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The twintailed blonde girl is tsundere.

I've never liked Neon Genesis Evangelion. This isn't to say that I hated it or anything, but more that it failed to fully elicit any sort of severe response in any direction. I didn't hate it, and I didn't like it; I was just not interested in it.

Which, I suppose, is sort of the problem, and worse than active dislike of the series: Evangelion failed to interest me, and so the only emotion I drew from the series itself (distinct from the emotions I have towards the fandom, which ranges from polite attention to eye-twitching irritation) was boredom. The series failed to engage me at any level. I've been classified as a hater of the series because of this, which I think kind of misses the issue: I don't have the passion to hate Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's just there. You may as well ask me what I think about the cultivation of yams.

From conversations with people who are fans of the series, it appears that a common thread (but by no means universal) is the ability to identify with the main characters, most often Shinji. (Occasionally Asuka is held to be the identifiable character; sometimes Misato.) They see themselves in Shinji, and they can empathize heavily with what he is going through.

Or maybe not, and I am completely misunderstanding the situation. I can kind of see it academically, but I cannot quite grok it to the fullness of understanding. This is because the three main characters, Shinji, Asuka, and Rei, are thoroughly unidentifiable for me. About the closest character I can empathize with is Rei, since she's quiet and unassuming, but I hear that she's not supposed to be empathizable, so I apparently have been suckered in or something.

I'm pretty sure I was never like Shinji or Asuka. This is not a boast, since it's entirely likely that I was in some way worse. But I didn't have parental issues, and I grew up in a happy home environment. There is just nothing connecting me with people who went through what Shinji and co. did. It's kind of like a cultural gap, except not exactly cultural, but more circumstantial. I recognize that it is a valid personality type; it's just not mine.

I think the character who would have the same sort of reactions I would might be Maya Ibuki. Her actions seem kind of natural, at least.

And since I can't empathize with the main characters, my other option was to watch them from the outside, seeing how they act from the viewpoint of an invisible observer. Considering my usual tastes in comedy and lighthearted fun, however, Evangelion held no joy for me.

I can understand that it is significant to the culture of anime, as well as its enormous influence. But I just don't like it. This has no bearing on its quality or its importance; just my personal tastes.

I should probably be spending more time on this topic, but not only do I not have the time or inclination to do so, I also don't think there is anything more that has not already been said by many others far more eloquent than I am.

For some reason, I find the GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class ending theme "Colouring Palettes" kind of catchy. Specifically, the Tomokane version has some cool guitar riffs, despite my not actually liking Tomokane (as a character) that much, at least compared to Kisaragi or Namiko (or possibly Miyabi). The song doesn't quite hit the "good gods this is AWESOME" area, but it's enjoyable to listen to, and that's probably all that really matters.

It does keep my mind off the spectacle of Baby Noda humping the teddy bear.

For some reason, once you become an established blogger who does okay-ish in terms of site hits, nowhere near the Big Guys but still kind of ego-boosting, a great many people start wanting to recruit you into their blogs.

I'm not entirely certain why. Maybe it has something to do with having developed your own style, or showing that you actually know how to spell, or something along those lines. Why I was not so scouted a few years back when I was blogless (well, I had and still have a Livejournal, but it's more for slice-of-life) is a mystery.

I turn these invitations down. The chief, primary, and overriding reason is because I have enough trouble writing my requisite posts on this blog, much less come up with something new and different for someone else's. It's the time factor, mostly: so many things are happening in Real Life that require my attention, largely because they tie kind of directly into being able to eat, preferably while watching anime with an Internet connection. I have this chunk of hobby time which looks substantial, but quickly gets consumed by all sorts of things, mostly due to stuff I agreed to do during the less hectic times. They're still technically hobbies, but being responsible for them turns them into obligations which I have to do, whether I continue enjoying them or not.

Blogging about a subject in general takes up more time than simple typing speed would indicate. For one thing, I have to keep up with both the anime I want to blog about, and the anime that everyone else is blogging about, and the anime that may or may not be blog-worthy. (These may be the same thing.) While I am doing so, I also have to find something to say about them, rather than the usual "eh, it's good" or "eh, it's not good".

Other stuff like GamerS I treat as a test of my improvisational abilities. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. So it goes.

All this has left me surprisingly little time for my other hobbies; I've been meaning to continue my long-abandoned Card Captor Sakura fanfic, but unless I can justify it by posting it in instalments on this blog (which I doubt will be welcome by anyone), it will have to wait. And then there's the whole genderbending thing to work on, sometime.

I mention all this not to whine, but… well, maybe just to whine a little. But the original intention was to illustrate why I always seem to be posting Things Of No Substance every week, both sometime on Saturday evenings.

