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READING WEEK - ANIME VERSION

Since I have badwidth to spare at home I decided that I should watch a ton of anime over the break hehehe. I was actually just planning to catch up on the stuff I'm currently watching and maybe start a few of the newer shows that I've been putting off. It didn't really work out that way though and I ended up only starting one new series since I was busy watching some older ones I hadn't seen. What did I watch you ask? Well, since I'm on this shounei-ai kick right now I figure I should watch some Gravitation first...

GRAVITATION

After watching the first episode, my impression of this show was not all that great. I really thought the story was lacking but decided to continue with it since the boys are hot and well... just look at the pics hehehe. Quickly, however, everything changed and I just fell in love with this anime. What I probably like best about this show is the music... especially one song called Sleepless Beauty (which I now can play from memory on the piano). All the songs are just so damn catchy and quite good... ah but that's just my opinion and what do I know anyway. The story basically revolves around a boy named Shuichi who is attempting to make it big in the music industry with a band called BAD LUCK (great name eh). While being a major part of this anime it's really only half the story. The other half you ask? Well a love story of course! One night while walking through the park Shuichi meets a very handsome mysterious man (Yuki a romance novelist) who tell him that his lyrics (which flew out of Shuichi's hands) are absolute crap... from there on the rest is history. I'm definitely glad I watched this anime. I loved the story so much that I decided to read the manga and an already through five volumes. I've also added it to my amazon wish list (hint hint) so there will definitely be more Gravitation in my future...

   
    

Ok so I went a little screen cap happy with this one but there were so many nice scenes I couldn't even get them all in... not to mention the other hottie mchottie characters... Oh pink hair = Shuichi, Blond = Yuki... just in case anyone didn't already have that figured out.

FUTAKOI & NANOHA

I finshed both of these over the break... well actually just Nanoha but Futakoi was close enough to the break so what the heck. Since I finished Futakoi first I'll talk about it first... Now did anyone else notice that NOTHING WAS RESOLVED!! What the heck?!? Nozomu thinks he can go on into the forever land of bliss with a ton of girls in love with him? What a load of crap. I'm really tired of these ridiculous harem animes. While moderately enjoyable I think I'm just about done with this type of anime. At least for a while anyway... Ok Nanoha... this show was ok, and that's about it. The ending was really happy and everything was wrapped up nicely. I don't really have a problem with this one but I never found myself really attached to or even really enjoying it all that much. In fact, if it wasn't for reading week I may not have even bothered to finish it. For me I guess this one is a take it or leave it leave it.

TWIN SPICA & PEACH GIRL

I decided to watch Twin Spica since I read some good things about it and damn were they ever right. This show is a definite MUST SEE. I got through all the episodes in practically one day and was just amazed at how good it was. If you ever watch this be ready to cry your eyes out. I don't think any other anime has ever made me cry so much. Anyway, it's a beautiful story with wonderful characters and you must must watch it!

Since I finished a few animes I decided to pick up a new one and while I planned on going with Mahoraba or Negima I ended up getting Peach Girl. The drawing style in this show is quite different from anything I've watched before and it had initially been the reason for me not wanting to watch it. But I had a feeling it might be interesting and so far I'm really enjoying it so I'll definitely be continuing with this one. The story revolved around this girl that no one really understands because her skin is a bit darker than everyone else and so she is thought of as a delinqent. In reality though, she's quite the opposite and is only tanned because she used to be on the swim team. Her so called "best friend" is really her number one enemy and keeps trying to destroy her life and make her look bad. While this sounds all really sad, the show is really quite funny so go check it out if you haven't already.

SUKISYO 5

A ghost has been running around the school looking for Sora. When the do-it-all team takes on the task of finding this ghost Sora has no idea what he's in for. The ghost has indeed been looking for him and follows him home telling him that he wants to be his lover for two days (cute little blond boy). Oh course he doesn't give Sora a chance to refuse. Eventually the two end up going on a date which is prematurely ended when Hiromu (ghost) is told to just go away after threatening Sunao. Hiromu obliges and we later find out that a boy named Hiromu is uncontious in the hospital. Sora immediately feels bad for the things he said to him and thinking the boy is going to die, runs out of the hospital to find him (in ghost form). Sora of course meets up with Hiromu at the amusement park and the two of them finish their date on the ferris wheel. At the very peak just before they kiss, Hiromu disappears saying that this was a best time of his life (this is where I burst out into tears). The next day at school we find out that Hiromu is perfectly fine and has been released from the hospital. He doesn't remember his time as a ghost though... ah thank goodness for happy endings. This episode was really great. The next one is supposed to be a valentine's day episode so it should be interesting hehehe...

   

READING WEEK

Well, reading week has come to an end and what have I accomplished.... um ya that's right NOTHING! It's my own fault though, I'm incredibly lazy. So instead of catching up on school work, here's what I acutally did... Monday was valentine's day so I went to help out at my aunt's flower shop (The Rose Bouquet... check it out if you're ever in Woodbridge). It wasn't a particularily busy day (I've seen much worse valentine's days), but there were quite a lot of deliveries to do and gues who got to do them? It was probably one of the worst days of the year to be driving around. It was freezing cold and raining all day so the roads were basically a shee of ice and walking up the driveways was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I kept sliding all over the place while attempting to hold on to arrangements... ah but it was worth it to see the smiles on peoples faces when they got their flowers... plus I made some money hehehe.

