Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

As opposed to the research described in my previous post, I figured that for "Final Exam," I could find a fair amount of stuff on the Website. As it turns out, there's hardly any background text on the pages. But what really struck me is that you can download any of the current books for free. Although the information won't be as accurate, this would prove an extremely useful resource for someone who doesn't already bootleg them.

Also, I'm amused by the fact that this commercial site is chummy and informal, addressing the customer as "kimi." As he'd most likely be a dude, I don't find this particularly offensive （笑）.

I've been getting occasional comments from anonymous users. The first one may merely have been my brother being sarcastic, but I've gotten others from different IPs on a post that covers two mostly unrelated topics, so I don't even know for which part(s) they're thanking me. They didn't sound like anyone I knew, but I tried searching to see if they were just people who didn't log in by seeing if the same IPs appear elsewhere; it didn't work. I've commented elsewhere about how difficult this makes things; an addendum to that is that it occurred to me that if you make a Plus account just to read other people's LJs, you don't even see the fact that you have ads on your empty blog, and it allows you to avoid the normal ads shown to visitors.

It is, however, interesting to note that whoever these people are, 75% of them know my sex, which is not a secret but not often noted, either. (It would help if they had gender-specific pronouns other than third-person. This omission is the same in Spanish, and the first- and second-person ones are rarely used in Japanese—and the former [first] not always absolute.)

Edit: Bloody 'ell, I'm not paying attention. I bring shame to the name of "guy who really likes speech patterns."

Some other points about "Spaghetti Western（仮）" that I neglected to mention:

*Although I'm told that "Hispanic" is technically not a race but an ethnic group that includes both blacks and whites, I plan to make them all a tan tone to emphasize the difference from the outsider protagonist. For the same reason, I'm also tempted to have them speak Kansai dialect (mostly because of the "sai"), in which I'm even less fluent than standard. It might be more logical to give them stereotypical rural accents (using the copula verb "da" after verbs and adjectives and the emphasis particle "be"), but that always annoys me because it sounds like bad grammar.

*Also, since it's set in a Spanish-speaking area, I can hardly resist using the first-person pronoun 「予」 ("yo"). Unfortunately, I only know one character who uses it, so I don't have much on which to base the speech patterns. (He's an emperor, so it may not even be appropriate for anyone in the setting.) I've commented before on all the new first-person pronouns I encountered when I first read that series, but I never saw any of them again, except the one that's used by two characters therein, which turned out to be all over the place.

We were hiding out in some Japanese school.

I remember almost nothing from this one, but it was a combination of Raki☆Sta (particularly the bit starting here) and another school series. (It's been so long, I've forgotten what the latter was.) I've never even read or watched the former, but it's one of the ones blitzcon told me he was going to show me long, long ago (but not early enough that I could actually get the videos), so I've been breaking my usual rule in its case. Consequently, most of my knowledge of it is from Ms.?† Maitake's illustrations and comics (although I haven't actually been reading the posts since I haven't even started the series yet), which is undoubtedly skewing my preconceptions of its content.

†You may remember that I fouled up a while back and that I later decided not to worry about it. I neglected to mention that Ms.? Maitake replied the very next day and pointed out that it was clearly stated on the site that duplicating things without permission was prohibited, which rather scuppered a post I'd made.

Meanwhile, when I contacted her/him to ask whether I could post direct links to individual posts, I decided to ask about her/his gender so I could address her/him less awkwardly, but she/he declined to say. (Japanese writers/illustrators sometimes take PNs that would suggest genders different from their own, but I've never seen anything proving that any have made false claims about this. Then again, nor do I have any proof that any Japanese comic writer/illustrator has ever been captured on camera (with the exception of Akamatsu, whose mug I do not fondly remember seeing, particularly considering that he's actually married to a lady who's more than 13 years his junior now), so that's hard to say with certainty, either. You can take this into account for my generalizations in the next paragraph.) I would tend to assume that she/he's a man like me due to the demographics (?) of what she/he seems to find interesting, but that's a bit of a disservice to Ms. Hayashiya, Ms. oneirotsai, and many others. Of course, in English, there aren't any honorifics‡ except title prefixes, so it doesn't make much difference; in Japanese, I've just been using speech patterns somewhere in-between.

I do find it interesting that I see ladies who draw stuff aimed at male audiences all the time (with Ms. Takahashi being the classic example), but never confirmed examples of men drawing stuff for ladies. (The fact that ladies draw lots of yuri, yet I never hear about men drawing much yaoi, is less surprising.) The closest I've seen is Fujieda, who has been suppressing his style (judging by Iono Sama Fanatics, his only independent work I've read) in various YuriHime Comics mooks (and of course the compilations), but although they always use feminine second-person pronouns, the content of even the main series is more moe than shōjo, so he's still a bit short of Jack Nicholson.

