I would like to note that Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu has managed to capture me starting with the first 5 minutes of the first episode. Unlike most other series of this season, this show is now tagged with a label of “definitely watching this”. Based on a light novel series, it’s the chronicles of a war taking place in Fumizuki Academy.

In this school, people are assigned to different classes (from A to F) depending on their score on the placement exam. This might sound pretty just, considering that some people are faster learners and some are not, however there is something to consider. These classes get different treatment, as in, equipment and facilities. The A Class, for example, gets laptops and comfortable sofas, while the F Class has a room in the old building; there are no chairs and the tables are so old that their legs break if you put a schoolbag on top of one of those.

Enter Yoshii Akihisa, the “main” male character. Unlike some of his classmates, he seems to be genuinely stupid (and doesn’t even object when someone calls him an idiot). Obviously, he finds himself in the F Class, along with some old friends. He doesn’t really have any good qualities besides being a typical ‘nice guy’; though it seems like he’s the hardworking type, too.

Sakamoto Yuuji, the class representative, has the power of charisma, is a natural leader, and controls the F-bunch pretty easily. He easily pulls off long motivating speeches, and is probably quite a cunning and sly person.

Next up, Tsuchiya Kouta – the resident pervert of the F Class, always armed with a photo camera, and often suffering from massive blood losses due to nosebleeds. He has no redeeming qualities, is the #2 worst student after Yoshii, and is a walking ecchi knowledge base.

Kinoshita Hideyoshi is the trap. He isn’t actually gay, nor is gender-confused, but has a girlish look, and is overall pretty cute. Just like Minami and Mizuki, he isn’t really F Class material, because he got too absorbed in the drama club’s business and thus his grades went down. He is actually pretty smart, and seems to be the second best in math in the class.

The damsel in distress, Himeji Mizuki. Amusingly enough, she’s both cute (moe-style) and smart. The A Class material. On the day of the placement exam, she had a high fever and collapsed in the classroom. Re-taking the exam is not allowed (why, though? it makes no sense to me), so she ended up in the F Class with zero points. Has some feelings towards Yoshii (mainly of gratitude; he was the only one who tried to help her when she collapsed during the exam). Seemingly excels at everything; the ultimate weapon of the F Class in the war.

Shimada Minami. Born in Germany. Classmates with Yoshii since 1st grade. Has issues with kanji which is the main reason for her to be in the F Class. With her overall academic abilities standing on at least B Class level, she sucks at Classic Literature and everything that involves comprehension of written Japanese. Aces math tests. Sports a ponytail with a huge ribbon, is pretty strong and athletic, and is Yoshii’s arch nemesis whenever he is about to do something stupid. A classic tsundere type (i.e., is characterised by a slow transition from tsun to dere; see also: Tohsaka Rin; not to be mistaken for Shana/Louise type tsundere characterised by random mood swings). Is obviously my favourite character in the series.

More on the class system: a class can challenge another class to an Exam Summoning Battle (ESB for short). The winning class can, for example, switch the facilities with the defeated class; it’s the only means for a lower class to get better equipment and treatment. ESBs are held using summoned beings; each student can summon one, and the base stat for such a being is the total tests score of the student. It determines the hit points of the summoned being; if you are defeated and your HP reaches zero, you are forced to attend supplementary lessons. However, during a battle you can withdraw and recover your hit points by taking a test. One can also take tests beforehand to accumulate a high number of points.

While all this might sound stupid, the series is pretty fun to watch, the character designs are really nice, and the super deformed summoned beings are adorable.

This show features a loser-class oblivious-subclass male protagonist who is allergic to cats, a childhood friend, and probably some magical stuff along with swords, monsters, and boobs.

So, the story: the guy had a protective charm given to him by his grandmother. The charm stops working. Weird monsters appear, willing to kill the guy. Somehow their awesome plans to get rid of yet another idiot are thwarted by the appearance of a slutty katana-wielding girl who also has cat ears and tail. Wait, no, actually the entire plot can be explained in three words: Boobs, boobs, and more boobs.

Mindless fanservice.

Therefore, I convert the cuesheets into unicode, leaving the TrueAudio-encoded files intact – I’m sure that it’ll save me quite a bit of bandwidth when a new version of that said collection comes out by placing the .tta files in their respectable subdirectories. I doubt rwx (the guy who posts the collection torrent) would re-encode something into something, when there are TrueAudio encodes available in Japanese P2P networks.

dBu music

C77, 30.12.2009, DBCD-0012

01.春の湊に ～ Finding shiners 02.小さな小さな賢将 ～ Spirit of Reepicheep 03.置き傘妖怪囃子 04.時代少女とハイカラ親父 05.キャプテン村紗 ～ A ladle is my friend 06.虎柄の羅刹天 ～ Tiger Raxasa 07.一塵法界の火 08.感情の摩天楼 ～ Liberated White Lotus 09.空の帰り道　～ Landings from sky 10.天空昂進曲 ～ The march over sky Original Score: ZUN (Team Shanghai Alice). Arrangement: dobu usagi (dBu music).

