There. Fixed.

Or you can just go to this random image board where I get most of the stuff from. Not entirely safe for work, cos some jokers do upload rubbish.

Things that came through the inbox at work

Interesting spam.

In other news, ANN reported on 15 Jul that Rierie will be appearing at New York Anime Festival 2008 from 26 to 28 Sep. Rie hasn't said anything about it on her blog, in fact it hasn't been updated since 6 Jul.

Separately, the freaking tomoyo episode is out. Like now. Finally there's an animated Tomoyo ending. Too bad i'm leaving for work in 10 minutes. I'll be praying for the Tomoyo After H-OVA.

Lastly, the shows for Fall 2008. Hellgirl should really just stay dead. Too bad the link doesn't work. I'll fix it when i get back.

See ya.

茅原実里1st Live Tour 2008～Contact～ LIVE

Just having fun with the screencap function that i've just discovered.

Dog? Rabbit?

Shut up.

Let me guess... Gintoki!

She looks blur, doesn't she? No, i'm commenting on the video quality.

Diary of an 11 year old

One evening, while I was at home doing my homework, I heard some people shouting outside. I ignored it and decided to continue solving those horrible calculus problems. Oh wait. I’m supposed to be in primary five. I can’t even do ratios, much less integrate. Anyway, I said what the fucking job and continued with my homework, whatever it may be.

Ok.

I lied.

I was dying to know what happened outside.

So I died.

And went to heaven, which comes complete with Hiro and Sae.

Henrietta and the boob fairy not included. That is a pleasure only hell can offer. Ero no Tsukaima. Tsk tsk.

It's amazing that i'm already getting a bit chubby after just 2 days, must be the high carbo meals served in the cookhouse. Well, at least it's FOC.

綾子ラブ！Seriously, i don't fanboy enough about Ayako.

And Rierie endorses CJ7, perfume and softener. I didn't know that CJ7 actually got renamed Miracle 7 in the Japanese release. So the mention of a Chinese geographical feature is too much for a fanatically nationalistic Japanese audience to take? Hehe. Btw, why is Rierie doing this for free instead of negotiating lucrative endorsement deals? Oh, i forgot she's too busy monster hunting. And that's why i wub her.

See what I mean about them not wearing anything below the waist except pantsu?

Kagamisumi has been bragging about his meron-pan experience on MSN recently, so I decided to one-up him and go hunt for some “anime food” myself. (For those who have been broken by Jason, it’s not that kind of meron-pan. I hope.)

There’s some Hokkaido Fair going on in this shopping mall, and I saw dango on the promotion brochure, so I thought I’d go down to have a look. Turned out the fair was quite pathetic and packed full of aunties who were bored enough to go shopping on a weekday morning. All I wanted was dango, which I realized was quite dumb, since the bus trip almost cost me more than the dango. Crap. Anyway, after queuing for half an hour I had a stick of tri-coloured hanami dango. Yay. They looked like this (pic stolen from most reliable source on the internet):

As I couldn’t sing with my mouth full, I hummed the dango song while I ate. The taste was pretty good, but nothing special, tasted like mochi with red bean paste filling. Actually, it was mochi with red bean paste since they’re all made from glutinous rice flour. Never mind.

Then yesterday I got dragged on a trip to some Japanese supermarket all the way in town, supposedly to decode the chicken scratch on the packaging. My mistranslation was not needed after all, since when it came to grocery, the pictures were pretty self explanatory. Saw a lot of Japanese expats/tourists around. And these as well:

Mame daifuku, favourite food of Suzu from Nagasarete Airantou. Made from glutinous rice too, so it tasted exactly like a giant dango.

Doraemon’s namesake. Interesting how the connection was lost in the Chinese translation that I grew up on (小叮当 / 哆啦A梦). Disappointingly, it’s just pancake with red bean filling, and there was a strong smell of eggs. It wasn’t too bad; I was just expecting something more special.

Guess the only anime food obsession I can truly understand is gyudon. It’s one of the best things there are, besides curry rice (the South-east Asian kind). Mai has good tastes in both food and yuri companion.

So what other anime food fetishes shall I experience next?

Sukonbu? Maybe.

Oh no. No, Tailbone Cake on my table please.

