I've spent a lot of time recently playing games and watching anime. That's why there hasn't really been a new update to my blog: nothing noteworthy. I really like the anime-planet thing, I've been keeping it up to date and it's kind of handy. Plus it looks really cool as a signature in forums.

Let's see... Watched Karas, loved it. Great art style with a really interesting plot line that I wish they would have made into a series instead of an OVA. I feel they have much more that they could do with it. On the other side though, I'm glad they didn't try and do more than they could. If it turns out that the story really just doesn't have much else to it, then it would have been ruined to try and expand on it. That's one of the most important things with anime really: know the limits.

Watched all of Saikano, or less popularly but officially Saishuuheiki Kanojo. It's supposed to be a really depressing anime, and I was let down by the fact that it really isn't. The plot is about a girl who has gotten some sort of surgery to become Japan's ultimate weapon in some future struggle of humanity, essentially World War 3. The premise is that basically she's Japan's last hope, but she is still a high school girl and wants to live a normal life. So she can more or less transform to an ultimate killer robot, but nobody but a few knows it. What I think was supposed to be depressing is her feelings, which they do an amazing job of conveying. Basically she can't control herself when she's in robot form. She just kills and kills, and as the show progresses she gets to be such an efficient killer she just decimates towns instead of individual units. The problem is when she goes back to normal she remembers all of it and just can't handle it. In that respect, I love the story. But I couldn't really connect with the depression there. It's a well told story, but I think for me any depression that would come from the show is the general fact that humanity is at its end. The end of the anime is very good, and I almost found it funny that in the copy I have, the sub group put at the end of one of the episodes, "This is the end of happiness in Saikano. If you want a happy ending, pretend the rest of the show doesn't exist and stop now." More or less. Honestly though, if you do that you're shorting yourself of a very artistic end. And it actually completes the story. Much better than the "artistic" end of Neon Genesis Evangelion. If you've got free time, a good show to pick up.

Apparently I didn't write anything about Kimikiss Pure Rouge. It's an interesting love polygon anime. It's been a while now since I watched it, but basically I can summarize to this: if you like slice of life, romance, or that general idea, you'll like it. Some interesting characters in that one, with not one but two simultaneous love stories, both with interesting twists to them. And Sakino's pretty cool. So is Mao. I wish I had a sister like Mao. :/

The sub group I joined is still doing fine, as far as I can tell. We're pretty damn slow though. Almost finished translating Cosmos Pink Shock, and we have another translator working on something else that I can't think of right now. Almost done timing CPS, and after that it should be a pretty quick job to finish and we're set, first release. There's talk about doing a "fake dub" for CPS, where basically we just make up dialogue since the TL is taking forever, and dub our own voices over the dialogue. It sounds interesting, but I'm curious how we're going to manage that since we don't have the original audio tracks to keep the sound effects and music without literally talking over them. Pretty tacky. Personally I'd love to see it done Mystery Science Theater 3000 style. We'll see. In the end, nothing might get done anyway.

I've been playing through the Metal Gear Solid trilogy for PSX & PS2. I've so far beat the first two and I'm working on the extra content of the second one before moving onto the third one. I love the story, hate the controls. It's got to be one of the worst shooting games ever. But luckily it's a shooter disguised as a stealth game, so you don't have to shoot that much. When it forces you to, though, god I hate the game. I'm curious if MGS4 suffers from the same problem. I think I can deal with the supposed 180+ minutes of cut scenes in it, just so long as they don't try and make me use their excuse for a first person view. I think I could deal with the cut scenes though because I like the story. Hopefully there's a way to pause them, because that is somewhat of a problem already.

I bought a new 750GB hard drive for my computer, so I plan on going up this weekend to grab it. I also bought a new mouse pad, as the one I have is starting to just get... Old. I think it's from '94 or maybe even earlier. That's also at home though, so yet another reason to go.

My wallet is starting to break, but nothing major. Firstly, it's a trifold. There's a pocket in the middle section that is relatively small that I've been using to store quarters (other change I toss in the cup holder of my car) and it has now broken so that the pocket opens to the rest of the wallet. It's impossible for me to describe further, but suffice to say it's not a huge issue, as I'll just not carry change on me now. Maybe I'll throw that on my Christmas wish list or something.

There's slight talk of possibly getting an apartment with a few friends of mine back in my hometown for this coming school semester and perhaps relatively indefinitely. I'm kind of excited for the idea. Not that I don't like living at home, I just want to try and be a little bit more independent. That's a good chunk of the reason I'm living down here in Champaign for the summer in the first place. I'm hoping things go well.

I looked over the community college that I go to's web page and they no longer offer Japanese as a course. I'm saddened, because I was really thinking that would be an amazing course to take. I heard through a friend that the sensei who taught it possibly died? I don't know if that's more than a rumor though. The cold truth is that no more do I have an option to take Japanese for dirt cheap at a college level. I'm slightly more interested in actually buying the Rosetta Stone program then. Since I got over my initial phase with the program I've decided that you really have absolutely no hope of actually learning the language with it, but it would be a definite help getting started. I say you have no chance because you won't learn any grammar. Or proper sentence structure. I have an idea of how a typical simple sentence goes, but if you made it complicated I'd probably be like, "Okay I know you said boy, run, father, and squirrel, I have no idea what you really said." Currently my goal is to pick up enough of it to know when translations on the animes I watch are bad. Then I can feel like a snob when I say SHS has shitty subs, etc.

As a side note, I just started watching Air. Is the Japanese word for "bark" really "piko"? I know a frog's "ribbit" is "kero", which is... interesting. Weird stuff. They have a sound effect for everything. :P

I was invited to join a group of people who are apparently working on making their own MMO. Aside from my general skepticism that this will ever get off the ground, I'm interested. I've basically got nothing concrete to add to it. Maybe I can give some ideas, or perhaps help with game mechanics--god knows I play enough games--but otherwise I've not got much. I told the invitee as much and it seems to be okay. Not sure. I'll see how things go, I guess. As with all things.

Adion is currently listening to: HALCALI - halcali'n'bass [3:44]