蓮弾奏結界 白夜小夜曲 Serenade at midnight sun

dBu music

C77, 30.12.2009, DBCD-0013

01.藍空の影 02.春の湊に ～ Lost shiners 03.雲間に漏れる一条の光 04.Sky Ruins 05.Wandering Ghost Ship 06.-ESOTERIA- 07.一真法界の火 08.U 4 R 09.擁怪寺 10.百夜些夜曲 ～ Serenade of hundred nights Original Score: ZUN (Team Shanghai Alice). Arrangement: dobu usagi (dBu music).

So I wanted the new version on my server.

And yeah, I had to update the port. Took much less time than back in February; this time I only had to update the patches, and remove one of them (the one which was required to build ejabberd using Erlang R12 and below). And of course update the pkg-plist file (packaging list, responsible for the removal of package’s files during deinstall).

There’s still a small problem with ejabberd somehow setting the permissions for Mnesia files to 750 instead of 640, but I’m too tired to fix it right now.

In case anyone is interested, here is the updated port directory (extracts to jabberd2 so you’ll want to extract it in /usr/ports/net-im).

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/ejabberd stop
cd
fetch http://media.fujibayashi.jp/software/ejabberd2-port.tar.gz
cd /usr/ports/net-im
tar xvzf ~/ejabberd2-port.tar.gz
cd ejabberd
make deinstall
cd ../ejabberd2
make install
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/ejabberd start

There is no need to convert your Mnesia database, however I advise to back it up (before stopping ejabberd) so you can restore in case something goes wrong:

su ejabberd -c "ejabberdctl dump /tmp/ejabberd.dump.`date \"+%Y-%m-%d\"`"

Of course, you can backup the database “as is” after you stop the server by copying /var/spool/ejabberd somewhere or archiving as a .tar file.

And after watching the first four episodes I guess I’d say it’s one of the masterpieces of the year.

Apparently, it’s 12 episodes long (or so it’s expected to be), and judging by the first arc, No Longer Human,  2 more novels are animated in the remaining 8 episodes. The production quality is not outstanding, but still really solid and pleasing.

Absolutely recommended.

Looked like emo shit at first, getting to become kind of nice, though gloomy and dark, series. Character designs suck, though, for almost everyone (except some guys and two – just two – girls named Noloty Whateveritwas and Hamyuts Meseta).

Setting: steampunk. Well, not exactly; and we’ve got magic mixed in. There are airplanes, too, and gods lurk somewhere out there as well.

The opposing sides are the Library of Bantorra, which stores all books (with books being something extracted from people when they die – those books contain a person’s complete lifetime records), and the Church of Drowning in God’s Grace (a bunch of fanatics whose ultimate goal is to reach some kind of paradise, for which they have to indulge in every desire they’ve got).

And of course, there are superpowers in action, too.

1. Someone is extremely lazy.
2. The moon phase wasn’t as tsukuyomi as it should have been – until today.
3. This ain’t a review.

You sure?.. Well then, let’s proceed!

Week 2, Day 3: November, 4th

• Darker than Black: Ryuusei no Gemini intro theme single, Tsukiakari no Michishirube by Stereopony
• Sora no Otoshimono intro theme single, Ring My Bell
• AIKa Zero theme single, Flying Kid
• Dragonball Kai Song Collection (in before Sugisaki goes “KAI!”)
• To Aru Kagaku no Choudenjihou Outro Theme Single, Dear My Friend -まだ見ぬ未来へ- by Elisa
• To Aru Kagaku no Choudenjihou intro theme single, only my railgun by fripSide
• Exit Trance Presents Speed Anime Trance Best 8 (oh come on, you’re still producing these?..)

Spoiler: it wasn’t Joshua, duh.

Week 2, Day 5: November, 6th

• TV Animation Umineko no Naku Koro ni Character Song vol. 2
• DJCD Kara no Kyoukai the Garden of sellers (wait, no, of tellers! but they do like to make money, duh)
• DJCD Sayonara Zetsubou Housou Tokubetsu Ban Kessakuhen (wait, what?)
• Moeagare! Gundam Brass, conducted by Otomo Naoto
• TV Animation Umi Monogatari ~anata ga itekureta koto~ Original Soundtrack
• TV Animation Tatakau Shishou The Book of Bantorra outro theme single, Light of Dawn by Annabel
• Fresh Pretty Cure! (the movie) Soundtrack
• Faith (Prince of Tennis never ends.)

Drown in the sea of imaginary seacats!

