legal anime downloads

One of the big problems anime has is piracy. However, the thing with anime is it's not quite the same beast as with other forms of piracy.

The main difference is that anime is Japanese but very popular outside of Japan. That popularity means that potentially there's a ready market available to buy your products, except it's being pirated left, right and centre. However, without the piracy it wouldn't be as popular as it is - it's like a double-edged sword.

In order to feed the popularity it needs fansubbers - people who add subtitles to the anime so that us foreigners can watch it too. I'm not going to explore why they do it, but suffice to say Fansubbers are basically volunteers. But they're also the enablers for all the copyright theft that goes on, so they're the target to beat fansubbing.

And it is theft, btw. It's not normal theft - you didn't take a five-finger discount from your local DVD shop - but it is the same basic thing. If you've not paid for something or the something isn't being given away (or the copyright hasn't expired) then you are basically abusing Intellectual Property and Copyright laws.

Anyway - back to my point - the issues are complicated.

In the case of western mainstream films and music the main differences is the speed of availability. Western media comes to us in all sorts of forms - at the cinema, in live concerts, DVDs, CDs, rentals, broadcast on TV, as well as all the legal internet stuff - streaming, downloads, MP3s, the iStore, etc, etc.

So it's available. It's around. You can go down the shops and buy it, you can get it legally via the internet. And if you're willing to wait you can get it cheaper or even free on the telly. Also, radio and television as well as magazines and the net can provide us with reviews and previews and free samples and all sorts.

It's pervasive so the point is there is really no excuse for piracy.

For anime the situation is different. I mean, you're still talking about infringing copyright, but the available is just not the same.

I can't go down the shops and buy the latest anime shows. I can't watch them on TV. Until very recently I couldn't even get them legally online either.

So, if there were no avenues at all for people to watch anime would there be as many fans? Well, clearly not. If people could only get at anime by buying expensive DVDs the scale of the fandom would be too small to support itself. It's that combination of word-of-mouth and availability that feeds the popularity.

Unlike music or western films, that illegal route has traditionally been the only way to try-before-you-buy. Especially when you're talking about the more unusual shows. I mean, I don't mean the whole Naruto, Bleach side of anime - the popular face that would almost certainly make it over here anyway, I'm talking about the weird odds-and-sods.

The classic example is Azumanga Daioh. Without the huge popularity generated through fansubs, none of the western companies would have touched it, but because of the fansubs, they did and so it got its day in the sun.

If there were no fansubs, that could never have happened.

But then on the flipside - looking at the Bleaches and the Narutos - what are the effects of fansubs on their sales? The trouble is it's almost impossible to quantify.

Another crucial issue is the speed of availability. These days we get near-simultaneous film releases at cinema and for DVD for films and music, but it can be months (if not years or even never at all) before the DVD version of a show becomes available in the west.

For some shows fansubs are literally available within a week. Much as I have issues with fansubbers, I have to give it to them - that's a phenomenal turn-around time for volunteers.

And what's more that's part of what anime fans are there for. They type of person that is an anime fan is much more likely to be of the frame of mind that getting it first is more important. These are the people at the frontiers, they're the early adopters. To them, knowledge is a currency - if you're not up-to-date you're no-one.

And part of the problem there really lies at the feet of the anime companies. The impression we're given is that they expect very large sums of money for distribution rights. They've also been horribly, horribly slow to take advantage of the opportunities the internet offers. They do not understand the western market, as they are so used to how the otaku behave in Japan, spending huge sums of money, happily being ripped off by the anime companies.

They have, in short, sat on their bums doing nothing expecting the gravy train to keep running for ever.

And they've paid the price in many ways for that attitude. Many western companies have effectively pulled out or folded and so any license money they were getting has dried up. Let's put it this way - a bit of money for all of your shows, or no money at all?

Thankfully things seem to be improving. There are finally moves to get legal forms of anime up and available to foreign consumers. It's the only way they'll ever manage to "beat" the fansubbers, but I have to wonder if it's not coming a bit late.

scan-o-rama

Discovered an interesting site/blog thing on Friday called Stuff White People Like. It's kinda squarely America-centric, but I found it pretty amusing.

The weekend was an odd one. I woke up on Saturday totally shattered. I was so tired I could hardly be arsed to get out of bed and instead watched several hours of recorded telly (I've now literally only got the film Lucky Number Sleven to watch).

When I did eventually shower and stuff I still ended up bumming around for an hour-or-two. Finally, I got my arse in gear and did all the usual bits and bobs of keeping life running. I did discover that I've apparently been hit for late-payment charges on one of my credit cards.

Now to be fair this is true - I checked my cheque book and I've not paid them. But the thing is I'm convinced I never received a statement. Trouble is I can't really prove that, so I just did an internet transfer - hopefully it'll be enough, but without being able to find the statement it's difficult to know what the minimum is.

Anyway, on Sunday I had a much more productive day (also, much colder as we're having a cold-snap). I scanned like there was no tomorrow - I must have done something in the order of 200 scans.

I scanned the latest megami deluxe (volume 11) which had the best part of 80 images, then I scanned two Artbooks - Divergence Eve and Makoto Uno's. I didn't actually get Uno's quite finished, as I wanted to watch Top Gear and Survivors on the telly, but I should be able to finish it this week.

Lots of scanning meant lots of anime watching too. I've now finished the Spring Season (Strike Witches and Blassreiter not withstanding) so am finally moving onto the Autumn stuff. Here's what I watched:

• Telepathy Shoujo Ran was surprisingly good. I'm pretty sure this is aimed at a younger audience. At least that's the optimistic viewpoint - it's either a surprisingly sophisticated show for younger audiences, or a rather simple show for adults. I'd prefer to think of it as the latter, since I quite enjoyed it. The only thing that did worry me was that the thing that made it interesting - one of the characters is really evil, but in an "I'm broken" way - sort of got resolved by the end of ep 3 when I stopped watching. If she has a sudden personality flip it may mean the show is less good than the impression I got.
• Eve no Jikan was good. It's an ONA - I've not specifically mentioned those before, it means Original Net Animation, so it's basically broadcast on the web. There's 6 eps each of about 15 minutes and I watched the first one. The animation was beautiful, though the viewpoint-camera thing they used occasionally was a little distracting. The show had distinct overtones of Shirow (not sure if he's involved) and Asimov with the laws of robotics. It looked like it could be very good - very thoughtful, rather than action oriented.
• Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel was okay - nothing special, but not exactly bad either. It's a 2 episode OAV so I just watched the first episode. It's basically a magic girl job, with two magical girls in it. I can't say there was particularly anything that made it stand out :/.
• Switch was okay. It's only a 2 episode OAV so I just watched the first one, though it's based on a fairly long-running manga, I believe. It also lacked any women whatsoever, though all bar one of the men are gorgeous in that androgynous way Japanese women like (the old, ugly one was clearly a bad guy). Oh - think I might have given the game away there a bit. It's female-fantasy pretty-boy stuff. It's an organised crime/undercover cop sort of job, though, so it wasn't bad, but it's not really my cup of tea, either.
• Michiko to Hatchin looked very good. I only watched the one episode as I believe it's been licensed already. Basically this is by the people that did Samurai Champloo. Now for other people I'm sure that means a lot, but I've unfortunately not got around to watching Champloo (it's one of the many series occupying a shelf) so I didn't quite know what to expect. First thing I noticed was that it's beautifully animated, and to be honest I'd be happy to watch it just for that, even if it was rubbish. Second was the great character design. As for the story - it looked like it could be awesome, but 1 ep is not enough to be certain.
• Skip Beat! was another show that was surprisingly good. It's also another show that's aimed pretty squarely at women. The plot is that this girl moves to Tokyo with this pretty-boy character who is essentially trying to become a "celebrity" (it's a little difficult to explain how Japanese entertainment is set-up - think 'manufactured acts' on all levels). She ends up supporting him, working several jobs to pay for an expensive apartment and looking after him, all in the belief that he might love her. He turns out to be a bell-end (which is pretty obvious to anyone but her), she finds out, and swears revenge. The form of her revenge is kinda why I ended up liking the show - it's just a little bit unhinged. I dunno, it's difficult to explain, but the show is like all sort of predictable (and maybe a little dull) but then it'll just throw a random curve-ball and those are why I ended up enjoying it.

omg, look at all the blood!

Woke up very early this morning. I'm kinda convinced that something is waking me up, actually - my hypothesis is that it's some kind of animal (fox or a stray cat, maybe?) using my landlord's catflap. It's just that it's odd that it seems to happen at about the same time in the morning and it's now happening all the time since it's come colder in the mornings.

Plus, when I stayed at my Dad's a while back I was sleeping right through until 7-ish. The regularity and pattern just seems odd. I think I may do something to see if I can get evidence in some way.

Anyway, I'm not sure if it was the getting up early, but I've got a blown blood vessel in my eye. It's very unsightly, but doesn't really hurt or anything - it just looks ugly. Maybe it was the BT thing yesterday? I literally blew a blood vessel! :)

So I've been finishing off the latest magazine scans this week and I so I got the chance to watch the following:

• Ultraviolet: Code 044 was okay. It felt very old fashioned. Plot wise, I'm not sure if it would come under 'retro' or not - retro implies something deliberate - but certainly the artwork and animation were retro, and, if I'm honest, not really my cup of tea. It was also surprisingly talky and slow in the first episode for an action series.
• Detroit Metal City is very good. I didn't quite go for excellent, as I have to admit the character design and animation is not quite to my liking, but the show itself is very good. It's probably the funniest thing I've seen in ages, with a very entertaining set-up. It also strikes a great balance between its elements - it kinda pokes fun at everything, which is a neat trick to pull off.
• Shikabane Hime: Aka seemed very good. It's the new show from Gainax and is (rarely, for them) an adaptation of a manga. I've no exposure to the manga, but the anime seems very Gainex-y so I'm not sure how much they've tweaked. Anyway, the show does seem very well done, although I have to admit it doesn't seem hugely original - there's a lot you've seen before, but it's entertaining enough.

