UNLIMITED BOX WORKS

The Mathematical Theoretical Version (the one I made up):

I am the edge of my shape.
Squared is my face and cubed is my volume.
I have proved over a thousand theorems.
Variable to rational,
Variable to imaginary,
These polygons hold many numbers,
Yet these polygons will remained unsolved.
So, as I calculate,
UNLIMITED BOX WORKS!

The Applicable Practical Version (the one a friend made up):

I am the edge of my shape.
Flat are my sides and sharp are my corners.
I have been created over a thousand times.
Unknown to bounce.
Nor known to roll.
Have withstood pressure to be stacked many times.
Yet, the contents will never be known.
So as I open,
UNLIMITED BOX WORKS!

Microbio + Anime

No, this is not a review on Moyashimon. I haven't finished microbiology yet so I'm not finishing Moyashimon until I finish that class.

ANYWAY because studying is so much fun, I decided to relate a bunch of microbiology to animelike things.


Anime Respiration

There are five classifications that Otakuisms fall into when classifying Anime Respiration. It is important to keep note of them in the case you would wish to cultivate any, by any chance.

Obligate Aniobe: These cultures must watch the most popular anime series and must always be given the top overwatched anime or else will perish. Examples are those who watch Naruto and Bleach.
Obligate Ananiobe: These otakuisms cannot stand the sight of immensely popular series. Instead, they stay far away on the bottom, only watching series that have never been heard of and never will be heard of. Any exposure to a popular anime series will result in a mass of flames and death of the otakuism.
Facultative Ananiobe: These otakuisms can tolerate a variety of anime series, but thrive best on the popular ones. They do not mind watching series less popular, but surely the more popular series are popular for a reason, right?
Microaniphile: These otakuisms dislike a strongly popular series, but still require the series to be somewhat popular for them to watch. Examples of this are those who dislike bleach or naruto but would go after something like Haruhi or any Key anime, which are fairly popular in Japan. However, none of these series have been overhyped, hence, a lower exposure of popular anime series.
Anitolerant: These otakuisms will watch anything, whether it's popular or not. They don't care if it's on the top of the list or on the bottom of the list, as long as there's something to watch.


Judging from these classifications, I would most likely classify an otakuism like me either Anitolerant or Obligate ananiobe. Probably more Anitolerant.

-----

Have you ever noticed that in some anime when a person becomes "healed" or while "healing" a wound, the wound or the healing hand will usually glow a glowing color? From reading my microbiology textbook, I think I can attribute this to a bacteria that produces a natural antibiotic. Apparently during the civil war, sometimes a soldier's wound would appear to glow in the dark and this was attributed to the soldier's wound as healing; in actuality, there is a luminescent bacterium known as Photorhabdus luminescens which produces a glowing light as well as an antibiotic which prevents infectious bacteria from taking advantage of the wound. So, whenever the next time you see a priest using "Heal!", think of the Photorhabdus luminescens!!!

-----

THE GIANT BACILLI IN TOUHOU ARE KILLING ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ef- tales of memories

With a bit of humiliation I will admit, this will probably be my favorite romance anime for a while.

There are other anime classified as romance that I hold in high regard, but in those cases I usually like them because of various other elements, mostly fantasy, more rarely comedy. For example, AIR is still my all-time favorite anime, but AIR had a lot of fantasy elements that I consider AIR more of a favorite fantasy type anime than a romance (plainly I couldn't see any romance getting past Misuzu and Yukito being brother and sister, anyway).

Similary ef-tales of memories had some fantastical elements, but they were not abstractly connected to reality. Instead, the show had a ton of symbolism. A RIDICULOUS AMOUNT THAT CAUSED ME TO RESURFACE MY TENDENCIES TO POINT OUT SUCH SYMBOLS... the broken leg, the sheep math problem, and ultimately, the novel written by the andrograde amnesia girl. I really could not help but say "that is just neat" everytime they included such symbolic elements, even though the world around them is still very much similar to a regular, realistic world.
(Save for some points that they never went into, which is a bit bothersome but serves the purpose of emphasizing that this is a romance anime.)
Those symbolic points, along with the andrograde amnesia case which I have to find interesting since I take biology and neurology courses, are the main aspects that set this anime apart from other romance anime. Other romance anime typically emphasize so much on lovey-dovey that it becomes boring to me to continuously watch it; this one had, first, the memory-deficient girl which has the audience (aka me) saying "interesting", then continues to add various symbolic meanings and drawings as the series goes on. It's sad to say that it's one of those anime I can't watch one time to catch all the symbolism and meanings, yet don't feel like watching it all over again... I might anyway.

