RANTS AND MUSINGS Everyone needs a little space to vent their rage, emotions, and whatnot. Well, this is mine.
RANT #1: What the heck is up with the Ratings these days?!
Okay. During the summer, Kitanna and I went to a local video store that has a special section for Anime, which is, unfortunately, situated downstairs, right around the corner from the 18 and over stuff, which causes some weird stares from people when we go down there. ANYWAY, we had our hearts set on renting out a Slayers Next tape that we had seen there earlier. Eventually we found it, and were overjoyed. As we were headed up the stairs to pay for our prize, we noticed one little detail on the box that we had missed.
The thing was rated 18.
A little background on the Slayers series is required here. Slayers is one of the most harmless Anime series you could find. I don't mean it's like the Japanese equivalent of Barney or Teletubbies, but there's almost no nudity. On occasion, there is some blood, but those occasions are very far and in between, and even then it's nothing worse than you could see in some live action movies.
This pissed us off beyond belief, mostly because the other slayers tapes that we had seen were rated 14. After a good half hour of pacing around and muttering angrily to ourselves, we went up and decided to try and check out the video anyway. If they tried to deny us our Slayers, we'd go down fighting.
To our amazement, the guy at the counter barely looked at the box and checked it out anyway. We have two theories about this: Either he was really braindead and maybe a bit incompetant, or he heard our angry mutterings of protest and felt sorry for us.
Anyway, the whole point of this rant is just me wondering how people rate anime. Do they actually watch it, or do they just think "Oh. It's another one of those japanese porno cartoons. Slap an 18 on it and get it over with."
Meh. I digress.
MUSINGS #1: Alas, poor Dollar Store, I knew thee well...
A nearby dollar store just went bankrupt. So I'm going to muse about my loss.
There was no better place to go and get wrapping paper for a birthday present, or junky little things for a grab bag. No longer can I just head down the street and grab a cheap notepad for doodling in. No longer can I laugh at the phenomenally cheap kids toys. I can no longer even contemplate buying my friends one of those hilarious little fuzzballs called Wittle Wubbies ('cause everybody needs a wittle wubbie sometime!). I can't even continue the tradition of getting my friends cheap little things from the dollar store for Xmas.
All in all, it was a great loss.
Now I have to trek downtown to go to a dollar store...v_v
Musings #2: THE LIGHTPOST!!!
By a strange turn of events, I've become strongly attatched to a lightpost across the street from my friends house.
It all started when I excitedly stated to my friends that I'd finally found out how tall Piccolo actually was (6'6 for all you wondering. And he weighs 200 pounds. They have it at PlanetNamek.com). Despite this, I was still wondering how tall he'd be compared to me, since I'm the tallest of our trio, and I'd been wondering about it for quite some time. As I contemplated this, I stood on this little concrete platform that the lightpost was on. Then Kuri pointed out that if Piccolo was 6'6, he'd probably be up to the first ring on the lightpost. Looking up, I realized that I would come up about halfway up his chest.
In other words, he was at perfect glomping height!!! I immediatly hugged the lamp post as hard as I could. Then Kitanna realized that she was in a perfect shin-kicking position. She started kicking at the post. I cried out in protest and started kicking back at her.
05/11/01: OTAKU FOREVER!!!
There is no greater joy then being an otaku, and meeting up with fellow otaku. I just went to my first meeting of my town's official anime club, and it was the best saturday afternoon I've ever had. Most of the people there were guys who looked like they were in their twenties and would've been branded by some as the "basement-dwelling-freak" variety. But I wouldn't have had it any other way. Everyone was so incredibly nice, I felt right at home. Me and my friends were surrounded by people who had the same interests as us. After watching two fansubbed episodes of Sorcerer Hunters that the president had brought in, some guy took out his laptop, hooked it up to the TV, and immediatly started showing us some fantastic music videos he'd made. I tell you, you haven't lived until you've seen a music video with Sailor Moon to Weird Al's Jerry Springer song. ("Well, I've been sleeping with your dog Woofie!" "Agh! Woofie, you B****!! Well, I've been sleeping with your pet goat!!" "THAT GOAT DOESN'T BELONG TO YOU!!!") It had everyone practically rolling on the floor with laughter. And Alas, poor kenny. He can't even survive in an anime music video anymore...^^;;;
In short, for all you people who were in that club and may be reading this, DOMO ARIGATOU GOZAIMASU!!!! Now I've got a tiny, tiny idea of what going to Otakon might be like!!