‡In my research for Projects Abdiel and Homuncupunk, I was surprised to find that in modern English, the one language I've encountered that has almost no ways of showing respect, we have retained the plural/formal singular objective from the early modern variety as our sole (before conjugation) second-person pronoun.

We had an alliance of kami-tsukai from the two R.O.Ds, like in THE TV. I was Ms. Readman, which meant it was a pain in the ass because I had to speak in a high-pitched voice and always use polite forms.

Of course, from what little I remember, I was talking to Ms. King, which means that I'd be using even politer forms if I were myself. Also, if I were really Ms. Readman, neither of those things would be difficult. . . .

My readership appears to be at an all-time high (apparently at least two regulars!), but I've accumulated quite a lot of stuff during its absence, to say nothing of my sloth and the fact that I've built up a lot of new things due to year's-end-and-beginning splurging. So, I'd like to see if you have any requests or suggestions. What I've got in the works is as follows:

( Ridiculously long notes )

So, to work through my backlogs, here are more thoughts about some visual novels I've played:

Note: From what I've seen, Japanese use the English "heroine" to refer to the chief protagonist ("shujinkō")'s female love interest even if the protagonist is also a lady. (This is especially prominent in ones where you choose a scenario based on one in particular.) Since you won't know which character is which unless you know the games, I'm using this system for brevity and clarity.

Kurenai-Doki no Uta, Chapter 1 (Atelier of Chiharu): I've posted about Chapter 0 here and here. Sadly, I never got through this chapter. Although it is some interesting stuff, including commentary on societies both mortal and keyō and how life is after giving up one's humanity, the fact that I no longer have the patience to wade through large chunks of text was my undoing. The fact that the protagonist and heroine don't look like they're going to be getting back together anytime soon (which is just as well, since I've learned not to post on daily_yuri) doesn't help. According to the circle's page, it's currently on hiatus but planned to go up to Chapter 9, and considering that 0 and 1 each take umpteen hours (perhaps a single-digit number for fluent readers), there's a long way yet before a conclusion. I also didn't reach any suggestion of why this one was rated "18 and up," but with the story focusing on two guest characters (one male), I didn't have particularly high hopes about that, either. Chapter 0 already showed the internal organs of a human who'd been cut in half despite being "all ages," so I can only imagine what sorts of things would require such ratings (as usual for Japanese stuff).

Natsu no Hi no Resonance (Saitō Kagura): I was alerted to this one here. Fortunately, it's not nearly as long and meandering, so I was able to sit through it. The central theme is a weird techno-fantasy anomaly that's never really explained, but, like in a recent review, that's not the point. It's not a happy end, of course, and as with Yami-Bō （う～、思い出したくないな）, people on daily_yuri are complaining about something that I didn't see, which means either that the translator assumed something I didn't, or that I just missed it. I was more bothered by troubles with the game engine, such as the facts that you can't turn down the ridiculously loud sound effects and that you can't use "skip" because there aren't any choices to stop (so you have to make sure to save). It would also have been nice if there were a few CG events (full-screen set pieces), but that's not a big deal. This is also one of the rare occurrences of a lady who uses the first-person pronoun "boku" just because she's cute and energetic, not because she's boyish as is much more common.

Aoi Shiro Taiken-ban (SUCCESS): I mentioned this one back here. Although the game is for PS2, they were kind enough to provide a downloadable playable demo (downloadable here) for PC. Of course, before that, they released the OP (also downloadable from the same page), which is a good preview. Apparently, there will still be some blood-sucking, but from this sample, it appears to be only a 1:2 ratio to kissing, so that ought to be good enough for me. There's also an obvious water theme, but that's not enough to put me off.

Anyway, this is a commercial product with full voice, so it's a lot easier reading than the other two. One related interesting element is that you can choose a voice to tell you about the options in the main menu (although only the protagonist's is available in the demo). The game itself is the usual combination of (1) generic backgrounds with character images showing their current emotions/etc. and (2) CG events with at most slight changes when people move, but both are much more dynamic, with sprites moving around at different distances and the camera zooming and panning to whichever part of a set-piece is currently being described.

In terms of actual characters, I get the sense that the protagonist's voice seems more mature than you generally hear for a second-year high-school student (equivalent of an American junior). It's not like she sounds like an old lady or anything, just more serene, or something. I guess that's to show that she's an assiduous sort of person. It's also interesting to see how one of the main heroines reacts from the standpoint where I know about her feelings (from here*), but the protagonist apparently doesn't. Meanwhile, someone from the second page of characters steals a lot of scenes because of her extremely extroverted nature, but I think most (if not all) of the first page has a destiny advantage over her in terms of long-term plot.