The only anime I have done that with right now is AIR.

That being put aside, I've decided to list my favorite anime in each anime genre.

Romance: ef-tales of memories
Comedy: Nodame Cantabile (I watch a lot of comedy just for laughs, but since it is comedy, it never really strikes out as "this is incredible" or "this is so touching"... Nodame Cantabile is quite decent however)
Fantasy: AIR
Action: Magical Lyrical Girl Nanoha
Science Fiction: Stellvia of the Universe (old favorites die hard?)
Slice of Life: Aria
Suspense: Code Geass (Good anime but &^*&^$*#^ stupid cliffhangers)

Other series worth noting that I haven't noted because I've been too busy watching anime:
Sayanora Zetsubou Sensei: A sarcastic comedy anime. Fun to watch but kind of leaves you feeling like "wtf" for some time. Many people say the art design for this anime rocks. I agree.
Gurren Laagan: A mech anime introduced to me by a friend. If I were to define mech anime, I'd use this anime as the example, just like if I were to define utopia I'd use Aria.
Sky Girls TV: I like this anime's art style, but I haven't watched enough to say much about it. So far it's slow, but I'm liking it.


I've watched a lot of anime and wanted to write stuff up on it, but because of my laziness I haven't done much. And now school is going to start soon. Oh well, it was a fun anime-filled winter break for me...~

Aria

ARIA DEFINES UTOPIA. PERIOD.


(Note: this viewer has not finished watching this animated series. Please consult this blog at another time in the future for further information regarding the opinion of this viewer on this animated series.)

Disregard this (Post #200 btw)

OMG MY PROFESSOR DIDN'T EMAIL MY GRADE TO MY ADVISOR FESIfvwonvFPCSEFNefip FNSIF I HOPE THIS FREAKIN GETS FIXED I DON'T WANT TO RUIN MYDAMNRECORDJUSTBECAUSE MYPROFESSORDIDN'TEMAILMYDIRECTEDRESEARCH GRADE OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMG AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARFGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH sjFOSIDV soF isofiaof aifo asiS
I NEED
TO BASH
SOMETHINGGGG

A sense of humbleness

One of the things I was always raised with was to be compared to people. I don't know if that's really a good thing or a bad thing (most people seem to regard this as a bad thing) but typically my parents (and eventually, I myself) frequently refer to others like role models and the oh so famous line, "why can't you be like them". I think in regards to most people, eventually they started comparing themselves to worse people and saying "its a good thing I'm not like them" or to just stop comparing themselves. But as a person myself I still look to the skills and achievements of others, and at the same time realize the insignificance I am compared to many of these people. It's a dejecting feeling, to know that you haven't in the least accomplished as much as others have, even more so if they're about the same age as you; but musing it over it appears that it can't be helped. It's always a disappointing feeling for myself when I realize myself as "just average"; on the one hand it could be worse, but it could always be better. This is the scenario to be dealt with all the time, no matter how much I want to better or worse my life.
The obvious solution to this is, of course, stop being lazy, stop procrastinating, do more in life. In terms of procrastination, I attempt to do things a little at a time so it they don't build up, so despite my ADHD I'm not sure of that's a particular problem, however, it seems difficult to devote myself to work aside from school work (and more recently, lab work). I believe this will not fare well for me in the future and in real life, and indeed if I could overcome this problem, I can probably be more "achieved" in life like others I refer to. Stop playing games, do more work? maybe. That would change who I am though, although maybe a change is needed...

