lordy lord

Holy Mary, mother of Jebus H Chrimble - last night I actually watched some anime!

I know, I can barely believe it myself either.

And it was multiple episodes. To be fair, the episodes in question were only 10 minutes or so each, but then I watched 8 of them, so that's got to be the equivalent of, what? 3 or 4 normal length episodes.

If it wasn't that anime is supposed to be one of my main hobbies, and thousands of anime fans don't struggle at all to watch some anime every night, it'd almost be impressive.

When I think back it kinda makes sense that I've been struggling. This last weekend I managed to finish both BSG (I'd finished the series a while ago, but there were quite a few extras to get through) and 'as you do' - the Richard Hammond book. Both of these have eaten up a lot of my time - don't get me wrong, it was all highly enjoyable, but it does mean if I'm spending hours watching/reading them, then I could hardly have been watching anime, could I?

Plus of course, there's the Anno thing. I think I may have crested a bit of hump there - I think I'm happier to ration my playing a bit more, instead of being horribly obsessed like I was not so long ago. Plus there's another factor there too.

Since I've been playing Anno loads I've developed a very stiff right shoulder and neck. I've a strong feeling that this is due to the many, many hours I've spent playing the game and hence sitting in the same position.

I've experienced a similar thing before when I've had a game obsession on the go, but usually the pain is focused in my elbow. I did have some elbow twinges, which is why I think the shoulder pain is caused by excessive playing, but they weren't too bad.

So yeah, I think partly my decision to reduce play is to see if that improves the situation. And certainly having not played at all since Monday, this morning my shoulder seems a lot freer.

Anyway, now for the brief low-down on what I watched, though I'm sure a full review will follow on my site eventually.

What I've been watching is Doujin Work. You may recall I mentioned I was reading the manga on which it's based and I said I was a bit on the fence, although broadly came down on the side of liking it.

Well, I started reading the manga and picked up the anime because Doujin Work was one of the shows I discovered via fansubs. I would never in a million years have picked this up if it hadn't been for the fansubs, as it doesn't look like my kinda show and it doesn't sound like it either when you read the blurb.

However, I was also starting to get a bit worried by my fansub filtering process. The best example of this was a how called Koharu Biyori (Indian Summer), which I really found funny when I sampled via fansub, but then when I bought and watched the DVD it was, well, I won't say bad, but it was just okay.

Another example was Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei. I really loved the anime when I watched it on fansub and although no-one has released it in the west, so I can't check it out properly, they have released the manga, and I've found that to be awful. Well, awful's unfair, but for a comedy manga I haven't laughed once - indeed I can hardly even spot the jokes, let alone find them funny.

So what about Doujin works? Well it's very good.

Having now read some of the manga and watched two thirds of the anime I can see why I have differing opinions on them. The manga is in a four-panel gag-strip format and to mimic this, the anime is a series of shorts. But the shorts are far longer than just 4 panels worth, so the story has become a joined-up whole.

But what they've also done is tweak the story. They've kept all the important elements, and some stuff is actually identical to the manga, but where the manga was weak, they've improved it. Mostly this revolves around the narrative, which they've given a really good massage too, making it more consistent and following a proper measured story.

And the most important thing is it's genuinely very funny. I was laughing out loud on more than one occasion and even when it's not laugh-out-loud funny, I was grinning.

So I'm relieved - at least some of my fansub filtering works!

Which isn't to say Doujin Work is entirely rosy - it's only 12 x 13 minute episodes in length and they've split it across 3 disks, which makes it pretty poor value for money. To kinda compensate for this, they've included a live action segment (which I'm guessing was part of the Japanese DVD releases) that follows two of the Voice Actors as they try to make their own doujinshi.

This is bloody awful on so many levels it's difficult to know where to start. In fact, I'll probably leave my spleen venting for the full review, but let's just say it's not enjoyable viewing.

But now comes the really big test - can I keep going? Or is this just a small blip?