Equivocal Resolution

Touch!

To be honest, my interest in anime has been declining for the past year. Why you ask? Simple, lately I have been reluctant to pick up any new series at the beginning of each season. In the past, I would download anything that catches my eye. However, I have decided against using this method because the success rate has been low (I mean actually finishing the series). There is nothing worse than picking up a series and discovering it’s crap midway through. So have I stopped watching anime? The newer series yes, but not the older ones. Before I was never inclined to watch a show that was produced in the 80’s or the 90’s. Yet that changed, after watching this one particular series. Usually the animation during those two decades are a major turnoff, but if you get past that than it might turn out to be major hit for you. Touch did that for me. Now don’t get me wrong, this series isn’t for everyone. If sports anime bore you than I wouldn’t recommend this, but if you are an avid watcher of sports series than this is a must-see. Now you may ask how did I come across this? My good friend KT introduced it to me.

Summary taken from ANN.

The story centers around three characters - Uesugi Kazuya, his twin older brother Tatsuya, and Asakura Minami. Kazuya is the darling of his town as he’s talented, hardworking, and the ace pitcher for his middle school baseball team. Tatsuya is a hopeless slacker who’s been living the life of giving up the spotlight to Kazuya, despite the fact that he may be more gifted than him. Minami is the beautiful childhood girlfriend and for all intents, sister from next door who treats both of them as equals. Society largely assumes Kazuya and Minami will become the perfect couple, including Tatsuya. Yet as time progresses, Tatsuya grows to realize that he’s willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of his brother, except at the expense of giving up Minami to Kazuya. And thus the story is told of Tatsuya trying to prove himself over his established younger brother, how it affects the relationship between the three, and both brothers’ attempts to make Minami’s lifelong dreams come true.

Ideally, the main focus is on baseball, but as the show progresses it focuses more on character development, relationships, and overcoming adversity. From time to time, something unexpected would occur and it would leave me dumbfounded. Most shows wouldn’t dare do what Touch did because it would cause an uproar (I’m not going to go in detail because that would ruin everything). Yet with their gutsy crew, they managed to produce an amazing piece.

Overall I had no complaints and if I were to give it a rating…I would rate it 9.6/10. Yet the so-called fanservice was absolutely atrocious. One of the main character was asked to join the rhythmic gymnastic team. I’m sorry, but I’m not interested in girls in leotards. For ex. During some of Minami’s performances, they would pause briefly when the angle was focused near her chest area. Or they would start the scene focused on her chest area, which is equally annoying.

Yet despite the horrid fanservice, the baseball scenes left me speechless. Near the end, I thought my heart would pop out of my chest. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. To be honest, I wished there were more baseball scenes and if they did incorporate more than the show would truly have been epic.

Poll

Wow how long has it been since I’ve updated my poll? Not only do I have to update that, but the blogroll as well *grumbles*. It was a unanimous decision folks…SAKURA-CHAN was voted as your favorite Clamp character. LOL I wasn’t surprised at all since she was leading the competition since the first day. What baffled me was Syaoran beating Tomoyo. I know he redeemed himself near the end, but still. Ok onto the next question: What kind of Otaku are you?

a) level 1 – I only watch anime or I only read manga
b) level 2 - I watch anime and read manga
c) level 3 – I am a level 2 otaku that cosplays
d) level 4 – I am a level 2 otaku that collects dvds, manga and or figures
e) level 5 – I have an anime body pillow

If you pick option E…welcome to the club. Thanks to Bandai, the melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya will have a body pillow cover accompanying vol. 2 and 3.

How lazy can one individual get?

How lazy can one individual get? LOL For once I felt compelled to write an entry. Honestly I don’t know what happened to me. I used to love writing entries, but as time progressed I ended up neglecting this blog. Could the reason have been a lack of interest or motivation? Even as I sit here pondering that question, I still have no idea. Not only have the post stopped, but so has the anime viewing. I used to watch an episode a day, but now I watch one a week or two. The only series I’m keeping up with is Nana and Negima… I know if I gave Nodame Cantabile or Code Geass a chance I would love those two series, but why haven’t I? Once again I don’t know the answers to those questions. The bloggers that I have been keeping in touch with keep on recommending new series, but I keep on telling that I will download it later (I never do). XD *Sorry* I value their opinions, but my interest in anime has been lacking this year. Does that mean I’ll stop being an Otaku soon? Doubt it. Even though my viewing has declined, my spending hasn’t.