Tuesday I brought my mom's car to the dealership because the check engine light kept coming on. When I got there they told me the car would be fixed in an hour but that quickly turned in to two and finally they told me that I would have to get a curtesy car for the rest of the day. I kinda wish they'd told me that before I'd wasted two and a half hours sitting around at Mercedes Benze. Anyway they basically gave me the same car I was driving except it was a coupe. It was acutally quite cute and not to bad to drive. Actually it felt like it had a whole lot more power then the car I usually drive. Anyway, after finally getting out of there I headed over to Kikiwai to pick up Zettai Kareshi volume 5. It's finally been licenced and will be running in a new shoujo magazine starting this year. Since I'm already so far into the story I figure I'll buy the Japanese versions and see if I can figure any of it out, then once the english version is out I'll buy that too. Later that day I went to check out the new library on Rutherford. I don't know what to say about this place, I was absolutely stunned. It's definitely one of the nicest libraries I've seen... it even has anime magazines!! I only have a couple problems with it... first of all there really arn't a lot of books yet, but of course that's to be expected since it's relatively new. Secondly, the search catalog is really slow. They have all these beautiful new computers that take forever to do anything. This really disappointed me but overall it's a really nice place that close to home so I can't complain too much.

The rest of my week was basically nothing but anime watching so I'm gonna write up some stuff about what I watched when I get back to rez when can upload some pictures. The only other fun thing I did this week was go out with Pawel Thursday night. We hadn't really talked for a while so we decided to go out for dessert/tea and catch up. We ended up going to William's coffee pub on Jane. It was actually the first time I was at that location and it wasn't too bad but it did get really busy and quite loud which made it a little difficult to talk. It closed pretty early at 11pm so we went over to Dave and Busters for the rest of the night which was quite fun. Definitely a nice night.

Hmm let's see... OMG I almost forgot about some important stuff from last week. Last Friday night was our valentine's day movie night which was held a Janine's house. Once again we got a ton of snacks and Janine's mom made us her super yummy pizza. We ended up watching Nouvo Cinema Paradiso and Emma, both of which were really good... ok this is getting long, time to stop... for now...

RIBON

After searching around on the internet a bit I discovered that there is infact a Japanese "mall" relatively close by... well, it's in Markham but if you take the ETR you can get there in no time. Anyway, this "mall" is not really a mall at all but a small collection of Japanese stores (little food market, bakery, jewlery store, fish market, cosmetics shop and a book store). I actually only went over to this place (called J-town) to check out the book store. On the internet it said that they sold manga and magaazines so I figured it would be at least worth taking a look at. Well... they do sell manga and have a quite a lot of it but it's mostly older stuff and I think it's only used books that they sell. They did however have some of the magazines that manga run in (Ribon, Nakayoshi etc.). I had actually wanted Hana to Yume but when I asked about it the sales lady told me that you could only order it through a subscription which is just too much money for me. Since I drove all the way out there I figured I should get myself something hehehe, so I picked up the first two volumes of Ribon for 2005.

 

I must say I was extremely surprised and pleased with this magazine. First of all they give you lots of fun stuff. With the first volume I got a 2005 calendar, lip gloss, aishiteruze baby stickers, sabotine's secret tissues and a shinshi doumei cross scratch card (not really sure what that's for just yet). With the second volume I got a shinshi doumei cross watch, datte suki nandamon bag, valentines cards, and an extra book with a bunch of short love stories for valentines day (sweet sweet love book)... the stories are really cute! I haven't taken a really good look at the magazines just yet but the stories look pretty interesting and I just love the ads (they're really fun... especially the ones that show you how to use the gifts that came with the magazine). One story in particular, did catch my attention... datte suki nandamon. This is Wataru Yoshizumi's latest manga (did marmalade boy, ultra maniac etc etc). I'm not really sure what it's about since I haven't really looked at it but just from skimming it looks pretty good.... ok enough about this.

Saturday afternoon Lara and I went out for lunch at East Side Mario's. We both got this unlimited lunch thing that was really quite good. For nine dollars you got unlimited soup or salade, garlic bread, a pasta and sause of your choice plus a dessert. Not a bad deal at all...

SUKISYO 3 & 4

Episode 3 was basically just a filler episode so I won't really talk about it except to say that these three little boys have been sneaking around and doing jobs that were supposed to be for the "do-it-all" team. Eventually they are caught and one of them looks a lot like Sora... don't really know if this is significant but who knows.

 

The next episode is a lot better. A masked man attacks Sora and gives him a note saying that he will take what's most precious to him. Sora of course has no clue what this is but Matsuri sugests that it would be his lover (Sunao hint hint). Eventually Sora assumes it's his stuffed pink elephant and goes to drastic measures to ensure it's safety. Oh I should mention that Sunao also got a note saying that he would be taken that evening. Anyhoo, Sunao and the elephant are both captured so obviously Sora goes after them. Yoru comes out to save the body that his beloved Ran lives in and in the process damages the stuffed elephant. At this point Sora comes back and starts to cry over the thing hehehe. Later on Sunao hands back a sewn up elephant to Sora however, he is still very upset. No not because of the elephant but because he now realizes that he has another person inside of him (Yoru). Earlier in the episode Sunao and Sora had a discussion about how Sunao had Ran inside of him and he basically had no control over what he did. Sunao also tried to tell Sora about Yoru but Sora would not believe it. Ok I think that's all that's important in that episode. It appears that Shinichiro and Nanami (masked kidnappers) knew about these alternate personalities but I'm not quite sure yet why they're so concerned about them. Things seem to me moving fast so hopefully we'll find out more soon.