mDuo13

Well, the weather has been unbearably hot for the past two days, which is precisely the kind of warm welcome back from Hawaii that I was not hoping to encounter. It's made worse by how bad I was burned in Hawaii. How bad? Well, I may in the future blog about it, as I have something of an anecdote, but suffice to say I've been staying out of the sun as much as possible for the past week and I am still peeling.

During that time, I've been catching up on "being home" things - one of which is working on my job search. My good friend Rylee had some pretty insightful things to say about it, and although I don't agree with him 100% it has prompted me to do some major revisions to my resume. This has, of course, delayed the actual sending of applications because I don't want to send an incomplete resume to a job I really want.

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Well, I'm now breaking what I think is the longest streak of not writing any blog entries since I updated this site. And it hasn't been for a lack of things to write about; closer to a lack of time to write about them. In the time since my last post I've finished ARIA The ORIGINATION, Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 and a few other anime series, graduated from college, played Metal Gear Solid 3, gone to Fanime Con, started smoking, gotten married, gotten divorced, lost my job, gone to the moon, fought off cancer, climbed Mount Everest, and played a lot of mahjong. Okay, I admit, a few of those were made up. But really, a lot has happened.

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After about 95 hours of gameplay, my party finally beat the last boss of Tales of Vesperia. Overall, it was a really satisfying game with great characters and lots of good party interactions. I wanted to play as most of the party members, but each character is individualized enough that in order to get good enough with any one, you can't really spend time learning the others, especially later on when each character has a variety of different tricks and commands thanks to the huge array of skills available. Perhaps later on I'll replay the game on the PS3 with different friends, and get to try out something new... or perhaps I'll get to play Estelle again. She's good enough that I don't mind either way. I'm looking forward to hearing her voiced in Japanese and seeing the new story points of the PS3 version. But for now, in celebration of finishing the game, I made a new CG of her even though I've been absurdly busy lately.

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In the course of the last three days, I've watched all of Maria-sama ga Miteru - Two original series (13 episodes each at 24 minutes), the OVA (5 episodes of 50 minutes) and all 11 episodes of season 4 that have aired thus far (24 minutes each). That's a lot of anime. And it's been a very enjoyable series for me, for several reasons. But as always when I finish with something as engrossing as this most recent marathon, the recoil when I finish is harsh. After such a break from thinking about ordinary matters, I end up reexamining everything with new perspective, often harshly. This time, the hard question I find myself asking is whether I'm actually making progress.

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Lately I've been watching a fair amount of anime - the list of things I'm keeping up with this season is long - but the one that's wowing me most at the moment is Kemono no Souja Erin, a 50-episode children's fantasy epic that nobody else seems to be watching. It provides something refreshingly different than the current lot of copycat fanservice anime. And even though it's (apparently) aimed at children, it is actually one of the more intelligent shows currently airing.

Take the most recent episode, for example. Even disregarding the unusually good music, the episode introduces us to several potentially recurring characters as well as the concept of the seizan; the one even undergoes a slight change of heart through his encounter with Erin; it brings our first visit to a larger, bustling town; it hints that a grand plot has actually been developing for some time now with the comments about a man who suggested stealing Touda eggs; it introduces a mysterious antagonist; it provides Erin with what will probably be her signature harp, and this is all on top of an episode plot where Erin stands up for a boy because she recognizes her own situation when he is separated from his mother for breaking the law; all this on the excuse of John needing to go into town. And on top of all that, we get a parallel subplot of a lost kitten told without interference by any of the main characters.

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So the time of Spring Break is finally (or already?) upon me. I ended up making no plans except to stay here and have some quiet time to myself, uninterrupted. I have not yet explained this to my parents (who may not realize my spring break is already underway). I hesitate to tell them, because I have a feeling I know how the conversation would go.

"So honey, what are you doing for spring break? Got an exciting trip planned?"

"Nothing, mom. I'm going to sit in my room and watch anime or something."

"But you do that normally. Spring break is a time to go out and do something fun and unusual!"

"I do that normally because that's what I like to do! And anyway, I might not see another person for several days in a row. Now that's something I don't normally get the chance to do!"

"It sounds so lonely. You should have come up here to visit us. I'm sure your cat would like to see you."

"nyoro~n"

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