An update, 'cause I feel like one's past due.
Hm...it seems a lot of things have happened lately (a very recent crisis in particular I won't be telling you about because it's a bit too personal, but I will say scared the living hell out of me until just today). Since I have a moment, I figure I'll devulge a bit for y'all...
Lesse, classes started back last week. Started back on a bad note, at that. I had $300 of credit put away for books and such this quarter (since, for the past four quarters, supplies for all four classes never exceeded $250), and lost $272 of it on the first day to an elective course. I signed up for Architectural Drafting this quarter, since I was well warned against taking Storyboarding and Character & Object Design at the same time, and remember my high school Architecture class rather fondly (both because I liked the subject matter and because it was pretty laid back & easygoing). Unfortunately, as soon as I get in there, the teacher drops the $300+ supply list on us (books alone were $150 and $35 respectively) and tells us we'll be spending "all of our free time drafting." He's completely anal to boot, and tends to rip students' work to shreads (though from what I've seen so far, he still gives them pretty decent grades).
I almost dropped out after the first week, but since my folks would kill me if I did that, I stuck with it. It's not as bad right now as it seemed initially, and luckily the jerk was bluffing when he claimed our waking hours were shot. But then that may be because I've numbed myself to giving a rat's ass about doing "A" work. It's an elective course geared exclusively towards first-year Interior Design students; it has little real value to me come to find out (I had figured it'd be a general architecture course, not an intro to drafting). As long as I pass, I'll hand in C-work for all I care. Terrible thing to say, but then I was screwed over royally by this very class, so...
The rest of the quarter seems enjoyable, though. Literature II & Art History II seem work-light, and they're over topics I rather like (literature and Byzantine-Renaissance era art). Character & Object Design, with the all-dreaded ELIO, has so far proven to be the most enjoyable of all. After all the horror stories about the all-dreaded ELIO, he actually seems like a nice guy and a competent teacher. And the class so far has been a helluva lot of fun. Lotta drawing though, so I'm still glad I skipped out on taking it and Storyboarding simultaneously (and Storyboarding, I just found out, is taught by my Scripting for Animators teacher...guess what I'm aiming for come registration for next quarter).
Of course, these classes aren't without a hitch. A financial one. Literature book cost $60 (not bad considering how HUGE it is), both Art History books together cost $120 (main one was $100, supplemental book was $20), and Character & Object Design's almost as bad as Architecture. No book, but some really classy art supplies ($75 for a pack of 24 Prismacolour markers!). It's times like this where I can't thank my parents enough; I'm so glad I was blessed with a family that I could both get along with and that would help me out in a pinch, I'll tell ya that much.
The car got repaired just in time for classes to start back. It runs, but it's rickety, and I had to spend the first week of school driving on the spare "donut" while we shopped around for a fourth wheel (not just the tire, but the wheel itself was beyond repair). Got that this weekend, also got the wheels aligned. Supposed to look at the brakes soon, and my friend Daniel came by to work on some lighting problems (which are now mostly fixed...mostly). Decided to take out the CD changer, since it's the root cause of all the electrical bullshit going on in the car and currently prevents complete repair (a month with no interior lights, a week with no tail lights...thank God I didn't have to go anywhere at night!), but I need to get Dan back over here in order to do that.
Anime-wise, not much going on. Well...not much that you'd care to hear about anyway. Saw all of Gungrave over a weekend and disliked all but about seven episodes of it. Fairly decent Mafia drama gets bogged down by ridiculous zombie soldiers, monster-of-the-week henchmen (who all had twenty plus episodes of character development pissed away beforehand), and generally uninteresting characters & plot. On the opposite end, I started Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou (His & Her Circumstance) last week, and was absolutely blown out of my chair. I figured it'd just be another high school romance series, but I sorely underestimated it. Superb series with excellent writing and well thought-out characters that (as stale as I think this line is, due to usage by idiots) I can kinda relate to. The fact that it's not just another Akamatsuesque "boy loves psycho girl that always assumes the worst of him yet loves him secretly in the end" type of formulaic love-comedy is like a breath of fresh air, and the character interactions are actually compelling to watch, rather the aforementioned "compromising position -> misunderstanding -> forgiveness" pattern. I'm up to episode fifteen right now, and I can't wait to see the rest.
