Stuff of the week: 15-21/11/2010

image@eshuu

Anime - In the order of how much I enjoyed them

1.Kuragehime 5: It was great.

2.Arakawa under the bridge ^2 7: Kamenashi Kamenashi Kamenashi Kamenashi ~ I wrote the other post before watching the rest of the episode so I didn’t know they all became crazy and made a Kamenashi religion =)) Oh god someone please show Kamenashi this episode and ask how he feels/thinks xDDD

3.Tantei Opera Milky Holmes 7: Henrietta is hot, Cordelia went berserk from lack of light and Nero is just getting cuter ~ This episode is pure chaotic and that is why it’s so awesome xD I’m so glad I picked Milky Holmes xD Also this is first time I can see the detective girls as 16 years-old, they all looked like they’re elementary students in previous episodes, or maybe it’s me who has problem with details and memory….

4.MM! 8: One of the better episodes MM!, I laughed at how Tarou changed from a M -> lolicon -> super pervert -> gay for Tatsukichi -> M. The comedy was really great xD And Yuuno is just so cute ~ I’m hoping for a Tarou x Yuuno ending /o/

5.Heartcatch Precure 39: Almost felt like a filler episode. Erika is always fun to watch but I’m sure I’d get mad often if I was Coffret xD Like how those creatures on the enemy’s side treat their wounds, pour sand back then use a tape and you’re all set =))

=6.The world God only knows 7: It’s still entertaining to watch but Kanon is so boring. Seriously, she is why Keima should continue to think real idols are horrible.

=7.Otome Youkai Zakuro 7: This one is kind of… silly? It’s really cheesy and geez Kei’s reason of fearing Youkai is pretty stupid -_- Also seeing Zakuro constantly bullys Kei while he is always nice is not fun :\

=8.Shinryaku! Ika Musume 7: It’s funny and worth watching but not memorable at all >_>

9.Shiki 16: At this point I only want the remaining main characters to become Shikis and live happily ever after….

10.Star Driver 8: Oh god Sugata is becoming so boring, just what I feared most. This is so cliche, can’t they do something about it? I haven’t lost hope yet though, please don’t disappoint me :’( I really like Sakana-chan x Head couple but they “broke up” in this episode -_- Bring her back, I don’t want this to be the last time I see them together

11.Katanagatari 11: Not really this week but ~ Anw this series really requires you to like the main characters huh? I mean I don’t even really care about what is going to happen anymore, I just hope one of them or maybe both die in a tragedy manner for something amusing. Both of them are just so freaking boring. I’m so so so glad next episode will be the last one, gotta say a-12-episodes series aired in a full year is a nice plan.

Manga – No particular order

-One Piece: wth with that Chopperman one shot???

-Katekyo Hitman Reborn 315: Hey it’s nice to know that even though Tsuna is such a…urgh there is no word to describe him, anyway it’s funny to see him peeking at Kyoko’s panty lol And wow Gokudera is a real stalker huh? I hope Shitt P win, such a shitty name geez.

-Saki 56-73: The manga is so slow I can’t see them making a second season!!!!!! ;A; Yuuki has improved a lot but she still can’t keep her cool, I hope she will finish the first round alright. The only thing I don’t like is how Hisa seems to be the ultimate Alpha (or is it Beta?) that can get any girls she wants. Stick with Mako and leave my other couples alone :-w

-B gata H kei 142-154: My favourite comedy manga ~~Kanejou is so inexperienced she acts like Yamada sometimes =)) Hang in there Takeshita, things will go crazy if you’re not there xDD

-Aoi Hana 36: It’s not this week buuuuuuuttttttttt ~~ Fumi and Ah-chan’s relationship doesn’t really make sense to me >_> I guess it’s nice that they kissed?

-Kintoki One shot: The plot and pacing is alright but it really lacked some energy.

-Moon Walker One shot: It’s HORRIBLE! I’m surprised a professional mangaka can write something this bad. Except for the art everything screams amateur and self-serving. It’s like Konomo Takeshi drew this to satisfy himself and lure in some fujoshis who only cares about bishounen along the way.

Other

-Scamp‘s Arakawa posts are getting less and less fun to read. Is it because he is losing interest in that show?

-Psgels posted about his 5 year anniversary, my favorite part in that post is “amusing search terms”, they are really amusing lol. Psgels watches too many anime and writes too many posts that I have to wonder what the heck does he do?? It’s amazing how he has been writing so consistently for 5 years. Sometimes I feel like he misses important side details in anime because he watches too many and he can be pretty judgmental but reading his posts is nice, I always check out his blog after finishing episodes of series that he covers.

