You’d probably think me odd if I told you that I had a friend nobody else could see. Perhaps, I hear voices. Maybe, I let my imagination get the better of me from time to time…well, it happens.

Watching Chaos;Head is a rather unusual experience. I’m sure other bloggers have already expressed this sentiment in some way or form. It isn’t that we’re crazy, or that we’re out of touch with reality, much. Okay, we may be a bit out of touch with reality for short periods of time, but it’s all in good fun.

What I find most interesting is that the show seems to hit on a certain aspect of myself. That aspect being how closely I am to being completely out of touch with reality. Sometimes I feel that I have to really give it some effort to stay grounded, or I’ll may let myself wonder off. I find myself talking to myself from time to time. I have to admit, I’ve had a few rather rigorous conversations and arguments with myself before I realized that I was sitting in traffic and others were watching me. Hopefully, they just thought I was singing.

We all live in our own little worlds. That really should not be understated, because they are rather little when you think about it. I’ve spent time talking about how our “little worlds’ affect the perception of a story, but usually I take the stance that there is a majority similarity in the way things are viewed, despite there being difference of opinion based on personal history.

What would it be like to see the world differently, to such a great extent that the perception might as well be an orthogonal reality? Could one function or, at least, pretend to be normal? Probably not. That is if they were unaware of what others perceived as reality and what it was like. That alone entails that they had experienced something similar.

This is something along the lines of the old addage about walking in someone else’s shoes, just without the moral construct. Likewise, in my opinion, if one truly wants to understand then the only path is experience. Just walk up to the edge of insanity and jump right on over. Who knows? The fall may be worth it.

Unfortunately, we cannot determine whether vampire equals boobies or panties. I tried doing some factoring, but only got as far as “rosario + vampire = 2 * boob + panties,” which was none too enlightening. One must be careful to realize that panties is one of those variables that seems to be plural when, in fact, it can be singular. We don’t know if that should be more than one “panties.”

Ostensibly, we are compelled to assume panties is greater than 1. After all, it would be a little disturbing if it were only a single pair.

New equation:

vampire = 2 * boob + n * panties – rosario
where n = [0, infinity)

What does this mean? Absolutely nothing.

Also, why is it called a pair of panties? I know it’s an old question, but I haven’t ever received a satisfactory answer to it. It’s not like pants. Pants have two legs that lend themselves to being called a pair. As far as I can tell panties are composed of a single unit.

I think what we have here is what linguists would call “semantic change.” Doesn’t it seem like the meanings of “pant” and “panties” are switched? I think a very long time ago some guy/girl with dyslexia kept getting the words mixed up and others simply stopped correcting the mistake because it was tiring. They probably just took what they were saying in context. Over time people started to use the same meanings for those two words.

Yeah, that’s the way it happened…

Extra credit:

• Blood+ = ?
• infinite Ryvius = ?
• 3×3 eyes = ?
• Samurai X = ?

These are the only ones I could think of at the moment. BTW, the 3×3 eyes OVA’s are pretty good.

This show is trying to pick a fight with me!

It started with the “monkey butts” in episode four. The alien-astal projection was one thing, but a monkey butt combo was a total knockout. I wasn’t sure I could recover from it. I decided to watch episode five to see if there were any latent side effects.

It was going fairly smoothly until this abomination of animation. Are they talking at the urinal? Yes, they are! What the hell! There’s a rule people, “No talking at the urinal.”

I know what some of you are thinking, “But I talk to people when I’m at the urinal all the time.” Guess what? They’re ignoring you. It’s a rule that you can’t even listen to people talking at the urinal. You have to go, “bla bala lalalal” in your head until they shut up.

Got it? Eyes front, do your business, and get out. That’s how it supposed to be done. Also, for the love of whatever deity you believe in, wash you freak’in hands.

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Obviously, this message is directed at our male readers. 

The following post first appeared on my old blog: Chibi no Nothing

I had been planning to watch Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) for a couple of weeks. To be honest it was the name of the movie alone that drew me to it. I watched the first few minutes of it a week ago, but I was caught up in some other activity that I do not recall, which made me put off watching the show for a while. I finally got around to sitting down for roughly ninety minutes in order to watch the movie.

I don’t watch many feature length anime. This has to do with both availability and time. It is a lot easier to sit for twenty or thirty minutes indulging in a little procrastination while not feeling too bad for the experience than it is to sit for ninety.

For that matter, there is only one reason that I actually managed to watch the entire show. I have plenty of things that I should be doing, given that school is about to start again soon. However, the movie starts out showing the main character Makoto who is plainly a fun character in general.

