The Garret

O flist, I turn to you for help and advice!

cadragongirl and I, being friends and roommates, have occasionally been known to sit down and share a meal together. When that meal is a dinner that we have cooked ourselves, on the rare occasion that our schedules match, we like to watch dramas and things as we eat. Now, back in the day when I didn't have crazy hours, we could watch a drama episode. Now-in-the-present, we don't really have time for a full hour-or-45-minute-long episode.

But! we said to each other. Anime episodes are only 22 minutes long! We should watch some more anime!

Then we realized that neither of us knows enough about anime to actually pick a good one. We have watched (and loved):

- Ranma 1/2
- Skip Beat
- Ouran High School Host Club
- Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge/Perfect Girl Evolution/The Wallflower
- Special A

Each of us has individually watched a few more, but those are the ones subjected to communal viewing.

We started and sort of gave up on Fruits Basket, Seirei no Moribito, and Hikaru no Go as not quite fitting both our anime moods at the time. (Yes, we've also seen Avatar. Not just the bee's knees, my friends, but all the joints below the hip belonging to the bee.)

So I turn to you, O flist. What do you recommend?

I started watching Avatar: The Last Airbender back in December, and promised myself I could finish it after I finished That Damn Paper.

That Damn Paper is finished, and so last week I watched the second two seasons of Avatar within the space of about four days. (Look, eating and sleeping I was willing to eschew, but I had to go to work sometimes. Luckily some of my colleagues are even bigger dorks than I am. ♥)

Anyway I finally finished watching and it is PRETTY MUCH THE BEST THING EVER. Below the cut are some of my favorite lines and flaily real-time reactions to individual episodes.

( KIND OF SPOILERY. AND FULL OF KEYSMASH. )

CONCLUSION: MIND-BLOWINGLY AWESOME

So instead of using my snow day off from work to write either of the things I really need to be writing, I started watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. As you do.

I'd heard it was awesome. I'd heard it was fantasy multicultural in a big way. I'd heard the ladies tended toward badass.

NOBODY WARNED ME IT WAS HILARIOUS.

Halfway through the first season, Zuko’s uncle Iroh is totally my favorite. "No nephew of mine is going to stow away on a ship without some backup!" Though I quite like Sokka too. He just wants a little respect, okay, and--ooh, hey, is that food? NOM NOM. And he actually APOLOGIZES when he’s been a sexist pig! O_O I HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS BEFORE.

Katara seems just as cool as promised. Talented girl who doesn’t take no crap off nobody in search of a mentor? Count me in. Aang just wants to have fun! And, you know, save the world. Poor ickle woobie show-off. Zuko’s not bad either. Disgraced prince with fire skillz, exiled for being too reasonable, on a mission to redeem himself and win daddy’s approval? I’m there!

...

Well, Mary Stayed Out All Night has LOST ITS FOOL MIND, not that that's news. But I definitely approve of the amount of JGS singing in the finale. ♥

A day off, and it’s too hot to go out and actually do much, so cadragongirl and I are holed up at Panera. I am spectacularly failing to write my staff rec for Plain Kate, because I love it like burning and keep getting sucked into re-reading bits and crying and then failing to have the right words.

But it’s nice to have a day with air conditioning and computers and time to just write. I should be doing other things, but I really need this day to just sit and drink chai and write. I’ve been full of ennui lately; the hot weather makes me grumpy and lethargic. Now that I’m full of chai and AC, though, I kind of want to go dancing.

Last Friday M and I walked down Faneuil Hall to the waterfront, then around the back of the aquarium where you can see the seals from outside. Yay! We window-shopped our way back (I was unexpectedly impressed by American Eagle Outfitters jewelry--think it was AE, anyway), and I bought an outrageously expensive (but delicious!) bag of chocolate chip cookies at Quincy market. A good afternoon. I will keep it in my memory to ward off feelings of inadequacy when they come prowling.

In other news, I think I should dye my hair red while I still work at a bookstore and am living the carefree young life. On the one hand, I want to get a job in publishing. On the other hand, I want to continue living the carefree young life. I want, I want, I want.