I think that just leaves The Telepathy Girl Ran as the only thing I've not watched from the April '08 season, and that's because I downloaded a German version of ep 1 (:/) so I watched Shikabane Hime instead.

Oh no - actually I've got Strike Witches and Blassrieter to watch too, but those are slightly different. I've already paid to watch the entire seasons for both on Bost so I don't really think of them in quite the same vein.

It's about time - all the October season shows are startign to pass my threshold for watching them. What I tend to do is wait until I've got about 6 episodes downloaded. That allows me to watch 3 or 4 episodes (or go up to 6 if I'm really undecided) in a row. I usually watch them

bloody BT

BT phoned me last night.

Bizarrely, and I have no fucking clue what's going on, they claim that my "calls are not 'with' BT".

They've phoned me with this claim before, and it's always gone the same way:

Them: "Your calls are not with BT"

Me: "Yes they are."

They then assert that they aren't and I start to get very fucking annoyed. Yes, they are with BT, I just don't use my landline very much. Some automated system has decided that means my calls are not "with" BT.

I don't even know what it mean - who the fuck else would they be with? BT certainly send me a bill every quarter and, if I've made any call, they charge me for them, SO WHO THE FUCK ELSE HAS MY CALLS THEN, DIPSHITS?

What winds me up even more is that they, having made this asserion because the system is telling them my calls aren't with BT and me having denied it, told them no-one else has my calls, said I've never "transferred" my calls, and don't have SKY or any other call thing (well, I've got a mobile and I basically only use that to make calls), they then go on to say that they can check the system to see if my calls are still with BT.

I mean, seriously: What?

How can the system tell them my calls aren't 'with' BT and then they can check the system to see if they are? Excuse me while I spot the total fucking inconsistency.

As you can probably tell this wound me up no end. I was fuming for ages last night and I'm still annoyed about it now.

My guess is that if I let them proceed it will turn into a telesales thing and they'll try to sell me shit I don't need, but by the time we get anywhere near that point I'm already shouting at them and i just hang up.

bloody BT

BT phoned me last night.

Bizarrely, and I have no fucking clue what's going on, they claim that my "call's are not with BT".

I have

a brief pause

I'm definitely putting trismugistus.com updates on hold until Christmas.

I have got a few things I could put up there, but they're basically just reviews and I've never been keen on just doing reviews every week - it gets a bit same-old-same-old so I like to have some variety. After all, that is why I have all the different sections :/.

However, one thing I do have to do before I pause is add on a thing for and affiliate for digital-bondage. I've never had a section for affiliates. I have a links page, which includes a section for other waller's sites, but I've never bothered with affiliates.

Mainly that's because I know I'm not very good. As such, I've always assumed that if I asked other people if we could become affiliates they would say no (or say yes more out of politeness than really wanting to do it) and that nobody would ever ask me.

Only someone did. The person in question is pinkprincesslacus and she has a site called hime-designs.com. What I'll do is I'll probably add something to the front page of dig-bon until I start updating the site again properly and I can integrate it.

I dunno if I've mentioned this before, but my sites are actually a big of a con. They look a bit like they're done with clever tricks with the menus and stuff, but those are all just cons. Really they're done in a hard-coded way that gives the illusion of being cleverer than they are.

Anyway, so the point is I'll have to manually add the affiliates thing in properly and that could take a while.

I was also thinking I could change up the banners. I use my walls as my banners and I only did about 5 or so when I came up with the idea, but I've done some nice walls since then so I think I could either replace them or add in some more.

What I also need to do is get some of these walls and vectors finished. I've done quite a few vectors, but some of them need tidying up a bit and many of them need backgrounds doing.

I've still not really done a proper background for the "little angel" vector I did. I've sort of thought of an idea, but not quite seen if it's practical. I wanted to do something a bit abstract for it, but I didn't know if I could lay my hands on the stuff I'd need to make it look right.

I've also not done any more on that soul eater wall. It quite demoralised me when someone else walled it, but it would be quite a shame to just let it come to nothing.

I also need to really rethink the writing section of the site. If I'm going to keep it (and I'm currently wondering if I really should) I need to think if I'm going to update it with stuff.

Part of the problem is that my writing effort has mainly gone into trying to write novels recently and I wouldn't be happy posting any parts of them until I'd finished the novel. Plus extracts are always a bit rubbish.

Hmm...

Lastly I really need to do something with Scan-city. It's just silly having it there doing nothing when it costs me money each year.

Anyway, the point is I'm going to put proper site updates on hiatus until Christmas and then come back "bigger and better" as it were.

nacho libre

This weekend's DVD was Nacho Libre.

It's a bit long-winded to explain, but is actually kinda simple, so bear with me. It's got Jack Black in it as the titular character, Nacho, and is directed by the guy who did Napoleon Dynamite, Jerad Hess.

It's set in Mexico and the plot is basically that Nacho is an orphan who was raised in a monastery by Catholic monks. He's also a big fan of wrestling. Now that isn't wrestling as in proper wrestling like they do at the Olympics or the WWF type American wrestling (which actually developed from this sort of wrestling).

It's sort of the mid-point between those two - it's got slightly cheaper production values than the American wrestling, but still maintains a bit of the reality of real wrestling. However, it does have the whole pantomime aspects to it.

Basically, when I was a kid they used to have the same sort of stuff on Saturday morning TV, with characters like Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks. Only it's a bit more flamboyant than that.

Anyway, so Nacho wants to be a wrestler, but the monks are opposed to it (quite why is a bit vague). But Nacho is also the monastery's cook and is committed to the Orphans the monastery looks after, so he can't just leave.

Also, a love interest is kinda tacked on.... I'm not really selling this very well, am I? Well there's a reason for that - I didn't really enjoy it that much :(.

I'm a big fan of Jack Black, and he's basically the reason I thought I'd take a look, but really this isn't a JB movie, it's a Jerad Hess movie.

I really want to like Hess's stuff. I try really hard. I watched Napoleon twice to see if I would get it more on the second viewing, but I just didn't.

I don't know if you've ever heard the term, but there's a language to cinema. It's a way of doing things that we've all grown so used to that it only becomes apparent when it's broken. Like, for example, if you show two characters talking but using individual close-ups, generally you have one of them on the left hand side of the screen and the other on the right. However, it's only if this isn't done that you would realise it was a convention.

Well, comedy also has rules, like gaps left for people to laugh. Well, when I watch Hess's stuff I notice those gaps, but I don't really see the joke. It's like he's saying the punch line to a gag, but I don't even realise that that was the punch line. I just don't get it.

I mean, it's not totally bereft of funny stuff, but then it's equally got things that I just don't get. And worse, it often feels like they're trying way too hard.

*sigh*

Unfortunately, the things that could have carried the film even though the comedy isn't to my taste are also lacking. There are lots of plot holes and lots of stuff goes nowhere. I'm all for breaking standard dramatic structures, but it's just annoying when stuff goes nowhere.

For example, the love interest thing just never really happens. There's also no indication as to what happens to Nacho's partner after a certain point, or, indeed, any of the other characters. Also, the biggest crime is that there's this whole segment in the middle about this Gypsy king that is just utterly pointless (the deleted scenes feature a whopping 8 minutes of scenes that were excised from this part, clearly showing they realised it was beyond pointless too).

Anyway, the DVD itself is quite good. After the last few rental DVDs having absolutely no extras it was nice to see this had plenty - featurettes and stuff. Though I have to say the commentary track just isn't worth the space on the DVD, which was annoying as I like a good commentary.

oh my god, where's my card?

Those were my exact words last Thursday as I scrabbled around in my wallet, desperately looking for my debit card.

See, I was actually planning to buy my new dehumidifier last Thursday. There's a Focus DIY place just up the road and I figured, what the hell - might as well pick it up there, rather than have to go out at the weekend.

Only I couldn't find my card and there was no reason for it not to be in my wallet - I'd not cleaned it out or anything. In fact, I couldn't remember using it since earlier in the week at Tescos when I'd done a food shop. At Tescos when I'd used chip and pin to pay for it... I realised I must have left the card in the damn chip and pin machine!

I've nearly done this on a couple of occasions before and I bet it happens all the time. I mean, it's all right chip and pin, but I dunno, there's some aspects to it that just aren't as good.

Anyway, I had to dash back to work early so I could look up on the net where to call to cancel my card. Made the call and it was all sorted. I've also checked my statement and it doesn't look like any dodgy shenanigans went on with the card. The checkout person probably just gave it to the supervisor and they have some mechanism for keeping hold of them, I guess - as I say, it must happen all the time.

Anyway, it did put a slight kibosh on my plans for the weekend as it meant I couldn't get any cash out. Well, I could, but it was coming out of my other account, which never has a lot of money in it. So I played it safe and only bought 'just enough' petrol and paid the tax on the new figurine I got from Japan.

I have to say it's a really nice figure. It's Hime from a manga/anime called Princess Resurrection. It comes with a mini-character as well as the main figure. It's also got a proper base, rather than just the normal round ones and it's quite large and is well sculpted and the face doesn't look stupid as they sometimes do.

This weekend was a cleaning weekend, which also gave me the chance to give the new dehumidifier a whirl. This dehumidifier was a lot cheaper than my last one and it's kinda smaller and slightly less 'adjustable'. But in other respects it has a few advantages over the other one. One of the nice touches is that it has a carry handle. It was lugging my last one around that caused me to break it, I think.

