I took JLPT 3 today, it was my first time taking JLPT. It was pretty okay since I’ve learnt all the stuff that’s tested in my Japanese lessons. Just a few questions here and there I wasn’t too sure of despite the fact that I didn’t study at all (ehe ^-^;), and as for the Listening section it’s over once you miss or mishear a keyword, really…

I had a lot of leftover time, especially for the Grammar and Comprehension section… I spent 40 out of 70 minutes half-asleep even after checking -_-

To be honest, I kind of wanted to take level 2 this year, but seeing how difficult the grammar patterns were and just looking at the huge number of kanji I hadn’t really learnt started to scare me. And so in the end I decided to take JLPT 3. What a coward, you might say, but I’m not that much of a mugger, especially if I haven’t had proper lessons at all.

Next year, I’ll probably be taking Level 2, I wouldn’t be ready for Level 1 imho. How was Level 2, mish? |D

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Update: I’ve been reading lots of Detective Conan, in addition to Skip Beat!. DC’s really nostalgic but still really enjoyable! I never guess the murderer correctly (then again I don’t expect the likes of an idiot like me to) but I feel like I learn something from it all sometimes. I really like all the characters, too. The manga makes me want to watch the anime, which I would expect to be 395431.1954903x more nostalgic because I used to watch chinese dubs in Taiwan… For Skip Beat!, the art still irks me sometimes (that is, quite a bit) though I’ve really come to like Kyouko. Her hatred for Shou has also been successfully passed on to me, somehow. I find myself cheering her on when she gets some of that revenge against him, and I feel increasingly disgusted when he appears in the manga. That the seiyuu for Shou is Miyano Mamoru in the anime doesn’t really help either. I sometimes don’t think his voice suits the roles he does.

P.S. These flash games are really fun, somehow… sigh, the Japanese and their quirky ideas. Some games have been translated into English while others have not. Rose & Camellia (maybe better known as the slapping game?) is especially creative and addictive, I find |D Highly recommended if you are bored at the moment.

On a random note, I really want to watch Sky Crawlers and have my own week of leisure and do other random things which I enjoy as usual, but from tomorrow till Friday I’ll have to go to a camp I don’t even really want to go to :\ which I find really ironic since the camp actually costs quite a bit. I’m not really a camp-person, either…

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I’ve also been wondering a bit about how scanlations work and stuff :\ there always seem to be an awful lot of people involved in any proper scanlation of any series.. How many people does it take to change the lightbulb, really?

*Bishoujo game/ Galge ramble alert  :\ Although there really aren’t any adult parts here anyway. And as you can see the lack of tags simply indicates that I’m writing this just for the sake of updating something.

Pictures consist of 3 cute nendoroids :3

I have been playing a certain bishoujo game (obviously in Japanese) to do with STARMINEGIRLs and AERIALSHOOOOTs which is not to be played by little kids at all costs, and I think the sad part of it all is that I really love the music, it is godly, I love the art (I could do without the fanservice though) and the plot (I think it’s rather genius) and the voicing is not bad (there’s even some Sakakibara Yui and Shiraishi Minoru, although Mira, one of the heroines, has this really annoying voice 60% of the time), but I could really do without the eroscenes. Seriously. Plus one of the heroines doesn’t even look 18! (It’s expected, but… fyi I mean Mira here) And them kids are still going to school! Yet some of them have unbelievable eye sizes! Gosh. もう勘弁。Nagi and Taiga would cry in a corner and despair at their own eye sizes should they see this. Then again, they are not alone in that world of 無乳, especially since there is Oki Kiki to join their club. In any case, if I had to say something about the characterisation besides that, there are of course the usual tsundere, megane, loli, munyuu types, and the characterisation isn’t really that unique, I feel, but they do develop the characters, even the side characters, to a decent extent. Then again, I’m not a Lit student, so… Well.

スピカ

I figured you might want a little more elaboration on the plot, since that wouldn’t really hurt and I really do think that it’s very interesting. So there’s this guy, you, who I refer to rather as the ‘hero’, who wakes up in the clouds and realises he’s falling downwards at terminal velocity towards earth in a certain town in Japan. He doesn’t remember anything, not even his name. So sure, he meets our fellow heroines on his way down, but they are suspicious of him and don’t really try to rescue him straight away. Moreover, all three of the heroines are Mahou Shoujo Lolikko Cutie’s and they need to get rid of some monster right away. To be more exact, they are witches called Etoile, and the monsters that only they can see who fall from the sky frequently and seek to annihilate the world by destroying some weird building (didn’t pay much attention there, sorry) are demons called Zodiac. Tragically, despite some effort to rescue the poor hero, he falls to his death and dies within the time it takes for the first sign of gayness in Junjou Romantica to appear in the first episode. I estimated around 20sec, if you happened to wonder, although I guess the poor hero in this game took a little longer since I take a little more time to read the Japanese. And Scroll. And hold Ctrl.

