phew, what a scorcher

God, it was hot on Saturday.

I managed to get the car washed and polished, but with hindsight, waiting until Sunday would have been the better decision. It was cloudier and a bit cooler on Sunday, so it would have been a more pleasant experience, but not by much, I think.

Saturday spurred me into breaking out the air conditioner on Sunday morning. I think this is going to be a very good thing, as the forecast is for a bit of a heat wave this week.

If this is the case it does mean I made a bit of a tactical error. I was thinking about getting a haircut on Saturday, but in the end was too lazy to bother (I have to get up very early to get to the hairdresser before any sort of queue forms). Whilst I'm not desperate for a haircut, shedding a bit on the top might help if it is going to be scorching.

Sunday I also did a huge amount of scanning and finished all of the magazines. Don't get me wrong, I still have a lot of scanning to do, but it was nice to finish the magazines. I actually put the scanner away as I'm kinda sick of looking at it, but it'll have to come out again soon.

While I scanned I watched some fansubs of course:

I watched some more Hatsukoi Limited. I actually kinda spoiled this for myself a bit by reading the manga online. What happened was I thought I'd see what the manga was like and if it was available in the west, but during my investigations I found it on a scanslation site and also discovered it was only 4 volumes long.

These discoveries kinda meant I ended up reading the whole thing. It was good, but it meant I knew what was coming next in the manga. However, interestingly they've tweaked the anime quite a bit and I actually the think the tweaks are something of an improvement, and definitely flesh things out a bit more.

Oh, and I also discovered it's by the same manga-ka who did Strawberry 100%. The art style is still gorgeous, but it's better than 100% as the plot strands advance in a much more succinct and direct way. There's none of that fannying about and tooing and froing that gets annoying in 100%.

Asura Cryin was kinda rubbish. I mean, it wasn't actively bad, but it was such a generic mish-mash of stuff you've seen before that it was very dull.

There's actually a quote I once heard that went something along the lines of "I'd rather be confused for 10 minutes than bored for 10 seconds" and in a way Asura Cryin tries to follow that principle. It starts off with all sort of weird stuff that you don't really know quite what's going on.

For example, the main character has a female ghost that follows him about. Or another example is a weird girl that turns up and gives him a suitcase. Or the other weird girl that breaks in that night, using magic and threatens him.

But the problem is that all of these surprising elements are basically standard anime elements. I mean, if I'd never seen any anime before ever then maybe it would work, but as it is I was able to guess most of the twists before they happened.

I then watched one episode of something called Jewelpet. This show is definitely not aimed at me - it's aimed at little girls and not only that, but it's raison d'etre is selling toys to young girls. Think Transformers, Pokemon, Beyblade, etc - it's a show aimed at flogging toys.

It was also quite poorly (cheaply) animated and wasn't exactly based on an original concept - there are these magical creatures that look like jewels lost around the earth and you have to go and find them.

However, more in my age group is Sengoku Basara. I have to admit that on some level I was a little disappointed by Sengoku Basara, because it was exactly what I was expecting.

I know that sounds weird, but I think I was secretly hoping for a bit more of a surprise element to it. I mean, what's there is all perfectly good, but if it had whipped out something extra - something a bit more bonkers maybe - I'd have liked it more.

Also, I was a little unsure how serious it was meant to be. There were some thing that were quite comical, but I wasn't sure how much of the rest of the show was supposed to be taken in that vein. For example, there's a really hot ninja who has a sort of 'love-explosion' moment where the background goes pink and she makes an orgasmic face. Which was quite funny, but a lot of the rest of the show was played with straight faces.

But don't get me wrong - I liked it, just probably not as much as I'd hoped.