Rubénerd!

Yes I only just posted this picture in a previous post talking about Debian, but I just have to come out and say purple and violet are some of the greatest colours in the world. That's okay to admit, isn't it?

I haven't had much time to theme this Gnome desktop yet, and heaven knows I'm not a Nurie, but I think the Crux icons and Unity GTK+ theme with 65% transparency in menu bars and Terminal windows for a purplish Mac OS X look is pretty swish.

Even with full composting on a heavy desktop environment like Gnome the system is still able to fly on my ThinkPad X40 which was built four years ago. That's something Windows 7 can barely pull off on similar hardware let alone Vista.

The background image is of course the awesome Senjougahara Hitagi from Bakemonogatari which I've been reviewing here. Interestingly enough if you do an image search for Senjougahara Hitagi on The Googles one of my posts is currently the third result on the first page. Apparently her fan club is small!

Sitting down and reviewing an anime episode I've timed takes the same amount of time as three to four regular posts here, even if they're something obscure like a fun fact nobody cares about. Busy, but back to business. That sentence had some fancy alliteration.

Because the Hitagi Crab story arc only went for two episodes, I had wrongly assumed the Mayori Snail arc of Bakemonogatari would only last two as well, but here we are for a third serving in that gigantically surreal playground with that raised coloured track everywhere. Dang urban renewal!

After the fruitless search efforts in the previous episode desite Hitagi's awesome GPS phone, this one focused on Mayoi's troubled family life and how she ended up looking for her mum on Mothers Day (surprising though it may seem) in the first place. Or in this case the first "house". That sounded wittier in my head.

As someone who lost their own mum to a debilitating illness I can understand how difficult it can be growing up without a mum, but I imagine it must be even harder for someone who knows their mum is alive but due to a divorce and legal proceedings they can't see them. These characters and I have such happy home lives!

So after some spendgags about groping someone far younger than himself by accident and the subsequent bites which quickly healed given his past affliction (lots of thinks they expect you to assume and accept!) Hitagi returns and starts profusely apologising for pretending that she could see Mayoi. It's a coping mechanism because she wanted to appear normal.

We find out why she couldn't see her this episode, along with some funny takes of Koyomi arguing and fighting with himself from Hitagi's point of view. Even J.J. Abrams made a directing appearance:

Now due to Koyomi's desire to help people out of the blue Hitagi tells him in English that she loves him. My first reaction wasn't "awwww", but "what?" After only a few episodes, three of which were in the same day she drops a bombshell like that! Of course as she follows the tsundere personality to a fault, Koyomi is the typical guy who doesn't reciprocate but merely feins surprise and dodges answering directly.

And yes, it turns out they do find Mayoi's mum's house, or at least where it used to be (dang urban renewal) and her "state" is subsequently promoted. I had no idea spirits followed strict ranks and orders, and that by merging with a vacant lot that formerly held a place of residency it could generate an intense glow that apparently nobody else in the neighbourhood saw!

I gotta say, for a series that was so interesting and weird to start off with, having three episodes set in the same scenery with the same graphics was a bit tiring. I'm still liking the story, but here's hoping other things that get "promoted" are the scenes.

And of course an episode of Bakemonogatari wouldn't be complete with some just a bit of blatant fanservice, this time a bizarre angle of Hitagi just before she confessed her feelings. Allegedly you need buns of steel to confront Koyomi's spirit seeing ways!

I've been spending my afternoon programming in my room because my sister is still feeling crook and I don't want to wake her with my loud bucking spring keyboard. I blame her condition on the fact she hasn't ever put a Toblerone box on her nose. Yeah, that works.

Having spent a few hours in here I've noticed just how messy it is, from my chair here I can count four empty takeaway coffee cups, nine coat hangers, an upside down box fan, a power supply cable that I've forgotten what it plugs in to, a rolled up quilt I took off the bed last night when it got too warm, and several tons of documentation and other paper strewn everywhere back when I was looking for my Oracle serial number.

ASIDE: This has got to be one of the most ridiculous premises for a blog post I've ever done, except for literally everything in the nonsense category.

Just from where you're sitting now, how much mess can you see? If your room is spotless don't answer, I don't want your snide judgement ;).

I know I only just posted about Akiyama Mio from K-On but this picture was too good. In hindsight I should have put this picture on that aformentioned blog post instead of the one I ended up with, but oh well.

Anyway here we have Mio on a Ducati no less! I wonder if she's met Casey Stoner?

