Opinion Prone

So I’ve reread and reviewed Gundam Wing’s Ground Zero, Blind Target, and Battlefield of Pacifists. All three are manga that take place between the Gundam Wing anime and the Endless Waltz OAV, and the latter two are written by scriptwriters of the series. These three books, along with Gundam Wing: Episode Zero, were among the first manga I ever bought, but I haven’t read them in years… it was really strange going back to them now, especially since it’s been just as long since I’ve seen the Gundam Wing anime. It was kind of nostalgic and kind of hilarious. I didn’t realize or remember how pretentious some of these storylines were. :P

I’ll be rereading and reviewing Episode Zero soon, and after that, I’m going to be selling them all to a friend. I was really fighting with the idea of letting them go — like I said, these were pretty much the first manga I ever bought — but I think after rereading all of them, I’ll be all right. Gundam Wing was one of my first major fandoms, so it makes sense that it’s hard to get rid of what I own. It makes me wonder what else I’ll be getting rid of soon, and it makes me wonder what I’ll be getting rid of in the future. I don’t buy too many things in general, but I get attached easily. And I’m a packrat. I’m not used to getting rid of things at all. Damn economy, eh? Damn it all.

Finally, finally wrote my review for DOGS.

It was kind of interesting that while I was writing it, I realized that it really isn’t as amazing or unique as I sometimes like to think it is. Honestly, I think I fell in love with the artwork more than anything else, but forcing myself to write what I think about the other aspects of the book was pretty enlightening. Funny how that works, huh?

I was thinking about also writing a review for the DOGS side story, Hardcore Twins, but I’m not sure if it’d be worth it. I mean, it’s like a 20-page comic introducing two characters that appear later in Bullets and Carnage… would someone really read a review for something like that when it’d likely take less time to just read the comic? Then again, I guess the same could be said for SEED Supernova, which I reviewed out of sheer boredom. Ho hum.

Finished the review for Nodame Cantabile!

I’m not sure if I should go ahead and move onto the sequel or wait until its finished airing. My brother is still trying to get me to go through more of Seto no Hanayome, but I’m not really feeling it. I want to check out the Nodame Cantabile live action stuff though — there’s a drama and a special out, right? The live action all takes place in Europe though, so maybe I should wait until I finish the anime’s sequel? I also kind of want to check out the manga, though it’d be kind of weird without those long montages of music… plus, it’s still on-going, so I’d have a lot of catching up to do, only to wait some more. :P Oh, woe. For these series that have run off and seeped into a dozen different medias, how do you choose what to check out and in what order?

After years of being a fan of GitS: Stand Alone Complex, I finally got around to watching the original Ghost in the Shell movie. And here’s the review. I’m expecting a rush of “not helpful” feedbacks because I reviewed it negatively, hahaaaaa.

I’m wishing again that users on MAL could actually leave comments on reviews so I know for sure why people think some of mine are “unhelpful,” particularly when I think I’ve reviewed in favor of the general consensus, like my Perfect Blue review. I want to know if it’s actually something about my writing or people disagreeing with my opinion. Ah, well.

I just finished Nodame Cantabile, so that review should be coming up soon~.

Finished my review for Mushishi. I was kind of surprised at how quickly I plowed through this series considering it’s completely episodic and has no overarching storyline.

It’s usually a lot harder for me to get into those kinds of series, and that’s actually the reason I’m having such a hard time finishing Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei right now, lol. The first series was great, but I think I may be getting tired of the usual antics. I (finally) finished the original Ghost in the Shell movie and am about halfway through that review now. My brother and I are also plowing through Nodame Cantabile and will probably finish in another day or two. As a huge fan of classical music, a (mediocre) pianist, and a former clarinetist, it’s pretty exciting for me to see some classical music in my anime. :P Can’t wait to finish this series and see if the sequel’s worth pursuing!

I finally finished watching Spice and Wolf last week, so here’s the review for it. I can now say that I’m looking forward to the upcoming sequel of it. Hurray!

I seem to have this big issue with swapping tenses in my reviews. I’m never sure whether I should be writing them in past or present tense, so I inadvertently end up jumping around a lot, which is really annoying. (I’m sure most people don’t notice anyway, but I do when I go back to read them sometimes…) History papers are in past tense because we’re talking about the past. English papers are in the present because the book is fictional and we’re discussing it in the actual present. As far as I know, you should still use present tense even if its historic fiction. I suppose according to that reasoning, reviews should also be in present tense because we’re discussing it in the present and they’re fictional works… I just need to remember this next time I write. It’s way too much trouble to go back and fix everything I’ve written now… Bugger.

