nickchanger's blog - Category: "Television"

So much is happening atm that I have not found the time to write a blog about it or anything else, so what you are reading now is just your imagination.

Figures

I have of course received my "donation" figure, and I had ordered another one which I have also received. Here are some pictures:

Minami Shimada and her summoned creature from Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu

Yuri from Angel Beats!

I now have five figures which are all currently standing in my bedroom window as I have no where else to place them. I have free shelves but it cannot be too high up because of to much fanservice you know :P . I will not order any new figure for quite a long time as they are quite expensive, and I have no room for them.

Birthday

I had my birthday in all quietness and I'm now 27 years old...!

Company Summer Party

The company where I work had its anual summer party. We went to an outdoor go-cart track where we had a grandprix for two hours. Pretty damn nice to race with ~60km/h on a small track and at the same time beating my co-workers and bosses :D . Unfortunately I had gotten car sick before we even got there so my stomach was weird. Driving go-cart does not help and I had to go out of my last two races as I simply got too sick. I even puked a little which is not great when you are are wearing a helmet :P . After driving round-and-round we went to one of my co-workers house and ate some great food and had fun until late at night. I drew manga on the tablecloth.

Anime and Manga Presentation

Every Friday we have what we call Friday-15 at the company. One makes a short presentation about something they find interesting. We use this as knowledge sharing between the groups in the company, and it is specially good if one group have found a problem they have solved in a smart way. They can then explain what they did to the rest of the company and we can learn something new. On the Friday before our summer party we had a special Friday-15, where I made a presentation about something I find interesting. I called it "Otaku, a World of Anime and Manga" - so as you can guess it was not the usual kind of knowledge sharing. As I only had the night before to prepare, it did not become a perfect presentation. Some might even have become more confused about it, but whatever, I had a lot of fun explaining this stuff to my co-workers :) . I am thinking about making it into a blog post and this time do it properly :P .

Japanese TV-series

I have started to watch Japanese TV-series. The first I saw was the live-action version of Nodame Cantabile. It is Josei (for young women) but it was great fun and filled with great classical music. I can really recommend it. It ended with two special episodes (of two hours each) and two films (again of two hours each), and in the first of these films there was a scene that was so extreme that I just had to see it on YouTube... or more correctly, check to see if it was not already up there - but to my surprise it was no where to be found. So I uploaded it my self, my first YouTube video :P .

I recommend watching it in 720p and full screen! Currently it have reached 400 views in six weeks - uuhhh

Finding a new series to watch is, however, not easy. The only acceptable database I have found so far is the wiki on d-addicts. It does not have any neat search filtering on category or rating such as AniDB had when I started watching anime. This means I had to go alternative ways to find other shows, such as checking what some actors have also done. The actress behind the main character from Nodame Cantabile (Megumi "Nodame" Noda), Ueno Juri, was both cute and great so I checked out some of her series. I also found that her birthday is on the same day is mine :o - just two years later :P . The next series I saw was Last Friends which is completely different. It is hardcore drama with violence, gender confusion, childhood traumas, cheating wives, etc. Juri-chan, as she is often known on the web, played a boyish girl. A completely different character than Nodame, which just shows she has talents. So far I have seen four series and two films featuring Uenu Juri. Considering that I have seen 12 Japanese series so far I still cannot really be called a fanboy, but I am looking for more with her :P .

Brother's Hat

My brother have finished at his current school, HHX. That means he have finally received his hat! Although it is a lighter shade of blue than mine (as I went to HTX) I guess it is still OK :P . In his last three exams he got 12 (the highest grade possible). Congratulations to him ... now he just need to figure out what to do next!

Simon with his new hat

Bachelor Party

Since my friend, Ste, were going to get married we threw him a bachelor party. He thought he were going to chop chocolate for the wedding, but instead we caught him and he ended up running through the city of Odense drinking and giving candy to kids while wearing a bunny suit. Before grilling and drinking our asses off we played two hours of paintball which is great fun. I was lucky and only got hit by one hurtful ball. Guess our "protecting suit" took most of the power. On the other hand I was shot straight in the mask above my mouth. There is only a grid there which means a lot of paint flew straight into my mouth - man it tastes awful. At the end we let Ste run from one end to another while the rest of us fired the rest of our bullets at him. Lucky for him this was one week before the wedding so most of the pain should have gone away :) . We had great fun partying downtown with him in his bunny suit.

