Exclusive Insanity

Lately I haven't been watching or reading much. Cody and I have mostly been gaming. He had some MOD days on his last schedule too, which meant no evening shifts, which meant I wasn't reading manga in the evenings - I was spending time with him.

We did go to see Paranormal Activity on Sunday night. It was pretty creepy. The ending was a little cheesy in my opinion, but I guess it fit well. The guy in the movie was a complete idiot. It seemed the best way to get him to do something was to tell him NOT to do it. "This thing is dangerous. Don't try to communicate with it. Don't provoke it." Mr Macho is just so convinced that he can protect his house and his girlfriend without anyone's help that he does both of those things. Immediately. And repeatedly. He does not call for professional help as he has been advised. He does "his own research" and tries to act like an expert when he really knows nothing. They both suffer for his idiocy. God, what a moron.

Anyway...

One of the things Cody and I been playing together is Suikoden V. Which is a one-player game, so when I say 'playing together', I mean I'm reading the manual and telling him how to recruit the 108 stars while he plays the game. It's a really entertaining watch, though. I love the storyline. It'd make a really awesome anime series if done right. Now that it's been out a few years, I know it's never going to be adapted into one, but seriously, it'd be pretty cool if it was given the same treatment as Tales of the Abyss. I'm really looking forward to playing more, but I don't get to spend as much time with it as I'd like since we're going through the story together. I probably should've just played it myself. I wouldn't have gotten very far, more than likely, because I'm not the greatest gamer - but when I get involved in a story, I just want to keep going. Another reason that it would've been awesome if this was an anime.

Cody and I tend to have differing approaches to anime viewing, though, which sometimes makes it hard for us to watch stuff together. When I'm really into a series, I want to watch it all the time. As in, whatever else I do in my spare time gets shunted off to the side until I'm finished with the series in question. Cody is the same way with anime series as he is with games: he usually has a bunch going at once and switches around between them pretty frequently. So, if he's not in 'Suikoden V' mode, he has no interest in playing it, even though I'm dying to see more and find out what happens.

It kind of sucks.

We've also been playing some WoW lately. Cody and I started playing WoW because Tylor and Sarah play it and we agreed to try it. It's a really neat game, and a lot of fun. You can waste a lot of hours on it pretty easily. Thing is, Tylor and Sarah play on a PvP (Player vs Player) server. This means that enemy players can attack you whenever and you can attack them whenever. It doesn't sound unreasonable until you're a low level character trying to level up and some high level asshole comes along and kills you easily just because he's bored, and then sits on top of your corpse and kills you every time you try to get back up and run away. It is hella annoying and tends to ruin an otherwise fun afternoon/evening.

So, we've been getting more and more sick of this crap. We don't even play with Tylor and Sarah much because they're not really on when we are and they're also much higher level than us. Then deitysend mentioned that she plays on a PvE (Player vs Environment) server, where enemy players can't attack you unless you have flagged yourself for it. We were considering moving, but didn't want to rush it. Then some random guy decided to kill us and camp our corpses last night, and we moved our characters right then and there. Goodbye, assholes.

Tonight we're going to watch an episode (or two) of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I've read a lot of reviews on it and it's supposed to have awesome plot and awesome characters and is reputed to be epic and wonderful. Since I've read all of this, now this series is going to have to be really fantastic in order to meet my expectations because they are pretty damn high. We'll see.

So, a few days ago, I finished watching all four episodes of Tales of Phantasia.

( Thoughts )

Yesterday I finished reading Marmalade Boy, which I started the day before yesterday. It seems like lately that's what I've been doing when Cody's on night shift: reading manga. Last week I read Watashi no Messiah-sama, which was... odd. I read it on a recommendation, but I don't necessarily recommend it myself. This week it was Marmalade Boy.

( Thoughts (spoilerish) )

Marmalade Boy was not a bad series. It never tried to be more than it was, so it succeeded in being a cute little shoujo romance and a fairly enjoyable read. Not bad at all.

So, I went on Amazon looking for DVD sets and such. Just for the fun of it, here's what I found...

Yeah, nice try.

I need to get this one at some point... just for the sake of having the whole series

OMG I must get this! *orders*

Mine! *orders*

Still no sign of a completed series or box set... Viz sucks...

SO not fair that it's in box sets now that I have all of the individual DVDs...

This would've been tempting maybe three years ago?

This one has a better cover than my set. Bleh.

The only season I don't have yet. I want it. I just don't want to pay for it. Someone get me this for Christmas!