The big news though, involves the debut of the one show I've been looking forward to this year more than any other: Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny. First episode ran in Japan on Saturday, and I managed to download the raw only a few hours after that (just got a good fansub earlier this morning). For an opening episode, it surpasses that of its predecessor by a wide margin. The animation & music have been turned up a notch (well, they at least haven't made use of SEED's sucky-ass CG & animation shortcuts, yet), and the plot & characters show plenty of promise. It's not as much of a direct lift of previous Gundam titles as SEED's beginning was (nearest parallel to be made is 0083, and that's a big stretch), which actually leaves room for them to do something surprising from the start this time. The cast looks very likable overall, with the newcomers starting strong and the returning SEED characters not losing a step (bonus points for the fact that my two favourite SEED characters -- Athrun & Cagalli -- already have very prominent roles in Destiny).
Of course as to be expected, the majour Gundam fanboys already hate the show since it didn't spring forth, fully armed, from the forehead of Yoshiyuki Tomino himself. But fuck them. Most of you already know I have less than zero respect for those bastards anyway.
Anyway, all the new stuff aside, I've mostly just been keeping up on Elfen Lied (almost done...), Interlude, and MariMite ~Haru~. Planning on watching the first episode of Kannadzuki no Miko, and pondering whether or not DearS is worth continuing, but I've already gone over the high points.
Azumanga reviews...I had one practically done a while back, until the computer crashed and the whole thing went to hell. Starting fresh, and I have the first one about halfway done. Hopefully I can bang out all three (and possibly the eX-Driver movie review) over the weekend.
Hm...nothing else really going on that I care to mention, and I need to get back to sketching for Character & Object Design. So I'll call it a night here and bid you adieu. Night all!
--Nagi
Lesse, classes started back last week. Started back on a bad note, at that. I had $300 of credit put away for books and such this quarter (since, for the past four quarters, supplies for all four classes never exceeded $250), and lost $272 of it on the first day to an elective course. I signed up for Architectural Drafting this quarter, since I was well warned against taking Storyboarding and Character & Object Design at the same time, and remember my high school Architecture class rather fondly (both because I liked the subject matter and because it was pretty laid back & easygoing). Unfortunately, as soon as I get in there, the teacher drops the $300+ supply list on us (books alone were $150 and $35 respectively) and tells us we'll be spending "all of our free time drafting." He's completely anal to boot, and tends to rip students' work to shreads (though from what I've seen so far, he still gives them pretty decent grades).
I almost dropped out after the first week, but since my folks would kill me if I did that, I stuck with it. It's not as bad right now as it seemed initially, and luckily the jerk was bluffing when he claimed our waking hours were shot. But then that may be because I've numbed myself to giving a rat's ass about doing "A" work. It's an elective course geared exclusively towards first-year Interior Design students; it has little real value to me come to find out (I had figured it'd be a general architecture course, not an intro to drafting). As long as I pass, I'll hand in C-work for all I care. Terrible thing to say, but then I was screwed over royally by this very class, so...
The rest of the quarter seems enjoyable, though. Literature II & Art History II seem work-light, and they're over topics I rather like (literature and Byzantine-Renaissance era art). Character & Object Design, with the all-dreaded ELIO, has so far proven to be the most enjoyable of all. After all the horror stories about the all-dreaded ELIO, he actually seems like a nice guy and a competent teacher. And the class so far has been a helluva lot of fun. Lotta drawing though, so I'm still glad I skipped out on taking it and Storyboarding simultaneously (and Storyboarding, I just found out, is taught by my Scripting for Animators teacher...guess what I'm aiming for come registration for next quarter).