ミラ

In any case, this hero isn’t quite that unlucky, since he meets a certain kid calling herself Kamishama in something like ‘heaven’, though I wouldn’t call it that exactly. You’ll get what I mean if you play it. He somehow manages to convince her to give him a second chance at life (and eventually more and more chances), since it would really be a waste to die right there and then. When he resurrects, he always resets from the last time he gained consciousness, and he can retain the memory from his previous life/lives, much like how, when you Game Over, you start again from a previous save point with the knowledge of what choices do not work, or much like how that Tokikake girl recklessly uses her time-leap skills. This allows the plot to branch out in quite a few directions. Of course, he’s not really that suicidal so there’ve only been a few times in the game that he tried to kill himself in a desperate attempt to redo what he had done. Eventually the guy finds out more about the Zodiac, the Etoile themselves, and the Kamisama, and on the way he realises that Love (read: Ｈ) saves the world! Sigh. Seriously? I mean he even turned Lolicon for this, what a jerk. I should have known. I like the plot thickener they use, though, it really does make sure you’re interested in what’s gonna happen next. Though of course, there are some choices that the hero (the Kamisama Kazoku call him うんこマン, actually) makes which I really don’t see the reason behind. 

ガーネット

Hn, I guess that’s probably enough rambling on a game with a restricted target audience. I haven’t beaten the game –I just want to see what happens in the True End, really, since I already had to skip through a harem end, it seems. Plot thickener and twister works almost too well.

I wonder how that Cross Days is coming along..? I liked the way 0verflow presented their stuff, much like animu episodes. And Jingai Makyou is rotting somewhere on my external harddrive along with Gekkou no Carnivale (same scenario writer I hear). I like how Nitroplus is consistently good with their game CGs, some games are absolutely unbearable due to their art.

Marisa, drawn by DaDa on pixiv, wishes you a Happy (Belated) Halloween~

A bit late, but I haven’t been posting. That’s an unavoidable, inexplicable fact. I write more often on Lang-8, and that’s in Japanese, mind you. And I update Poupee more than I update this site |D Speaking of poupee, I found some guy who actually posted stuff there and dressed up his poupee and shtuff. *trauma trauma* And then I just LOL’d.

I’ll be talking about games I’ve picked up/ have wanted to pick up, as well as the anime I’ve picked up and dropped.

I figured I should try and use my holidays to play some game that I’d wanted to play, so I did. I’m playing Pi Story now, but I lag up in dungeons/ maps/ whatever you call the places the pi bring you to because the connection’s pretty bad for some reason. I don’t usually like to team up with strangers, so it’s quite horrible for me when all the monsters spawn like crazy (i.e. Petite Forest, with the dang orbs). I’d play Mabinogi, but I don’t live in North America. I tried the bypass thing but uh I kept getting problems. So I gave up. ._.u I considered the Japanese server but I couldn’t be bothered in the end.

RO2 is coming soon. I’m not sure I should join or not with my grades in the gutters already.

I think I shall make it a habit to post Miku fanart in every future post… or not. Fyi this is by ぷちでびる (read: puchidevil) on pixiv.

I’ve also picked up some new anime, such as Skip Beat! (quite horrible, but oh well the manga was good I heard and I can’t be bothered to read the manga) and Garei Zero (the plot kind of goes nowhere though ep 4 was funny, but I just had to watch each episode to get to the bottom of it but I’m at my limit and gonna drop it damyou). *Edit, I’ve dropped it. Although Kemeko’s not that bad, it’s just not my taste (Fanservice aka ’saggy bwbs’, and Crazy-with-barely-any-logic-nor-meaning?!), so I’m watching it with little enthusiasm. I’ve picked up Tales of the Abyss (just because it’s one of the ‘Tales’ and I liked the cheagles and Luke didn’t irritate me as much at first and I have no means of getting my Tales of Symphonia for my Wii since I’m broke), Kuroshitsuji (the butler’s pretty much the only character who prevents me from dropping this), Clannad After Story (I don’t quite mind KyoAni works), Toradora! (despite whiny tsundere Al-gone-wrong, the duo are funny) and Michiko to Hacchin (this has potential I believe) although none of these shine quite as much as Kannagi does. Do I have to add in a ‘Kya’ or ‘Squee’ to show just how much I love it? Kya~! Squee~! (I don’t normally do this, you know.) I just love the puns, the tsukkomi, most of all the comedy duo themselves, etc., so that might be my weakness, but the bottom line is I just love this anime. Also, Nagi, tsundere as she might be, doesn’t irritate me much since she’s more like Kana from Minamike than a tsundere. Kugyu voices too many tsunderes already, and I don’t even like her that much :\ 

I dropped Hyakko (bad art and bored me despite a Kana-like character, sorry Jazzu), Yozakura (average but boring too), DMC (too vulgar and way too random for me, dropped quite a while ago, although I did enjoy Gag Manga Biyori) and Index (average and reminding me of Mx0 but ohwell, nothing special). 

