Month: March 2013


(via baccano-01 – WWC | weeaboos with controllers)

Baccano!

Someone recced this to me years ago, and I finally got around to watching it. I got stopped the first two times because the intro drove me crazy in Japanese and English. This series has a really interesting setup, and then kind of … flops on execution? There’s way too much exposition (monologuing! I hate monologuing!), and because events are told out of order, they keep ‘reminding’ you of what happened before by repeating scenes. Characterization is kind of… all over the place, which is weird, too. There’s a lot of one-trait characters, though admittedly there’s also just a ridiculous amount of characters and the anime is only 16 episodes long. I’m thinking I may try to pick up the manga (/novels?) to see if the written format helps the pacing.

That said, I actually did enjoy it, ahah. I liked quite a few characters, though (of course) especially Maiza, Firo, Ennis, and Czeslaw. Apparently Tumblr is more fond of Claire/Vino, though.

Also: Isaac’s seiyuu is Masaya Onosaka, who also voices Vash from Trigun, which paired with Miria sounding kind of like Milly and the both of them basically still kind of being similar characters meant that I partly just have a ridiculous crossover in my head now.

well, at least it’s not only me.

Tonight I was talking to my JOI tutor tonight about how I’m thinking I have to push back my goal for the N3 to next year. Because with my current pace, I’m only going to finish iKnow’s 2000 level by October, and the N3 expects you to know ~3000 words. Frequently when we’re doing lessons, I’m like, “I don’t know that,” from the books that specifically are N3 vocab/grammar points, which doesn’t bode well. And unfortunately, as I work full time and have other obligations, I’m pretty much maxing out on study time without going crazy at ~2 hours for vocab study a week (some weeks, less), plus whatever I manage to pick up from whatever I manage to fit in watching/reading/during tutoring sessions.

Though I told her I average about 2 hours a week, and she was like, “That’s much better than me! (with English)” ahah. I vaguely am drafting a post about learning speed vs quality (for me), but I’ll have to actually write it some other time, because I’m super tired, but I felt slightly better that someone else moves at a pretty slow pace, too.

letsmakeacontract:

Samsara by saber_01

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

This one I pretty much just watched because my roommate has been obsessed with it for months, and if I didn’t watch it, she was probably going to spoil me on it (more). It’s basically mahou shoujo trying to be gritty?

Given I’m not generally a huge fan of mahou shoujo, I enjoyed the darker aspects… but for me the transformations and sexual objectification of young girls is part of why I don’t like mahou shoujo as a genre much, and those aspects are still present. Plus, it may be partially due to the length of the anime (only 12), but I felt like it was kind of a shallow examination of the genre anyway.

I liked the series the way I like ridiculous sci-fi/action movies– because it’s pretty and fun and somewhat thinky, but mostly just pretty and fun.

Sailor Moon R

I stopped watching this midway through the series because I got fed up by Mamoru’s breaking up with Usagi for her own good being dragged on forever months ago, but I finally picked it up again yesterday and watched the rest of R. Ironically, I had apparently stopped literally on the episode before Usagi has the same dream and figures it out and they make up again.

Sorry, spoilers?

Really I just can’t with the entire time-travel and everything, also Mamoru you trolled yourself, I’m just saying. It is also very bizarre the way everyone talks about/to each other differently when they’re in costume or not.

There’s really almost nothing about this show that I like, outside of nostalgia factor, and it’s available since my roommate has it. And since I don’t care all that much about it, it’s easy to throw on as background. And because it’s so formulaic, even though I’m not paying much attention, I can still mostly follow it even though I’m not reading the subtitles.

So that sounds terrible to say. It’s not that I hate it, it’s just seriously not something I would watch if I wasn’t trying to get more Japanese listening practice in. And I didn’t also kind of want to finish it just because I used to watch it when I was thirteen, but I never saw much past R.

spacey review, somewhat.

I found out about Anki years ago, though after I was out of college, and I attempted a couple times to integrate it into my study habits, but it’s never stuck. Up till now that’s been fine; I’ve been using iKnow was my primary SRS for vocab, with Read the Kanji kind of supplementing that. But I keep doing lessons for grammar, and then because I’m not really reviewing enough, forgetting the points soon after. This is pretty much the same issue I had in college, where it felt like I could only remember things for tests, but it wouldn’t really sink in.

So I’m trying Anki again? I could make a deck on iKnow, but that site is very geared to a specific type of review sets, so I thought it might be easier on Anki.

To my surprise, there’s a new Anki version that seems to have made the card creation process a lot more intuitive for me, so I’m kind of hoping that means it’ll be easier to use in general. I never really made my own decks before, because I’d always end up frustrated with the process. Though personally I also feel like using other people’s premade decks end up making things tedious, especially when they are gigantic things of hundreds of items that seem like I’ll never get through.

Since I’m making my own to review, I have less than 40 cards right now, including reversals, which is way more manageable. Hopefully it’ll mean I can keep up with my lessons better, since I can possibly just review for short periods during the day with Anki. iKnow is a little weird and difficult to do 1min or 2min reviews with, and even though I could turn off the sound on the app to use it at work, I don’t think it quite works as well that way.

ふふふ〜 Today both FMA 1 and Okami arrived. I actually managed to understand… the gist of what was going on in Okami? Though first it played the intro as a movie sequence and just scrolled through the text and I was like oh god, if the whole game is like this I will understand nothing, because this is going by way too fast for me and my sad first-grader reading speed. But then it turns out no, once I finally figured out how to operate the controls to start a proper game, I can click through line by line.

At first I was using a dictionary to look up stuff I was unclear on, but I think after about five dialog boxes of that I gave up and just sounded things out and if I got it, cool, if not, I clicked through anyway. So kind of more back to tadoku-style, because I have no patience. But it was nice that I have, in fact, improved my vocab enough that I can do that and still get something out of it. Though it took so long to get through the opening text that I got to the save point and was like fuck it, so I haven’t actually really done any game play yet.

Found a transcription of the English version which is awesome, so I can use it to check my understanding after I play through scenes, too.

Though why exactly have Izanagi and Izanami turned into Nagi and Nami?

coerulescens:

naminational:

sarlaccvagina:

BISCUIT CANS ARE TERRIFYING

i hate these things so much. SO. MUCH. 

THANK YOU.  I’m so glad I’m not alone.  :C

I had to try to explain these and why I was terrified of them to my online Japanese tutor at one point, which was hilarious. I ended up calling it ‘instant bread’ because I didn’t know what else to call it, and then she was just amazed that we had things that were mostly pre-made and could just stick in the oven.

Americans are lazy, what can I say.

Cruel Story of Youth

Okay and I actually watched this one first, but whatever. It was… better than Empire of Passion, but even though I watched it with subtitles, I still felt like some of it was really confusing to me, ahah. Like the beginning where they are showing shots of a Korean protest– I wasn’t entirely sure if the movie was implying they were actually Korean or not. (Which, no, it isn’t.) This is possibly just me not paying enough attention, still, as I was kind of doing other things, too.

Anyway, the main relationship is still creepy and abusive (like literally, again, their first sexual encounter is pretty much rape), and then I didn’t wholly understand what was going on with her sister. But I at least found the story interesting to watch, and their character development was also kind of fascinating, since … it actually exists? I’m not sure I’d watch this one again, but at least I didn’t feel like I wasted my time watching it.