Of course, these classes aren't without a hitch. A financial one. Literature book cost $60 (not bad considering how HUGE it is), both Art History books together cost $120 (main one was $100, supplemental book was $20), and Character & Object Design's almost as bad as Architecture. No book, but some really classy art supplies ($75 for a pack of 24 Prismacolour markers!). It's times like this where I can't thank my parents enough; I'm so glad I was blessed with a family that I could both get along with and that would help me out in a pinch, I'll tell ya that much.
The car got repaired just in time for classes to start back. It runs, but it's rickety, and I had to spend the first week of school driving on the spare "donut" while we shopped around for a fourth wheel (not just the tire, but the wheel itself was beyond repair). Got that this weekend, also got the wheels aligned. Supposed to look at the brakes soon, and my friend Daniel came by to work on some lighting problems (which are now mostly fixed...mostly). Decided to take out the CD changer, since it's the root cause of all the electrical bullshit going on in the car and currently prevents complete repair (a month with no interior lights, a week with no tail lights...thank God I didn't have to go anywhere at night!), but I need to get Dan back over here in order to do that.
Anime-wise, not much going on. Well...not much that you'd care to hear about anyway. Saw all of Gungrave over a weekend and disliked all but about seven episodes of it. Fairly decent Mafia drama gets bogged down by ridiculous zombie soldiers, monster-of-the-week henchmen (who all had twenty plus episodes of character development pissed away beforehand), and generally uninteresting characters & plot. On the opposite end, I started Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou (His & Her Circumstance) last week, and was absolutely blown out of my chair. I figured it'd just be another high school romance series, but I sorely underestimated it. Superb series with excellent writing and well thought-out characters that (as stale as I think this line is, due to usage by idiots) I can kinda relate to. The fact that it's not just another Akamatsuesque "boy loves psycho girl that always assumes the worst of him yet loves him secretly in the end" type of formulaic love-comedy is like a breath of fresh air, and the character interactions are actually compelling to watch, rather the aforementioned "compromising position -> misunderstanding -> forgiveness" pattern. I'm up to episode fifteen right now, and I can't wait to see the rest.
The big news though, involves the debut of the one show I've been looking forward to this year more than any other: Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny. First episode ran in Japan on Saturday, and I managed to download the raw only a few hours after that (just got a good fansub earlier this morning). For an opening episode, it surpasses that of its predecessor by a wide margin. The animation & music have been turned up a notch (well, they at least haven't made use of SEED's sucky-ass CG & animation shortcuts, yet), and the plot & characters show plenty of promise. It's not as much of a direct lift of previous Gundam titles as SEED's beginning was (nearest parallel to be made is 0083, and that's a big stretch), which actually leaves room for them to do something surprising from the start this time. The cast looks very likable overall, with the newcomers starting strong and the returning SEED characters not losing a step (bonus points for the fact that my two favourite SEED characters -- Athrun & Cagalli -- already have very prominent roles in Destiny).
Of course as to be expected, the majour Gundam fanboys already hate the show since it didn't spring forth, fully armed, from the forehead of Yoshiyuki Tomino himself. But fuck them. Most of you already know I have less than zero respect for those bastards anyway.
Anyway, all the new stuff aside, I've mostly just been keeping up on Elfen Lied (almost done...), Interlude, and MariMite ~Haru~. Planning on watching the first episode of Kannadzuki no Miko, and pondering whether or not DearS is worth continuing, but I've already gone over the high points.
Azumanga reviews...I had one practically done a while back, until the computer crashed and the whole thing went to hell. Starting fresh, and I have the first one about halfway done. Hopefully I can bang out all three (and possibly the eX-Driver movie review) over the weekend.
Hm...nothing else really going on that I care to mention, and I need to get back to sketching for Character & Object Design. So I'll call it a night here and bid you adieu. Night all!
--Nagi