Ah, gone are the days when I enjoyed Mahou Shoujo and watched anime (as well as the Powerpuff Girls) in Chinese. Akazukin Cha Cha was one of them… Ah, fyi this is by yukke.

My gut tells me that at least 99.9999% of the people who bothered to visit this page just went ‘tl;dr’ as usual and to those who actually know me in real life, this post probably wasn’t relevant to your interests (I don’t really post about my life here so please do look somewhere else where I do if you can even find one in English |D). I wrote a lot of run-on sentences today orz. And I probably abused the parentheses a little too much.

In any case, to sum up, please do watch Kannagi if you haven’t/ don’t plan to |D ! Especially if you love funny anime

And the Kannagi Girls are (from left) Zange-chan, Nagi and Tsugumi. Jin, the main guy and chibi in the centre, is pretty funny, as are his fellow art clubbers. Especially Akiba-kun, who has the same voicer as Simon from Gurren-Lagann. Btw, this is high res so click for fullview.

*Technically, the above image was a highres scan that I had to tweak a little in Photoshop in order for it to look better.

*Pictures, you ask? Maybe, maybe not. Depends. It’s late now, after all.

My dreaded examinations are finally over, and the results are only gonna be in next week. Frankly I don’t expect much of myself judging by how badly the papers seemed to go.

In any case, I’ve got more time on my hands now. I’ll probably start trying to improve both my English and Japanese vocabulary as much as possible – through iKnow and the like, probably.

I’ll be catching up with animu and stuff now. I might even eventually get around to watching G00 if I feel like it. I’ve finished Natsume Yuujinchou, it was an alright series. I feel happy after watching but I don’t find much meaning to it, nor do I find anything worth fangirling. I didn’t like the voicers much when I first watched it but they grow on me, almost all voices do. The ending was rather… anticlimatic, as the whole series generally is. Or maybe I expected too much out of it.

I’ve started on the Tales of the Abyss anime as well. The cheagles are so adorable |D Although I do find that the plot development seems quite strange. I read the first few chapters of the manga as well, it’s pretty much the same thing, and I found it very weird even then. I’m not a Lit student so I can’t really pinpoint what aspect of it seems weird to me, but uh. Either way, I’m guessing it has to do with how it was adapted from the game. I was actually kind of disappointed with the voicer for Luke when I watched the trailer, but as I said, it kinda grew after the first and second episodes although I still prefer a voice with a somewhat different kind of feel for a character like Luke.

I’d like to try and play more of my games too, my Wii has been rotting beside my computer monitor for at least two weeks (actually, maybe three) already. I haven’t really tried out SSBB properly yet, and that kind of game isn’t exactly my forte, but whatever. Super Mario Galaxy is also still unfinished as yet. There are way too many galaxies to cover! Although I did get all the Grand Stars already.

Gotta sleep now, sorry it’s kinda short (or maybe you’d be thinking Don’t Be Sorry, It’s Finally A Semi/Demi-Short Post Hurrah)

AKA Work vs. Play, or as depicted, Homework Monster vs. Zelda

*Picture NOT owned by me in any way, I got it from a dArtist whose style should be quite recognisable. Very talented artist.

Play Wins! ONE HIT K.O.

Okay random, but that’s really what’s going on now.

I’ve gotten back into my semi-obsessions, which are, for now, the likes of a certain Japanese SNS fashion-related website, as well as Purime 5 (as usual T___T)

Bad timing, since my examinations are in, oh, TWO FRCKING WEEKS?!

On top of that, I have this project due THIS FRIDAY and I haven’t even started properly on it. I’ve kind of gotten a rough idea for it already, and I think it’s pretty feasible, just that uh. Not sure if the teacher grading me will feel the same way about it.

やる気がゼンゼンついてないんですよ～～神様、もう勘弁してぇ～

omake:

'Let's Play'

Miku Miku Shite A★GE★RU~! KIRA★ミ

Now that I have your attention, I shall ramble.

*BY THE WAY, this was supposed to be posted on 15 August but I think I wanted to get nice pictures but uh I can’t be bothered now, so here you go. Really late, yeah, but it’s quite a rubbishy ramble-post. My practical’s over, too.