*We only get the description of their meeting second-hand, so I'm not sure how the protagonist saved her from a boring speech with hime-sama dakko. . . . I also find it amusing that the other heroine refers to the object of her affection as her "daughter," as in Ōran Kōkō Host Club.

Despite the fact that the story centers on a girls' school kendō club and the swordswomen they encounter on their getaway, there haven't been any with badass speech patterns so far, but I imagine I won't be disappointed by the heartless swordswoman and the oni queen (a spoiler, yes, but c'mon, they tell the story about the eye in the first scene, so anyone who even starts it can guess just as well as I did). Speaking of the latter, I think I heard that the name "Kohaku" is traditionally paired with "Hisui" like in Tsuki-Hime, but it apparently isn't this time unless that's the name of one of the others in a previous life. Meanwhile, all of the students are from the first two school years, despite the fact that this doesn't appear to have the necessity of keeping them for a series as in HAYA-BLA. There's also a male character who's rather sparkly (and I'm not talkin' 'bout the top of his head), but I doubt he'll be much of a problem, as he seems to be a nice guy and doesn't appear in the video.

All in all, I'm quite expectant about the last one, even if it will set me back quite a chunk of change. . . .

These days, I have so many Japanese books to buy that by the time I get one, I don't remember what I'd read about it that prompted me to put it on the shopping list. This means, for one thing, that I generally go into each one with a clean slate, no spoilers, preconceptions, or particular expectations. This is especially true in the case of Aka×Pink, which I put off from a previous order because it was another novel that I'd bought accidentally. (For all I can remember, this one may predate "Yuri na Hibi.") Now that I've finally read it, I have enough kansō to fill an entire post.

Of course, in the interim, this one spent a lot of time sitting around the room, so I'm well acquainted with the cover illustration. I thought it just reminded me of Sai-Kano because of the content, but upon closer inspection, it's by the same guy. (I didn't remember the name because I didn't give a damn about that innovative-but-borderline-harem series in the first place.) Since I don't pay attention to prose, I hadn't heard of a major comics guy doing illustrations for novels before. Then again, there are only two real illustrations in the entire book. . . .

Anyway, from the blurb on the back, you'd get a certain idea of what sort of book it's going to be. But despite the fact that most of the characters are very unusual people, it's written pretty straight. (It isn't often that you read a book where the most normal guy in the cast is also the chief comic relief. He's the source of the quote in the subject line—yes, in Roman letters.) I suppose a human might have trouble taking such eccentricities seriously (although not so much as in Sai-Kano), but I like the way it explores these innovative personalities in a respectful manner.

In a similar way, despite the fact that the participants in the central fight/hostess club have to have cheesy/fetishy stage personae and outfits, and the matches are partially just for show rather than competitive, it's compared to MMA (with an octagon cage, despite the fact that PRIDE takes place in a square ring with ropes) rather than pro wrestling. I never had much interest in MMA, where the main MA (particularly among Brazilians and Japanese) is jūjutsu, because I don't much like seeing men rolling on the floor and grappling. (I guess that's in focus because it's effective in bare-handed combat. You don't need to choke someone out if you can stab or shoot him.) This one, however, focuses more on (somewhat) more dignified striking and stand-up. (I find it amusing that the one who admires "Mirko-san" is known as "Mīko-san.")

The story focuses on three main heroines, with each narrating one chapter. They are three very different individuals, but their common ground (other than occupation) is their seeking to understand what they want in life and reconcile it with what others want of them. (Incidentally, they also all use "watashi" in hira-gana, including the tough one who sees herself as a man and uses according speech patterns otherwise.) Although the different narratives overlap a lot in the same scenes, it's rather interesting to see which heroines feel it significant to describe which parts in full, and which they didn't seem to perceive at all.

Of course, yuri was still my main incentive behind this one. It's hard to say much without spoiling some of the interesting psychological elements, but suffice it to say that many of the most significant relationships in the story are between the heroines, and the line between friendship and romance, like much of the tale, is rather ambiguous. I quite liked it, with the exception of the fact that one of the relationships ends with a rather loose end.

All in all, I quite enjoyed this one and recommend it highly. Besides that, my ability to get through it led me to think that I might be willing to actually try some more novels on purpose—but, then again, I hardly have any shortage of reading material. It would be more useful to get back into reading prose in English, in case I might become able to write novels of my own, which would circumvent the problem of drawing that's currently my only real obstacle.

By the way, I was interested to see that the author is a lady who has a "my boom" about a particular color of lipstick, and who pumps iron at least once a week. The elements about practicing kara-te (she's a black belt who made it to the national championship in '02) and receiving a love letter from a younger lady are apparently autobiographical. I guess that like me, being an unusual person gives her a viewpoint that allows her to portray things differently from normal people.

