The Glass Museum

I didn't think my first post would be non-anime for my re-inaugural review. However, I thought I would cover my recent excursion up north to the middle of nowhere sorry I mean Canada.

Along the way there, my tour bus stopped to give us time to explore the magic world of...

 Target!

Just kidding it's the Corning Museum of Glass. That's a thing apparently.

So yeah, I thought I would cover my recent tour around the Museum of Glass, written as I looked about and snapped photos with my phone.

WOAHHHHHHH.

Upon disembarkment from the bus, I saw the red circle thing pictured above. Upon further examination, by which I mean walking up to touch it, I found out that it was not made of glass.

I'm disappointed already.

The Update 2012

Yesterday I was taking a look through my old bookmarks cleaning everything out when I stumbled upon a link to a blog I hadn't updated in two years. Memories of a dull and regretful summer came flooding back, marked by sparse moments of pleasant satisfaction. Seeing the old blog link there gave me a nostalgic feeling,  I don't need to say that the blog I saw was this one, even after not updating for two years.

Yeah, sounds about right.

Summer 2010 in Anime: Strike Witches 2

//I wrote this two years ago but never published it, now seems like as good a time as ever right? (no.)

I've rewritten this review several times, trying to figure out how to best criticize a show like this. In the end, I've just decided to do a plot summary and rant. Let's begin by introducing the characters shown in this episode, for those who are unfamiliar with the series or need a quick refresher:


Meet Major Sakamoto, the commander of the 501st Joint Fighter Wing and sadly, not the main character. She's a strong-headed person who's served in the military for several years, having known Yoshika's (the main character) father while he was building Striker Units, a jet propulsion system that conveniently only works on underage girls in their underwear. Misinterpreting the eye-patch as a sure sign of leadership, the military puts her in charge of the Strike Witches, an elite squad  a team of armed fighters  eleven half naked lolis who don't seem to own any pants and are moe renditions of famous, real-life ace pilots like Chuck Yeager (first person to go faster than the speed of sound) and Kaneyoshi Mutoh, who is so unimportant that his Wikipedia page just redirects you back to the Strike Witches article. Major Sakamoto is actually based off of two people.

She also seems to believe that a katana is actually a useful weapon against
enemies armed with lasers.

Summer 2010 in Anime: Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin (Occult Academy)

This is the show of the season. I've been waiting for this anime to come out since....well, since Chartfag gave us the list of shows for summer. Occult Academy is about a girl named Kamashiro Maya, daughter of the recently deceased principal of Waldstein Academy in Japan. Waldstein Academy, also known as "Occult Academy," earns its nickname from the strange and mysterious phenomena that occurs there, as we are helpfully told in the intro by a taxi driver who won't shut the fuck up.

It’s July 1999, and people in Japan are wondering if it’s the last day on Earth.  We're obviously able to relate to this thanks to all the 2012 doom-sayers who keep showing up at our doors and scaring away the Girl Scout cookie vendors. 

"That's not true. Stop telling people we do that."

Coming Up Next in Summer 2010

World War II was a devastating point in history that killed millions of people.

It shall always be a reminder of the unforgiving grip that power

and money had on humanity. The soldiers who fought in this tragic time

shall be honored for the rest of fuck it who am I kidding this is gonna suck.

Summer 2010 in Anime: Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakama-tachi (Ookami-san and Her Seven Friends)

I'm currently watching an ongoing American TV Series under the name Leverage. It’s about these four ex-criminals led by an ex-insurance agent who form an elite team that mimics Robin Hood’s style of doing favors for the unfortunate poor by screwing over rich assholes. I haven’t gotten around to seeing every episode yet, but I will say that it’s a pretty fun watch. Anyway, I’m starting off this review this way because I couldn’t help but be reminded of Leverage as I watched Ookami-san and Her Posse of Intimate Douchebags. That said, I will not mention Leverage again.

One of these things does not belong.

Our main character, tough-guy tough-girl Ryouko Ookami, is a member of a professional club of high schoolers (a.ka. Otogi Bank a.k.a. the fucking mafia) that exchanges favors with other students. A client generally comes in with a request, which the team then tries to complete. After the request is fulfilled, the client must do them a favor in return. In this episode, a girl named Kakiri wants the team to stop her love interest Akihiro Ouji from quitting the tennis team due to his broken leg (I'm sorry, what?). The show proceeds to successfully parody Cinderella as the team tries to prevent the guy from submitting his resignation form. It also gives us some very funny narration by Satomi Arai, the voice actress of everyone's favorite lesbian, Shirai Kuroko. Actually, I don’t think she even bothered trying to come up with a different style of talking for the show, half the time it feels like I’m watching DVD outtakes of Railgun.

OH FUCK I KNEW IT

Summer 2010 in Anime: Highschool of the Dead Review (Ridiculously Lengthy Edition)

Yes, "Highschool" is one word, apparently. This is the show that a lot of people have been excited about for the past few months. I did a Google Image search to find a main picture for this blog post, and I got these on the first page (NSFW):

You stare at this for a few seconds before realizing the 
image isn't getting any clearer.

The images tell us everything we need to know about the show. They say a picture's worth 1000 words, and we already have 15,000 words screaming at us that this is going to be a show heavy-laden with fan service, boob jiggles and whatnot. What we don't see is zombies. I'm not really into these types of shows, so I need a different incentive to watch. We all came to see the undead, it's in the title of the show for God's sake. Well, don't fret too much, because there's only about thirty billion of them wandering around the city trying to fuck shit up. Excessive swearing aside, let's begin.