A – Anime

And here we are kicking off this years A to Z challenge! My 2016 is Pokemon, due to a high level of current nostalgia and looking forward to the new games coming out later this year (Sun/Moon & Go!)

A is for anime. For those that don’t know, anime is a Japanese style of animation, which is where Pokemon originated from, as do many other great things.

The anime follows Ash, the main character, as he travels around the regions of the Pokemon world, encounters new people, catches and builds relationships with all his Pokemon, earns gym badges and competes in challenges and leagues.

It’s been going on since 1998 in the English language, so yes I do remember waking up early Saturday morning, running downstairs, and switching on the TV for Saturday morning kid’s breakfast and tuning in for that week’s episode, as they are currently running over 919 episodes, with several seasons passing through the different generations. No I am not up to date with the anime, but given how nostalgic I’m feeling, it’s something I might go and re-watch.

Although the games are said to be the main part of the Pokemon universe, the anime is way to introduce the Pokemon and world in a more specialised fashion, and each episode will typically involve a new Pokemon. There was even a feature (which may or may not still happen) over the break where they would show the silhouette of a Pokemon and make you guess it – “Who’s that Pokemon?”.

Yes, this is technically a kids cartoon show, but as I keep saying, nostalgia can play a big part, and because it is aimed at kids, you not only have the people who grew up with Pokemon, you attract the young generations in as well, and thus the Pokemon continues to be exceedingly popular.

And, of course, with any TV cartoon or anime, you have the theme song. It’s changed over the seasons, but the original one still has a special place in my heart.

 

Pokemon of the Day

A is for Arcanine.

Fire type, canine like Pokemon with orange/cream fur and black stripes a bit like a tiger, it evolves from Growlithe (with the aid of a fire stone).

Arcanine is one of my all time favourite Pokemon, mainly because I think he’s a bit like a tiger, would be super fluffy, and you could totally climb on his back and ride him, and when he is rumoured to reach top speeds of over 200mph that would be awesome. They are also super loyal, as long as you are loyal to them, so they make great partners. That, and their natural habitats are often volcanoes, and I do love me a volcano.

 

 

Sushi

Is freaking awesome. Anime Soc just had a social this evening where we took advantage of 40% off vouchers as Yo! Sushi and had a delicious evening meal. And I got a mochi free since I ordered a plate but they only had one left – go free mochi!

Other sushi that I love are maki. Fish/vegetables in rice with seaweed wrapped around it – that’s what maki is. I love cucumber and assorted fish maki, which has tuna, salmon and prawn involved. I also had yakisoba, which is noodles with vegetables and chicken. Or at least chicken yakisoba has chicken in it. The vegetable one just has vegetables.

And then there was mochi. Mochi is hard to describe, but it’s a desert with a chewy outer shell made up of hat you get leftover when you boil rice, with some sort of delicious thing stuffed inside. It’s a lot more tasty than I’ve described, especially the chocolate mochi, which is of course what I had.

So now I am full of delicious, delicious sushi, and with 40% my bank is a happy as my stomach.

Floating Along

I haven’t been doing a lot this week. At least it seems that way. Just took a look, and I haven’t updated in a week, so that seems like I have fallen behind in my blogging promises. Unless you count a week as sunday to sunday, in which case I can still redeem myself.

LARP business, and Fenrir Matt has stepped down as a ref, which means a ref election is in the new future, and I do intend to run, and considering that I came fifth in the last election (when four refs were elected), I think I have a pretty good chance of becoming a ref. Not saying that is what is going to happen, but there is a good chance. Not sure when the election is actually happening though. Just have to wait for them to announce it.

Work is plodding along. Got my proposal done, now I just have to work on my actual project. 6000 words isn’t too tough a target to meet in 9 weeks, right?

Housing for next year is on the lists as well at the moment. I have people to live with next year, although we don’t know if a fifth housemate will be joining us or finding his own place, but he should have an answer tonight, and then we can start to look at the right number of bedrooms in the house.

I feel like I haven’t done a lot this week. And I need to get out of the house, so I shall be going to Anime Soc tonight and talking housing and watching a film the looks to be so dreadful it’s funny, which will be nice.

End of 2011

So it’s the end of the year, and I have to say, where the hell did it go?!? Seriously, I can remember back to summer and that doesn’t seem like it was long ago at all, even though I’ve had a whole semester of university since then. Although I don’t remember the first half of the year all that well.

Quick review of the year!

January:  Year of Indulgence begins! Many 101 theme challenges. First 7/8 Character in LARP. Tonsilitis.

February: More 101 theme challenges. Hot Water Bottles. 24 Hour! I vow to never do the food order again. Early morning ramblings

March: 100th Post! Anime. Mafia popularity explodes. In the Hive. Graphics 1 Coursework. Seriously – Mumps? I had my jabs! Up to 47.

