The Short Version

OOPS, I DID IT AGAIN

I PLAYED WITH YOUR BLOGROLL

GOT LOST IN THE ‘SPHERE

go here

The Medium Version

I originally wrote up around a thousand words on this topic (which you can read in all their glory in “the long version” below), but then I read Scamp’s post.  What he said about me struck a chord:

No, because I don’t want to step on people’s toes simply for the sake of step­ping on people’s toes. Mikoto/Fangzhao/Flomu can get away with that because that’s his shtick. His inter­net per­sona is built up so that he can ‘get away’ with doing that (for a given value of ‘get away with’) and I’m glad people like him exist. Someone needs to give vari­ous parts of the blo­go­sphere a kick up the hole every now and then. It’s just I don’t want to be that per­son. I’m too much of a pussy to do that so directly.

You see, my internet persona may have developed into a metablogging prince of drama, but I never intended it to turn out like this!  Although I find anime interesting (and Nichijou orgasm-inducing), I like talking about blogging more.  What goes on in a blogger’s head when they write their posts?  Why can they write something like this and I can’t?

In a way, this has helped me understand what I like and dislike about blogging in general.  I don’t like “academic” blogs.  Blogs thrive on comments.  Posts should have voice.  A blog should be organized.  Episodics need not give a summary.  Things like this.

But if I continue down this path, I can see myself becoming a more outspoken form of Author.  A less oldfag version of lolikitsune.  A less popular and more personal form of the two.  When I started anime blogging, I took a look at those two blogs and wondered why anybody would make a blog about anime blogs.  It just seemed so stupid – and it still does!  So this isn’t a road I want to walk down.

But what else can you do?

Yeah, okay, so maybe the only thing I’m half-decent at is metablogging.  I originally wanted to write many different blogs under different pseudonyms using different styles talking about different things (episodics, editorials, etc.)… but then I realized I would burn out halfway through.  I ain’t got the dedication for that.

Instead, I’ve landed on the “ultimate ‘white base’ blog” http://flomu.wordpress.com, where I’ll be exploring different ways of aniblogging.  I hope you’ll join me on this journey.  And I hope I can last long enough for it to be worthwhile for you.

The Long Version

(aka the second draft of this post)

P.S.: I’ll be at flomu.wordpress.com for the foreseeable future, so it’s safe to blogroll me away!

P.P.S.: I set flomu.wordpress.com as my main blog earlier this week and imported misakithursday.wordpress.com, so sorry for all the trackbacks you people have been receiving.  I’ve been having a hell of a time importing back and forth because some comments on one blog aren’t on the other, and vice versa.  I’ll do one last blog synchronization in a couple of days, but after that whatever you say on one blog won’t be transferred to the other.

I have many ideas.  I post once a week.  Therefore I need to pick one of these ideas to use for a post.

The problem is, I am not 2DT.  I cannot turn an idea like “sex hair” or “deep penetration” or whatever sex topic he’s talking about these days into a full-fledged post that’s interesting to read and fun to write.  So while it may seem like I just need to roll a dice and randomly pick one of my drafts to complete and publish, LIFE AIN’T THAT EASY FOR ME.

And life has been so hard for me recently (what with going to Hawaii and all) that I haven’t had an open Saturday to muck around on the Internet and eventually pick something to write about at 1 am.  So I decided, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if I just wrote ALL OF THEM?”  And thus this post was born. [1]

“Power Levels“

Post stats: 80% complete, 50% satisified.

I was reading my Railgun manga the other day when I came across one really annoying page that goes against everything Railgun stands for.  The audience wants to see Mikoto kicking some level 2 ass, but the whole theme of the story/manga is “friendship and everyday life is better than leveling up.”  Saten comes to the conclusion that powers are cool, but her level 0 self could still help out in important ways.  The theme is heartwarming and everybody is nice and then you have Mikoto practically scoffing at the low levels of a bunch of thugs.

Bah!  Something is wrong here.

And then I looked around my massive manga medley and spotted Eyeshield 21, a manga where power levels are determined by bench press and 40-yard dash stats.  And then I thought of >9000 and felt that I could conjure up some more bullshit to add to these three manga and call it a full-fledged post!

However, when I sat down to write my bullshit, the bullshit became more shit than bull and I ended up with a bunch of nonsense.  As much as I love nonsense, I’d like my posts to be somewhat readable/understandable, unlike J159 posts.

The bullshit in question:

Gintama

Speaking of BL material, I bet there’s a thousand and one demoknights’ worth of fanart about Gintoki and Jiraiya already.  The Gintama fangirls are a crazy lot.   If fanart is any indication of the fanbase, then Gintama fans would be 99% female.  And by that, I mean each fan is 99% female, 0.99% male, and 0.01% retard.

That kind of sounds like the Earth’s atmosphere.  99% Nitrogen, 0.99% Oxygen, and 0.01% I should have googled this.  Don’t you feel sorry for plants, though?  There’s 500 times more oxygen than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so plants must have a lot of trouble breathing.  If plants were all humans and humans were all plants, we would have a lot of trouble breathing.

Redwood trees would be basketball players and baobabs would be McDonalds customers.  Roses would be murderous prostitutes and rafflesia would be big, stinky otaku who sit around all day.  Mikoto Misaka would probably be Yggdrasil or something because she is essential to the life of every living thing.

I have many opinions about Gintama, but none of them involve Yggdrasil and 0.01% retards.  So instead of scrapping this work of art or posting this piece of shit, I decided to put the post in perma-draft purgatory.  Until now that is!

“Anime Songs that Changed My Life”

or God Knows… and Rhythm Emotion and NICHIJOU

Post stats: 66.67% complete, 90% satisfied (initially), 33.33% satisfied (in retrospect).

Cheesy title deserves cheesy post.  After a slew of really long posts, I wanted to go back to posting something in the vein of Things I Don’t Like About AnoHana, where my ideas came across in easily digestible bite-sized chunks.  And since I was watching lots of ‘God Knows…’ videos on youtube, I thought that a brief song feature would be nice.  Plus it gave me an excuse to embed a video.

But what eventually came out was a pile of rancid personal, meta, and unrelated garbage that took up 238 words.  But I didn’t learn!  No sirree!  I took it one step further and wrote 324 words on Rhythm Emotion in an “Extra Post” (something not published on Thursdays!).  This, too, was a crapfest of personal and meta and NO HUMOR.

But even then, I still hadn’t learned my lesson.  I watched the second opening of Nichijou so much that Hyadain practically brainwashed me and forced me to mash his song and my previous two drafts together into one giant monster of a post that would be the lowest point of my aniblogging career.  Thankfully, I broke free of his control before I managed to type anything about Hyadain Joujou’s bizzare adventure.  But I’m sure that would’ve also been a mess.

Half-developed Ideas

When I go to sleep, I hook my phone up with the charger and place it on a desk next to my bed.  The most important part is that it’s within reach, because I need to put all of the junk I think about on it, lest I forget by the morn’!

Some of this junk is one line long (see below for that).  Other bits are more bots than bits and more outlines than bots.  I’ve never liked writing outlines for essays, and writing outlines for posts is no different.  But I just have to write them down, because Death’s brother always comes to whisk away all the brilliant ideas brewing in my mind.

Like fancy restaurants offer expensive appetizer sampler plates, I’m going to offer you a sampler of my thoughts.  This is a journey into my brain, without the $20+ price tag that comes along with the mozzarella sticks!

Weeaboo Games

(sorry, @fkeroge)

Before the formspring question, there was the tiny note on my phone.  Before the tiny note on my phone, there was Chantelise.  I was super excited about Chantelise for no reason at all.  I had played Recettear, but I thought Chantelise looked like shit.  After finishing FF7: Crisis Core, I’ve also come to hate hack-and-slash games.  Chante and Elise aren’t very cute or moe or kawaii and I don’t particularly like them.

Any way you look at it, Chantelise looks like a game I would really hate to play.  But I bought it for $9 on Steam and played 6 hours of it.  The graphics are shit-tier, and I’ve complained about the keyboard controls to many people.  So the conclusion I came to is: I LIKE WEEABOO GAMES.

Well, sort of.

I played Perfect Cherry Blossom and Recettear for a semester, and I just recently played Saya no Uta… but that covers all the weeaboo games I’ve played.  I haven’t found any of them amazing or surprisingly fun, but I did enjoy them.  How people manage to play Touhou for so long and get so good at it is beyond me.

Another thing that’s beyond me is Monster Hunter.  My friends in high school played it quite a bit, and once I got a PSP last summer, I went out to buy it.  AND IT SUCKS.  HOLY CRAP.  I HATE IT.  The tutorial is so long and I have no idea what the hell is going on.  It’s so boring and not the least bit interesting, yet some people can play so much of it for some reason.  Maybe if I completed the twenty-hour tutorial I would understand enough to play the game and finally enjoy it, but I don’t have twenty hours to waste!

