I’m truly and honestly sorry for my protracted absence and silence from this blog. Aside from the plethora of exams I had to study for (because I study now), I still have a lot of exams for the following week. I’m sorry I couldn’t post earlier, but I have avoided dallying around the Internet so as not to waste time. Aside from the fact that I’ve had to deal with Emmanuel Levinas and microbiology, I’ve also had to deal with Kafka.

Oh, and Kimikiss remains to be awesome.

Saturnine linked to an article of his trying to promote community among the anime bloggers on IRC. I do not read his blog, reasons stemming from his demeanor on IRC to his general treatment of other anime bloggers. I clicked that specific post of his, however, and I was filled with horror.

I do not write troll posts: I deem myself somewhat more intelligent than that, but this occurrence simply filled me with bile and with disgust. I felt that it was like Adolf Hitler promoting community within anime blogging. One may ask: why do I compare saturnine with Adolf Hitler? His demeanor in that post of his was highly contrary to any altruistic or benevolent behaviour in the IRC channel of animebloggers hosted under Maestro: the channel is located at #animeblogger on irc.irchighway.net. People can check us out there. I am quite jovial and facile in the channel, and yes, sometimes I reach extremes of being quite stupid, but I enter to chat and to joke with my fellow bloggers, and sometimes discuss matters that are relevant to our interests, not be in an English class or a class of manners. Saturnine, on the other hand, is a curmudgeon who offends many people’s sensibilities. (I say this without vitriol; I cannot find another more fitting word.) I believe he has trolled everyone except a few regulars of that channel, and I believe that those regulars can attest to this.

I speak of this in all honesty: saturnine lashes with harsh words at almost everyone, and I find that a character like this cannot ever promote community. Can you imagine someone like Adolf Hitler talking about the union of the human race? I sure cannot. This is similarly the reason why I can never believe that he wrote that. I would highly promote what he proposed in that post of his if Jeff Lawson wrote it; right now, I feel too surprised that he even had the gall to write a post like that.

I wish most of you people will listen to me. I believe that if you follow his exhortations, you will just be like Hitler’s people: it will probably merely be a confederacy of dunces.

I am inviting a lot of flak from the community, imagined or otherwise; feel free to heap your insults with your comments.

Have a nice day.

Caveat: this post is only tangentially about anime. However, I thought that if I don’t write this down I may just forget it. And I don’t want that to happen.

As a person, I am quite introverted: I spend my time mostly alone, brooding about different ideas and thoughts. I rarely go out to shop or to gimmick: frankly, they only cost me money and time. I am not a materialistic person: the only time I bought something was because I wanted to help, and it turned out even that attempt was a failure (since what I bought was fake). I guess I am very simple as a person: I appreciate my blog, one of my outlets as well as a conduit for communication, being read. I love writing, and I love anime. (more…)

I’ll try my best to be as civil as possible, but please do forgive me if ever I overstep my bounds.

I am frustrated because I believed I was helping the industry. I was, but it was not the anime industry. I was helping the bootleg industry, and I paid a significant amount of money for it. In the end, I was just another person fooled. I really had good intentions, to be honest, but I was simply fooled by the beauty of the boxset of Binchou-tan. In addition, I have never seen an original anime DVD before; thus, despite my efforts in discriminating if the boxset was pirated or not, in the end, I was fooled. (more…)

I have gone to anime conventions before, but I have never yet gone to a Hero anime convention. The Hero anime convention calls itself the biggest anime convention, and with good reason: it is the only anime convention advertised in local television, and to be honest, it really was the biggest I have ever attended. It was the only convention in my experience where I had to wait in line for two hours just to get into the convention center. I had a good time, though, and I finally found and bought for myself my very first original anime DVD. Despite the ubiquity of pirated DVDs (there were at least four stalls that sold anime episodes converted to DVD), I found a limited choice of original anime DVDs, and … (more…)

Jeff Lawson wrote a wonderful post with regard to the state of the anime industry. He states pertinent points; in fact, he even linked to relevant material. He does not offer answers: in a post-modern way, he organizes and asks the relevant questions. I do not know much about the industry, and I also cannot offer much when it comes to solutions to the problem. However, in this post I hope to be able to describe and explain why fansubs, particularly in the Filipino fandom scene, is a necessity. (I wanted to comment, but judged against it: at best, this post is tangential to the matter at hand that he discussed.) (more…)