April: Still ill. From Wales to Strom in short succession. 2 updates on 101 Theme Challenge, I was slipping.

May: Exam time! Filled with revision, apathy and the drive to do everything but revise. World of warcraft.

June: More Strom! Scotland! Boredom results in Cleaning! Tuna BBQ!

July: 54. Stars. Tabletops. World of Warcraft. First level 8 character in LARP, all the 7/8’s in the world. Away from Norwich, back home. Strom again.

August: Moved into a new house, lovely new house. Boyfriend in hospital. Birthday and Underwear!

September: Laziness to the extreme! Also Geology in Greece, stupid hot weather. Start of the new term, lectures, pub crawls and all the rest.

October: Illness, unproductive due to world of warcraft. Mondays are not their own fault. Unhealthy food is the best. Careers fair – eek! I’m actually growing up.

November: Anime, NaNoWriMo, writing, lots of coursework and projects, go-go-go-go!

December: Unplanned date, finished coursework, yipee! DnD on monday nights. Back home for christmas, roasts, presents and family all followed. Should have posted more this year. Will try for bi-weekly updates at the very least next year!

 

So here’s to a good year gone, a better one to come, and many happy returns all round!

Anime Screening Week 6

I said I was going to post about the anime we were watching, and I never did. Oops. Here it is, a little late then.

Wolf’s Rain

A series about wolves. Wolves have been extinct in the eyes of humanity for 200 years, but are actually still around, they just appear as human to the humans. The wolves are following the scent of moon flowers to try to find paradise. There are found main characters. The strong silent one, the slightly comic one, and tough city street guy, and then the kid. Also they are all male and it’s a running joke that we call it slash wolves cause it totally is.

Gundam 00

A group of people called celestial being have declared that they want war to end, and they will top anyone who instigates war with the use of there gundam, big robots with super powerful capabilities. Which is hypocritical, ending war with more fighting, but hey ho there we go. We follow the efforts of the gundams as they try to end war in the world.

The World God Only Knows

A school boy is great at getting the girl. As long as she’s digital. He’s the champion of dating games and gets tricked into signing a contract to help a demon track down and save lost souls, who have attached themselves onto girls. Now he has to use those video game skills in real life, to much hilarity since he still hates the real world.

A Certain Magical Index

A girl named Index changes Toumo life when she crashes onto his balcony. She’s part of a church that protects magic, or rather protect people from magic and has an ability called perfect memorization, which means that she can hold every word of 103,00 grimoires in her head. And remember them all. The plot is a little fast, so in five episode we’ve found out that every year Index needs to have the rest of her head that isn’t holding those grimoires cleared or she could die, but in the last episode we found out that may not be true, and the Church probably isn’t all what it seems to be.

Honey and Clover

A slice of life romance thing set in an art college. I haven’t found much plot in there, but that because I think it’s about the subtlety of romance, and how relationships grow and fade. It’s okay, nbot really my thing but not bad at all.

Madoka Magica

School girls get the chance to get thier greatest wish granted, but in return they have to battle the evil witches who spread corruption and misery everywhere. This follows the two girls who get his chance, and other magical girls, as they ahve to decide whether it is worth thier lives to get thier greatest witche, and thier battles along the way. It’s kinda dark, but good at the same time.

Panty and Stocking

Fallen (sorta) angels have to redeem themselves. Except thier powers revolve arounrd thier undergarments. Panty’s knickers turn into a gun, and Stocking’s stockings turn into swords. It’s crass, loud, hilarious and I love it. Apparently it gets a plot at some point in the near future as well. They have to kill ghosts (evil spirits) to gain heavens (golden coins) to return to heaven.

And that’s it for this year. A good collection and we voted to keep in everything, so everyone else thinks so as well, which is good.

First Lecture

Right. I’ve realised I am bad at keeping this blog updated. Hopefully, now that it is term again, more things will be happening, and I will have constant internet access and so will be able to blog more often, and have more to blog about.

This week has been hectic, so I’ll go through it day by day.

Monday: Had to go into uni to work on some coursework from the geophysics trip to Greece. We’ve gotten all the coursework for this so I just now need to actually sit down and do some coursework. We had to finish off the bit of work we should have done on the last day, except it’d rained the night before and people’s rooms had flooded so no one had had any sleep so the lecturer’s were sensible and said we could wait until we got back to do it. And now we have two more bits to write up and hand in and two weeks to do them. Then we had a committee meeting to talk about a couple of things before socmart on Tuesday, and we decided how to actually tackle the issue of Equality and Diversity Champion. Then my boyfriend came round in the evening.

