Today i ended up doing practically nothing except for translating the fourth episode of Shiki and watching Stargate Atlantis. And more Stargate Atlantis. Reminds me of the insane streaks i had of SG-1, when i sat down in the morning and watched like two seasons non-stop until late night. I get that feeling again, that oh, just one more, and this is good. For most of the first season, i didn’t feel that… i don’t know if it has something with school starting again, or just the episodes are getting better and better—though of course after watching all ten seasons of SG-1, two of the Stargate movies (don’t feel like watching continuum, somehow these alternate reality stories in Stargate tend to be… lame—except the exceptions) and a season of Atlantis, as of now, i pretty much developed an ability to foretell the story of an episode. From the title, from the first five minutes, from focus of certain characters, after this much often it gets obvious. When it’s yet interesting, that’s when i get glued to the screen for hours. Many hours. Like now.
Starbucks Pike Place roast
Nowadays whenever i went to Starbucks, there were no limited edition coffees on the shelf, so i somewhere hoped i could finally give the rest of the usual blends a try. But when i actually went to buy my next dose of beans, there waited the Pike Place Roast. Though there was an Anniversary blend not so long ago, this one’s related to the roots of Starbucks too. According to the sticker on it, that was where the first Starbucks cafe opened.
The Pike Place roast is unusually mild for a Starbucks limited edition coffee, so when i had my first cup of it, it tasted a bit too light. But just now i made an espresso out of it, an espresso that kicks me off my feet. It’s fantastic. Due to the mild nature of the roast, even in espresso it doesn’t get too stingy–it stays mellow. That reinforces what Starbucks says in their ad: it’s their smoothest blend. I haven’t tasted all their coffees, but chances are it’s true.
It smells smooth and sweet, while the hot steam has a touch of something fresh similar to eucalyptus in it–but that might be only my imagination. If i were into mild coffees, i’d probably love it. This way, i just say it’s a good blend.
Hyakko!
You want light and easy entertainment? Here you get it. Hyakko is the perfect anime if you just want something funny without too much of a deeper meaning. It’s about a bunch of girls at school, their everyday lives, and how they get to know their new classmates at school. There isn’t much of a story—most of the episodes focus on one character, and that’s all. True, occasionally there’s a bitter aftertaste to some scenes, but i think that this level of drama can be passed without disrupting the entertainment much.
Not to mention that as much as i love the character design of Naruto, Kageyama Torako is pretty much the same, just in a girl version. Not necessarily only the hair and eye colours.
I first started watching Hyakko back when it aired, together with Toradora, but it ended up on a “hiatus” the same way too. Then this summer watching Toradora reminded me of the adventures of the Kamizono Academy girls. It was really worth watchin, i totally enjoyed it.
Above pic from アニメ壁紙タウン.
Metallica, Saitama Super Arena, 2010. september 26
Dear AC/DC, you should seriously contact Metallica. Because what they did this sunday, that is what i call a show. Unlike yours. The two opening acts, The Sword and Fear Factory played for the usual “opening band” duration, not too short but not long enough to get fed up with it either.
And then, and then, and then, Metallica came on stage. Although i wasn’t in the standing-moshing crowd, because i could only buy a seat ticket to the opposite end of the arena, it still sends shivers down my spine when i think about it, and i have to say this wasn’t my first metal gig either. Although i think there were problems with the sound during the opening acts, the whole performance of Metallica, the whole show of Metallica, the whole concert Metallica gave, it was, to put it short, perfect. (Except for a bit of the background screen that died midway.) They played great old songs as well as newer hits, and though i didn’t know just like half of the songs (the Great Old Ones—although they didn’t play the Call of the Ktulu), it was fantastic, i didn’t even have time to space out.
Not to mention the feeling of looking down at the pit, for example during the Master of Puppets and seeing four meatgrinder moshpits swirling in the crowd. I so much wanted to be down there.
Do you listen, AC/DC? This is how you do a great show. You should’ve been there, it was epic. They even invited one guy, for whom this was his 100th Metallica show, on stage. Amazing. Now i understand why so many people have been there both days. I wish i was one of them.
Internet changes
A couple of years ago in the scene i’ve belonged to online then, it was more or less customary that everyone starts a fansite or a “shrine” for the anime or band they loved. I still see some point in shrines. A shrine is a tiny website with only a few pages, a largely graphic design and minimal textual content devoted to the topic.
But a fansite is large(r), with quite a lot of work put into it, whatever the form of site is. Just writing the content and hunting down some rare images takes ages. I mean it, from experience. But just now i realised that i’ve never been to a fansite with the purpose to check out some info, or just read about details. And that’s the static content the writers (usually) put such insane amounts of work into.
