such, so I'm only going by the handful of tracks I've already heard.

Oh, and the game also has extras. I'm sure you get coins from...whatever, completing stages? Well, you use these coins to buy stuff in the extras menu. Since I have no coins yet, I can't really show you guys much, but here's how the menu looks!

I might translate the options later if I'm not too lazy. The above screenshot shows the menu to buy desktop wallpapers, so that's pretty cool.

Overall, it's a pretty addictive game. I'm getting better as I play along. I said in the beginning this won't really be a review, but after finishing it, I'd say it'd pass as a half-assed review. I don't think there are any other English reviews on this game yet anyway. The only ones I find on Google are too brief, but maybe I just didn't look hard enough. Give it a try if you're looking to kill time, it's pretty simple and surprisingly addictive.

~ Kirari ミ★

Some Vocaloid songs

Making my 2nd music post here. This time I'm going for some Vocaloid songs. If you don't like Vocaloid, that's cool and understandable.

This is a rather new song from OSTER Project, the same composer that made some of my older favorites, Miracle Paint and Piano Girl.

I don't check Vocaloid charts much, but I'd assume World's End Dancehall is a fairly popular song. So some of you probably know it already. Regardless, felt like putting it in here because I like it quite a bit when I'm in the mood for it.

Don't want to oversaturate this post. I might make another Vocaloid post sometime in the future if I see people like this post. If not then it's all cool, I've other music I can post anyway (not that I post music that much).

~ Kirari ミ★

Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria 1 review

1st time

"I am Aya Otonashi. Pleased to meet you." 

The transfer student says with a faint smile. 

23rd time

"I'm Aya Otonashi. ...Regards." 

The transfer student says, uninterested, emotionlessly. 

1050th time

"Aya Otonashi." 

The transfer student utters, looking completely bored, not even looking at us. 

13118th time

I look at the transfer student, Aya Otonashi, whose name I don't yet know, standing on the platform. 

"Aya Otonashi." 

The transfer student murmurs only this to her classmates. In a low voice, as if she doesn't care whether we can understand her. Nevertheless, her voice is clear. 

--Yeah. I already know her name. I have just heard it for the first time, though. 

Everyone holds their breath. Not because of her blunt, simple self-introduction which wouldn't even count as greeting. It is probably because she is such a stunning beauty, who stands out from everyone in the room. 

Everyone waits for her next words. 

She opens her mouth. 

"Kazuki Hoshino." 

"...Huh?" 

She calls out my name for some reason. The entire class looks at me with questioning looks. Don't look at me like that, I'm clueless myself. 

"I'm here to break you." 

She suddenly proclaims. 

"This is my 13,118th 'School Transfer'. Even I can't help but get annoyed after so many. So for a change, I'll proclaim war." 

She doesn't spare even a glance for our dumbfounded classmates and gazes at me alone. 

"Kazuki Hoshino. I'll make you surrender. Better give me your most precious thing soon. Resistance is futile. Why? That's simple. Because I am--" 

Aya Otonashi forms a smile and proceeds with her sentence. 

"--always by your side, no matter how much time passes."

____________

So I just finished my essay (10 minutes before deadline, playing YATTA! to celebrate). I wanted to do this earlier, but as I said, got preoccupied last minute with my essay that I didn't even know the topic for, let alone that it was due today. The above is just the very first page or so of the novel, right after the prologue.

So, here's my review of the first Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria novel. I mentioned in my previous post that I was in the middle of reading it and found it pretty interesting. I finished the first volume, so now I think I can do a review on it without spoiling, and still catching some pretty good interest in it.

The story is pretty much a plot that's used quite commonly, a time loop. No, it's not quite like the Suzumiya Haruhi's anime adaptation of the Endless 8 time loop (which was actually only a 30 page chapter in the original) or anything, where everything is essentially the same except for a small part at the end. At the same time, it's not quite like the Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni time loop, where everything is completely different. There's one character, Aya Otonashi, that keeps her memories of the previous iterations. Most of the other cast lose all their memories when time resets itself. 

There are a few rules that are pretty much always followed, such a truck accident that always happens, and always kills one of the cast members. Shortly after this accident, time restarts itself, and the person that died in the accident is brought back alive. Of course, nobody really remembers the incident, aside from Aya Otanashi. But what's causing this loop? Apparently, it's the cause of a wish. There's a box that can grant any wish, and it was apparently handed to someone. So long as the owner of this box exists, their wish will carry out, and the resets will continue. Aya Otonashi attempts to find the owner of this box, and stop the cycle for good.

Interestingly enough, although the start of the story is in chronological order, it's simply to show that each iteration is different from one another, and to show how Aya Otonashi changes over time. The rest of the novel pretty much throws the time line out of whack. You're shown parts from various numbered loops, and they're not all in order. Sometimes you're seeing an iteration from before the one you just read, sometimes you're seeing one way ahead of what you just read. It even goes back to certain repetitions numerous times. It's pretty nice how it does it, and despite how it sounds, it's not really hard to keep track of everything. It also makes it nice way to hide clues for future plot twists.