And for all you people who don't belong to an anime club, go out and start your own, goshdarnit!! OTAKU UNITE!!!
05/11/01: Monsters Inc!!!
I just saw this yesterday. THAT WAS THE CUTEST MOVIE I'VE EVER SEEN!!! And it was really, really funny!! Very original and creative too. Boo is so adorable!! But why did Randall have to be so evil? I liked Randall!!! But then again, he did make a great villian...
In short, go see the movie, goshdarnit!!
20/11/01: Where are all the Metal Guardian Faust fans?
I just got this nifty little graphic novel a couple of weeks ago since it was on sale for $12.99. Only now have I got the energy to rant about it a bit. Metal Guardian Faust is a story by Tetsuro Ueyama set in the near future, revolving around a young, relatively normal girl named Rushiha Gyokoji, and her kickass, six-foot tall bodyguard robot, Faust. One day, Rushiha is just hanging out at the local arcade, when all of a sudden, a gigantic robot (named Rudolf of all things) tries to kidnap her, Faust crashes through the window on his motorbike, promptly chucks her aboard, then rides off into the sunset. Needless to say, this is a bit confusing for poor Rushiha, who doesn't have the faintest clue as to what's going on. Soon enough though, she finds out that Faust is a robot designed by her scientist father to protect her from numerous other nasty robots who are after her (some examples of their names are Dancer, Prancer, and Donner. Starting to see a theme here?). These nasty robots are under the command of a supremely nasty (or bitchy, depending on how you want to look at it) robot named Angel, who wants Rushiha's body so she can become human.
Anyhoo, this series is completely and utterly unknown. It was released by Viz in 1998, but nobody seems to have heard of it. There aren't any links for it on Anipike, which makes a bit of sense, considering the thing is only one volume in size.
If you can find a copy of this thing anywhere, take a look at it. For what seems like a relatively simple story, the book's got a lot more depth than I expected. The characters are all three dimensional, although Rushiha is a bit of a dip at times, being the damsel-in-distress. Seriously, the plot has some major, major twists in it, and some really touching moments too, as might be expected with a story about robots wanting to become human. The art is fantastic, the style's very clear, and the fight and chase scenes are some of the best and most creative ones I've ever seen on paper.
06/12/01: Go Ocean Group!!!
I live in Canada, and we canadians just got DBZ with Ocean Group dubbing. I just heard a sample of the dubbing a little while ago (*Sob!* I don't have cable, so I can't watch dbz regularly!!), and I'm pretty happy about it, especially Piccolo's voice. I'm so glad they got his old voice actor back! I never liked Piccolo's Funimation voice much, he sounded like some bizzare cross between a pro wrestler and a crazed trucker. His voice put too much emphasis on growliness, and not enough on expression. That, and he grunted way too much. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just watch the fight between him and Juunanagou. Anyway, his Ocean voice is still kinda growly, but the emphasis is more on the deepness of his voice, and *gasp of horror!* he's got EXPRESSION!! He doesn't just sound like a macho wrestler all the time! His voice goes from flat to sarcastic to almost happy at times!! These changes in tone give him a better-rounded character in the English dub, so he's not just Mr. Attitude anymore.
Gohan's Ocean voice is great, almost...(dare I say it?) perfect! His Funi voice actor was pretty good in the first place, but I think the Ocean Gohan voice is better nonetheless. He sounds great, you can almost tell that whoever did his voice had a lot of fun doing it, and his manly-man Great Saiya-man voice is appropriatly goofy. He sounds pretty natural either way, like a regular teenager, who just so happens to run around in a wetsuit, tunic and helmet, fighting crime ^^.
07/12/01: Piccolo Fanfiction
Okay. I'm getting reeeeally annoyed with a lot of Piccolo fanfictions. Most of them consist of "Piccolo meets mysterious girl and falls in love"-type plots, so much that this is practically its own genre. I'm not saying these fanfictions aren't good or well written, but there are just so many of them. About half the Piccolo fanfictions on Fanfiction.net are about Piccolo falling in love one way or another. And don't call me a hypocrite because I'm writing Feral Science, I have absolutely NO intention of making Yari and Piccolo fall in love, EVER.