In an ideal situation I'd still be able to play games and work hard and achieve something. I think I'm reaching as an ideal situation as I can get, maintaining fairly nice grades, doing a decent amount of work in lab, and still going to anime club and playing RO. But it's always the inevitable feeling... when will the ideal situation end? When will I have to start achieving more and giving up what silly yet entertaining pleasures I have?

Life is never going to be so simple. I hope I can grow up without any problems...

Lucky Star

One of the big burning questions (ok, maybe not so big and burning) is why people would hold this show in such high regard for its, in many people's honest and decently logical opinion, mediocrity. It's artstyle isn't that great, the music is poppy and catchy but nothing truly emotion touching, and to inquire if there was any sort of plot would be futile. However, Lucky Star has, for me and for many other viewers, been a very decent show to watch that has proved to be more entertaining than the other "mediocre" shows out there, and there remains the mystery of why this is so.

This is most likely because it's the best anime-tized lifestyle one can relate to. Anime in general will frequently have references to cultural events or other facts here and there that one can say "hey I know what they're talking about", but Lucky star does that about every episode for the normal person, and every 2 minutes for the common otaku. This is why it has so much appeal; the joy of saying "I TOTALLY KNOW HOW THIS CHARACTER IS FEELING RIGHT NOW" or "I DEFINITELY KNOW HOW THAT FEELS" every so often, only you're seeing it in anime form with cute girls acting out your everyday quirks and actions. This is probably Lucky Star's greatest strengths, to relate to so many events that everyone has in their lives, especially in the common everyday life of an otaku. Not even a hardcore otaku, but also the casual otaku who, like Kagami, is interested in normal life just as much as the anime culture.

Speaking of Kagami, I'm not typically a fan of tsundere but Kagami is my second favorite character (in the main group) plainly because she's so funny and I can relate with her a ton of times. If anything, it feels like both the personality of Kagami and Konata are with me all the time, with the "Kagami" conscience always saying "why the hell are you doing that"... Kagami's wtf moments are the best scenes for laughing, as great as Tsukasa and Konota's cousin's bumbling moments are the best scenes for gushing...GUSHGUSHGUSH ok enough of that.

SPOILERS NOT LIKE ANYONE WHO'S READING THIS CARES OR IF THEY DO THEY PROBABLY FINISHED LUCKY STAR ALREADY. In terms of the scene where Konata's mother comes back as a ghost figure, I think that was probably, personally, the least realistic and relatable subject yet most fantasized situation of any otaku individual out there. To have a loved one (and a childhood friend at that!) presented as so easily "obtained" is most possibly the most ideal scenario any otaku would want... just like as if it had come out of a dating sim game. I bring this up because one person apparently was telling me how great it is and wanted me to finish up Lucky Star just so I can watch it. It's a decent scene, but nothing along the lines of AIR and Lucky Star just isn't an anime to be taken seriously, so it would be a bit out of place as well. I understand that there are some anime which can put in a real serious moment after so many scenes of happy and funness (see: Full Moon wo Sagashite), but Lucky Star isn't one of them: it's comedy and pure comedy and anything deviating from it would be illogical.

Or Kagami would say. :V

Neurobiologist's guide to Ragnarok Online

STR- actin filaments, muscle spindles, golgi tendons, neuromuscular junction activity
DEX- Motor neuron, motor cortex, procedural learning, cerebellum activity
AGI- Propeoception, somatosensory cortex, myelination
VIT- Increased endorphin release, Dorsal cell ganglion
INT- Hypothalamus and Temporal Lobe, Declarative Learning
LUK- ...:V

Scientific Journal Articles

The truth.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/63957/How-to-write-Consistently-Boring-Scientific-Literature

*hijack* this blog is now a lab rant blog.

