I was still on the verge of deciding whether follow this series, and episode 3 officially seals the deal for me. The more I watch this anime, the more I see myself in the closet otaku Haruka. She constantly reminds me of my past, present, and probably my would-be future otaku self. Her bitter experience of being shunned for her otaku hobby might have been portrayed to be a little extreme, but it really happens. I�d say it actually happened to me, in a less dramatic the entire school shuns me for being an otaku way, and more of the subtle �shunning� treatment stereotyping ways.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Most of my life I’ve been struggling with a superiority-inferiority complex, and despite how many times I convince myself that I should be proud of myself, take pride in my abilities and what God has endowed me, I was never fully at peace, and that inferior angsty attention-seeker persona of mine would always creep in no matter what.

Popularity: 6% [?]

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.

Popularity: 8% [?]

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.

Popularity: 22% [?]

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-�-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.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Apparently, what inspired Hiro Arikawa to write Toshokan Sensou is the Statement of Intellectual Freedom in Libraries of the JLA (Japan Library Association), written on a plaque inside the library she and her husband visited. This was mentioned in her postscript in volume 1, but I really didn’t understand it until today, when I checked out the spunky updated Toshokan Sensou article on Wikipedia. I fail as a TS fan! zetsuboushitaaa!

Popularity: 6% [?]

First off, let me ask you this, will you watch an anime raw, and even go to the extent of blogging it, if you didn�t understand much of what�s being said in the episode(s)?

Popularity: 19% [?]

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.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Rumors of my identity have been greatly exagerrated, such as being this Reisen bunny of the game Touhou

The comments I’ve read in my Shugo Chara DS game post reminded me of the time I was in the same boat as them. When I was a Nihongo n00b, yet filled with the desire to play Japanese games, and become a weeaboo On my part, it became a prerequisite that I memorize the Japanese alphabet first, at least, before anything else. Though my original intent in memorizing hiragana and katakana way back elementary grade 5 was no other than to impress my crush and to follow anime songs LOL.

Popularity: 9% [?]

I, along with my friend, whom we shall call Bernice, decided to add a spin to our Valentine�s and celebrate it like how a Japanese girl would. Instead of waiting for guys to give us chocolates and flowers during this day of hearts, we were the ones giving out some sweet tokens to the guys in our project.

Popularity: 5% [?]