(Yes, I know the ANN article already says as much.)

Since I don't rightly know if putting the actual music onto my blog will make Maestro yell at me, I'll just use the Youtube versions for now.

There's something about the simple, catchy tunes in a certain sort of anime BGM that appeals to me in a deep, primal way. They would probably not win any music awards, and bear more similarity to muzak than anything else, but it's the happy, bouncy sort of backgound noise that sticks in the mind as indelibly as the girl from Ipanema.

I suppose I noticed it first with Azumanga Daioh and "Saa, hajimari yo", which later acquired vocals in "Kaze no Iro March". It's the sort of BGM which fits a slice-of-life series, and I admit that I only use "slice-of-life" as a convenient well-recognized term to differentiate from, say, sports or action anime. What I mean by "slice-of-life" is the sort of story which does not focus on being the strongest or the classical Hero's Journey or some sort of dramatic revelation or other. Rather, it's the quiet, everyday, unremarkable happenings of the characters going through their daily routines. A group of friends, being friends.

This can obviously be present in an anime of another overall genre, since character interactions are an important part of almost every story, apart from the more Artsy (or grandfathered) sort. What I speak of are the moments where sweeping orchestral scores or ominous Latin-esque chanting would be out-of-place, as are delicately sorrowful strings or lonely soloists. Moments of simple happiness, the sort we can experience ourselves in our own lives. I'm a great believer that life should have its own soundtrack, and these tracks make it all worthwhile.

Admittedly, I usually have to have seen the source anime before the full impact of the BGM can be felt. This may be why I tend to mentally recite the spiel about the nonexistence of Santa Claus whenever my mp3 player turns up "Itsumo no Fuukei".

I'm not entirely sure why I have to try to come up with some sort of theme titling for posts about The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It's invariably "The Something of Someone", and I am not so creative as to come up with a great many versions (possibly 15,498, or even 15,853) of this. And yet, there is the niggling feeling that this is somehow expected of me.

I picked up the second volume of the Haruhi-chan manga a couple of days ago, possibly in the vague intention of having something concrete and non-transient to remind me of the highly amusing incidents therein. I've not had much time to do anything other than a quick skimming, or indeed much time to do anything. I'd say I'm on the depressive cycle of manic-depression, but since I'm not (formally) diagnosed with such, I won't. It's just plain listlessness.

Haruhi-chan has helped in perking me up a little, and I suspect that it's because if I'm reading it, I'm likely not also reading forums or blogs or such: in other words, I'm not interacting with the fandom. This leaves me free to actually enjoy what I'm doing, rather than having to defend my enjoyment of it from the inevitable complaints, flames, and the other hazards of the Internet.

I have, it appears, gone back to basics.

It's always a pleasure to indulge in my hobbies as hobbies, rather than obligations. I know I'll receive all sorts of comments about Remembering to Do This Blog for Fun, which I'm still not sure how to answer: I tend to want to ramble on about whatever is on my mind at the moment, but this only really works in private. Once I have a public blog, I have to watch what I say, because posting these ramblings count as having published them, and now I have to be able to defend what I say. Invariably, the negative comments will get challenged far more than the positive sort, so I try to remain upbeat.

It's tiring, but it's not a matter of choice: if I say something, I must be able to defend it, or retract it as required. To behave otherwise is to shirk the responsibility I have due to the power of merely having a blog. If I claim to be posting my thoughts, I should be actually doing so; anything else would be at least unintentionally misleading, if not outright dishonest. I don't pretend to have a full grasp on the necessary vocabulary for expressing myself, so misunderstandings are inevitable, but that only means I should try even harder to avoid miscommunication.

I knew this when I started this blog, of course. It's something I've come to accept… which, of course, doesn't mean I don't resent it at times.

But I digress. Reading Haruhi-chan has the bonus of being able to see the miscellaneous illustrations the artist has seen fit to use as space-filler, and these are what reminded me of at least part of my love for MoHS: cute girls.

No, really.

I've never made any secret of my appreciation for the fine female form, presumably since I Do Not Get Any in Real Life. I'm well aware that this is escapist fantasizing, and I would never objectify Real Women like this, entirely because I am fully cognizant of the differences between fiction and reality. (I honestly think I'd gouge my own eyes out before I'd treat Real People in the consequence-free manner I could treat Fictional Characters. Not the consequences for me; the consequences for them.) But I will spend an uncomfortably long time staring at a picture of, say, Ryouko Asakura, divorced from the Truth about her personality as displayed in the canon, and simply admire how good she looks.

The same goes for Emiri Kimidori. It's my side character preferences acting up again, I suspect. This may be why I'm looking forward to new chapters of that Yuki Nagato spin-off manga, which hopefully has more of these characters without the plot portcullis slamming down on any further appearances.