It was an odd weekend in some respects - I've got this odd contradictory feeling this morning that I both achieved a lot and also didn't quite do enough :/.

Anyway, one thing I did do was a bit of scanning. I scanned megami, which is always an odd mag to scan. It has lots of posters and those take ages to scan, but then the mag itself can sometimes have as little as 10 or 15 things worth scanning, so it's done in next to no time.

Animedia was the other mag I scanned and that can also be odd. I've mentioned before that animedia would be the subscription I would dump if I had to. Some months there's next to nothing - less than megami even - but then in months like this it has loads of stuff. But the weirdest thing about it is the timing.

I mean, one thing about Japanese mags is that none of them are like our magazines. If you look at Empire, for example, it has reviews of films and they rate them, sometimes giving films very low marks and telling you they are dross.

Well, Japanese anime mags aren't like that at all. They're more like big collections of promotional material and they never ever say anything bad about the shows. What's weird with animedia is it seems to lag behind all the time. We're now well into the October season, right? But it's only this month where they've got loads of pics from the shows. Well, surely if it's all about promotion and previews, they should have had loads of images months ago too. That's what all the other mags do :/.

Also, you see what I mean about feeling like I've done loads but also not done much. I hadn't planned to do any scanning, so it's good I squeezed some in. But I only got two mags done and I was at it for hours :/.

Anyway, I watched a couple of the last few shows from last season while I scanned:

• Blade of the Immortal was okay, I guess. It seemed very talky - there were long periods of people basically almost making speeches, but some cool action interspersed. The weird thing was that although I wasn't hugely impressed with the anime, it made me want to check out the manga. I got the distinct impression it would work way better as a manga, where big long chunks of dialogue are more okay than in anime.
• Real Drive was kinda good. It's from an original idea by Shirow and you can see his hands all over it. It's also got a nice set-up and an interesting lead character. However, there were a few downsides - the character designs are not to my taste for one and the pacing is a little odd. The second episode, for example, was very lively with a nice dramatic structure, but then the third episode seemed a bit all over the place, tbh.

empowered volume 4

I got Empowered volume 4 this week.

For anyone not in the know, empowered is the latest work from Adam Warren. Warren was one of the first American artists to adopt an anime style that I know of. He also holds the rights to the manga/comic adaptation of the Dirty Pair, who have always been one of my favourite anime franchises (if that's the right word).

Anyway, Empowered, although obviously drawn in Warren's anime-inspired style, is actually a superhero book. Although it's not a normal superhero book.

It's kinda a riff on that idea of "what would superheroes really be like if they really existed?" and a lot of the book is devoted to the personal lives of Emp, the hero, and her friends, acquaintances and cohorts.

It's also quite adult - the parental advisory sticker on the front and the shrink-wrapping is definitely there for a reason. I mean, it's not really explicit - it's not porn - but it's not for kids, either.

So yeah, volume 4 arrived at my house this week and I've been giving it a good read. I'm not sure I'd say it was quite as good as volume 3, which is my favourite so far, but it is very good. It's actually set in a shorter time period than the previous books, or it seems that way anyway - there's certainly a clear linear structure to the stories, whereas in the previous volumes there were normally at least one or two random stories that were independent of the main plot for the book.

Not that that's a complaint, it's just interesting to see Warren developing things. He's definitely layering in a lot of stuff in this volume that I'm guessing will have some big payoffs later.

Given the origin of Emp, it's not surprising that some of these are only coming in with volume 4, as he's kinda been writing it on the fly to some extent. It does add a lot of depth to the series, though I must admit I missed the purely comic side bits a little.

But then there's always the caged demonwolf to inject his own particular brand of wit to proceedings. I love the demonwolf - I mean, really, as a character it's just a disembodied voice, but the great thing Warren does is to make him more than that.

It's difficult to explain - I guess you'll just have to go and buy your own copies to find out!

And I'd highly recommend you do :).

It's going to be a bit of a busy (and expensive) weekend, I feel.

I got another letter from the post office telling me I have a parcel from Japan waiting. I'm guessing this is going to be a regular thing now as I must have gotten on Customs radar :(.

The other big expense is that my dehumidifier has packed up, so I'll have to buy another one. Looks like the cost of them has come down a lot since I bought my original one, but we're still talking ballpark £100+.

I have to have a dehumidifier where I live. It has horrible problems with damp (I think the damp course is shot) and occasionally things have gotten quite mouldy, so the dehumidifier helps to keep those nasty little spores at bay.

Plus I'm going for a few drinks this Saturday and I have to do all my cleaning and stuff this weekend too.... yeah, you're right I'm just pre-empting some sort of "I didn't manage to get x done" post on Monday :).

... and burn

Spent most of last night doing one of the less pleasant jobs involved with being a dirty fansub user.

Fansub files can be pretty big. For a half hour show in normal res they're normally about 180-200 meg and if they're in HD then you're talking anywhere up to 400mb per episode. Now if you say most series are either 13 or 26 episodes long, on average, then you can see that each show has the potential to be several gigabytes big.

Plus of course these things are happening in parallel - it's best to keep up with them as they come out, rather than wait until the end, because normally very few people seed the entire series. So that means you're talking about lots of gigabytes of space needed.

However, my normal hard-drive I use in my regular machine is actually quite small - it's a fast raptor drive, which are blindingly quick, but they have to be small as the trade off. Plus I sometimes like to take fansubs with me. So what I'm saying is that I bought one of those smaller external hard-drive.

Basically they use laptop hard-drives, rather than the big ones, so you can basically put them in your pocket. Now this drive isn't small - it's 150 gig - but as I mentioned fansubs are pretty hefty files and tend to have a lot of series on the go. Espeically because of overlap. It's like the new october season of shows has just started, but of course several of the spring shows are still going. And that's not to mention the delays you sometimes get occasionally with the fansubbers.

Anyway, my point is that every so often I have to clear off a lot of stuff from my external HDD, and that means burning it to DVD. I generally burn the completed (or abandoned) shows I've watched which are therefore just taking up space.

It is quite a shore, though.

Firstly I don't generally stay loyal to fansub groups. I tend to find that fansubbers have the moral scrupples of a dead frog, as in practice none of them draw any line between licensed and unlicensed shows, so I don't feel any particular desire to be loyal to them.

That does mean the filenames can be all over the place, though, and my over-developed sense of tidiness means I often have to rename them all, which is freakishly tedious.

Then there's the whole burning thing. Now my drive is awesome and the software I use is pretty efficient, but there's no getting around the fact that transferring up to 4.5 gb of data is pretty slow. I mean it would be slow if I was just moving them from one hard-drive to another, let alone burnign them.

One weird thing I did find, though, is that my drive is really slow when it comes to DVD-R disks. For some reason it will only write these at up to 4x, whereas for DVD+R disks it will write them at up to 16x. I have no idea why this is (though I have to say I also don't actually understand the distinction between the two types, +R and -R).

So I spent a good couple of hours burning stuff to DVD last night, but I probably won't need to do any more until Christmas. And even then it will be more out of a desire to get ahead of myself than a necessity as it was last night.

For some reason, and I've no idea why, I've started reviewing stuff in session zero over at AP this last couple of weeks. I really am not at all sure why. I mean, I don't really need the papers, as I still have over 100,000 and people never really paid much attention to what I said anyway, and they still don't.

I think part of it is because, if I'm honest the standard of wallpaper that's getting approved seems to have dropped a little. However, the numbers are quite low, so rather than be all whinging I thought maybe it was because people aren't getting very good advice at SZ, and rather than be part of the problem I'd be part of the solution (omg, I think I'm turning into an American management executive :().

men with brooms

I watched Men with Brooms on DVD this last weekend.

It was kinda okay. I dunno. I kept getting this really weird feeling that it was sort of like a sequel, but also that it never quite got going.

It was a weird feeling like it was a TV movie that had been made after a show had been cancelled and then fan-supported had managed to get the film made. A bit like Firefly where the show got cancelled and then fan-support got Serenity made.

I don't think that was true, though - I think it was just that it was a plot that was carrying around a lot of back-story. Like they'd over-developed the characters and their relationships and then not quite explained it all in the best way possible.

Also, the film was about curling. Well, no, actually it wasn't about curling it was about relationships, which all stories should be, but this was hung a framework of curling. Curling is the sport where they chuck rocks down the ice and try and get them closest to a target.

Anyway, the point was it didn't quite explain curling properly either. There was a weird dynamic to it. It was a bit like it didn't quite know where to hang its hat.

I don't know if you've seen dodgeball, but on the one hand it was like it wanted to be like that - a piss take of those 'triumphing at sport' films. But then equally it seemed like it wanted to play it seriously and be one of those triumphing through sport films.

I dunno, it just lacked something somewhere - like it didn't quite make up its mind what it wanted to be.

Also, it had Frasier the Mounty in it from Due South (actually I think he directed it too, if not wrote it). I loved Due South and one of these days I'm going to by it on DVD - it was a great show.

tappety-tap

One of my work colleagues has been driving me bonkers recently.

He taps his feet. Well, I say taps. It's more like he's trying to burrow his way down to Australia. It's really hard, and it's really loud.

I've nicknamed him Thumper (after the rabbit from Bambi).

He's got an interview for a contract over at Porten Down today and I so hope he gets it. I mean, even if it means I get left with more work or something, I'm almost praying he gets the contract, otherwise I may just be driven insane.

I've taken to listening to my MP3 player at work to try to drown him out. This kinda means I've been getting a bit disconnected from the happenings in the office, but it's that or I murder him. And, although I'm sure no jury in the world would convict me when they heard why, I can't be bothered with the hassle.

I think Chinese water torture is based on a similar principle to this - drip, drip, drip = tap, tap, tap.

Anyway, last night's journey home was awful.