I’m not too concerned with the technical merits of the voice acting. I’m not speaking for the character design either, which seem to be rather ordinary. The animation quality was impressive. That did not sway my opinion very much as I have come to expect better quality in feature length anime. I simply liked this character. She was fun straight forward and easy to grasp. Those are not necessarily adjectives that I would generally give as positive attributes. In the context of the story it was exactly what was needed. She gains an incredible power that allows her to leap through time, and she uses it to achieve relatively mundane tasks.

Watching her realize that she had the power to fly back in time then seeing what she did with it was done perfectly as far as animation and story telling go. We could see her mind working as she comprehended the situation. We could also see how she totally missed the incredible depth and vast potential she had at her disposal.

What I liked the most was exactly that she did not use her time leaping ability to save the world or change the destiny of all man kind. Her outlook was entirely superficial at first. At its peak it only extended to her friends at school. She was in ever sense of the word a “kid” about the whole thing.

The movie had its less light moments. They worked in a little drama and romance toward the end of the movie. The message, “time waits for no one” seemed to be appropriate. Throughout the movie Makoto tried to change aspects of event to get a desired goal. There just was no way for her to create the perfect history. It would seem fate was the real message.

I would have really liked to take this post on some type of emotional diatribe about how time can both heal and cause great distress. It just doesn’t jive with the movie. I simply wasn’t too moved by it. Please do not misunderstand me on that last comment I thoroughly enjoyed watching it.

My one thought while watching Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo wasn’t about time travel or changing fate. I couldn’t seem to shake the thought that I would really like to see a show based on Makoto just being Makoto all day and nothing more.

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About the person in the lab room: I think it was Makoto who was in the lab and pushed herself.

Also, I’m trying out bloggers new polling widget. Please vote, if it isn’t too much trouble. It’s on the right side near the top.

The following post first appeared on my old blog: Chibi no Nothing

A while back I wrote about how I wasn’t too pleased with the fact that Code Geass was going to be more than one season. Then briefly after Euphie became the Murder Princess I wavered in my opinion.

Then Euphie died. I returned to normal.

After watching episode 24 and 25 where are we? Do we know more about Lelouch? Not really. Lelouch’s motive and actions have not changed much over the course of the first season. Of course, one can always say that he has become a tad bit more evil. Let’s face it, Lelouch is a “bad guy.” It’s just that we have a natural tendency to side with the lesser of two evils, and Britannia just doesn’t seem to have any redeeming qualities aside from cute princesses who like to go on murderous geass infused rampages.

How about Suzaku? Sure he murdered his dad, but he seems to only really feel bad about it in conveniently short periods of crippling emotional turmoil.

To be fair, Lelouch and Suzaku do get some flashbacks of childhood moments.

How about C.C? C.C. is perfect, and I’ll kick anyone who says otherwise. Actually, C.C. seems to get a good dose of development. It’s all character development in the form of her personality. We get very little, if any, historical context. This is unlike the history we are show with Lelouch and Suzaku. We don’t know exactly what she is, where she has been, what she is doing, why she had green hair, what’s with the pizza, what is that thing she wears it looks like a straight-jacket, I used to have some of those trick hand-cuffs that magicians use, and–oh yeah–pepperonis is yummy.

What about everyone else? Not very much, that’s what. Code Geass is full of mostly static characters. That’s not to say that they are uninteresting or uni-dimensional. It’s saying that the story wasn’t a progression. It’s as if the pieces were set in place and the game started while we watched. There was little setup. We were only told what was needed in order for us to understand why the characters were acting a certain way. Also, it provided a means to understand what was guiding their actions. For me this creates a detachment between my feelings towards the characters and the plot they are embroiled in.

Perhaps that is what was intentionally the intention of the ones that intended to deny us an extension of emotional context for the characters. There is a big difference between seeing the emotional reaction of a character and understanding that reaction. It takes time for an audience to develop an intimacy with the characters. This is time the Code Geass has had and still has. That time that was had, has been wasted. Wasted on what? Explosions, that’s what.

I like explosions too, though.

Okay, I’d better stop it here. Let’s just say that I still think they could have wrapped it up in one season. Now, we all have to wait.

This type of waiting is like sitting in a dark room. The night sky, illuminated by the hollow moon. She sits across the expanse waiting for that sound. She is waiting for a message. Waiting for sweet words from that which she holds dear. The hours are upon her, but she dares not sleep. Wait. . .was that a ring.

[ see? What the hell is going on here? Damn cliffhangers!!!!! ]

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“grok” – google it.

edit: 12:21 – made some corrections, nothing special