I have the vague idea that I will fail my Chemistry practical (more of the theory part of it). My Social Studies essay is pretty doomed as well since multiculturalism is really quite vague imo, and my writing has never been good, or rather, only for all the subjects which require you to elaborate and/or inference a lot (along with the fact that uh, the answers are probably not found directly in the textbook and notes.

Oh well.

Either way, I’ve been catching up with Soul Eater, which I still kind of dislike despite the very slick and very cool animation by BONES since the characters, though unique and memorable, do not happen to appeal directly to me. I am of the opinion that the voices don’t exactly match all the characters fully…(was that Chopper’s voicer I heard along the way, btw?!) And the character traits get irritating quite quickly, unfortunately, even though the development is coming along.. fine…. or worse. The occasional fanservice doesn’t help much, although the boin boin~ is not overdone unlike in Sekirei.

TUTE DIED HOW COULD HE. Tetsuwan Birdy Decode really appeals to me on the other hand. Despite the leotard, fanservice is not excessive nor overdone imo. Rather, the leotard is pretty elegant sometimes, and the action scenes are all really well-done despite high speed god-mode… Just right! |D Plus the main lead isn’t really of that horrible a character, unlike NICEBOATTHAR Makoto (unrelated but anyway).

Natsume Yuujinchou seems fine for the first episode, OP and ED not really very speshul or anything, but I like the Nyanko-sensei (I liek his voice in ‘true form’ better of course) although the impression I have of Natsume (as well as the series on the whole, for now) is still more of… weird.

Also been watching Ryoko’s Case Files, now I know why I love Ryoko so much, she’s so similar to Artemis Fowl. Rich, egocentric, scheming, it’s all there! In addition the fact that they both deal with the supernatural and have exceptional deduction skills, maybe. Furthermore they aren’t very honest with themselves half the time, and are great actors |DD I really want to read the whole Artemis Fowl series but being the deprived little Shift (are you Control or Alternate?) I am, I have only read around two (plus or minus one at the most) of the whole series. Time Paradox looks intriguing *o*

Speaking of books I have been trying to read Amatsuki for the art. The story doesn’t seem to have proper transitions or logic and keeps skipping here and there though. What’s more, half the time it reeks of Philosophy, what with the ‘Is this world real?’ and who knows what else, that doesn’t really make sense. On the other hand, I really like the art style. I think the anime semi-butchered it, though probably not that badly. Not anywhere near a Yashigani anime, thankfully, since most studios are funded moderately well these days.

Note– YES Hibari is finally back to normal in the latest chapter! (his hair was indeed quite fluffy in TYL mode)

I’ve been playing Super Mario Galaxy as well, got 3 Grand Stars already. I want SSBB and Mario Kart though… or at least Okami D: Also still waiting for FFXIII and Rune Factory. It is a sad long wait. A very sad long wait.

On another note, This poupee girl rubbish actually seems to be pretty interesting. It helps my fashion sense, at the very least, which is less than non-existent, fyi.

…technically Ganondorf nearly went and did that, while I just got so irritated by the fake-ends that I went and beat him up, along with the game |D and then I got to see a full-grown Twili Princess as opposed to that helluva tsundere chibi OR that giant blobby tentacle-monster-thing.

Midna’s voice was fun ;D

Now that I’m done with Twilight Princess, I’m so relieved. Mixed feelings maybe because I actually paid for it… Oh hey, maybe now I’ll be a bit more productive! (My physics is still doomed dead shot to hell though :c)

I am such a sucky gamer that I took 50+ hours to complete, no lies here. Maybe now you has an idea how badly I play, I don’t think the average time for completion is so long. I think I took at least half an hour to a whole hour or more for the ending? orz

My brother’s on MGS4, I have to say that that Vamp vs Raiden trailer portion is really just eye candy in the whole game. Though for the girls or the guys, I have no idea, due to influence by Jazzu, since the impalement portion did seem to have quite a bit of innuendo, except for the context of the whole battle. Anyway, I don’t think he’s playing all too well, so I don’t think gamer genes run in the family — unlike a certain sirane-sama who unlocks and completes everything in a game in a fraction of the time I take, as long as she doesn’t get distracted by a passing Tieria the Trap or Kanda or some OTP she ships from Japan.

My brother’s also on quite a few PSP games at once, I’ve kinda gotten addicted to Patapon because of how catchy the beats are. He’s especially hooked on FFT it seems, not sure how much they remade it from the PSX version I tried to start on the other day, though.

I need my sleep now. Hope others enjoyed the game as much as I did! I love the music, too, I think now I could loop the whole soundtrack, yet still be willing to pay for a live orchestrated performance locally. BANZAI LoZ CREATORS! Just make more games for uh, the Wii. Or something that I actually own, really.

Speaking of which, there’s the Sony vs Nintendo comparison, eh… Nah, let’s leave that for another day.