It seems to have settled down a bit today, but the weather here has been biblical over the last few days. There are huge puddles and the river next to the A31 is massively flooded. I've only seen it more flooded when there was all that flooding the other year.

However, I'm not sure if it was because of the weather that they shut the A31 last night. It could have been due to a fuel spillage at the Hen & Chicken - that's happened before. I mean, it could have been a knock on from the weather of course.

Whatever - it meant I didn't get home till really late as I had to go the really long way around.

I got a really nice surprise when I got back though - the ne anime mags were there!

That has to be a new record. I only got the e-mails telling me they'd been sent on Monday and they were there the next day. All the way from Japan.

And I think it is basically genuine - the Japanese users on AP have only just started uploading their scans this weekend and I'm pretty sure they get their copies early (the famous Akihabara gets advance copies a couple of days before subscribers apparently).

tappety-tap

One of my work colleagues has been driving me bonkers recently.

He taps his feet. Well, I say taps. It's more like he's trying to burrow his way down to Australia. It's really hard, and it's really loud.

I've nicknamed him Thumper (after the rabbit from Bambi).

He's got an interview for a contract over at Porten Down today and I so hope he gets it. I mean, even if it means I get left with more work or something, I'm almost praying he gets the contract, otherwise I may just be driven insane.

I've taken to listening to my MP3 player at work to try to drown him out. This kinda means I've been getting a bit disconnected from the happenings in the office, but it's that or I murder him. And, although I'm sure no jury in the world would convict me when they heard why, I can't be bothered with the hassle.

I think Chinese water torture is based on a similar principle to this - drip, drip, drip = tap, tap, tap.

Anyway, last night's journey home was awful.

It seems to have settled down a bit today, but the weather here has been biblical over the last few days. There are huge puddles and the river next to the A31 is massively flooded. I've only seen it more flooded when there was all that flooding the other year.

However, I'm not sure if it was because of the weather that they shut the A31 last night. It could have been due to a fuel spillage at the Hen & Chicken - that's happened before. I mean, it could have been a knock on from the weather of course.

Whatever - it meant I didn't get home till really late as I had to go the really long way around.

I got a really nice surprise when I got back though - the ne anime mags were there!

That has to be a new record. I only got the e-mails telling me they'd been sent on Monday and they were there the next day. All the way from Japan.

And I think it is basically genuine - the Japanese users on AP have only just started uploading their scans this weekend and I'm pretty sure they get their copies early (the famous Akihabara gets advance copies a couple of days before subscribers apparently).

oversleep-age

Well, that was odd.

On Sunday morning I massively over-slept. By my reckoning I was asleep for a good two hours over when my alarm should have gone off.

I say should have gone off because it didn't. My main stereo has an alarm on it and I use that. It's a bit like a clock radio. Unfortunately, it was my cock up that caused it - turns out I knocked a button when I was shifting some boxes around and didn't realise, so the alarm didn't go off.

Anyway, it meant I didn't get up until very late. It also kinda poxed my day up - it was a bit like I was in a daze all day. Plus I had a terrible time getting to sleep last night.

That's one of the troubles with lay-ins - they mess your body-clock up and mean you're not tired when it comes to bed time, so you don't get as much sleep and your routine's a bit out of kilter. So I'm a bit muggy headed this morning too.

Anyway, one thing I did get done is a lot of scanning this weekend. I did all of last month's mags (which is good as I've just received e-mails saying the next ones are on the way :/).

I also watched a bunch of anime shows while I scanned:

• Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu - very good. I watched one more of this show and I still think it's very good - one of the best shows of the season, in fact.
• Kyouran Kazoku Nikki - okay. This really didn't do anything for me and I just watched 2 episodes. Whilst I wouldn't say it was actively bad, as such, it just didn't really appeal. The premise was part of the problem in that it seemed so utterly contrived and daft. I also have to say I wasn't at all keen on the art-style.
• Ryoko's Case File - good. I quite enjoyed this, though the animation seemed a little cheap. It's a supernatural/cop type show and it's one of those where you've kinda seen it before, but it's entertaining nevertheless and there's a good dynamic between the lead characters (a sort of will-they-won't-they thing).
• Mission-E - good. I just watched the one episode of this, more to confirm if it was still any good. It's technically a sequel to a series called Code-E which I quite liked (though I don't think it ever sparked much general interest). It's essentially a sci-fi show. Interestingly, the sequel isn't a direct sequel - some time seems to have elapsed between the two shows. I enjoyed this first episode, so both are the potential purchase list, if it ever gets licensed that it.
• Hidamari Sketch x 365 - good. Another sequel (to Hidamari Sketch), so again I just watched the one episode. It was good. It's sort of a slice of life show, but it's got an odd, surreal humour slant to it as well. Interestingly, this sequel is unusual too, in that it actually takes place in parallel with the original show.

Oh, I also forgot to mention I was watching Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage during the last week and finished it on Friday.

It's just as good, if not slightly better than the first season. The reason is that there's a slight tonal shift from the stories covered in the first season. The first season I would primarily characterise as being humorous first, serious second, whereas in the second season this is reversed.

I'll definitely be doing a review of it later.

Oh, and speaking of reviews - I've poxed up my website update schedule. I could blame the oversleeping thing, but the truth is I've just ballsed it up.

Mainly this is because I've kinda been waiting on finishing some wallpapers. As I think I mentioned the other week I've done several character vectors, but haven't quite completed the wallpapers, so updates to my site have therefore gone the shape of the pear.

Thinking about it I may actually put updates on proper hiatus until the New Year. That will give me a little more breathing room and I can also take the opportunity to watch some more stuff and build up a new stock of reviews as well as the wallpapers.

lewis hamilton & contractual obligations

Well, I can't go without mentioning the formula one world championship and the winning there of by young Lewis Hamilton.

It's been a great season this last year. I mean, there was some dodgyness and not a little controversy, but then those things always make the season more interesting, if not actually being good in and of themselves, but Lewis triumphing is a perfect end to it all.

It was a well deserved victory, and I truly think he is one of the best drivers that this country, if not the world, has produced in ages.

What makes things even more exciting is he seems to be one of a crop of new drivers coming up just recently. As much as I personally like Michael Schumacher, I can't deny that things became a little stayed while he was dominant. The sport kinda lacked for any real rising stars of his calibre.

I mean, there were a few good drivers, as there are every year, but not in the volume we seem to have good newbies this year.

I did actually manage to spoiler the race for myself by catching the end of the broadcast (I normally TiVo it so I can skip the adds) but what I didn't realise was that he only won it right at the very end by passing Timo Glock on the last or second-to-last corner. It was still quite exciting, even though I knew the outcome.

Anyway, what I also wanted to mention was that next year there are a whole raft of changes coming. Firstly, they're getting slick tyres back, thank god. Also, they're banning all these "down force aids" which a) make the cars look fucking awful and b) are also part of the reason over-taking had become difficult.

All these down force things make the air coming out the back really turbulent, making it difficult to really get close enough to get a good tow. Also, if the air is messy it hampers the effectiveness of these down force aids, meaning it was difficult to follow another car closely.

I don't know the details on that one, but I've been saying for a while they needed to sort out the down force, as it's made it far more difficult to overtake, reducing the spectacle of the sport.

Anyway, the other thing that's intrigued me has been this new energy recovery system. I hadn't got a clue what that was all about, but on the commentary for the last race they implied it was almost like an electrical version of a turbo. It sounded like, once it's built up a bit, you can push a button and it gives you a "boost to overtake". If that's really the case, it should make things very interesting indeed.

Oh, and I've been checking my contract, as a blogger, and apparently I'm contractually obliged to comment on the whole Brand/Ross thing.

I can't honestly say I give fuck.

I've not much exposure to Brand - I've heard his radio show a couple of times and it was funny, but I've seen him on telly and found him unfunny. As for Ross, I used to like him a while back on the radio, but then went off him as he (and this is an opinion I'd formed a while back, it's just a co-incidence that people have been saying the same thing) really seemed to bully his guests, especially on the chat show. I dunno - he just seemed to keep stepping over the line.

Anyway, I haven't heard the offending show, didn't use listen again and don't read the papers, so I have no idea what was actually said and therefore don't have any real opinion.

What did interest me was that, apparently, only 2 people actually complained during the show (and those were about swearing), but within 2 weeks, 30-odd thousand had complained. That just says so much, it's scary.

Clearly the intended target audience for Brand's show "got" the joke, but those who aren't listeners were not amused. Seems to me there's nothing else that really needs saying.

backlogs

Well, what I was afraid of appears to be happening - I've got a backlog of scans building up.

Not that I can really blame it for the backlog, but I was kinda surprised actually. The latest issue of Megami seems to have set something of a new record, in that I think I got an e-mail saying it was on its way last Friday and it was here on Monday.

This is Monday... my day off... the day when I was supposed to do loads of scanning... the day when I didn't do anything of the sort... the day when I just sort of sat watching telly and playing games all day... :P.

I have now almost totally annihilated my backlog of telly stuff, though. I've just got the last three episodes of Mutual Friends and the film Lucky Number Slevin on there - that's it. Quite a few of the things I've been watching have now stopped and some more end this week, I think, so if I can watch this week's telly live (or at least, before the w/end) then I should be able to get it all totally cleared.

And that would mean I'd have loads of free time at the weekend which I can then spend scanning... Which I'm pretty sure I've been saying for the last couple of weekends, but there you go. Maybe I'll actually do it this time. Maybe.

The other backlog I've got building up is games again. I had a few sessions some months ago where I cleared out lots of un-played games, but what's happened of course is that Chrimbo is rapidly approaching, and that's a big time for new games.

