Kurogane’s Anime Blog

Well, my uni’s sem. break for the upcoming Chinese New Year just started, so I’ll have more free time to blog. Hopefully, I’ll get myself into making a banner for my blog, since someone started the banner design wave.

I’d probably also tweak the theme for my blog, so to my loyal readers, anything you want to see fixed or added in, please tell me so. I’d might also experiment with some plugins here and there too.

Meh, so far, I’m going to take it easy for now. Fate/Stay Night will be up later, as the only raw torrent is in WMV9, which I totally abhor since I can’t take screencaps with it. Getting a Xvid encode off Winny now, although it’s running pretty slow :P (10kb/s)

I seem to be cursed in Melaka. My exams just finished and I was just settling down to enjoy Kashimashi, when my hands turned itchy and I started to dig my ear with cotton buds. Unfortunately, it seems the one I used took a liking to my ear canal and nudged itself comfortably inside it.

The local GP couldn’t remove, thanks to the fact I just found out that my ear canal is special in the way that it’s crooked instead of straight. Heading over to the ENT specialist later on. I really can’t stop laughing about this, although it’s really sad :P. Feeling both XD and _|-|0”” too.

***Update***: Just went to an ENT specialist. He removed it in less than 5 minutes. That was a really expensive cotton bud there. About RM40 to be exact _|-|0^2.

To begin with, recently a (small)local tabloid, **Kosmo!**, had recently highlighted that *hentai* fansub DVD’s by “local entreprenuers” (read, pirates) were being sold openly in shopping complexes, *pasar malams* and wherever they open shop.I came to know of this thanks to Jeff Ooi, an influential Malaysian blogger. You can read his post here.

The highlight of this article is no doubt the labelling of anime as animated sex. As with most non-mainstream things, thanks to the ignorance of a few towards the usefulness of Wikipedia and Google, now it seems that *anime* is being thought of as animated sex with an apparent crackdown approaching shops selling it. I won’t go around explaning what is *anime* and what is *hentai*, since Jeff has done it. I really do think we don’t have to go pull another “Edmonton Times” again.

Now this would be good and all, considering that the “local entrepreuners” *are* making profit out of the hard work of fansubbers, who as I know intend to distribute for free, but due to a fact that I’m pretty sure the higher-ups *also* do not realise the existence of Wikipedia and Google, no doubt that mainstream animes will also be affected in it. I can already imagine the cops pointing to a copy of Doraemon and shouting, **”CAT SECKS!!! SEIZE!!!!”** and so on. I wonder what would they think if they saw Bible Black :P.

My position on all this though, is pretty much neutral. I don’t really care on what happens due to the fact that most *anime* sold in Malaysia are pretty much unlicensed stuff. I haven’t heard of any true Malaysian distributor of anime, ala ADV style.Besides most of the VCD’s (yes we still have this barbaric format for videos) and DVD’s sold are really low quality stuff. I’d say that the Malaysian anime community in general is in between Level 1 and 2, adjusted for localization. And I’d just realized that jason took this topic up faster than me :P.

For now, I’ll leave it at this. This kind of things really pop up once in a while in Malaysia. I guess that the **KOSMO!** people are really just taking this topic up to divert some attention to the 2-ton-falling-blocks-killing-bigshots issue now hot over here. jeff really shouldn’t have brought this up, considering that **KOSMO!** doesn’t even have a website. In fact, I’m really only writing this because I’m bored waiting for tonight’s Bleach and Jigoku Shoujo. Meh, in a week or two, mention this and no one will remember :P.

I will be on a short 3 day hiatus to attend my grandfather’s funeral. So expect no updates for a while.

Oh, it’s a day early but before I leave, I’d like to wish **Rie Tanaka**-san a very Happy Birthday. Popularly known as the *seiyuu* of **Lacus Clyne** in **Gundam SEED** and of **Chii** from **Chobits**, she is a very talented *seiyuu*. Her most curent role now is **Suigintou** from **Rozen Maiden ~träumend~**.

***Omedeto tanjoubi!!!***

Ah yes…. 2005 has been quite an eventful year for me as I stepped out from school and entered the realm of the “poor university students” somewhat ala Hachikuro’s characters :). But in between, quite a lot of things have happened.

