Oshigoto

In case anyone was wondering what I do, which I may have alluded to in the past, go here and look at the second picture.  That's my job, sticking that bad boy on and attaching the whole back end.

Unfortunately, I'm doing it today AND tomorrow, which is putting me a little behind in my attempts get going again with my latest review. Overtime is nice, but free time is better.

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Monty Oum RWBY

h/t The Brickmuppet for the last one. First one seen on Himawari. Looked good, although even the 480p was really pixelated in the action scenes. I think though, the first ones were better, lacking dialogue.

Here's the first:

Here's the second:

Here's the third.

And the fourth:

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Joy!

Himawari has been making me very happy.  Playing a time consuming game with all the graphic features ON instead of off... And best of all, I re-discovered that a while ago I had downloaded the Tenchi Muyo OVA series in 1080p a long time ago, but I could never watch it because the opening sequence, with that flashing pattern, was pretty much instant death for any codec on Dystopia.  For Himawari, she wasn't even breathing hard, and I got to remember why, for the first six episodes anyway, why it was one of my favorite series.

I was in love with Ryoko, at first. She was like Lum, with an edge. and I particularly liked the history she had with Tenchi before he was even aware of her - that was a sweet backstory.  Of course, after the big storyline in the first six episodes, they fell back on fairly standard Harem tripe, and that dimmed my enthusiasm, but still, I haven't seen it since I was eagerly buying it up on VHS.  And I've always loved that opening theme.

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And I was like...

Click to Embiggen

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The Price of Technology

They used to say, with regard to Moore's Law, that a top of the line computer would typically cost around $4000, and that with each doubling of the power of computers, the top of the line computer would still cost around $4000.

Well, I think they did hit some limit based on the scale they can make IC traces, so now the prices are coming down.  WAY down. For $1030 before tax ($1128 after) I think I got an amazing deal. I probably could have spent more on  higher end video card, but even this one is an order of magnitude faster than my old one. (Wish I'd had access to this video card rating site someone showed me afterwards, for a little more the next variant of my new card is significantly better, I suppose I could return it and trade up, but it's 45 minutes each way.). In any case, while I suppose there were a couple of small areas where I could have been a little more top end, I'm well up there, and I was able to get a much better computer, and hopefully solve all my problems.

Alas, that remains to be seen. Some of my computer issues are yet to be resolved.

So today's foray to Fry's to build a machine from the ground up resulted in me bringing home:

An 8 core, 4 GHz, Socket AM3+ AMD processor (an unlocked version that my MB can supposedly automatically figure out how far it can overclock and even possibly free up any unused cores),

An MSI motherboard that could support it (and a few features I wanted that distinguished it from the others, like optical digital audio out that connects directly to my Amp.),

16 Gig of memory (1600 speed, could have been faster, but at $99 for the pair, a great deal),

A 750 Watt Corsair power supply with modular cabling,

A very nice "Soprano" case,

Another 2 TB drive - which turned out to be a wise investment, although it would have been better if they hadn't been sold out of the Seagate Barracuda that was cheaper and the same model as the one I've got.  This one's a Hitachi.

A new Asus nVidia GTX 650 video card, and

A SATA DVD/CD drive.

And on the way out I remembered to snag an HDMI cable, since my old video card did 1080P via component video. Alas, the days of taking advantage of the component video switching in my Amp will have to change, and I'll have to use the TV remote to switch between the computer and the video gear, and switch the amp for the audio.

Not one item on the list was over $200.  Most were under $150, and the DVD drive blew the curve by being $12. The HDMI cable, which I picked up on the way out (fortunately) was a very reasonable $8 for a 6 footer, half what they used to cost.

There were also about $40 worth or rebates among those components. And the laptop has one too I need to send in for.

So I carefully began the process of building the machine, routing the wires though the rubber grommets in the frame of the case, installing drives in the slide out trays (This case even has a space in the top where you can basically jam in any bare SATA drive into this socket for hot swapping backups.) Once everything was in, and the TV was switched to HDMI, I crossed my fingers and fired it up.  It worked!