All these characters pale, however, against Sonou Mori, the Organization member disguised as a maid. The illustration on page 37 of the second volume of Haruhi-chan (according to the Taiwanese translation copy, anyway) is a fine example of a sexy, sexy lady.

First, a disclaimer: I am not abandoning this blog. At least, I do not have the conscious intention of doing so. Indeed, I have the conscious intention to do precisely the opposite, to hold on to this blog as long as my love of anime and writing holds out, which should be until I die or the Internet dies, whichever comes first. While I cannot absolutely guarantee this, since I'm not omniscient or even merely prescient, I'm going to do the best I can to keep to that promise.

Having said that, I am considering a new blog.

It's not really my decision per se. It will be a group blog, with the other co-blogger being a real life friend of mine. We're doing this in a sort of vague effort to help another site branch out into more than competitive gaming news. (That link may not be current for long; the site admin is planning to change the site name soon, as soon as he decides what.) We may be getting more bloggers, preferably real life friends, although our schedules may mean that they'd prefer to be occasional guest bloggers rather than regular features.

What does this mean for this blog? Right now, very little, since that hypothetical group blog isn't even named yet, much less running. We're still looking for a good name, and considering our brainstormed ideas included "AnimeZombie" and "ZettaiZetsubouAnime", we may need help with that one.

But once it's up, I may resort to crossposting articles. What goes there (that I've written) will appear here as well, while what is here may not be replicated there. Think of it as the distilled essence of actual content, rather than my usual filler posts of "hee, cute girls". If you want to continue reading the random ramblings that spill forth from my brain without much filtering for coherence or hygiene, keeping track of just this blog is fine. If you want to read only actual attempts at intelligent thoughts, go to the new blog.

So, with this new blog, what would you, as anime blog readers, like to see?

There's the usual episode summaries, which will require more time and effort than is presently available to me, but I can try to cut down on some of my other hobbies. (Or, indeed, the number of anime I watch.) There are reviews, which have mostly the same problems as episode summaries, except slightly easier to handle. I'm not sure if I want to do commentary, since that's what I'm doing here; this sort of thing is about the best I can do, and anything more substantial I will have to leave to my co-blogger(s).

If we had to name an audience, I'd say the more casual anime fans. The sort of people who like anime in general, but may not like digging deep into anime fandom, and just want to check out a review or some such on an anime they're eyeing for a purchase. That means few inexplicable fandom memes, and as user-friendly a tone as possible. We may use a scoring system.

It's not really the informal, rambly style I'm used to, but it will be a learning experience, at the least.

Schadenfreude is not especially prominent in my personality (l'esprit de l'escalier is), and to be honest I don't really find The Endless Torment Of Mikuru Asahina all that entertaining. Of course, later it turns into comedy through repetition, and Mikuru's superhumanly resilient optimism and cheer makes it seem like all the abuse that is heaped upon her is not that serious. It's okay to laugh along. It's okay.

After all, most people I know seem perfectly content to laugh at Taniguchi's misfortunes. There may be a double standard here.

Despite my tendency to skip past the harrassment of Mikuru's person by Haruhi, fate, or both, I find the music of "Higeki no Heroine" ("Tragic Heroine") to be apropos, in situation and title. Mikuru would have been the heroine in another show, probably shoujo, and "tragedy" seems to be a good descriptor of what appears to be the default template for these characters. Despite the existence of two other possible theme songs for Mikuru, one of which is associated with "non-Haruhi" while the other is "too much Haruhi", when I think of Mikuru, the tango comes to mind immediately.

And the incredibly overwrought solo violin, possibly the World's Smallest, places the situation in the comedic context it is intended to be in. (The orchestral version, here along with two other tracks ("Invitation to the Unexpected" and "Beach Vacation"), makes for a startlingly fun showcase of the lead violin.) The strong melodic line is lyrically tempting:

Oh what a tragedy
For a heroine like me
I don't want to be
In this club especially
What is that costume for?
Why are you locking the door?
Oh how can this be
Kyon-kun, help me!

Possibly the most pathetic sort of blog post is the one that promises future blog posts, without actually containing any substance in itself.

The whole Kyonko thing is, incredibly, still going on. Perhaps not as feverishly as before, but various new fanmade material are being put out in various languages, although primarily Japanese and English. In that time, I've heard all sorts of criticisms about this phenomenon. The most common appear to be the usual screed against fanfiction, fanworks, and fan interpretations in general, claiming that by altering the canon, we are somehow blaspheming against the creator's vision. It's the sort of thing that I can't really counter: I don't agree with that viewpoint, but I can't come up with any sort of reason apart from "just because I disagree". If I tried to pass that off as a valid excuse to change other people's minds, I'd get rightly reamed in debate.