OMG I can't believe that I did that aaaaaggghhh I thought yesterday that I had completely run out of primary antibody and that my experiments had to be delayed once again so I panicked and requested an overnight delivery request but of course all the offices were closed and I couldn't find a fax machine so I had to wait until the next day at 8 AM and hope they can get it before 8:30 AM (that's the deadline for overnight shipping) but it turns out the guy in charge of orders is out for the ENTIRE DAY so I probably won't get my antibody tomorrow but then I come into lab and came up with this INGENIUS idea that of course I couldn't think up yesterday to vortext the damn antibody and well what do you know there IS ENOUGH ANTIBODY FOR ME TO USE BUT GODDAMMIT I RUINED THE ANTIBODY BECAUSE I DIDN'T PUT IT BACK INTO THE FREEZER BECAUSE I THOUGHT I RAN OUT OF ALL THE ANTIBODY ALREADY AND SO NOW THE ANTIBODY IS COMPLETELY RUINED but I'm going to try probing with the primary anyway because I figured any result at this point is a good result and even if I don't see anything surely by the time I develop my blots I'll get the emergency delivered new antibody and I can just reprobe without stripping or anything since its the same antibody anyway and I'm sure if anyone reads this blog they couldn't care less other than the fact that this is the most terrible run on sentence they have seen in their life.

Lab Drama

So, First off I want to make a recognition and acknowledgment of "being emo". In general, most people believe "being emo" is bad in itself, that it's some entity that takes over people's minds and makes them want to kill themselves. On the contrary, I think its normal to have specific emotional fluctuations depending on mood. Typically, its the source that causes a person to become "emo" that is the problem, in my opinion. When someone is "emo" because of something, it means he or she REALLY REALLY cares about it. He or she may state, while being emo, that he or she hates (emo source), but in reality he or she probably feels like he or she can't live without it. In this general sense, I believe people who become "emo" over a game like Ragnarok Online should find something else to care about because in essence RO is just a game. I find people that become "emo" over love, personally, a bit silly BUT I acknowledge that they find it an important thing; I certainly respect their emotions if they are in a depressed state and will not try to state their rightness or wrongness in drowning in their emotions because of a loved one.

I bring this issue up because recently I've been having a LOT of issues regarding lab work in general. It is very difficult because I am not a person who will openly say "DEPRESSED LAB WORKS SUCKS RANT RANT RANT" because we need to have a people-friendly environment in the lab. But recent issues that have come up with my advisor and an endless array of mistakes that I never seem to improve on is driving me up the wall. Remember, I acknowledge that I like lab work and, for the most part, when I'm actually doing the work I'm quite happy. However, 2 issues is leaving me to feel like little more than dirt:

1.) My Advisor. I respect and honor my advisor a lot for teaching me so many techniques and introducing me to the lab environment. He has, for the most part, been guiding me, perhaps in his opinion too much, through various conferences, lab meetings, and experiments to get me where I am now. But one slight mistake I made and he decides to abandon all the guidance he has ever provided and treats me no better than anyone else in the lab. In one sense, I can understand this action. It is time, he believes, that I should be independent, solve mistakes on my own, analyze data and journal articles, and become ultimately the same level as he is in terms of stature. But I'm not, I'm still hanging. Its not that I don't do anything now that he's not helping; I'm going through experiments, doing more than I ever did before, trying to solve problems and read papers... but his lack of acknowledgement is discouraging. If even just once, he says something like "you're doing a good job" like he did before, even if he didn't help me, I think I'd feel much better. But he just treats me (if I dare say) coldly, not giving any acknowlegement to the work I'm trying to desperately do to prove to myself and others that I'm not just a child but someone who's actually devoting time and his life to research.
I believe that it's probably a selfish request, to request for acknowledgement. In the real world no one is going to care if you're a scientist or a toilet scrubber. But still, I can't help feeling down about it.

2.) Mistakes. I make them all the time. In midterms, while playing piano, and in experiments. I believe the lack of acknowledgement from my advisor and others also relates into this area, because if I keep on producing mistakes, I can't produce data, and without data I can't prove that I've been working hard. This is the sad truth of my lab life, that in spite of how hard I worked, I haven't produced any data on my own that I can say, "I did this, this is what I have shown". Yesterday I came so close, SO CLOSE, but then, I realized this morning, I did one slight stupid error... and ALL the data I ahve collected, as well as some of the experiments I had been doing, have been screwed over and wrong. So, I had nothing to present at the lab meeting today. This depressed me to no end, and my advisor of course gives no sympathy. But, lesson learned (or rather relearned, over and over again) that nothing ever goes according to plan. NOTHING... I just worry if I can make my experiments on time.