The world of BIOS has improved to the point where you can use the mouse with it. Alas, while booting up with my original drive, I got about the farthest I was able to before the old machine really began dying.  The mouse would freeze during the post-desktop loading process, right about the time the SysConfig dialog would come up.  Plus Windows wanted to re-validate, but couldn't connect to the internet for some reason.  Safe Mode launches would lock up (Probably missing some critical files for the new config). Fortunately, I got that second drive.  As I write, it's in the process of formatting, and I'm going to install an OS on it.  Then we shall see if I can successfully copy all my important stuff off it before trying to fix my original drive's OS.

Why not stick with the OS on the new drive?  It's a slower RPM, and there's so much stuff to re-install and re-update. The new drive is meant for backups. (Also, the CD that came with the new drive seems to be less bootable than they indicated, so my XP Pro disk is doing the formatting.  It's taking a while to format the raw drive.)

I'll keep you fascinated people updated.

Update 1: I guess I really do need Windows 7 or better.  XP can only access 3 Gig of memory. But I still don't want 8.

Update 2: Amazon told me that Win 7 wouldn't arrive until Wednesday, so I didn't check my mail until now (3 AM Sunday) but it arrived Saturday at Noon. It's going to take some messing around to get my drives right. One can't change the drive letter of the boot volume, I still want my system on one half of my faster Seagate drive hooked up as drive 0. Fortunately I installed XP on Both drives, so I renamed the Hitachi drive to H: will boot from that and get C and D back to their proper places (instead of E and F.) Wondering about repartitioning, so I'm backing up all the torrents from D. Reorganizing is always such a pain.

But I DID discover that on 4/20/13 they released a new CCCP.  Yeee!

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Dystopia has Fallen!

Unfortunately, Dystopia is the name of my main Desktop computer, pretty much my only really useable machine. (I've given up mostly using my vintage 1996 Mac, and I have one other less advanced PC that is scheduled to run the CNC Router I will build eventually). Usable was a fairly charitable description for a Single Core Socket 939 Athalon at 2.4 GHz. But it did have one thing going for it, a 2 TB SATA drive, divided into two partitions (thanks to Seagate's cloning program splitting it to match my previous 200 Gig drive). C: of course was the main one, and D: contained all my torrents.

The graphics card, a BFG-made nVidia 7300 lost its fan a while ago, but kept working. But I got into playing a game that ran the graphics pretty hard, and I got an education. The game would oddly lose its frame rate dramatically, then regain it in a minute or so. The Task Manager would show a huge spike in Kernel times. The in-game debug stats showed that it was that the Open GL calls that were taking an order of magnitude longer, and my handy little Infrared thermometer showed me what was happening to the graphics card. At the start of the game it would begin heating up, and at a certain point, it would go into some kind of thermal shutdown.  It still worked, but slowly.  Once it cooled (barely) enough, it would start flying again, and overheat again. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. A strategically placed case fan solved the problem, but before I could implement a better plan, it failed permanently, only working in some kind of VGA mode.

So began the desperate struggle to salvage things as other cascading failures followed. CHKDSK started making an appearance in the boot process, never a good sign. Attempts to copy my documents folder to my external USB drive would fail before it got to the important stuff, all my pictures and writing (and apps, and software installers). Hey Microsoft, what ever happened to Abort, Retry, Ignore? Abandoning a copy fifteen folder levels deep because NTUser.dat is in use is a really shitty way to leave a user. Attempts to copy my data into the remaining space on the D: Partition were similarly cursed, even a Power Outage added itself to the mix. By this point, the machine was starting to randomly fail to get through the POST or load the BIOS.  I fell back to my previous video card, with significant additional problems related to the end of support for it in the current divers. Eventually I decided I didn't want to risk the C: drive any more, and pulled out my previous 200 Gig IDE drive, which SHOULD have still had a working OS on it. But guess what, it wouldn't boot.

