Daily Archive for January 26th, 2006

Kashimashi 3

Too tired to do a summary and also why re-invent the wheel? Check out the summaries by Omni and Kurogane. A Yasuna-centric episode but Tomari’s interaction with Hazumu plays an important role in the buildup. I liked very much how the primulas (which were not in the manga) were used again to emphasize Hazumu and Yasuna’s estrangement and then reconciliation. Pacing and structure was more believable with this reconciliation taking place gradually over two episodes and that Yasuna didn’t just mount her Get Hazumu’s Love Expedition straight after his transformation into her. I don’t think this detracts from Yasuna’s desire for Hazumu at all and IMHO makes Yasuna a more likeable and sympathetic character who felt guilty about turning down and hurting Hazumu. Well, she is relieved that Hazumu wants to be friends - “normal friends” said Hazumu but looks like the next episode will see Yasuna opening her heart to Hazumu. I’m still rooting for Tomari though. ;) The love letter and the Tomari fangirls were hilarous especially when one of them called Tomari her "prince". LOL

I don’t recall Yasuna having a dog in the manga either and the presence of her pet was a good device for her to see Hazumu snuggling with Tomari in the previous episode after the Attack of the Media Vultures. In this episode, Yasuna’s interaction with the dog showed her stoic attempt to cope with her loneliness but also underlined the cracks in that facade.

Again, elements of the manga have been reshuffled or changed but they largely improve the flow and coherence of the story. The alien, Sora Hitomi, was “detected” by Namiko-sensei twice before his infiltration of the school as a teacher (foreshadowed by the OP). I found Namiko annoying in the first two episodes but really had a hearty laugh when her students repeated her every word in class, even her sigh. The explanation of Jan-puu’s human form was also appreciated. And Hazumu’s mom rocks - love her Kyoto-ben and her power wrestling moves. I wonder if she’s related to School Rumble’s Karen Ichijou?

Screencaps follow: Continue reading ‘Kashimashi 3′

blog好き大好き

And so we bid an imminent fond farewell to Anime Blog Toshokan and welcome Jason’s creation of its new and improved successor, blog好き (blogsuki), now with its own domain, wider column width, search function and categories.

I trace my first use of an anime blog aggregators to the Elsewhere box in King Matthew of the Kingdom of Kawaii’s sidebar. It was a convenient way to see the latest posts without having to check out each site individually and it also generated a huge amount of hits for my own blog. :) However it was limited to displaying 11 or so posts at a time and I didn’t discern any archive or search function for it.

Then there was Anime Bloggers: A Daily Anime Review Site which was manually updated. Its listing of anime blog posts operated roughly 2005-07-22 to 2005-08-17 which was unsurprising due to the proliferation of anime blogs making manually updating an ever more tedious and time consuming task in seeking out posts and updating the main site in contrast to the RSS feed aggregator used in Matthew’s Elsewhere box.

On 2005-10-22, Jason Miao of Anime on My Mind announced the setting up of Anime Blog Toshokan, an anime blog RSS aggregator to give a wider picture of what’s happening in the anime blogging community as well as provide a better resource for English anime blog readers. About a week later Matthew launched a similar resource - the AnimeBlogger.net Antenna (I always think of the hair antennae of anime girls like Lunamaria when I see that). I thought this was an excellent thing and see both RSS aggregators as complementary rather than in competition with each other. There’s an element of backup redundancy as well as slightly different populations of anime blog feeding into the two. A great way to quickly discover new posts, new anime blogs and the lastest anime news and goodies. In all, greatly valued resources for my anime habit.

blog好き… just more to love.
And we loves it!