Ste in a bunny suit during his bachelor party

Wedding

So Ste got married, and it was a wedding with everything. A cute white dress, a black suit, lots of flowers, a church, two rings, a toastmaster, great food, great desert (!), speeches, songs, photographers, 70+ guests, wedding dance, cutting socks, rice, and me as the best man wearing a flower in my hair...!?

Ste is the first of my friends getting married and I were the best man. There is a high chance this will also be my last time in that role. I had made a speech for my friend and his bride AC (yeah, we are really lazy when it come to names). To do something different I went into one of the most girly shops I know and bought a hair band with a big flower and wore that while speaking. The clerk commented that "it looks like it is going to be a great Friday if it starts like this". In the same shop I also bought two simple and flowery ear pins (I think they are called). Before the wedding ceremony in the church I placed these in left pocket of the groom (that is above the heart). At the end of my speech I told him to take them up and give them to his wife. It was a reference to a Japanese tradition where at the last school day the boys would give their second button to the girl they like. The reason being that they have worn that uniform for the last three years and during that time, the second button have been close to their heart experiencing all of their emotions. So when they give it to a girl they are actually giving their emotions to her. Since I did not have a chance to mess up one of Ste's coats by ripping off its second button I decided to do it differently, hence the ear pins in his left pocket. Of course I messed up my speech so both the ear pins, the flower in the hair and other parts were confusing and I doubt even half of the guests got it :) . But, well, that is just like any other presentation I make :P .

The whole day, however, were really great, and a huge congratulation and wishes of best of luck or something like that goes to Stefan and Ann Cathrine.

Ste and AC in front of the church after their wedding ceremony

Europe Trip

In a week I will, again this year, go to a holiday house for a week getting drunk with my friends. A couple of weeks later I will go on large trip around Europe with my parents and brother. We will take our own car and spend two weeks in countries like Holland, France, Spain, Italy and Germany. At least those are some of the planned locations, as we still have not made any final thoughts on where to go. Therefore I would like to ask the Internet if they would recommend any places in mainland Europe south of the Danish border that we really should visit. Anything goes, even if it is just a small weird thing as it is no problem to visit it if we are driving by it anyway :) .

So far we have planned to see (just to name some):

• The Dutch Delta Works
• Pont d'Arc
• Rennes-le-Château
• Andorra
• Sagrada_Família in Barcelona
• Leaning tower of Pisa
• Venice
• Florence Cathedral
• San Marino

No doubt I well talk more about this - if not before then after the trip :P .

Been way too long... got way too much to tell... where to start... hmmm.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year! ... ehm, yeah it's been that long :P .

So, I guess most of what I have to tell is about new equipment. Materialized world! That's all that's going on at this end.

TV

My friends came to my apartment for new years eve, a total of nine people were eating, drinking, partying and sleeping in what limited space I have - great fun :) .

Four of them came a few days earlier so we could have a small LAN - we are geeks after all. As they came by car I used this opportunity to do a bit of "big shopping". A went to the nearby Sony Center and bought me a 46& TV and a PlayStation 3... damn the numbers on the credit card machine were bigger than usual.

After loving the screen for a couple of weeks I started to dislike two things: The sound (no surprise there) and the fact that the PlayStation were unable to play MKV files - a format most of my anime is in. So I had to expand the media area of my living room quite a bit.

This time I bought the stuff online as I knew that would be the cheapest. I ended up buying a Sony Home Cinema speaker system - not because it should be great (who have ever heard of great sound from Sony?), but because it fitted well with the TV - where I can use BRAVIA Sync to control everything from one controller, it had all the necessary ports, and it was fairly cheap for its "size".

