Generally speaking, I watch my anime as a hobby, as a way to unwind and relax. After a long day full of stress and shouting, where people are, well, people, it's kind of nice to sit back and enjoy a few hours of not thinking in twenty-five minute chunks at a time. Something easy on the eyes, and easy on the brain, where the world is a happier, funnier place.

Having said that, I'm not entirely sure this show is good for me.

It has been observed before that I don't handle conflict very well. Most of the time, I try to avoid it as best as I can, largely because I have a very short temper, and I tend to say things which I regret soon enough.

Episode 15 of Card Captor Sakura, "Sakura and Kero's Big Fight", was therefore not exactly one of my favourite episodes. Which was a pity, since it slightly touched on some rather serious issues, but done respectfully and yet also in a light-hearted manner. Somewhat more relevant to my interests, it was also a step up in terms of animation quality from the previous episode, as objectively as I can determine.

Still, I wouldn't really place this episode in one of my favourite spots, which obviously isn't saying that it's bad. No, it just doesn't really have much appeal to me, relatively speaking.

Of course, Tomoyo not getting a whole lot of screentime might have been a factor.

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The picture doesn't have anything to do with the topic today. I just wanted to get your attention.

Recently, I've noticed that several spam-busting solutions on other blogs were eating my completely legitimate comments, mostly because I was a "new commenter", which presumably meant that I didn't have enough "good karma" with the spam-solution in question. Normally this would be only a very minor inconvenience at most, but when the CAPTCHA image failed to load in the first place (due to server load, I imagine), I had to rely on the good graces of the blog owner to check through his/her moderated comments manually.

Now, considering the Akismet stats on the amount of spam out there (I don't use Akismet, although not due to anything other than laziness; the current spam solution for Moe Check is Spam Karma 2, for lack of anything better than default), I don't really blame the spam-busters for being overly paranoid. I mean, look at the graph: all that orange is spam, compared to the blue of legit comments, small and lonely. I've been told that this is normal, which makes it even worse, since we have apparently progressed to the point where only one out of ten comments, if that, is legit, and nobody believes that this is odd. I'm well aware that each spam comment is essentially free, or at least has insignificant and trivial cost to the spammer, but all the effort expended in trying to block spam is beginning to feel like trying to inhale a hurricane. It's depressing, and it's even more depressing that I appear to be one of the very few who even think that it's depressing instead of Life As Normal. Zetsuboushita, and all that.

Moe Check receives something along the lines of fifty spam comments a day (down from a hundred a day), which isn't anything compared to the really popular blogs out there, which I've heard get something like a thousand spam comments every day. This means that it's still (barely) possible for me to go through each and every one of the moderated comments every day, checking that no legit comments got accidentally eaten. I worry every night that I've missed something, and some unfortunate commenter out there is wondering why his or her comment hasn't shown up yet, and will never show up.

And if my spam-buster solution is messing up somehow and eating legit comments, it's not like I'd know until I checked. Even if it does happen, it's not like I know what to do to allow these legit comments without working even harder to moderate away all the spam which slips through.

I'm not even going to touch the issue of scrapers and splogs, which I don't have a clue on how to deal with.

In any case, based on observations on how Spam Karma 2 works, I've come up with a few ideas on how to make sure that your comment won't get flagged as spam, either by automation or manually:

• Use proper English. This is extremely important. If English isn't possible, I also accept comments in Chinese, Malay, and Japanese. Please check your spelling, grammar, and punctuation; the worse it is, the more likely I am to conclude that it is spam. On a related note, if you comment in a language I don't understand (ie anything other than the four listed: English, Chinese, Malay, Japanese), I can't know what it is, and I'll err on the side of paranoia.
• Make your comment relevant. "I agree" and "I dunno" and "Interesting", with no other references, are one of the favourite tools of spammers. At the very least, say something about the content of the post in question. Just quoting the title is almost a sure sign of a spammer.
• Don't list Geocities as your website host. This one is Spam Karma 2's problem: Geocities is very blacklisted, possibly because of the large number of ad sites hosted there. Listing a Geocities site pretty much guarantees that your comment will be marked as spam, through no fault of your own.
• The fewer URLs per comment, the better. Spam Karma 2 deducts points based on the number of URLs in a comment. Three is pretty much the maximum before Spam Karma 2 gets too suspicious. Five is right out.

It's a sort of Catch-22 situation, really: if my spam-buster is eating comments, I'd like to know, but for me to know, the quickest way is for someone to comment, and those affected can't comment due to the spam-buster eating said comments.

