Softly she said, “Father Tully says that some loves come unbidden like winds from the sea, and others grow from the seeds of friendship.”

Up until this point I was wondering if it would change genres, to a sci-fi novel, with all the inter-dimensional travel stuff. But I guess this settles it! It’s obviously fantasy!

Oh, and just for good measure:
BULL SHIT

Pros:
You can get really large numbers with two hands. (And that’s about it.)
Cons:
Because we’re mostly taught to count by tens, breaking out of the mindset to get useful numbers quickly is rather difficult. Also (because of the above) once we pass about 100 we tend to generalize and having the ability to pick out exact numbers is generally not superior. It’s generally useless to be able to count to 1023 on your fingers because no one knows what the hell you’re doing, too.

Verdict:
Fun to be able to do, but largely useless considering practical purposes and time investment to learn. (Won’t stop me from doing so though…)

Where’s that facepalms link?

Microsoft’s offering Office 2007 Ultimate for $60 if you have a qualifying .edu email account. Considering that Ultimate is almost $700, and just about every version of Office 2007 in itself is over $100, being able to get the whole thing for $60 isn’t too bad. Get it if you use Office and don’t have 2007 already.

See another dawn
Through our daughters’ eyes
You give me a reason
To walk the fire

Clannad (Thursdays)
Almost out of principle, I want to see how KyoAni’s gonna pull this one off. Air translated really well because only the first half or so had to felt semi-contrived, but I hope it’s the same deal with Clannad. I mean, I like the other characters as much as anyone else, but they’re not important to the After Story, which is, you know, the point.

KimiKiss (Thursdays)
Somehow I forgot to stick this here. Also watching out of principle because of my worship of the cast. (I guess Thursday is the “out of principle day?”) The first episode was also kinda interesting in the way they seem to be breaking the stereotypical eroge mold (I know, I know, it’s not a eroge, but see Clannad for what I mean) and made up a bunch of guys that didn’t exist before. I really hate the standard mold because it takes a lot of effort – and you can sense it a lot of the time – to make sure it’s not utterly contrived. Also, because there aren’t enough boys for the girls (did I really say “more realistic” earlier?) now we have to know which girls get the shaft and don’t get KimiKiss’d. GET IT?

Shana II (Fridays)
Urusai urusai urusai!

Gundam 00 (Saturdays)
Whatever, I’ll watch it as long as they can keep the quality up. All there is to say.

Minamike (Sundays)
By far the funniest series out right now, as I started to think as one of the sisters said as part of the pre-OP sequence that this show was about her family’s day to day life and not to have any real expectations, and to watch the anime from three meters away. Then her little sister makes her think this love letter she got was a letter of challenge. Utterly hilarious. I think this series is going to be the one that everyone keeps talking about nonstop, and it doesn’t have the KyoAni stigma too.

This one doesn’t need explanation:

There was a bunch of warnings about what was coming up next too

Then there was a random Touhou reference (people were still laughing about Nice Boat and were saying “it’s gonna be Nico Nico on that computer,” lol).

They’re saying stuff like “Konata vs Akira!” and “It’s Stage 4 of Imperishable Nights!”

Anyway, it’s just fun to see this self-referencing. Also, I think this is the first time Touhou has been animated.

The main character pilot is apparently a Sousuke character (child soldier in his own country) and the rest of the pilots actually might be like, somewhere between 20-30. (OMGWTF! GANDAMU pilots over 20?!) Oh and there’s the obligatory princess-type which the main character is gonna get together with. I guess we can’t get away.

Oh and no stupid “GANDAMU IN ACTION, EROGE CHARACTER POSE WITH NAME” sequences. Such a plus. I’m so put off by those, even with KyoAni does it I facepalm.

But crap, there’s the retarded pose

Sunrise is actually capable of pushing out what I want in terms of aesthetic level and consistency, because I saw it happen with Planetes. Maybe now that the series has a new art direction and is surrounded by KyoAni fanboys that looked at Seed and were like “meh,” they’ll pick up the slack.

For my final laugh:

GANDAMUUUU!!!!

In-game, with the polygons doing their work, it actually looks very Gundam-ish. So when I first changed jobs to Dragoon, I was very excited. FF3 GANDAMUUUUU!!!!

Edit:

I got up in the morning and watched it. So far people have said it’s rather Gundam W-ish with similar elements, but in my opinion the only real similarity is the fact that there’s a Releena with black hair. It’s easier to describe it as FMP-ish, but with Mithril as a publicly announced anti-war organization or something. The main character uses melee attacks in a very agile Gundam, and there’s even a Gundam sniper voiced by the same VA as Kurtz. I’m very optimistic right now though, because the military operation in the first episode actually made sense to a certain degree. Attention to detail is rather high for a Gundam series, as well. Maybe this is the start of a new trend? I sure hope they can keep it up.

(〇v◎)

The site is kinda cool for learning a bunch of Japanese internet jargon. It’s basically Youtube, but you write your comments on top of the video (comments can be turned off, but why?) so there’s both an abundance of writing and general silliness.

ANKO IRI PASTA RICE
ちょっっっっｗｗｗｗ

There’s generally a lot of pun-making, like they turn some lines from the ED into something really silly… or perverse, and commenting on sometimes stupid things the characters say. (Bamboo Blade has been the target of the best of this so far, see above.) My other favorites are references to other series, like when in that Suteki Tantei Labyrinth anime they keep saying that one of the characters looks like Taniguchi.

KimiKiss’s first episode ended like this

Many actors often get shoved into a singular role which they have difficulty both casting and acting out of. When I explain this idea to friends, I usually think Russell Crowe – can you see him in a non Gladiator-esque role? I mean, seriously. Or Tom Cruise, although I think he does it on purpose to inflate his already massive ego.

On the other hand, Yuu Aoi (蒼井優) managed to established herself as an acclaimed actress without clinging to a single stereotype. A short list of what she’s played:

1. Refined schoolgirls, obviously (Alice)
2. Unrefined mining girls (Kimiko)
3. Military sergeants (Mami)
4. Artists (Hagu)
5. Erm, I guess a priestess of a sorts (Tanyuu)

That’s all I can think of for now. And now, in her latest movie she’ll be a slightly off-kilter resident of a psychiatric ward. (With cornrows. I still can’t get over that.) What’s the common link between these roles? Well, they’re female, and they’re deployed at a genius level by Aoi. Not much else.

I think what really causes her to shine is a mastery of the details of expression; Aoi is capable of minutely controlling her ranges of facial expression to limit it to the character she’s playing’s and the mood of the scene, or force a new one upon it. In other words, she’s very good at being expressive, and very good at being believable while gracefully shifting through a range of emotions. There’s a lot of things you can see her in where she doesn’t say anything on-camera, but still carries a very heavy and provocative presence simply because she knows all the right body language and facial movement to do so.

The real juxtaposition is how she acts in real life; self-describing herself as “shy,” she is always very reserved and talks softly in her interviews, so I wonder where she gets the ideas for her more extroverted characters. (Shoujo manga? That’d be cute.)

Oh and I mention she was cute yet? She used to sport a much “rounder” face in her younger days, which you can see sometimes in her older photos, but that’s sorta gone (baby fat, is it called?), with a more mature prettiness to replace it. It really is one of those faces that grows cuter as you look more. She also, although their physical features are different, her expressions remind me of someone I know, cough cough.

優ちゃんかわいい～！→

By the way, for my next “awesome person post,” I’ll do ZUN, which I actually feel a little more comfortable with because ZUN 1) isn’t cute, so the entry won’t be me gushing about ZUN that way and 2) I draw a lot, so I kinda understand the doujin artist concept. Sorta.