Last updated October 11, 2006.
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August 02, 2005: On Sabbatical. Be back later.

Kodama George
Travelling. Itinerary not conducive to watching anime.

Kodama George and Tanokura Miyuki
So long.

P.S. Y'all should watch Kaze no Yojimbo, eh.

November 07, 2005: Still on Sabbatical.

So, this sabattical is going on a little longer than I planned. Everything is copacetic unless I run out of money, though.

In any case, I've started a little bit of anime-type catching up, but I've been avoiding anime blogs, message boards, and the IRC to avoid spoilers. Hey, what can I say, sometimes I don't give a damn about spoilers, sometimes I'm neurotically fastidious about avoiding them. Right now it's the latter.

[Update: I understand that this has nothing to do with Kaze no Yojimbo, but I don't care to fix it at this time.]

November 27, 2005: T-shirts.

I saw someone wearing a "I [moonlanguage] ANIME" t-shirt the other day. I'm kinda curious as to whether it said, "I AI ANIME," "I SUKI ANIME," or "I KOKORO ANIME." Personally, I hope it wasn't suki.

December 22, 2005: Anime DVD glut.

Nowadays when I pass through Best Buy's anime DVD section, I can't help but think that entirely too many shows are being licensed. I'm amazed that so many mediocre shows are licensed and released so quickly—and this coming from someone who has watched more than one season of Da Capo.

The basic economics at work have probably made the market at bit more competitive. You can see this in the proliferation of so-called thinpacks and multi-disc compliations that seem to come out quicker and quicker. Presumably, companies are acknowledging that their customers generally lack the budget to buy every single DVD in a six-disc series for every single title they wish to collect. (I also submit that the people purchasing those disc-ones-plus-collector-boxes-plus-extra-large-shirts jobbies are people who have already seen the entire series via fansubs, but that's a whole 'nother discussion right there.)

Anyway, I was saying that more and more titles are coming out as thinpacks now. For example, the full so-called platinum edition of Neon Genesis Evangelion can now be acquired for $50, and the full season of Narue no Sekai (Narue's World) is a steal at $30.

Not all these thinpacks are so inexpensive, though. The Mahoromatic thinpack is still about $100 (and arguably well worth it), and the first season of Cardcaptor Sakura sells for about that much as well.

Cardcaptor Sakura DVDs
Behold, the shoujo.

While I'm all in favor of more people purchasing the DVDs to this excellent show, I can't quite embrace the idea of Cardcaptor Sakura thinpacks. I still maintain that having a full rack of Cardcaptor Sakura DVDs on your shelf is critical compenent of "animu cred."

The same holds true of Full Moon wo Sagashite DVDs and Kokoro Library DVDs, providing we are ever fortunate enough to see such DVDs stateside. Sigh.

March 01, 2006: Anime blogging history.

Looking back at my old archives, I think my first anime-based blog entry was from February 16, 2001:

Princess Mononoke will be available on VHS for purchase in North America beginning March 13 this year. It is currently available to rent on both VHS and DVD, and available for purchase on DVD. Mark your calendars, eh. Kiki's Delivery Service is already available on VHS in both dubbed pan & scan and subtitled widescreen.

Man, that's a long time to be doing this. That was back when karmaburn.com was still a Geocities site and referenced anime pretty much never. More than five years as of last month, not including possible entires from the Geocities-only pre-karmaburn.com days of yore.

May 19, 2006: Anime idioms and viewing habits.

There are a number of staples in my anime viewing habits. At any given time, there is a high probability that I am watching some manner of the following types of shows:

  • Mahou shoujo.
  • Space opera.
  • Harem comedy.
  • Unrequited love. (Frequently overlaps with harem comedy.)
  • Something with giant robots. (Frequently overlaps with space opera.)
  • You can also reliably expect me to follow some manner of Yui Horie vehicle, or some show that compels compliance with the Ayako Doctrine.

