Here in America, a cycle repeats: a new school year is starting, and the hopes of millions of students ride on the wind in pursuit of their dreams, myself among them. In the meantime, before I bury myself in trying to become The World’s Next Great Addition To Anyone’s Japanese-to-English Localization/Translation Team (who am I kidding – I’m taking Japanese 1A again despite having cleared 3-kyu because I have reason to believe that even though I might know a handful of words and I can listen and read a bit, my ability to form sentences with proper grammar seems not to exist), here I am, obsessing, once again, over Manabi Straight instead of writing real blog posts!

It’s true. I’m too lazy to develop my tweet thought process into full blog posts, so they stay on Twitter as chains of three or four or nine tweets-in-a-row. Apparently, though, I’m down for taking pictures of, cutting, pasting, and translating choice panels of the third Manabi manga tankoubon in order to pay even more homage than I already do.

I’ve at least got an excuse just for today: it’s sorta Manabi’s birthday.

I’m not hardcore enough to separate the pages of my precious bound volume* in order to bring you this fine piclation, but the point stands: I think a bit too much about Manabi. Maybe I should consider actually watching more anime than just Amagami SS (a horribly enjoyable show) this season. Or any other season, natch. Maybe I should get back into K-ON!! in anticipation of that one Sega music game that’s coming out.

For the time being, though — happy birthday, Manami Amamiya, and, as always, まっすぐゴー‼

* That said, if there are raw scans of the Manabi manga floating around on the Internet and OpenManga can support a potential translation of it, I am absolutely down for translating it!!

I’d be continuing the streak of posts I’ve got about character birthdays (today’s Kanon‘s Ayu Tsukimiya), but in about six hours from the time of this post airs the first episode of the one thing I’m committed to following during this 2009/2010 winter anime season: Hidamari Sketch x☆☆☆. And thus, all of my hype is being focused accordingly.

Therefore:

Yeahuh.

Amusingly enough, I’m celebrating the birthday of a girl who’s supposed to be born in 2018, but if you set it relative to the series’ end (meaning it was 2037 two years ago), she’s 21 and thus legal to drink alcohol in America! Although, of course, she’s only studying in Oregon for one more semester…

Other character birthdays I celebrated this month (albeit without this much fanfare) were those of Nayuki Minase (12/23) and Kuga Kokage (12/19).

Happy Holidays to everyone who celebrates them!