Static content just won’t make people stay there. Once they’ve seen it all, without anything else to do they leave and probably never come back. What makes people stay and/or come back is dynamic content.
Forums, where on the one hand, they can interact with other fans, and on the other, generate unique content. News feeds, which is pretty much the same as writing a thematic blog. And if they still need the info, a cross-linked wiki is surely there in the blue with tons of data (part of which is user-contributed) on the topic. I wonder if other websites (anything beside communities, shrine-types, blogs and wikis, and of course webshops/download portals) would have a chance to survive at all. Like, at all.
Toradora!
I first started watching Toradora! when it started airing, but then it just wasn’t interesting enough to watch. But this spring a girl from the music club said she was watching it, reminding me too. In the summer break, before heading off to my journeys, i managed to watch it all.
It was… Strange. Obviously, after watching loads of anime the final pairings get more or less clear in the very first episode, and with that, for me the anime gets more tense, since it’s a story between a startpoint i’m at and not infinity, but a known (or thought to be known) endpoint. It’s drama, and it’s funny, and it’s highschool. Crazy life, that i’m pretty sure doesn’t exist anywhere but anime (not in Japan for sure) with loads of hilarious but at the same time very touching situations. And we can see bonds forming and disappearing.
It was nice. I didn’t even pay attention to details like graphics or music–the character designs and the story were enough. After i finished it, i felt strangely down, but i guess that’s just natural from a single guy watching a romantic anime.
Also, the Suzumiya fan i am, i just had to use the pic above, from Drunk Weeaboo. Of course there’s no Hare hare yukai dance in Toradora.
Samurai Champloo
I can’t even recall when i finished Samurai Champloo, yet another masterpiece by the creator of Cowboy Bebop, Watanabe Shinichiro. It must’ve been sometime back in the middle of august…
Yet, just as its older brother, Samurai Champloo is great. As Cowboy Bebop mixes blues with space and western, so mixes Samurai Champloo historical Edo period Japan with modern city underworld and hip-hop. As expected, both the graphics and the music of the anime is of insane quality. Fantastic puns and jokes, hilarious situations often burst into amazing fight scenes and/or tear-jerking drama parts.
The story is very well designed too. Through the loosely connected episodes of the heroes’ journey, a story worthy to be compared to a classical full-length novel unveils. In the meanwhile, sometimes strikingly harsh realities and brutal but just philosophies appear. And however matching this description is to Cowboy Bebop, i’m talking about Samurai Champloo, and despite these similarities, while watching it, it doesn’t feel like a “little brother” or successor, but a creation of great value.
Something you really should watch.
Above image from The Futile Podcast
Holy crap
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I guess i should just move to China. Not much of a difference anyway, living under a communist regime and playing a game on Battle.net. This is so… scary. Especially after reading Little Brother (Cory Doctorow’s)…
StarCraft 2 + Blizzard rant
Blizzard pissed me off. Badly. It’s one thing that battle.net redirects me to the korean website, even though my account is south-east asian–apparently all japanese are considered to be able to speak korean too. But whatever, i got used to typing sea.battle.net instead of just battle.net.
Actually it was all fine when i got the game (StarCraft 2 we’re talking about here). I completed the campaign, wrote a blogpost about it and since then played against harder and harder AI’s. Not against humans for the sole reason that the people i would want to play with are in another region. And StarCraft 2 is geo-locked, just like World of Warcraft. Meaning you can’t play with people from other regions, and even if you got access to another region, your achievements and scores will be stored only for the region you got them in. Even better is that although SEA apparently got merged into the north american region, technically the two are still separate, just now i can have a NA character too. Great.
Third night, Okinawa, etc
I thought this night worths a separate post, it was really funny. I was staying at CamCam, where i returned after i finished my sightseeing trip. That was when i realised that my watch stopped sometime during the day, that’s why the sun was setting at two pm.
But of course when i realised that it’s six pm and not three, i suddenly got hungry. I didn’t feel like going to the same cheap place as the day before, so instead i headed for the main street to eat something with agu, the local pork. But after walking for like ten minutes there, and all restaurants were expensive and the advertisers on the street didn’t even try to invite me in, i got pissed and went to a small famiresu i passed on the way earlier.
I sat down to the great surprise of the owner-bartender and ordered the most filling-looking item from the menu (again to his great surprise that i could read the japanese menu). While i was eating friends of his dropped in and started drinking and talking. I didn’t leave (on intention) after finishing my meal, so it wasn’t long until i was part of the conversation too, and even got snacks and drinks (awamori-water 1:1 mix). It’s always astonishing how quickly japanese can get insanely drunk.
