Anime Notes

[niko]

Recent Anime Viewing:

Yakitate! Japan, Eps. 1-10:  Like all good shonen combat series, this sucker is addictive for no good reason, except this time around, there are baked goods!  I do love the characters, though.  They're fun and fluffy and have just that right edge of wackiness without being utterly over-the-top.  I would pay good money to see someone put this show on TV in place of YugiOh (with the same marketing effort) for a while and see what happens... Would American kids get behind a show that has all the same competition elements as YugiOh or Dragonball, but no violence whatsoever?

Gankutsuou, Volume 3:  Lovin' it.  Why didn't anyone tell me this series had such a lovely little slashy/angst subplot?  There needs to be a list of these things somewhere, damn it!  <eyeing my vague on-again/off-again plans for a site devoted to canonical-h/c>.  I've spoiled myself on where Franz's plotline is going, but even barring that, don't you just want to huggle him to pieces?  *sigh* 

Fantastic Children, Volume 1:  Very Nice.  One of those unusual little shows that keeps you thinking - not in a deep, philosophical way this time (so far) but just by being *interesting* beyond the usual anime tropes.  Kind of a cross between "Spiral", "Now and Then, Here and There", and "Melody of Oblivion".

Anime Goodies:

Finally received the figure I pre-ordered a while back.  She's very pretty.  Not having purchased figures before, I didn't expect her to be quite so bendy, though.  The flexibility of the PVC material makes her seem to be less durable than I'd have liked, considering the cost.  But I'll survive that.

Got in a new order of five artbooks from Amazon.jp.  This was a nice batch, with a couple that I wasn't sure about turning out to be *very* impressive.  I'm particularly pleased with Horibe Hiderou's artbook "Yours".  The description said it was a collection of magazine covers from a hentai-game magazine, so I expected it to be a whole lot of over-the-top T&A, but it turned out to be way less fan-servicey than that.  I was quite charmed by most of the young women he's drawn.  (I read somewhere that this artist passed away recently, which is a real shame.)

My catalog of artbooks is almost entirely database-ized now.  I just have about ten books to take pictures of and document, and then I can start going back and filling in some commentaries and stuff.  I also need to tweak the popup code a bit, because when you click an item down near the bottom, the screen scrolls all the way to the top every time, which is a real pain.