This time I had a small batch, so I'm trying to drop them all down here before I get the next one and end up being distracted again. But if I always use the same number of items for good luck, why is this one smaller than usual?

説明しよう！†

I did indeed pick 13 items in my original order. However, due to the fact that the release of one of the items kept being postponed, I had a chance to trim out some mistakes I had made: one that I had bought elsewhere (and posted kansō here‡), one that I had accidentally put in the cart twice and ordered elsewhere, and one where my suspicions were confirmed, resulting in its removal as per my policy. When I heard that Yuri Michelin (?) was pushed back again to February, I finally gave up on having it in this order, so the survivors finally shipped.

Anyway, the actual kansō:

「Comic YuriHime VOL.9」 (Anthology): I don't remember too much of these, no doubt due to the difficulty of keeping track of multiple series with multi-month gaps in-between episodes. Nonetheless, it's all good. (Actually, I haven't gotten around to reading the solid blocks of text yet. I'm somewhat curious about an entire article on the Himitsu no Kaidan series, which I found very disappointing from a yuri standpoint—but, then again, I'm a man.) I found it amusing that, unlike Ms. Kiryū, Futami saw the good side of not being blood-related to one's sibling. There's also a second one-shot from the person who did the one about the yakuza heiress earlier. Apparently she/he likes "bad girl" protagonists—and sex, although the latter is pretty ubiquitous in this mook lately.

「MY OTOME Zwei」 (Higuchi Tatsuto/Abeno Chaco): Fortunately, this one follows the chronology from the Ein animation rather than the comics (although there is an allusion to the latter), yet has just as much nudity as Yoshino/Satō's works. (Incidentally, I can't seem to find that post on one of my sources that describes exactly how much you see of which characters in Episode 3.) The chief things I like about it over the OVAs are the increased focus on the relationships between Ms. Kruger and Ms. Viola (although still not much) and Ms. Chrysant and Ms. Armitage (the latter because the author admits that she's her? favorite character), and the complete lack of appearance from Ms. Marguerite (which is better than seeing the depths to which she'd sunk in the show).

「Gakuen Utopia MANABI STRAIGHT! Massugu Go!! Amamiya Manami 3A NO.45526 SEIOH GAKUEN 1」 (ufotable/Tartan Check): The title refers to the punch visible on the cover, which is one of Ms. Amamiya's trademarks. In any case, the primary heroine is quite cheerful and provides lots of skinship, mostly with the secondary heroine; there's some hint of admiration for a character who shows up later on, as well. A standard sports lady and an assiduous tsun-dere (hmm, seem to remember one just like that from Na*na*ki!) round out the cast. I have some difficulty telling the four heroines apart visually, as they're all the same size and shape, and all have short hair other than the fourth.

「Shiharu Genesis 1」 (Kondō Rururu): There are plenty of stories about reincarnation of demons, but it's unusual to use that as a premise for a honobono girls' school life comedy. . . . Like X and Ten-Kin, this follows the 1999-based chronology, but in this case, that's only the birth of the Devil, so it's set in the near future, before her awakening (thus avoiding the continuity problem the other two had, in that they were not finished by the time 1999 passed and the world didn't end). You may notice that I said "she," which fits in with my description of the series in the first sentence. It's not clearly stated, but I assume that this follows the standard in Japanese secular sources that demons (and possibly angels) do have gender, so this would probably fall under the heading of "transexual yuri"—although in a fantastic manner, like KA・SHI・MA・SHI. [It turns out that this isn't the case; for the purposes of this series, all of the top seven demons were ladies in the first place, as was I.] Anyway, it's mostly about the friendship between the two major heroines, but there are hints that Lilith is looking for a bit more (unsurprisingly, considering that she's often described as the bride of Satan, despite the fact that she is also commonly called the first human woman). Stating the presence of any given reincarnatee is not much of a spoiler, as all are identified by their names (e.g. ルシファー → るしはあ → しはる).

Speaking of names, this work also follows the Japanese convention of "Lucifer" being the demon name of the Enemy, as compared to his Latin angel name. In Ten-Kin and DEVIL & DEVIL, his angel name was Lucifel, a fabrication using the Hebrew "el," which is found in many angel and human names. In the former, "Satan" is a title applied to his seven lieutenants (and not him), while the latter has "Satan" as the hereditary title for the ruler of hell.

Like CHRNO CRUSADE and Project AnthraXX, a running gag is that the chief demon is actually a very nice person. And like Ten-Kin, there is also an angel who is reincarnated in parallel to the fallen—although this time they reversed the missed opportunity by making them both ladies. Personally, I'm glad I wasn't actually reincarnated as a Japanese lady in 1999. I appear to be the most popular angel in Japanese media; in Earthian, DEVIL & DEVIL, and this, it looks like I'm the only one taken from Abrahamic scriptures and apocrypha. [Actually, it turns out that Raphael is actually my aide, and Lucifel, Uriel, and Gabriel appear as well.] At least in this and Ten-Kin, I get to fight, instead of being in what appears to be a purely administrative post. . . .