The unveiling of 2005 was marked with some tragedy, as the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami ushered many people in to a year of sadness and a celebration to the human spirit. I myself, who is living in one of the countries affected(but not so badly) by the tsunami, felt some sadness towards my neighbours all around, who have suffered much despair.

However, on the anime scene, the winter of ‘04/’05 proved to be quite a interesting one with Mai HiME, Sunrise’s latest cash cow franchise captured much of the otaku population, with it’s combination of harem-sized cast of characters, gripping storyline and cheesy endings. Mentar from Memento became quite an expert on this subject, and seems to be now, the foremost HiME/Otome authority, amongst the blogging world.

As for me, it was around that time too, inspired by the efforts of the anime bloggers (which at that time was quite a small but well-knit community) such as Matt, moyism and Momotato, I started dabbling in to watching anime in raw form. I found it hard at first, but thanks to their efforts in posting up summaries, I managed to get the hang of it. Soon, too, I followed their footsteps in blogging by opening up Kuro’s Little Blog, mainly to blog for fun and as a hobby.

Unfortunately though, it was no sooner than April, where due to some internal disputes, I found myself without internet. It was truly a big impact on me, considering that Mai HiME was nearing it’s end at that time and also quite a lot of new and anticipated shows were being started. However, soon, I had to accept the fact that I had overstepped the line and resigned myself to two months without Internet, in anticipation of being accepted in to my university, MMU, where I could get access to the Internet.

After two hellish months with only scattered access to the Net, June came and I set off to my university with much excitement and anticipation. However, a bad mistake made by inexperience costed me another three months without Internet and that period still remains a bit traumatic for me. I sorely regretted the fact I was missing out on FMP:TSR, which in the beginning of 2005 had been my most anticipated anime for the year. The 5 months without Net was undoubtably the event that had the biggest impact on me, as I slowly lost somewhat of my Net identity and the following of recent trends.. I really have to confess here that I’m really such a big Net junkie :P.

Finally, in September, I moved away from that hellish place called EP and managed to find a room somewhere else, with broadband. With my newfound freedom and permanent Internet access, I vigilantly worked to catch back on time lost and caught up on this year’s series’ like Trinity Blood, Tsubasa Chronicles, Honey & Clover, Shuffle, Ichimashi, Pani Poni Dash and especially FMP:TSR, which did not disappoint.

I was also right on time to catch the Fall ‘05 season, which so far, has been the best one for me, thanks to the influence of Matt over me to watch Nanoha and subsequently made me a Nanoha A’s fanboy ^_-. Fall Season also started off the anime blog movement explosion, which has been steadily gaining momentum over the year with the advent of easy to use blogging software and the ease of finding hosting. Primarily driven by Mai-Otome and the rest of the Fall Season shows, new blogs started to spring up and the anime blog scene has really grown to be quite big.

I also restarted blogging, and thanks to the graciousness of Maestro, who gladly offered me hosting on his domain, I discovered the wonders of Wordpress and the result is what you are all seeing now :). I’ve learned quite much from blogging and I really like to thank all those who have inspired me, helped me and also to all my blog readers for all their support.

I’ll end it off here for the time being. This kinda turned out to be quite dragged out, XD. If I have offended anyone, I apologize beforehand. This is just really all my views about this year. I can be quite blunt sometimes so… gomen ne~~.

As outlined earlier, I’ve been under a major spambot attack, specifically targetting two areas, which was comment spam on this post and also tagboard spam.

To solve this problem, earlier I disabled comments on the said post, while for the tagboard I employed what I thought to be an ingenious trick, but I failed _|-|0”’. In the end, I installed Bad Behavior and my comment spam problem seems to be gone, while I have removed the tagboard from the site. I’ll solve this problem much more in detail later :P.

As for other stuff, I’ve been having a burnout recently on anime. Kinda lost my interest in watching anime for a while, which I guess stems from the hiatus of the shows I’ve been watching recently. Also, exams are approaching and I still haven’t really understood most of the stuff I’m supposed to learn… but seriously, it’s not much of a thorn for me.