Tuesday: Socmart day! I got to dress up as Ryanne and wonder around handing out flyers to all of the new people. I then decided, though talking to various people, that I was going to run for LARP ref on sunday. Oh yeah, we’re having a LARP election on sunday, for all four ref positions. I think I have a decent chance of getting a position, considering who else is running. Then we had the icebreaker in the evening, which was awesome and I got to meet many many new awesome newbies and I really hope they stick around. Also, frothing. Frothing is awesome.

Wednesday: Spent the night at Marks’. Woke up really late, missed a lunch date with my friend (sorry!), walked into town to talk to some people in starwynn about things, went home, prepared for a committee meeting that never happened, tried to do some work, then gave up and went on WoW. Spent all evening on WoW and eventually the guild managed to complete a raid, after failing at firelands first boss we went over to do the Throne of the Four Winds. And after several attempts and failings and tryings we eventually did that one, killing all four bosses and getting guild achievements and loot. Worst bit was resto druid loot dropped, a belt, and I already had a better one >.<

Thursday: Woke up, played a bit of WoW, came onto campus for my first lecture of the new term. Speed lecture was speedy! Seriously, the lecturer talked at a hundred miles an hour. Am now sitting in the Hive with people talking about everything and anything. Will be here until anime this evening where we are going to watch Howl’s moving castle. It’s a good day, if far far too hot. Not as hot as Greece, but hotter than I would like it.

Tomorrow is the newbie pub crawl, saturday is Sabbat, and then all of the excitement on sunday with ref elections. Will hopefully have an update tomorrow. If all else fails, I’ll talk about what I’ve done in my lectures.

Home 2

Still home. It was my dads birthday today, so we went up to reading to spend the day with him. I baked him some muffins and did them up in a pretty box with a card. I like making present. For one it’s so much cheaper than buying, and it’s really satisfying to make something and give it to someone.

We then went to see the movie Horrible Bosses, which was very funny. It’s a movie about three guys who hate their bosses and then decide that it would be better if they were all dead. Hilarity ensures.

I’ve been to the movies quite a lot lately, well, that was my third in a couple of weeks. First, Green Lanturn, then bridemaids, and no Horrible Bosses. Movies are good, and entertaining.

I bought myself a present. A very nice sourcebook by the name of Anima: Beyond Fantasy. It’s a very pretty book and the reviews of it I’ve read says it’s a really good system as well. So I get to read and play/run that at some point. Things to do things to do, and maelstrom is so close and then straight after that I have to move into my new house. Busy times!

Anime of the New Year

I haven’t actually posted anything really much on anime. One post during the week ten screening in first term. Well, now we’ve just had week 7 of second term end, which is week 19 overall, so 9 weeks of anime to cath up on. The line-ups changed a bit. Now we have:

• Samarai Champloo
• Black Lagoon: Second Barrage
• Nodame Catabile
• Rosario Vampire
• Kimi no Todoke
• Darker Than Black
• Tests, Idiots and Summoned Beings.

So that’s techincally three new shows. We had black lagoon, and we’re now watching the second season since we love it so much. The short episodes have been replaced by a longer series, since we voted one of them out, and we didn’t have a replacement. This turned out to be Rosario Vampire, which is a bit fan service,with school, and supernatural creatures. And I think it’s awesome. Arakawa under the Bridge also finished, and has been replaced with Tests, Idiots and Summoned Beings, which is school/humour and it’s good.

Lets go through what happened in each episode this week. If I can remember. In Samarai, the three of the main character re-united after a couple of fight scenes with an extra character, who ended up getting set on fire and then jumping over a cliff into a river. In black lagoon, they are trying to complete a job to get a person who makes fake money out of the town whilst people are trying to kill the lot of them, nothing unusual there. In Nodame Cantabile, they were planning their first concert, and Nodame finished composing her music. Rosario vampire we learnt that water hurts vampires (it’s too pure for them) and meet some mermaids. Kimi no Todoke, they all went round Sawako’s house for the afternoon and had a hanging out session, then some stuff happened, they went somewhere else, and then Kazahaya was walking Sawako back to her house and then he almost kissed her. Que the entire room screaming out for him to kiss the girl. Darker than black was  a weird one, with Hei meeting a lackey for a mafia like organisation, hanging out with him, and then then mafiaso got given a doll to take care of that Hei and group were meant to be kidnapping, and he took it round Hei’s place and it ended there which was annoying. And in tests, there was a lot about lunchs, as two girls had made lunchs for the main character, and one of them was bad at cooking, whilst the other was too shy/ashamed to give the lunch she made for him to him.

And I think that’s a fairly good, if very brief run-down of the anime at the moment. We have: swords; guns; music; fan-service vampires; slice-of-life school; supernatural crime; and school humour. I like it, it’s better than it was last year.

The reason I’m doing this today instead of another theme is because I want to give myself some time to write some more of them, as I am starting to catch up on myself. I have the target to write five more before I go to bed tonight, which will give me more breathing room. Wish me luck!