I can’t remember the last series that left me in tears as much as Toradora is doing right now. I think only the “she’s flying” scene in Azumanga Daioh can compare to the brilliance that was episode 5 of Toradora. It’s pure gold, I tell you!

Though I feel sorry for Ga-Rei Zero. Also a very good series (and much like one of my old favourites, Jinki:Extend in more than a few ways) but it just gets overshadowed this season. Such a shame.

In the meantime, another new show came to my attention. It’s called EVE no Jikan, or “The Time of EVE”. It revolves around androids in the future, which most people treat as tools, but some others are attracted to them. At first I thought this is just blatantly ripping off Chobits, and didn’t expect much at all. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
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Because of the wierd aspect of the original image, it comes in 3 formats: 4:3/5:4/16:9 with no logo, 16:9 with a logo in the xbox hueg blank space, or for those who want to crop it in some other wierd way, there’s the raw 4000×4495 uncropped PNG. Go nuts!

P.S. special stuff coming soon for Vista Ultimate users

I believe I may have been a little hasty and somewhat jumping the gun when, in my last post, I said most of the upcoming anime was ‘meh’. The first one to appear (albeit a little early for the fall season) is Bounen no Xamdou, or “Xam’d: Lost Memories” as it’s known in English. This one as I mentioned is being released on the Playstation Network as a rental download, but ironically it’s already hit the ‘net in full force and full quality.

Back to the topic at hand though: I was probably also not correct in comparing Xam’d to The Incredible Hulk. The best way to think of this series is to imagine Evangelion, Last Exile and FLCL getting together in a broom closet somewhere. Xam’d would be the resulting illegitimate child, and I can proudly say that the result is just incredibly freaking awesome.

Trust me when I say that if you enjoyed FLCL at all, then Bounen no Xandou is a must see. Even if you don’t like FLCL, give this a shot anyway, and if you still don’t like it I’ll try not to hate you too much. No promises though.

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Yes, lack of 4:3 and 5:4 ratios this time. Combination of laziness and widescreen source. Who doesn’t have a widescreen these days anyway?

Ok, first thing’s first, there’s a new season coming up, and that means summer anime. Usually a good thing. Only nearly everything this upcoming season is guaranteed to suck. It’s either mystery/supernatural genres, or stonking great tits and a plot if you’re lucky. So I’ll be more focused on clearing my backlog of stuff.

That said, there are some gems this season. (more…)

Vampire Knight: I think I said this one would be a hit and a miss. Turns out whoever was shooting was blind, deaf and dumb, because it was a huge miss. The animation isn’t bad, and the hair is way too detailed (DEEN seem to have a habit of this, see Shion no Ou), but I think this says it best:

[it’s] aimed squarely at the creepy yaoi fangirl demographic

Now, with that out of the way, the stuff that doesn’t suck. And I’m pleased to report that if you steer clear of the obvious bad shows (To-LOVE-Ru and Kanokon, I’m looking at you!) there’s a lot of good coming out of this season.

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If copyright holders are so worried about their rights that they think tying the hands of honest customers is the way to go, then in my opinion, they don’t deserve copyright.

Update: It seems CoreCodec have realised the error of their ways, and I applaud them for vowing to work more closely with the open source community. That said, this highlights the fundamental flaws with the DMCA - it’s a shoot first, ask questions later policy which is so open to abuse it isn’t funny.

Anyway, new trace. Long overdue, this time it’s Blair from Soul Eater. Who can resist catgirls?

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The first trace in a while I’ve done pretty much exclusively in Illustrator. Discovered a few neat tricks (notably Live Paint) that speed up the process tenfold in Illustrator CS3.