-Recently I also like to read Sergio’s blog, he reminds me of Aki when I first knew Aki but they went on different routes. The way Sergio is so focused on moe and fanservice is fun but it’s a little too one-sided, he can also be kind of extreme when it comes to elitists. Even though he is a neet he learns many languages, I wonder why?

-4saken “came back after hiatus” lol, I hope he doesn’t go on another hiatus again xD I like your posts so write more often ^-^

-There are a few artists I watch in DevianArt that like China, objectively speaking, I also think their culture is really interesting. But I’m a Vietnamese, my history and everything I know about China makes me hate that country. I don’t hate a Chinese person just because he/she happens to be a Chinese but I hate China as a whole.

-Now that I’m home again, I finally remembered that one of the reason I wanted to study abroad was because I don’t want to live in the same house with my younger brother. He really gets on my nerves.

-This week was a bad one, I’m so depressed and empty I didn’t know what to do. I even get sick today, actually I’m not tired to the point of calling it sick but I’m worried that it may get worse tomorrow -_- I’m definitely going out to watch some movies next week.

Everyone loves manga

Since OreImo started airing, there have been a lot of posts about how people can relate to Kirino’s feelings,circumstance and how similar her situation to theirs. Which are impossible for me to relate to. Because since I started reading manga/watching anime I’ve never met anyone who seriously looked down on them or laughed at me for loving these things. I suppose I’m just lucky but my road to anime/manga has always been smooth.

Anyway since some people wrote about their fan-life, I feel the urge to write about them too /o/ I’ll start with Middle School since well, elementary kids love cartoon and picture books in general.

Middle School:

I transferred in 8th grade so there were 2 phases here.
-6-7th grade: There were at least 6 kids with manga-style drawings including me. Almost everyone read manga, some went to the manga store on a daily basic to rent them (not me though, I’m cheap and I prefer to own the thing), some bought manga weekly, some discussed Pokemon everyday since Pokemon was airing at that time, there was this boy who was really good at drawing Pokemon, and there was this girl who was scolded because she kept drawing in the middle of class. Basically it’s a heaven for manga fans. When my teacher told us to write a short paragraph to practice grammar, I even wrote something that looked like it was taken out of a manga.

We went to school in the morning, stayed there all day and came home in the afternoon. All students must take a nap in the mid-noon so they wouldn’t feel sleepy in the afternoon when they self-study or go to class. Apart form the classroom, each class had 2 rooms -one for boys, one for girls- with beds and small tables to rest and self-study. There were people get caught every week (or even day I’m not sure) for reading teen magazines and manga in napping/self-study time. There were always some manga in teachers’ desks, I think my school’s always-closed-library was full of confiscated manga/magazines/books.

Needless to say I was full of manga-related activities all the time, and some of my friends were just as enthusiastic as me.

Lol moment: My friend and I tried to design our own characters based on Magic Knight Rayearth. I was so jealous of her drawing that I cried and she cried while trying to comfort me. We stood in front of the school yard crying where people were passing by to go home.

-8-9th grade: There were less manga fans in this class than my previous class but some of them were more hardcore fans. I started to join a forum, making friends online and went to small conventions organized by fans because of a friend. She and I also made some manga drawing project but it never went anywhere. I suppose it was because we spent too much time dreaming about a harem full of cool and hot bishounen. She also told me more about anime, but I was more interested in manga and she was more interested in dreaming about bishounen so we didn’t really watch them together. One noticeable change for me was I went from “I don’t want anything to do with shounen-ai/yaoi” to “I still don’t like them but I don’t hate them”. I played my first eroge at this time, I didn’t know what it was when I bought it, I only saw a pretty cover and liked that anime-style.

It was also the first and last time I made a family online with other fellow fans, a huge one at that, from great grandchild to great grandfather/mother. This was also one of the better time for Vietnamese manga, they published 2-3 different magazines and some groups, artists were pretty well-known. One of my fellow classmate/fan’s sister was in a big group so she told me a little bit of this and that about that group’s drama when I asked.

Lol moment: My online younger brother (who was actually one year older than me) said he would find my ideal boyfriend for me if I told him.
-Me: It’s impossible. He is just a fantasy.
-Him: Just say it, I can find him.
-Me: He has strange hair and eyes color. There is no way you can find someone like that.
-Him: Then he is just a foreigner.
-Me: Not really a foreigner.
-Him: Geez just tell me.
-Me: Umm… well… he is 1m80 tall, has long light-yellow hair and silver eyes.
-Him: Well he can use contact lenses and a wig.