Sai-Electromaster

(Originally titled “Metablogging Thoughts #1)

I was pretty excited about the potential of this idea for quite some time.  A month or so ago, I was talking with J159 (or was it someone else?) about Sai-Mecha and how POINTLESS it was.  And then I discovered Sai-Retro. [2]  And now I’m voting in ISML and following Saimoe.

The tagline for this post was supposed to be:

It seems that if you add “Sai” in front of anything nowadays, it becomes a big, heated competition between stuff.

And I was going to go on and talk about how the OEG and the Aniblog Tourney could have benefited by changing their titles to SaiOtaku and SaiAniblog.  It’s sleek and sexy and just weeaboo enough that the aniblog crowd can enjoy it.  Besides, it sounds cooler.

But what does ‘sai’ mean, anyway?  The only ‘sai’ I’ve encountered is the sai at the end of Sumire 16 sai!! and the pair of sai Raphael uses.

This lack of knowledge and my embarrassing lack of really good Mikoto pictures stalled the post until I finally decided that I wasn’t going to become Crazydave and browse zero-chan to find the pictures.

Addiction Levels of Games

(Or just “Addiction Levels in General”)

I was typing away at my Vacation post when I realized that my idea of a “anime, games, life, nichijou, etc.” blog was WRONG!  It has become much more about anime than life, and much more meta than anime.  Plus there has only been one post on gaming, and it was nothing more than a trollpost from a noob TF2 player.

To remedy this dire situation, I tried to expand on my ideas in the Vacation post because I didn’t think that faithfully explained how addicting Minecraft is.  Here’s what I came up with:

Minecraft: end up mining shit for hours, not even building.  Exploring caves and going around above-ground and finding lava pools and pumpkins is so fun!  It’s five-hours-a-day during crazy homework/exam season fun!

Breaking point: server gets shut down.  Nobody is online, either.  Discover that digging holes in bigger holes (caves) isn’t productive (though making middle-earth is)

I went on to type similar bullet-point-length ideas for WoW, Runescape, Maplestory, and all the shitty games I’ve played in the past.  And then, satisfied with my handiwork, I read what I’d wrote.  Instead of conveying the excitement I get from looking at thousands of gray blocks, it seems like I conveyed my desire to look at blocks instead of doing productive work for the rest of my life.  Instead of showing the exhilarating experience of fishing up Arthas’ gold coin from the fountain after ten hours of clicking one button over and over again, I seemed like a coin-fishing maniac.

But I guess that’s okay, too.

I also came up with a ladder of addiction comparing the addiction of different activities to each other.  It went something like this:  Minecraft = WoW > Maplestory > Runescape = Team Fortress 2 > Portal 2 >> watching anime >> anime blogging.

It goes without saying that Nichijou is not included under “watching anime.”

Rich Girls in Anime

(I need something here for the formatting to work)

If you’ve been following my blog (the two of you) or if you read my post last week, you’ll notice something strange.  No, it’s not that I learned how to put these thumbnail-sized icons into posts to look cool, but thanks for noticing that!

It’s the repetition!  ”Addiction Levels of Games” came up because I talked about the topic in last week’s post.  ”Rich Girls in Anime” came up before that, and it somehow wormed its way into the same post.

While my phone-noting system has given me a couple of posts in the past, it has given much more off-topic ideas I can cram into other posts.  I can only think of so many things on the fly, so I need a bank of moderately decently mediumly average ideas I can tap into in order to make an otherwise shitty post even shittier.  And this is one of ‘em!

Rich girls in anime:
- snobby tsunderes (everybody in Hayate)
- light-haired ojou-samas, may or may not be yandere
- Chiyo
- Tsuruya

As you can see, I did not develop this idea out very far.  I probably got tired of thinking of stupid ojou-sama types and went to sleep.  Ojou-sama characters are pretty annoying anyway.  They have so much money and are so snobby and I want their money, damn it!  Give me that money that you don’t deserve!

The typical rich, snobby tsundere ojou-sama goes through a tiny subplot of “I should stop depending on my money.”  You see it in all sorts of anime, from Golden Boy to your average J.C. Staff RomCom to Code Geass.  Except Euphemia kills people and Lelouch kills her.  Did you know that Euphemia is supposed to be SIXTEEN YEARS OLD?  Yeah, I thought she was 25 too.  Women these days…

Useless Cool Things

(Physics is cool, but not useless!)

My friend sent me a physics-related video yesterday:

I watched it and thought that it was a bunch of sentences with “quantum” in it with Morgan Freeman on the side.  While it’s super cool to see macroscopic objects exhibit visible wave-particle duality (or something that models it), Morgan Freeman was not necessary, and neither was the over-use of the word “quantum.”

I mean, “quantum particle” and “quantum object” essentially mean “small thing” and pretty much everybody believes in wave-particle duality now.   This is like the Large Hadron Collider.  Some crazy deep science stuff involving quantum bosoms and quantum hardons goes on, and everybody gets excited about it without knowing what anything actually does.  But hey, it sounds all cool and scientific!

Other things that sound cool but serve no other purpose include:

- exclamation marks at the end of anime titles
- everybody saying aloha and mahalo in hawaii
- the big bomb in atom zombie smasher
- [colloquium] preceding post titles (synonymous with category)

I’m going to skip the first and third points because the former is self-explanatory and the latter is self-obscuritory.  I’m sure none of you play Atom Zombie Smasher.

Aloooooohaaaaaaaa~!  That’s what I heard dozens of times every day.  And then MAHALO!  It was pretty interesting the first time around, but then I got tired of it.  Just like how I got tired of hearing about how girls in Hawaii and flowers in hair are related.  Whenever I said “Thank you,” it felt awkward.  And I never could say “mahalo” because my knee-jerk “thank you” came out first.  But I’m sure it would have seemed awkward too.

[Extra post] and [colloquium] and whatever you want to precede your post titles with is completely unnecessary.  Categories are there for categorizing posts, and tags are there for people who aren’t satisfied with categories.  I can understand if you want a more bold, shocking title that people could see in Anime Nano, but this isn’t the way to do it!  You should go at it with more flair.  Use a title like:

ಠ_ಠ  ಠ_ಠ  ಠ_ಠ !!!~COLLOQUIUM /*SEXY*/ GIRLS HERE~!!!  ಠ_ಠ *w*

I’m sure you’ll get a lot more views.  I learned this from Artefact.

Undeveloped ideas lead to irrelevant screenshots! Don't fall into this trap! Learn from the master of screenshots and captions! (that's J159, not me!)

Undeveloped Ideas

So while I have just a handful of half-finished drafts, I think of many quick, <=140 character lines that all get stored on my phone.  But the problem is, TWITTER BECKONS!  I have a lot of decent one-liners I’d love to shove and cram into my tight and sexy posts, but tweeting them instead of waiting for the weekly post is so much more appealing.  And with my pageviews, I’m sure more people would see a tweet than one of my posts!

In any case, here are several that were too crappy for twitter I reserved for good posts.

My face is too damn oily
It would be a holographic in a tcg

It feels like there are two Blastoises in my cheeks hydro pumping out copious amounts of oil.  There’s probably also a Charizard pooping out blackheads from my nose, because my nose and cheeks are covered in little dragon-dropping lookalikes.

That moment in an anime when “shit gets real”

Lots of people say that Mami’s death in Madoka Magicka (which requires a godlike computer, by the way) was the turning point for the series.  For me, the turning point was at the end of the final episode when I concluded that Madoka was never going to reach god-tier and lowered it to 8/10.

Generally speaking, I don’t experience these /moments/ of pure epic.  Sure, shows like Death Note, Code Geass, and Gurren Lagann hurl suspenseful scenes at the audience, but none of them convinced me that they deserved the 9/10 and 8/10 scores I eventually gave.  I had to do much retrospecting and prospecting and panning for gold before I could make up my decision.

There is, however, one exception: After Story.  Nagisa’s death was emotional, but… actually, not really.  Episode 18, where Tomoya is riding a train from his hometown with Ushio, is where it’s at.  Tomoya has a series of flashbacks of Nagisa as tears stream down his cheeks.  It was so silent and cut so deep that I was immediately swayed.  But then the shitty deus ex machina ending made me hate KyoAni (and then Disappearance and Nichijou came along and KyoAni is once again the best animation company ever).

I am a deconstruction of humanity

Anagram shameful otaku secret

Way back in 2009, I just got Twitter and was not using it as usual when I stumbled across an anagram maker.  It had one input field and gave one anagram’d version of the input.  Short and sweet and simple, just like me.  I put in “Mikotoism” and got back “OK! I’m moist.” (what a shitty excuse for a nag a ram), but I put in “Shameful Otaku Secret” and an amazing arrangement of words came out. “Cute flashers make out.”

Why can’t my blog name involve cute flashers making out?  I saw a shitton of prostitutes roaming the streets of Waikiki just a few days ago, so I’m sure I have more experience in flashers and whatnot.

>> But you’re a virgin, flomu!

Y-Yes, I am… I sure am… *sniffle*

Anagram ‘misakithursday’ —> ‘it is husky drama’

An addendum to my previous note.  Husky drama is what this blog stands for!  Let us husk the corn in the fields by day and type up scathing blog posts at night, snickering at the fools who read such shit!