Let's play guess the seiyuu, since i'm not 100% sure who's who either.

Yamato Nadeshiko?

Fujibayashi Ryou

Tenma and Eri

???

Allison & Lillia

Maria cosplaying as a seiyuu school guest lecturer in Osaka.

Summer 2008 First Impressions Part One

Slayers Revolution
Watched the original Slayers dubbed so I didn’t know Hayashibara could sound so goofy. Lol-ed at Goury’s sword. Not too bad for a first episode, I guess. Lina reminds me of all the crazy egocentric anime heroines out there like Haruhi and Kyouka. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

Ultraviolet Code 044
Park Romi’s character seems to be stripping the whole show. I was wondering when she would run out of clothes to step out of. And they stole her nipples. Maybe they’ll give the nipples back in the DVD. Chizuru got hers back. Koyama Rikiya ditches his GAR voice to play a creepy bastard. Yucks.

The character designs were very un-moe, meaning they didn’t have hydromegacephaly like Kagamin. That’s not a bad thing in itself, it’s just not cute. Didn’t find the action very appealing either. 2 more episodes and I might drop this.

Mahou Something I Can’t Remember The Very Long Title: Natsu no Sora
Gorgeous backgrounds. I suspect they have cunningly snuck real-life photos into my 2-dimensional entertainment. And I loved the potato harvester. The idyllic rural scenery made me feel like running off to some peaceful little farm to live out the rest of my short life. Sigh.

Feels like snail-paced slice-of-life fare so far, but the girl’s going to Tokyo next episode. And we all know Tokyo is where the loser guys get lucky, so I wouldn’t dismiss the odds of some action.

For some reason the name that caught my eye in the credits was Takano Urara. “Who’s that?”, you ask. She’s Raichu. Actually the only show with her in it that I’ve watched is Diamond Dust Drops and the name got stuck in my head somehow.

Sekirei
Musubi really sounded like Inoue Marina. I would have thought she was the seiyuu if I didn’t know better. (It’s Hayami Saori, i.e. Kou-chan in Oinarisama) As for the rest of the show, I have one word: Boobs. It looks bloody stupid so I’m dumping this in the same bin as Vampire+Rosario and Kanokon. That means I’m watching every single episode.

Hidamari X365
First episode was chronologically before the 1st season. I’ve always wondered what the point of mixing up the episode order for Hidamari Sketch was. This episode was almost exactly a rehash of the first dozen or so pages of the manga, so I felt the gags kind of lacked punch, though it’s my own fault for having read the manga. Still, it’s nice to see the gang again in animated form. Watched the raw yet managed to catch 95% of the dialogue, which shows how closely this episode stuck to the manga. It’s mostly a Yuno episode, with a bit of Miya. The rest of the characters were not prominently featured, though almost everyone made an appearance. Weird thing is the Landlady sounds like Shinkuro to me now.

X365 used all the first season’s BGM, which made me jump in delight. OP by the seiyuu foursome needs getting used to, I liked Sketch Switch better. The ED, Ryusei Record, sounds like standard marble stuff, which I kind of like.

Strike Witches
Pantsu, pantsu everywhere. Loli Major’s underwear. Seriously, EVERY SINGLE FEMALE CHARACTER walks around in their pantsu / swimsuit / bloomers, maybe except the grandmother. It’s like their uniform or something. And the camera keeps reminding you they’re wearing nothing but pantsu below the waist (except the propeller thigh-high boots) with all the crotch and ass shots. If Sekirei has got the boob aspect of fanservice (un)covered, this show fulfils the pantsu obligation. See, there’s something for everyone.

Really ugly cg. It’s one thing for a half-motorbike-half-mecha-thing to look and move like that. It’s another thing altogether when a half-plane-half-nekomimi loli looks and moves like that.

Plot looks like it was lifted straight out of Skygirls, it’s got the same loli gets scouted by the army and signs on to go look for missing brother/father thing going on. Enemies look just as generic as in Skygirls, so I’m guessing the fighting isn’t really the main point here, as in Skygirls. Anyway, when they do fight, it’s the katana wielding loli that delivers the finishing blow. Just like in Skygirls. You seeing a trend? Oh, and lol at Britania.