EDIT: In what is probably an extreme case of irony, I am locking pings on this post, because in the course of half an hour, I received no less than five pingbacks from various scrapers and splogs. These are pretty easy to weed out, since they invariably go "BlahBlahBlah wrote an interesting post today, here's an excerpt", and then get the blog name wrong.

If I get spam comments on this post anyway, I'll be locking those too.

Episode 14 of Card Captor Sakura, "Sakura, Toya, and Cinderella", suffers from what is either their fault or mine. Essentially, while watching the episode, I had the distinct feeling that the B-crew were the ones animating this, considering the number of warped background character designs and animation mistakes (for example, Tomoyo's hair ribbon changes colour between scenes… you bastards). Everything just seemed a bit lacking, as though all my love for the show was due to what was in my head, rather than what was actually on the screen.

However, I also noted that prior to watching this episode, I had just marathoned The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and eight years of progress of anime technology (along with the obvious realities of producing a seventy-episode anime versus a fourteen-episode one) would certainly make a difference. Perhaps I was merely judging too harshly with regards to mere surface quality, and the actual contents were in line with the higher class of filler, for which I should be thankful.

And so I cannot actually say whether this episode was good or bad, until I have reacclimated myself with the rather unique world that CCS is immersed in. Until then, please enjoy Osamu Dazai's [No Longer Human] the sight of Super Baito Touya as a… well, it appears that there is one thing that Touya is not good at, and that is wearing a dress.

Consider all jokes about "relationship", "Yukito", and "pants" already made.

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There's a sort of anecdote I like to mention when the conversation turns to Card Captor Sakura, and the evangelization thereof. Well, I say "anecdote", but it's something which has happened more than once, for some inexplicable reason.

The setting is a discussion about anime, and favourites thereof. I obviously mention mine.

"Oh, Card Captor Sakura?" the answer comes. I'm going to generically assign a male gender to this straw man, since in the four cases this has happened it was always with a guy, although I suspect this is mostly because I don't meet a lot of girls at all. "I don't like shows based on card games."

This generally causes me some pause.

"No, I haven't seen it before, but I don't want to. I mean, the main character collects these cards, like Pokemon, right? And there's also a rival collecting cards, and the cards can be used to fight each other, like Yu Gi Oh. That's a card game. Too merchandise-driven; I don't like it."

Upon which I have to patiently explain that while the summary may technically be true, and the series does have a lot of merchandise released, CCS is in no way a "card game" anime. This generally starts with the phrase "What the hell are you talking about?", and goes downhill from there.

Card Captor Sakura is, as has been mentioned before, one of the very few fandoms I will defend unto the death. (The other two are The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Discworld.) As a guy in his twenties, this seems to raise some eyebrows. I've come into a few conflicts with other fans, mostly from their disbelief that a guy could ever appreciate a show aimed at preteen girls, or at least appreciate it in a wholesome manner. I've been the target of some misandry based on my participation in CCS fanfiction, which is quite distinct from the general contempt shown to fanfic writers. (The cesspool of anonymous flaming here is Fanfiction.net, as might be expected.) To be fair, the vast majority of the fans I've encountered are great people, albeit a bit taken aback by the presence of this specimen of a rare male CCS fan.

CCS also has, as mentioned before, the odd position of not actually being criticized by those who have seen it, or at least not criticized with the same sort of intensity as more current shows. Witness the backlash to the popularity of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya or Lucky Star, or indeed any of the recent shows by KyoAni.

And CC Yoshi's recent post about CCS made me wonder: what was it about the series which makes it my favourite?

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If anyone cares, I've transcribed the somewhat random text-only opening title cards from the first three episodes of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei.

Yes, it's another filler post. ZETSUBOU DA~

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Cat.

Dog.

Boar.

Frog.

Hawk.

There's just something about animals in anime which seems a bit odd to me.

Have obtained one artbook, looking quite posh, titled "Super Lollipop" (ISBN 978-4-86199-096-0), with the subheading of "2nd drawing works of POP". It contains various artwork of, among others, Moetan (the English textbook, rather than the anime, it seems), and Fairy Musketeers (aka Otogi Jushi Akazukin).

Upon browsing its contents, I had to admit that it was pretty much everything that I thought it would be, and probably everything you'd think that it is too. Also, I have to wonder how this is even legal, much less being sold in uptight Singapore.

Surprisingly, the above image (from Danbooru) is about the closest I can find any scans of the book online. (I don't have a scanner, nor do I know how to come up with high-quality scans even if I did.) If nothing else, the picture on page 119, namely a chibi version of Anime Tenchou, should be good for some laughs.

I don't really have any point to this post other than to mention how flipping through the book results in the words "Lolipedofin, lolipedofin" marching through my head.