But really, I don’t like drama all that much.  I’m a nosy person with an interest in metablogging, so I guess it’s inevitable that I’d bump into dorama panorama every other post.  But people think that I’m purposely inciting drama and fanning the flames.  I saw a Samoan guy fan flames in a coconut that he cracked open with a rock earlier this week, and I sure haven’t done that before.  I just speak my mind, and my mind often involves others.

My mind also involves girls a lot.  There was this cute Chinese girl on my tour group in Hawaii, and I saw her at various destinations throughout my stay.  There was another cute Chinese girl who turned out to be not so cute from the front and she was really tall, too.  Like, my height.  But considering I’m under the white/black/non-Asian average of 6’2″, that’s not saying much.

WIRELESS LAN? Isn't that so pre-4G? (has a 3G phone)

The GAMESTOP guy in the mall tricked me into paying $5 to preorder the DS browser.

I was naive and in 9th grade.  Maybe I should have know better, at that age, but I was dumb, okay?  I went to the mall and bought Mario Kart DS and the scamming fraud of a cashier said that the DS Browser was coming out.  I had no idea what the DS Browser was or why anybody would want one, but he said it was only $5 so OKAY I’LL PREORDER IT!

And then I never got any notification from Gamestop that the DS browser arrived.  Nor did I care.  Why browse the internet on a tiny gaming machine when you have a desktop at home?  Who would ever, ever use the DS browser?  It’s not even Android!

Toejam
- I remember watching nick teen/kids choice awards or some nick show where they brought in a jar full of toejam.  Since I was an Asian child, I had no idea what the gunk in the jar was, or why so many people were shocked that one guy had been collecting the stuff for years.

Yeah.

Me and literary analysis

I wanted to write a post about my experience with literary analysis in aniblogging and in various English/humanities courses in high school and college.  But then I decided that this post would be a lot more interesting.  Both for me and for the two of you who’ve read this far.

My stance on “academic editorial blogs” like 2DTeleidoscope SnippetTee, and Altair and Vega is: If I like it, then I like it.  If I don’t, then I don’t.  But because the nature of these blogs makes them seem uninteresting to me, I lean more towards the “don’t” end.  A lot of times, it’s because I don’t understand what the blogger is talking about… and this stems from my uninterest in the subject.   (Circular reasoning, yeah!)

The few posts that interest me aren’t full-on essays that cover every angle.  In his posts, 2DT introduces and explains one point.  He doesn’t go too far to argue or explain this one point, and his posts are usually easy and interesting to read because they don’t try to cover too much ground.

On the other side of the line lies Moe Sucks, an example of the “academic episodic” blog.  When E Minor (and co. but mostly just E “ten-posts-a-week” Minor) writes an episodic post, he starts off with a quick impression of the episode and/or the biggest point he wants to make and then goes on to focus on several important points.  It’s organized and simple, and like 2DTeleidoscope posts, doesn’t reach too far.

tl;dr “Academic” blogs need to rein in the analysis.  I can force myself to read and understand your posts, but if it’s not layman-level, I’m not going to be interested.

This also leads into…

annotated blogroll

Two years ago, 0rion posted the first known annotated blogroll and revolutionized the ‘sphere!  Or that’s what I’d like to say.  But annotated blogrolls have been around in one form or another (hover-text annotation counts!) for quite some time, and I wanted to jump on the bandwagon.

If you’ve noticed, I have one or two-word tags that come up when you mouse over the links in my blogroll.  In the past, I tried to annotate that way… but now I need something more concrete.  I need to explain to my readers why each and every blog on my blogroll is there and why it’s worth reading!

And with this enthusiasm, I’ll end this post.  Because at 3900+ words and many hours spent typing, I’m beat.  Plus annotated blogrolls are dumb.

1. You can probably guess that I’m not going to write 20 posts in the space of one post. There’s zettai no way karen children I’m going to do that, so I’m going to be metaing and posting at a ratio of 90%/10%. Or maybe 50/50. Who knows?

2. Despite how useless I think SaiRetro is, they’re not doing too well with only ten or so voters.  So if you’re interested in that sort of stuff, so vote for Androids and Evangelions and Kasumis and Mistys over there.  It’s painful to see a competition with such a small following. Hell, their twitter account has 30 something followers who aren’t voting.  That’s sad!  Ha ha hah!  I’m sure SaiElectromaster would have had a much larger turnout.  Of course, there would be only one round and one contestant, but that’s relatively irrelevant general relativity.

By the time you read this, I will no longer be here.

In a week and a half from now (from when I am writing this), I will be in Hawaii, and I have just left yesterday (according to when this has been published).

To commemorate my nearly-week-long vacation, I’ll be talking about vacation spots in anime.  Nothing specific, mind you.  I don’t have the memory banks to store any specifics.  My brain is an old model, and it has a RAM of 128 megabytes.  I don’t want to save something so useless as anime vacation spots to my hard drive.  I should carry around an external brain.  I hear they make them with dozens of gigabytes now.

Rich Classmate’s Summer Home

There are some things I never understand about anime/Japanese culture.  One is why everybody has a hometown out in the boonies.  Another is why 4-girl 4-komas always have one filthy rich girl with a vacation home out near an isolated beach.

Back in 2000, it was pretty terrible.  Azumanga Daioh managed to save itself by having Osaka’s knife scene.  But now every mangaka and his/her uncle and that uncle’s dog and the fleas on that dog and the bacteria on those fleas and the electrons rotating around the nuclei of those atoms that make up the bacteria feel the need to put in a vacation home chapter.  And now there’s no more Osaka.  There isn’t even Chiyo-chan.  There’s just some stupid rich girl whose only defining characteristic is how rich and ojou-sama-like she is.

In comparison, my defining characteristic would be how middle-class and college-student-otaku-like I am.  Does that smell like UNIQUE to you?  No, it doesn’t!  If anything, it smells like too much homework on the weekdays, cup ramen at random times during the day, and lots of Minecraft and TF2 in the evening.

Heck, at least Chiyo was small and ten years old and small!  Mugi needs big eyebrows to become a quarter-fledged character and Tsuruya needs a fang and really damn long green hair!  Come on, those aren’t REAL character traits.  A simple haircut or a shave could trim all the excess hair away, and these two would be left with nothing but their richness and their money.

But then again, I wouldn’t mind being left with oodles of cash.

Remote Island Syndrome

Sometimes the rich girl has an island, too.  Or maybe the rich girl’s best friend’s fellow club member is in an organization that owns an island.  Or maybe a certain class rep is rich enough to rent out an island for the entire class.

In any case, anime summers often end up on a private island in the middle of nowhere… perfect for a murder!

But if you stop and think about it for a second, wouldn’t somebody have some excessive stupidity if they wanted to murder people in a closed circle environment?  If said murderer kills only one person, then you have a full list of suspects: the people on the island!  Just send ‘em all to the interrogation room.

Do closed circle cases even happen in real life?  You see it all the time on television because it’s a convenient way to make everything and everyone ambiguous, but you rarely hear about it on the news.

I don’t have anything left to say about this.  I probably had something lined up in my head and dressed up in mayonnaise, mustard, and jalapeno peppers when I wrote “closed circle island” as a bullet point a couple of days ago.  But now the mayonnaise is sour, the mustard is sourer, and the jalapeno peppers are as prinstinely spicy as ever.  Everybody knows that peppers take ages to go bad.

So I’m 1 for 3 here, and I give this section of the post a corresponding 33% approval rating.  If I saw this kind of rating on metacritic, I’d think Big Rigs or Elf Bowling-quality.  But this part wasn’t that bad, right?  At least I didn’t drive off the map into funky gray zone or rotate backwards at a million mph.

This reads "Pu-u-lu."

City Pool

On an unrelated note, the first recognizable character (民) on the pool sign above is “mín” in Chinese.  Despite going to Chinese school for eight years, I have a very limited and basic understanding of Chinese.  Thus the only phrase I can relate this character to is “mín zú” (民族), which roughly means “nationality.”

According to Google Translate, the single character means “people” or “nationality” by itself.  So what’s the extra “zú” character supposed to do?  It means the same thing with or without the second character so why do people need to add the second one?

Generic Festival matsuri whatever

I was in Little Tokyo the other day and happened to come across an Obon Festival taking place at one of the temples.  For a tenth of a millisecond, I gave in to the weeaboo side and thought that there would be goldfish scooping and mask vendors.  But then I wised up.  This was America!

And more importantly, the dango my friend bought looked like this.

Yes, I took the picture of the “dango” and the picture of the festival above with the same shitty camera built into my phone.  But for some reason, the dango picture looks amazing while the one above is terrible.  I should have brought my digital camera that day.

But anyway, the Little Tokyo festival was very strange.  We walked past a bake sale, went into the basement of the temple where lots of daycare kids were listening to a guy making a speech, and came out the other side to see a mob of middle-aged Asian women buying various fruits and veggies that were all really damn cheap.  I’m not too knowledgeable about Japanese culture, so I’m guessing this is the norm.

