Mistakes of Youth: The Blog (Powered by EXCELLENCE!)

Not much now. Will update when new things have started.

Current
Chii’s Sweet Home: Three minutes of stuff.
Ghost Hound: I don’t really care about this one anymore. Almost over.
Hakaba Kitarou: Subs have slowed down. Still decent entertainment with above-average art direction.
Kaiji: HOLY SHIT TISSUE BOXES THIS SHIT IS WILD
They Are My Noble Masters: Bleh.

Finished/Almost Finished
Clannad: Rushed but acceptable ending. I hope this after-story thing won’t be too long… but I suppose having questions answered would be nice.
Dragonaut: One episode to go. As horrible as this show was, I don’t regret watching it, since it was one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while.
Hayate no Gotoku: I’d welcome 50 more episodes. Nagi~
Minami-ke ~Okawari~: Yeah, I’m thinking asread didn’t get their Shuffle! budget for this one. Looks good, but moves awkwardly. Ending was fine.
Rosario + Vampire: One episode left. Decent for a crappy show.
Shakugan no Shana II: lol
Wolfy Spices: Well thank god that’s over!!
Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei: Waiting for Strato to sub the rest, but finished it raw. Very difficult to understand raw ;__;

Reading
Shinigami no Ballad: Past the deadline for the review, so trying to finish this one up. Works better as a cartoon.

Reading some KnJ chapters when they surface, and just finished another wonderfully confusing volume of Trigun MAXIMUM. I still have volumes of GSG unread, am almost caught up on OTAKU USA issues and have lots of unread Macias books from Christmas.

Can anyone recommend me any manga series that aren’t adaptations/have been adapted into an anime that I may like? I kind of wanna be an elitist manga reader, hur. Extra points if it’s not shoujo and not over 10 volumes.

Current
Clannad: Fine. Last arc killed two birds with one stone, I guess, so now we’re on to Nagisa.
Dragonaut: Yes, I’m still watching this, 21 episodes in. It’s so horrible, but it’s so bad it goes full circle and becomes good again.
Ghost Hound: Each episode is well done, but as a whole it leaves a lot to be desired.
Hakaba Kitarou: Carries itself on art direction, but is still enjoyably dark and mischievous. Makes me want a US release of the Gegege no Kitarou manga.
Hayate no Gotoku: Coming to a close. I wouldn’t mind a second season after something of a break. This last batch of episodes is pretty strong.
Kaiji: Working off shock value now. About six more episodes to go.
Minami-ke ~Okawari~: Not really funny, but an enjoyable watch. Asread’s animation doesn’t seem as good this time around, but I don’t remember much of what Shuffle! looked like past that one Memories episode I skimmed through for screencaps.
Rosario + Vampire: I should drop this crap, but I guess eight episodes is past the point of no return?
Shakugan no Shana II: Stuff is finally happening… four episodes until the end!
Spicy Wulf: Boring but watchable.
They Are My Noble Masters: Kind of want to drop this one too, but it’s not as bad as Rosario + Vampire. Carries itself of references.
Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei: Only good winter season show that’s not Hakaba Kitarou (and I guess Okawari). For serious. ZETSUBOU FAITO.

Not So Current
Dennou Coil: Watching this again for some reason. Still pretty boring, but I’ve gotten past the point where I dropped it last time.

Reading
Trying to get through back issues of OTAKU USA. Have stacks up unread manga sitting about. Should read those Macias books I got months ago.

Original Post

This is something of a true story. Yes, it is true that in my English 101 class last year, our first assignment was to write about anything we wanted. I however, did not write about moe. That happened about two years earlier in my Junior year of high school. See, in high school I was doing the IB, and part of trying to get your IB diploma was to write this 10 page essay called the Extended Essay. Me, being more of a Japanophile then than I am now (if your mind can fathom such a thing) wrote an “anthropological study” on otaku. The paper is horrible, and if I tried to read it again now I’d probably rip my face off. Anyway, the paper had a bit on moe. Now, when I wrote this (I guess back in… 2004? 2005?) I didn’t really know much about moe past the word. So I read a bunch of essays, and basically wrote about it as a desire to protect innocence and cited examples of certain works and magazines. Some time after I wrote it, I gave it to my English teacher to look over, and he said exactly what the guy in this comic says, word for word. As far as art goes, I don’t really like it. The drawings are sloppy and rushed. I do like the backgrounds and the lighting, though. I also like dressing the English teacher up as Lupin III.

I’m kind of running short of comic ideas. Nothing airing at the moment really inspires me to write anything funny. Well, I could do something about the two horrible Gonzo shows playing, but that’d probably be the same as that Soul Link comic I did a long while back. I do have a good supply of scripts that should last for a good 15 weeks, but reading them over, they seem very not funny. Eh. I probably need to give some of them a good editing job. Whatever. I kinda know what I want to do for next week, so that’s fine.

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