Always Mount a Scratch Monkey they say, Well, the Monkey may well be dead, but it's hard to tell because attempting to reformat the old drive and re-install the OS on it failed with a random freeze, and after that, well, it's just not restarting.

(I even replaced the CMOS battery. No real help there though.)

Well, I finally dug out the crowbar to pry open my wallet.  I've always wanted to have a Laptop. Meet Etna. The best HP laptop Office Depot had laying around. It doesn't give me access to my SATA drive yet, but it gets me online, sorta.  All my good stuff is still locked away (Including my bookmarks!). And I wasn't joking about the crowbar. My bank called me the day of the purchase to make sure it was really me.

I have gotten my first taste of Windows 8 and it's every bit as vile as you have heard. Thank goodness for the auto-setup it ran when I first powered up because I wouldn't have found some of the network settings manually. Although it was quite annoying in insisting to use my wireless access point instead of the perfectly good network cable plugged into the side. Eventually I had to turn the wireless off entirely. And I'm still not too thrilled about the info it insisted on collecting for a "Microsoft Account".  No, I'm not going to your stinking App store. They seem to have added another layer of abstraction to the filesystem too, in order to hide what's under the hood from users. My files seem to save in a directory called "Library" which is not what one would normally call something you write to.

Hopefully this weekend a trip to Fry's will give me the chance to get all the parts for a killer system, one that I will run into the ground for another ten years. And run my copy of XP Pro on for as long as I can.

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What should I do next?

Something to ask my reader(s?), since I've left so many open ended things.

1: Go back to Deadman Wonderland.
2: Robotics;Notes needs some love.
3: You never finished adding the pics for the last episode of Mysterious Girlfriend X
4: Nekomonogatari is only four episodes, you should be able to finish that.
5: Michiko to Hatchin has been kicking around in back of my mind.
6: Screw all that old stuff, how about covering something from the new season?

Any thoughts?

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Nyan Koi

Nyan Koi Opening credits

While chasing though links of various AMVs thanks to a certain Duck, I ended up running across some interesting shots from an anime that turned out to be Nyan Koi. Even from 2010, I was able to find the Coalgirls torrent and download it. Two episodes in, there are certainly aspects that would make it look like a harem, but I don't think it is. This could change. But it's been kind of fun.

Our hero, Kousaka Junpei is terribly allergic to cats. But his family has one, and as a family, they love cats. By accidentally defiling a shrine to a cat that saved his town in ancient days, he's now been cursed, and must perform 100 good deeds for cats or be turned into one - which he imagines will kill him through his allergy. A side effect of the curse is that he can understand cats (how else could they make their wishes known?). His enormous grumpy cat from home, and the shrine cat take the lead in driving him through a course of service to cats.

His childhood friend, Sumiyoshi Kanako is the first Ganguro girl I've ever seen in an anime (Specifically, she's a Manba type). Can't say I like the effect - on the other hand, she's stacked (fortunately, by the end of the episode she gives it up). Her role is the pushy, dominant, tomboy type, but there is no romance there. She appears in the second episode. A cat living by the school that she has been feeding wants to express her gratitude to her through him, but due to their personal chemistry (friends who fight all the time) it's not exactly something he can do easily.

By the way, he can't tell anyone about the curse, lest they become cursed too, and his curse accelerates.

The girl he's really after is Mizuno Kaede. She loves cats, but her family owns dogs. One of Junpei's first tasks is to get her to stop molesting the stray cats around her apartment complex. She was feeding them, but grabbing them and hugging and squeezing and loving them much to their distress. ("You mean a cat wagging its tail isn't the same as a dog?"). They actually connect at a few levels, but clearly it's gonna be slow going. Especially when she sees him being dragged around by Kanako and assumes they're a couple.

We shall see how the rest of the non-harem shapes up. There's a pair of twins in the queue who I would wager run hot and cold, good and evil.