Shooting galleries and yo-yo fishing are just stuff of fiction.  Reality is filled with cheap groceries and middle-aged Asian men who sound like twenty-year-old black women singing English songs on stage.

I also saw this car parked a few cars down from mine.  One out of the ten people who will click on that link probably recognizes this as the car at the Dannychoo booth at AX.  According to my friend, Dannychoo itasha’d some con-goer’s car for free (in exchange for blatant advertising  for some shitty blog).

If I were him, I would draw two big Xes over Mirai’s eyes.  Screw Dannychoo’s stupid advertising.  I would also write out “Misaki Thursday” over the “Mirai Suenaga” bit.  Or I could write “Mikoto Misaka” and change the stupid moe looking stupid Mirai into Mikoto Misaka.

I didn’t even bother talking about anime in this section, huh?

I got a haircut today

Whenever I get a haircut and the barber/barberress/conan the barbarian can speak English, he/she asks me, “how do you style your hair?”

Why do people assume I style my hair?  I mean, I came in with my hair drooping down and clearly unstyled so why do you think I keep buckets of gel at home?  I use shampoo and conditioner and soap and that’s it!

One of these days, I’m just going to reply “I leave it to fate” or “I use my pillow” or “what’s hair?”  I’m sure they’ll appreciate my thoughtful response.

In a desperate attempt to relate this to anime: the only two anime I’ve watched that show a character actually getting a haircut are Full Metal Panic and Gintama, though the latter involves the Shogun, poop, and pubic hair.  Anime characters don’t usually get haircuts, come to think of it.  Even in slice-of-life shows.

Well, I’m sure it’d be hard to cut hair that can stand up like this.  You’d need a diamond chainsaw.  I wonder how much that would cost.

It’d be pretty costly to make in Minecraft, but not as much as a diamond chestplate or something.  Those things are really damn expensive.

Speaking of Minecraft, I quit the game.  It’s too addictive and sucked out almost five hours of my day, everyday.  And that was when I was in school, too!

But at least it’s not as bad as WoW.  I remember sitting in front of the Dalaran fountain for an entire day, just fishing up coins.  Even though I managed to get all the bronze, silver, and gold coins, I don’t think I ever got the fishing title because the stupid fish in Orgrimmar was so hard to catch.  I fished in the troll lake next to the first aid guy for hours, and I saw so many people catch it.  But I only ever got the useless fish and a couple of vials.

Who needs vials anyway?

I wrote this introduction paragraph before I watched the episode, so I don't have any Naruto pictures yet. Instead, here's the frog prince.

In my journey in the anime world and fandom, I have come to the realization that “first episode impressions” are about as impressive as “random episode impressions.”  People are getting dumber and dumber these days and assume that a “three episode test” – that is, watching the first three episodes of a show to determine if it’s good – works wonders.  Some even believe that a three episode test isn’t enough, and that we need more and more episodes to watch before we can determine if an anime is truly good.

Eventually, we’ll reach the point where everybody agrees that watching an entire anime isn’t enough to determine if it’s good.  You’d have to write episodics analyzing every last detail of each episode before you can scratch the surface of such a holy and radiant anime.

But enough of that!  What I wanted to do was watch a random episode of a random show and see if forcing a “in media res” would tell me anything about the show in question.

I also just wanted to watch Naruto.

useless character!

Summary

Naruto talks with two frogs about flashbacks for 12 minutes and then I threw up all over my keyboard.

artistic shot!

Reaction

Deep down, I wanted to disprove all the crap people give this show.  There must be some reason why it got and remains so popular in America.  There must be some reason why people dress up as random Naruto characters at AX instead of Mikoto or Eureka or any Nichijou characters.  But the conclusion I came to is:

NO.

There is no reason why this show should be popular.  The half of the episode I managed to get through was a piece of crap.  I bet Studio Pierrot has only one guy working on this show, and he’s always drunk and blowing chunks all over the cels and script.  I bet he voices the characters too.  Or maybe he downloads Naruto soundboards off the internet.

The episode starts off with three ninja guys running down a tunnel, and Snake man (Orochimaru, I assume?) catches them and kills them.  And then the OP kicks in.  By that point, I was ready for the worst.  The animation of the opening minute was horrendous, and the Snake man looked retarded.  It was going to be a long, “suspenseful” episode where this Snake dude runs around looking for Naruto or Sasuke or whoever is the protagonist now.

But, no.  No, no, no.  The episode went on to feature Naruto talking with two frogs about random flashbacks for ten minutes!  What’s the point of the Snake man opening, then?  Where did he go?  I don’t even care for the answers to those questions because this is such a horrible, messy excuse for an anime.

And to top it off, this is from the point of view of somebody who hasn’t watched any previous Naruto episodes!  I’m sure that fans have seen the same flashbacks ten times over.  Why do they like seeing the same scenes?  If they wanted to watch something repetitive, they could go loop Endless Eight.  That would be a better use of their time.

On a more interesting note, I've been watching Golden Boy.

My original intent was to use the “random episode test” as an excuse to experience Naruto in all its glory, but now I see that the “random episode test” really works.  It told me that Naruto is a disgrace to humanity and that I was a fool for not believing all the people who bashed the show.

I propose that we all ditch the idea of “first impressions” and the “three episode test” and instead opt for the “random episode test.”  As I have methodically proven in this post, it works wonders.

P.S.: Shitty anime deserves shitty post.  Sorry for this week’s shit.  I really wanted to delete this draft, but I couldn’t let all my hard work (sitting through 12 minutes of junk) go to waste.  I bet this is how manga bloggers feel about the Bleach manga, too.  Except a chapter of that takes only ten seconds to read.

P.P.S.: In other news, I got 7 headshots in one round as a sniper yesterday (in TF2).  I’ve found out that the trick is to just keep shooting, because the head hitbox is bigger than you think.  I’m still unaccustomed to the Huntsman at close range, but I’m getting pretty good with the regular sniper rifle.  Hmm.

P.P.P.S.: I promise next week’s post will be better.  In fact, I’ve already written it!

Or so I’d like to think.  I hear audience-based material is all the rage nowadays, so I figured I would make a runaway blockbuster post as well.  I believe the phrase here is “by you, for you, and quite unlike what you’d've ever expected.”

In retrospect, this in no way reflects the opinions of my readers.  I doubt most of the people who I know on formspring read my blog.

Valence: Hentai

What a dirty boy.

I don’t watch much hentai.  The last one I watched was in digiwombat’s Onii-chan Theatre, and I don’t remember the title, what it was about, or anything about it, really.

kluxorious: how do you treat NSFW posts

I’ve been meaning to say bad things about Chocolate Syrupy Waffles for a long time (not that I haven’t done it in the past), but I figured most of the team members would eventually learn to grammar and make half-decent sentences.  And then this post showed up on Nano.

I’m pretty lenient with NSFW posts.  As long as somebody says “NSFW” in front of a post, I will not look at it at work.  I usually don’t look at aniposts at work anyway, but yeah.

It’s good that there’s a “Not Safe for ANYONE!” warning in the title, but why would anybody post pictures of real penises?  Even if I try to take it un-seriously, I find it pretty offensive and not the least bit humorous.  Though I guess different people have different standards…

concretebadger: “The fans ruined it for me.”

Touhou, Hetalia, Hatsune Miku.

Maybe I’m just a hipster.  Maybe I just want to feel different.  Or maybe the Toumikutalia fandoms just suck.

Hetalia is a horrible show.  I hated the few episodes I managed to sit through back in 2009.  But then the fangirls, oh god.  They make me lose faith in mankind (or rather, womankind).  I believe that a male fan of Hetalia should be ostracized from male society and be forced to live with the wild, crazy Hetalia fangirls in their primitive jungle abode.

I played Perfect Cherry Blossom for an entire semester, and I finally beat the damn thing on Easy mode (died many times at Yuyuko on Normal).  I enjoyed the game, and tried out some of the other ones.  But I’ve never been able to like the fandom.  Eye’m the strongest?  What the hell is that?  Yukkuri are the strangest things.  I don’t understand what goes through the deranged minds of Touhou fans.

I went to the Mikunopolis concert at AX.  I felt really awkward and miserable as a bunch of screaming girls screamed so hard their screaming was louder than Miku.  I watched the guys in front of me move their glowsticks completely out of time with the music.  I got tired and sat down and couldn’t see anything, so I sat on the top of my seat and my butt hurt after the concert.

tl;dr I should have gone to the Nirgilis concert instead.

nyoronnyolo: H-manga

I don’t read that much manga to begin with.  I’ve read only a handful of H manga/doujinshi.  I can’t remember the names of any because my memory is bad and I probably read them on /a/ or some other board anyway.

No, wait, I do recall one that Aizen posted on We love maids/Anime^2 back when that site was popular and not dead.   The only thing I remember about the thing was that the main character had a magical, detachable penis and turned into a huge wrestler guy at the end.

Bassun: Why sports manga is a dying breed

Damn it, I already said that I don’t read much manga!

