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’m still alive! Seven days more to FanimeCon — I figure I should post. Let’s start by talking about anime.

What I’m following this season:

• Angel Beats!: How do I put this?…it’s so convoluted. There’s the random awesomeness, like, say, every Girls Dead Monster concert and TK (and crew’s) ability to pack up a mahjong set in five frames flat (that’s a sixth of a second!!); then there’s what I expect out of Jun Maeda (every flashback thus far; the Otonashi-hugging-Naoi-in-the-rain sequence; Tenshi missing out on her mabo tofu, et al.); then there are the unanswered questions about the world proper (see: everything about Tenshi). I think it’s precisely because it’s so convoluted that I enjoy it, even if in the end it has the potential to be the biggest troll Maeda’s come up with.
• Ookiku Furikabutte ~Natsu no Taikai-hen~: I liked the first series, so I figured I should follow it up with the sequel — it’s pretty hype. So hype, in fact, that I decided to take a look at how Funimation decided to localize the first season (and they did a pretty good job of it, I’d like to say — but I digress.) I see that (as of this post) ANN has it down as a 13-episode series, but AniDB, MyAnimeList, and Wikipedia all say it’s “ongoing” — here’s hoping to another 26 episodes!

What I tried this season:

• K-ON!!: Watched one episode. I don’t dig the new opening or ending. Supposedly it’s grown on people. Other than that, seems like more of the same, which isn’t a bad thing. On hold, because I’m too lazy.
• Working!!: Watched three-fourths of the first episode. I’m not sure what turned me off — the oddball cast, the loli jokes, my sympathy for Takanashi, picking on Popura, or what. Dropped for now, but reconsidering. (Also, as an aside, the first half-minute totally invokes the Sex Machineguns.)

Not too much is new, though. Finals are around the corner (I’m prepared for everything!!…except statistics); I recently held Doubletap, a wacky DJ Max Technika tournament (of which you can see videos on Drayne O’s YouTube account); I’ve got two cosplays ready for Fanime (thanks in no small part to Panda)…

What else is there? Oh — for kicks, I bought a bottle of Odor Blocker. It does, indeed, block odor for 16 hours, and maybe a bit more.

My time with Sketchbook has come to an end; it joins Azumanga Daioh and Hidamari Sketch as one of my all-time favorite anime, perhaps further driving into the ground the fact that I might be enjoying the slice-of-life genre a bit too much.

In the meantime, I’m ramping up my anime watching. Like the above picture, Sketchbook handed the baton over to ARIA the Natural. Alongside that in my Queue of Old Stuff™ is Ookiku Furikabutte, with some Shugo Chara! on the side, and Uchuu no Stellvia, in a joint watch-o-rama with Amol.

I’ve also taken to sampling a handful of things from this season. K-ON! continues to be good. The new Fullmetal Alchemist feels quite like its predecessor, and perhaps has the best eyecatch (earcatch?) of the season. I’m going to sample Saki and East of Eden by the end of the week. And, finally, to top things off, I’ve got an Abridged Script for Ristorante Paradiso episode 1 that goes something along the lines of this:

FADE IN: INT. FANCY ITALIAN RESTAURANT

NICOLETTA walks in and has a fine supper with her mother and father-in-law. She notes the presence of SEVERAL HOMOSEXUAL ITALIAN MEN. She also notes that every woman in the restaurant that isn’t HER nor HER MOTHER are fawning over said HOMOSEXUALS.

NICOLETTA
What is up with all of these women blushing? Geez.

One of the HOMOSEXUAL MEN pours cheap wine into NICOLETTA’S GLASS. NICOLETTA ends up BLUSHING.

NICOLETTA
Shit.

END

K-ON! is good. Queen’s Blade will never touch my machine ever again in animated form, but a couple of friends found scanlations of the source material, and so my laptop plays host to a handful of PDFs for their use whenever necessary.

And Sketchbook continues to be wonderful. I think I might be addicted, even. It’s so good.