Let's see, in the last couple of weeks alone, I've got Far Cry 2, the Civ4 thing about conquering the new world (can't for the life of me remember the name :/), Fallout 3, and, most intriguingly Red Alert 3 (I've a horrible feeling I'll end up laying Red Alert 3 all weekend instead of scanning.). And I'm pretty sure there's one or two more I've already pre-ordered coming out soon too.

I guess Chrimbo is going to be quite a busy period for me if I want to clear stuff down like I've been planning.

Especially since I've been totally failing to watch anime DVDs at a rate faster than I buy them. But then if I can just stay on top of the telly stuff like I hope, I should be able to allocate a few hours to that too.

transformers (the US movie)

I watched Transformers this weekend on DVD.

I've got to say that, in all honesty, it was not as bad as I feared it was going to be. In fact, it was actually kinda good.

Which isn't to say it didn't have its problems.

It was far too long, was the main problem - well over two hours. Now, I've said before that I'm not a big fan of films running on for two hours. It smacks of over-indulgence, and I'd say that was the problem here too.

There was just slightly too much of everything. Slightly too much Sam Witwicky being all nerdy, slightly too much of the secret government organisation thing, slightly too much of the US military stuff, slightly too much hackering, slightly too much of the Autobots hiding scene, slightly too much transformers combat... you get the idea. If they'd have cut about 1 scene each of those, or axed some elements all together it would have been better, I think.

Not that any of them were fundamentally bad, you understand, just they went on a bit long.

Also, Megatron, who's meant to be the ultimate bad-guy in Transformers, seemed distinctly unthreatening. Partly that was because he wasn't in it until near the very end, partly they didn't big him up enough, focusing too much on the McGuffin, and also he didn't really do anything hugely evil.

I mean, he did - he ripped one of the Autobots (Jazz) in two, but I dunno, it was done in long shot and just sort of happened. It didn't feel evil. Maybe that was because Jazz was a bit-player. Maybe if he'd pulled Bumblebee's legs off it would have been better, because we cared more about Bumblebee.

Anyway, the biggest surprise for me was that in the end I didn't care about all the buggering about they did with the transformers "lore". One of the most obvious changes was that they changed what a lot of the characters transformed into, most apparently with Bumblebee.

I mean, Bumblebee is named because he changes into a VW Beetle or "Bug". But actually, I found that didn't really bother me in the end. Plus some of the changes were logical, because the toys never made sense. For example, Soundwave was a tape player that changed into a huge robot and Megatron was a handgun.

You can do that sort of thing with a toy or in a cartoon, but you can't justify taking a tiny tape machine and just expanding up a million times - it would look silly. So I can understand those changes.

They also ditched the origin story. Again, I can understand this, to some extent, though it seemed less for practical reasons. Although part of me was glad - the problem with comic book adaptations is they often end up fudged. Although I often prefer the comic origins, I think it's better when they adapt them to give the films their own separate origins. It's better, I think, if they have an "alternate universe" approach.

Plus here, they actually focused on the human characters anyway. The film was actually about Sam and Megan Fox's character (can't remember her character name, but she is totally hot) falling in love, more than it was big robots pounding each other in the face.

So overall, it kinda worked.

The only other thing I'd say is it was kinda difficult to see what was going on. This film is the first I've ever seen where you need to go high-def to watch it, I think. The amount of detail in the characters means I think you'd really benefit from the extra clarity of blue ray.

dental scrapings

So I had Monday off. Part of the reason was because I had the dentist in the morning. And yeah, I know that having the entire day off because of a dental appointment in the morning seems a bit excessive, but then I hate going to the dentist when I have work, and yesterday part of the reason why was heavily underlined for me.

He scraped my teeth. You've probably had that done - they're removing the plaque that builds up on your teeth and is a veritable des-res for bacteria. So I can see why they do it, but it doesn't stop it being unpleasant.

The problem is the plaque builds up at the bottom of your teeth next to your gums and also in the gaps between your teeth, so when they're scraping they often hit your gums a lot, especially in the gaps. I came away yesterday with lots of red bits between my teeth where the gums had been totally brutalized.

And while I wouldn't say it was anything on the level of having a filling done or that sort of pain, it's pretty damned uncomfortable. My teeth ached all day, and they're still not fully okay today.

It's made slightly worse for me as I have sensitive teeth. I use sensodyne toothpaste and it really helps - without it I can't eat ice cream, but with I'm fine. But the thing I've noticed about it is it's sort of cumulative. If you stop using it, after a while your teeth become sensitive again, and then it can also take a while to have an effect once you start again. It's like it builds up on your teeth.

So of course, when he's scraping away the plaque, he's also taking that build-up away with him. Not that I've had any ice cream, but cold water, for example, is now unpleasant.

Which, as I say, is one of the reasons I like to take the day - sitting in work with aching and bloody teeth isn't my idea of fun :/.

quality

I've mentioned before that I'm a member of a site called Urbis . It's a site for writers and the basic idea is that you post your work there and people review it.

Now there are quite a few sites that are supposed to be about the same sort of thing, but what makes Urbis clever is that you're participating in a give-and-take system. Your work will only be reviewed if you do reviews of other people.

How they do that is with a credit system. So, you earn credits by doing reviews and it costs you credits to unlock your reviews. That way you have no choice but to do work in order to get the benefits.

Of course, it's all open to abuse, as all systems are, but there are some mechanisms to try to counter that. For example, you can ask for refunds if you think a review is pure drivel. The other system is that you can rate reviews as being either good or bad 'quality'.

Now, and I don't want to boast about it, but so far I have maintained a review quality above 90%. I don't want to boast about that because it's slightly unrepresentative - it's not just the author that gets to vote, for example, and a good chunk of my good votes have come via that.

Plus I've done something like 150 reviews, but only got about 50 votes (many, as I say, not from the author). Also, of those 150 a good proportion (maybe a quarter?) haven't even been unlocked, so nobody can rate them good or bad.

And of course there's always people who wouldn't know a good review if it slapped them in the face, but anyway, the point of this blog is that I like to think I've got my relatively high number because I write good reviews.

I do this by trying to focus on what really matters. In my opinion things like spelling ad grammar are not as important as the mechanisms of the story telling, for example. Also, I don't tend to worry too much about things like point-of-view unless it really badly poxes up a story.

Which isn't to say these things aren't important, it's just that if something is unreadably dull because it's all just boring telling when it could be shown in exciting and dramatic scenes, then that's what matters most.

Polishing up your spelling and POV slips can come after you make the thing interesting to read.

The other main thing I do is to offer suggestions. I think it's one thing to just rag on a piece, telling them in finite detail why it's rubbish, it's quite another to say "here's some ideas for making it better."

Now the difficulty with my approach is occasionally I run up against people who clearly think they're the next Shakespeare (or insert any appropriate well known and widely recognised writer you like). So then my review and suggestions come across rather differently - they're not seen in the light they're intended.

That's when I get a negative quality, I think. Even though I've clearly spent a lot more time thinking about my review than the people who've just spunked "zomg I r likings your drivel" below me.

It can be quite demoralising.

But the worst ones are when I point out something that's clearly just plain wrong, or doesn't work, or is illogical. For example, I might point out that some "science" they've used is bullshit, or point out that some trick they're pulling is just that - a trick and therefore a con.

Sometimes this is taken well, but a lot of the time it's taken as you might expect. If you're on a flying carpet, you don't want someone pointing out that there are strings holding it up (or, worse, pointing out it's impossible and hence causing the illusion to collapse), so you're not going to be pleased with the person that does.

lost in the extras

See what I did there with the title? It's because I've been wading into the Lost S4 extras. Clever, huh?

Anyway, bad puns aside, 'wading' is definitely the right term to use - there's loads of them, far more than there have been for previous seasons, I'm sure. For example, there are only 14 episodes, but about half of them have commentaries, whereas in previous seasons where there were twenty-odd episodes and only about a quarter of them had commentaries.

Also, there are two entire disks of other bonus stuff, which ranges from the standard (bloopers, deleted scenes, filming stuff and interviews) to the more interesting, like a documentary expose of the Oceanic Six (the description of which makes more sense once you've watched the show) and an hour-long thing on the flash-forwards.

It's loads of stuff and it should keep me busy for a good while.

I'm guessing this is the upside to having the shorter seasons. Plus there was the whole writers strike thing, so I imagine there was more spare resources to work on extras stuff than usual.

Unfortunately I've got really behind with other stuff. I've recently realised that the new megami is about to come out (and the other mags will be close behind) and I've not really got anywhere with scanning last months mags - all I've done is the posters from megami, everything else is untouched.

I really need to get my arse in gear so I don't end up with a backlog.

Luckily I do have next monday off (I've got the dentists in the morning) so I may take the opportunity to make a good chunk of the backlog disappear. It should also give me a chance to finish off last season's anime shows and maybe even tackle some of the autumn season's stuff.

Plus there's something of a let-up coming with all these TV shows I've been watching - most are coming to the end of their runs, so, assuming nothing else comes along, that should ease up some of the pressure.

Bizarrely, I've actually been doing quite a lot of vectoring recently and am literally on the cusp of finishing about 4 walls. All I really need to do is make the backgrounds, which, with me not really having any artistic talent is always a tricky part, but at least it means I won't be stalled due to half-finished vectors like I normally am.

monkey brasses

It was bloody cold last night and this morning.

At some point during the night it snowed, but it must have been dark when it happened as it was a case of opening my curtains this morning to be greeted by a blanket of the white stuff.

I love a bit of snow - it looks very decorative, but the practicalities can be a little difficult. After it had snowed it got so cold that the snow then froze, so this morning it was very treacherous going out to the car. And that's not to mention the job I had trying to scrape the stuff off the car.

It's really difficult scraping frozen snow off - it forms a sort of lattice structure that's really strong. Ordinary frozen ice is much easier to get off as you can literally just scrape at it, plus turn the engine on and melt it a bit. Frozen snow you have to sort of hack at it, and it really takes some doing, plus because it's got all these holes in and is so thick, it's less susceptible to heating.

