Anime review time! I won’t go too much into detail as far as story lines go, I guess you can learn much more about the respective titles from visiting the official sites than from what I can tell about them.

Avenger 1-4. I was hopeful this would be one of the better new anime series just from looking at the features in Newytpe. It just took me one episode to realize I was wrong.
As plain as the setting of the red planet and its cities is, as slowly and boring moves the story line. And even if you get hints on Layla Ashley’s (female protagonist) past, the way the cute little Dolls are treated, how evil Volk and those freaky Dolls are, you just don’t care!
None of the characters is really likeable. The Ali Project songs are aweful >_< The BGM is annoyingly loud at times, almost like the series is trying too hard to be as cool as .hack//SIGN but fails terribly.
The only good thing about Avenger is the character design which is really nice looking but won’t be enough to make want to see any more than those four episodes.

Gungrave 1. Another huge disappointment. I’d say it’s even worse than Avenger story-wise. One episode was enough to decide: no more of that!

Shingetsutan Tsukihime Prologue, 1-2. This was actually a pleasant surprise. The prologue which came out a few weeks ago didn’t impress me that much. The whole series, however, is far more interesting and darker than I thought. Definitely not the next Boogiepop but still nice enough Japanese teen mystery/horror and a solid video game adaptation with a good soundtrack. I need to see more of that!

Fullmetal Alchemist 1-4. Pleasant surprise number 2. I find the usual long shounen series like Naruto, Rave, Hikaru no Go, One piece etc. a bit boring but this is really really good!! The protagonists are extremely likeable. (Al!! Kawaiiii!!!) There are no annoying girl characters. The story is quite innovative and I’m more than willing to follow the 52+ episodes this is going to have! Highly recommended!

Mujin Wakusei Survive 1. This is probably one of the more unknown new titles. I almost skipped this after visiting the official site, thinking this was some sort of kiddies show. I’m so glad I started watching it, though! This is my favourite autumn season anime so far!
The world Luna and the other kids live in is described so detailed it makes everything seem very familiar even though it’s just sci-fi. Luna herself is such a sweet, tough girl, you have to like her! She’d be my hero if I was 9 ^^;
I only got to see the first episode where all the characters and the world were introduced so there’s not much story development yet. From what I can get (and pretty much like the Japanese title infers), Luna’s new class will strand on an uninhabited planet which sounds a bit like Robinson Crusoe for kids ^^;
There are some nice remarks on the environmental protection issue here and there, not as apparent as in Chikyuu Shoujo Arjuna (which I love) but still there. I guess they are also more subtle with them as the show is targeted at a younger audience and environmental protection is not a major theme in Mujin Wakusei Survive.
It’s an awesome show, though and I so cannot wait to see more. I hope there’ll be more subs of this even though it’s a bit more obscure than the other new titles. Everyone has to see this!!!

Now that I have more time than when I was at uni, I also started last (i.e. spring) season’s Last Exile. I’m glad I can have little four-episode sessions now that the whole series is over and I don’t have to wait a week till a new episode is released.
At first, I wasn’t too happy with the CG; I’ve got used to it though… The whole show is just awesome, really innovative with a nice retro feeling (that’s not necessarily a contradiction!). I really like Ravey and Claus (I’m not that far into the series, so I can’t say much about the characters that are introduced later). The flight scenes are breathtaking and the music is so dreamy and majestic at the same time… I love the whole show *_*

Now that you’ve made your way till down here, have a cookie and download my first ever DVD encode, merry’s Violet Harenchi PV at Black Sheep :)
I had to password-protect the file cause I don’t want brainless fangirls to just leech it of the site and violate my bandwidth. I believe everyone else is clever enough to use Google if they don’t know the answer…

music: Juno Reactor – Guardian Angel (Xavier’s Edit)

My life looks like this at the moment: I’m either withdrawing from RL because I can’t stand being with idiots or I’m staying away from computers so I don’t have to be around all sorts of online idiots.
Right now I’m in a stay away from computer phase. Just reading the shortest annoying post anywhere makes me want to pull the fucking plug. My tolerance level has decreased to zero. But let’s not get into that any further.

Apart from that, I feel perfectly fine. I’m using a friend’s Mac to rip the Merry DVD. Junya crashed 12 times in a row when I tried using him to rip the damn thing.
Why oh why has the first DVD I rip to be an NTSC 29,97??? ;_; And why the hell do you need at least 5 different applications to rip a DVD if you want the encode to look at least slightly okay? This is difficult, but I’m coping. (At least that’s what I’m trying to make myself belief ^^;)

A few anime reviews/impressions/opinions will follow soon, I guess…

I’ve completely forgotten to eat over the past 3 days. Encoding is time-consuming, so is staying out till 4 in the morning -_-;;

music: Massive Attack – Risingson

It’s a little too cold for October but I love it. This is a nice change after the maximum-heat summer. I really enjoy taking the dog for a walk now. What’s more beautiful than our lovely dog running through red and golden leaves?!

I’m still in a state of inner peace. I don’t want to sound overly spiritual or whatever. It’s just that I’m glad I made the right decision. It took me long enough -_-
Uni is not the right place for me. I gave others advice about their future lives and didn’t notice I was heading into the opposite direction of what I said would be better. …Does that make sense?

There have been some really annoying posts on the baroque ML lately… Sometimes I feel like stabbing those obnoxious fangirls.
However, I find making or joining so-called anti-fangirl cliques just as infantile.

I still have to pay my Third Stage order -_- I also feel like making a huuuge CDJapan order… I need new Japanese movies!!

