The real reason I’m writing this post is so that I have an excuse to post a few pictures from the summer vacation I just got back from; but, I’m going to cover up the off-topic nature of this post by talking about a couple of thoughts I had about anime while on vacation and upon coming back.

Once again I spent my summer vacation relaxing in a beachfront home along the coast of Lake Erie. The location was so perfect, literally spitting distance from the shore, that we didn’t mind that the house lacked air-con.

Just about every house one can rent for vacation nowadays advertises that they have internet service but what they define as “internet service” is always an interesting surprise. This house had no landline phone or any sort of router that I could find but there was a wireless network my laptop found that I was able to connect too. I didn’t feel comfortable feeding this connection any of my various account names and passwords so I wasn’t able to blog or post comments but I did feel comfortable enough to fire Azureus up and continue grabbing anime that I wanted to watch. (I’m not sure what that says about me but I’m sure it means something.)

Very quickly I realized that it was going to be impossible keeping up with the 20 or so anime series I’m watching right now. There was important vacation related activities – like swimming at the beach, watching gorgeous sunsets, looking for beach glass, relaxing on the patio, marveling at all the stars that one can see outside of a city, etc – that limited the time that I was willing to sit down to watch anime. Also, the internet connection was junk; I felt that I time-traveled back to the dial-up days. It took forever for a single episode of anything to download.

Not the most relaxing way to spend time on vacation but it was a very memorable episode.

This naturally forced me to decide which anime I’m watching right now was worth it and the ones I couldn’t live without was sometimes a surprise to me. The anime series continuing from spring that I had to keep up with were three: Steins;Gate, Nichijou, Tiger & Bunny. No surprises there – Steins;Gate is All-Time Top 10 bound if it doesn’t fumble the ending, Nichijou is the best comedy series by KyoAni ever, and Tiger & Bunny has finally gotten serious about showing it’s full potential and it’s been a nail-biting ride (I hope it continues). Hyouge Mono would probably be in this category but it’s been forever since a new episode has been subbed so I don’t know for sure. Of the continuing spring series there was two series that I found that I could wait till after coming back from vacation to watch – Ao no Exorcist and Hanasaku Iroha. I like both of these series a lot but if I’m being critical I know why neither anime got watched. The fight in episode 15 of Ao no Exorcist currently feels like the high point of the series with it treading water since then and I’m not sure if A-1 can make the ending top that episode. As an original work, there is no excuse for pacing issues but Hanasaku Iroha continues to stubbornly stick to being completely random even after 19 episodes and there’s really no compelling reason to why it needs to watched as soon as possible.

Of the new summer series only Natsume Yuujinchou Season 3, Mayo Chiki, and Dantalian no Shoka made the cut. No surprise with Natsume, it’s one of my favorite series of all-time and the location – near the lake with the sound of waves lapping the beach in the background – actually enhanced my viewing experience. Mayo Chiki continues to remain surprisingly engrossing and the best new comedy/fan service series this season. I’m starting to conclude that Dantalian no Shoka will not be among the best series this season but will continue to be an interesting anime to watch.

It definitely was worth the wait though.

Two of the new summer series – Mawaru Penguindrum and Ikoku Meiro no Croisee – I dearly wanted to watch but the former didn’t air that week and my preferred subbers of the latter were slow (which was okay, I understand stuff happens but going through a Yune withdrawal is a painful experience). I initially didn’t think I’d miss either series as much as I did but I guess there’s truth in that saying about absence making the heart grow fonder.

This left a pile of new anime series that I didn’t watch that waited for my return home; including, R-15, Nekogami Yaoyorozu, Sacred Seven, Yuruyuri, Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi, Kamisama no Memo-chou, Blood-C, and Kamisama Dolls. There’s some good stuff on this pile but not good enough to get me to drop all the important vacation stuff I was doing. Speaking of which, while watching an awesome sunset, I got into a discussion about the best type of sunset. I argued that a sunset under partly cloudy conditions was the best type of sunset and clearly superior to a cloudless sunset but I was in the presence of someone who held the opposite. Neither of us was particularly serious but I thought this would make a good poll question that I could ask an impartial audience such as those reading this blog to answer. To help make the decision easier, I’ll include pictures I took of both types of sunsets while on vacation this year and you can vote below.

Cloudless Sunset

Partly Cloudy Sunset(s)

View This Poll

Thanks for the vote. The rest of the vacation was pretty typical vacation stuff. On the clear nights I saw a fair amount of Perseid meteors leading up to the peak night but I got clouded out on the peak night itself. There were a couple of storms that blew through which made for interesting viewing on how the coastline can quickly change and I even got to see several lightning strikes out over Lake Erie at night and was mesmerized at how bright and crisp they looked. However, the most exciting thing that happened during the vacation was when a P-51D Mustang buzzed the house.  In the pictures below you can see how the house sits in relation to the lake. The P-51 flew past at the same level as the first story windows and only about 75-100 feet from shore. It was really bookin’ it; a blink and I would have missed it. Thankfully I was looking outside when I first heard the engine growling towards me, though I almost missed it because I was looking up for it. I never thought I’d actually see a P-51 in-flight. Growing up I went through a phase where I learned everything I could about WWII and, even today, the P-51 has remained my favorite plane of the era.