「Neko Mokoro 1」 (Otokasa Aki): Another one set in a magic school for ladies, although this one is in some sort of space opera setting. The heroine's feelings originate in the fact that the object was the first other person she ever saw who looked human, but she remains loyal even after meeting various other beauties. An amusing running gag is that, although the heroine spends most of the first volume only being able to see her admiree from afar, she has many fantasies about what would happen when they meet, all following the same pattern, including that what they're doing towards the end of the dream is always censored (or perhaps left to the reader's imagination, but I like the sound of the first one better). The heroine's reaction when they finally do meet face to face is also quite nice. Of course, it's hard to say they have good prospects for a relationship if they don't even know one another, but I'm confident (as is the cover to Volume 2). Incidentally, this series is also the first I've seen to portray the difficulties of mermaids living on land.

「PENGUINMUSUME 1」 (Takahashi Tetsu): On the inside pages, this is called "PENGUINGIRL 14," where the "14" means (numerically, not phonetically) the same thing as in 14; the exploitative nature and the overly developed figures of the two chief heroines are other parallels. Sadly, this one loses out in the key point, as the athletic lady and her suitor (suitress?) are Heroines #2 and #5 rather than #1 and #2, and the former doesn't seem to have a huge following of underclass fans. (I told you the "boku" was an important selling point!) Still, there are several good prospects—I think the hime-sama dakko was a nice touch. (Incidentally, that's the one point that punk Zidane wins over Squall. It might have something to do that Ms. Til Alexandros was actually a real princess, though.) Heroine #1 has been related to the term 「ミーハー」, but unlike Ms. Kuremi, she's interested in men, too. Heroine #2 also knows a hunk when she sees one, but then again, so did Meg (too lazy to look up her surname).

Other points of interest include the fact that, for some reason, the ladies' uniform has a slit skirt with a fake petticoat doohickey. Meanwhile (not much of a spoiler), like in Ruro-Ken and Iono the fanatics, the drag queen guest (hopefully)-chara feels the need to show concrete proof. (Is it a coincidence that all of these were written and drawn by men?) Also, the Japanese heiress has a head butler named "Sebastian" (contrary to most old geezer butlers I've seen, who are called "Jī" or "Jīya" by their masters), while the American? one ("Marie Chupacabra W. Whitebear" sounds quite multicultural, but since the "W." is pronounced "Double-U," English has as many points as French and Spanish put together, and we all know how English speakers love giving their kids names from other languages, as anyone who knows my family can attest) has a head maid named "Maguro." Takahashi beat me to the punch with his badass eyepatched maid, but her personality is completely different from mine's, and the world still has room for plenty of gantai moe. There's also the same misunderstanding about the term 「メイド」 as in HAYA-BLA, but this time it's because she's Chinese, not because she's had an unusual upbringing.

「Kyōkan Astro 1」 (BannoNegi): From the title, I thought this was going to be set on an educational starship or something, but apparently the "ASTRO" is just the name of the athletics wear company that the main heroine patronizes. (I haven't the foggiest idea where they got the 「艦」.) Anyway, this is something of an unusual series, as it's set in a high school, yet the main characters are the teachers. (There was a student with good taste and a name who appeared, but only for one strip. Perhaps she was hospitalized after the heroine's hug.) Still, they are mostly in their 20s, as is to be expected from a society where female sex appeal is supposed to peak in the teens or earlier and ladies are ostracized for not marrying and retiring by the age of 25.

Anyway, the chief heroine inadvertently provides a lot of good scenes, mostly with the other who fell for her on the third page, but also with the other two main heroines and several lesser characters. (The story starts out focusing on a small group of individuals, but later adds some others, likely when it was clear that the serial was going to continue. Kubo did a similar thing with BLEACH, I imagine due to the fact that he wasn't told until the last chapter that his previous series was being cut.) I believe that falls under the heading of "tennen." The other characters are disappointing, but on the whole, I think this is my favorite of the new ones.

「HAYATE CROSS BLADE DRAMA CD Vol.2」 (Hayashiya Shizuru): Since this one has audio, I haven't gotten around to listening to it yet, but I do notice that they've skipped ahead to the Gakuensai part. Obviously they don't have the demand to adapt the entire series, so they're just doing the favorites.

Conclusion: Apparently the loss of luck wasn't terribly significant, as these are all worthy of continuing to read (with the exception of the one that was only one volume).