Note to self: lay off the black v-neck of shoulder-baring awesome. For some reason it has been garnering me a lot of sleazy looks this week. Ugh.

And now, a word or two about Mockingjay! Um, probably kind of spoilery. And super vague. Sorry. But mostly about ships, which are not really the point of the books anyway.

( In which the Hunger Games books are like Hana Yori Dango )

Friends and sundry! I write this from a remote outpost in the mountains of California, where it is cold and misty. Quite frankly I would love to be tramping around in the woods wearing rain boots, except my rain boots are on the other side of the country and anyway indoors we have muffins and tea.

It has been an eventful week! Friday was graduation, which involved a lot of standing around in an uncomfortably short dress wearing robes and a silly hat. cadragongirl bravely took the afternoon off work to attend graduation, and she brought me PIG-RABBIT as a present! TWO PIG-RABBITS! One for my phone and one for general hanging around. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! (I think, between this and when I was blathering about neurotransmitters to a4yroldfaerie as we made purple pita bread, I may qualify as the dorkiest person ever.)

We got dumplings in Chinatown to celebrate my supreme dorkiness, and also graduation and cadragongirl having survived the semester from hell.

I flew out to California the next day, and spent most of the trip ( composing a rant on gender and personal boundaries in enclosed spaces )


Since arriving in California, I have learned that pumpkin chocolate chip cake is actually delicious (much to my surprise), tiny old yoga ladies are hardcore, and that even though I still don't like the US cover, Sarah Rees Brennan's new book The Demon's Covenant is excellent and funny and addresses one of the major problems I had with The Demon's Lexicon. Kind of.

Also, I made my dad watch the first episode of Troubleman and he thought it was hilarious. It's all in picking the right drama! *shoujo fists of victory*

I miss cadragongirl quite a lot, and I think I will go eat muffins now to console myself. Ever since we finished The Woman Who Still Wants to Marry, we couldn't bring ourselves to watch another drama because the ladies simply failed to be half as awesome as Shin-young & Co. So we've been watching random episodes of Ranma 1/2, and now I have the first season theme song stuck in my head. /tangent.

Ahem. Now, about those muffins...

The other day I was looking for the manga Dororo in various libraries, because I loved the movie and I am determined that this be the summer I learn to appreciate manga and graphic novels. I found the Publishers Weekly review of the American publication of Vol. 2, and then I had to go look up what else PW had said about Tezuka Osamu. Turns out, though manga is relatively neglected, Tezuka gets a pretty good share of attention. Here's the review in full:

Dororo, Volume 2
Osamu Tezuka. Vertical (www.vertical-inc.com), $13.95 paper (288p) ISBN 978-1-934287-17-0

The late master manga storyteller Tezuka (Astro Boy; Phoenix) returns with the next volume of his 1967–1968 horror/samurai epic, and the dire doings escalate to horrifying levels as young swordsman Hyakkimaru continues his quest to reclaim his stolen body parts from a gaggle of demons, accompanied by the self-described “world's greatest thief,” the diminutive Dororo. This time their wanderings bring them into carnage-laden conflict with fearful villagers, carnivorous fox spirits, opposing actions in a border war, a face-stealing evil Buddha statue, unrestful child ghosts and a nobleman whose loving marriage to a moth demon brings about shocking tragedy. Along this journey of despair, vengeance and the darkest of magic, Hyakkimaru encounters long-lost members of his family—with devastating results—while secrets from Dororo's past are revealed in the presence of a monk who persuades Hyakkimaru that an aspect of his thieving companion may offer a hint to his mission in life once he completes his odyssey of righteous killing. As per the previous volume, this is compelling stuff and notable among Tezuka's works for being almost relentlessly downbeat, gruesome and genuinely creepy, all elements somehow enhanced by the artist's appealing animation-influenced visual style. (June) (in the 7/7/08 PW)

The last clause cracked me up at first, and then it made me cry a little inside, and now I'm just confused. Does the reviewer, despite praising Tezuka as a "master manga storyteller"and mentioning Astro Boy and apparently being familiar with his other work, not connect Tezuka with early Japanese animation? Or did Tezuka's style (as well as content) change by the 1960s? The origins of anime in manga are fairly well acknowledged, as I understand it, but has the influence run both ways? Or is the reviewer saying, "Oh look, gore and creepitude made even more creepy by the use of kiddy-appropriate-style art!"? *headscratch*

Possibly I am thinking far too hard about this and should be stopped. But if anybody knows more than I do about the manga/anime relationship (not hard to accomplish, as I am fairly ignorant), or remembers anything from that first week of anime class (I don't), or happens to have a copy of Akira to Princess Mononoke handy, feel free to jump in. Or tell me to stop over-analyzing. Whichever.