My first semester of third year has finally ended. Despite having some almost insurmountable tasks, I have succeeded in surpassing them (to some degree). Much thanks goes to the people who correspond with me in this blog; you have been part of my success. That success isn’t much, but I’m thankful that I still can freely express myself and have people to correspond with me. My thanks goes out most especially to Ryan and Wilson (meganeshounen). Thank you for being there with me. (more…)

School Days was among the many reasons why I have rekindled the flame of anime addiction inside me. It was, however, not the only one. Among the pivotal reasons why I have appreciated anime once more was simply because of a happenstance: I was surfing through CrunchyRoll, a popular online video streaming site that caters to fans of Asian media, when I found an anime series entitled The Red Blooded Eleven. Curious, I searched the Internet for more information with regard to the series, and I found some from fansub.tv. What information I found was both funny and absurd at the same time: I saw some of the pictures that were highly suggestive, and I laughed with the absurdity of the accompanying subtitles. I am pretty sure pictures speak more than a thousand words with this series. (more…)

As I’ve mentioned in my previous write-ups I have successfully tried and stifled (if only by a little bit) my overeagerness and addiction to playing DotA. I have also started focusing once more on my studies as well as tried to become more sociable to my amiable dorm mates: for me, at least, it seemed as if I had started life anew. Problems with the motivation to study, however, still arose (and keep on arising) within me. I chose my schedule so that I had no classes every Friday which would allow me to study more or to do more research regarding the different subjects I am taking this semester. Today was that very first Friday of supposedly scholastic utility; my resolve, however, wasn’t as inflexible as my schedule was. I spent about six hours playing DotA despite my sheer disinterest in it (and this is said in all honesty) as I did not want to stay in my room and I also did not want to study. Much could have been done within those six hours; I, however, decided to revel among the different heroes and heroines duking and juking each other out in DotA. Yet I was not pumped, however, in the least, despite the fact that when I used the heroes I was accustomed to I owned; neither was I amused, however, when we were losing because the hero I was using was not viable against good team play of the opposing team. I was using Pit Lord, and whenever I used that hero we lost. Yet that still did not interest me.

(more…)

I haven’t been updating, but it’s not because of DotA. Although I still play DotA, I often just play it now for stupid fun like I did today. Since Pit Lord is now the quintessential useless hero (at least in comparison to others), I picked him and I tried a new (stupid) build. This was initially to purchase two Stout Shields that were not to be upgraded, and of course purchase a Dagon for hero-killing (but actually for last hitting heroes ). Since we were assured of losing as my other teammates didn’t even play half as well as me (in that state), I just bought two more Stout Shields with the end result of having four of those, a Boots of Speed and a Dagon 1. I ended up having the score of 2-2, and just because of that I was happy the rest of the day (or what was left of it).

That’s all for the DotA talk. I haven’t been updating recently because I finally found some real-life friends who appreciate anime and Japanese culture the way I do, and most of them are my dorm mates. Thus, I don’t lock myself up in my room and stay with my computer for the whole day anymore just surfing or watching anime, because it’s much more fun to talk about the anime you like and discuss it rather than watching it alone. It’s also quite fun watching anime with friends, though, definitely. I’m still an avid fan of anime, although I’m trying to revisit the old times by downloading (and hopefully watching) RahXephon. It’s a pity that my BitTorrent sometimes chokes on me, so I’m not downloading it as quickly as I can.

I have also been busy with schoolwork and though many people may be offended by my lack of anime posts I have been trying to excel at school and now that I’ve finally found artifacts of a social life I’m having more and more of a difficult time posting about anime (of which among the recent ones the only series I watch is Reideen).

I know there are classics-in-the-making like Simoun and Touka Gettan and Saiunkoku Monogatari (although that’s not finished yet), but I’d like to enjoy being in the company of real people in the meantime. I’ve also been watching Proposal Daisakusen. This does not mean I’m closing my blog down, though. :V

And there’s only a few more days until Mononoke!!! Oh man, I’m so blogging that.