For now, I’m kinda enjoying manga though, with the flood of releases thanks to Christmas and New Year’s Day. Bleach Chapter 209 and 210 was seriously cool, and I’m also having a big crush on Kashimashi…. for some reason, I’m very attracted to Hazumu _|-|0”””. AT-Translations also released Hayate no Gotoku Volume 2, which proves to be hillarious as usual (Nagi 4TW!!!). Maybe I’ll do a post about it later. I’ve also been reading Sennen no Yuki, quite an interesting read.

Here’s a little question to all my readers out there, what does Miu from Ichigo Mashimaro, Seras Victoria from Hellsing, Chise from Saikano and Yuzuki from Chobits share in common?

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(continue on for the answer…)

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Well…. this weekend was kinda hectic. I kinda went “Cuti-cuti Malaysiaaaa~~~”(local tourism catchline :) because I was travelling everyday for the past three days :P. Friday, Melaka-KL = 120km, Saturday, KL-Ipoh = 180km and today, Ipoh-KL = 180km again _|-|0””’….oh and tomorrow, KL-Melaka = 120km’s. Hahaha.

Anyways, thanks to a stroke of luck, I have internet back in my place, so I can access and download :). I see that the “bastard sonofabitch arsehole faggot spammer” has been nicely at work and I’ve cleared some of the spam already, most notably in the shoutbox :P. I’m not going to put in any fixes till later because I’m too lazy to research, heh.

Well, it’s 25th December and I wish all readers of my blog a very Merry Christmas. Normally, I’d put in some nice art but I don’t have my “collection” here, so meh… Anyways, Nanoha A’s 13 later and also GSD Final Plus, if I have the time :).

EDIT: On the other hand…. some people really have no sense of humour :P.

Well, since it’s Christmas, I’m going back home to celebrate it (well, actually to get my mom to do the laundry ^_^).

Unfortunately, since a little accident happened at home, I won’t have internet access over the weekend, therefore I can’t catch Nanoha A’s 13 :(. I’ll be blogging it up first thing on Tuesday, or Monday, if I can hack it :).

On another note, some bastard sonofabitch arsehole faggot spammer has been targeting my blog, especially on the comments and tagboard. So far Wordpress has been deflecting all the spam comments quite admirably, but I wonder would it last over the weekend, before I find a better way to can it. More to my concern is the Tagboard, which is almost defenseless to it :(. The only anti-spam way I could find is the CAPTCHA add-in, but I personally hate those, so I’lll try to find another way. Meanwhile, if you do see spam in the tagboard, just ignore it. I appreciate any suggestions on how to anti-spam my Tagboard :).

Ahh….. _|-|0””…. just finished spamming Evangelion Renewal in 2 days. Seriously, a word of warning, don’t do that unless you wanna turn antisocial and angsty. EVA really did that to me, making all my friends asking what happened to me. Maybe I’m just an attention-seeking whore… Ehem…. brainf**k at work…..

Other than that, I just watched Kong tonight. It was quite a good watch, albeit a little too long at 3 hours straight. It was roughly 1 hour to reach the island, 1 hour to catch Kong and 1 hour to kill him. I kinda feel sad for Kong though, he died of absolutely no fault on him own T_T.

On other stuff, I intend to do a 2005 in review for anime…. but just kinda feel like I’m not fit to do it, considering I missed half a year of anime…, well, maybe I might do it during Christmas. There’s not much anime coming out in December I’m interested in, except for Itsudatte! My Santa, which was actually kinda dumb that I don’t even feel like blogging it. Next month should prove interesting, with the advent of Fate/Stay Night, which is the series that ANY hardcore otaku should take a look at, and also Hellsing Ultimate, as long as they don’t delay it again >.< .There's also quite a few titles coming out in January that I'm interested in and I'll cover that later.... or maybe not.

Sigh.... this semester is actually proving to be quite a b*tch, being a short semester and all, have to cover 3 subjects in 2 months. I have my finals in 2 weeks plus, and I still can't understand a single thing the lecturers are teaching (except for English) as the classes are all at stupid times... LIKE 8AM =.=.... I can hardly wake up for the class, let alone pay attention... Oh well, hopefully I won't fail it.

Well to end this off, here's my current desktop.... which I haven't changed in quite a while....

Original Image : 1442×1075