Update: Episode 3 introduces a college girl, a Letter Carrier with a bad sense of direction, whom Junpei helps. She hits on him for some unknown reason. She is definitely a bit weird. Kaede sees him get hugged by her. His sister and Kanako also see him with her.

Episode 4, the Track Team captain, who loves beautiful things, including Kaede, challenges Junpei over her. But it turns out not to be like that.... After Kanako knocks this Senior out for fondling her boob (It's beautiful after all) the gang has to drag the unconscious person back home. Which turns out to be a gangster's mansion. Kaede is in heaven, she's got a thing for gangster movies. Junpei is really feeling under the sword now. But as the girls enjoy a bath, it's revealed that the team captain is the gangster's DAUGHTER, she's just very boyish, and she falls for Junpei because he doesn't mock her fear of lightning.

Episode 5: Nagi Ichinose, the track team captain and Senior, hatches a plot. She's invited Kaede to the amusement park, and given Junpei a ticket, and a challenge. He has to decide which of them he's dating. The answer being a no-brainer, Ichinose issues another challenge that he'd better be Kaede's boyfriend by the end of the day, or he'll have to marry her as a backup. By accident, Kanako has joined the crew because Junpei's ticket was a double. Now it turns out that the park is owned by the Yakuza, and the boss is determined to NOT have Junpei marry his daughter, and Ichinose is actually trying hard to push the two together. Kanako is just the opposite. Hijinks ensue, and it's actually one of the funnier bits of battle matchmaking I've seen in a while. It's complicated by the fact that Ichinose stacked the deck by telling Kaede Junpei likes her, but he doesn't get a chance to say so himself. Later at school, Kaede asks Kanako if she and Junpei are dating, but she swears that no, they aren't (Even though she was dragging him off at every chance in the park to get him away), they're just childhood friends, that's all, really. Ichinose shows up, and Kaede's innocent question (related to the letter carrier and boys hugging girls without caring who they are) puts both Ichinose and Kanako in a murderous mood. The teacher comes in and this leads to the exchange of the day:

Teacher (deadpan): "Fifth Period will be starting soon. Ichinose, back to your classroom."

Ichinose: "Heroes always arrive late, Sensei"

Teacher (still deadpan): "Then go back to your own planet."

There is some confusion over some doggie treats, and at the end, we see one of the twins, who has an ominous black cat, and she seems to know about the curse - and worse, Kaede overhears.

Episode 6 kicks off with a replay of the last scene, and where the girl asks him if he was cursed by the statue, he replies by turning tail and running (Right past Kaede who was hiding behind a car, worrying about Junpei talking to another girl she didn't know). After consulting with the cats, Junpei concludes that he needs to talk to her, but at school, his buddies speculate that he's going after the "Twin-tailed Junior" right where Ichinose and Kanako can hear (Apparently now they both favor the Junpei/Kaedo pairing). His buddy got the idea when he asked him about twin-tailed juniors, since he didn't know the girl's name. He's found by one who gives him a letter and disappears (it was immediately obvious to me it was the wrong one, but he doesn't know she's a twin yet, you can see the hijinks a mile away, can't you?) The letter's a love letter, and by the time he finishes reading it, the "Same" girl (with a different sweater on) angrily snatches it out of his hands saying it's a mistake. These Hijinks, they cover miles in mere SECONDS these days. (Kirishima Kotone is the nice one) Nasty twin does want to talk to him though, and says to meet at the temple. She tells him she's more spiritually sensitive and can see it on him. Then she blackmails him, threatening to hasten the curse, spreading the story, if he doesn't stay away from Kotone-chan. He still doesn't get that they're twins, until she punch-launches him and he lands next to Kotone, who admonishes her sister Akari. (BTW, Panty shots figure prominently here.) Kotone turns out to be more than a little twisted as well. "I'll put away my fantasy journal, but may I continue to stalk you?" She's into guys suffering misfortune. It gets a little complicated, they are the daughters' of the cat temple monk, their cat used to be friends with the temple cat, but they now hate each other. Junpei is tasked with getting them to make up. In the process he scares off Kaede (who was walking the four giant dogs her family owns), Kanako finds her crying and is after his head. The mail girl sees him with the twins, and when Ichinose and her gangster dad run into her looking for Junpei's house (WRONG person to ask) she tells them he's in the park with the twins. So now Ichinose is out for blood too. Two simultaneous beatings and a dog mauling later, Junpei gets a chance to apologize and explain. Yay. And Kotone is pleased to see his misfortune.

