i'm not procrastinating! my template has to update all the pages on my website so it'll be chugging along for a little while XD

reading

i just finished ai yori aoshi - 17 volumes of harem romance! XD altho before you condem me to the very depths of bad taste, there are a few things about this series that make it stand out from things like love hina (...not that i actually minded love hina as much as a lot of people did o.O; )

( main contain slight spoilers for ai yori aoshi )

i've just started re-reading genshiken, which wren10514 very kindly gave me the last 3 volumes of for christmas! i can't remember how many times i've read the first volume of genshiken but i'm still finding details that i really like in the backgrounds...its such a great series <3

watching

would you guess it? still watching DS9! XD we're on series 6 now so the plot's really heating up...i like the first couple of seasons but it also improves as it goes on, and i've never seen series 6 or 7 before so i'm really enjoying seeing them for the first time!

we finished paranoia agent a week or so ago - i'm really glad i bought that series, i can see myself watching it again and noticing a lot of things i hadn't realised on the first viewing (altho why are there a couple of random filler episodes in the middle of such a short series? o.O; )

also watched a couple more eddie izzard stanups - dress to kill and definate article. i prefer definate article as dress to kill is a little more political...altho my fav is still glorious...'ahhh! i'm covered in bees!' XD

playing

at the mo i'm in love with katamari! its a great pick-up / put-down game so i usually just play the odd level or two (i don't have time for any long gaming sessions @ the mo o.O; )

i also really like virtua fighter 4 - out of all our fighting games i think this one has the best controls (plus i'm a bit better at it than i am at the others ^_~ ). altho tekken 5 is still the prettiest ^^

still not even started phoenix wright 2 or okami! but i feel secure in the knowledge that as soon as i get bored there are other games waiting in the wings! *yay* :D

Tags: anime, games, manga
aroundabout now, i am: working

after (actually now i come to think of it) many months of planning, rodentnetworks (nattherat's) website is up and running!

it can be found here

www.rodentnetworks.com

she designed and implemented all the workings of the site, all i'm doing is hosting it and posting updates ^^ anyway, check it out! nattherat is a great upcoming talent - she's only in college but she's been drawing better figures than i can now since before i even started comicking! (darn her! XD )

i especially love nattherat for drawing the amazing Solid Spy - a CLM fancomic! (i really hope one day we can share a table at an event or something...that would be super cool <3 )

anyway must ramble less! argh...we just watched last week's episodes of denno coil to catch up for tomorrow and one of them is totally heartbreaking! its like, look at this cool creature, now watch it slowly die... ;_;  but still i absolutely adore that series so its pretty cool that i get to watch more tomorrow too ^_^

Tags: anime, art, clm, random
aroundabout now, i am: tired

i found this track on my computer when i was trying to clear up some space on my hard drive (120GB is soooo not big enough! >.< )


anywhoo i'd totally forgotten i had it! its from ayakashi: classic japanese horror. i didn't think that much of the anime series (admittedly we only watched the first episode, and i think it was on halloween night last year when i just so happened to be feeling incredibly rough [not via alcohol tho, i think i ate a bad pizza o.O; ... the perils of unhealthy eating! XD ] )

i have to admit i'm a sucker for japanese hip hop (i have the samurai champloo soundtrack on CD :D ) - the japanese seem to have much more fun with hip hop than a lot of US or UK artists and it doesn't come across like they're try to be well ard pimps or whatever XD

in fact the samurai champloo soundtrack has loads of loverly jazzed-up chill out tracks on it *mmm* ^_^

has anyone else seen afro samurai? we watched the first 2 eps but haven't had a chance to watch the rest yet ... its not baaaad ... its got some very cool moments in it.... but seriously it just makes me want to turn it off and put champloo on - go on champloo show em how to make a samurai anime! XD

wierdly enough i can't remember any of the afro samurai soundtrack off the top of my head...o.O;

/ramble

Tags: anime, music
aroundabout now, i am: tired

we finally joined a gym - mega yays! XD we went for our induction yesterday night (and it was one of those long ones where they go through all the weights machines as well as the CV stuff) and that was good, but i woke up this morning feeling all headachey and ill *grr*

ah well that's gone down a lot now so i'm cracking on with another good day's work!

it felt really good to get back into just moving around more (i walk quite a bit but most of the time i just sit at a desk so it was good to do stuff like the cross trainer to really warm up the ol muscles ^_^ ) ...i'm positive about it now, but just wait for the bitching when i've been going for a few weeks and i can't be arsed any more XD

reading, watching & playing

oo...i haven't done this in a while! here goes...

