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.