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.
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