i just finished a cool travel book called hokkaido highway blues which is about a canadian guy who hitchhiked up japan from cape sata to cape soya at the same time as the cherry blossom front. it was a good read - an interesting look at the real japanese people that he interacted with in their daily lives, rather than an overly romantic look at japan ^^

as usual at the mo we're still watching DS 9 - seriously, i love that show! XD we're on season 5 now so only 2 more to go after this o.O;

anime-wise we've just finished the first disk of paranoia agent, and i'm enjoying it just as much as i thought i would! i'm really glad i bought the box set ^_^

games-wise i'm back on the DS after a month or so's break, playing phoenix wright 1 and loving it! boy is that an addictive game! (altho i haven't yelled 'objection!' at the DS yet as i think i'll look a bit stupid o.O; )

i've been catching up with the geek syndicate podcast which is a really amusing mix of kinda rough sounding london guys talking about how much they like comics o.O; one i really got into lately was a discussion about western comics and how they might be shooting themselves in the foot by being sorted by publisher rather than genre (amongst other things)

richard cheese took over for music again whilst i was doing my momiji designs (well wren10514 brought her albums down so i just had to listen to them all again! XD ) but today i've discovered the sound track to ghost hound, which is chock full of cool jazz tunes! its got a kind of yoko kanno cowboy bebop soundtrack vibe but with a few less of the sad songs methinks

here's the opener so you can get an idea of what its like

Tags: anime, books, games, gym, music, random
aroundabout now, i am: busy

dennou coil is a new anime series we started watching last night and is right up my street, if you haven't experienced it yet it's got lots of my favourite things in it!

- cyberpunk
- cute yet random things
- slice of life

and just lately i seem to be more into

- stories about kids

(i'm writing one for RSoM, and reading lots of yotsuba and strawberry marshmallow o.O; )

it also seems to wear a ghibli influence on its sleeve (some things are quite similar to my neighbour totoro), but TBH they're not too similar, and as i love totoro that's fine by me! XD

anyway if you like any of the above then give it a go! here's the opening for ya

Tags: anime
aroundabout now, i am: enthralled

dragon half came today *yaaaaaay!!* according to the box its

"the funniest anime ever made" - Just about everyone actually

XD

oo...maybe i'll draw a mink fanart over the weekend...there's not enough dragon half fanart out there!

in other news, shoulder pain is slowly going down thanks to rest and ibuprofen >.< i've now thumbnailed out quite a bit of about 8 pages of my RSoM (i'm trying to do a 1/2 decent job of the thumbnails so that lee can have a looksee and tell me whether the story is decent enough...lots of panel boundaries drawn but not everything has yet been drawn within them! XD ) ...at the moment it comes to 17 pages in all

i've also worked out pretty much what will go on each page and pretty much the entire script (well the story was written a while back and i've just been doing almost nothing but RSoM sketches for the last 2 days [bar reading murakami whilst laying my back out flat on the floor >.< ] )

watching, reading and playing

still watching loads of DS9 - i love it so much! we're up to series 4 now and i'd better get my hands on some cash before we finish it because we don't have the box sets for series 5 & 6 yet >.<

saw the 1st episode of afro smurai last night - its quite good, the music is actually well integrated and atmospheric, not just crappy hip hop at all *phew* it has some nice bits of deadpan comedy in it and the look of the show is very slick with some nice character designs too, however i really think its trying a little too hard to be super cool, which makes it a bit stilted to me o.O; (also i'm not sure whether getting a lot of the characters to talk in a sort of overdone black american way was supposed to be funny, but it really is XD ...motherfucker XD ) all in all so far i wouln't want to swap our samurai champloo DVDs for this (TBH it kinda makes me want to re-watch champloo as i can remember now how good it was o.O; )

at the mo i'm reading 'hardboiled wonderland and the end of the world' by murakami. its good! apparently it inspired the anime series haibane renmei, which i saw/bought a couple of years ago, so i might re-watch that as i'm getting a bit nostalgic for it ^^

games-wise i'm not playing an awful lot, i seem to be using my free time for anime, reading and drawing at the moment so my poor little DS is sitting alone ;_; altho we do play the odd few rounds of worms 2 on it - i love that game! my worms talk like james brown! *dies of cute*

...i'm sure it'll get a lot more use once wren10514 gets here ^_~

eep! i guess i should get off the computer again o.O; its so wierd not to be surgically attached to it all day and evening o.O;

Tags: anime, ds, murakami, random, rsom
aroundabout now, i am: sore

it looks like i'll probably be missing the last 2 episodes of chevalier d'eon at next week's WedsAnime as my grandmother's funeral is on the tuesday and we'll only be getting back from gloucestershire quite late in the evening the day after...

...so as i was considering what to do with my time today i thought i'd catch up on some of the other anime i've missed from WedsAnime, and lo and behold i've got the last 3 episodes of sola, the last 2 episodes and eureka 7 and the last 2 episodes of deathnote to watch!

...it seems i can never actually be there for the end of a series o.O;

in other anime news i'm still gagging to buy more speed grapher but with no funds, we got afro samurai last week but haven't watched any yet (tho the art cards in the box are quite cool), and we have a copy of dragon 1/2 coming in the post (one of my only end-of-adv buys in the end...pity gantz was so expensive, i'd have loved to own that anime ;_; )

in other end-of-adv comments...i'm really going to miss the yotsuba manga ;_; i wonder if anyone else will pick it up?

