So life happened, and by “life” I mean “a bunch of things”. Well, I guess that’s sorta what life amounts to. I’d also like to think that life would give me a bunch of things to blog about, but either I end up pretty lazy, or I become too busy to the point where, by the time I would’ve posted it, the entry in question wouldn’t be as timely as I’d like it to be. Anyway…happy new year, two months in.

Manabi Mode seems like such a 2010 thing, despite what my Twitter says (“I heard [ufotable producer] Hikaru’s coming to SF for a Kara no Kyoukai event!! MAYBE I SHOULD COME UP TO HIM WITH MANABI STUFF AND HAVE HIM SIGN IT AND TALK ABOUT IT WITH HIM MASSUGU GOOOOOO”). But if you check my Twitter, you’ll notice that I also happen to be tweeting a lot about Sketchbook. As of late, I figured I’d start tagging stuff with #sketchbookmode, to see how long this particular round of obsession lasts.

If you know me well, I have a list of three series that I consider my god-tier-will-rewatch-or-reread-any-time-I-feel-like-it-which-is-often series: Manabi Straight, Sketchbook, and Hidamari Sketch. (As an aside, there are two other anime rated 10 on My Anime List — Azumanga Daioh, which is more of a sentimental rating than anything; and ARIA the Origination.) At any point in time, I will be unusually hype for one of those three series. Right now, it’s Sketchbook. For a moment inbetween all of my Manabi hype last year, it was Hidamari Sketch.

As they say, parting makes the heart grow fonder. The three series are in different positions. Manabi, with its thirteen episodes, OVA, and four tankoubon, is completely done; in the end, there’s nothing truly new I can experience from that series. Hidamari Sketch‘s manga is ongoing (on its fifth volume right now); the anime has three seasons and I wouldn’t be surprised if SHAFT animated a fourth.

Sketchbook, however, is somewhat interesting. The manga is ongoing (the seventh volume hit Japanese bookshelves in early October, and it’s understandably not been licensed for the English market); and the anime, full color’S, is a 2007 thirteen-episode release whose only official English release has been on Crunchyroll. Crunchyroll’s license for the series, as of last June, seems to have expired, and thus everything but the first episode has been taken down. The series covers some three to four volumes of scattered content…most of it resides in the shucchouban – a special volume comprised of comics (with most of the content actually not being 4-panel!) that were published in the spinoff Comic Blade Masamune.

I’ve mentioned before that Sketchbook, to me, is a really great series; in fact, I prefer it over ARIA. I wouldn’t be able to tell anyone why, though. Some people have dubbed me slightly odd, but at the very least, we all recognize that to each his own.

Anyway, as of recent, I’ve somehow ended up following a couple of Japanese Sketchbook fans. They seem pretty passionate about the series. I read their tweets whenever I’m bored and whenever they make a reference, I get it, even if in Japanese…but I can’t respond, nor make appropriate replies/comebacks, because despite my ability to read/recognize Japanese text, I’m not very good at actually forming sentences, and thus not very confident about using it, either.

Also: just last week was protagonist Sora Kajiwara’s birthday. The moment it hit midnight on February 4 in Japan, a good chunk of the Sketchbook cluster cheered as much as they could. Some talked about how glad they were to be Sketchbook fans, and to have met like-minded people. Some posted birthday pictures. Some rewatched an episode or two of the series. Some sent congratulations to @KajiwaraSoraBot. Some admitted that Sora’s birthday was the first time they got really, really hyped up over the birthday of a fictional character. Fun times were had.

Somehow, in addition to my wanting to be a great translator/interpreter/teacher of the Japanese language someday, I now have a very active reason to study Japanese. And now, as of late, I’ve been practicing my Japanese to no one in particular, unless someone replies or mentions me in Japanese. Then, I try my best to form a reply. (As an aside, I love you, love you, LOVE YOU, codefromtokyo; his Japanese dictionary for iOS has come in useful when I can’t come up with words or phrases I need.)

So, long story short: due to the fandom, Sketchbook continues to be relevant for me as I continue my study of Japanese language and culture. And so, from time to time, I’ll be posting a handful of notes here on the usage of Japanese, in an attempt to explain it…and maybe it’ll be useful to other people studying Japanese. And, like I’ve been doing lately on Twitter, the examples are probably gonna be Sketchbook-centric…though I could probably go either which way with that.