All told it took me a good ten minutes to de-ice the car. It's things like that which make me glad I get up nice and early for work.

Anyway, I watched the rest of Lost Season 4 last night. I've just got the extras left.

It was good - don't take what I'm going to say next to mean I didn't like it - but I'm not at all sure about these short seasons.

I believe the idea behind them is so that the total number of episodes adds up to 108 (which is the sum of the magic numbers). Plus I also guess it means they get to stretch it out a little from the planned five-year arc.

But the problem is it makes these last three seasons seem more like light snacks than full-course meals, and I like my Lost to be a full course meal. Especially since I basically have to wait an entire year between seasons (thank you once again, fucking Sky).

In season 4 the pace is definitely a lot faster - all of the episodes are roller-coaster rides with very little let-up in the pace. So, for example, when they had Ben locked up as a prisoner before he was there for ages, but this year when they had him as a prisoner again, he was almost immediately out again.

Not sure which I prefer, tbh, as it's a bit swings-and-roundabouts. A fast pace can be nice, but it does tend to highlight one of the cheats they do on Lost.

The cheat in question is the size of the island. If a group heads out for another part of the island, the amount of time it takes them is totally flexible. There was a classic at the beginning of the season, where they went to a dead body and then it was the best part of a days walk until they encountered the helicopter.

But then, it apparently only took them 20 minutes to go and fetch the body and bring it to the helicopter. Well, okay, maybe the first time they were wandering a bit, but it still should have taken them a lot longer to go there and back the second time :/.

Anyway, as I say, I love Lost. Part of the reason is because it's proper sci-fi. I know a lot of people give it flack because they feel it's being made up as they go along and it never really answers any questions, but those criticisms mainly come from people who probably shouldn't be watching it in the first place.

I mean I'm glad it is popular of course, so it doesn't constantly have an axe having over its neck like Babylon 5 used to, but like B5 it's clearly really for sci-fi nerds more than it is for the average viewer.

Slither

Watched Slither on DVD this last w/end. I have to say it was rather good.

It's basically a comedy horror. An alien something-or-other lands on earth in a meteorite, infects someone and then he proceeds to... well, it's a little complex to explain. I suppose the best way to cover is that he spreads the infection, but it's not quite like that.

Anyway, the guy that's infected is a jerk, but he's rich and has married this totally hot school-teacher. The local chief of police (or sheriff I think they actually call him) is in love with the school teacher, and she kinda likes him too.

So you've got a love triangle going on, which is kinda a surprising amount of depth for the type of film. Well, okay, it's not deep, as such, but the clever thing is the film never forgets about the relationships, and indeed, is kinda driven by them, which is some adept storytelling.

Especially since Slither is essentially a Sci-Fi/Monster Horror B-movie, but with a slightly larger budget. It covers everything from zombie survival to horror-classics like Bride of Frankenstein.

One of the clever things it does is to pay homage to the staples of those old B-movies, as well as making references to a lot of the classics of the genre. Some of these references are quite subtle, but others are more on the nose, and obvious.

The same goes with the humour - sometimes it's quite subtle, or quite dark, but other times it's big and obvious and others it's more of a nod towards the fans, so there's different things for different people to laugh at.

It's also quite knowing. There's definitely a wry smile or a quick wink to the audience occasionally about how silly things in the movie actually are. The best of these comes right at the end where the denouement is both shocking and silly.

My only criticism was with the DVD itself - there were absolutely no extras. Which is weird, because on the Amazon DVD listing for the retail DVD there are loads of extras listed. So perhaps it's just that the rental version doesn't have any? Odd.

square eyes

So, a partially successful weekend.

I watched a lot of telly. The list of stuff I've got recorded and awaiting viewing on my PVR went down from about 2 pages worth (so about 50 things) to about 5 things.

However, I was secretly hoping to totally clear the list, but I kinda just got sick of watching that much TV. Sunday evening I was going a little bonkers, I think.

I had pretty much under-estimated how much stored up TV there was. As such, I also didn't get that far into Lost season 4 as I'd hoped. The last 3 seasons of Lost are being done as shorter seasons - 16-ish episodes instead of the American standard of 25-ish - so I was hoping I'd basically be able to watch it all this w/end.

However, I only watched the first disk, which is 3 eps. And what I've seen so far I really liked.

There was a lot of critiscism of season 3 (which I didn't really agree with, tbh) and I think most of those criticisms have been addressed. S4 is definitely faster paced and more focused on the core characters.

I also didn't get any scanning or walling or anythign done due to the weight of TV, but I was kinda expecting that.

The clocks went back on Saturday, so we're back on GMT. I always struggle with the changes. My body clock is rigidly fixed on my schedule and it's difficult for me to adjust, even by as little as an hour.

What normally happens is that on the day after the switch, the Sunday, I basically end up running on my existing schedule. That means I have my lunch at virtually mid-morning, for example.

Then, after that when it's back to work for the next week my body clock goes completely screwy and I end up feeling tired at 8PM and wanting lunch at 3PM and stuff. It's a bit like jet-lag (I imagine, as I've never actually flown anywhere, so I don't know) and I dunno why it does this, but it always happens.

Next week I'll be right-as-rain again.

fresh from nihon

I got a letter the other day that something had come from Japan for me and was being hit for customs charges.

I don't know what it is until I go and pick it up from the Aldershot depot. Customs charges are a bit weird - generally they're actually not that hefty (£5-off in this case) but what often happens is the Royal Mail tacks on a "processing charge".

Now I have no idea what they actually mean by that. Are they just charging me for sending me the letter? Or does it mean they had to go to some place to pick the parcel up especially? Either way, their charge is in the order of £15. To me, that seems a little disproportionate with what the customs charges actually are.

Anyway, I'll find out what it actually is tomorrow when I pick it up.

I'm planning to kick-start a bit of e-baying action this weekend.

I got a bit fed up with it the last time I was doing it. Partly that was because it was due to necessity - I needed the cash (don't I always) - and so felt like an obligation, but also it's quite demoralising selling almost everything you own :(.

And that was the other reason I stopped - I'd actually almost run out of stuff to sell. Well, I say that. I haven't run out of stuff to sell at all. What I mean is that I'd run out of stuff that I'd used.

I've tonnes of stuff I know I'm going to sell, but I've not watched/read/played them yet. And it seems a little retarded to sell stuff that I've bought and have never actually got any enjoyment out of :/.

Still, I've a few things I've been through now, so I can get a few things on there.

The only other big plan of course is to sit my arse down in front of the TV and watch all the crap I've been recording (and Lost s4 too, probably). Maybe then I'll feel like I'm getting somewhere.

Doldrums

I've been in a bit of a funk lately.

It's not particularly good timing - as previous posts have indicated I've already got lots on my 'to do' list, but I've been struggling a bit with getting on with stuff.

My dad suffers with depression and he's explained what that's like and it's not that bad, but it's a bit like a mild depression. It's like it's difficult to get started with things, like there doesn't seem to be any real point.

I mean, I do stuff like my hobbies because I enjoy it, right? And I know that, but it's just getting started on them becomes like a chore. It's like instead, sitting down and just staring at the walls is far more appealing than having to do anything.

I dunno - it's a bit difficult to explain, tbh.

The risky side of it is that I can go on binges. Now that isn't the normal booze binge or something you might think, for me it would be an over-eating binge, which I need like a hole in the head, or maybe a spending binge, which would just be a disaster.

So I'm trying desperately to push myself over the hump. I'll come out of it eventually anyway of course, but maybe I can distract myself until then or something.

Lost Season 4 turned up the other day, so maybe I should focus on actively watching that and see if accomplishing watching that (eh?) will give me kick up the backside.

Hollywoodland

One thing I did get done last weekend was that I watched a rental DVD.

This one's been sat on my shelf for a good couple of weeks, which isn't good. I like to get them watched as early in the month as I can so that I guarantee I get the most value from them.

Anyway, the rental in question was Hollywoodland, which starred Ben Affleck. I believe, though I may well be wrong about this, but it was heralded as something of a "return to form" following the nightmare abortion that was "Gigli" and some other dodgy movies.

I have to say that Ben was good in it. Indeed, all of the performances were pretty good, although Bob Hoskin's accent seemed a bit wobbly early on to me.

However, I didn't really enjoy the film.

It reminded me a lot of the Black Dahlia. Now that isn't to say it was that bad, it's just it was set during a similar sort of period and was about Hollywood (Hollywoodland used to be the old name for Hollywood - the sign even used to have the 'land' bit, trivia fans).

Maybe it's just me, but there's something about these two "real crime" films that I didn't really like.

I think a major part is to do with the fact they never really gave you a proper answer. Clearly, Black Dahlia had a theory as to who it was, but it was just so bizarre and stupid and made so little sense it just felt rubbish. Hollywoodland didn't really even have one of those - the detective chasing the story never really came to a definite definitive conclusion other than a sort of vague suggestion that it probably was suicide in the end.

The only saving grace for Hollywoodland is that it was clearly intended that way - the detective rediscovers what's important through investigating the murder, type story.

The other thing about them that turns me off is they feel like they're really self-indulgent naval-gazing exercises.

It's like the directors are more interested in the Hollywood of the 40's and 50's than the stories themselves. I think the intention of both is sort of to go "Here's the seedy underbelly of Hollywood."

But there are two things with that. First, we all kinda know it was seedy already, but then second there's a feeling that they don't really mean it. Or at least, maybe they do, but they're also going "Woah, cool, it's old Hollywood - great, huh?"

The Saga

Coming soon to a multiplex near you...