I liked Rierie’s Lt. Col, she’s giving me Claudia vibes. She walks around in pantsu as well. (Yay!) Miyukichi’s flat (as in the lack of boobs) character sounds like Reika from Ninomiya-kun, seems to have the same personality as well. Koshimizu Ami was somewhere I think, must have missed her appearance. Saeko Chiba’s “HAHAHAHAHA” was interesting. She played the loli major. I’m not familiar with the lead girl’s voice though (Fukuen Misato). The only roles I can remember are probably Patty (Devil May Cry) and Mayu (Hataraki Man). She sounds passibly cute, though not much of an impression.

マジ？！

Delivery Health.

In other (possibly related) news, new Ichigo Marshmallow OVA announced.

In yet another piece of (totally unrelated) news, the army is really efficient. Military efficiency is not an oxymoron. But we all know that already, so it’s not really news, is it? I’ve just been given five whole days to say goodbye to my wife, mistress, GF, pokemon, all 6000 HDB flat-mates before I go die for my country or something. How generous of them. Operation Flying Eagle guys got only 24 hours.

They probably figured an old man like me doesn’t have to be coddled like a cute and innocent little 18 year-old. Fair enough. But they really should have at least told me where to turn up for duty. Seriously, there was no mention of my new unit’s address in that cute little computer-generated letter full of typos. Oh well, I’m sure 6.021023% of all taxi drivers on the road will know where XXX-XXXXXX / XXXX XXXXXX CEN is. You can fill in the blanks and guess my new posting if you’re that bored. (Hint: it’s got nothing to do with delivery health. I hope.)

Wherever that place is, I suspect the job description will read something like this:

1) Make coffee and sweep the floor
2) Pick up phone calls and leave them on hold forever
3) Summarise stuff
4) Feed the paper shredder classified waste

(1) I actually kind of enjoy, (2) is torture and (3) might be a pain or quite fun, depending on subject matter. (4) is actually the best of all, I enjoy the shredding noise immensely, though the thing is they might make me take the polygraph lie detector test again. Shouldn’t have to, it’s not a sensitive unit. Still, let’s hope not. Having to go through an intrusive security clearance process just to shred classified pieces of rough paper is quite dumb.

If you want to know how privacy-depriving their background checks are, just imagine the worst possible game of Truth and Dare you’ll ever play in your life, only you can’t choose to do a dare and you’re hooked up to a bloody lie detector. I believe the idea is to dig up all your skeletons in the closet so there’s nothing left for you to be blackmailed into betraying secrets with. Smart, eh? Here’s an idea of the kind of questions they ask, plus what i answered years ago vs. how i would answer now.

Qn: Do you surf gay porn?
19 year-old me: No.
Now me: No. (You didn’t ask about yuri twincest.)

Qn: Have you ever committed a crime and gotten away with it?
19 year-old me: No.
Now me: No. (Actually, several times a day, according to the Temple of Xedo.)

Qn: Do you pay for Delivery Health?
19 year-old me: No.
Now me: No. (But I’m thinking about it.)

Qn: Have you ever received a gift valued at more than $1000 from an acquaintance of the same gender?
19 year-old me: No.
Now me: No. (But I won’t really mind if anyone hands me $1000 this instant. Btw, I just received my GST offset package. All hail the Big Boss!)

Qn: Have you ever been approached by any foreign intelligence agencies?
19 year-old me: No.
Now me: No. (But Rierie visits me in my dreams. I have no idea if she’s working for anyone though.)

Qn: Are you gay?
19 year-old me: No.
Now me: No. (What did you expect?)

As you can see the idea is to pry out your inner GAR. All the questions are yes/no only, and you get to clarify all of them with the interviewer (a lady in my case) beforehand so you wouldn’t be shocked into giving a false positive reading on the detector. In fact, you’re supposed to declare all your deepest darkest secrets to the interviewer before they even hook you up to the machine. Then you answer “No” to everything because most of the questions will be preceded by the phrase “Besides whatever that has already been declared”.

Oh well, it was quite an experience talking dirty to a stranger onee-san, so I’ll have to say it was quite fun, plus I got half a day off to do it. Wouldn’t want to go through it again though.

Unless there’s news that the army has just hired Rierie.