Sunday

I haven't had such a relaxing Sunday in quite a while. Usually by Sunday I would start dreading the coming Monday, and start checking emails to "prepare" myself for another working week. I didn't check email today (actually I tired to but VPN was down... even better). I could get to like this.

Went to the gym this morning, had lunch and came home and "worked" on my new project... hehe, don't worry it's not real work, it's my home page! It might be hard to believe that I never had a home page for myself ever since high school, I think laziness might have something to do with that. Anyways, there's nothing on the site yet except for a link back to this blog. I am not planning to do anything fancy with it, no dynamic stuff since I am not hosting it myself (well that's not entirely true, the menu is generated with JavaScript, but no server-side stuff for sure).

I spend some time searching for a fansub of the Saikano movie today... there is raw but no sub =( Wish my japanese was better. So downloading the OST instead, the next best thing.

Oh, and I finally watched MIB2 which one of my previous coworkers lend me. What a bad movie... 2/10

Saikano

So, recently I am finding a bit more free time on my hands, and hence starting this blog. I am also (finally) taking the time to finish an anime series which I started watching quite a while back, called Saikano (in English, "SHE, The Ultimate Weapon").

Saikano tells the story of the main characters Shuji and Chise in the days leading up to the end of the world. Chise is a small, fragile looking girl while Shuji is quite the opposite; tall and brawny looking. They are quite the unlikely pair. We soon discover that Japan is at war with an unknown enemy and Chise has a major part in it because she has been turned into the "Ultimate Weapon" of the Japanese defense force. As the story progress, we will see Shuji and Chise struggle with Chise's growing abilities and the pain and suffering of war.

This is essentially a love story, but I must say it's one sad and depressing one; definitely not light hearted stuff. I do think the story captures the emotions of the characters very well though, you can really feel the pain they are going through. And the series has some very nice background music too, one of its strong point. The animation is decent for a GONZO production, I don't personal like the style that much but I think it's because they are trying to be true to the manga. Also, GONZO tends to draw "lines" on character faces like scratch marks or wrinkles; it didn't bother me that much in FMP but in this series it is very noticeable because the lines are in red and makes everyone looks like they are blushing all the time (understandable for Chise, but *everyone* is a bit much).

This is still not a bad series, just not as enjoyable due to the grim nature of the story. There's a live action adaptation of the story at the beginning of this year too (http://www.saikano-movie.com/). I hope to see it if I have the chance.

My rating: 6/10

First Post

After months of urging by my good pal, I finally decide to give this blogging thing a try (let see how long I can keep this up, being the lazy cat that I am... see my pic on the right? Yeah... that's me, I sleep all day =)

Not sure what to write, never really wrote a diary/blog before, but given that I have such a terrible memory, this might not be a bad thing to do. Well, we'll see how things go.