My love for mangas will never waver. In my opinion, most series are way superior in their manga format than their anime counterpart. Cardcaptor Sakura is an exception though. Sakuras cuteness is deathly and if I had a lil sister like her, I would never let her leave the house (thanks to all you pedololi-kuns out there). After I have watched the last movie, Sakura-chan may have become my favorite character. How did she win me over? Just like how she won everyone else over. Her positive outlook and attitude is something to be admired especially at her age. My biggest regret is not having vol. 5 of Master of the Clow. Like always, I ordered these from TRSI, but they cancelled vol. 5 because they couldn’t get it from the manufacturer. Am I angry? HELL YES! Not too long after, I went and ordered it from my bookstore, but I haven’t heard anything from them after a month. Luckily OS found a copy at his bookstore, but I have to wait until my bookstore notifies me about the status of my manga (if they can get it or not).

Ok enough rambling. All I need now is vol. 6 of Negima and I’m done. Should I get the limited edition? I was only looking forward to the limited edition box that accompanied vol. 1. *thinks for a bit…* Or maybe I don’t have to buy it afterall…

Supply and Demand eh?

Supply and demand eh? As a pre-business student at my university, this term is frequently used by my professors. In a perfect world, retail industries would like to make as much profit as they can on a certain product. To maximize the profit, retailers must calculate two factors: suggested retail price and quantity of that product. Yet as a smart consumer, we want to pay the lowest price possible, but ensure that particular company has a certain allotted quantity. Do you see the dilemma occurring? Fear not, there is a point where these two factors will collide and intersect. When that occurs, an equilibrium price is produced. This graph will prove this theory:

Now I don’t know the logistics behind the recent release of the two game consoles but the term supply and demand applies to it. There was a shortage on Sony’s PS3, so they were able to hype up the price to a whopping $600-700 per console. Their rival, Nintendo also released a console called the Wii. In terms of quantity, Nintendo released a total of 2-4 million while Sony released 200,000. The difference is huge…hence the set price for the Wii was half the amount of the PS3. Anyways, LOL ignore this half-assed attempt at trying to explain supply and demand. This semester I’m taking economics and commerce so we learnt the term today.

Anyways, as a consumer what do I do when there’s a shortage on both items? Wait or line up like the masses? I have this friend who works for Future Shop (Canadian equivalent of Best Buy and they own FF). He works in the gaming department and on the release date for the Wii, he was working. Now if FF had 40 Wiis, and you were the 41st person in line who waited for 2-4 hours …what do you do? Go home empty-handed? LOL not this person, they bought an Xbox 360 instead. No I wasn’t that person (because I couldn’t wake up early enough to line up for one), but it was near-impossible to find one during Xmas season. Therefore, on a whim, I bought a DS LITE on Boxing Day! XD

Now Dec. was definitely a memorable month in terms of spending. Here are some miscellaneous items I bought from TRSI. Any smart consumer would research what they buy beforehand right? LOL Let me tell you this…I have not seen an episode of FMP yet, but it was on sale so it was natural I buy it without any forethought right? HAHA I hope I like it. As for the plushie…it was cheap so no hesitation there.

I also got some Mai Otome figures from HLJ, but we’ll save that for another post when I have the time to build them.

Favorite CLAMP character…

Gotta thank Washi for this image! XD

Since I promised to post at least once a week…this week’s post will be dedicated to CLAMP fans. Actually, to be honest, I haven’t seen or read a lot of stuff that was produced by CLAMP. So my knowledge concerning them in terms of their projects is very limited. Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, XXXHolic, Cardcaptor Sakura are the only creations by them that I’ve seen and or read. I can’t say that I’m a huge fan, but I do enjoy their work tremendously.

Here’s a brief background info concerning their group…

CLAMP started out as a 12 person group, but currently there are only four members left. The remaining member’s names are Ageha Ohkawa (leader), Mokona (main artist), Tsubaki Nekoi (artist) and Satsuki Igarashi (artist as well as designer). At first, they created dojinshi’s but soon afterwards they ventured into the manga scene. Many of their mangas have been adapted into anime series.

My true quest is to discover … who’s your favorite Clamp character? Is it the adorable Sakura, the lovable Tomoyo, the ferocious Kerberos, the mighty Mokona and etc. If I started naming every character …well this post will still be under construction. If your favorite character is missing from the poll just msg me and their name will be added to the list. My only qualm is this list might become huge so I’ll stop once I reach twenty people. However if you want this to become an ongoing process such as:

- I’ll change the poll every two days to make it more exciting
- The characters in each poll will be decided by the series in which they starred in
- The winners from each previous poll will be a finalist in the final round
- Thus we pick a winner without anyone complaining about how their favorite character wasn’t in the poll

Yet I’ll only do option B if there’s enough people interested in this idea. If not…well I’ll stick with Option A. So bear with me… basically its trial and error at the moment.