16/12/01: DAMN IT!!!
I am seriously pissed. Every single time I get my page up on a server, that particular server decides to screw up on me. I'm not kidding. First time: Geocities. Pagebuilder took too long on my crappy modem to do anything worthwhile. Second time: Homestead. Difficult to work with, and once refused to upload any of my files for a month, then finally started charging. Third time: Fortunecity. I spent a good two hours or so downloading Trellix Web, which was EXTREMELY difficult to work with, then when I finally got the site done and had uploaded everything, I couldn't find it anywhere on the server. Fourth time: Geocities again. I battled my way through until I had about half of the site uploaded, then Geocities started charging.
Now Tripod's doing it to me. It's been okay so far, but lately it hasn't been working, and today it took me HALF AN HOUR to get the server working, and then another good while to get the file uploader, and even then it wouldn't work, so eventually I got really mad and downloaded an ftp transfer thing. This kind of stuff only makes me want my own domain name even more. Frankly, I'm disgusted. When I left Homestead, I thought it meant that I wouldn't have to deal with crap like this anymore. Apparently I was wrong...
*New!* 29/12/02: Determination!!
Okay. This page looks like crap in 800 x 600 moniter resolution. And most people out there have 800 x 600 resolution, except for me, cuz I have a freak of nature moniter... this is not a good thing.... Therefore, one of my new years resolutions will be to truly learn HTML and figure out a good layout that will look decent on smaller moniters too!!! *clenches fist* It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.
But first I've got to get all this schoolwork out of the way... I've got to finish that math project...then that big history essay...then study for that french quiz...and then I've got exams... Oh great, January, here I come...*groans*
Whee!! Minority by Greenday is such a cool song!! *hums* "I wan-na be the min-or-ity! I don't need your author-i-ty!! Down with them all, the major-i-ty!! Cuz I wan-na be the minor-i-ty!!" *ahem*. *reads over this entry* ...Hey, this is starting to sound like one of those L-journals... maybe I should get one, I could rant in it all I want, and it would look neater than this thing...
On another note, I've fallen head-over-heels in love with the old 60's Batman. I just got the special edition of the movie on dvd, and it's freakin' awesome!! That shark that bites Batman's leg, that they attack with handy shark repellent!! All their funky gizmos, like the bat-ladder that comes down from the bat-copter, and actually has a big label hanging off of it that states in gigantic yellow letters "BAT-LADDER"!!! And of course, the rogue gallery ^^ Gotta love it!!
Lastly, I love this new computer mouse we got!! It's so nifty!! It's got this little rotating scroll-page thingy in the middle, and it's so smooth compared to our old one!
Also 29/12/01: On a more serious note, Regarding the Feral Science fanfic...
I know that I've been promising more chapters of this ever since the summer, and yet I'm still stuck on chapter five. Well, I'm finally offering an explanation other than writer's block:
First of all, this fanfic is probably going to be really, really big. I've got most of the plot outlined, and so I've got a good idea of what's going to happen. The problem is, since I've outlined the plot, certian scenes from later on in the fanfic keep popping into my head. When they do, I write them down, so I won't forget them. So now I've got all these different bits and pieces of the fanfiction lurking around on my desktop. The way I wrote chapter five was by doing this, it was sort of like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Take the parts that fit that chapter and put them together the right way. I actually went through two or three versions of chapter five before I came up with one that worked.
In short, this jigsaw approach has completely backfired for chapter six, as I'm now practically drowning in later written-down scenes. Whenever I try working on chapter six, I get swamped by all the other scenes I've written out, trying to fit them all together. It's like trying to juggle twenty some-odd balls at once, sooner or later you lose a handle on them and they all fall on you. Heck, I don't know if half the scenes I've written out will even get into the fanfiction. There was even one scene where Yari got drunk.
Anyway, I just have to get this thing sorted out in my head, because I really want to continue with this fanfic. I'm really frustrated with it right now, you can sorta see that in that fanmanga I drew the other day. It's not every day that you draw stuff where your own characters threaten to beat you up, ne? ^^;; But I think I've got things a little bit more under control now. I've just got to sort out a few more kinks, write it up, then it'll be done.
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