I have also received a rather more compelling offer to write for another anime blog; the extra compulsion is because the offer was extended by Real Life friends. In the fevered contemplation that ensued, I was wondering what the reactions here would be if I moved all my standard anime reviews there, and kept the "side" stuff like the CCS episode summaries and Nanoha GamerS here. I could link or crosspost the review-type stuff back here, as a lazy shortcut. There shall be the place for the more respectable face of anime blogging (relatively speaking); I am quite certain that nobody else on the Internet is going to want to host these weird screenshot comics of questionable legality.

Knowing these guys in Real Life and interacting with them on a regular basis allows for some extra accountability: if someone seems to be slacking off, we can commence with the "wtf mate" and smacking each other upside the head, like a peculiarly injokey Stooge troupe.

Honestly, what I'd really like is a year off from all obligations, so I can work on what I want to, when I want to. There's a zillion stories I want to write, but life is not so easy. I should have called this an anime and creative writing blog. I'm still tempted to do so, but the decision never seems to stick, especially in the cold light of dawn.

Time shall tell how it will all end.

Why do so many bishoujo games have a token cute animal (for varying degrees of "cute")? The Key anime adaptations featured theirs, with Piro in Kanon, Potato in Air, and Botan in Clannad. Nursery Rhyme has Azu, and Heart de Roommate had Toshibo. I first noticed this during the fake opening for the last Haruhi-chan episode, where apparently Muu-chan (a Haruhi-chan original) and Shamisen double-team this role.

I've not had much time to play Coming x Humming, and I swear that this is actually the name of the visual novel. I have no idea what it's about, except apparently some sort of local goddess from the shrine taking human form to… I don't know. Boink the player character, maybe. Characters in visual novels seem to have a surprisingly blase attitude towards plainly supernatural phenomena; it's hard to tell if this is something generally Japanese, or if it's just easier to tell a bishoujo game story like this, without having to explain all the plot contortions.

I wonder what the first bishoujo game to utilize all these conventions was. Probably something relatively old and familiar, since when I encountered them in Coming x Humming, they had this comfortingly familiar feel. Token cute pet, token childhood friend, token MAGIC… all is well with the world.

Recently I stopped by Kinokuniya to pick up the official English translation of the first The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya light novel, as well as Negima volumes 20 and 21 (translated by Del Rey, rather than the Chuang Yi Singapore version). Also, I picked up a not-very-good omnibus with three Hercule Poirot mysteries, and Neal Stephenson's Anathem, which garnered a "is that a book or a box?" from my father.

While looking for more frivolous items to fritter my money away on, I browsed through the stupendously immense collection of shoujo manga also on display. Most of these had been translated into Chinese; I think it's easier or perhaps cheaper to do so, compared to the licencing of manga in English by US publishers.

I'm not very good with my Chinese (especially traditional characters), so I was mostly skimming through the pages in search of something eye-catching. Now, I've always been of the opinion that, like moe bishoujo harem comedy anime and manga, the intricacies of a certain genre of shoujo manga is probably lost on the uninitiated. I assume there's a set of terms for this, since it's not like all bishoujo anime are harem comedies (Azumanga Daioh sort of leaps to mind; comedy, but not harem), and I'd certainly not want to over-generalize every shoujo manga in soft pink cover colours as the same sort of story. Rocks and glass houses, unclean crockery, so on and so forth.

Nevertheless, I did find it intriguing, or at least amusing, that there appears to be a sort of template from which the protagonists of these manga are produced. Consider the following traits:

• Pretty, or at least cute.
• Not particularly smart, and gets confused easily.
• Clumsy, in that harmlessly adorable way.
• Bullied frequently, but never lets it get her down.
• Always tries her best at everything she does.
• Is often in the presence of at least one blatantly handsome guy.
• Grows up to be successful, competent, and incredibly attractive.

Now, which of the following comes to mind?

1. A stereotypical shoujo manga heroine, of whom I read no less than thirteen of during my browsing session.
2. Mikuru Asahina.

It is a mystery.

It has been several weeks since I've had the chance to sit down and watch anime, or even to keep up with anime news of any sort. I have been collecting episodes, much as that figurine you thought was such a bargain before you realized that you had no more space to put it collects dust. I am dimly aware, through the random osmosis of the anime blogging community and its associated aggregators, that various series (Clannad After Story, Toradora) have ended, and some (K-On) will be starting. The details will have to be left to others paying more attention than I have.

I have, however, managed to sneak in glimpses, furtively seen, of bits and pieces of episodes; never enough for a full digestion of the events therein, but sufficient to abate the hunger. Some Sora Kake here; a taste of Zettai Karen Children there. Occasionally I may dip into the gumbo of Maria Holic, steeped in strangeness and substances only legal by technicality. Haruhi-chan already comes in handy bite-sized chunks, and although it is enjoyably fluffy, it is correspondingly not quite filling.