Week 3, Day 3: November 11th

• Seitokai no Ichizon intro theme single, Treasure, by Hekiyou Gakuen Student Council
• TV Animation CANAAN, CANAAN Inspired Album
• Princess Lover! Original Soundtrack (well it’s just crap series so noone actually bothers)
• TV Animation Kämpfer outro theme single, One Way Ryou Omoi, by Natsuru-tan and Kaede (d’aww Inoue Marina)
• Wanted! for the love, by NEEDLESS GIRLS+
• Miracle Train outro theme single, Stories, by Kita Shuuhei
• Kobato intro theme single, Magic Number, by Sakamoto Maaya

On to the next question! Why is Battler so emotional about everything and why is Beatrice such a bitch?

1. Ryuukishi07 said so, it must be true.
2. There is no Umineko anime.
3. Battler has a sister complex and there are no chances for him to ever get over it.

Really? Never thought so.

Week 4, Day 3: November 18th

• Fight Ippatsu! Juuden-chan new intro theme single, BouNce BaCk, by Plug (These titles. These titles. These titles.)
• Fight Ippatsu! Juuden-chan new outro theme single, TeCh=NoloGy, by Alesta (These titles. They’re eyesores.)
• Fight Ippatsu! Juuden-chan Charge! and Onegai Sweetheart, by Plug, Alesta and others
• Seiken no Blacksmith intro theme single, Justice of Light by Gojou Mayumi
• Seiken no Blacksmith outro theme single, Miracle Happy Day, by Lisa
• Dragonball Kai original soundtrack volume 2
• Shakugan no SHANA S intro theme single, Prophecy by Kawada Mami
• TV Animation Asura Cryin’ 2 intro theme single, Alternative, by angela
• TV Animation Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu new character single vol. 4, Koizumi Itsuki
• (insert yet another Prince of Tennis character CD here)
• TV Animation Shin Koihime Musou intro theme single, and outro theme single too
• (guess what) Kateikyoushi Hitman Reborn! Character Single Series Dai 3 Dan 1, Sawada Tsunayoshi / Reborn, and Dai 3 Dan 2, Gokudera Hayato / Yamamoto Takeshi
• (fuck yeah) USAVICH Original Soundtrack – Kirenenko Ver.
• (ippatsu!) USAVICH Original Soundtrack – Putin Ver.
• Tenshinranman Nyubabababan by MOSAIC.WAV (yay!)

(I hate to point this out, but wasn’t the game of that 3rd week supposed to be the last one?)

Week 4, Day 3: November 25th

• Seitokai no Ichizon outro theme single, Mousou Fetish, by Hekiyou Gakuen Student Council
• Winter Sonata Original Soundtrack vol. 1
• Tales of Symphonia the Animation Sylvarant Songs
• Kanokon ~Manatsu no Daishaniku Sai~ intro theme single, Komorebi no Sordino by Sakakibara Yui
• JAM PROJECT Best Collection VII
• TV Animation CANAAN Original Soundtrack
• TV Animation Kiddy Girl-and intro theme single, Baby universe day
• TV Animation Saki Original Drama vol. 2
• Little Non The Best (they did an opening single for Saki)
• Miracle Train Character Song vol. 1, Roppongi Fumi
• Miracle Train Character Song vol. 3, Shinjuku Rintaro
• Hetalia Axis Powers Sound World (it’s a sountrack, not a drama CD)
• Hetalia Character CD vol. 6, America
• BLEACH Brainless Collection (oh excuse me, Breathless Collection) 03: Abarai Renji with Zabimaru
• Higepiyo Original Soundtrack (and Kaze rejoices)
• Fate/Recapture -original songs collection- (ahaha TYPE-MOON, almost got me)
• TV Animation Tentai Senshi Sunred 2 intro theme single, Zoku, Mizonokuchi Taiyou Zoku, by manzo
• TV Animation Tentai Senshi Sunred 2 outro theme single, Mizonokuchi Forever, by Morino Kumahachi
• Macross Frontier Itsuwari no Utahime Mini Album Universal Bunny
• TV Animation Sasameki Koto Original Soundtrack, Sasameki Oto

And the last question. Which title was suggested by Kurimu in episode one?

1. Lucky Star.
2. The Melancholy of.
3. Seizon.

And… the results aren’t in. Sorry. See you next time!

Week 4, Day 4: November 26th

• DJCD Hayate no Gotoku!! Hayaraji!! vol. 2
• DJCD TV Animation Sengoku BASARA KojiroKatakara Special Edition
• Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu Purezza a la carte! vol. 1
• Natsu no Arashi! outro theme single, Otome no Junjou
• Neon Genesis EVANGELION Shin Suisougakuban vol. 1 and 2
• Fresh Pretty Cure! Vocal Album vol. 2

Week 4, Day 5: November 27th

• TV Animation 11eyes outro theme single, Sequentia by Asriel

Though you may forget the review, rest assured, it remembers you. Bye-bye!

Almost nothing caught my attention (well, except, probably, kimi ni todoke, which is really nice but I can’t manage to get striking screenshots).

However, the decisive battle against my laziness will be held tomorrow, and should the victor of that round be yours truly, this site will be blessed with some more crappy reviews.

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