Other arguments against The Genderbending of Haruhi Suzumiya include a more specific distaste for altering the characters' genders, both in the physical and sociological sense. And then there are the simultaneous complaints that we are altering the canon too much, and not altering it enough.

The AnimeSuki thread about the phenomenon is still in existence, although the focus has shifted thanks to the project leaders losing interest in a straight novel conversion. My careful withdrawal from what they are doing right now is something that will have to wait for another post, since I'd rather not end up having to retract what I say in favour of something only marginally more accurate to my meaning.

Which isn't to say that I'm completely out of it, of course. I'm just not working on the Current Hot Project; small little fanfictional efforts are still within the realm of possibility. This is, unfortunately, not going very well, mainly because I appear to have lost the ability to characterize.

To be honest, most of my previous efforts were based on my usual shorthand-simplification method of writing fanfiction: reduce the character to their bold strokes outline, assign them an easily-remembered voice and tone, and things generally work out from there. By this system, Kyonko is the world as written by a tsundere, trying to be cool and aloof like the typical teenager, but protesting against Haruki's antics a little too much. Haruki Suzumiya, for his part, always shouts! Using exclamation marks! He's very excitable! And impatient! He also complains about the shortcomings of others! Repeatedly!

For Mitsuuru Asahina, I took the much-maligned personality of the Generic Spineless Non-Perverted Harem Comedy Male Lead, and gave it to him more or less unchanged, since it seemed appropriate. Itsuko Koizumi gets to copy-and-paste from Wikipedia. Yuuki Nagato is fairly easy to write: any time he has dialogue, I strip it out. Yuuki communicates by staring: "yes" becomes a stare, "no" becomes a stare, "pass the salt" becomes a stare… somehow Kyonko always knows what it means. (Cf Discworld's Librarian, ie "ook".)

I may be exaggerating for effect, but likely far less than you might think. I've been told that I characterize well, which always makes me feel guilty, but I suspect that coming up with subtly-nuanced and complex characters is mostly for the author's benefit, since readers will only remember the vague generalities anyway. (I'm not saying that it's not necessary to come up with complex characters, but that's another blog post in itself.)

The current problem I'm facing (apart from having little motivation to work on the actual novel rewrites, thus keeping myself to fanfiction) is that I kind of need to explain some mind-numbingly complicated theory, which allows me both Itsuko and Yuuki as mouthpieces, but it is highly improbable that Kyonko will let them infodump without snarky commentary. The theory (about multiverses, largely obtained from several science fiction books of varying hardness) is difficult enough to understand without the reader getting distracted by pained attempts at humour. And yet walls of text are also unwelcome, leaving me with the version of writers' block whereby I know what I want to write, but I don't know how to write it.

I have newfound respect for Tanigawa Nagaru for being able to explain stuff like Euler's planar graph formula in a coherent and entertaining manner, even through a layer (or two) of translation.

No doubt the title will lead to more Google searches about student council improvements in general, rather than the anime.

I admit that the only reason I even know about this show, apart from seeing it pass uncommented and unmentioned in the torrential rivers of information that proceed daily through my consciousness, is due to the vocal presence of Yukari Tamura. I should mention that I am not a true fan of voice actors and actresses, in that I base my observations on nothing more than whether I like how they sound. I know nothing about their daily lives, their personalities (real or manufactured), their interests and hobbies… actually, if it comes down to it, I don't want to know. I've had the nasty experience of having a work (a webcomic, if you were wondering) "tainted" by knowledge of the elitist and cavalier attitude of its creator. It's a weird mental block on my part, but it does mean that I'd rather not know about all the inevitable celebrity scandals and such accompanying the VAs I recognize and love listening to.

Having Chiwa Saitou on the cast list is a nice bonus, of course.

Best Student Council (or its Japanese name, Gokujou Seitokai) is the sort of show one should not look at too closely. Rino's handpuppetry of Pucchan is mildly creepy, hinting as it does of some sort of unsound mental state. As the show progresses, this turns into something supernatural, which is probably worse.

And yet, if you just watch it for the comedy and the gags and the funny facial expressions, it's not a bad show. Not thoroughly outstanding, but not bad. Certainly enjoyable enough, if only for the first watch-through.

I've noticed that this sort of denial of the more uncomfortable aspects and implications in my entertainment, via the careful compartmentalization of higher mental functions, leads to less aggravation and burn-out overall. So it goes.

Through no real deliberate intent on my part, I seem to have drifted away from what I suppose could be broadly called "the anime blogging community". I suppose I'm technically still a part of this "community", in that I am blogging anime, and thus I can be considered to be part of the anime blogging community by default. And yet, I don't actually participate in any of the activities that would make me a Part Of The Community beyond that which is conferred merely by existing.

