Smooth and Flat

Finished watching Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha on Saturday.

I’ve watched the first two episodes when it was airing. Wasn’t really attracted, and postponed it until I feel like watching it. In the end, it took 4 years to get to finally do that; mostly because ilifin and Kaze kept talking about how great it was. So I heard that it gets better after episode 6 or so – and decided to give it a try. Of course I didn’t skip any episodes even though I was a bit tempted to.

It all made sense when Fate Testarossa appeared. And indeed, after episode 6, the show turned into something really awesome.

On a side note, the quality of the DVD visuals and animation is far superior compared to what was aired. Shockingly different.

(Couldn’t resist the temptation.)

When the series started airing, I watched two first episodes and somehow postponed it. I didn’t hate it, I just thought it was a bit… lame (there are many examples of poor adaptations of jRPGs). Recently I decided to continue watching the series; I remembered I didn’t like some characters (like, for example, Jade) and that I loathe the protagonist, Luke.

So I started with episode 3 yesterday, and am up to 7 now. And somehow I ended up thinking that Jade is my favourite character, along with Anise. I guess I also like Tear, but she’s a bit strange. I still loathe Luke, and Natalia really annoys me – along with Guy (they both are blonde, does that have something to do with it I wonder). Mieu is strangely cute, but I have no affection towards him (unlike Tear). Ion is cute, but I can’t find myself to like him – he’s too background-ish and generic. Of the villains, they’re way too generic as well – and therefore I only like Anya Gloomietta. Also… I don’t trust that Van person.

You make Anise a sad puppeteer.

So my DSL modem is running at line speed of 5300/768 or something. And it’s Dec 2nd. Who’d have guessed, my internet access plan is still 2Mbps. The speed is still at 250K/sec max.

I’ll postpone it until daytime, though.

In other news: Gundam 00 S2 and Toradora! are getting better and better with each week, however I can’t say the same about Akane-iro or Chaos;Head. Said Akane-iro is diving deeper into plain fanservice, and Chaos;Head would do better if the plot wasn’t that complicated – the series itself is not really pushing me towards analysing the events and trying to find the culprit or the big idea, because… this show is only entertaining, nothing more. To put it harshly, Chaos;Head is quite a dumb series.

Also, watching Freedom (the OVA series about some idiots from a lunar city going to – guess where – Earth, which was said to be completely destroyedby a war or whatever). At ep 4 now; and to be honest, I don’t think I like the series.

My stomach hurts so much…

I’ve watched 5 episodes of Kannagi in a row. Why they do this?.. I was laughing so hard that I almost choked, and my head hurts a bit now. This show is completely awesome even though it lacks originality. The character designs are neat and clean, the animation is quite good, and Nagi and Tsugumi are so lovable and cute… Well, almost all characters are great, even Zange (though I dislike her).

Nagi’s lies and honesty are so touching.

And… that’s why I skipped Kannagi for 5 weeks straight. I’m afraid of watching series I love because when they finish airing I won’t have to look forward to the next episode. Rewatching is not a solution – I like when I don’t know what will happen.

P.S. Nagi’s facial expressions just kick ass.

I’ve been postponing quite a few episodes of some series with a reason “not in the mood for that, I’ll just watch these later” and in the end I keep getting spoilers (mostly from IRC) on episodes which aired a month ago. Some examples include Kannagi, Xam’d, To Aru Majutsu no Index, Akane-iro (to much less extent though), and a few others.

Mostly, though, it means that my interest in the series is not high enough; for example, I never postpone Toradora! or Skip Beat! along with Gundam 00. I do have too much free time, though (even at work) which I spend on IRC, World of Warcraft and Burnout Dominator; it’s not that I need to force myself to watch the series listed above, it’s just that I don’t bother. Sometimes I think, “I should watch this series now”, and load it in my media player – and then I end up watching it until the last (aired) episode.

On the other hand, there are series which make me feel a bit awkward when I think of watching them. For example, Kannagi – somehow there’s that feeling of unrest if I think about getting to watch the next episode (I’m stuck at episode 3 or so, where Nagi came to the school). I don’t know how to explain it, really – it’s usually the same with hentai stuff (which I watch really rarely, but still watch sometimes).

With some series, I’m just afraid of getting pulled into the pace – as it happened with Hayate no Gotoku! when I ended up watching it completely in 3 evenings.

Crossdressing in my Gundam 00?.. No way! (ilifin has something to say on that, too.)

So, who is godmodding in Gundam 00 now – Celestial Being or those Innovators?.. So far it looks like CB has kind of… lost the lead as they keep getting surprised or ambushed suddenly. Their crew also has a lot of problems – motivational, mostly.

I think I really dislike that ‘Billy’ person. By the way, I don’t recall why would he remember Setsuna… Did they meet somewhere already in S1?.. I wonder if I need to rewatch that series. I fail. Setsuna stormed into apartment when Sumeragi and Billy were there and took Sumeragi with him. Thanks to Remo for reminding me.

Who would have thought that Ryuuji is a pervert?.. But I must admit, this episode was kind of epic. I guess I’ll get to work on userpics based on it tomorrow.

In other news: I’ve watched the first episode of Casshern Sins. The series is kind of… strange. But the characters somehow have really pretty designs, except for those robots, of course. I’ll check the next two or three episodes to decide if to drop the series or not. I don’t like the ‘main character’ guy though.

Been also playing Burnout Dominator and got to over 7000 Dominator points – I still have to beat the Tuned Series Grand Prix though since I only have scored a Silver Medal in it before. And I don’t really understand why can’t I use the unlocked Dominator car during Grand Prix… and where can I use it at all. After getting the Gold in that event I’ll try the next available series, I guess.

Also, I’ve got my (new) Kara no Kyoukai novels, will probably start reading those the next week; the three movies I watched were pretty impressive, too (well, TYPE MOON it is).

P.S. Somehow, I think I like WordPress more than LiveJournal…

Not really much to wait for. However, I’ve yet to watch Natsume Yuujinchou, and the second season, Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou will air this Winter.

We’ll also get Slayers Evolution-R; I don’t expect it to be better than Revolution (which wasn’t really good, to be honest – just a bit above average), though. In other news, MariaHolic – if done right – might be pretty entertaining, and Sunrise will present their new series, Kurokami (which involves a geek as the main character yet again – and this sucks, I suppose, I don’t like this trend).

Considering the other series, we’ll see when the trailers become available.

Installing WordPress wasn’t really hard; however, I had to spend a lot of time after the installation trying to customize it to my tastes. But so far, this blog should accept OpenIDs (I wonder if it actually will).

Also, catching up on some series.

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