Although TheBigN beat me to it, I’ve been dropping hints left and right that I’ve joined the mass that is Touhou Anonymous, least of which would be an amusing cry for help on my mini-blog, but I think it’s time to make this official: my name is CCY … well, my psuedonym is CCY … and I’m a Touhou addict.

Who knows what it is. The manic gameplay that shoots adrenaline through your veins as quickly as the characters shoots bullets, the immense music scene from its hard-rock remixes to the drug-like addictive flash songs and everywhere in between, or just the sheer size and limitless bounds of the fandom … perhaps I’ll never know a reason until I fall out of Touhou.

But until then, in my typical analytical style, I can’t take it lying down. I’m very bad at admitting I simply like things because I do, and so it’s time to dig up the roots of, at least, my Touhou fandom and shine some light on some of the intriguing, curious, or just plain weird ends of the Touhou universe.

There’s a method to every madness, and it’s time to find mine, in this mini-series of mini-posts. And target number one …

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Apologies for a quick entry, but that just means I’ll have to leave the discussion open-ended instead of just babbling on forever. We’ll see if this incites more comment.

But, anyway, if I do manage to get this post finished in the next half-hour, it will have been roughly one year since the airing of the first episode of School Days, the infamous harem (some say anti-harem) show that was groundbreaking or shocking in so many ways. Truly it is one of the most unique shows the anime world will see - maybe not in concept, but in execution, you just have to wonder what kind of ideas were running through the producer’s heads, for better or worse.

I thought it would make an interesting topic to look back from much further down the proverbial river (hey, you make the boat jokes, not me) back at School Days, and see if it’s still everything it was cracked up to be. (more…)

The rumors of my blogging laziness have been greatly exaggerated.

In the midst of the working world and of real life another Rapidfire post rises from the ashes to inject a thousand-odd words of anime ranting and raving into the bloodstream of a starved anime fan.

Well, in all honesty I hope you’ve been reading elsewhere too, so you shouldn’t be starving, but in any case, I’m just starting to go off on random tangents, having already written all the content out of my head (yes, the pre-jump section comes last here) and now desperately typing random, fourth-wall referential content in an attempt to fill space.

In case you’re interested in what’s on board for today, there’s a news section announcing a new Shuffle!-like substance for the PC, a short metarant involving ads and websites, and a good long analytical-type thing about Howl’s Moving Castle - one of the popular Miyazaki films - and the power of emotional connection versus logical appeal.

Well … uh … how about that Nagato?
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A quick discussion on two unrelated topics here, a concept I like to call ‘halo characters’ and a rant (albeit spoiler-free) on the status of Kure-nai through episode 9.

It’s pretty much as is, so let me use this pre-jump space as a mini-shoutbox, a mini-rant within a mini-rant post. It’s like those Russian dolls.

* Does anyone have plans for Anime Expo (AX), the weekend of the 4th of July? Some friends and I are considering making it happen (albeit very unlikely) and I’m just wondering if any of you can bribe me. Or provide rooms. Come to think of it, those two might be related.

* Those who said ItaKiss were better than Special A … yeah … you’re right. The latter has been on a horrible, horribly spiral recently with just Hikari bearing the weight of the show (Kei has since collapsed, for now).

I’m hoping this is just a result of S.A. spooling up for a bit of awesome later on, but ItaKiss is definitely pushing a lot harder with more plot and more intriguing characters. I don’t even hate Naoki any more, that’s how good it is.

* 300+ MB releases of Toshokan Sensou make me a sad panda. It’s one of my most-looked forward to shows of the season, yet it’s stalled out for me on episode 4 as I struggle to look for low-size subs. I use direct download, not torrenting … maybe that is my problem. Unless the crackdown in Japan busted a Toshokan Sensou capper, or something. It’s a tough gray-area issue to argue, so I’ll stay away from that.

And now, onto the main (minor) event…
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The feature that everyone expected to be dead - probably including myself - returns for a second edition of quick ramblings about nothing in particular.

It’s pretty much as the title says in terms of the three topics - a call to arms about the upcoming anime convention in San Jose, new enlistments in the integrated blogroll, and a rave about the strangely delicious mix of books and guns, so check it out.
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A new feature that will undoubtedly die past its second post or so, Rapidfire is basically an evolution of the Track Two theory in being a bunch of short posts that wouldn’t make it on their own, collected into one post. All we need now is those crazy Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei segment titles.

By the way, I had to change the title a bit after I realized it looked like it said “KyoAni remakes Bamboo Blade,” except with commas hidden in there.

Inside, it’s pretty much what’s on the box. What shows KyoAni, our king of redundancy (and pretty animation), should remake, “first impressions” of Bamboo Blade, and a little convention talk about Fanime and the strangeness of life. Forge onward.

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