P.S. I was going to discuss a few new vocab words from this batch, but I've already spent my computer sessions for three days typing this, so I'll follow that up later. So much to type, so little time and readership . . .

†I first remember hearing this element used by Seki Tomokazu (played by Seki Tomokazu) in Love Pheromone (half of Love-Ge), but I can only assume it's more prevalent in pop culture than I've noticed. It's also used commonly in PENGUINMUSUME.

‡I know that you can't access this if you're not a member of daily_yuri. However, if you actually care, it's no trouble to join. You don't even have to have it on your friends page. The only risk I see is that someone might see your membership on your userinfo and think you're weird. You can also join whenever you want to read a post, then immediately quit again when you're done.

[Edit (2009.08.19): Clarified some misconceptions I had before reading further in those series]

Alphabetized to avoid having to rate them even more precisely

4 Movies You Can Always Watch:
1. STAR WARS EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE
2. STAR WARS EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE
3. STAR WARS EPISODE V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
4. STAR WARS EPISODE VI: RETURN OF THE JEDI
I rarely rewatch movies (even the ones I watch in the first place) anymore. There's just too much else to see. However, I've listed a few classics that I wouldn't mind watching again, since I'm interested in the setting. I guess I picked EPISODE I as my fourth because it has Ms. Portman in it, and she's not making out with Hayden Christensen. Capt. Tarpals is cool too, for all the five minutes of screen time he gets. UTENA is probably complicated enough to be worth watching again, as well.

4 Bands/Singers You Can't Get Enough of:
None. Even if you take it figuratively, there aren't any of either about which I care. My favorite composer is Uematsu Nobuo, but I don't care much about him, either.

4 Books You Can Read Over and Over:
1. CODEX: DAEMONHUNTERS
2. CODEX: WITCH HUNTERS
3. INQUISITOR ANNUAL 2004: vol. 2 The EXTERMINATUS Files
4. INQUISITOR: THE BATTLE FOR THE EMPEROR'S SOUL
As you may remember, I no longer have the patience to read large blocks of prose, and I get tired of reading the same story comics repeatedly. (Even most volumes of HAYATE CROSS BLADE and Yuri Shimai I've only read about a half-dozen times.) Most of the stuff I reread is reference material, for which I don't have many big ones at the moment, now that I'm not bothering with D&D anymore.

4 Towns You've Lived In:
1. Northfield, MN
2. Norwich, Norfolk
3. Redwood City, CA
4. West Lafayette, IN
I'm counting everywhere I've stayed on a regular basis (including sabbatical and school, but not other trips).

4 Shows You're Watching:
1. BLUE DROP: Tenshi-tachi no Gikyoku
2. JEOPARDY!
3. Minami-ke
4. MYTHBUSTERS
I'm far too lazy to catch TV shows consistently, and I don't give a damn about enough shows to bother getting TiVo. I've got a couple of new ones due to this meme's occurrence at the beginning of a season.

4 Shows You Like to Watch (not necessarily current):
1. CA$H CAB
2. THE COLBERT REPORT
3. THE DAILYSHOW WITH JON STEWART
4. MAIL CALL
Since this is in the present tense, I'm listing ones that I would continue to watch, not ones that I've already seen in full and thus probably will never watch again. I've also omitted the ones from the previous item, since you already know those. The two fake news shows are about the only way I'm willing to spend time actually using my eyes to find out about news. Too bad I'm too lazy to watch them when my brother isn't here. UTENA might fit into this category, too (and I still haven't seen a couple of the filler episodes).

4 Websites You Visit Daily:
1. Allies
2. The Animal Rescue Site, etc.
3. Ecology Fund
4. PRIVATEER PRESS
Yes, I still click on all these donations for causes about which I don't give a damn, as long as they're free. The other two I only visit regularly because they don't have RSS feeds.

4 Favorite Foods:
1. Cheesecake (on principle)
2. Hawaiian bread
3. Milk chocolate
4. Rainbow sherbet
I don't have much interest in food now that I'm restricting myself so much, so these are pretty arbitrary choices. There are plenty of foods that I would enjoy eating more, but I don't count them because I don't eat them.

4 Places You'd Like to Be Now:
1. Darfur, the Sudan
2. Madison, WI
3. Nottingham, Notts
4. Tucson, AZ
I really hate Japan. Even back when I was willing to kill and eat innocents for my own enjoyment, I still had to put up with people smoking everywhere and having to be polite to men. I may post about the Darfur part later. (This seems an odd way to release that information, but whatever.)

Very generic. There's no mention of games played, or miniatures converted, or anything interesting like that.

YesAsia.com uses USPS for its free shipping, so you can track an order once it makes landfall on this side of the pond. Thus, when it arrived in Illinois on Sunday, I was full of anticipation. Sadly, however, it arrived in Missouri four days later. I have no idea what was with that, but it somehow managed to get here this afternoon nonetheless—right after I'd finished rereading HELLSING.

