I’ve been spending my time recently cleaning up my computer to hopefully forestall the inevitable complete FUBAR that happens quite consistently every year or so. I’m not due for another one until next year, but preventation is allegedly better than the cure and all that. Incidentally, this is one reason why I’ve not been updating as often, since it’s hard to wax humourous about anime when even being at the computer sends me into guilt trips on what I Should Be Doing with regards to defragging or whatnot.

One of the annoying parts of this is that I had set my Non-Unicode Language option to Japanese. (If anyone’s wondering and if it matters, I’m running WinXP Home. I update only when that little popup balloon tells me to.) This is necessary to play my various visual novels collected over many years, since for the most part they’re not translated into English (fan patches or otherwise). This, apparently, plays utter havoc with the various Deep Applications needed for, say, my (nVidia) video card, my (Lexmark) printer, or my (Nero) DVD-burning. The details and long, involved, and arcane; I do not fully understand it myself. But suffice to say, I have been trying to convince various applications that I am not in Japan, and I am not in the US. Instead, I am in Singapore, and regional restrictions are my bane.

This entire post was prompted after the fourth system restart necessary when switching to Non-Unicode Japanese to Non-Unicode English (US) and back. This is what I have to deal with, people.

You may have noticed a disturbing lack of substantial posts in recent times. While I’m not going to regale you with excuses, I’ll just reiterate that this does not, in any way, mean that I’m giving up on this blog. This is because I am thoroughly and frighteningly stubborn, even after it is made abundantly clear that something is a Bad Idea.

A part of it is that I’ve not actually been watching a lot of bloggable anime, which is a distinct case from watching anime period. I watch quite a lot of Hidamari Sketch x365, for example, but I can’t find anything to say about it.

And while I enjoy the recent anime seasons, it’s more a kind of passive enjoyment. Nothing has quite managed to fire up my Burning Blogger Spirit, or whatever equivalent imagery there may be. I just watch, enjoy, and… that’s it. My brain runs empty on inspiration. This overall apathy is why I end up making plenty of bad comics.

Maybe I just need more sleep, or something. Trying to keep the hours normal people do isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

A shorter update this time.

Of course, we’re going with Rin. If it helps, I might do a few other run-throughs next time to showcase the other characters, assuming I don’t forget about this in the near future and lose all interest.

Generally when I get a new idea for a project, I run it into the ground until I get bored of it (which happens quite quickly), and then I leave it on hiatus indefinitely. Until I suddenly get another burst of inspiration, and then start up all my old projects again.

Anyway. Previously on Nursery Rhyme, Shizuma got conned into a date with Yukina, or at least what amounts to a date. This doesn’t actually have much to do with the plot, since it’s not like the player can choose to get out of it.

But I have this blog entry to do.

When last we left off, our protagonist Shizuma had been accused of a Humourously Embarrassing Peeping Incident, involving what is obviously the tsundere option Tita Flawless Brandt. A d2 flip made my choice for me: Shizuma tells all.

So it goes.

The last time I tried playing Nursery Rhyme, I didn’t get very far. Time passed, and the blog stats kept telling me that people seem to like that post. Gods know why; maybe everyone’s actually looking for real nursery rhymes, which have often struck me as being a bit creepy if one knows their historical roots.

(This is why I’m not heading my entry with “nursery rhyme”, since someone looking for something for their kiddies might not react kindly to eroge.)

One of the frequent comments about Nursery Rhyme is that it’s actually a pretty good game, or at least a good Visual Novel (disclaimer added to head off debates about the definition of “game”), and it is Such A Pity that nobody’s made an English patch for it yet. Since the main reason I didn’t finish the game was entirely because of the lack of an English patch, I can understand this, much like how I cannot understand most of the text in the game.

Therefore, a thought occurs: being that I have no other ideas for a blog post that haven’t already been overdone, why not post about a playthrough of the game?

Normally I’d keep a post like this at the back of my mind, hopefully to be forgotten, because it’s a very bad idea to start yet another thing I probably won’t be able to finish. However, Real Life has landed me in the middle of what might be described as Excreta Occurs, and I really need something to cheer me up. Therefore, you get this. I may or may not continue on with this, depending on my whims.

In the far future, when I am no longer under the thrall of soul-sapping situations, or at least head up instead of head down, I might alter this intro to be less irritable. Until then, so it goes.

Incidentally, don’t ask me where I got the game, since I don’t even remember it myself. I suspect that this is one of those “friend of a friend”, or “guy who knows a guy” things, and I’m horrible with keeping track of those.

Unless one is going for something Darker and Edgier, magical girls, by their very nature, have to exist in a sort of simplified version of Real Life, where Improbable Aiming Skills are de rigeur, and indeed on the lower end of the power spectrum. It is a world where teenage (and younger) girls can go up against trained killers and win, possibly because trained killers are usually not as dangerous as the Monster Of The Week, or at least as dangerous as the Monster Of The Week could be if it hadn’t been nerfed.

It is also, apparently, a world where a single stolen book is transported in a briefcase, which is then placed into a large reinforced crate, which is in turn placed into a large shipping container. Which took a great deal more time and effort to move than simply carrying the briefcase. So it goes.

Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel, apart from having a distinctly redundant title, has Yukari Tamura and Mamiko Noto in the lead roles, as Extroverted Twintail Haruka Minnazuki and Introverted Meganekko (who, unfortunately, loses her glasses when in Magical Girl mode) Aoi Kannazuki respectively, complete with all the associated character tropes thereof. It is classic, not in the sense of being able to survive through the ages, but more due to its whole-hearted embrace of the Standard Magical Girl Tropes, complete with helium-voiced super-bouncy ave;new ending theme. (Which is certainly keeping with the theme).

Hopefully the second episode (of two; this is an OAV) deals with the distinctly Downer Ending cliffhanger, mostly because a magical girl team comprised of Yukari Tamura and Mamiko Noto is, in this blog’s vernacular, hanyaa~n.

Possibly I will be accused of being Late To The Party, which implies some sort of party in the first place, to which I have not received a formal invitation. Or perhaps the party is open to any and all, free drinks included, as long as one is not Late, which I unfortunately am. No more am I on the cutting edge of anime, and my inability to keep up with the latest trends might saddle me with an attack penalty.

The meido uniform is distinct from an actual Real Life housekeeper’s uniform by connotations, hence the altered spelling. There is some overlap, perhaps reasonably so, between the uniforms for Meido and Waitresses, but the distinction is lost on plebeians such as I. The above screencap is actually taken from episode four, which ramps up the fanservice to a level best described as “borderline”. What it borders shall remain unstated for family-friendliness, but rest assured that the cleavage-emphasizing pose depicted is but the baseline of the dizzying heights explored.

And as Impz implies (with appropriate RAGE), the thought of the famed generals of the Three Kingdoms era being used as vehicles of Fanservice is more than a little mind-numbing. Rest assured, however, that once one gets over the initial breakage of brainmeats, one will be able to accept anything in that vein with either cheerful interest or implacable libido. The difference, in this case, is insubstantial.

And yes, I posted this entirely so I could use that title.