Eyeshield 21 was good.  Hajime no Ippo is repetitive.

That sums up all the sports manga I’ve ever read.  If you asked me this three months ago, I would have went on a tangent and mentioned how good comedy is a dying breed.  But now…

I still wound up on a tangent discussing a possible tangent.  Ha ha.

sdshamshel: Sub-Saharan animals in anime

I can’t name any Sub-Saharan animals off the top of my head, so I went to Wikipedia’s article on Sub-Sahara Africa and searched “animals.”  What came up was “guinea fowl” and “donkey.”  Now, I don’t know any guinea fowl appearances in anime, but I sure can name a lot of asses.

Makoto Itou from School Days is the classic example of a huge ass.  But hey, he got laid and was more popular than I’ll ever be.  Many people say that nice guys finish last, and while I’m not particularly nice or guy, I’m nicer and guyer than Makoto.  Maybe after crossplaying Mikoto next year, I’ll get rid of that guy half and finish a little closer.

Another, much more obscure ass is that of Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gautaman!  This anime is a relic from a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth pornography and ecchi were one and the same.  Back in the day, we had good anime like this.  Top-tier toilet and derriere humor.  Now you youngsters have something called “moe”?  What’s wrong with this generation?  All these gizmos and gadgets, and you still can’t make or appreciate an anime with good comedy.  Man.

Also, cheeks of steel.

Emperor J: Manyuu. Great Anime or Greatest Anime?

The video below is my only experience with the show, courtesy of Tenka Seika.  I’m not too good at guessing things in general, so forgive me if I interpret this video the wrong way.

First of all, it’s pretty obvious that this is a boxing anime in the vein of Hajime no Ippo, yet with more samurai-eqsue elements.  The jabs at the beginning followed by the swordfight at the end make for a very action-based show.

Furthermore, the female cast broadens the target audience to girls as well.  Women aren’t just sex symbols – they can punch as hard and as fast as Ippo and cut and slash as skillfully as Zoro.  Hopefully this show will herald many more anime with women in powerful and leading roles rather than as part of a “harem.”

Queen’s Blade, which aired a few years back, tried to do this and failed.  It ended up pandering to otaku who simply wanted to see boobs and butts and naked women.  But it also set the stage for such anime as Seikon no Qwaser, which displayed the important and vital role women play in society.

Queen’s Blade also paved the way for Manyuu, a show which focuses more on character development than character sexuality.  As the video shows, censoring is done discreetly but is prevalent throughout.  It’s just enough to get otaku interested in the show and just shy of scaring off its female audience.

Truly, Manyuu is an artistic masterpiece that champions a more active female role in anime.

Elyon: Yanderes.

While Yanderes are good and all, I usually prefer Pockdere.  The thickness of Yandere allows for a more satisfying crunch compared to Pockdere, but I really don’t like the dipping sauce for Yandere.  It’s messy and I either finish all of it before I finish the sticks or I have so much leftover that I can’t help but dig it out with my finger.

Yet when it gets hot around the house, I prefer Yandere.  In hot weather, Pockdere gets stuck together and it’s a real pain to eat.  Even after it cools down, the sticks are still glued together.  Obviously, Yandere doesn’t do that.

Recently, I’ve been trying out LuckyStickdere.  It has the size and thickness of Yandere, but with the “sauce” already on the stick like with Pockdere.  For some reason or another, it’s also easier to take apart once it’s melted (which doesn’t happen very often anyway).

53RG10: Anime.

No.

chronolynx: Feminism as it applies to pre-Eva mecha anime

I’ve only watched one pre-mecha anime: Gunbuster.

This is my hero.

Noriko was cool.  Feminism?  Not so much.  I feel like this was just a standard epic mecha series with a female main character.  Blah blah blah, Noriko was strong and woman and strong and female but hell, I don’t really care.  It was a good anime with an engrossing plot and interesting characters and really terrible spacesuit uniform things.  I prefer Yoko’s space suit outfit uniform thing.

I’m not too knowledgeable about feminism nor do I want to talk about it that much because girls suck.

I like girls, though.

Ambivalence… or is it ambiguity?

Bradley: Complete this sentence: “I was wrong about…” Elaborate.

Who’s Bradley?  Why am I following him?  Bah!

I was wrong about nothing.

If I have the time to go back and think about what I’m wrong about, I’d rather be playing Team Fortress 2.  Heck, that just gave me a great idea.  I’m going to go play TF2 and write the rest of this post later.  It’s taken two hours so far, and I really want to go get owned by the newly-nerfed Cow Mangler 5000.

@fkeroge: *Looks at an anime poster posted in room* Anime posters.

I have quite a few anime posters, but most of them are small, Megami-sized ones (two sheets of 8.5×11 paper).

I got a free Hatsune Miku Mikunopolis poster at AX by giving Toyota my email address.  They sent me one email.  I’m sure that the cost of printing that one Mikunopolis outweighs whatever they could have conned me into buying.

Besides, I drive a 2000 or 2001 Audi.  It’s 99% functional and has leather seats.  However, the 1% non-functional part makes it a real pain in the ass and I’m afraid to take it on the highway because weird “check engine” and “check car” and “check anime blog” lights come on randomly.  The guy at the shop said it was connected to the door-activated car light thing for some reason and now I don’t know if my car has a serious problem or not.

I should have gotten the crappy old Volkswagen next to it.  Hell, I should have rented a car or something instead of buying an old beat-up one from a scamming Asian dude who gets really mad and yells a lot.

I hate Asians.

I’m Asian.

Asraful: Anime as a medium, rather than a genre, and the tendency (or apparent tendency) of anime watchers and the blogosphere to forget this (and expect every show to be awesome, etc.)

I don’t think many people (well, in the blogosphere at least) feel as though anime is a genre.  Sure, there are stereotypes that some genres of anime push to the limit – magical girls and RomCom harems, for example – but I don’t think anybody expects all anime to be like a magical girl show.

That said, I also believe that people need to realize this on their own.  And most are!

also, am I kawaii? uguu~

trzr23: Blog about anibloggers. It’s meta, but it’s always fun.

Oh, speak of the devil.  Metablogging, eh?  I’ll just spit out a few things.

Anibloggers’ anicon posts

I’ve seen a lot of anime convention posts, but this one just takes the cake.  If you scroll down to the bottom, you see that the two cosplayers Punynari found cutest actually found his blog and commented!  Wow!  I wish Artist Alley Yotsuba Cosplayer-chan would comment on my blog too!

Team Blogs

I think I’ve made it clear (well, in the past at least) that I dislike team blogging.  I dislike team blogs.  I’m not going to go through the trouble of remembering all the bloggers at THAT or Sea Slugs or Borderline Hikkikomori or whatev-

W-Wait, you mean blog about the actual BLOGGERS?  Man, I can’t do that.  Even among anibloggers, I’m an anti-social nerd who doesn’t talk to anybody.  Hell, it’s taking all the courage I can muster up to write this post b-because I’m so n-nervosu

I’ll try my best, though.

trzr23

I think this guy is an arrogant asshole.  Why is he on formspring?  Why does he have a blog?  Why do I have a blog?  Why am I such a terrible blogger oh god shit

vacubcaquix

Since I’ll never have the balls to say this to his face (aka on Twitter), I’ll say it here.  Stop advertising your stupid blog!  It’s annoying!  Just post stuff and tweet about it once!  You don’t have to retweet it from three different Twitter accounts and ask dumb questions like “when is this going on anime nano?”

Damn it.  I just checked Twitter and he retweeted his tweet about his blog post for the umpteenth time.  I think he un-retweets and then retweets to keep it at the top of my Twitter feed.  STOP IT! STOP STOP STOP!

Bah!

I like the guy, but this spamming must stop!  And I’m not going to be the one to tell him!

P.S.: Don’t tell him I said this because he controls SCCSAV and can easily destroy my meager existence on the internet with a snap of his fingers.

P.P.S.: You could also destroy his fingers so he can’t snap.

EDIT: So between when I wrote this post and when it got published, I got the balls to do this and now I’ve been banished from the cool kids’ club.  Don’t associate with me, lest you also receive the absolute zero shoulder!

That’s right, laugh at me!  Laugh at the man who dared defy the supreme overlord!  But know this: I shall have the last laugh!  *walks off into sunset*

canon_chan

Big, white, and nerdy.  Manma.

mefloraine

Supposedly an ex-Catholic schoolgirl.  Is probably a big bulky man with lots of hair, looks like a gorilla.  Eats naughty little kids for breakfast.  Eats Corn Nuts when naughty little kids aren’t available.

Shinmaru

Some guy.  Hispanic.  (Latino?  Mexican?)

Jesus159159159

Another guy.  I don’t know what race/nationality he is.  Keep it AEI.

7thwraith

Yet another guy.  Asian.

RP

Fourth guy.  I helped him and 7thwraith get together.  They probably had wild, unbridled weeaboo moments together.  Asian.

Seinime

I’d like to say that he’s my home dawg from way back in the day, but not really.  Very cool guy who’s made as many blogs as I have.