I spent most of this weekend re-watching Gravitation, a strange and frequently hilarious anime about the moral journey of Shindou Shuichi, his romantic interest Yuki Eiri, and his band, Bad Luck. It's about boybands, scheming corporate bosses, romance novels, and true love in the face of post-traumatic stress disorder and interfering siblings-in-law. I have a whole new appreciation for the music industry angle now, I must say. And I kind of want a Hiro icon.

A Thing I Love About New York: the way my skin looks pale gold sometimes in the subway lights.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008
A bit of randomness about Garth Nix, librarians, and weaponry in public places...

ME: I'm reading the sequel to Sabriel, and there are librarians, and they CARRY SWORDS and BEAT DOWN EVIL. WITH MAGIC. AND SWORDS. IN THE LIBRARY. I kind of want to be a librarian now, but only if I get to carry a sword. I'd even settle for a BYOB* librarian job. Not only can librarians be sexy in this degenerate day and age, but they can also be BADASS. I could be the badassedest librarian the world has ever seen!
snowqueenofhoth: XD
ME: Er. If I can convince the NYPL that they should hire me even though I'm not a student and yet can't work full-time. XD
snowqueenofhoth: Good luck with that?
ME: Heh. Yeah. But clearly they are desperate. I mean, their central branch YA section isn't even alphabetized! I could be a badass bat'leth-wielding force for order! Without the, you know, bat'leth, because I'm pretty sure the guards at the door would confiscate it, and that would be sad.
snowqueenofhoth: I... am glad you are so excited.
*BYOB: Bring Your Own Bat'leth

Also there is no more Oriental-flavored Top Ramen in the entire city. I know this, because I have looked. And there is none. Clearly this is the Rubik’s Cubes of Doom’s latest crime against humanity.

Mind you, Top Ramen is probably a crime against humanity. Luckily I have cadragongirl to take me to Chinatown for congee and my favorite broccoli and braised tofu in black mushroom sauce.

Sunday, March 23, 2008
Yup. I have a cold. A beautiful spring day, lots of (well, okay, not lots, but) work to do, and I’m lazing around watching anime. This is junior year all over again. Except with a slightly better angle on the computer screen.

Watching Hana Yori Dango (the jdrama version). ALL OF IT. FINAL EPISODE TINY SPOILERS The TOJ contest: not-very-Irish step dancing to, like, techno Irish music? Heheheheheh. OMG I can’t believe Tsukushi just went all Miss Congeniality on them!!!!! AWESOME! :D:D:D:D:D /SPOILERS Damn this catchy theme song!

Reading Kyou Kara Maou manga... AHAHAHA Conrad’s a Red Sox fan!!!!!... (later) Clearly the reason I fail at relationships in Real Life is because I’m completely in love with Conrad. Even if he is a total sandwich, aka the only person in this entire manga who is not TOTALLY INSANE. Still, sometimes a girl craves grilled cheese, you know? But no, I am sure Conrad has a hint of cream cheese pastry filling somewhere along with the tasty baguette exterior. Or maybe Brie.

Okay, now I really want a baguette.

Also watching Rose of Versailles. Oh, Andre.

All this anime is quite obviously getting to me. I have started thinking in Japanese. This is a problem, since I do not actually know Japanese.

Monday, March 24, 2008
A rabbit has just arrived. I have a country-born native’s scorn of city people who buy bunnies for Easter, and considering the children’s penchant for running around screaming I think this is an ill-considered move. Still, it is quite cute. In a rabbitty sort of way. Its name is Honey Bunny, as far as I can tell. Or possibly Hunny Bunny.

In the best tradition I, of course, will be calling it Killer.