News of the Shugo Chara 2nd season seems to be all the buzz recently, to which I have mixed feelings about, same with other people. I have yet to grow tired of all the fillers eps because I skipped (or fast-forwarded through) most of ‘em, episodes 14-15, 34-37, but still.

Well well, it seems that Cospa has decided to fool TS fans into buying give us more TS goodies, some shirts and tote bag which basically scream “I LOVE TOSHOKAN SENSOU!!” When I heard about this from Yu Ominae of AnimeSuki since the official TS site never mentioned anything about it, I went “Holy Mackerel!” 8O, pleasantly shocked and surprised by this news. Obviously, the next thing I did was to find out where I can order this, despite it being a unisex shirt (aka not really a cute fashionable shirt). Preorder seems to have ended in other shops, but luckily, Amazon JP still have them in stock And hurray for friends and officemates in Japan who can bring these stuff for me!!

So I gave Toshokan Sensou a full mark of 10/10 in my MAL (and once again I hear cynics go “WHUTT?!”). Objectively speaking, there’s a plenty of good reasons why I came up with this score, and I’ll just let this graph speak for ‘em:

I just came out of the cinema hours ago, watched the movie Wanted with my brother so I get to watch it for free >:), and I have only three words to describe it: BLOODY. FUCKING. AWESOME. Beware of foul language, this post might as well be rated R-13 (like the movie) because of this profanity.

People who have been keeping up with my MAL probably noticed that I already dropped Himitsu off my list, after mentioning nothing but praises for the show in my one and only blog post for it.

With the first four episodes of Himitsu, I was spellbound. For the first time in my life I thought I was seeing the world through Shimizu Reiko’s eyes. But then for some reason, the magic the show had on me gradually worn off, and after 6 episodes, I feel like I’m just dragging myself to watch the succeeding ones (and hence I didn’t get past episode 7 any more). I can’t pinpoint exactly what drove me away from this show. Perhaps it’s Aoki, the angsty siscon to whose thought patterns we are made to conform to with each episode, or the chief who remains as monotonic as ever (Tomokazu Seki was such a waste on him). Issa-sa had this very sentiment right after episode 3; I only felt it after 6 episodes.

I was supposed to post this in my MAL blog, but after two failed attempts (due to my booboo bloopers), I decided to just make a proper post about it here, since fate seemed to be against my MAL Shugo Chara blogging anyways. Thanks to that, you’ll find me babbling about the Shugo Chara anime again (whenever I feel like it xD), after having neglected the anime for months.

please bear with this screenshot first.

So the last episode has aired and thanks to veoh I managed to watch it in the office! w00t! But then it’s low resolution so it kinda sucks. Must rewatch later!

Curse this episode for making my eyes all red and swollen. I was crying throughout the episode’s run It’s that BAWWful. First off, after what happened last time (which was no longer shown to us, not that I really care — I’ll get around reading that part in the novel, someday), Genda ended up in a coma, and Doujou turned into a lifeless doll due to trauma and whatever it was that occurred with the crazy woman last time.

One of the things I like most about Kure-nai, aside from the adorable Murasaki, is its slice-of-Japanese-life elements, a topic which has already been discussed to no end by other bloggers. It’s a [gaijin's] window to the Japanese culture, providing insights on the Japanese way of life of characters like no other animes I’ve watched.

That said, I find it surprising that despite the number of people who mentioned the Japan-esque aspect of Kure-nai, no one seemed to have bothered looking into the significance of the Hina-doll and why the Kuhouins found it detestable that Souju died while holding onto this doll. Oh wait, there’s one, Teeif. Even Japanese blogs never seemed to have mentioned anything about this, I guess this was no longer a mystery to them since they’re, well, Japanese o.O Nonetheless, I found this subject fascinating enough to take a plunge into the Hina festival, to find out what the Hina doll really symbolizes.

Despite my long KnS-silence, I still kept myself updated with the series behind-the-blogging-scene (among the rare few KnS fans out there in the English-speaking blogosphere too). I read chapter 9 of the manga about 5 months back, then I no longer heard of any updates, until recently. Chapter 10 came out in the April 2008 issue of Dragon Age (and I only got to read it last month), much to my surprise that it marks the end of both the Misao arc, and the entire KnS manga too My hopes to see the Ignition novels in its manga form has been crushed. ;___;

But oh well, no use moping about it now. Perhaps the mangaka also found the succeeding arcs to be a trainwreck, and decided that ending the manga with the novel’s best arc would be best.

You wouldn’t (usually) find me watching anything loli. Note that, I placed “usually” because I’d like to keep an open mind though, and who knows there might be some loli anime worth watching. Anyway, Kurenai wouldn’t be the kind of anime in my watch list. After all, the premise of a high school guy living with the seven year old girl he’s protecting sounds like loli to me, especially so, that it is anime. Stuff like that do happen in anime, afterall. “But Kurenai is not loli!” I hear someone protest. Right-o. But even the obaasan at the baths commented on Shinkurou being into girls “like that” and Tamaki telling Murasaki that Shinkurou has lolicon.