I don't think I've mentioned this on here before, but I've been having a hell of a time with my new Egg Credit Card. Basically, they've been making a total hash of setting up the standing order that takes money out of my account.

Egg is one of those entirely online outfits - apart from the card and the t's and c's that came with it they've never sent me anything via post. Now if you have a credit card you'll know that they generally operate by sending you a statement in the post which has all your transactions and stuff and tells you what the minimum payment is, etc, etc.

Now egg does do statements, but you access them online and that's it. But what they also do is set up a direct debit with your bank account and then they'll take out either the minimum or a fixed amount, or whatever.

The reason I got the card, by the way, was because of my financial difficulties a while back - I transferred a balance to them in order to take advantage of an interest free period.

However, when I first set up the account there seems to have been some problem with my account numbers - I happened to phone them about something else and the numbers they mentioned were totally different to what they should have been. Now, I'm perfectly willing to hold my hand up and say that might have been my fault. I don't really see how, as the numbers were totally random, but okay, maybe it was me.

So, we re-did the details and they had another go.

Then the saga really started - when the next month came round I got this nasty e-mail from them saying the direct debit had failed. I went and checked various things and, while the money hadn't come out, according to the listings they had set up the DD. It's just somehow they'd failed to do it properly, I guess.

So I phoned them up again and we went through it all again, giving them exactly the same info. Then I did a manual cash transfer again to cover the late payment.

And guess what?

Same thing next month.

Nasty e-mail. I phone them up yet again. Go through all the exact same details yet again. I manually transfer money yet again.

Finally, it looks like (*fingers crossed*) it's worked.

This catalogue of balls up is hardly a glowing reference and as soon as the interest free period is over I'm seriously considering transferring the balance out.

chilly

So this weekend I got my haircut.

I went for the shorter version, with the sides trimmed with trimmers, rather than a scissor cut all over, so it's pretty short (I normally get the trimmer haircut during summer). As such I can't work out whether it was proper cold this w/end or if it was just the sudden lack of hair.

I know I had the heating on all day Saturday, although it was only on at "1 bar" - which is half power - and then Sunday I only put it on in the evening. So it could well have been just chilly but with me feeling it more because of the lack of hair.

I also did a mega-shop on Saturday.

It was so big I used one of those proper full-size trolleys. Being single I never use those - but this time I had all sorts of big packs, like six-packs of pop and water and big value boxes of stuff. As I said, I was trying to get ahead of myself with Chrimbalo fast approaching. I've got loads of pasts and rice and stuff in the freezer now, so hopefully it should be more a job of making sure supplies don't get too low before then.

Then it was back to the gaff for cleaning duties. I thoroughly clean my bedsit every two-weeks. I think that's enough for a single person, but it does take me all day, especially with all the sundries like ironing and changing my towels and bins and stuff.

Anyway, the point is that I did that and all was going swimmingly - I was really cracking on and was going to have loads of time to do stuff, but I fell into a bit of a trap. Unfortunately, it took ages for the kitchen and bathroom floors to dry (it being cold) and I was totally stuck waiting while they did... so I thought I'd have a quick go on Civ3... and it kinda poxed up the whole rest of the weekend, so instead of doing more useful stuff, like scanning or walling or making new updates for my webstes, I basically just plaed Civ3. I didn't even really clear the backlog of TV I've got.

Bugger :(.

tiring

I think this week I've been continuing on with the whole being a bit tired from last week.

I was gallivanting around all over the shop last week, so it's hardly surprising, I guess. I have done a few things - most notably I've been working on a new wallpaper. It's nothing hugely complicated or clever - I'm basically just vectoring out a to love-ru scan - but it's been nice to work on a wall proper again. Hopefully I'll get a chance to finish it this weekend.

I've also been reading a Terry Pratchett book called 'Thud!'. I started reading it on the train goign up and coming back from the thing last Friday (I like to read on the train, but reading manga gets you funny looks).

It's a pretty good one - there have been a few of his recently that haven't quite hit the spot, but this one was good. The only sort of down-side to it is that it's another Sam Vimes and City Watch book. Which isn't to say I don't like his Sam Vimes and the Watch books - I liked this one - but I've been wishing he'd focus a bit more on some other stuff. A lot of the recent books seem to be all about the watch.

One of the problems of this is that Sam hates magic, so some Pratchett's best characters (the witches and wizards) are deliberately side-lined, if not excluded all together.

Still, this one was good and I decided to go ahead and buy the other more recent ones I'd been holding back on... though not until I make a significant dent in my pile of unread books.

Did a little scanning last night and watch one of the shows I have left over from the last season. I also have one I watched last week that I forgot to mention on the old blog:

• Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu - very good. I really wasn't expecting much of this - the images I'd seen for it in the magazines had all suggested it a fan-service heavy rom-com, but it turned out it was a bit more than that. The idea is that the girl in it is a school 'idol', but really she's a nerdy otaku and the male lead accidentally finds this out. Now that could have gone either way, but for the most part it's actually quite good, although there's a couple of elements I'm not sure about. But it's certainly better than I was expecting.
  
• Mahō Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora - awesome. Now this one was also a bit of a surprise. I'd seen some images from it and I was really not looking forward to it because of the style. It has almost photo-realistic backgrounds - I'm not sure f that's just because they've been painted that way or they've processed actual photos. Now, I'm really not a big fan of animation laid over the top of photos, but once I'd kinda adjusted to the style what was revealed was a lovely story underneath. If I was to say it had a sort of studio Ghibli feel to it I think you'll know what I mean.
  

Megadeth

I've been listening to a lot of Megadeth recently.

This has kinda been brought about by a "grand project" I've been attempting (more on that later), the upshot of which has meant I've had all my Megadeth CD on my MP3 player, and hence can listen at work.

I used to be really into music, back when I was in A-level and at University. Interestingly it's another demonstration of how I'm slightly obsessive. I'd buy lots of CDs from new bands and obscure bands and stuff.

My main music of choice was heavy metal - specifically thrash or speed metal, by bands like Metallica and Slayer. My favourite was always Megadeth, though. I still think Countdown to Extinction is the greatest album ever made.

The reason I kinda stopped was a triple whammy.

Firstly, once I graduated Uni my interest just generally faded. My peers were less into music than I was, so there were fewer people to talk about it with.

Second, I got back into anime and manga in a big way, so a heck of a lot of my time was spent watching and reading that. Plus of course, my money went on buying then, rather than CD.

But the other key part was that Megadeth ceased to be. My favourite band was no more, and my interest kinda evaporated with them.

The reason they stopped was that Dave Mustaine (Megadeth has always been his band) had a severe arm injury and the prognosis was that he would never play again.

However, unknown to me, as I wasn't really paying attention any more was that Dave got better and eventually several years later he released a new Megadeth album.

Now, whilst I wouldn't say I was really back into music as such I have been rediscovering Megadeth, as well as familiarising myself with their newer albums, and I've really been enjoying it.

Drowning in Telly

I've been a bit indiscriminate with my telly watching lately.

I was trying to hold back and be a bit more selective, but I've kinda been watching a random crap. Unfortunately, this also means I'm getting a sizeable back-log of unwatched shows. There are a good couple of shows I've got sat on the PVR waiting to be finished.

But on top of that I know at the end of this month Lost season 4 will be turning up (on DVD - I don't have satellite), plus I'm pretty sure the last season of Battlestar Galactica is knocking about sometime soon.

Lost season 4 will be one of those things that always show me up as a completely lazy bastard. When it arrives I'll almost certainly sit and watch it almost non-stop. It shows that, if I really wanted to, I could plough through all my back-logs of DVDs, manga, books, games, etc, it's just that I tend to distract myself with rubbish and do things half-arsed.

But then every so often something like Lost turns up and I go through it solidly with total dedication until it's finished - probably in less than a week. So if I can do that with Lost, why don't I do it with other stuff? As I say, it's because I'm a lazy bugger.

I've not watched any of the new Battlestar yet, but I've heard good things, so I thought I should check it out. Unfortunately I think that means I need to get through 4 seasons, a mini-series and a couple of films, I think. It's a lot of stuff, especially when I've got loads of other telly stuff to watch.

I think I'm going to have to rationalise a bit. Plus I know some things are coming to an end. For example, both the F1 and MotoGP seasons must be due to end soon, plus there's some short documentary things that are near the end.

The trick is to not start anything new.

mags, hair and shopping

This month's newtype, animage and animedia turned up yesterday.

Two of them - newtype and animage - are absolutely dripping with pictures from the new season of shows and I'm very impressed. The other, animedia, is actually kinda rubbish. I sometimes wonder why I keep buying it - it's always very poor in terms of scans. But then it's not like it's reprinting other scans - if I didn't get it I wouldn't see those images. Still, as the anime magazines go, it's definitely the worst one I get.

I'm in desperate need of a haircut - my hair is really rather long and I'm starting to get that uncomfortable sweaty thing I get when it gets this long. Of course that's also a factor of being morbidly obese, but that's no reason not to avoid a haircut.

Looks like I'll have a busy w/end as I'll have to get a haircut and go shopping on top of a bunch of stuff I've got to do anyway.

I should also start hoarding for Christmas. I know chrimbalo is a long way away, but I like to get stuff like fozen food, tins and pasta all hoarded up well in advance, because shopping around Christmas can be such a nightmare.

I remember once going to Sainsburys to get some food one Christmas and the queues were so long I didn't get to the front of queue before my lunch ended. I ended up having to buy some manky sarnis at the petrol station on the way home :/. So now I like to stock up the freezer and cupboards well in advance.

lazy weekend

Well I virtually did bugger all this last weekend - only the "life stuff" I can't get away without doing, like changing the sheets and putting the recycling out.

I just couldn't really be arsed - last week was so intense with visiting Dad, having to do a whole bid in three days and then going to the SPSS thing on Friday, I just felt like blowing the entire w/end on nothing in particular.