Mushyrulez

Comments the most on my blog.  Played Maplestory.  I, too, played Maplestory and I’m still active on a Maplestory forum.  I talk about anime and TF2 there.

Heck, I talk about anime and TF2 everywhere.  Maplestory forum, Twitter, this blog, and even real life.  I need a better hobby.

2DT

He’s gone from the internet but not really gone.  Sounds like me.  Except people probably want me gone after all this time of name-changing whereas people want 2DT to stay.

I’m like a chameleon.  I change my name, avatar, blog name, blog address, and everything so much.  If I got a butterfly knife, I’d be complete!

/dumb eyeshield reference

digitalboy

I don’t like him.

Crazydave

See, you’re here too.

Annoying anitweeter who tweets all day and likes Mikoto Misaka.  From what he’s told me, recently he’s been mining coal in the Appalachian Mountains or something.

Scamp

I forgot to include you, Whale Hat Hare.

Walfas

Who is this guy anyway?  I follow him on Twitter and I’m friends with him on Steam and I know he likes Touhou and a lot of people I know talk with him a lot, but I’ve never talked with him/her/Cirno.

Touhou sucks.

Others

I got tired of typing.

Watch Nichijou!

Note: this picture is vastly different from the one in last week’s post.

GoodEnoughForMe: DRILL HAIR… how did it start?

Alien Nine.

Just watch the damn thing!

wah: SPACE ADVENTURE COBRA

not very vague i guess

Not vague at all.  I didn’t watch that show (though I have been watching NICHIJOU), and I don’t remember anything anybody said about it when it came out.  Though I remember the main character resembled Coach Wakamoto (above).

Hanners: R-15 as a realistic portrayal of the Japanese education system.

Oh, you silly nilly wet willy!  You sure do push my buttons, Hanners-chan~!

For anybody who hasn’t watched this season’s hot new show R-15, I’ll give it to you straight.  This gem of an anime is quite honestly the most realistic depiction of Japanese school life since School Days.  If Manyuu fiercely advocated women’s rights, then R-15 fiercely supports the Japanese education system.

Nowhere else in the world would you find a country with countless young geniuses.  These kids are all Ivy League material and will grow up to be the leaders of tomorrow’s future!  Doctors and lawyers?  R-15 proves that Japan has a wider variety of young talent than any other country in the world!  Idols, inventors, and even porn authors… Japan is a dangerous foe for America.

Hell, they took out our women’s soccer team the other day.  If they join together with the Soviets one of these days, we’re doomed.  We should raise sanctions against this potential enemy.

Down with Japan!

Azure: How about UFO sightings in anime. *random unrelated suggestion*

Scratch that; Aliens of anime.

Alien Nine.

Just watch the damn thing!

Scamp: Favourite anime directors.

No really, try writing about that

I really like this one anime director named Yutaka Yamamot-

IMMEDIATE SHITSTORM

I don’t know much about anime directors, to be honest.  I can name about five or six, and they’re major ones like Miyazaki, Shinkai, and Shinbou.  I have no idea who directed my favorite shows and sometimes I even forget which studios made them.

But I do like Yamakan’s work.  Kannagi was fantastic, Lucky Star’s first four episodes were on par with the rest of the series, and Fractale was pretty good (you’re wrong, Scamp!).  Oh, and Michael agrees with me on Fractale.

Yi: Since your last question is about upper lips, why not blog about that?

Because I am lacking in knowledge of the upper lip, I asked Jesus159159159 to write something.

But his hard drive died, so here are some pictures of lower lips instead, courtesy of crappy shoujo crap shoujo anime Kare Kano:

I was taking beam profiles at work on Monday when suddenly, I just had to watch the new opening of Nichijou.  When I looked it up just now, I watched it six times before I could tear myself away from Youtube.  That makes fifteen views today.

I managed to get through my entire Nichijou screenshot folder while looking for a header picture.  I can vividly remember each scene/screenshot and I burst out laughing several times.

But enough of how much I like Nichijou.  On to something more interesting: how much I LOVE Nichijou.

Nichijou is the first anime I’ve ever fanboyed over.  While I can see why some people wouldn’t immediately love the comedy with all of their heart and soul, I can also see that this style of random humor is everything I’ve ever dreamed and hoped for in an anime.  It’s Hayate getting a 3LDK, with an extra room to boot.  It’s Sena going on to win the Super Bowl.  It’s not as good as Mikoto showing up in real life.  But hell, it’s up there.

If Eureka Seven is my all-time favorite anime and Welcome to the NHK is my anti-drug, then Nichijou is my idea of a fun time.

I’m in a love hotel on Saturday night with beautiful naked women all over me.  W-Wait, what?  it’s SATURDAY NIGHT?  That’s when NICHIJOU SUBS COME OUT!  I must have failed horribly at life to forget that NICHIJOU comes out on Saturday night!

I’m in a “important meeting” with my boss.  He’s promoting me to CEO, and I just have to sign this pa- SHIT, IT’S SATURDAY-FUCKING-NIGHT and I’m at WORK?  Signing some stupid useless scrap of paper?  I’d better jump out the window, hijack a car, and run all the red lights until I get home!

I’m in the White House, shaking hands with the President.  A nearby aide is holding two medals for my dedicated service to the country, humanity, and Nichijou.  Huh?  NICHIJOU?  HOT DAMN, IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT AND I’M NOT WATCHING NICHIJOU?

Nichijou is so damn hilarious that even the stills between the shorts are laugh-out-loud/clutch-stomach-in-pain/near-heart-attack funny.

What’s even better is how Kyoto Animation is able to keep up such a high level of quality for so long.  And yes, I do mean Kyoto Animation, the company that is making all of this possible.  I read some of the manga earlier this week and although it is superb, the anime feels like an even better adaptation.

So yeah.  I really love this show.  Anime-wise, Nichijou is the best thing that’s happened to me in two years.  I can’t recall a single airing anime that I’ve enjoyed so much.  At 16/24 episodes, it’s #3 on my all-time favorite anime list and still clawing for #2.

And I know it’s going to get there.

P.S.: I can see how many fans of the manga would dislike the anime, though.  Though the humor is still the same (the anime jokes are pulled from the manga, after all), the manga is -surprisingly – less random.  Each chapter shows one scene with multiple gags.  The humor is constant and consistent and overall it’s a lot more streamlined.  The punchline-less moments the Nichijou anime has become [in]famous for aren’t present in the manga.

Yet it’s the combination of funny gags and punchline-less gags that makes the anime so memorable for me.  In my opinion, animating Nichijou has been one hell of a job for KyoAni.  I am much, much more than pleased with the result.

Two years ago, I was a fledgling blogger going to Anime Expo for the very first time.  I somehow got into icystorm’s aniblogger meetup and ended up sitting across the table from my aniblogging hero, 0rion.  He was as un-cleanshaven as I’d hoped and looked like a true connoisseur of anime and expert on blogging.  He also looked like a homeless man living under a bridge.

Epic Win is perhaps my all-time favorite anime blog.  A year ago, 0rion found enough expired bento boxes in the trash can next to the convenience store to come back and write an optimistic, energetic post detailing how Epic Win would come back and everybody would be happy again.  I assume that failed, since Epic Win Under the Bridge has been devoid of content for a year.

To 0rion and Guff, wherever you are out there (or rather, whichever city park bench you’re sleeping on): I, for one, still remember you and your epic anime blog!  Please drop by the ‘sphere once in a while!

In other metaniblogging news: Scamp may have turned 3 years old, but Yumeka turned 9!  Scamp’s post has way more comments that it needs, so go comment on Anime Yume, the oldest and faggiest aniblog in existence!

P.S.: I don’t know any blog older than Anime Yume.

P.P.S.: I’ve nearly turned 2.5! (or 3, depending on when you start counting)

P.P.P.S.: There is no header picture to this post!  Now I feel like a wise, old blogger.

P.P.P.P.S.: I commented on Scamp’s post but not Yumeka’s post because I don’t know her as well, even though I’ve been reading her blog longer than I have been reading The Cart Driver.  But hey, I made this post so it’s all right, right?  Right?

…

HONTOU ga uso ni kawaru sekai de~

looks like shinmaru

Usagi Doroppu

The refined gentleman’s moe show, complete with 15 extra minutes of boredom per episode!

On the surface: Girl does cute stuff, looks deep and meaningful.

Reality: Girl is mentally retarded and has a memory span of 2 hours.  Cries for father/Grandpa because main character has a gun up to her back.  Main character takes her home.  BAD END.

6/10, will force myself to watch.  Hoping my prediction is right.

looks like mikoto (kind of)

No. 6

Shounen-ai trap anime!  Spiritual successor to Fractale!  Next episode: greenish-blue-haired girl in surfing mecha crashes into house.  Show becomes instant classic.

Didn’t quite like how the main character looks so feminine.  I swear this is going to become some hardcore explicit yaoi stuff.

6/10, will force myself to watch.

looks like moe

Ikoku Meiro no Croquettes

The refined French gentleman’s moe show!  Also for big fans of sign-building, apologies, bowing, and sign-building.  It’s got the pace of a turtle with a sloth’s brain, but it’s several orders of magnitude faster than UDoroppu.

