News stories are spreading like some sort of fire (a wild one I presume) that initial sales of the Bakemonogatari DVDs and BluRay discs have not only outsold the disastrous and missed opportunity that was the second season of Haruhi, but even K-On! In real terms outselling Haruhi didn’t surprise me, but beating the K-On with its huge impact on popular culture (sales of musical instruments, shimapan bowls and whatnot) was quite an achievement.
If I could come up with a witty opening line to discuss an episode of Bakemonogatari where something advertised didn’t happen and instead we were treated to a cute date episode, I’d probably put it here. In lieu of this, the above sentence will have to suffice. Forgive me for sounding distracted, I’m wearing a jumper and it’s actually quite warm out today.
Despite the internet only being down at our home for a relatively short period of time, it managed to get me completely out of sync with Bakemonogatari Ghost Storyness. Episode 12 is already out, and I only just finished with episode 11!
Because another episode of Bakemonogatari is out, it means a new vector desktop background of Her Senjougharaness! Here’s hoping her lack of appearances in episode 09 and episode 10 are rectified next week!
Honestly, she is one of the most compelling characters I’ve ever seen in an anime series and one of the first truly weird and unconventional people since Haruhi before her disastrous second season. Maybe it’s because I love office supply shops ^_^. I see your stapler Hitagi, and I counter with… my stack of multicoloured post it notes! Haiya!
I’d also say that I like her character because she has purple hair and purple is my favourite colour, but that might give people the wrong idea at a time when I’m mistaken for someone I’m not far too often enough as it is. My sister clearly doesn’t have that problem! Ruben-ko? Wait, Suruga would be interested in me then not Hitagi, whoops!
I had a point somewhere in this post, but I forgot what it was. Oh yeah, new desktop background. As Marvin Martian would say, Earth shattering kaboom stuff!
Bakemonogatari continues to be a series that defies all accepted conventions and refuses to be pigeon holed. I don’t know how you would literally pigeon hole a series, I assume you’d simply slip the optical disk into a letterbox and be done with it without much trouble at all, in which case the analogy in this example is flawed. I talk myself into corners without anyone else assisting.
You all remember that computer game Lemmings? I’m talking about the original one that was released for the Amiga and DOS. We had the original version and I remember this one level that had dark green trees and spooky music, both of which weren’t featured on any other level. In a spooky way (well, it is a Ghost Story!) this episode of Bakemonogatari kept reminding me of it.
Currently I’m watching both K-On and Bakemonogatari at the same time. Both and at the same time, you’d better believe it! If I needed further contrast between the two, Bakemonogatari delivered it yesterday with the closing episode of the Suruga Monkey story arc. This episode was intense!
It’s been a week or so since I last watched an episode of Bakemonogatari, and after what’s gone on this week I really feel like I deserved another!
After the relatively slow pace and harmlessness of the Mayoi Snail story arc of Bakemonogatari, this first episode of the Suruga Monkey arc seemed to return to the more surreal, darker theme of the earlier episodes that I’d expected the entire series to be. Perhaps it’s an alternating thing; heck as long as they don’t pull an Endless Eight I’ll be happy.
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!
I'm Ruben Schade, welcome to my labour of love mix of tech, anime, thoughts and nonsense from Singapore and Australia. Thanks for stopping by.
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