subdee

THIS PART ON THE OTHER HAND. (I really did not expect to finish so soon, it's just that I couldn't stop reading. ^^; good thing I didn't have anything important to do today, four hours sleep = not a good way to start the school year.) Scanslations are only up to the middle of volume 60, therefore I am only up to middle of volume 60.

Part Five: There is this nice-looking and polite young man who wants to be the best gangster (a Gang Star), so he joins the Mafia (this part takes place in Italy) and is assigned to work with five other boys who all dress outrageously. At first the others don't trust him, but eventually they come to respect him, and then to unconsciously rely on him even though he is technically not the leader of their operating cell. The beautiful thing about this is that he and the leader are friends or at least co-conspirators (they want to take down the Big Boss FOR GREAT JUSTICE), and so there's no awkwardness in the gradual shift of power. Bruno is capable, not the type to hold it against someone who issues orders in a crisis if they're sound. Giorno, in turn, stays out of the way most of the time.

There's a series of chapters that stick Giorno and one other member of the group together in a crisis, and each time the other member comes to the realization that Giorno's judgement is always absolutely reliable, and there is just something about him that is extremely compelling so that almost before they knew what was happening, they'd accepted Giorno in their hearts. I felt like I was witnessing the birth of cult leader. ^_^

So that's one thing. But really part five is ALL ABOUT THE STANDS. They are SO COOL omg. It's like they bypass reason and go straight to the section of the brain responsible for recognizing cool things. The art has a lot to do with this. The stands in this section aren't just fascinating, they are also visually exciting, stuff like melting walls and liquid floors and zippers on faces and running up stairs that sink so that you end up back where you started. Part Four had an Escher stand that sort of hinted at the kind of optical effects Araki busts out in this part, but really you haven't seen anything until you've seen three of the characters turned into stackable cubes which are then reassembled into furniture. NO, REALLY.


( More on stands )
( Random observations )

***

I like the new tracking feature so much that I added it to the entry comment bar on my journal. *g* If you're a paid or permanent account user with flexible squares as your layout, here are the tutorials you can use to do this:

1. http://community.livejournal.com/s2flexisquares/420736.html?thread=3592064#t3592064, builds on
2. http://community.livejournal.com/s2flexisquares/2307.html, see
3. http://murklinstest.livejournal.com/17235.html for instructions on creating a custom theme layer.

Fixed FST download links: http://sub-divided.livejournal.com/86235.html. Still missing WRCFST, but added the mysterious vanishing Fruits Basket soundtrack (tracklist -- scroll up for zip).

As long as I am dealing in uploads, wheezambu put these up:

Welcome to the NHK
Ep:01
Ep:02
Ep:03
Ep:04
Ep:05
Ep:06
Ep:07

This is that series about the hikakomori who thinks all of his problems are caused by the NHK (the television station, though he refers to it as the Hikakomori Association of Japan). I gotta say, the anime doesn't do much with the "main character suffers from paranoid delusions" angle. Though it is brought up occasionally, most of the focus is on main character Tatsuhiro Sato's social anxiety and terrible interpersonal skills.

I thought this would be a comedy with serious elements, BUT NO, it's a serious social commentary. There are jokes -- mostly centered around otaku haha -- but they don't really deflect attention away from the seriousness being a twenty-something shut-in. And consequently, some of them are not very funny. -_-; On the other hand the production values for this are phenomenal. It looks really, really good. The soundtrack is also great, and the voice acting. Basically, Welcome to the NHK takes no shortcuts. This includes the script. Tatsuhiro is not secretly cool, his condition is not the result of a cheap traumatic plot device (though for a while the series fools you into thinking this might be the case), the girl who wants to help him does not know what she's doing, his path to salvation is script-writing hentai dating sims, etc. Who knows, maybe all this is common sense in Japan. I was impressed, though. I'm not sure whether I like it, but I'm interested enough to keep watching.

Also, the moral of the series so far seems to be that it is better to be an otaku depised by the majority of the population, but accepted by a subset, than to be so preoccupied with being "normal" that you reject all social interaction that doesn't meet with your high standards. And that is definitely a moral I can get behind XD.