UROBOROS
Dir en grey’s 7th album
12th November, 2008

I’m a bit ashamed to say that I hadn’t really been keeping up with Diru news for the last few months, and so the fact that they swapped US labels and were releasing the album a day earlier in the States was completely unknown to me. Thus, I wasn’t prepared with a preorder of the album. I’m not sure how early the leaks got online, but I know Kaoru was ticked about it. I know that it doesn’t alleviate my guilt any, but I downloaded it yesterday and held off on listening to it until today…? I’ll be picking the US release when I go see them in Houston on the 25th, so in any case, let it be known that this band is definitely getting my money in more than one way. ♥

I set aside an hour and half to sit down and listen to this album without distractions. The leak’s quality is definitely not the best, but it’ll do. The album’s cover is one of their best in a while, I think, though I do wish they’d take a break from the monochromatic color schemes. I guess Glass Skin’s cover had color, but other than that, when was the last time they had a ton of colors on their album art? six Ugly? Anyway, this isn’t really a review of the album — I think it’s a lot harder to review music because impressions change much more readily over time compared to other things like series and movies. So these are just first impressions, written as I listened, so the comments are also much more unpolished than they would be in a review. :3

1. Sa Bir: Starts off with some interesting bass buzzing, hushed whispers in the back, and a very haunting melody on some kind of string instrument I’m not familiar with. The feel is very traditional Asian or Indian sounding, which is appropriate considering the title (I have no idea what it means, but it looks Indian or Middle Eastern to me). The voices in the back sound like some kind of story that you only have a vague grasp of — there’s someone threatening sounding and someone defeated sounding. It’s very intriguing… the softness of it does remind me a bit of the first track on MARROW, but the strings and the voices really suggest that something different is happening here.

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I met my goals last night as far as homework went, so I rewarded myself with Perfect Blue, which I’ve just finished reviewing. It was the last of Satoshi Kon’s movies that I needed to see, and it was quite excellent. I really can’t wait to see his newest project, Dream Machine, when it’s finished. :3

I was thinking of re-structuring the format I use to set up my reviews. Right now, the sections I use are a mix between the sections dictated by Kiji Anime, a now-defunct review site I used to write for, and my own breakdown of categories. Most review sites or whatever use a similar break down, but since I use MAL pretty much exclusively now, I was thinking of just conforming to that. Really though, the sections I use are pretty much the same anyway, just I list them in a different order and use slightly different names. Some of the other better reviewers also break down the “Sound” category into “music” and “voice acting,” so yeah… Dunno. I’m a fan of cohesiveness and conformity on things that should be uniform, like reviews, but that also means I like cohesiveness and conformity within my own collection of reviews. It’d be troublesome to have to go back and edit old reviews, lol. This is a pretty pointless internal debate, isn’t it?

I think I’ll probably just keep doing what I’m doing and not worry about MAL’s format. Eh.

Finally. A good month and a half after the series has ended, I’ve finished writing this review.

Despite the fact that I’ve said that the nature of reviews is to be opinionated, I have a pressing need to consider all sides of everything and to present as fair an assessment as possible. Naturally, being fair while simultaneously trying to convey your own personal feelings about a series is difficult. Code Geass has been one of those series that remind me why I’m a fan of anime in general, so of course I’m biased, but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand the fact that there are a lot of things wrong with it. How to get both points across without being more verbose than I already am? It’s a huge challenge, and I’m still not sure if I like how the review turned out. I did the best I could though, and I guess that’s all I can do for now. I may revisit the review sometime in the future like I did with my review of the first season.

I rewatched the first live action Death Note movie with my roommate last night. Hopefully the second movie and the L movie will soon follow, and I’ll be able to write all three reviews.

Moon Child is one of the few movies I actually own (well, to be fair, it was a gift). I’ve seen it a half dozen times or so and have been trying to write about it for a while. Even though it’s been years since I first saw it, writing about this movie in an objective manner has been much, much harder than I thought it would be, but here we are…

Moon Child

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