Yes, dear readers, it’s been a year since the [official] birth of Scrumptious, which is coincidentally, a few days away from the blog birthday of my cute little otouto Totali and the nazi dictator Owen. So yeah, that means we share the same blog signs too.

And just to share with you guys the lengthy history of our little blog…

Junjou Romantica at its finest.

Much has been said about dissing-or-dismissing a show for what it’s really worth, simply because of the genre it falls under, a point of contention in the blogosphere for who knows how long, and a topic tackled by Stripey-nii and Owen a few months back. As much as I hate to admit it, I found myself guilty of doing this act of vitriolic judging for the yaoi manga/anime Junjou Romantica, when I advised people to stay away from this show. Despite how justifiable my disgust for the manga (and all things yaoi, in general) seemed like, the fact remains that I found myself stereotyping it simply for being yaoi, failing to see things from an objective and non-homophobic standpoint. So this time around, I’m going to rid myself of that tsuntsun-poser self, and give this show the objective review it so deserves.

With the outpour of the new Spring animes, I’ve been thinking a lot about what blogging style I should really adopt and stick to. I had already gone weary of making summary posts, not because of the elitist view that editorials and other writing styles are superior to episode summaries, but rather because it’s not my niche. I suck at summarizing, and I’m not being modest at that. The amount of time I spend on writing these is just ridiculous, ranging from 3-5 hours or more, depending on the anime. And the thing I hate most about this is that much of my time is wasted thinking about how to describe the scenes. How more lame could that be.

More often than not, I’m not even satisfied with the summary I churn out. Again, because I suck. (I’m not soliciting any sympathies here; I’m just stating mere facts) So why bother spending hours on something whose results are far from what you’d be proud of, when you can capitalize on your strengths instead?

These thoughts already came to me a few months back, during Fall 2007, hence the change in my blogging style, particularly for KimiKiss and Shugo Chara, though I dropped the latter a few months after. The same goes for True Tears, whose bandwagon I joined halfway through the show, with the sudden spark of writing motivation I had. What I liked most about blogging KimiKiss and True Tears is how the shows itself compelled me to write. And I believe that’s the tried-and-true Way of Blogging^TM.

So Library War makes its premiere, and needless to say, I loved it!! *____*

As expected from Production I.G. (who Seleria and I fondly call PIG), the animation is superb, almost movie-like, I’d say. I loved the thick outline style they used on the characters, as some bloggers have also pointed out. And both the OP and ED songs are <3333 Hitomi Takahashi’s voice sounds so much like YUI I would not have been able to tell the difference if I didn’t know she was singing the OP beforehand o_O. And it goes without saying that Baseball Bear is <333

Despite the rather serious Library vs Media Improvement Brigade elements of the show, the mix of the action and humor, as well as the potential romance tidbit seemed all natural and not forced. Expect more action in the later episodes of the show, while still maintaining its touch of humor and romance (aka overall entertainment value). The prince-charming aspects of the show make it seem as if we’re watching a fairy-tale of some sort

The pacing was also great, though I was a bit sad that they cut short some of the comedic parts, like the Judo sparring scene and some bits and pieces of dialogues, but it was understandable that they can only do so much in the span of ~23 minutes. I’m not so sure if I can have the time and leisure to make deep frying posts this time around, but we’ll see~

Oryzae, ganbareeee!!

Useless fact of the day: Moyashimon microbes are moe-inducingly deadly, especially with their cute squiggly voices <3

Ok, please shoot me now. I can’t believe I’m enjoying this boobfest fanservicey show T__T Curse you Rito for being a cute heroic lad! Curse you Lala for being a rebellious sly UFO princess! Curse you Haruna for being so cute and moe! And finally, curse you Zastin for being such [...]

Ok, so Itazura na Kiss aired just a few days ago and many people are complaining about its crappy artwork. It just makes me sigh. Young’ns nowadays don’t know how to appreciate good oldschool 80’s or 90’s shoujo art. Tsk. I might sound old, but I assure you, I am not!

As a shoujo manga/anime lover, I absolutely enjoyed the Itazura na Kiss anime. I FREAKIN LURVVVED IT TO BITS! It might not have the same charm as Ouran Koukou, but its simplicity, slice-of-life feel and shoujo fluff romance comedy aspects (especially the normal optimistic girl x badass tsundere guy predicament) were enough to draw me in. Shoujo fluff, I missed you~!! This is the perfect way to take a break from the emo ride of KimiKiss and True Tears! \o/

Toshokan Sensou FTW \o/ (Iku completely agrees too!)

Only a few days till the airing of Toshokan Sensou, and I sure hope you guys are excited as I am (or even more!) for this show! Time for the final pimping, before this hits the airwaves! :3

If my previous pimpings were not enough to convince you to watch this, I sure hope this PV does +___+ Pure P.I.G. Awesomeness~!!! The SD-ish distorted faces are really cute And both the OP and ED song are <3333

It’s been more than a month since I had this post in mind, but for some reason I decided to forget about the idea and even scrapped my draft post for this orz. But lo and behold, as Crusader opens up the topic about biases, I decided to give this post one more shot. Also because I’ve learned some insights from a book I’m currently reading, Why Men Love Bitches, as out-of-character as my RL colleagues and friends find it to be. Just for the record, I don’t really agree with everything that’s written in this book, because of several principles I adhere to, but it’s valuable for gaining insights on the nature of both men and women (and it EMPOWERS women), similar to the book Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus Before I divert any further from the topic, here goes…

As you can see, most (like 99%?), if not all, the bloggers of True Tears and KimiKiss are people born with a Y chromosome. But well, considering the measly number of female bloggers on the interwebz, I think it goes without saying that there will always be more guys blogging a series rather than girls (with a few shoujo or BL shows as exception). The thing is, aside from the values, principles, beliefs, etc. that we have, gender also plays a role in our biases in anime, particularly how we perceive characters, why we support a certain girl, or a certain character archetype for the lead guy (or a guy for the lead girl, in the case of reverse harems). Like why I support Noe and Asuka, as opposed to Hiromi and Eriko, for instance, which I will be delving on in this post.

Shiraishi, you lucky bastard star, you! That satisfied look on his face says it all, doesn’t it?

Maybe not… Shiraishi has been dating these primas, one after the other. Eventually, they found out and are gathered here now. Looking at him with such betrayed eyes, their main objective: to give Shiraishi paddles of whoop ass. The cat even pities you now, Shiraishi.