In any case, I didn't manage to get any YuriHime Comics publications in this batch, but I still had one high-priority item: HAYATE CROSS BLADE Vol. 7. There'll be spoilers for up to that point, but there's only one person who has me on the friends list who's likely to ever read it, and I reckon she already has.

Ms. Zhū is still damn nifty, but more important was the much-awaited Shit-Bourgeois fight (or "kakumei vs. anarchy," as seems more appropriate now). I also notice that the ten battle is between the two S-rankers with weird belts. Ms. Inori must feel a bit left out, being the only one of the four combatants who speaks like a normal person.

Of course, with Ms. Mikado and Ms. Inori stepping into the spotlight, it's the perfect time to debut their Shigeru-Family mascots. Ms. Mikado gets tsun-dere points for her reaction to that. And I'm sure Ms. Kikkawa and I weren't the only ones surprised that Ms. Mikado took Shigeno rather than Shigerō.

We also get the first real glimpse of their background. I can't say I appreciate the direction of Ms. Mikado's motivation, but I do like her challenge to Ms. Inori the second time they met. I'm guessing that she was down about the business with Ryōichi, and it was the perfect time for Ms. Mikado to step in with a line like that. In the present day, it looks like Ms. Mikado is resigned to Ms. Inori's quitting because of it, but I'm hoping that it'll turn out all right, if Chopin's etude has anything to say about it. Also, it's interesting to note that the gender-like appearance and personalities of the heirs to the two rival corporations started out opposite one another and both reversed somewhere in-between. . . . (Ms. Amachi still has a lot of story left in her, so we'll presumably see what changed her at this point. Her father also looks rather young, if you ask me. . . .)

Meanwhile, the fight itself was predictably brief, even with the handicap. (Ironically, the word "punk" also has a similar meaning to "zako" in English.) The previous white-suit fight had a similarly obvious result, but Ms. Amachi drew it out for aesthetic purposes (although not as far as she claimed in the side story about the drama CD). Speaking of aesthetics, Ms. Shidō's and Ms. Tonami's custom blades looked rather cartoony to me. The latter is probably just because the basket hilt is too big in comparison to the more important blade, but in the former case I would have to commend Ms. Hayashiya for thinking up a logical reason for having a ridiculously large sword in a system that's essentially to first blood, even if it doesn't look good.

Also, the extras include the results of the second character-popularity contest (but not the episode-popularity one, oddly enough). The top two ranks are the same as before (which is perhaps why the numerical scores are not listed this time, as it made everyone but Ms. Kuga look pretty sad before), but I'm happy to have spent $1 to contribute to Ms. Mikado's placing at 4th, right behind Ms. Inori. As she already featured Ms. Kuga and Ms. Shizuma, Ms. Hayashiya instead included a gift illustration of the aforementioned runners-up (and our heroine) that would be suitable for daily_yuri if I could get a scan of it, but sadly no side story about them this time. Predictably, my other three votes didn't even manage to bump the poor side characters 20th place (which means they lost to what appears to be either a mascot or a cookie), but at least the captain of the nurse-tai appeared in one frame again, much to my surprise.

Coincidentally, Ms.? Maitake is in the middle of putting on a week-long HAYATE CROSS BLADE solo festival, centering on one couple each day. It sounds a bit lonely, so I at least will be sure to drop by on a daily basis. Meanwhile, Day 2 reminded me of something that I had overlooked: Ms. Hoshikawa and Ms. Tsukishima are now D-Rankers (last we heard), which means that they would be perfect targets for Ms. Nagi, who's going to be a big fish in a small pond when she gets there. She hasn't been mentioned for a long time except in the Kurogane×Shizuma battle, but I haven't given up on her. . . .

As part of my research for Project AnthraXX, I was looking through this. (You can probably guess why if you look carefully enough at my notes, but I know you won't, so you'll have to wait until it's hypothetically drawn so it'll be obvious.) Sadly, one of the problems with Wikipedia, just like its English counterpart, is that for fiction, almost the entire article is under the "spoiler alert" tag, so you can never be sure not to learn something you weren't supposed to learn yet unless you've already read the entire thing. It's especially difficult with Japanese comics, where the writers can get information from the serials, while I have to wait for the compilations. Naturally, I did happen to run into one.

Meanwhile, I was actually motivated to go back and read the seven volumes that I have. I stopped following the series a couple years back due to the refocus of my priorities, but it's still an entertaining series. I was particularly surprised at how much of the Millennium stuff I didn't remember after reading once (particularly the part about Walter and the tall, stoic, nameless Werwolf captain), as compared to the parts up to the HELLSING/Iscariote meeting, which I had read in two languages and seen in the TV series. Now that I'm more experienced and had already read through it, I was able to catch more of the design elements.