(Man, either these things are getting more complex, or I'm not able to remain brief....)

Episode 7: There is a Class Trip to Kyoto. Just before Junpei leaves though, the cats bring him another cat in need of his assistance. This one needs a lift to Kyoto, and so he gets to stow away in Junpei's luggage. Once there, Junpei has trouble enjoying the sights because this cat has told all the local cats about the cursed guy who has to help them out, and he is besieged. There is a traditional bathhouse scene in the inn, and amazingly, there wasn't really any "buy the BD steam" Guess they'd have to re-animate. There are a ton of coincidences in this episode. Ichinose is in town too, for a gangster meeting at the old homestead. And the cat who needed the lift was one they'd lost. Also, he helps a kitten who turns out to be the offspring of that cat. While helping the kitten home, the gang ends up at the Ichinose mansion. Kanako is in wanting to be with Junpei mode, when she doesn't want to strangle him. Ichinose is back to wanting Junpei too (the Coda at the end is that the family meeting was about finding her a groom in the gang, and she wouldn't have any of them).

Episode 8: The Misery Twins bring in a fat, lazy cat who wants Junpei to help train him so he can catch a sparrow to impress the lady cat he wants to be with. Junpei starts out okay, but eventually a chance to be with Kaede by joining her sports teams (seems she's in everything) causes him to ignore the cat. Pissed-off, the cat sneaks into the locker room and steals Kaede's bra and sticks it in Junpei's bag. In the middle of a mall, instead of returning the handkerchief Kaede had lent him, he whips out the bra, and he is ruined.... Point made, Junpei has nothing to do but help the cat, and succeeds in making him a buff bird (and lady)-killer. When Kanako and Ichinose find out about the bra stealing, they make a bee-line to Junpei's classroom to give him a beat-down (Although Ichinose is more pissed that he didn't try to steal HER bra, and at one point is about to whip it out) but one of Junpei's friends who is dating-sim obsessed mentions that he actually SAW the cat with the bra, and so it was all a misunderstanding. One side-line is that Kotone is so obsessed with Junpei's misery that she bugged his house and wants to have spy-cams to see his expressions when horrible things happen. Akari admonishes her not to use spy-cams until she is 21. Is this some odd point of Japanese law? I don't know.

Episode 9: Fan Service Special. Junpei's buddies propose a pre-exam study day. Only it's actually a break day, at the indoor pool park. Junpei and Kaede are stuck with rental bathing suits, but Kaede fills her two-piece out rather nicely, although nowhere near as well as Kanako does her bikini. The Misery twins are there too, by some coincidence. Akari is angry (Junpei accidentally unties her top while struggling with his buddies dunking him.) and Kotone snuggles up to him and says things that would be really nice if they weren't meant to be creepy. And further coincidence, Ichinose is also there (wearing an odd wetsuit kind of thing). Ichinose and Kanako have been getting into breast-pinching fights lately. They go at it in the pool, and Kanako ends up ripping down the zipper on Ichinose's suit. In the course of the fight, Kanako slams into Kaede, knocking her backwards. Junpei goes to catch her, gets smashed in the nose with Kaede's head, but at least in catching her, he gets to feel her up. Kanako is getting more into wanting Junpei, even though he's single-minded towards Kaede. Junpei goes in search of medical attention, and runs into a Cat who needs to escape from the pool park. Kanako catches him talking to the cat, but avoids worsening the curse by remembering something he said in #2 about cat empathy. She helps him toss the cat over the wall (outside, where it's snowing, in their bathing suits), and notes how kind he is and how much she enjoys being with him.