As for Chrome Shelled Regios, what samplings I have partaken of have made me curious about the nature of this dish: on the one hand, it has the heavy hints of angsty backstories and circumstances that may border upon the bitterness of emo, along with a sour frisson of convoluted conspiracy plots. And yet, Regios also features liberal servings of comedy, super-deformed moments, and even moe. I am unsure if I can help myself to the funny bits, while carefully setting aside the emo bits like unwanted asparagus. I've always been a picky eater.

The show also has little to do, as such, with the preparation and consumption of food. I'm just overusing the culinary metaphors because I haven't had a proper meal all day, and so now I go to raid the kitchen.

When I get a new toy to play with, especially if that toy allows me to make new toys, I tend to obsess over them. Such has been the case when, after sufficient prodding from a variety of sources, I bought the PDF version of the Maid RPG sourcebook. Yes, you read that correctly: it is a tabletop pen-and-paper roleplaying game involving maids.

Anime maids, that is. With everything that entails.

I've chronicled the creation of a basic cast of characters on my Livejournal, as posted in five parts. So far, at least; it is only on subsequent read-throughs that I realized how remarkably filling the game can actually be, despite its fluffy, light exterior. This is a game which can be adapted to a vast number of settings and situations, often in the same campaign. In fact, if you use the Random Events table, this is most likely going to be the case.

So far, the most fun I've had is in rolling up new characters. Unlike the HERO System, this takes something like ten to fifteen minutes, or maybe five minutes if you don't bother to write everything down longhand. Justifying the rolls may take longer, depending on how long you've been doing this sort of thing, but when you end up with a loli vampire maid with an affinity for magic and a great big axe for a weapon (the character I'm currently playing in a play-by-post, at least until the GM vetoes me), the justification may take strange forms.

Actually playing the game probably depends on how good at roleplaying everyone is, as well as how secure everyone is in their manhood. This is not a game for minmaxers, or those who prize an unsullied character concept above all. This is the sort of game for people who're willing to just go with the flow and play something, possibly because the designated cleric is a no-show.

And if, like me, you are a fan of moe harem comedy anime, with or without maids, this is perfect for you.

You can, if you want to, play as a butler, but then butlers are basically a side-show to the maids (automatically losing any challenge against a maid character), even if they are more accurately combat butlers. You can also play the "master" of the house, but you'll be stuck with even worse stats, and nothing to do except dispense Favour (the experience points of the game) like a particularly sad and geeky vending machine.

You can also, and this is allowed in the rules, pick and choose your desired character traits from the many (many many many) tables, but this kind of takes some of the fun out of it.

A great deal of the charm of the rulebook is the presence of the example characters, who do not just show us how the rules work, but enact little skits where they actually apply the rules directly, rolling their own dice. This is a great help in explaining the sometimes complex interaction of rules, as well as providing a decidedly moe heroine in Bashful Demon Maid Hizumi, who has no idea how she managed to roll a Demon trait.

This is a fun, light rules system, made for playing fun, light games. The best word I can think of to describe Maid RPG is "charming"; it's not perfect, but it's hard to fault it for its flaws. We have the core rules weighing in at about thirty pages, and then one hundred and eighty pages of optional rules that add a great deal more depth to the game.

At eight dollars for the PDF of 223 pages, this game is incredible value for money. There is even a little note from the translator telling anyone who pirates the game that the most important thing they should do is to play it, not just let it sit and rot on the hard drive. I cannot think of better advertising than that.

While Real Life takes over most of my, well, life, I have attempted to alter the flow of feng shui around my destiny by choosing a new desktop image. One wonders if this will have the same effect as mere rearrangement of furniture.

Yes, I am superstitious. I used to scoff at such things, but then I started playing Dungeons and Dragons, and from there assorted other tabletop roleplaying games. These all have one thing in common, also shared with certain Las Vegas activities, in that fortunes may turn upon the next roll of the dice.

Desktop wallpapers (or backgrounds, or whatever you want to call them) are a particularly specific category of images. Firstly, they must be of a certain size, or at least a certain aspect ratio, and have to look at least somewhat decent when stretched to fit. Secondly, they should preferably not be too busy, with gaudy colours and attention-grabbing shades in nigh-random locales, because it's supposed to be a background, rather than the main feature.

And personally, I make it a point not to have anything too embarrassing. I'm well-known among my friends and family as an anime obsessive of the species Creepius Fanboius, so having something anime-related is a given, but occasionally little children come to visit and wish to check their Facebook or something, and pantyshots may not be appropriate.

All this is probably far too much thought to put into something that I only see when I start up and shut down my computer anyway. So it goes.