Something which was brought up in the comments section of my CLAMP in Wonderland 2 review was the possibility of a remake of my favourite anime, Card Captor Sakura. I've been meaning to write about this for some time now, and I suppose this is as good a time as any.

Firstly, I need to lay all my cards on the table (convoluted referential pun unintended). If it were just entirely up to me and personally me, I wouldn't really care for a remake. For all the things I think the series could have done better (for example, the huge number of plot holes and bizarreness, which I'll probably point out when they get blogged about), I'm still of the opinion that it's one of the best anime I've ever seen, taken even as it is, rather than an idealized version in my head with impressive CG and suchlike. For myself, I'm satisfied with CCS.

However, it will be extremely likely that if CCS does get a current remake, in this day and age of the almighty blogosphere and episode reviews and such, there will be an upsurge of interest. CCS will be talked about; perhaps the comments will be unfavourable, perhaps people will love it anyway. But it will still be a point of discussion now, and remain in the current blogger (and anime fandom) consciousness for just that bit longer.

I mean, I was talking to an acquaintance about favourite anime recently, and I mentioned that my absolute favourite was Card Captor Sakura. Their initial reaction was a blank look I've become familiar with, as they tried to match the name with an anime released in the past two or three years.

"Oh, Card Captor Sakura," they say, finally remembering. "The one where Sakura and Syaoran from Tsubasa Chronicle come from, right?"

"Sort of," I hedge. "But I prefer the original versions."

"But it's such an old anime," they say. "Why don't you watch something newer?"

"I do," I say. "But I still like CCS."

"Yeah, that's very unusual," they say, and the matter is finished. And it invariably turns out that people I talk to have indeed seen CCS, and thought that it was good, but they had completely forgotten about it until now. I suppose this counts as evangelizing the series, since they often decide to watch it through one more time, but sometimes I selfishly feel like talking about CCS to someone who, well, knows what I am talking about.

And then there's the obvious benefit of more posters and merchandise coming out in all the magazines and retailers, rather than the occasional rehash of an image I already own. There is very little new merchandise for CCS, which is understandable considering its age, but, well, that's pretty much my point.

It's not likely that we'll be seeing a remake of CCS anyway, or at least a remake which will satisfy my incredibly keen nitpickery. (I'm still slightly peeved that Madhouse mis-animated Tomoyo in CLAMP in Wonderland 2 with brown eyes, instead of the blue eyes she was supposed to have.) Thus I think I am relatively free to speculate on What May Be.

The gut reaction for the first choice of studio to attempt this would be Kyoto Animation, of course. They have a reputation for sticking extremely close to the source material, and CCS has enough of a plot that any immersion-breaking references would be kept at a minimum (unlike, say, SHAFT, as much as I like them). For those with short memories and too much cynicism, consider how many references to other works you've seen in non-Lucky Star KyoAni works, and then ask if they broke immersion that much. Do this without bias, please.

The problem would then be which source they would stick to. The anime has seventy episodes and fifty-three cards (Clow or Sakura, including the movies), which would be a relatively immense amount of work for them. However, there's also the manga, which has nineteen cards and is divided neatly into two arcs, which would probably be more manageable.

Except that the manga does not have Meiling, and that, to me, is too much of a sacrifice.

We'd also have to bring back the original voice actors/actresses, and that's going to be a miracle. For one, Sakura Tange is pretty much retired (I forget whether she retired before or after voicing Kasumi in the Dead or Alive games), so no more hoe~ and hanyaa~n the way it was meant to be. I'm not sure what the schedules of the other seiyuu look like, but we'll have to bring back Junko Iwao for Tomoyo (she's been in a few anime recently, like Akane in the Mai-HiME/Mai Otome series), Tomokazu Seki for Touya (he's definitely active), Aya Hisakawa as Kero-chan (she's around here and there, I know that), Motoko Kumai as Syaoran (no idea if she's still active), Megumi Ogata as Yukito (I think she's still active), and Yukana as Meiling if she gets in (she's very much around, as Nanoha StrikerS and Full Metal Panic shows). Kanon managed to achieve the return of the old seiyuu, as did Negima!? and Ah! My Goddess, but I think this particular order might be a bit too tall.

And so I think that a remake of CCS will remain only in my imagination, where it probably should remain. Of course, we never know what the future might bring.

If it turns out to contain a remake of Card Captor Sakura as done by SHAFT and Akiyuki Shinbo, though, I think I might have to concuss myself just to make sense of it all. Mottsu cameos, Terada-sensei writing on that sentient blackboard, endless references to everything else for split-second frames… wow. My head hurts already.

At least it would be interesting.