Later, he has a cold from his exposure. Kanako rigs it so that she is the one to take him his printout and take care of him. Junpei is oblivious to the fact that she cares for him (and obviously far more than Kaede does), it almost makes me root for her, but her forceful nature really turns him off. A fat, gluttonous cat ask him for help in avoiding the diet his owner has put him on, but instead he lectures him how the cat should be grateful that his owner is caring for his health. Only too late does he realize the parallel to what's going on at the moment with him and Kanako.

Episode 10: Part 1, Kanako fails her final, so she has to do a report on local history. But hey, Junpei knows the Misery Twins, who are daughters of the local Shrine guy, so she asks him to go to them for help with history. The whole gang goes along to help her research for her report. After being bored unconscious by the priest (while the shrine cats explain about the twins to Junpei outside), the twins are pressed into service showing them various mysterious spots, ending up by a Maeneki Neko statue with an odd face that somehow compels people to vandalize it. Kanako falls under it's spell and starts to draw whiskers on it, but the twins stop her, and perform a cleansing ritual on the statue. Being the weird girls they are, they're feeling a bit awkward by the gestures of friendship people are making to them for their help.

The opening introduced part 2. The twins are also Magical Girls, sort of. Akari has always had a strong spiritual sense, which made her aloof as a kid. She can fight demons. Kotone has more of a scrying power, and a transformation sequence into a sort of goth-loli-devil girl. The spirit of the cat statue is pissed from being vandalized, and is on a rampage, but the girls are ready. Junpei for some reason goes out to the convenience store late at night and runs into them, and helps them with their fight. Usually people are weirded out by witnessing this, they say, but hey, Junpei's cursed by another cat statue and talks to cats, so he takes it in stride. Akari has a momentary fantasy about Junpei and dismisses it by slapping his face. Afterwards, the butterfly hair clips Kanako bought Akari for her help somehow helps her make friends with some of her classmates. Freshmen are SO shallow.

Episode 11: It's Christmas time. Junpei decides to get a temp job at the post office to make a little extra money, while Kanako is selling Christmas cakes at the mall in a Santa suit. One day he has a delivery at Kanako's just as she's coming out. Apparently she won some movie tickets, so she demands that he go see it with her. She turns it into a date, although he's not really into it, probably because she can't suppress her harsh dominant instincts (Although the thigh-high sheepskin winter boots she's sporting aren't my usual taste, they're nice). By the end of the date, she's actually feeling a little guilty that she's betraying Kaede, but she decides not to confess to him. While doing deliveries, a cat asks him to help get her kitten out of a tree. Kaede is passing by the park, and overhears him talking to the cats and mentioning the curse. Oh dear, that means she's found out, so the curse is going to get worse, and when he gets back to the post office at the end of his day, he looks in the mirror and discovers he's got cat ears.

Final episode 12: Kotone has put a GPS tracker on Junpei, so she knows something is wrong because he's not moving. The Misery Twins set off for the post office to rescue him. They keep him holed up on the temple grounds wearing a hat covered with charms, but the moment the hat comes off, the ears come back. Kaede meets Kanako and tells her that she's worried about Junpei being cursed, so Kanako phones him up and teases him about it. Now they know how it happened, but what to do about it? Nyamsus, Junpei's cat, has a plan. They play on the curse of the Maeneki Neko to convince Kaede that THAT is the curse he's got, and the Misery Twins show up just in time to cleanse him of that. It would have worked too, if it weren't for the meddling Yakuza Princess who snatches his hat, showing off the cat ears. Junpei splits, but it's too late, the twins find a path of his discarded clothing (Akari has an embarrassing lapse with his boxers) and he's in the park, as a cat. Kaede went looking for him too, and finds him. Fortunately she remembers his advice from the first episode about being gentle, and picks him up. She decides that Junpei cares too much about cats to be cursed by them, and her disbelief temporarily lifts the curse, well, the transformation part, which ends up with him naked in the bushes. This of course is the perfect time for the rest of the cast to show up, and Kanako starts beating on him. There's a bit of a wrap up in the last part of the episode, teasing about whether or not there will be a second season. He's still cursed, Kanako is still wrestling with wanting him and letting Kaede have him, he's still wrestling with how to get close to Kaede, and Kaede is still clueless.