I stopped halfway through this blog post and began to do more experiments and now I feel a helluvalot better than I did before. I apologize for anyone that bothers to read this blog for this post, as I try to make my blog entries as emo-free as possible. But then again I suppose I now understand why others emo into blogs, because when other people (like, your advisor) don't listen to you anymore you want a place to "talk" to and and maybe just pretend people are listening to you. I love working in lab to its utmost fullest, but it being something I love, even more than a game, means I'm going to have some drama and emoness tag along as well.

:V

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Perennial Midterms Rant, cont

So after the first fiasco involving my BME Physiology midterm, we had our second today and, looking back, I realized I have missed a lot of things I could have easily gotten right if I was just in focus. Once again I was overthinking one problem due to some rule that I thought was important (but now that I look back on it I should have just ignored it and I probably would have done fine), giving up time where I could have looked through my problems and corrected some really easy errors that I made. But again, its only when I look back that I think "oh, that's wrong" and realize I'm going to lose a few points not because I didn't know the material but because I rushed and made an error.

The frustration is hard to cope with. Unfortunately I can't go off campus until about 5 PM so I'll have to deal with it until then.

There's a break but there's also a lot of work coming up. Hopefully the least this midterm can do is wake me up and get me started on some things I need to do before it gets all crammed to Hell Week #2 for this semester...

Perennial Midterms Rant

There was an episode of Lucky Star I watched over the weekend where one of the characters had something bad happen to her, then it showed her going through her day and making small, stupid, annoying little mistakes, which mostly have nothing to do with the bad thing that happened at first, but just because of the bad event she was now having a bad day.

I could not relate to this scenario any more than right now.

As a side note, I need to make a entry on Lucky Star after I finished it. As if it wasn't obvious already, I think its key attribute is the fact that many of the watchers are able to relate to the events occurring in Lucky Star fairly often, even if you're not a hardcore otaku. Like the 3-second rule, or the bad day example I was just talking about.

...If I get a C in one of my classes my life is over.

LOL what

An anime artist drew a picture for the cover of "Cell" recently.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-09-07/jojo's-araki-draws-cover-for-u.s-biological-journal-cell

Obviously, the people who requested it (and have their article as the main one to read in Cell) were Japanese. For those who might not know, Cell is a highly academically acclaimed scientific journal that publishes the latest research in cell biology. It is VERY prominent and to have your paper published in Cell is a great honor, similar to getting your paper published in Nature or winning the Nobel Peace prize (well, that could possibly be the greatest honor of all in science).

While the artist is just another passing artist, it was still nice to know that something from two worlds I thought could never come together... comes together in this unique and awesome way.

I am absolutely reading this article just because of the cover. :V (It's a good article and relates to neuroscience! People should read it!)

Code Geass

TERRIBLE WAY TO END THE FIRST SEASON But I suppose it's appropriate. Almost makes me not want to have finished it, but I needed to free up room on my harddrive.

An EXCELLENT series, one that I supremely love and nominate as best anime for this (or last?) year. Unlike what others (including my friend) may think, I can define this as one of the most "hotblooded" series of the year, if taking into account "hotblood" is the definition of the feeling of excitement and anticipation. For me, the excitement and anticipation lies in the planning and ingenuity of Lelouche, most likely the most impressive character I have ever met. While having a slightly annoying ego, his intelligence greatly makes up for it and can be classified as one heck of an awesome character. What's most intriguing is that all his hopes and efforts are for his sister, in his efforts to find revenge to the one that did her sister harm and to have a world where him and his sister can live in peace (obviously, highly idealistic). For someone to work out plans so logically and base them on something so human... this is the human rationale. All of logic, whether from math or science, originates from ideals and imagination, an entity that does not truly exist. There is no such thing as a dot, or a line, as they can all be traced into being either a circle or an extended rectangle. Yet because we are able to establish a "dot" or a "line", we can define things like circles and rectangles. Idealogy is everything in reasoning, and part of Lelouche's character reflects that.