I'll get my motorcycle licence one of these days, it's on my laundry list length to do list (try saying that quickly five times in a row!). Once I do I'll get a fuel efficient Piaggio scooter for quick trips and a small, bright yellow Ducati for longer ones. I know I'm supposed to get a red one, but I saw a couple of yellow ones in Singapore and they were pretty damn swish. This is of course after I've won the lottery and stopped wasting money on computers.

I'm starting to notice more of my blog posts are being spawned from tweets on Twitter of all things. So much for all the doomsday predictions that Twitter was going to kil blogs!

For example, after seeing this latest tweet about yet another blogger complaining that K-On!'s Akiyama Mio is merely a moeblob I felt compelled to reply with a word and punctuation mark that together form the ultimate rebuttal of such a proposition if it is said while shrugging shoulders:

So?

Yes I'm a stereotypical nerd for having Mio as my favourite character of a series like K-On. To negative reviewers, I say it's your own fault for expecting Shakespeare in the first place, it's called having realistic expectations for a series you knew what it was going to be about in advance and that you didn't need to watch if you didn't want to! But we're getting sidetracked. Wait, that would imply I have a point to be getting sidetracked from. I blame this pebble that's been in my left shoe all morning.

If you haven't watched K-On (I assume most of you fine readers here) you probably could figure out which girl Mio is just from looking at the picture above. As I say about many things, if you're unable to I'm both surprised and fascinated at the same time.

Just don't say lazy!

Well after the token effort by Koyomi to help Mayoi in episode three of Bakemonogatari we finally spend some time with them all walking around the neighbourhood looking for what we later find out is Mayoi's mum's house. I'd forgotten for the first few minutes that this was a part two and didn't understand the significance until I remembered it was Mothers Day. I'm not slow I'm just... wait, did you just call me... slow?

Despite HRH Hitagi allegedly only leaving the neighbourhood a year ago, due to that pain in the arse known as urban renewal the trio are constantly overshooting where they're supposed to be going. And I thought she was supposed to be a genius; well I guess she said it herself that intelligence is a relative thing isn't it?

Anyway despite an exhaustive search with some killer backdrops that alas become a bit tiresome after seeing them several dozen times and despite her calling on Epic Hawaiian Shirt Guy and despite using her mobile phone GPS whatsit they never do find Mayoi's mum's house and the return to that gigantic playground. I think that was it. Wait, did you just call me slow?

I was hoping I wouldn't ever say this about Bakemonogatari, but this was the first episode I saw that I wasn't terribly fussed about. When I first started watching I was blown away by the production quality and the awesome characters, but even Hitagi's witty, deadpan-delivered lines that I admit to loving perhaps a little bit too much couldn't save this otherwise relatively lifeless outing.

As I said in my previous review, often I revel in trivial, silly episodes where very little happens; I made reference to the infamous episode where the story revolves just around Kyon collecting a room heater as being one of my favourites of the series. For this episode though, not so much. Perhaps this series set my expectations a little too high so when it came up with something more mediocre it had much further to fall, if that makes sense. Ah well, here's looking forward to episode 5.

Oh one thing I did forget, this huge playground park thingy did lend itself further to some extremely convenient character placement; for the first time since episode one (nowhere near enough, I might add) we see the Class President to End All Class Presidents again, though after seeing Mayoi's and Koyomi's confrontation all she did was bend down and pat her on the head! Ah the impracticality of it all ^_^.

"Absolutely insane"

You may recall last week I reviewed the third episode of Bakemonogatari and that I made the comment that Hitagi got so many head shots that I lost count after 14. Well I had a brilliant idea to use all those superflous eye frames (didn't realise that was kind of a pun until after I wrote it) to make an entire long-winded series about being able to tell Hitagi moods, but today I had a sudden onset of "better judgement" and decided this will be the last one.

I know, I know, I can already tell you're disappointed and upset beyond belief, but I'm sure you'll be able to survive. It wasn't you, really, it was me.

As I said in part one of know your Senjougahara Hitagi moods, this post is purely for educational purposes only, I will not be held responsible if you find yourself with a stapler in your mouth. Thank you.

"Fanciful"

"Mad"

"Apprehensive"

"Cheeky"

When the database for my original anime blog was wiped and I decided to start again in the anime category here, even though I still have all the images from it I decided I wouldn't bother recreating all of the posts. I already blog far too much and I have assignments to do!

One of the posts though that generated the most comments (over 20 if I remember) was my simple observation regarding Yoko from the Gurren Lagann series.