It always kinda bugs me in a series when a guy is relentlessly pursuing a girl, but can't seem to communicate his interest to her, while someone else pines for HIM and never lets him know. And that said object of his affections has no situational awareness that she COULD have a suitor makes me wonder, why is he bothering? The normal question of why bother chasing a girl who barely knows you exist when there's one who loves you right next to you always has to be answered by something that makes the second girl unacceptable. In this case, it's Kanako's dominant attitude. Why can't she recognize that calling Junpei her servant is really not endearing? Why can't she realize that they've been on the outs for years over a misunderstanding that was HER fault (This does get resolved, but she doesn't properly apologize)?

You see this a lot in the "Girl Next Door" in Broken Doll stories. Her character has some reason she can't be with our hero, usually because of the Doll stuck in his apartment, but she usually sublimates this by trying to help him get together with the Doll. Hence Kanako occasionally working towards getting Junpei and Kaede together, but she can't really follow through on it and play matchmaker because of her own, unexpressed feelings.

The story I'd like to see is one where said Tomboy realizes what she's doing wrong to drive her love away, and fixes herself, and steals the boy away from the Idol he's chasing. Somehow, I don't think I will ever see it.

Oh, and here is the AMV I mentioned at the top of the post. LANGUAGE WARNING

Posted by: Mauser at 02:53 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Vividred Operation

Jumping ahead of the unfinished posts in the hopper (Damned overtime and home repairs)...

I just had an insight and here's how I think Vividred Operation is going to end. Below the cut.

more...

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Robotics;Notes Ep. 6

There was a minor scene in Episode 4 where Subaru tries to pay a call on Kona to try to get her to develop a Kill-Ballad interface for controlling his M45 too.  The doorbell asks for a password, which of course he can't give, and he is rebuffed.  This episode opens with him trying again.  This time he gets as far as a little word game with her, but again, he fails and is cut off.

After the opening, Kai and Subaru are hanging out at the Hangar.  Kai is contemplating the mysterious Report No. 1 Airi and Sister Centipede led him to, while Subaru works on his robot.  They are not getting along.  But in spite of Kai's minor bullying (after all, he's a grade senior to Subaru) it works well for Subaru to be doing his robot work there, since he had to hide it from his father.  Kai asks how it's going with Furugoori (Kona), and Subaru merely says the negotiations are "Ongoing."  Just then Juuna shows up, and Subaru assumes she is the heretofore unseen Furugoori, but Kai corrects him.  In spite of her shyness, she and Kai have a certain chemistry.  There are no indications of a tedious love triangle with them and Aki, and I'm sure at this point they aren't considering themselves any kind of couple, but you can see the possibility.

At the end of the day, they retire to the shop for sodas (Skal, the local brand) to toast their new members.  "Jun" joined after Aki begged her to.  When Kai asks her if she's okay with robots now, she says she doesn't mind the Gun-Pro 1, but Aki's suggestion of a visit to the Robot Clinic (Doc's store) scares her silly.  Subaru is a stick in the mud, announcing he's leaving "Three minutes of celebration is enough for me." As Aki chases him down, Kai notices Mizuka tending the store and recalls the night before, when he let her read the report.


That night, Mizuka asked him if he knew Airi.  Kai was surprised that she knew about her.  But they may be talking across each other, the Airi she knew was Misa's friend in grade school.  There's more to it, obviously, but she cuts the conversation short by closing the store shutters.