Tags: anime
aroundabout now, i am: sore

we finally got round to watching vols 1 & 2 of speed grapher that i got given for christmas - i still love that show so much! (shame its going to cost a lot to buy another 5 DVDs of it o.O; )

anywho here's the opener, which is up there in my favourite anime openers now! (i love the graphical touches, the 80s influence and the sort of james bond-y-ness of it). it was originally set to duran duran's 'girls on fim' but there were (i think) copyright issues with distribution using that song over here...personally i'm so happy they couldn't use it as i love the funky tune they've set it to now!

Tags: anime
aroundabout now, i am: okay

so AVD appear to be having an insane online sale (every volume of rahxephon for only £2 each? *faints* ) however their site appears to be broken...sheer amount of traffic i wonder? or is this all a clever ruse to get us to their site and then whip the cheap DVDs out from under our noses once again >.<

EDIT: apparently their phone line is not connecting and emails sent to them bounce...they're certainly being difficult to contact o.O;

Tags: anime
aroundabout now, i am: somewhat annoyed

anime

i'm collecting the last 2 episodes of series it seems! i still haven't made time to finish the last 2 eps of eureka 7 or deathnote, and i've also seen all of gantz bar the last 2 as well...one of these day's i'll just have to force myself to sit and have a last-2-episodes-marathon or something o.O; (its because they're all subtitled, so i can't draw or eat my dinner while they're on... XD )

...altho we've started watching GITS: SAC 2nd gig again (we nearly made it to the end last time but something, i can't remember what, came up and our viewing got interrupted) - i'm really enjoying re-watching it! altho i still am finding it hard to follow o.O; we've not got much left to go on that one so hopefully we'll finish it by christmas and not get interrupted again!

we've got a couple of new ones for WedsAnime too now - chevalier d'eon, which is by production IG (who did GITS), and sola. chevalier is well put together with lots of detail to the characters and backgrounds and i'm certainly not minding watching it, however i guess my tastes don't really go into historical-style stuff much as i don't find the setting all that compelling...plus the use of psalms as spells is a little silly (altho i'm sure to the japanese market it probably seems cooler)

at the moment sola seems like any other harem anime so i'm not too bothered - some of the writing's quite good tho so it does make me chuckle every now and then ^^ i liked the use of light in the 1st episode (the main character is obsessed with taking pictures of the sky, so you get lots of nice shots at different times of day and in different weathers, and they were quite careful to change the colour of the light entering rooms etc. depending on what time of day or weather it was...however in subsequent episodes they seem to have dropped this a bit which is a tad dissapointing as it gave it a nice angle of artyness...)

reading

i'm also collecting mags o.O; we've got several issues of imagine fx and even neo that i haven't got round to reading yet (which is wierd for me as i usually read each month's neo mag within the first few days of getting it o.O; )

on the flip side tho i've been reading so much murakami! in the last month and a bit i've read blind willow sleeping woman, the elephant vanishes, south or the border west of the sun and sputnik sweetheart! ...altho now i've run out of the stack that the toothycats leant me ;_;

i just finished sputnik sweetheart last night - its a strange tale and i don't think i understand its meaning on all the levels i'm supposed to o.O; however, did anyone else notice a heck of a lot of parallels in this book to other short stories and novels of murakami's? i noticed these from other works:

- the story about the cat that goes crazy and climbs a tall pine tree, never to come back down
- the story about the old lady being eaten by cats
- a character waking up in the middle of the night hearing music, following the sound and then finding that there's no-one there...

...there may well have been more that i dont remember off the top of my head too...

anyway i'm at a little bit of a loss as to what to read next...i've flicked through neo (they have a cool japanophile stocking filler section..which was kinda sad for me as i'm not getting a stocking this year ;_; ) and i plan to have a perusal of sweatdrop's christmas special which looks very sweet ^^

i might read 'manga: 60 years of japanese comics' as we've had that since last christmas and i haven't read it yet! although i think i've got murakami withdrawl... ¬_¬

playing

haha! true to form i've stopped playing neverwinter nights 2 a stone's throw from the end! XD the problem is that really i need to just play it for a whole day and finish it in one, but at the mo i've got too much else going on to do that o.O;

i'm still mucking about with the sims 2 - its fun as its so very nicey-nicey! i challenge anyone to stay stressed or in a bad mood after playing the sims for a bit - its full of small victories and cute things ^_^

listening to

system of a down! my god they're talented! ^O^ (erm...but i have a horrible tendency to talk over they're songs about how talented they are, not allowing anyone else to hear the actual song ^^;; )

also listening to capsule and my cool parapara collection from nekofairy666 - good stuff! ^_^

comics

not much movement on fleet or rapunzel as i've been super busy with work and various little projects this last week (not to mention planning all the christmas food - which is a pretty big job when you're planning for the whole family...we're going to be spending an awful lot of the time around christmas preparing and cooking food i think o.O; )

today's CLM strip is done and will be up ASAP - this is the last pirate one for a little bit as it's going to be christmas specials all the way from next week until christmas! XD (and depending on how quicklt i get them done, there may even be 2 updates a week until christmas ^_^ ... bonus of actually spending most of the holiday season in our own house for once! XD )

*phew!* well that was a long update o.O; well i'll go do some other stuff now....*toddles off*

Tags: anime, comics, games, murakami, music
aroundabout now, i am: happy