I remember that in one of my Japanese studies classes, we talked about how offically, Japan is a democratic country but in reality isn’t because people aren’t really interesting in participating in politics etc blabla.

Does democracy exist in any of the countries that claim to be democratic?. Fuck, no! Democracy does no exist. It does not exist, no matter how much they claim to be proud of their democratic governments, no matter how many times they tell you the democracy in your country is worth protecting because it’s such a ‘modern’ and ‘precious’ thing.

Why can’t they admit we’re only living in a pseudo-democratic country? No one’s allowed to say what they want to say; if you want to say something important then no one will listen. We’re not ruled by our elected representatives, we’re not even ruled by the opinion of the idiotic majority. It’s such wornout thing to say, but we’re ruled by the guys with the cash.

Anyway, I’m convinced democracy will never work because:
1, The majority of the populatation is idiots. Period. The fact that the opinion of this majority is supposed to rule over any minority makes me want to shoot myself.
2, Your average man, i.e. the person who forms the majority with all those other people who’re not drastically different from him, i.e. the mainstream person is _not_ interested in politics. They’re interested in money and comsuming shit they don’t need.
3, The people ruling right now, i.e. the government, will do anything to stay in office as long as possible. That’s just human. We all like having power. Therefore, they won’t hesitate to lie or keep secret what threatens their positions.
4, The industry has the money. They need more. Greed is very human, humility isn’t. Politicans are corrupt. Not all of them, sure, but most of them. Give us what we need (less taxes, more space to build companies and factories, cheap man power), and we’ll give you what you want (money to finance campaigns etc; what do you want? cars? houses?). We’ll help you make the public believe they’re the ones ruling themselves. (XXX is a democratic country, remember?) And we’ll offer the most powerful weapon to keep everyone quiet: products. Nothing’s more effective than consumerism.
5, The people who are supposed to look behind all of this can either be bought or eliminated. The rest, those so-called intellectuals (those who refuse to shut the hell up)… well, forget about them because only very few people of the majority will listen and understand.
6, What will also help is ’stupefy’ the public. Make the majority even bigger. Give them products that will make their lives so much better. Convince them they need to have your product of choice. Why? Well, because everybody else has it and you don’t want to be an outsider, now do you? People will love you! Why don’t you go and see a quality movie with your friends? Charly’s Angels maybe? Have fun, your live can be so much better. There’s something for everyone. It’s certainly not free (hey, someone has to pay our Armani suits, the $4 mio. house, the 24 cars etc), but it’s more or less easily accessible and most importantly: it doesn’t require brains. No one can live without their lungs or their hearts but who needs a brain anyway? You don’t have to think for yourself, we’ll do all of that for you. You can vote every X years, we’ll give you what you need between one election and the next. No problem.

Socialism is Utopian, so is communism. And so is democracy. As much as I would like to believe in any of three, history has already proved that the former two were not meant to work for humans and sooner or later it’ll prove the same for the latter.

Today’s post and all its typos were powered by 1 pack of Ritter Sport Baileys. And people say chocolate makes you happy and satisfied… they were wrong; they always are. (Though on a certain level, I feel happy and privileged.)

music: Massive Attack – Butterfly Caught (RJD2 Remix)

I spent the past nights out. I usually got home at 5-7 am, most of the time I was too hyper to go to bed so I did various things I normally hate doing like cleaning up my room ^^;

My love also went into updating black sheep. I realized I love merry way too much to let the site rot.

OMG Amy, this is awesome! I’ve already printed it out ^_^

music: UNKLE – Be there

Rain is the most soothing sound to fall asleep to. I’ve never been the kind of person who falls asleep within seconds (like my sister) due to probably my biggest problem: I think too much. (Sometimes, when I meet certain people, I think there can never be such a thing like ‘thinking too much’ because they never seem to think _at all_, they have such huge lacks in all fields of common sense and (social) intelligence. And I hope I don’t sound too arrogant or whatever…)
So in the last few weeks, it took me about 2-3 hours to fall asleep. I don’t know if these sleeping problems were caused by my mental state or the other way round.
Looking back on the last weeks and months, they seem like a gigantic black hole. It’s a miracle I came out alive.
And now it seems like I’ve found myself again. Call it inner peace if you like.
It’s been raining for days and the average time for me to fall asleep is 10 minutes now.

I always thought Oe Kenzaburo’s works were considered ‘classics’ so I preferred staying away from them. Big mistake. I started reading Chiryoutou out of lack of anything else to read and so far, I’m loving every single line. And I want more Oe books!

Early October, one of my favourite times of the year: new anime!

Just finished Gilgamesh 1.
Wow, what can I say…?! This leaves out hardly any 21st century technology angst, post-9/11 cliché. Let’s see, we have a ‘over-digitalized’ world destroyed by terrorists, collapsing skyscrapers, return to the ultimate retro-ness (including no more computers, yay), telepathic kids, monstrous clones…
If that wasn’t enough cliched dark sci-fi stuff for you, well wait cause there’re also bishounen (no busty girls though), mysterious Babylonian names, some German language fun (title of episode 2 etc), a girl with ‘the perfect pitch’ (hello RahXephon), and arrrrrgh an avex mode soundtrack >________<
But no, it’s not that bad, it’s quite good actually: For example, the atmosphere is just perfectly dark and erm, retro; the charadesign is quite innovative and the protagonists are very likeable. But all in all, I do prefer stuff like Texhnolyze (♥), thank you.