Additionally, another great factor of Code Geass is that no matter how great his plans were thought out, something always falters and fails. If none of his plans gets ruined, then it would just look highly unrealistic. But even if his plans fail, he manages to take advantage of whatever the situations that come up. Only in VERY FEW events does he rely purely on luck, and in that case, its quite forgivable (hey, this is anime after all, isn't it?).

Aside from Lelouche being the coolest male protagonist I think I have ever seen, other characters are fairly interesting in their own ways. Lelouche's good friend, Suzaku I believe, is interesting in his own respects. A kind guy, albeit a dangerous pilot. I was entertained how his movements were predicted by Lelouche after a while. Overall I didn't concentrate too much on him because there was obviously someone much cooler close to him that I was trying to figure out. As for some of the girls, I find that Euphemia and Shirley were both reasonably cute. C.C. had her own style of "cuteness", if more appropriate termed the word "hot" although I seldom use the word and don't like to use it often.
Slight spoilers though if you are reading this you either a. don't care or b. already watched Code Geass already. Not like anyone reads these blogs anyway... BUT
I find it really interesting that of all the ways that Lelouche's plans get ruined, the one that seemed to deal him the hardest blow was by his sister Euphemia. That was one twister I really liked. Another was shortly after how he accidently manipulates her to conduct a genocide, ultimately putting things in his favor once again. What's interesting about that is how he regretted his decision, but continued to move on. An amazing show of persistence, even if despite the fact that he is sacrificing one of his relatives to "save" another. (Needless to say his logic begins to falter, but there's so much other things going on that I never really had time to develop and think on that).

Orange-kun is strangely entertaining! He is similar to one of those guys everyone loves to pick on just because he gets angry, and he gets angry because he gets picked on. A lose-lose situation on his part, but oh well. AND HE PILOTS A GIANT ORANGE LATER!! How entertaining is that :V

The music... overall I enjoyed the intro to the first half of the show, ending to the second half of the show, and the intro to the last episodes, the other OP/ED was not as much to my tastes.

With that I believe I have said most of what I wanted to say in Code Geass. There has so far never been as an exciting of an anime as Code Geass. Code Geass and Sola are the anime to watch this season! Go for it! :D

Planetarian

Lately I haven't been writing significant posts, particularly reviews on anime and other related material. This is mainly due to the fact that I had to take Writing 340 over the summer which resulted in me not feeling like writing up anything. This is not necessarily due to the fact that I haven't been watching any (decent) anime (on the contrary, Sola was a very good anime that I would suggest to others, but have not yet written a review yet). However, presently I have just... (Played? Watched? Read? insert appropriate verb here) Planetarian, the Reverie of a Little Planet, and, like any otaku fan that knows of Key, the work was spectacular.

I have to admit, similar to how when I first watch Haruhi and AIR, the work seems to be pure eyecandy. I can't deny that I enjoyed most of the visual novel because of how cute the Planetarian girl looked, because personality wise I (until the very VERY end) did not find her any more exciting than an AIM bot dressed nicely. VERY nicely. In fact this makes me worry, in the event that in the future people will design advertising bots just like her and possibly warp the minds of many into this monopolistic world of fantasy... but I digress. This visual novel isn't, of course, about the mindnumbing cuteness of the main heroine and it's theoretical possibility of brainwashing poor fools into buying things just because they're cute. It is an entertaining story, sometimes fun, sometimes sad, overall very moving and heavily touching.

Following this point there will be spoilers.

The part where she is attacked and begins "dying", so to speak, was not particularly moving in that she got shot and is dying. This the authors (ie, Key?) probably realized, even though, yes, the death of a cute character like her is indeed sad. What made the entire scene so touching was her memories that she recalled. What's moreso about it is how throughout the entire visual novel, she mentions the concept of memory here and there, and at the very beginning only briefly mentions her holographic replay feature. It almost hits like a brick when they finally reveal the emotional link of her memories to her character. Yes, admittedly, when that part came, I had tears. I was not crying, but it could not be watched without some emotional movement within yourself. But alas, this is probably what makes the novel so great.