Picture of the house I stayed at, taken from the beach

The view from the second story balcony

Vacations always end and before I knew it, I was back home and all the anime that I left alone was staring back at me wanting to get watched now. I was tempted to drop many of the lower quality series because I have a hard enough time psyching myself to watch the weekly R-15 or Sacred Seven but for a couple of these series I had two episodes to get too and for the others I knew another episode was just a few days away at best. All without my normal trick of layering together the better series with the poorer series because I’d watched all the really good ones. In the end, I trudged through telling myself that if I got through these series I would get to rate them as low as they deserve. And I was left with a bigger appreciation of how seeking balance is sometimes the right thing to do.

In closing, I’m back home with my high-speed DSL connection and the light pollution that washes out most stars at night and a clear anime backlog.

I’m sometimes amazed how disrupting a vacation can be to one’s life but that’s not the reason for this post (though it does help explain where I’ve been for the last 3 weeks) nor is it an excuse to post pictures from my vacation (though I will post some)  but because I had a thought about slice-of-life anime while I was on vacation and I took the above pic to remind myself of this thought so I could share later.

Since the summer vacation of 2008 where I tried out vacationing without a purpose except to relax and the small fall vacation from Fall 2008, I’ve really gotten into the whole renting a house for a week+ somewhere and doing nothing type vacations (see 2009 and now this year). So there I was sitting on the beach, listening to the lapping waves of water, watching the sun set and eating mint chocolate chip ice cream – immensely enjoying myself, far beyond what I should be allowed to feel and it hits me; I’m practically doing a live action slice-of-life anime by myself. Practically because I don’t happen to be a high school girl in a band who likes tea or a high school boy that can see ghosts  and has a fortune cat as a sidekick or a gondolier on a terraformed Mars but it’s still close enough to make me realize that the reason I like slice-of-life anime so much is because I love those small normal goings-on that are the center of these shows. Going to the beach? Awesome, I love the beach. Picking tomatoes, creating a feast and inviting all your friends over? Sweet, wish I doing that right now. Going to a coffee shop run by a android that drinks more coffee then she sells? Bring on the apocalypse, that’s my idea of the perfect day trip. I just wish it was easier to make these shows sound interesting to other people.

Sorry if that wasn’t such a deep philosophical point but it is slice-of-life anime we’re talking about.  Now here’s some other pictures from my vacation and the other reason why I’ve been slow with the posting is that I’m teaching my one younger sister how to drive (this’ll be the fourth sister I’ve taught to drive) and we’re trying to do it in only a month and a half which means I’m going out everyday  for at least an hour and it’s really sapping my strength.  And it’s not like she’s a bad driver but I’m exhausted nonetheless. This would be episodes 8-9 of my life as a slice-of-life anime but sadly, not many Japanese learn to drive (using anime as a judge) and thus this would feel out-of-place in an anime. The only example I could think of was Sunohara from Clannad.

Same sunset as the first picture

Same sunset as the first picture

Same sunset as the first picture

The beach house we rented had a lovely lookout.

The owners overstated their beach access but I wanted to get a picture of this cliff from the beach below and after a climb down the near vertical ravine and across the rickety 2 ft. wide bridge without anything to hold onto to keep balance on, I got this picture.

Time-lapse pic of the nearby road from the 2nd story deck, the stars were pretty as well from here but we only got a couple nights clear enough to go star-gazing.

This butterfly let me run into the house, grab a camera, and come back outside without moving so I could get this picture.

Another sunset pic but from another night

Filed under: anime, meta/office keeping, other wallpapers and pictures

With my defeat in the quarter-finals (which I totally expected and helped along by voting for Kurogane) as well as the end result of this year’s aniblog tournament in sight, I feel this is a good time to reflect on the Aniblog Tournament and post a couple of suggestions for next year’s aniblog tournament (assuming the organizers will run this tournament again).

I’d first like to thank everyone that voted for me throughout the tournament; I appreciate the support. Even in my loss to Kurogane, I couldn’t believe the number of votes I received. I know some of the votes were made in attempt to get the weaker blog to advance but even discounting those, I received far more votes than I thought was possible.

It felt very surreal to make the final 8 and it left me with conflicting feelings. I have no illusions that I’m one of the top eight blogs in the anime blogosphere but to say it was a fluke would belittle my opponents from the first four rounds which would be wrong. I wasn’t very familiar with my second round opponent, Bokutachi no Blog, third round opponent, Unmei Kaihen, or fourth round opponent, Anime Diet, before the start of this tournament but I now know that they (and bad luck party too) are quality blogs and beating them definitely meant something. However, the ease that Kurogane beat me means that I’m still no where near being one of the titans in the anime blogosphere so I won’t let my performance this time go to my head.

