アニ・ノート

As seen at Calguns, an AR-15 with a laser engraving of Konoha leaf:

At the thread, some of expected confusion and typical Naruto bashing is present, but not as much as I feared. Also, some of the posters appear to know what /k/ is. Perhaps I should be disturbed.

My own BLR 81 has an aluminum receiver with wide flat surfaces, so it would take engraving nicely. But I guess I’m not fan enough to take a leap.

For some reason, this struck me as humorous:

Remind me never to kiss Yoko. It seems like whenever someone does, they soon wind up as dead meat.

Where did I see that before?

Don Curtiss was playing with fire.

I see observations like this quite often:

Japan is a very cash-based society, and there are no such things as using personal checks to pay for goods.

Everyone says that. Nonetheless, I keep seeing things like these:

The example above is from Rocket Girls, but I saw them in Bamboo Blade, Chobits, etc. Apparently, they have no checks, but they have registers.

The length of this thing keeps confusing me. Every time I think that I must’ve reached the halfway point, it just keeps going deeper and deeper. For example, Mana’s arrival threw me into a loop. It just made no sense whatsoever.

Since then I looked into the booklet, which says that Mana is going to be badly injured and hints that Kotaro has a chance to prevent it. Perhaps they want to force him to make a choice between saving Kaho and Mana. That would make at least some sense, but still…

Speaking of choices, I suspect that a vast majority of them are empty and the plot railroads the events. Indeed it’s the only way to make the thing fit on DVD. For example, in the beginning Kotaro is offered a choice to discuss his predicament with Ai or Takeshi, whereas anyone with a brain larger than a pea would see that the only reasonable choice is to chat with Tomo. Which is what happens eventually.

Even when effecting an outcome, choices in Hourglass are often similar to elections: I have to select the least evil. It has a lot to do with the protagonist being dumb like a stump, which disappoints. On the other hand, I became less disappointed about the lack of animation. All I have to do is to regard VN as a kind of manga, only on optical media. When seen in that light, Hourglass is a compelling entertainment.

BTW, Sixten seems to explore the Ai avenue, but the events are all the same. But of course! Railroad plot.

This is the first professional visual novel I’ve played, and if other visual novels are this good, I can understand why they’re big among anime fans.

I think it’s “manga fans” now. Compared to anime, VN is just not in the same league.

This is how far watching anime can take you:

  Level: 4, Section 1: 89, Section 2: 71, Section 3: 164, Total: 324, Result: Pass

In practical terms, this is not enough to watch raws indiscriminately, but in most cases the second pass with subtitles off is doable.

Jonathan bade his time long enough, marshalling his arguments in secret like Marshal Zhukov did for Operation Uranus. Now that he dropped the hammer on Chihiro, the effect is equally devastating [link].

There’s nothing left for me to debate, except to pick up the pieces and observe that in my experience the preoccupation with “professional help” is deeply unhealthy. By creating a comforting relief from the ouside, the specialist makes the illness more attractive and tends to draw the treated mind deeper into it. It is downright dangerous and worse, is imminently avoidable in most cases. If this applies to Chihiro is speculative, of course. She is after all completely fictional and thus malleable for the writer.

LATE UPDATE: Kurogane joins Jonathan:

… more especially when I was totally lead to think that Chihiro was going to commit suicide at that point.

This thought did not occur to me when I was watching for some reason, so my first instinct was to disagree with Jonathan. But like I said, it was a well framed response, and now we see Kuro doing the same interpretation.

Apparently there was a small con in my backyard this weekend, Nigorimasen reports. Its name folds into an acronym “AOD”, which clashes with “Anime on DVD”. Also, seems like either the screening was lacking or CalAggie didn’t care for seeing anything, which is my primary occupation at conventions. So I don’t regret skipping.

Instead, I spent the Sunday lounging with a slight fever, after I went shooting to Panoche on Saturday. I probably was still weak after the cold on the previous weekend, and exposure did me in. Among other things, I’ve got stuck and had to hike back to camp to get a recovery vehicle.

Keeping in mind that I was there with the same group whom I exposed to anime by screeing Dragon Half, I got off easy.

See the list at Moetron.

Old news, but still: Kinokuniya in San Francisco expanded into the 1st floor. There is a stairway between levels inside the store. They moved all manga down. Manga sales may be declining in Japan, but we are behind the curve.

When I went there, they had figurines of Mucchi and Mikan. I have to say, I heard their call, but I’m too strong even for them. There is only one who could sway me.

Jeffs pulls a cruel experiment on blog readers. 28 comments and counting.

Ourselves, we just went to a restaurant, lounged in a bookstore, and watched RahXephon (in dub — my better half’s choice). I snapped a picture of Elvy’s watch.

UPDATE: Did anyone notice that we get to know Elvy when she unnecesserily kills half of her squadron by attacking RahXephon in a mistaken belief that it’s another Dolem? That’s pretty much the RahXephon’s theme, I’d say. Oh, and a couple episodes down this somehow becomes Haruka’s fault.