Heterochromia

Today the last episode of Getsumen to Heiki Miina was subbed. This post is therefore Okama-themed. Also, I want this outfit.

Oh my God, not even one week after I started this small weekly section, there is an imitator! Moreover, it’s Anna from Natsukashii and 2 screenshot limit. (Anna, if you read this, please do me a favour and update or delete your link to Surprising Noodlesoup on Paperlove, even though I’m pretty ashamed for that site today. XD The old domain is long gone. Thanks!)

As expected from last week-end’s Fanime, the week started off pretty strongly with lolikit’s write-ups on Fanime and Gia’s amazing paper on the Gainax day. It’s full of information and since I never really cared about animation studios and the backstories of anime and anime licensing before (only manga so far), it was quite interesting. But beware, it really is a long read and it took me two days at work to read this

If blogs have a persona, then IKnight’s would look like this. And Iwa ni Hana could *potentially* look like this as well.

Next, I guess it’s time to present another new and/or interesting blog: Iwa ni Hana. I won’t go into detail about how great this blog is, because everybody and their mother does this and it annoys the hell out of me. I don’t know anybody whose blog I respect who doesn’t have her in their blogroll, and the loud voices of praise about how sophisticated, intellectual and academic this blog is has been pushing me away. Why? Well, I find that blog absolutely un-readable. Whenever I think there is a nice or informative post, I copy the text into a text editor to spare my eyes from the horrible font and the dreadful white-on-black theme. It doesn’t matter what a great writer you are when your blog is not user-friendly. (On a side note, “academic” nearly always mean “pretentious”. For work, I’m reading and reviewing about 20 paper per day and I don’t need any academic tendencies in my feed reader unless it’s really good. You get the idea.)

Every once in awhile, you can find some interesting things in the blogosphere, such as newgeekphilosopher’s take on Asperger’s and anime blogging. I didn’t know much about Asperger’s before and think that these kinds of people have much more of a reason to blog because they provide another perspective on the things. Reading other people’s angles are always exciting, the more different they are from mine, the better. I also don’t think it’s not a problem not to “understand” a movie. It’s also good to say “I didn’t understand this, but I noticed this and that, and these are my thoughts about what I saw.”

OGT comments on Soul Eater and notices (just like Osu and me) that it’s extremely difficult to write about it besides that it’s “plain cool”. Even with raising so many interesting points, OGT’s postings on other series are typically even more insightful and well-written, but Soul Eater just doesn’t have much inside, I guess. (By the way, I didn’t know the show has a special status for the animation company so my hopes of the show staying just as strong as it is have gotten much higher.)

I find the yellow extremely intriguing.

Somebody in the US win the Urusei Yatsura shirt for me please! X-) Although I actually never read the manga (maybe I should, I love Rumiko Takahashi!), I really like the design of this shirt… and why the heck can’t you just buy it T_T

For those people who still remember Itsumo Anime Blog, maya has decided to join Natsukashii as well! I must say Osusu is doing an amazing job at collecting everybody and I’m looking forward to more of them. Now the only thing Natsukashii needs is some links for the respective authors’ postings

I imagine loli Eureka as a genki, cute girl like this. I wonder why?

I have just started watching Eureka Seven and am already looking forward to the movie. Loli Eureka is just so damn cute! And I think that sdshamshel did a good job at spotting this hint.

absolute0 has posted the third part of “A Visual Study of Traffic Lights in Anime” (part 1, part 2). Unfortunately, it merely consists of screenshots without any comments, but I find them interesting nevertheless.

Finally, I managed to actually find a picture from Getsumen to Heiki Miina! I have seen an artbook in Paris, but didn’t dare to buy it T_T

After all the tl;dr, here’s the run-down on the horribly organized girls round-robin. I will explain what I mean with this derogative:
1. We originally had three topics which were suddenly changed due to some complaints about being feministic (nevertheless, women will be taking over the internet, mwahahar!) Is anybody still interested in the “feministic” topics, btw? I’m actually still considering writing about them.
2. We originally planned a signing up system so to avoid flooding the internet with postings. Now there are 9 people writing on the first topic, mind you. The person who reads all these postings receives an MP3 of me saying “Timotei!”
3. The whole thing turned out to be like the ABC, with no discussion on the blog postings whatsoever, because everybody is supposed to post at the same time. Signing up originally also had the function to give people different deadlines (e.g. 4 people write on May 31, 3 people on June 3) so as to give the readers a bit time to read - and give the writers the possibility to respond to the others.
4. Linking each other is rather badly done so far, very unlike the ABC. Also notice how the girls tend to link the other postings at the end of their own while the ABC people used to rather link the others at the beginning of their postings on the topic.
In sum, it’s amazing what went wrong that we all automatically took for granted back then for the ABC. Ironically, I digged out Owen’s first e-mails about planning the ABC when it didn’t even have a name, not to mention the Google Group. What the heck, I am the only person who was “in” both groups from the very beginning.

Note the little Alice-rabbit-hybrid in the picture.

Enough complaining, we have gathered a few interesting opinions and most of the postings are already worth it for the well-chosen Alice-in-Wonderland-themed pictures. Maybe that’s what girls are the best at:
- Hinano decided to kick the plan of blogging simultaneously and went off…
- … raising some points that blissmo has picked up.
- De même, Shizuki(e) didn’t feel like sticking with the date either and comes with a nicely structured write-up.
- myu did a nice job replying to others in a short post.
- animemiz explicitly says she loves networking (I guess that happens to you when you reach your 20s) and chose the clearly structured FAQ-style.
- elenzend wins with good structure and readability as well.
- Soshi gets the brilliant idea of first considering what “escapism” to avoid mindless ranting on the topic. The result is a well structured post without having to slice it into user-friendly sections. I would be able to approve her effort even more if she actually gave the source of her definition…
- …which is Wikipedia, as usagijen points out. The most established blogger among the group also uses the nicest pictures - I see a correlation?
- A Day Without Me raises some interesting points. Unfortunately she is the last to post and there are no reactions yet.
- I nearly have overlooked KaeBoo’s post on her freshly made blog, because she didn’t sign up.
- Finally, gia has sadly misinterpreted the original purpose of the system: 1. after the deadline, 2. without signing up, 3. without any reply/discussion related to the other postings, 4. ranting somewhat randomly. It doesn’t matter anymore, as the original purpose didn’t get across anyways. But gia actually linked everyone at the beginning of her post (!) and put a warning prior to her rant. I heartily approve.