7/10, dropped.  I stopped learning French back in Junior year of high school!

“Now it’s time for your punishment, Shou-chan~  You’ve been a naughty boy!”

“D-Don’t!  Our dear sister is watching from Heaven!”

Mawaru Penguindrop

Traits that make people think an anime is good:

• Lots of dumb colors (Trapeze)
• Somebody dies early on (Gurren Lagann)
• Boy looks like girl (any anime with a trap)
• Failcest (anything)
• Peer Pressure

So I’m here to say that Penguindrop is NOT GREAT.  Too much hype for a series that’s clearly going to go downhill.  The only way to save this show would be to kill off Shouma and replace him with Kamina.  The penguinhat turns into a Gunman, the three penguins turn into Kittan’s three sisters, and they all die in a glorious battle.  Only the sickly sister lives on, and it turns out she’s actually a penguin.  She dies too.

That would be decently cool.  A show about mascot penguins and stuff… not so much.

6/10, will force myself to watch.  It’s the next big thing, after all.

WHAT?  YOU’RE NOT LETTING US SEE THE PANTI

oh wait

Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi

First impression: Generic harem show.  Slightly tsundere childhood friend, domineering vampire, fangirls, etc.  Main character is also called Hayate Ayasaki.

Turning point: Screenshot above.

Conclusion: REALLY BAD generic harem show.  An annoy amount of gratuitous pantyshots.  Childhood friend is kind of cute but not really.  I would rather watch Hayate no G0toku than some Hayate knockoff.

3/10, could not finish first episode because of pantyshots.

Kamisama Dolls

enormous breasts

6/10, dropped.  Interesting/mysterious enough, but imouto does not make up for college girl and her two massive sidekicks.

“My hair pisses me off!”

Sacred Seven

Sticks and stones may break my bones and this show sucks.  Maid army is dumb.  Post-transformation is dumb.  Premise (stones) is dumb.  Hair is too long.

4/10, dropped.  At least Sunrise tried to make it interesting by inserting all of the above.  Too bad they’re all terribad ideas that never should’ve seen the light of day.

P.S.: Apparently, this has Code Geass vibes out the ass.  I’m not too knowledgeable about ass vibes or Code Geass in my ass, but I don’t think this has anything in common with Code Geass.  If an attractive red-haired girl with a dual personality shows up in a skin-tight outfit, I would watch this show.

P.P.S.: If an ugly green-haired girl shows up in a skin-tight outfit, I would drop the show immediately!  Disgusting!

You ate all of it already, right?

Yuru Yuri

Predictable and boring 4-girl show with predictable and boring jokes.  Kind of like K-ON!, only the girls here are actually cute.  Sister’s room was pretty funny.

4/10, dropped.  Not my thing.

I-Is this love?

Mayo Chiki

The characters were drawn well, and the butler guy/girl/thing is pretty cute.  Blah blah blah how did the clothes come off blah blah okay

4/10, dropped.  Did not interest me, but props for characters.  Also this was animated by a company called “Feel,” which I’ve never heard of.

They should make this with lots of gay men.  Oh, wait.

The iDOLM@STER

Not something I would usually watch, but very good episode.  Characters are all one-dimensional (combined, they are 13-dimensional!), but the way they were introduced was impressive.  Documentary format, hooray!

I don’t particularly like any of the characters, but I loved seeing them interact in a daily slice-of-life setting.

8/10, will watch to see how far down this falls.  Great episode, but series is bound to be crap.

“Oops, forgot my schoolba-  H-Hakase?!”

R-15

I thought it might be cool, seeing how the main character is a porn author.  But it’s not.

2/10, dropped.  I spent more time drawing Nano + Sakamoto than watching R-15.

I thought we all learned how to do this back in 2002.

Kami no Death Note Pad

Good show for once!  I should change this post’s title to “‘Tis the Season of Worthless Anime and Kami’s Memo Pad.”  What’s a Memo Pad anyway?  All I have on my computer is Notepad and Wordpad.

I thought the whole first episode was pretty good… except for the generic ecchi first-episode-ending-scene.  Well, I guess you have to appease everybody.  I’m sure there are people out there watching this only for the loli neet person thing.  I couldn’t care less, really.  As long as there’s more interesting prostitution-murder cases and the characters aren’t terribly boring, I’ll keep watching this!

After all, I have yet to find another Summer 2011 show to fall back on.

8/10, will continue watching.  I hope this is at least half decent.

This is me. I tried to frown, but it didn't work.

First, let me apologize to the people at AX who had to see my ugly mug.  Second, I’d like to apologize in advance for not taking enough pictures.  The third mistake is that I shouldn’t have ever been born.  The fourth is that I just made a lame SZS reference and nobody will get it.

Also the pictures are huge.  But I’ve already shrunk them by 50%.  Imagine how big they were before.

DAY ONE

After a day of standing in the pre-registration line for two hours in the hot SoCal summer sun and browsing the entire exhibit hall and buying cheap manga and getting really tired and a lot of stuff happening, I ended up at the Danny Choo panel.  I don’t like Danny Choo, my friends don’t like Danny Choo, and Danny Choo doesn’t like Danny Choo.  So in short, I don’t know how I ended up there.

Danny Choo talked about life and how to build a resume and blah blah blah

It got really boring and my feet hurt so I didn’t want to go walk around to find something interesting.  So I started taking pictures of my shoe.

This is an action shot.

So after a while, I got tired of taking foot/shoe pictures and decided that my feet wouldn’t get any more interesting.  Of course, they were still far more intriguing than Danny Choo’s life lessons panel, but I still got bored.  I wandered around until I found a room showing Ghost Stories dubbed.

Later I went to the Maon Kurosaki mini-concert because my friend wanted to go.  Why else would I still be hanging around in the convention center at 11 PM?  What a stupid idea.  I don’t even like Maon Kurosaki.  I should have ditched him and gone to the Nirgilis concert instead, but I was dumb and decided to go along with what he wanted to do because I’m a total dumb dumb.

Afterwards, I met female (!!!) Pyro and Medic.  Dunno why they were still around at midnight, but it was nice seeing TF2 cosplayers (maybe free to play got peoples’ attention).  I also saw a heavy, a female scout, a couple of medics, lots of spies, etc. but no Soldiers or Demomen.  Bah.

Speaking of cosplayers I didn’t see, here’s what you all should have cosplayed as:

Maybe I could/should have expected this, but there were NO Mikoto Misaka cosplayers. NONE! AT ALL! I know Railgun/Index isn’t exactly geared towards women, but for a convention with tens of thousands of people, you’d expect to see at least a couple Mikoto cosplayers. What’s worse is that there weren’t any Eureka cosplayers either! I saw an Anemone/Dominic couple, but no green-ish haired goddesses graced my eyes.

You people!  I blame you people!  Go dress up as Mikoto!

I’m thinking of crossplaying Mikoto next year because this current state of affairs has left me in despair.

DAY TWO

I wanted to see the Production I.G. panel from 9 – 10 am, then I wanted to hurry over to catch the second half of “A Survey of Anime Opening & Ending Themes” (Alex Leavitt‘s panel).  After that, I was planning to hang around at the Exhibit Hall until lunch, and then I would go to the “Anime Club How-To” panel to see how my college aniclub could improve.  By that time (3:30 pm), I would go around with my friends until the aniblogger meetup at 6:30.

I got to the convention center at noon.

Apparently, there had been a huge deal about a bomb threat and people were talking in hushed whispers about the legendary anibomber who wanted to ruin anime expo for us all.  There was a suspicious package in the dining area, so the LAPD bomb squad was rushed in and people were shooed (evacuated) out of South Hall.  After a while, the suspicious package was no longer suspicious and the anibomber threat subsided.

I was still at the hotel, though.

But at least I saw this tank.  I prefer Neotanks, though.

So instead of following my brilliant plans, I ended up wandering around the exhibit hall until 3:00 pm, when I decided to go see the Gonzo panel.  I didn’t bother to look at the little green chunk in the schedule titled “LASTEXILE: Fam, the Silver Wing World Premiere,” so I had no idea what the panel was going to be about (Nyanpire, maybe?).

It turns out that there was going to be a world premiere showing of a new season of Last Exile right before the Gonzo panel.  But luckily for me, anibomber threat happened and I managed to stumble into the Last Exile screening, which started half an hour late.

The people hosting the panel/screening were really anal about cameras, saying that if somebody was caught recording the episode, he/she would be banned from Anime Expo… forever!  Plus the screening would stop and nobody would get to see the show until it aired in October.

Anyway, the episode was pretty cool stuff.  Fam and other girl take on two battalions of battleships and manage to survive and rescue two princesses!  I haven’t watched Last Exile before, but from what I could tell from this screening,

And at least two people thought the same thing!  Usually, nobody retweets what I say unless they’re stupid or crazy or extremely handsome.  Two retweets is statistically significantly different from the norm of 0 retweets, so I assume Fam was really freakin’ good.  Look forward to it in Fall 2011!

