I watched the OVA of Ikoku Irokoi Romantan by Yamane Ayano against my better judgement. Wow...it wasn't very good. I was expecting bad, but...it was far worse than my lowest expectations. The production values were very low, but beyond that the pace of the story was glacial. Even the sex was oddly lethargic and lacking in passion. The best parts were when Kaoru and Ranmaru were interacting (fighting), sadly. I didn't mind the revised storyline, too bad they sucked most of the zing out of it in the process. :P
I wish she'd write a sequel to the manga, though. I'd love to read more about Ranmaru and his hot Italian Japanese-freak lover, though I suppose they might have to deal with the fact that he's in fact being unfaithful to his wife...
Speaking of Yamane Ayano, where are the new chapters of Crimson Spell and Viewfinder? It's kind of annoying how many months elapse between chapters...It's so easy to forget and then miss the posting of the new stuff while browsing the flist (I suppose I should just unjoin some comms to make things easier for me :P).
After seeing a bunch of posts reccing
yuletide fics on the flist, I decided to poke around and read a bunch. Some of the ones I rather liked:
Christingle by
loneraven, His Dark Materials, Will at Oxford.
La Familia by
sesame_seed, Chrestomanci, Millie gets sick and the Family falls apart.
Breakaway by
shrift, Whistle!, adolescent confusion.
All True-Hearted Souls by
mardia, Temeraire, intriguing Granby POV.
Houses and Rain by
untrue_accounts, xxxHOLIC, the zashiki-warashi does Valentine's Day.
The Longest Night by
thehoyden, xxxHOLIC, Yuuko riddles as usual.
Hair of the Dog by
ruffwriter, Black Lagoon, Rock likes pain.
Speaking of fics, love the
PoT drabble by
bookshop that puts Tezuka and Bump of Chicken together and makes it work. Sort of. Okay, not really, but Tezuka is massively weird in a LOL+sweatdrop kind of a way. ^__^
And speaking of PoT, saw a post for a doujinshi I own and haven't looked at in forever:
Asymmetry Triangle. Pairings are Saeki/Ryoma, Fuji/Ryoma, and Saeki/Fuji (yes, very WTF?), everyone is massively OOC, the art is pretty, the storyline is "heartwarming," and I really feel like digging out all the doujinshi by this circle that I bought because the art (and the character OOC-ness and the "heartwarming" storylines) made me smile despite the constant undertone of WTF-ness.