Oh SURE, now it's just ONE box set... Bastards...

I haven't gotten around to finishing this series yet, but I kind of want a box set of it.

I kind of want this one too.

I've concluded from this that I need to win the lottery so that I can buy whatever anime box sets I want.

I have nothing really to say about the Evangelion movie. It was okay. I'll probably go see the next one if it comes to theaters over here. If it doesn't, I'm sure Cody will download it and I'll see it anyway. I still have no interest in seeing the series, but I'm curious to see if the movies will change much about the story.

I have been playing a game on my PSP called Tales of the World. It's very good. It has a character creation system, so you can decide if your character is male or female and choose from a few options to determine what he/she looks like. It has characters from other Tales series, so my interest was piqued. I've already watched Cody play through some of Tales of the Abyss, and we've seen half of the anime. We also just bought Tales of Vesperia and played through the beginning - it seems kind of neat so far. I've never seen or played any of the others. I figured I'd download the anime adaptions that were made for some of the other games (Tales of Phantasia, Eternia, and Symphonia). So far, I've watched an episode of Phantasia and an episode of Eternia.

The Eternia anime seems boring so far and I hate the female protagonist. She's a bully and she gets angry over the stupidest little things. Her relationship with the main character is that girl-beats-on-the-guy-and-it-is-supposed-to-be-funny thing. I really find this irritating if the guy is actually way stronger than the girl and thus makes no attempt to really defend himself (which appears to be the case in this adaption). It's too bad because I really like Reid (the main protagonist) in Tales of the World; he's very friendly and is probably the only Tales character who never refuses an invitation to join your party. I wouldn't mind reading the manga for this one because the girl is more in-character (ie: less of a bitch) according to the game and it follows the main storyline instead of being a pointless side story, but it's only half scanlated and looks like it hasn't been updated in a while. Unfortunately, none of the Tales manga is available to buy in English.

The Phantasia anime is really neat - I read up on the story before watching it because I'd heard that it's hard to understand without some background knowledge of the game. The plot is really very good. I found the side characters - Arche and Klaus in particular, but Chester as well (mainly because of how he is in Tales of the World, since he wasn't in the first episode for long) - really interesting. Their dialogue is lively and engaging. The main characters, Cress and Mint, are kind of boring, but that's okay. The series appears to be crammed into far too little time - it begins partway through the game's storyline and leaves certain parts out in order to hurry through a fairly involved plot. The animation is very nice and the battle scenes are well done. I really wish they'd expanded this one into a 26 episode series, like Abyss. Even a 13 episode series like Eternia (which I really didn't think deserved it) would've been better. As it is, we have four OVA episodes, and I guess that'll have to do. After watching the first episode, I decided to buy the DVD on Amazon (this is the only Tales anime that was given an official English release). There's apparently a manga that has just started being published in Japan and seems intent on following the story from beginning to end without rushing, but only one chapter has been scanlated and releases are either extremely slow or completely stalled.

A side note about Phantasia: I've been leveling Chester (an archer) and Arche (a mage) to be steady members of my party in Tales of the World, and was kind of surprised to find that they came from the same Tales series. More than that, I was surprised to find out that there's a romance implied between them. They got one of those 'I hate you - no, wait, I love you' things going on, apparently, and I've heard that it works quite well. I like the idea. I'll be very interested to watch the rest of the series and see how it develops.

I watched the Phantasia episode with Cody (he's already seen the Eternia anime), and he wasn't as interested as I was. He does want to watch the Symphonia anime with me, despite the fact that I've heard it's not finished. I think there's another arc coming out in 2010 Spring - at least, that's what I've seen online. The nice thing about that one is that the manga is fully scanlated, so reaching a cliffhanger in the anime is okay. I can just follow the storyline in the manga to see what happens next. I've already read a lot of the major plot points online too (I love spoilers).

Incidentally, I'm looking for either Symphonia (GameCube) or Phantasia (Gameboy Advance) to play. After I finish Tales of the World, of course.

So. Um. We got back from Europe last week. Heh. I'm lazy?

( London )

In other news, apparently Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle is ending soon. I am kind of relieved about this. I don't think they can gracefully wrap the darn thing up in two chapters, but I will be glad when I'm no longer wasting time reading new chapters and wondering what the hell is going on. I did find it entertaining, but it sure was convoluted and confusing.

I think I might like to read through xxxHolic, though. That looks to be a stronger series. It's supposed to end in December. I may wait until then to pick it up. We'll see.