I remember one of the first impressions I had of the series was Arucard's crazy eyes. Now that I look at it more carefully, the same trait is displayed by pretty much every adult male character (and Ms. Blitz). Even the unaltered humans like Maxwell look positively abnormal. Of course, that is not terribly surprising, as a good proportion of the principal characters is made up of bloodthirsty megalomaniacs. The series also has possibly the highest eyewear quotient of any I've seen, between the spectacles (apparently vampirism can cure aging, but not astigmatism), sunglasses, Walter's monocle, and Doc's goggles. The illustrator particularly likes to show people with their faces shrouded in darkness (even when standing in places where the rest of their bodies are illuminated) and glare off their lenses. I also noted that people seem to have really long arms (reaching about to their knees), but I don't have anything in particular to say about that.

Another thing that struck me when coming back to the comics was the gags. I've said before that I don't believe in the concept of the "smart joke" (although there are certainly some more intellectual than others), but I find it hard to call these ones even jokes. I liked the fact that they removed them from the TV series, but I hear that they have been retained in the OVAs.

Also, another unusual thing for an action series is that we never have to worry about the hero. The introductory stories (the village of Cheddars, the Northern Ireland mission, and the Valentine Bros. siege) serve mostly to introduce us and Ms. Victoria to the fact that Arucard is ridiculously powerful. In fact, among all the weird monsters, the chief protagonist is often the one who seems the most hideously inhuman. He also uses my favorite speech patterns (after a brief attempt at "ore" in the first chapter, later retconned), but so does half of the rest of the cast.

Incidentally, it appears that, officially, the TV series is now known as Hellsing Rescript, while the OVAs are just HELLSING. This is because this was another one where the TV series got ahead of the original comics, so they had to make up their own ending. This has happened with all three of the animations of Young King Ours series I've seen; no surprise, as they say that HELLSING only runs every other month, which means about one volume a year. In the meantime, I see that Koyasu plays Luke Valentine in both versions. It's different from my image of him for him to get such a zako role, but at least unlike his brother, he was supposed to seem like a tough guy. After all, he plays the part that shows us to the full degree that Arucard is so ridiculously powerful. Many of the other parts have been recast for the OVAs, resulting in Andersen being played by Wakamoto. I would be quite amused if it turned out that his true form is an unidentifiable round yellow creature.

I've finally gotten around to reading Chapter 0 of the visual novel I mentioned way back. I'd never read one of these before, so it was an unusual experience. It took me several tries to realize that I needed to right-click to save, which was a big help.

My comments (no particular spoilers):

The circle that made the game is known as Atelier of Chiharu. The Japanese loving the word "atelier" aside, I only recall seeing the name "Chiharu" used for minor characters in yuri-themed works: HAYATE CROSS BLADE, PURE Marionation, and "Kanojo" (one of the main characters in this case, but only a short story, so relatively minor) (included here and probably here). I can only assume that's coincidence, as in the case of my _hizuru comparison.

The story itself is very heavy on the melodrama, with a good dose of graphic violence and some light moments (often switching moods very suddenly). I don't know the language well, but I can tell that it's a lot more poetic than anything I write. It was somewhat unfortunate that the engine used doesn't have a system for ruby text, so ate-ji and the like have to be added in brackets afterward.

The writing isn't the only fancy part. Despite this being a freeware game (and thus having a low enough budget that they had to use open photos for the backgrounds), there are numerous full-color illustrations and half a dozen BGMs composed for the game. That's presumably what helped me to overcome the attention-span problem I have reading prose. The men tend to be a bit ugly, but the ladies (and one yasa-otoko) look quite nice.

One minor thing that bothered me was that the main characters are members of traditional Japanese families, which means that the ladies all have to use polite forms when speaking to the men. On the other hand, I rather like the concept of the family dōjō where they don't teach actual martial arts, just whatever method can be used to kill most efficiently—much like Ms. Inferne's teachings in Project Artificer. And in any case, I have no complaints about the fact that the main heroine is ridiculously strong.

Another interesting thing I noted: The heroine was bothered by the fact that she has trouble with history class because they have to memorize so many dates; she wishes they would learn about the significance of events instead. I agree with this, and I think that in my schooling, it was more the latter style. This seems likely to be a common difference between Western and Eastern education, as we are more right-brained and they more quantitative (?). This reminds me of how I could never write anything with such metaphysical and artistic elements as this, since I can only properly process more down-to-earth themes. Maybe that says something about the difference between their mainstream society and their cult media.

Incidentally, if you want a taste of the illustrations, I've stored what I've collected for daily_yuri here.