Yoko professed in the 5th episode that she chose to wear a bikini top all the time because it was something that "wouldn't restrict her movements in combat" (uh huh, sure) but... she also always wore a scarf, something you'd expect to wear when the weather is... oh I don't know off the top of my head... cold!? While I'm at it, I'm going to the beach to wear snow boots!

The question I posed was: huh?

We devised several theories. We must have been wrong all these years, it's not the top of the head or the ears that lose the most body heat in cold weather, it's the neck! Or perhaps subterranean civilisations have different climate patterns. Or maybe because she was so tall her neck pokes through to a different layer of atmosphere from the rest of her body. Or perhaps she was in fact a vampire the entire time and she was covering up bite marks. Or maybe she was bought off by the evil fashion scarf lobby. Or maybe she was just crazy and made no sense.

I guess they do say anime and manga don't follow any established laws of physics or fashion. What I love is when story writers for these shows attempt to explain such bizarre physics and fashion, it's like watching the characters explain a new gadget on Star Trek that will emit a certain energy pulse to disperse the astronomical anomaly that's affecting their ship's systems. You know it's all bunk, but you suspend disbelief and follow along anyway ^_^.

"Mildly surprised"

Just like a person who scoffs down several coloured plates then feels too full to have any of the red ones, it has come to my attention that if I posted reviews of Bakemonogatari every day in a row I would exhaust my supply far too quickly. This is also the first time I've reviewed an anime series as it's airing instead of using DVD releases, so I'm having to think of ways to occupy myself while waiting for the next episode.

From my review of the third episode:

Speaking of eyes (wait, what?), I think it would have made far more sense for the "password" for this episode to be eyes or hitagi-eyes. It was almost as if they adapted the story for this episode to maximise the number of random close up shots the animators could do so they could draw Hitagi’s eyes. I lost count after 14 times.

Drumroll please: in this brilliantly composed post of literary genius I present a guide to get to know the moods of Senjougahara Hitagi. This is strictly for entertainment purposes only, I absolve myself of any responsibility if you find a staplers in your mouth.

And yes to reiterate, these are all from the same episode. And this isn't even a quarter of them. For your sanity and for my bandwidth I have limited myself to these so far. Arigato.

"Wary [of wind blowing hair into her eyes]"

"Intrigued"

"Stunned"

"Normal!"

After going through the two part Crab God saga of Bakemonogatari, this episode was far more "subdued" and whatnot -- it also didn’t stray from the one park/playground scene for the entire duration of the show. I haven’t read other people’s reviews yet, but I’m sure there were probably more than a few who bashed it for it’s… sleepyness.

Subdued, sleepyness, whatnot, these are technical visual arts terms. I know what I'm talking about.

I liked this episode; then again I really liked the episode where Kyon has to go get the room heater for some reason too, so maybe I'm just strange. Perhaps there's a part of me that's just pleased when people don't automatically think they have to cram as much as they can into their allotted timeslot.

Yes, this entire episode took place in an abandoned playground/park thing which is abandoned because it's a specific day of the year with much backstory behind it. Koyomi made his way to said park himself but by sheer brilliant dumbfounded luck Hitagi just happened to walk past too. Genius! Or maybe she's a stalker. Hadn't thought of that.

Apparently Hitagi isn't impressed with Koyomi's suggestive hair shenanigans.

Inevitably much of the dialogue surrounded what Hitagi thinks she owes Koyomi for helping her fight the Crab God and the curse she had been cursed with. Cursed with a curse, I like that. There's a sweet moment (aww ^_^) and at one point she suggests such things as only wearing an apron to fix him breakfast, but instead he ends up preferring to talk about his family problems. Aww.

Speaking of eyes (wait, what?), I think it would have made far more sense for the "password" for this episode to be eyes or hitagi-eyes. It was almost as if they adapted the story for this episode to maximise the number of random close up shots the animators could do so they could draw Hitagi's eyes. I lost count after 14 times. As far as fanservice goes though, for me eyes are okay ^_^.

Almost as an afterthought we're also introduced to Mayoi who was lost, I think. Suffice to say if most people Koyomi's age did to Mayoi what he did, he'd be in a LOT of trouble! But did you see her eyes? There's something going on there...

As with the other episodes the setup appeared relatively normal but was ever so slightly surreal, it’s another thing I just can’t put my finger on but you’d understand if you watched it. I don’t know what kind of playground they were at but it was huge. Not as huge as the washing machine was shiny and red in the second episode but big nonetheless.

Wait, that didn't make any sense. I feel the urge to ride a girder bicycle, or whatever that thing was.