So after my awesome cool Gonzo adventure, I met up with some guys from the internet and went to the Bandai panel, which was almost completely comprised of two guys saying “look at this preview.”  Stephanie Sheh went on stage and looked stupid, too.

I don't remember seeing the guy third from the left. He must be Kanata or something.

After that, the event that everybody was waiting for happened.  I was hanging around in West Hall, waiting for the aniblogger meetup/dinner when I saw a group of mismatched people standing awkwardly in a circle.  There were Asians, Whites, and Shinmaru all standing in one place.  I knew I had found my group.

After waiting a while, a huge mob of anibloggers appeared (I assume they met separately and talked trash about us lower anibloggers).  Eventually (an hour later), we set out for dinner!  And by dinner, I mean expensive food truck grub.  But at least I got to take a picture of anibloggers taking pictures of canon_chan cosplaying/crossplaying.

Also zzeroparticle was standing next to me and I didn’t know who he was but he knew me.  Go figure.  Also there was a gigantic white guy.  I don’t know who he is, so please come forward if you’re reading this, gigantic white guy.

On another note, the Kanata guy in the picture above is apparently ToastCrust.  I thought ToastCrust was the aforementioned gigantic white guy.

I didn’t spend much time awkwardly socializing with the anibloggers because I had to go… to the HATSUNE MIKU CONCERT!  After all the anibloggers who were going to the Miku concert had left!  Maybe I should have gone with them.

I’ve only listened to one Miku song a single time: World is Mine.  I found it annoying and more annoying, so I don’t listen to Vocaloid songs now.  They’re dumb.

Now if you think that was a buildup to say “this concert changed my mind,” you’re wrong.

The concert went something like this…

Once we got in, the first thing my vocaloid fan friend said was: “wow, that screen is tiny.”  And it was.  It was 100%, real, genuine life-size.  Except in the Nokia Theater, life-size means pint-sized for everybody not sitting in the first three rows.

Somebody died and Dannychoo was in charge for emceeing the event and blah blah at least he didn’t tell us how to build a resume.  Once he finally got off the stage, Miku started singing but there was no Miku on stage.

Right after the first song, Miku appeared and “World is Mine” came on and

KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

please somebody make it stop

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I couldn’t hear for the rest of the night.

Most of Miku songs left me confused.  I’m a guy who doesn’t listen to or like Vocaloid songs because they sound strange and pierce my eardrums.  So imagine being in my shoes, listening to Miku sing songs about pop or poop or whatever…

Needless to say, this concert didn’t convince me to become a hardcore Miku fan.  Sure, I think she’s cute and I think it’s an amazing phenomenon… but her songs are screechy and are about bowel movements rather than melodic ones.

On the concert itself, though: The atmosphere was crazy.  You always hear people talk about “electrifying atmospheres” at concerts, but the only electric atmosphere I ever believed in was the electric field around Mikoto Misaka.  But this Miku concert was insane!  People were waving their glowsticks out of time and jumping up and down and screaming like monsters (see picture #2 for accurate representation of fans).

I felt like crying at times because I was so happy to experience this electrifying atmosphere and because of the pain from my broken, bloody eardrums.  I think that if this were a HALCALI concert or even a Nirgilis one (gah, should’ve went to that one…!!!), I would have broken down in tears.  It felt great to be at such a huge concert for a virtual idol who doesn’t exist and sings higher and faster than human ears were designed to handle.

I guess this means man has finally overcome his evolutionary barrier.

DAY THREE

I don't know if zzeroparticle wants his name shown. Maybe I should black out his face too.

I got up at 9:00 am and managed to get my lazy friends out of the hotel by 10:00 am, and we got to zzeroparticle’s panel just as it was starting.  Because I cannot find Shinmaru’s shoddy recording on Youtube and zzeroparticle hasn’t posted about it yet, I’ll just put some comments on the panel here.

After the panel, my [non-aniblogging] friends told me that it sounded like a lecture and that much of what zzeroparticle said was quite obvious.  I found it a little different than that.

Pros

• Lots of music.
• Zzeroparticle tried to explain how the music helped whatever anime it was in achieve a better mood, tone, creepiness, etc.
• Mostly songs from obscure shows that I barely recognize.  Like Aquarian Age and Le Portrait de Petit Cossette.

Yeah.  But at least I went and listened to music that’s not by HALCALI.  I wish HALCALI would come to AX one of these years.  I really love that band.

So afterwards, my friends wanted to leave and I ended up ditching the Day Three aniblogger meetup, but whatever.

The Nirgilis panel later that day was really low quality, but it turned out to be great fun!  The guy hosting the panel was all sweaty and nervous and couldn’t ask any good questions and even admitted he was nervous (never do that, public speaking people!).  The translator talked really softly far away from the microphone so nobody could hear what he said, but he was a cool guy.  The members of Nirgilis were really laid-back, friendly, and all-around awesome people.

When the Nirgilis folk tried to say that their song “sakura” was inspired by opera, the translator said “Oprah,” and that really broke the tension.  Things went smoothly from there.

What really surprised me was that Yuki (furthest right in picture above) was a huge Nichijou and slice-of-life comedy fan.  She listed Lucky Star, Azumanga, and Nichijou as her favorite shows.  If anybody was there, I was the guy who yelled “Nichijou!” and clapped when NOBODY ELSE DID.  Bah, AX attendees!  You people need to watch Nichijou and dress up as Mikoto.  Learn to anime omg

Everything turned out okay in the end, though.  Two people who went up said they were Nichijou fans as well, and one Asian guy said his favorite show was Eureka Seven and his favorite airing show was Nichijou.  I feel like I could really get along with that guy.

I went to the Durarara!! panel.

It sucked.

I texted my friend and he said Durarara!! was a “girl anime,” and from what I could tell at the panel, I agree.  So many Crispin Freeman fangirls.  There were even Walker fangirls.  Who the hell likes Walker?  He’s the most side of side characters!

Bah.

also I saw a death note

Later, we went to the Maon Kurosaki concert, which was a big fail:

Actually, my tweet doesn’t do the mini-concert enough justice.  The concert on Sunday was forty-five minutes long (half the length of the “mini”-concert) and had only one song that Maon didn’t sing on Friday night’s mini-concert.  I didn’t even have to go to the concert itself after going to the better mini-concert.

Also for some reason the staff at the Maon concert were even more anal about cameras and stuff than at the Miku concert.  I had my camera in my backpack in the Miku concert, but the staff at the Maon one told me to “take it back to the car.”  Since I didn’t drive to AX and the hotel was half an hour away, I couldn’t get in.  Luckily, my prescient friend realized the concert was going to be a huge flop and a total waste of time and decided to take my camera and went to browse the exhibit hall.

Because Denny’s was super duper crowded for dinner, I couldn’t make it to the noitaminA panel – which I really super duper wanted to go to.  Later, I found out that the panel was a super duper letdown (they only showed previews and announced licencing of noitaminA anime), so I’m now super duper glad that I was eating my skillet at 8:00 pm instead of sitting through a bunch of trailers.

And then I sat through 3 hours of Disappearance.  By the end, I was itching to get up and run around… but I ran into lvlln.  So instead of running around to get rid of the jitteryness in my legs, I talked with him about Haruhi in general for a while and then waited for the shuttle for a while and rode the shuttle for a while and by the time I got back to the hotel, it was 2 am and I felt so tired and pooped and bad.

DAY FOUR

I didn’t do anything on day four.

Also I’m tired of typing this post.  I hate long posts so much.

Just look at more pictures and stuff.  Hopefully your computer will have frozen by now.

Day Three: South Hall.  Not nearly as crowded as on Day Two, but still…

Day Two: I was talking to anibloggers when suddenly HOLY SHIT YOTSUBA OH MYG ODD

Day Four: I was talking to friends in the Artist Alley when suddenly HOLY SHIT CUTE 4CHAN ASIAN YOTSUBA OH MYG ODD SHIT OH GOD MY HEART

semi-not-really-obligatory loot pic

P.S.:  I spent a lot of time on Days 2-4 asking for Mikoto Misaka commissions.  Too bad NOBODY KNEW WHO SHE WAS, or what series she was from.  Artists are the dumbest people.  They draw mainstream crap and think they’re otaku, but they ain’t half as immersed in anime as I am!

But really, I expected some of the artists I asked to know Railgun.  None of them did.

I did get a commission from a friend of a friend, though.  I actually got him to draw both Railgun and Eureka (he knew both of them!).  To be honest, I didn’t expect a very good drawing from him, but it turned out quite well (see above).

P.P.S.: I wrote this last sentence just to get over 2700 words.  2713 word post, hooray!

P.P.P.S.: To any and all of you who’ve stuck with me and read this post, thank you.  There are craptons of AX posts all over the internet (like over at Anime Instrumentality, Anime Diet, Anime Yume, and other Anime ____ blogs), and I appreciate you wasting ~15 minutes reading this.

weeaboo gathering '09

I will be there tomorrow, and I expect to see you there.