For the MKV files a bought a Mini-PC from Zotac. It came without an operating system so I decided to install Ubuntu as I believed it could not be as bad as the last time I tried it. It has become much better but there is still some weird stuff going on. As with all Linux distributions a lot of insider knowledge is needed to really use it effectively. I might know my way around a Unix shell, but there are still limits to what I am actually capable of there and how fast I can do it. But it is running now with full HDMI support and VDPAU on the nVidia ION graphics card - which is used for hardware processing of the H.264 codec among other things.

I installed XBMC as the media center and it is pretty sweet. A few settings and bam I have a complete library of everything I have, including descriptions, cast lists, thumbs, posters and fan art. With an application for Andriod I can even use my phone as the remote control! Only problem with online databases and fan art is that most anime fans who have creative skills tend to focus on the wrong stuff - I do not care if they were at the beach for half an episode, it is a show about astronomy! :P

The media area with my Sony BRAVIA 46& TV, PlayStation 3, Zotac MAG, Old computer and Sony HT-AF5 5.1 speaker system.

Figure

In the previous blog entry I mentioned that I had ordered an anime figure, and that I doubt I would receive it in 2010. I was right. Around two weeks into January I received a mail saying that they have shipped it. Two weeks later I received the package! Here is a small gallery of the unpacking.

The package

The case

All the pieces

The figure is of Senjyogahara Hitagi from Bakemonogatari and it is created by Good Smile Company. It has two poses:

Senjyogahara Hitagi with staples

Senjyogahara Hitagi with her weapons

It is around 21 cm in height and made of PVC. It has fairly high details and seems to be of great quality. I would recommend figures from Good Smile Company, but since I have absolutely nothing to compare it with this recommendation is not worth much :) .

The same day I received the above mentioned package I also received a mail saying that they have sent the next figure. This time within the original promised month :) . It will hopefully arrive in a couple of weeks as well. It was sold out everywhere almost a month before its release! I'm glad for pre-order ;) .

I am still a noob when it comes to watching anime and reading manga, but I am getting there. According to AniDB I have 82 animes, but several of these are second seasons or OVA's and others are films. So a more correct unit would be episodes of which I have seen over 700. That is the same as 12 days and 20 hours! I currently have six series and one film waiting to be seen. According to MyAnimeList.net I have read 10 mangas or a total of 662 chapters which they estimate to have taken almost four days!

I should really get another hobby?

Anyway, I have compiled a small list of some of the stuff I have learned about the world from watching anime and reading manga. It must all be true, right?

• Girls gives you a nosebleed, one way or the other.
• All girls are embarrassed by their bust size, no matter the size.
• You cannot die from an epic fight - you just get really really tired.
• At least one of your female friends is a ghost.
• The first kiss is extremely important - so is the first touch.
• Kawaii!
• Eating food prepared by someone bad at cooking can often be fatal.
• Girls and women have much bigger eyes than boys and men.
• Parents are rarely ever home.
• All girls wear skirts and they are always to short.
• For some reason girls with cat-ears and a tail are really cute.
• There is a rabbit on the moon
• Tears are huge.
• Hair can sweat.
• If a girl gets sick, and it is not a cold, she is either pregnant or terminally ill.
• If you have a childhood friend you will eventually start dating her.
• All boys are being accused of being perverted no matter what they do.
• The Japanese word for panties is "pantsu"...
• "Saving" a girl from something even slightly dangerous will make her fall in love with you - even if you are a girl.
• Small children are often really smart while teenagers are stupid as hell.
• If you are afraid of getting robed, assaulted or raped on your way home it will happen!
• Magic exists but you need a card or some other device to use it.
• All guys who does not realize it, or look for it, have at least two girls who are in love with them.

... that really is not the question. You cry when you cry and that is it. If you feel like crying go for it for crying out loud! ... no pun intended - ok maybe a little.

I am not sure about when the last time I really cried were, but I believe it were quite a while ago. More precisely at the funeral of my grandmother (on my mothers side) around 12 years ago. Think it was the culmination of seeing several people around me suddenly in tears that tipped it over for me. Since then I have felt it to be close several times but never really done it. Most memorable is the funeral of my other grandmother (on my fathers side). It was a very moving event, with one of my cousins singing and all, but I was almost ten years older and apparently more prepared.