As you can probably tell from the small part of the first page I pasted at the start of this review, Kazuki Hoshino plays a major role in this story. He's our narrator, and also loses his memories with each reset. However, he doesn't completely lose them. As long as he gets a mental push in the right direction, he can actually remember some of the past events. 

The novel is a pretty quick read. Like most light novels, it's packed with tons of dialogue, meaning it's a lot shorter than you'd think it is from page number (or, in this case, scrollbar length). You can easily finish it in a few hours, even if you're a relatively show reader. It keeps up at a fairly quick pace the whole time, skipping all the loops that are uneventful and sticking to the key time frames.

Overall, it was an enjoyable read. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a nice light novel. It's enjoyable and has some pretty nice plot twists. I'm planning to start the 2nd novel tomorrow.

~ Kirari ミ★

Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria

So this is a light novel that's been on my "To Read" list for quite some time, but since my backlog is so huge, I couldn't get to it until today. Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria (空ろの箱と零のマリア) is a light novel someone on /jp/ recommended to me a long time ago. Since I just started reading today, I'm not too far into the series. I read about half of the first novel so far, and I have to say that it is quite a nice read. Can't say too much about it since I'm not that far in, but I just felt like talking about it a bit.

The name of the novel's name translates to something like Void box and The Zeroth Maria. I'm going to pick up a physical copy of it sometime next week, I think, so no images of the pages right now aside from those pre-scanned by Baka-tsuki. Basically, the first novel is about these two students that are going through endless repetitions of the same two days over and over. Aya Otonashi and Kazuki Hoshino are pretty much the only two that are aware of the repetitions. Well, Otonashi is, while Hoshino doesn't know until something sparks his memory of the previous worlds. The novel starts off showing a very brief scene of the first loop, just the scene where Otonashi introduces herself to the class, then skips to the 23rd, showing the same part, and skips several times so that the reader can see how much of a toll the repetitions are taking on her by the 1050th loop. From there, the story skips back and forth between loops, labeling them so you can better keep track of the timeline. Showing things a bit out of order does have a rather nice effect, and does eventually lead to some nice plot twists.

９９９９回目

Otonashi is trying to get to the bottom of everything. She wants to find the person responsible for creating this infinite loop, and she wants to put an end to it. I don't want to say too much, partly because I'd rather not spoil, and partially because I'm still only halfway done with the first volume, but it does suck you in. It also separates the different repetitions nicely, so it's easy to pick up and read one section, then put it down for a bit to continue later. May write an actual review for it when I finish, right now this post is more to just introduce it to anyone that may be looking for new reading material.

~ Kirari ミ★

Short rant on dakimakura prices

Want a dakimakura? Sure, pay up 9,000円! You know, everything in Japan is so expensive, but do they really have to milk otaku for that much cash? There's no reason for printed pieces of fabric to have such a hefty price tag. The manufacturing costs of these things are at most $20, and that's if you're just making one and not mass producing. Yes, the material is soft (and differs, so it's hard to give an exact breakdown of this), but they're not weaving gold into your case. Really, the official ones are really similar in feel to the Chinese bootlegs you find on E-bay and such. Those I find priced fairly. If only they stopped picking such crappy artwork for their bootlegs. I assume it's because they're essentially made from the same crap. Really, it's just 2 strips of fabric with images printed on them, sewn together, and a zipper added. This isn't something that should cost more than my jeans.

You can make your own dakimakura for fraction of the price it'd take to buy an official one, but that assumes you want to walk into a silkscreen shop and ask them to print out a loli on a pillowcase. But they're able to sell them at that price because people are buying them at that price. So they'll be staying at an unreasonable level for quite some time. 

~ Kirari ミ★

Delivery!

I know a lot of you like showing off your figure deliveries and such, but my crappy camera won't do those justice. So here's my newest delivery! Just what I wanted to see in my mailbox after a long day. I wasn't even expecting this until November 1st, but it seemed Amazon felt rather generous and sent out my books early so they can get to me on the same day that they're supposed to be released on.

Not a long nor interesting post, I know. Right now I'm in the middle of reading (as you can see from the above image). Maybe I'll make another post later today to review these guys or something. I mean, I already read Disappearance, so maybe I should hop onto Suzumiya Haruhi-chan first or something. Back to reading, I'll post a bit later (probably, if I'm not lazy).

~ Kirari ミ★

Light novel translations

So, I've always thought about this, but never really wrote my thoughts down on it. Light novels are a really niche market outside of Japan. I mean, to the point where their translations are usually cut after a few volumes. It's quite sad too, but I think it mostly has to do with the fact that...they're not found in bookstores. I mean, you'll see them maybe the first month they're released or so, but after that bookstores never restock on them, and your only way of getting them is from online retailers.

Now, being someone that buys my books online most of the time anyway, I don't mind that, but I don't see how that's good for their sales at all. Do the bookstores refuse to restock because they don't sell well, or do publishers refuse to release new batches for bookstores?

