Multi-fandom updates

Have been friended five times over since I posted that last Mirage semi-summary. XD;; How do people know? If there's a grapevine I haven't found it, it's not as if I post a heads-up to mirageofblaze every time I write one of these. (...Although I maybe should. But... so lazy...)

Actually I've been watching a lot of anime recently, I just haven't posted about it. Finished Paranoia Agent about a month ago. Am impressed with the writing: normally one half-expects a series of its type to resort to obfuscatory mumbo-jumbo at the end (only at the end!?) to disguise the fact that it has no idea what it's trying to say apart from a philosophical-sounding truism or three, but no. Kon Satoshi knows what he's about, bless the man, and I found the result by turns upsetting and moving.

Then I watched fifteen episodes of Monster over the course of two days, as it hit one of those runs where you just have to keep watching in order to find out what happens next. So now I'm only ten episodes behind the fansubs instead of what it was before. ^^;v

Then yesterday I read five volumes of Bleach for pretty much the same reason. I love the characters and all but it's the art that makes me a fan of this series, I have to say. Not even the drawing style per se, but because Kubo Tite has an incredibly strong sense of design, on a par with and in fact rather reminiscent of Nagano Mamoru (yeah, I finally identified what it nigglingly reminded me of XD). It seems very clean, not wildly baroque like GetBackers, but there's all this wacky world-building going on just beneath surface level. He gives personal data to Ganju's goons, collectibility value to soul candy dispensers, a name to Byakuya's scarf (don't you get the impression that the Kuchiki have a Way of the Laundering of the Scarf ritual that takes place every month or so and is a big effing deal within the household?)... I loved the note where he demonstrated the handy snap-on design of Hanatarou's first aid kit. XD Of course, now that I realise it reminds me of Five Star Stories I have to keep reminding myself that the vice-captains are not fatima. Some of them do behave like it, but Renji...? Collapse, gurgle faintly.

I'm getting bored with Shounen Jump type battles in general, though. I mean as swordfighting scenes go they're great, but what it comes down to is you hit the other guy, the other guy gets stronger and hits you back, you get stronger and hit the other guy back... The tiny dribblets of plot that happen in between are what keep me reading. There's really not a lot of plot at all, but the ratio of shocking twists to storyline is quite high. XD

I also watched the first episode of Loveless. Don't know a thing about the plot; it seems very epistemological-minded to me - Ritsuka is an empiricist, Soubi is a constructivist! - which is a sure sign that I didn't understand it. Perhaps I should try the manga but hey, catboy!Ryouma factor. XD (I can only conceive of the ears thing as being HUGELY EMBARRASSING. OMG everyone will know in class the next day etc.)

Oh, and at some point I watched the first 3-4 episodes of Buzzer Beater. It's really nicely-done (though the marker-pen feel is intentionally kept), and I think the script reorganises and expands on the original. Anyone else watching this? I've always found the subtext in Buzzer Beater sort of... weird, maybe because it grafts a xenophobic anxiety that occurs in other sports onto basketball, which doesn't really have any in the real world.

Lyrics and griping

I feel exceedingly awful. =_= On top of the lingering rhinitis I developed a gastrointestinal upset - I hate gastros, because they prevent me from eating, which is the axis around which my world revolves. The weird thing is that my sister had the exact same thing yesterday. The day before she was at a wine-and-cheese after her piano teacher's recital. As of course she could not drink the wine she ate tons of cheese, and was sick thereafter. Brilliantly not learning from example, last night I went out with Erin and had a giant portion of aubergine parmigiana, which (I'd never seen the dish before) turned out to be essentially vegetarian lasagna. And now I'm sick. So either our frail Asian stomachs had the same reaction to too much cheese, or whatever my sister had was catching. Or it was catching, but only organisms weakened by cheese are at risk.

( Yuki - JOY )