So what did I do with my time? I buggered about with Civ3... I know, I really shouldn't have as I've kinda rekindled my interest, but I didn't want to do anything that needed me to think particularly hard. By which I mean I didn't want to do anything 'new', like have to learn a new game or pay particular attention to something. With Civ3 I can almost put my brain on auto-pilot.

Speaking of the SPSS thing it was actually okay. I mean, it wasn't really hugely useful but then it wasn't utterly useless either. Bloody uncomfortable seats though. And they tried to cram way too much in - it ended very late.

giving it the hard sell

I've got to go to a thing tomorrow and basically it's going to be a company spending all day giving me the hard sell - as in trying to make me buy their product.

I'd really rather not go, but the problem is I don't want to seem overly negative. It's free and I think my boss thinks it's actually like a mini-course or something. I don't want to have that thing of me just pessimistically going "I don't want to go, it'll be rubbish." I worry about doing that as in I'm not a "team player" or something.

I mean, it may be useful, maybe I am being overly negative, but I've a feeling it won't be much fun. It also seems like a rather long day. It's up in London so I have to put up with the train journeys, so I doubt it'll really be any shorter than my normal work day.

some new artbooks

I know I kinda promised I wasn't gonna buy any more artbooks until I'd scanned the ones I've got, but I couldn't resist, I'm afraid.

One of the things I got was the latest edition of megami deluxe (volume 11 I think it is). It's the usual collection of cute girls from recent megami posters, with a few clean animedia spreads thrown in for good measure. It'll take the usual age to scan, I'm sure :/.

The other two books are a bit more interesting - they're both for Toshihiro Kawamoto, who was the character designer for things like Cowboy BeBop and Golden Boy. They're retrospective books on his career - each covers 10 years, from memory, and they're quite interesting.

It's one of those times I wish I could read Japanese as the commentary seems like it would be quite interesting. One of the big surprises for me was how much Gundam stuff he did in his early career.

I'm considering not scanning these books - they're really quite nice, thick books, of a high quality and it would be a shame to de-bind them. Also, most of the stuff in them is not big spreads, and it's almost a "sampler" book. Some shows have only one or two images.

I've a strong feeling I'll leave them as-is.

I also received the latest issue of normal megami while I was away. There's some lovely posters in it, so I'll need to scan that too.

I did some scanning last night, actually. I'm into the books that have a lot of pics in them. Last night was the Nagasarete Airantou artbook, and even though I scanned nearly 50 pages I only got half way through the book, so I'll finish it off tonight, I hope.

I also watched some fansubs while I scanned of course:

• World Destruction - okay. I gotta say this didn't really do much for me. I mean, it wasn't actively bad or anything, it's just it felt a little tired and cliched. It appears to be based on a sega video game property, so maybe that had some impact, but it's a show I had little interest in.

return of the tris

Well now, it's been a while since I posted on here. As mentioned that's because I've been away on holiday--I went down to Devon to visit my Dad, as it was his birthday last week.

It was a pretty expensive w/end all things considered. My new car has really great fuel economy. I can get around 50 miles per gallon if I "eco-drive" it, but of course if you're having to do around 400 miles, that still means you're going to use about 8 gallons, which is a full tank of petrol and so costs the best part of £40 or so :/.

Then there's eating on the road - unless you pack a lunch, which I can never be arsed to do, you'll inevitably have to get something to eat (the journey is the best part of 4 hours) and prices in rest stops are never cheap - I must have spent about £10, total.

Then there's the fact it's his birthday, so I spent about £35 or so on gifts. Plus I paid for a meal at the local restauranty-pub place, which was about £40.

So, all things considered that's about £125. Not the cheapest of week-ends :/.

And speaking of expensive, I've come back and seen some annoying news this morning. I've been buying the individual volumes for ADV's releases of Welcome to NHK and Red Garden.

However, a few months back, ADV essentially went tits-up. They've not actually folded, but, from what I've read, what happened was they made a dodgy move with a backer/investor in Japan. That all fell through and (for some reason) they lost all of the titles they'd licensed during that period.

Which included NHK and Red Garden.

But then, Funimation swooped to the rescue, picking up the licenses. Now it's taken them a while to catch up with stuff (they also picked up distribution of all the Geneon titles) and the announcement they've made is that they're releasing both series as collected volumes.

I must admit I was kinda expecting that as most all of the stuff they've released that they picked up has been in the form of collected volumes (sometimes as "part 1" and "part 2" sometimes as the full series) but it doesn't make it any less annoying.

I wouldn't mind so much if either series had only been at the 1 or 2 volume stage, but both were 1 volume away from completion. Factor into that the fact that the number of eps per disk always starts higher and then reduces and it means that in order to get the last 3 or 4 eps I have to not only buy several disks I've already got, but I have to pay a huge whack for just those last few eps.

It's pretty annoying, and pretty expensive too.

birthdays and long week-end

It's my Dad's birthday tomorrow, so I'm going down to visit him this w/end.

He lives in Devon and I live in Hampshire, so it's a good trek--about 3 or 4 hours, traffic depending.

I'm actually going down on Saturday and coming back on Monday, but I'm taking Thursday and Friday off as well so that I can get some personal stuff done as well.

It probably means the bloggage won't get any updates for a while, as I tend to write these first thing at work. So I'll see you next week (I dunno who I'm talking too--nobody actually reads this :/).

my little angel

Well, I finished that re-cg I was working on.

You can find the finished product over at AP here. It's not a whole lot different to the preview I posted in the previous blog, mainly because I got sick of doing the wings.

I think it's probably my best vector work ever. I've used every technique I have at my command to make it and I think the results are spectacular.

The only problem is I'm not sure I can do it justice in a wall. I had a few ideas, but I dunno, I think I may wimp out of actually walling it :(. What makes this a special shame is that I very much doubt anyone else will wall it either :(.

I made an appeal for someone to wall it in the notes on the AP page and I'm effectively repeating that appeal here, I guess. I'd love someone to wall it. I can also make a wingless version available if you want to make your own wings in your wall--just give me a shout over at AP.

Eventually the vector will go up on my own site of course, but that won't be for a while.

And speaking of my own sites I uploaded the last of the previous batch of updates this last w/end. It was a review of X--ostensibly the anime, but also the manga effectively. Check it out here.

I think I mentioned it before on the blog. I struggle with CLAMP stuff and I sometimes fear it's because I'm homophobic on some level. I don't think I am, but, for some reason I can never pin down, I never really quite like CLAMP's stuff. I tend to assume this is because of their story-telling, but I dunno, everyone else seems to love their stuff, so I wonder if there's not something more to it

Well, that was surprisingly deep for the old blog :/.

I've been working on some new site updates - I've got a bunch of reviews done as I mentioned before, but I like to keep things a bit more varied, which is where things like the vectors and walls come in. It should basically mean my sites will be updated into the New Year at least.

will it never end?

Well, I was a particularly good little boy this w/end and I did a shed load of scanning.

In fact, I actually did a count at the end of Sunday and I'd done a total of 189 scans. This was across 5 artbooks... One of which actually reminded me why the whole scanning thing had pretty much ground to a halt: of those 189 scans, it must have had about 89 of them. In one artbook.

I mean, that's great--everyone who buys artbooks loves it when they're jam-packed with pretty colour pictures--but it also kinda makes the book feel like a chore to scan. I mean, with a book like that, you can be going at it for 2 or 3 hours and then think to yourself "How am I doing? I must be nearly finished." Then you count up how many scans you've done and got left and you find you're only half way through :/.

Anyway, the good news is that the artbook pile is at least 1/3rd, if not half as big as it used to be.

I've been continuing in my game of anime catch-up while I've been scanning. I'm hopeful that if I can stick with the scanning during the next few weeks I can clear the entire backlog of series before the new (October) season's fansubs really get going.

This w/end I watched:

• Special A - very good. Another from the plethora of shoujo manga adaptations that seem to have exploded forth this season. But this one is distinctly different. I mean, it's got pretty-boy style art and the premise is daft, like most shoujo stuff, but this is more of a traditional romance job. And I was actually quite impressed. It's not really new or original as such--I've seen just about everything here before--but it's got gusto and puts a nice spin on the whole scenario. And it's pretty funny too.
  
• Tetsuwan Birdy Decode - okay/good. It's got an interesting premise, I'll give it that. And it does generally feel like it has the potential to be quite good--the bad-guys are quite interesting, especially. But I dunno, it just felt like it lacked something. I think maybe it's because the whole Birdy character wasn't really explored much at all. I only watched my usual 3 eps and maybe it gets a bit more involved later, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.
  
• Koihime†Musou - okay. It's basically the same idea as ikki tousen--taking the whole "romance of the three (four?) kingdoms" thing and replacing the characters with hot chicks. And hot chicks means boobs, jiggling and lots of baths, obviously. Yes, it's a fan-service show, as you can guess. I dunno--it didn't really do much for me other than the t&a, though.
  
• Natsume Yuujin-chou - awesome. Yujin-chou means "book of friends;" the friends in question being ayakashi, which are like spirits. It's based around that whole thing of knowing someone's "true name" gives you power over them. This was really very good indeed--it's the type of show that only anime does. Partly that's because it's routed in Eastern mystic traditions like I say, but also because it baulks all sorts of traditional story-telling structures and just does its own thing.
  

Maybe I've gone soft recently, but the above shows and a few others recently have kinda restored my faith in anime a bit. I mean, I never really lost my faith, but a little while ago we had Gurren Lagann and Code Geass in quick succession and I dunno, everything looked a little less good (and, possibly more importantly, like hoary old retreads) by comparison.

These shows have confirmed that they can still produce stuff that's interesting and different.