Thought I'd work at getting my fic journal up to date (for once) and I remembered these. Letters, written last January, for svz_insanity on her birthday. (Stacey, you don't mind, do you?)

***

To combat the sorry state of English education in Japan, students at all grade levels are now required to exchange letters with a native speaker. The program calls for U.S. students to write first -- because they are more likely to quit -- so these are in reply to svz_insanity's introductory letter.

( Prince of Tennis )

( Death Note )

( Death Note )

***

Speaking of gift ficlets, eeeeee Suzumiya Haruhi!

falxumbra, you'd like this. Cheese! Cheese everywhere! Gratuitous eye-gougings! Traumatic backstories! Emotionally retarded men with bulging muscles!

I told worldserpent I couldn't read this series, but what I actually meant was that I tried it in one of those weird "skimming" moods -- you know, the kind where you can't concentrate long enough to do anything productive -- and since I'd heard the first two arcs were sketchy, I started with the third. There was a lot of dialog (which I skimmed), and there were all these suddenly-introduced characters who were not particularly likable. The Stand powers were boring and I concluded that whatever the appeal of the series was, it was beyond my ability to appreciate. Strangely, the one thing I have heard turns most people off -- the art -- wasn't an issue.

But if canis_m can read it, so can I! After all, she is not even a shounen fan! This time I started at the beginning and...OMG, how could I have been so dumb?! This series is gr8. Dio's father won me over. He's this classic dirty thieving abusive drunk. The first arc isn't just set in 19th century England, it's filled with 19th century English characters. I bet he robs graves too. Dio is so evil. The part where he is best friends/secret worst enemies with Jonathan gets a little repetitive, but it is saved by the way he achieves ever higher levels of diabolical evil. The first final showdown was awesome. ( Read more... )

Finishing the third arc today. I've got most of the day to read, I'll probably be finished with scanlations by tonight.

P.S. Going the serious-fandom-research route for fan_extension. The journal is doctairej. That stuff in the userinfo is not actually a full explanation of what we'll be doing, more like a few broad hints to tempt people into signing up. I'd like some Western media fans to sign up too, but who knows if that will happen.

P.P.S. A note so I don't forget about these before I blog them, it's been so long. The books I've read since July split evenly into good and bad:

Good
Intuition by Allegra Goodman
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Around the Bloc by Stephanie Elonzo Griest
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

Bad
His Quiet Dust by William Styron
Half-Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins
The Best American Travel Writing, edited by Jamaica Kincaid
Maps for Lost Lovers by who really cares? I couldn't get past the first page.
The Fall of the Towers by Roger Delany.

Writing these up was no fun at all. But if not now, then when? NO DAY BUT TODAY.

I'm posting the two longest ones first, since they are somewhat related to each other.

Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore
A fifteen-year-old boy runs away from home, and a man with a mysterious mental handicap can talk to cats. Eventually, their lives intersect. I liked this one better than Hard-boiled Wonderland. tarigwaemir said something about the writing (or translation) having more punch, but I didn't think so. It took me a long time to get used to so many stock phrases. They weren't bad, but they were distracting. ( Read more... )


Pamela Dean - Tam Lin
Janette goes away to college, where she gets along really well with one roomate (Molly) and learns to tolerate another (Tina). Additionally, there are all these beautiful, mysterious, somewhat unnerving students hanging around, many of them Classics majors. Jannette is involved with three (Nick, Thomas, and Robin). The book is a retelling of the Scottish ballad Tam Lin, in which the brave and headstrong Janet saves her otherworldly lover from the clutches of the Fairy Queen. ( Read more... )

Bookblogging would be easier if I didn't feel the need to WRITE SO MUCH. -_-;; Here, have a super short movie review:

Snakes on a Plane
SURPRISINGLY GOOD. Well, not the scenes they added to up the sex/violence/ridiculousness. But the underlying movie, the one that makes no sense but is ernest anyway? That movie's pretty good. When the passengers all rally together to fight off those pheromone-crazed exotic snakes on that airplane, you really root for them. Even the dumb motocross kid.