That doesn’t count! -A-”

High School:

There was less fans here than before. Though it’s more like I moved from one kind of group to another. Some of my classmates did read manga but they were like newbie/casual readers compared to me, they also liked the manga that I hated so I didn’t really talk with them. There were some fans in my neighbor class but I didn’t bother with them either.

I introduced yaoi to a friend, she then told her closest friend about yaoi, they then became hardcore yaoi fans together. They were NOT manga or anime fans, they were just yaoi fans. They literally saw yaoi everywhere, from classmates, friends, lovers, cram school teachers, favourite bands (Linkin Park), movies to completely strangers. I don’t think I’ll ever understand how their brains work.

Since there was no fans for me to interact with in real life, I came to the internet. I didn’t like that old forum that much so I searched for new ones and found a bunch of interesting fan boys, then through one way or another, I became friends with some of them and lot of dramas ensued. Anyway from that point on, I only made online friends and I’ve met most of them in real life.

I also  started watching anime seriously and had fun with fandom activities.

Lol moment: Took a few months to finish telling my yaoi friend the whole story of Angel Sanctuary with the break time in class. I almost did the same thing with her closest friend, but we didn’t meet each other much so it was better for her to read the manga.

Family:

My dad was away most of the time so only mom and my younger brother count.

-Younger brother: He is a casual reader, if I buy manga he will read them but that is it. His interest is something else.

-Mom: Her view on manga changed as I grew up. She is pretty open-minded and supportive. She used to forbid manga and even teared some of my manga when I was in middle school because she wanted me to concentrate on studying but she is cool with it now.

Moment 1: I was in high school, my mom told me she wanted to talk about something, we sit seriously in the living room, then she asked about my porn (hentai)  in my computer. She refused to say who used my computer and told her about that, I thought knowing who that person was may make things really awkward so I didn’t try to find out. I told her I was old enough to know what I was watching, and I just watched that stuffs because I want to know things. After that I processed to tell her about Japanese manga/anime industry, how a-m isn’t just stuff for kids, how they are serious business and for adults. We talked and the conversation ended with my mom telling me “Don’t let your younger brother know about your porn”.

Moment 2: My mom’s co-worker/good friend has a son who loves drawing manga, he is in college but he doesn’t care about studying and spends most of his time drawing. His dad (my mom’s friend) has an acquaintance and she offered him a job which was drawing picture books for her. After telling me that, my mom asked: “Since you like drawing so much, do you want to draw manga like him?”. I was really surprised, I didn’t expect her to ask me something like that at all. After a moment I explained to her that the kind of manga I want to draw isn’t what they want. That was last month.

Me:

I hate anyone who badmouth stuffs I like. I’ll use HunterxHunter key chain, Honey&Clover ringtone, post Angel Sanctuary stickers all over my pen when I want. Anyone who have problems with that can go to hell for all I care. I’m used to being an outsider for various reasons so being isolated because of my hobby wouldn’t bother me one bit.

family

I can’t stand my dad. Now our relationship is like daughter and step-father even though he is my real father. I don’t want to go anywhere near him and just want him to leave me alone. It’s not the same kind of annoyance I had when I was in high school, it was hatred born out of fear and anger of being betrayed, forced that time. Now I dislike him like I dislike a stranger.

It’s kind of sad how time and distance can change our relationship so dramatically but I guess it’s inevitable. Telling people to do whatever he wants without giving a care about them is in his nature. I still want to sigh when I think back at this monday when my family went to the airport to welcome him home. It has been 4 years since the last time he went home and the first thing he said was complaint about how slow and silly we were.  The airport office messed up the gate number, many people made the same mistake with us and waited at the wrong gate but no, it’s our fault for being so inactive and silly. On the way home he kept talking, telling me and my younger brother to do this and that. He hardly ask us anything, he didn’t make a conversation, all he did was telling us to do what he want. Granted most it are for the sake of us, but when he doesn’t care about how we feel, what we want, they are just for his self-satisfaction.

This is why I don’t want to come back to the UK to study. I know he sacrificed a lot for me and when I think about it I’m really grateful but to get to the bottom of it, it’s impossible for me to respect and love him the way I used to when I was just a kid. With that, if I still use up every money he earns without knowing when and how I will repay them, I’ll feel really horrible. I have already felt so horrible actually.

It would be nice to have an ambition but with my current attitude I don’t think I can ever make them proud of me or give them a luxury life. I should just go with a goal of not making them worry about me.