I suspect that a part of it is due to Real Life. The pace has either stepped up, or my brain has stepped down; both possibilities are equally plausible and disturbing. Apart from the obvious side effect of leaving me with less time to enjoy my hobbies, anime watching and blogging being among them, it does mean that I cannot quite eke out the mental fortitude to engage in the spirited volleys that passes for conversation among fandom.

Very few blogs, this one included sometimes, actually want to engage in discussion. Most of the time, it's just a venue to air our viewpoints, however we see fit to do so. In many occasions I've tried to be patient and rational in a debate with someone who is clearly not interested in dialogue, a fact which is borne out when the other party says in effect "actually I don't care what you or anyone else says, I'm just venting". I have no inherent objections against venting if it is made clear that the rant is not a topic to be discussed in depth. Otherwise, the failure in communication just wastes time.

This gets even worse when it comes to the statement of opinions. One thing I learned to do is to make sure that when it comes to touchy topics, it is abundantly clear which parts of what I am saying is fact, and which parts are opinion. The rule of thumb is that if it's not firm enough to be printed as a reputable source (ie "go to press"), then it's opinion. It's a little like that quote about journalists calling murderers "the alleged murderer" and the King of England "the alleged King of England" to avoid defamation suits.

What it all boils down to is that I have the option of Participating In The Anime Blogging Community by sparring with the people involved, or staying out of it all and spending my time watching anime instead. I simply do not have the Copious Free Time or emotional willpower to engage in both activities at once on a regular basis. It's difficult enough to come to terms with my own unpopular opinions, such as with the run of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya's "Endless Eight" (summary: I really liked it), but when I see another post bashing it (fine) with incorrect language (not fine), I have to hold my figurative tongue rather than get into an argument I know I cannot finish.

So it goes.

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.

Sometimes I get reminded once again that my tastes in general hew quite closely to the norm, despite what the immense amount of flames and insults I have received regarding said tastes might suggest. To be more precise, my tastes are close to what anime production companies believe to be, if not the norm, then at least in the vicinity of the norm, able to recoup its expenses in making an anime from the manga thereof.

Or something.

Omamori Himari is getting animated, and will be airing sometime in 2010, which I know is Old News, or possibly Old Olds. I've only really noticed these happenings because I went on a re-reading binge recently: for the most part, I don't particularly follow news of upcoming anime, unless they are of things I am currently obsessed with. Omamori Himari, sad to say, is not one of them, but I do like it for the comedy, so this piece of information is not unwelcome.

There's not much to say apart from that. Himari will be voiced by Ami Koshimizu, to the probable interest of a friend of mine. The art style looks a little different, but it's a bishoujo harem comedy anime with action elements; I can tolerate quite a lot. Good or bad, the anime will not somehow magically invalidate the existence of the manga, so I see it as a bonus more than anything.

All this mild interest could be because the primary reason I like the manga in the first place are the Wacky Comedy Hijinks, some of which are probably too risque to broadcast. And in the true tradition of my odd mental patterns, I've latched onto yet another minor side character as my Favourite: Lizlet L. Chelsie, the British teacup in maid form.

After Hayate the Combat Butler, I may have to clarify what I've come to realize is an assumption about me: I don't actually have very much interest in the maid uniform thing. I mean, I don't dislike it actively, but to me, it's only an outfit that happens to have frills, which I do find interesting. However, since lots of magical girl outfits in general have frills, it's not like the maid uniform has a monopoly on this.

So the reason I like Lizlet is not because she wears a maid outfit. (Besides, she does state that she's not actually a maid, but merely a waitress in a maid cafe.) Unfortunately, I don't know why I like Lizlet, other than a faint desire to see her in casual clothes for some reason or other. Possibly this is because casual clothes means that she's not on duty, which implies some sort of special occasion, such as a date, which in turn promises a given amount of romantic development.

Maybe it's because compared to the other girls in Yuuto's harem, Lizlet's approaches, despite being as direct as the others, is relatively tame. Yes, she does want to do the dirty with Yuuto, but it's presented as more of a Young Lady In Love kind of thing, ratcheted slightly towards the ecchi side. (Again, compare this to every other girl in the harem, all of whom want to do the dirty right now.) Lizlet does exhibit signs of distress when she's left out of the harem hijinks, but mostly because she's been left out of the fun; jealousy does not appear to be a factor. Lizlet appears perfectly happy to share, which is probably not a happy thought for Yuuto.

Maybe it's Lizlet's non-combat status. Yes, she does her her own special moves ("Black Tea Drop!"), and she has the advantage of being invincible as long as her "real body", the teacup, is undamaged. But she's a shoujo protagonist in the midst of this shounen action manga, and she knows that the best place to be when the fighting starts is somewhere else.

Or maybe it's because her teacup is implied to be an erogenous zone. To speak of unusual euphemisms.