Rather unusually, I am currently only following three shows: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, School Rumble 2, and Fate/Stay Night. (I guess technically I'm slowly re-watching Noir, from the Girls-With-Guns category I didn't mention.) This leaves out a lot of the usual anime classes. I can't properly claim Haruhi fits in any of the above categories. School Rumble, 2nd Term, satisfies the unrequited love category and the Yui Horie vehicle element. And Fate/Stay Night kinda hits the harem comedy elements, technically, as well as the Ayako Doctrine part. But where are my space opera, giant robot shows, and magikal girl shows?

I bet this is why I keep getting the urge to re-watch Gundam SEED Destiny, and why I'm so impatient for a Mahou Shoujo Fate Testarossa anime.

June 18, 2006: Tsun-Tsun, Dere-Dere.

I'm calling my shot: The tsundere subset of moe will soon overtake generalized moe itself to be the leading anime zeitgeist meme. Hell, it's practically there already.

It helps that tsundere is getting its own show this summer.

September 09, 2006: Yui Horie Faction, assemble!

Yui Horie's blog
Yui Horie's photo diary.

You know, seiyuu blogs would be a lot more interesting if they would focus more on photo-journaling their wacky adventures instead of taking pictures of food and/or pets all the time.

September 13, 2006: Planet.

I have been playing around with Planet. My ambition is to have an RSS aggregator with feeds from the anime blogs I read regularly. I would just use Raspberry Heaven's Mainichi Planet and its regular Planet, but this way is more fun, and I can tailor it to include just the blogs I feel like reading.

The current feeds do not yet accurately represent the blogs I regularly read; I just kinda threw it together to see if would even work, first. I'll almost certainly omit the blogs that display the full entry instead of just a short excerpt unless I can figure out how to truncate them.

So anyway, if any of you are reading this because you saw something new in your logs, and thought maybe someone was image leeching or something...nope, it's just me reading your stuff. I trust nobody will care that their website is being viewed in this manner instead of the, uh, regular way. For the time being, I don't plan on passing the URL around, so there will probably only be a few people who even know about the aggregator. Well, besides y'all.

September 23, 2006: Yui Horie.

Yui Horie
Yui Horie
Gosuhorie.

Yui Horie apparently turned 30 a few days ago.

In other news, if there's more to gosurori than tiny hats, black dresses, and zettai ryouiki, damned if I know about it.

October 04, 2006: RSS Syndication.

So, I've actually been thinking about incorporating RSS to this site. What can I say? The peer pressure is getting to me. Or something.

Being the particular sort of person I am, I've been debating for some time the relative merits of my options:

  • The easiest of these seem to merely utilize one of those websites, like http://www.wotzwot.com/rssxl.php, that generate RSS feeds from raw HTML. I'm probably too much of a control freak to do that, but I have no objection if some of y'all feel like doing this yourselves to add this site your own feed aggregators or blogrolls or something.
  • I could just break down and start using Wordpress or some other PHP + MySQL solution. This is probably the most sensible option, but I really don't feel like fussing with CSS and the myriad ways different browsers interpret it, anymore.
  • I could do nothing, and trust that anyone that reads this site regularly has already gotten used to reloading it manually every so often. I amend my first point: This is my easiest option.
  • I could write up some sort of infernal RSS generator myself, or modify someone else's work to suit these needs. Yeah, right.

In other news, there are no plans to enable comments. I haven't even listed the e-mail address for viewer mail in ages.

October 05, 2006: Cron.

In other news, cron hates me.

October 06, 2006: RSS and Blosxom.

Okay, I've tinkered enough with Blosxom and an RSS 2.0 plugin for it written by Andrew Cowie of operationaldynamics.com that I feel their integration with this site in its current form is satisfactory.

For the time being, I have no plans to use Blosxom outright, or Wordpress, or whatever, but I don't really have a compelling reason not to use Blosxom (or at least one of its PHP variants). I'll probably get around to it eventually. Then again, Momotato talked about switching to Wordpress over a year ago, and it marked the nigh abrupt end to his anime bloggering. COINCIDENCE?

 

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