General Thoughts About the Aniblog Tournament

The Aniblog Tournament was a complete surprise to the vast majority of the anime blogosphere when it started and I was very curious to see how the bloggers and readers would take it. There were so many different ways it could have turned out; it could have been ignored or it could have generated tons of animosity and bitterness between blogs or it could have turned into a big joke after being swamped by fake voting. Instead, the result was very close to the best case scenario and I think that says something good about everybody involved (from the voters to the organizers).

I wasn’t expecting much from my involvement since this tournament was “just a popularity contest” so I felt blindsided when I realized that my participation would yield great unsolicited feedback about what I was doing right and what I needed to improve upon. Some of the suggestions for improvement where things I was privately thinking that I should do but it took someone else pointing it out and the desire to fix these deficiencies before the next round match up to actually get me to fix them.

I also wasn’t expecting to discover new blogs that I should follow but that happened as well. Upon becoming an anime blogger, my intake of anime increased drastically and as a result I radically cut back my anime blog reading. I had less time to read other blogs and my need to read episodic blogs disappeared because I was now watching all the anime that interested me in the slightest. I also stopped checking out new blogs as they started because I liked the mix of anime blogs I followed and didn’t see the pressing need to find more. The product of this mindset was there was a depressing amount of blogs I was not familiar with and before I voted I wanted to make sure I was voting for the “right” blog. (Never call me an uninformed voter in anything.) This lead to discovering blogs like ghostlightning’s where I had previously read a few posts from but never connected these posts together in my mind to tell me that I needed to follow this blog and established blogs like Behind the Nihon Review that I can’t understand how I missed in the past and newer blogs like Scamp’s that I found having an interesting author/style of writing behind it.

For “just a popularity contest”, I think the Aniblog Tournament did a great deal of good.

Suggestions for the Next Aniblog Tournament

I was very happy with how this tournament was set-up but I thought of a couple tweaks that I think could improve next year’s aniblog tournament (assuming and hoping there is one).

I like the general format of the tournament, how it has 96 spots for blogs and gives a first round bye to the stronger blogs, but using a set number will always mean some blogs are left out or there’ll be not enough blogs to fill the required spots. The best solution, I think, is to have a round zero where all the blogs not getting first round byes are put into different pools  – I was thinking 8 – and the top 8 vote getters in a poll of that pool would be used to seed the first round match-ups.

Another needed change is to publish the tournament bracket early, giving the voters time before the start to review blogs they’re unfamiliar with and to allow bloggers time to prepare their blogs to look and read their best.  (And allow any blogs to opt out if they so desire.) Assuming the my first suggestion is implemented the added time could be used for feedback to ensure no anime blog gets left out. For example, next year around mid-February, the initial bracket with the blogs getting first round byes could be published along with the proposed list of participants in the various pools. People could then mention anime blogs that were not included that they feel should by included and a revised listing of the pools would be published about 7-10 days before the start of March. Then on March 1st, the polling would commence on the pools and by the middle of March the winners would be known and placed into the tournament bracket. From there, people would have a couple of weeks to read and/or prepare for the start of the tournament on April first.

I also thought trimming the matches from 7 days to 5 days was a good idea and wonder if it could be shortened to 4 days.

I have seen the suggestion somewhere else that editorial and episodic blogs be segregated more in their pairing next time. I think the idea is tempting but ultimately not a sound one. Yes, they are completely different types of blogs but one can still measure how much value reading a certain blog gives to oneself independently of the content of the blog. And looking over all the match-ups, I don’t see the editorial blogs doing that badly anyways.

Completely Off the Subject

Though I don't like how the game makers elected to hide Germany's true flag for the game.

The lack of anything new on The Null Set recently can be attributed to my decision to pick up a game called Hearts of Iron 3 and the insane difficulty it’s taking to learn how to play. I didn’t expect this game to be this difficult to get after playing so many games of the same genre but it is and trying to figure it out has been taking up a lot of space in my brain. I’m at the point now that the game is starting to make sense and becoming fun to play. If you’re wondering, it’s a strategy game set between the years 1936 – 1948 and the player can pick any country to play out WW2 or an alternative WW2. In my game, I’m playing one of Chinese political factions and so far I’ve been able to reunite China, push Japan off the Asian continent then invaded and conquered Japan turning myself into the Asian superpower. And in Europe, Germany started the war like normal but then invaded Spain and England. And America finally joins the war in mid-1942 (no Pearl Harbor to bring it in sooner) and invades/frees Norway from Germany. At the present moment, England is trying to convince the Chinese Empire to become an Allied power but I’m being tempted by the largely undefended Allied holdings in Asia (India, Indonesia, etc.) not to join, though, the idea of a European invasion by the Chinese Empire to save England, France, etc. is almost too absurd to pass up.

Completely Off the Subject 2

My younger sister graduated high school this year and for her party, last week, she wanted to rent a farmhouse in Amish country and spend her time shopping and relaxing. At night I marveled, once again, about how awesome the stars look outside of the city and decided to see if I could take a picture of them. A tripod would have been extremely helpful but I did get a couple nice pictures.

If you look at the full size pic you can see it's the Big Dipper

Filed under: meta/office keeping, other wallpapers and pictures