Remake Honey


My blogging seems to need a certain amount of reorganization.

My experiment in [microblogging->] has been going on for quite some time, and it seems safe so say that the system is here to stay, so here’s my Twitter account again:

http://twitter.com/bluemistanime

As for my main blog, it may be time for something major. I’m not so sure whether I’m going to lead it to something better or worse, but I hope you would still stick around like before. Nope, I’m not announcing a hiatus or quitting or anything, but please do watch out one of these days (or weeks, hopefully not months though). I hope my plan for remaking this blog goes well.

Well that was just a quick update to refresh things a bit. Until next time.

JLPT Season 2

This season… the stakes are higher… well not exactly.

I’m aiming for the JLPT3 this coming December. After my [little victory->jlpt-verdict] last year with JLPT4, I seem to have a measure of where I am now in the hopes of living the Japanese Dream (?). Why not level 2? That one is downright impossible right now. There is indeed a huge gap of skill between level 3 and 2, something which would be addressed by 2010 when the test format will be revised.

This won’t be as smooth a ride as last time. With me [losing->losing-japanese] some of my knowledge and not being able to immerse myself in Japan during this past year, things will be tough without proper training. Any kind of entertainment (anime, manga, game, drama) won’t be enough. I should start reading textbooks, and hope to find someone to converse with in Japanese.

And this is one test I really want to pass, as this is related to my career path right now. I may have been airing some of my work complaints on Twitter, and to tell the truth, I want to resign and find a better job. I don’t know if attaining a bit more Japanese proficiency can help in my CV credentials, especially if the companies I’m applying to don’t care about that. But hopefully, this would say to employers that “this guy can achieve something”…

…or would it backfire? “This guy is an otaku.” lolz. Hope not.

Akihabara Massacre

My condolences to all the people affected by this incident.

People die everyday, but modern media tends to lean on the more controversial ones rather than focus on the needs of the hungry and war-torn in other parts of the world. I guess they were having a field day when this happened. After all, shock happens when it’s rare and one-in-a-million.

It’s a perfect recipe. Akihabara, massacre, otaku culture. Same thing with the US version. Columbine, massacre, video games. That’s two of my own hobbies there. So, in the “impossible” event that I freak out, get tired of life and start killing people on the streets, pundits will only need to refer to my non-conformities to find out what kind of person I am. Great.

Continue your idiocy you stereotyping, typecasting, racist people.

But by saying that, am I not the same stereotyping, typecasting, racist person? You throw stones at me, I throw stones too. What a fundamental problem in modern society. This kind of behavior can’t be helped, really. A hopeless case for someone who strives for peace in this world.

While other people would say that this story will just die out, I say never. It doesn’t deserve to die. Let the debates continue. Issues like discrimination should always be talked about. I am not a US citizen, but I like that you have a non-conformist guy to potentially be your President (please vote Obama).

I guess the [Tragedy, Hope->] title would have been better applied to this story. Let me connect a bit of the Sakura factor in this one too. Remember, Sakura was different. She was eternally young. Wouldn’t that be an issue of discrimination/envy in their Da Capo world? We don’t see that in the games. I imagine that sometime between those 50 years, there came a time when people had become suspicious of Sakura. People may label her as a witch, deep inside feeling envious that she can never grow old… or not die at all even. But I also imagine at some point, people start seeing her beyond her physical appearance. As a person. As the same human being that they all are, despite the minor difference. Eventually they loved her, elected her as school principal, and possibly be a huge contributor in society. Her sakura magic research may even be more useful someday, and somehow people may trust her in searching for the truth in the magic. This is the hidden story that I wanted to believe. I hope society can learn from this too, accepting differences of other people instead of persecuting them. Maybe the Akihabara tragedy may have been avoided if the world, and all the people in it, were in a more open-minded state of being.

Tragedy, Hope

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Knowing about the true story of Sakura in anime form was unprecedented for me. Even if I had already [skimmed the surface->dc2-da-capo], I guess the tale can still be told effectively in another way. The most important part of the experience though, is that I can relate somewhat to the character. Yes, Yoshino Sakura’s trials, tribulations and tragedies reflect my own set of current real-life problems. As a result, my heart breaks yet again for this fictional character, and in part, this fictional character gave me a source of reference, reflection and inspiration of myself.
Continue reading Tragedy, Hope

Fansubs: Serious Business

If you are an old reader of my blog, you would certainly notice that I do inject a lot more terms in Japanese today. I understand that this is indeed a bastardization of both languages, English and Japanese, but sometimes I can’t help it. How do you translate “tsundere” in English anyway? It’s hard to provide banter on new trends in anime without adhering to those new trends themselves.

This recent documentary about how bad anime fansubs are nowadays also was a bit of an eye-opener for me. Clearly the guy who made it has raised some spot-on points, although I would argue that he’s a bit barking at the wrong tree. Fansubs are NOT professional subtitling jobs! Hence the “fan” in fansubs right? Well he did mention that old fansubs are better, and I have no qualms about that. He’s right too, many old fansubs are on par with professional subtitles. The problem is, in this modern age of [information overload->], the term “fansub”, and maybe even “fan” itself, will have changed.
Continue reading Fansubs: Serious Business

Introversion

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I used to write a personal blog. Actually, my ronery post is derived from that blog, and I just edited it accordingly. Lately I’ve been reading my own posts on that personal blog of mine, realizing how much I’ve changed… or should I say, how much I’ve not changed. These few months I’ve been discovering the quirks of my own personality, and I’ve come up on this term called introversion. It honestly fits me to a T, and as a result, it somehow filled me with even more roneriness than merely not having a romantic partner.
Continue reading Introversion

Three-Year Anniversary!

Three years… what else can I say?

I would like to thank everyone, be it fellow anime bloggers, avid and new readers, or crawling bots (yep gotta thank them too) for visiting my site. You have been my inspiration and motivation to continue this expression of fandom. I don’t need to make mentions because in one way or another all of you are awesome!

I’m pretty consistent too… the blog has garnered 1.5 million hits. That’s almost 500,000 [per->year-1] [year->year-2].

Please also cast your votes at the Anime Blog Awards. Readers can now vote on the People’s Choice. They represent some of the best anime blogging has to offer. Because I believe the anime blog community is the best blogging community on the internets… ever!

I look forward to more anime, more moe~, more dorama, more lolis, more… eh screw it… I simply want MOAR!

Cheers for more years to come!

Renovation

Basically, I’m trying to change my blog mechanics right now, and I’m thinking of a lot of ideas on how to present you with the maximum amount of my content in the simplest and sensible manner.

Traditionally, I am a very busy casual blogger with only a few posts each month. That’s because I make feature-complete articles, if you know what I mean. Feature-complete articles may basically mean long-ars wall-of-text posts of mine, but I meant each post to be as meaningful, less information-hanging, and as conclusive as possible. Because of this, I’m not a time-based blogger, in which I feature the latest and the greatest, rather I want to promote my old posts, updating them as required. Take for example my posts about bishoujo game companies like [Key->]. I want to update the article based on new information like Little Busters, anime Clannad and their newer upcoming game, but I don’t update it because most likely, you won’t see it because it’s old. That is despite me sticking it in the Recent Updated Posts section of the sidebar.

I’m trying to brainstorm how you, my dear reader, would be able to see and access my old (but updated) interesting content. New readers of my blog should be able to see the content for the first time, while avid readers would be able to catch updated content of the topic in hand. While I was partly successful in some ideas by grouping it into projects, like the [ToHeart2->] project, for more individualized articles, I need another way to go at it. What do you think?

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