Subaru returns home, and his perma-scowling dad notices a grease spot on his shirt.  Subaru makes a quick excuse about it being his scooter breaking down, but dad doesn't seem to be buying it.


Kai breaks into the abandoned and empty Folk museum again looking for Airi.  She's a little disappointed that the question he wants to ask her isn't about the weather, which apparently is her specialty, but when he asks her about Senomiya Misaki, she replies the they're friends.  From the sound of it, she used to gossip to Airi about her day in school and about her classmates.  When he asks her about Kimijima Kou, she answers "My master!"  He's the one who created her. (So, Mizuka DID know.)


Suddenly, Kai hears some noise down the pitch black staircase.  Using his PokeCom as a flashlight, he descends the stairs.  Airi doesn't know what's down there, because the area hasn't been mapped.  At the landing, Kai finds a door, and looking through the VR of his computer, he sees another password box floating in the air.  The same password works to open the door.  To his surprise, the room has power unlike the rest of the building, and a giant computer bank, a cassette tape deck, and some other odds and ends.  The Cassette plays a tune that sounds similar to the music Japanese crosswalks use.  He asks Airi what the big computer is, but she can't see it, and tells him to ask Sister Centipede.


Sister Centipede knows the score.  The machine is an "EGI machine".  Well, that helps a lot.  Apparently it's a transmitter sending a signal into space.  What Kimijima was doing on the island: Classified.  How did he die: Murder.  Who did it: that data has been erased.

Subaru tries Kona's place again.  It would be a little too facile to say she's got Asperger's, but apparently she does compensate for her mis-socialization with a little program that reminds her it would be rude to not answer her door.  Still, it's clear she's not right in the head, more like a personification of 4-chan.  Seeing Subaru on the CCTV, she mutters "Boys with glasses are so moe," but then screams that he's a disturbing stalker.  She keeps threatening Subaru with reporting him to the police, but he will not be deterred, and eventually he gets through to her.  But there will be a price.

Kai is reaching a dead end researching the ownership of the Folk museum and any connection to Kimijima when Subaru finds him to tell him Furugoori has agreed to help.  At the hangar, the whole gang is gathered around to welcome her to the club as the newest member, only she's not actually there, she's attending via a PokeCom propped up on the table.  Aki isn't happy, but Subaru doesn't care as long as he gets his program.  That's when Kona announces her condition as being a naked photoshoot of Subaru wearing only his glasses.  Shy Jun is instantly scandalized.  Subaru stands firm that this was NOT the deal.  Kai is supposed to help her fight cheaters in Kill-Ballad.  Jun is STILL scandalized, imagining BOTH boys in a naked photoshoot with Cheetahs.  Kai straightens her out, but Kona, she's so far out in left field, she's out of the parking lot.


Buoyed by the increase in membership, Aki proposes another trip to the candy company, but only Jun comes along, and it seems worse than before.

72 hours later, Kona has a new program for the M45.  She worked continuously for 72 hours, because once she starts coding, that's how she goes.  She didn't do that for Subaru, if that's what he's thinking, she says as she closes the call to him.  Ominously, Dad may have overhead the call in the hallway.

The next day, they're trying out the program in the Hangar, and it's working well.  The girls come up, and apparently it actually went well at the candy company.  Jun's karate gi and a little demo apparently appealed to the perverted exec, and he agreed to sponsor them.


They stage a test battle, with Kai driving the M45, and Aki operating the Tanegashimachine 3.  It's hardly a fair fight, and Aki gets pasted.  Subaru is impressed with Kai's skills.  But then, Subaru's dad shows up, and seeing the robot in Subaru's hand, he walks up and decks him.  It goes downhill from there, and Subaru just gives in, abandoning robotics and the club.  He gives up his dream and will just be a fisherman like his dad.


The stress of this scene gives Aki another fit, a bad one from the look of it.

Posted by: Mauser at 08:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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