Anyway…頑張ります！そして、よろしくお願いします！

The release for DJ Max Technika is right around the corner (at least for a handful of arcades, Sunnyvale Golfland included)! That said, I’ve updated my guide with songlists and am set to update like mad once Platinum Crew US comes out. Speaking of which, I should probably getting around to getting a new card, because I’m not a huge fan of my Play the Future card…and I want to be able to rank online.

Can’t wait to see everyone purchase and use their The Clear Blue Sky cards! Well, not that I can blame them, Sky (pictured above) is pretty. But not as pretty as Ryun, from Here in the Moment. Or as cute as Yuna from Melody.

First person that I see enjoying a card that doesn’t have a girl on it gets props from me…for being a rebel.

I realized a bit after my bacon-obsession post, looking at the contents of the front page of my blog (my last ten posts), that I don’t speak too much of anime nowadays (even though a handful of posts do have anime imagery) – as opposed to earlier on when this blog might as well have been an anime blog.

I’m glad I didn’t revive Waffles. Although I do have a handful of things to say about Bounen no Zamned. I’ll wait until it’s over, first.

As soon as the Windows 7 beta publically released (or, rather, properly released), I nabbed it, mostly to see what the hype was all about. It’s a pretty decent OS thus far. I haven’t had much experience with Vista, so I can’t say how much of an improvement this is over that (although I’m sure you can find it somewhere else). However, it’s quite speedy and zips along just as fast as XP did, except with a dash of Aero polish. I didn’t need to install any drivers, either; everything worked right out of the box, except for the fingerprint scanner my laptop came with, which Windows 7 instantaneously and gleefully provided a link to.

Coincidentally, Pentavision released the ‘full version’ of the DJ Max Portable Black Square website and had some downloadable goodies on hand, too. I nabbed a pair, and now they’re in a rotation with three other images in Windows 7′s built-in desktop picture shuffler thing. Nifty-nifty stuff.

Now, the only gripe I have is that I can’t watch softsubbed anime on Windows 7. Supposedly, there are ‘working’ tweaks, but for some odd reason or another, those tweaks aren’t working their magic on my computer.

I guess whenever I’m in the mood for Shugo Chara!, I’ll be restarting my computer, but other than that, I’m quite content with Windows 7 thus far.

Addendum: While talking with Rome, I did a pair of benchmarks: it takes about less than a minute (50 sec.) to get to ‘fully working’ e.g. you can open up an application and not have it choke; and RAM usage upon startup is approximately 17% of 4GB (.68GB). This figure jumps to about 24.x% when I actually start doing stuff (for the record, this is on “maximum-shiny” Windows Aero – boatloads of blending effects and whatnot ahoy!

Also, I was able to do the above picture in Paint. Whenever I get back to XP, I’ll give it that good dose of drop shadow. Still – proper PNG support in Paint is great, even though it’s probably been there since Vista.

Speaking of things that were in Vista but are not present in 7, Inkball is gone. The best default Windows game came and went. Microsoft needs to correct this, and preferably with the next beta build of Win7.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Also, as an administrative aside, the blog’s been upgraded to WordPress 2.6.5. Nice to know that I didn’t screw that up. I might up to something like 2.7b3 sometime just for kicks.

In the case that I get a wonderful, wonderful readership stretching into the six digit range (thank you, thank you all! I feel so loved), I’ve prepared a favicon for bookmark bars, and for iPhone/iPod Touches (love ya, Dan).

…well, not that the iPhone icon is much, but hey, screw the screencap, have a Mimi!

Hello, once again. My name is Spiritsnare.

You might remember me. I used to operate an anime blog called Waffles on this domain. What happened was that the lovely-lovely Misu, who graciously hosted me on the VisualNews network (now NovelNews, I guess) — his server went down, and took Waffles with it, and I didn’t have a backup. I think the only full backup I have is probably on either AnimeNano or the AnimeBlogger Antenna.

I waited for the longest time, mostly out of laziness. The only journal updates people would be able to get from me resided on my sketchy deviantART account.

And now I’ve decided I should pick up somewhat regular blogging again.

It occured to me that I am not watching as much anime as I used to, forsaking new seasons of fresh content due to laziness and college. Reviving Waffles would be out of the question. So, I decided to create a catch-all blog, writing about life on the domain that once held my old one.

As for old content on Waffles, I will be reposting content from it. It’d be nice to at least have it up. A la Azrael‘s transition from I Am A Japanese School Teacher to Gaijin Smash, old content shall be reposted over time. (The only solid date I’ll give you for a reposting is Manabi on April Fool’s.)

In the meantime, I shall get to work making myself at home again.