I've been focussing a bit more on my wedding now that the Europe trip is over and we're more or less settled in the new house. This weekend I'm heading down to New Westminster with my mother and sister for some dress shopping, which I'm kind of nervous about. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to order my dress a size smaller to stiffen my determination to lose weight or if I'll play it safe. We'll see how I feel when I'm there.

I have been talking with a minister who said that it's likely he'll be able to perform our ceremony, and I've got a photographer, florist, and caterer lined up. I think I'm ahead of the game for now, and I'd like to stay that way, so I'm keeping an eye on my wedding checklists.

A small lesson in Karma:

The Bad: When Cody and I moved into our new house a little over a week ago, we were a little disappointed by how the old owners had left it for us. The walls hadn't been painted, which we'd been promised, and they were dirty. There were dents and scratches on them which hadn't been there before - signs of carelessness while moving, probably. There was a dirty ashtray on the porch and cigarette butts all up the driveway. The garbage bin was full, and the recylcing bin was wide open and overflowing (it would not even have been picked up in that state - we had to empty half of what they'd crammed into it out to wait for the next week). The compost bin was full, but the grass clearly hadn't been watered or mowed for some time. We were left only a single garage door opener and no keys for the front and side doors (apparently they lost them because they always used the digital locks - it ended up taking a while for the realtor to find them, and we still don't have a key for the door from the garage into the house). The floors hadn't even been swept, and there was leftover food in the deep freeze and freezer.

The Backlash: The realtor later informed us that the old owners of our house had moved into a "fixer-upper" (less money than we'd paid for their place). They had received a $27K discount because there was a bowed wall in the basement. The previous owner of the place accidentally sprayed some water down onto the wall before moving out. Shortly after the move-in, the wall collapsed, and mud and water from the backyard poured into the house. The amount of cleanup was ghastly, and I don't even know the cost of fixing the wall (plus the fact that half the furniture in the rec room down there probably had to be replaced). Because the bowed wall was part of the contract, they won't get a cent from the previous owner to help.

The Lesson Learned: Don't screw people over, unless you like being screwed over yourself.

In other news, I found a dead mouse on our driveway this morning. I suspect the neighbor's cat, but don't really mind. A dead mouse on the driveway is better than a live one in the house. Cody also discovered that Quiz will kill and eat spiders (even big ones). I am very, very happy with my kitty.

Also, birthday yesterday. I'm 27 years old now. Woo.

So, since Geocities is closing in October, I took the time to move Kensuke Central (even though I haven't updated it since 2002 and probably never will again) over to my current webspace. I also changed the old website so the pages on it are all mostly warnings to change your bookmarks (for anyone who might still visit the place).

Anyway, the new address is http://kendailove.hiddenlegacy.net. It's got the exact same content as before, just in a new location. I'm too lazy and don't care enough to redo the site, even though I think it probably needs it.

I basically only spent time working on this project at times when I didn't feel like packing. Strange how I'm only productive on something if I'm procrastinating on something else...

I can't believe there's no Jenrya x Takato community on LiveJournal. There's Ruki x Juri and Kazu x Kenta... but no Jenrya x Takato.

Goddamnit.

If I weren't really, really lazy, I'd make one. But I am. So I'll just complain about it.

By the way, for those who haven't guessed or who have no idea who I'm even talking about... I'm kinda watching Digimon Tamers again. Yay?

Snagged from pichi

Name your 10 absolutely favorite couples (het/slash/canon/fanon) and ask people to see what trends they notice about your couples. Try to pick different fandoms.

Guh. I dunno if these are the actual FAVORITES. These happen to be the ones I'm particularly fond of at the moment. This could potentially change tomorrow. Oh well... here, in no particular order:

1. Ken x Daisuke - Digimon (okay, this one really is probably always going to be on the list)
2. Syaoran x Sakura - Card Captor Sakura
3. Yamato x Taichi - Digimon
4. Koushiro x Mimi - Digimon
5. Akira x Hikaru - Hikaru no Go
6. Simon x Nia - Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
7. Takeru x Hikari - Digimon
8. Sinbad x Jeanne - Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne
9. Kaoru x Luna - Mujin Wakusei Survive
10. Durnik x Polgara - Belgariad series by David Eddings

Guess which anime I've been into lately. Go on - guess.

Y'know, there are seven het pairings on there, but only three yaoi. Blasphemy or some such. I guess my tastes have changed a little. Not completely, but yeah, a little.