The little charm music, of course, helped. In fact, music was done VERY nicely to portray an appropriate mood in Planetarian. This novel is, indeed, a masterpiece as many have already said many times before, therefore, I need to blab you no further on it.

Instead I should be telling you about Sola, which is also a good anime, but for the time being I must finish up this obsession over planetarian.

AIR to be released soon

My friend told me that AIR had premiered on Anime Network yesterday, July 27th, the date of my birthday. As such, I decided to look up when AIR will get released in anticipation of buying it.


Amazon.com says it'll be released on August 14th.

http://www.amazon.com/Air-TV-vol-1/dp/B000RHMQLM/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-3770257-6421245?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1185655046&sr=1-1


Man, the cover looks so nice. *drool*

Best. Anime. Ever.

I My Me Strawberry Eggs

Overall a fairly interesting comedy anime. I think the characters are a little weak and need development, especially the characters besides the main characters. If they had more story behind some of the other characters besides just the teacher and about 3 students, then this should could have been potentially more interesting and touching. The thematic concept of the anime is decent enough; not unique, but touching upon many of the aspects of discrimination, though I do say some of the characters are quite stupid in some respects. (AKA they took WAAAAAY too long to settle the whole ZOMG IT WAS A GUY AFTER ALL issue at the final episodes) The music is a little funky (weird country music) so not that great.

Well, at least the main heroine was really cute, and though she was spaced out most of the time she seemed smarter than most of the other girls in the school. A decent enough anime to watch.

AX 2007

Once again, all my BSing skills will be needed for my ethics paper in WRIT 340, which REALLY needs the BS because ethics is ALL about BS. Therefore, short bullet point summaries.

-Aya Hirano is the cutest seiyuu I have met so far, and probably will be the cutest seiyuu ever. While I still like KOTOKO and eufonius better in terms of singing, Aya has everyone beat in terms of personality, (normal) voice, and basically being an idol. Her (incredibly high) energetic nature is just like... dangerously cute for some reason. While other seiyuus might pretend to be cute, for whatever reason I find that the way she acts is as if she's genuinely excited and curious about America and her American fans, and that excitement is terribly incredibly cute for some reason.
-Aya Hirano likes cake, Yuki Goto likes alcohol, and the voice actor for Nagato likes chocolate.
- quite a lot of stuff bought. There was a lot of 2 dollar manga that me and my sister jumped on and pretty much bought the entire shelf.
-Orskaband (sp?) is cool but only because they have a trumpet, saxophone, and trombone player in their band. Unique!
-savage genius was really good, but unfortunately I was worrying through most of the concert that I wouldn't be able to get a good seat at the SOS concert to enjoy it thoroughly. I bought one of their albums though.
-the SOS concert, in the meantime, was the most poorly organized concert that ever existed. There was a 1 and a half hour delay, then when the concert finally started we find out that about half of the "concert" was just the Japanese and American VAs reciting lines from the anime. In what little music they had left, Hirano Aya and the voice actor for Nagato (I highly apologize but I cannot remember her name) both were lagging in their singing, that is, they started their singing a bit later than they were supposed to. Not only that, but the VA for Nagato also forgot some of her lines from her songs.
If concerts were graded on a 1-10 scale, this concert would have gotten a -22 except Hirano Aya was there, so that adds +100 to the concert scale. :V
-Chiaki Ishikawa (or the Yuki Kajiura sidekick) Concert was decent, and my sister liked it.
-The Momoi concert was the most organized and "best" concert in AX. Too bad it was the concert with the smallest attendance.
-Bought a lot of box sets. Only 35$ for thinpacks now, that's within my range for buying series.
-Did I mention Aya Hirano is cute? I won't deny that it might also be the age factor (being one year younger than me), but if it weren't for her remarkable enthusiasm and cuteness she would have never charmed me as much as she has right now. :V

Maybe more, if I can think up more later.