Lots of light novels never get any attention paid to them. There are some really interesting titles out there that just get dropped because not enough people know about them. I'm sure if word was spread around more about them, more people would be inclined to buy them (they're usually cheaper than a volume of a manga anyway).

But of course, there are light novels that actually do well, but most of those are popular because they already have a popular name within anyone who's into anime or manga. Suzumiya Haruhi's translation seems to be selling well, but that's not surprising really, considering how popular it is. That Death Note spinoff titled L: Change The World (which is actually a novel adaptation of a spinoff movie, wrap that around your head) even managed to make a top seller for some time, according to the New York Times. Of course, Death Note is popular as well. Meanwhile, other nice reads are never picked up because their names are obscure, they were never adapted, or their adaptations weren't anything that really sparked widespread attention.

So what of these titles? They usually just get dropped, and most of the time with no official statement of their discontinuation. Really sucks, there are quite a few series that I got into and was never able to continue because of their discontinuation. I have the Japanese versions of some of them though, just sitting on my bookshelf until I can read them fluently enough to actually enjoy them, rather than referencing an online dictionary every other page.

And I'm still butthurt than Tokyopop discontinued Welcome To The NHK before I got to buy a copy. It wasn't even on sale for that long. I've already read it, but I want to keep it for my collection. Too bad it's impossible to find now, unless I wanna drop $150+ on a copy. Aren't we in 2010? We have on demand printing now. I'd pay an extra $10 or so if they just freaking print 1 copy from an online order placed on their site or something. But that's just me getting a bit into a personal rant.

On the other hand, after a really long hiatus, Tokyopop began publishing the new volumes of the Karin novels. Where the hell did that come from? Whatever, I'll probably buy those, but I don't really have the urge to start reading 6. They're fast reads though, so I'll get to it eventually.

What bout you guys? You guys read any light novels, or had any series you were reading before but then got shut down? It'd be nice to be fluent enough in Japanese to actually read them without translations, but we all know how lazy we are.

~ Kirari ミ★

Thoughts on 2D love

I'm sure you guys are very familiar with 2D love. I'm sure some of you find it silly while others take it seriously. I felt like writing down some of my thoughts on it all, but I'm also using some personal examples and experiences, so be prepared for a slightly biased view on it all. This isn't meant to be a persuasive blog post or anything, it's just me free writing my thoughts a bit.

First of all, I feel I should get the misconception out of the way that 2D lovers are actually in love with "ink on a page" or anything of that sort. I tend to see this comment quite often. Troll or not, it's showing ignorance. I'm sure there are some 2D lovers who do actually love the ink on the page, but a majority of us, from what I've seen, don't think this way. It's as if you have a photo of your wife. If someone points to that photo and asks who that is, the logical response would be to say that it's your wife. Of course, you're not saying the photograph is your wife, but the person in the photo. That's how 2D love is. It's the character that you'd be in love with, the one that the image shows. Everything about that character that makes them who they are. When you have a 2D lover, you love a concept, not a physical object. You love everything that the character represents. 

"But she was made by some fat sweaty dude who wants you to like her, so he gets sales!"

And what if your girlfriend's father was some fat sweaty dude who made her for the purpose of hopefully getting into a rich family? Hypothetical of course, but does it really matter? Your girlfriend isn't her father. It doesn't matter who made her. She could have hideous parents and really hit the genetic jackpot to graze past all their bad genes and come out beautiful. Does that mean you love her less because her parents look like the back end of a horse?

"But she's not even real!"

What's the point here? We know this. You're not saying anything that will lead us to some kind of epiphany. We know this, and accept it. Some of us are glad about this fact. You're implying that you can look down on someone because they don't have a physical object to channel their emotions to? That they don't have a real person to lust over? This isn't even an argument, it's just someone thinking they can throw this as some sort of insult. It's a childish attempt to sling mud at someone.

Furthermore, most people into 2D don't want real. They realize that in reality, "happily ever afters" doesn't happen very often. Without diving too much into the subject (this could be a whole blog post on its own), people love 2D for many reasons. I often see people say that 2D lovers only love 2D because they can't get 3D, as if it's entirely ludicrous to love a character unless you're in the depths of depression. You can't summarize the human psyche like this. When it comes to the human brain, there is no clear cut path. I'm sure there are some who don't really like 2D, but turn to it as a form of happiness to divert their attention from a depressed life. These are the kind of people that, if given the chance, would absolutely leave their 2D lover for a real relationship. However, this is one case, and from the looks of it these people don't make up the majority of 2D lovers. 

There are even those who love 2D and try to get attention from it, such as the dudes who marry their DS or dakimakura. I won't really judge them, but I personally feel as if they're just making fools of themselves, but perhaps my perspective on them would change if I actually talked to them and asked a few questions myself. Seems more like they just want to show everyone that they're "different" from the world.

Anyway, I'll save some more of my thoughts in some later blog entries. For now I'll just end this blog post with an obligatory video:

~ Kirari ミ★