Yoshitoshi Abe is one of my favorite Japanese illustrators. He is famous for his work in Serial Experiments Lain, NieA_7, Haibane Renmei and Texhnolyze.

One thing that I like about his art is the degree of realism in it. Compared with most anime/manga art which are simplistic in portrayal, Yoshitoshi Abe’s art has a lot of detail. It takes you to worlds beyond ours!

While I initially didn’t intend to post about our 1st Round-Robin topic about the subject of anime and escapism, I had a sudden burst of inspiration after reading Hinano’s entry, and I found myself empathizing with, and pondering upon this escapism issue. Then comes Soshi’s write-up on this topic, and once again I am inspired.

First of all, what is escapism? According to good ol’ Wikipedia:

Escapism is mental diversion by means of entertainment or recreation, as an “escape” from the perceived unpleasant aspects of daily stress. It can also be used as a term to define the actions people take to try to help relieve feelings of depression or general sadness.

Given this definition alone, one might say that using anime as a means of escapism is actually good. Hey you’re using it as a stress reliever! Instead of getting all depressed and frustrated about real-world issues to the point of being suicidal, you channel all those negative chi to watching anime, and voila, say goodbye to a stressful life! Happily ever after. Not really.

This feature has returned, once again, to satisfy anyone’s traffic light fetish (if, indeed, such a thing exists).

A ‘Good’ Shugo Chara doujin?

As I was looking for some Shugo Chara pics in danbooru a few weeks back, I stumbled upon the cover pic of this Amu x Ikuto H-doujin amidst the pages of of SICK pics *facepalmmm*. I was reminded of Hinano’s RAGE over the sick Shugo Chara doujins she saw months ago, and this got me thinking as to whether this doujin actually falls under the ‘good’ category.

Testing the ‘Asides’ feature of this theme, still wondering how we can make the most out of this space. Either we post some random twitter-like blurbs on animes (copy of my MAL blog? ^^;) and other stuff, post some side-news, etc. Might as well make a poll for this. Ok, forget that first, comment on [...]

Synopsis: Watanuki, without knowing it, buys a dream from Himawari and Doumeki.

I know this entry is already late. By now, those who are watching xxxHOLiC Kei have probably read gazillions of summaries for this episode from gazillions of anime blogs. So if a detailed summary no longer interests you, dear reader, you can skip the sordid details and go to the end of each post, where I will be writing my thoughts on each episode.

Synopsis: Watanuki is sent by Yuuko to rescue the Zashiki-warashi.

With the use of the tengu fan, Yuuko transports Watanuki and the Karasu-tengu to where the Zashiki-warashi is being held captive.

Watanuki and the others find themselves in front of an abandoned building reeking with malicious energy. Watanuki walks towards it. The Karasu-tengu warn him that the one who held the Zashiki-warashi isn’t someone that Watanuki could go up against. Watanuki says he thinks so too but Yuuko sent him so there must be something he can do.

Paranoid as the chefs are, we never got to upgrade our blog to WP 2.3. We talked about some upgrade plans months back, and even spent quite a deal looking for a new spunky theme for our blog, on top of checking plugin compatibility issues. I fell in love with The Morning After theme, but due to the busy life of the chefs that time, on top of uncertainties if the upgrade will go well and an advice from Maestro not to upgrade to 2.3 yet, no blog upgrade(s) happened, not even a banner change!

Synopsis: Doumeki continues to search for a way to restore Watanuki’s eye.

Although it is already late at night, Doumeki continues to search for a way to restore Watanuki’s eye. Watanuki arrives bringing food for him.

Doumeki explains to Watanuki that the storehouse contains books collected by his grandfather. His grandfather was careful not to let anything bad enter the place. Watanuki notices that protective wards have been set up. Watanuki thinks that in stuffy places like the storehouse, there are always some spirits but he couldn’t sense any there except for something he can’t quite explain.

Weeks after Toshokan Sensou aired, I couldn’t help but facepalm at the people who were taking it really seriously, especially those who even gave their lengthy oh-so-intelligent logical / analytical / political explanations just to point out the loopholes of the series, vis-à-vis Real World Standards. thank you guys for your smart-ass explanations, you’ve just proven how SERIOUS you are over Toshokan Sensou. While most people agree that the premise of Toshokan Sensou is silly, there are those who get to enjoy the show despite that.

Instead of acting like a curmudgeon (which I initially intended to do), I sat down and thought about the sentiments of these Toshokan Sensou cynics. Pondering upon the roots of this hate, I noticed an odd similarity between the reactions of people against Toshokan Sensou and that of Tezuka’s misgivings against Iku, as far as the first two episodes are concerned.

“What random nonsense!” some of you might be exclaiming right now, so here’s a bit of explaining, which I hope will make my point clear.