I have never cried from watching a film. One cause might be that I have not really seen that many really really sad films, so there have probably never been a reason to do so. Even though I have not seen that many I have seen some and although I have noticed a reaction, it has never been big enough to really bring forth the tears. Lately I have seen several anime series with quite sad and moving story lines and the latest have been the most brutal so far, Clannad After Story. It is the second season of the Clannad story. The first season were the first of this kind of theme I have seen and it were a bit supricing to me as it is marked as a "seinen" anime, which means it is targeted at men. The reason for this however is probably that Clannad were originally what is known as a visual novel - a computer game with lots of talk and often several cute manga/anime girls. The whole series is basically about one boy, a senior at high school, who gets to know several girls who all have a tragic problem of some kind which he helps them with. In the second season this style continues for the first episodes but it soon shifts to more or less only focus on this boys life as he struggles with several tragic events happening to and around him. Another anime I have seen which have the same kind of theme is Kanon (2006 edition). It is created by the same team who is behind Clannad, and is basically the same. Were also originally a visual novel. The main difference here however is that this time the boy have met all the girls before (when they were 7-10 years younger) but he have forgotten about it. While he starts remembering stuff some tragic events from the past are unfolded and at the same time happening in the present.

All series are actually quite good, but not exactly my kind of theme so even though I considered seeing Air, a third anime series created by the same team (and again originally a visual novel), I am not sure I really feel like it at the moment. I probably need a lot of comedy for a while :P . As mentioned Clannad After Story have been the most brutal I have seen so far, but it is only because of its length and thereby the amount of tragic events. There is no doubt in my mind that the absolute most emotional and sad film I have ever seen is still Grave of the Fireflies, yet another anime. It is weird to believe that it is by the same company who is behind My Neighbor Totoro! :o

One good thing about all this is that seeing these have proven to me that anime expands over so many different areas, from the very sad (mentioned above) over the more serious (e.g. Planetes) to the mindless fun (e.g. Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu, Azumanga Daiou and School Rumble), and from the dark thriller (e.g. Death Note) over an ecchi magical world (e.g. Zero no Tsukaima) to some aimed at children and/or the whole family (e.g. Kiki's Delivery Service). So no reason not to watch anime! Btw, all animes mentioned are recommended :P .

Holy crap its been a long time since my last entry :o . I had planned a couple of entries but I have been too busy to actually write them :( . So this is just an update basically to tell the world, like it cares, that I am still here :P .

So what have happened since my last "update". Not much actually. School have taken up a lot of my time since we are only two in my group this semester and we are still writing almost as much as we did on any other semester, where we were six people. We plan to finish next Friday so we can relax in the Christmas holidays. This year, I will be going home to my parents, what a shock, and stay there for Christmas and new years. As far as I know we will spend Christmas eve in my brothers apartment, we did the same four years ago in mine. Last year we abolished gift giving, but instead added the game known in Danish as "pakkespillet", translated to "the gift game" I guess. We play it with cards which means that in turns we pick a card that tells us what to do basically. Usually the game is played with a dice that when you get a 6, you can pick whatever gift you want. This game of course means that I have to bring several small gifts, as it was not hard enough already :/ .

The same day I wrote the last blog entry I also started played League of Legends. The DotA clone game that does it much better than both DotA and HoN. It is well structured, clean graphics, and kind of fun. Together with some guildmates from my World of Warcraft guild I have been playing several premades over the last few weeks. We were supposed to participate in a tournament last Wednesday but it was pushed because of patching and problems that followed. So now it will start on Monday instead.
I expect we have a chance to win the first match but will most likely loose the second. The reason is that we still have not really figured out a good strategy (champions, lanes, jungling, items, etc) that fits us well yet. I doubt any of our opponents are reading this but I still wont be telling more until after the tournament :P .

As my time was not limited enough already I have also started to re-watch Gilmore Girls. Stupid, stupid, stupid :/ . But I pretty much had to since I have already re-watched Family Guy, American Dad, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, Coupling, Firefly and Futurama this fall. I have also started to regularly watch The Daily Show, great fun and a bit of news.

So... incoming cheesy effect: Merry Christmas ... and all that stuff.