Interludium

Oh wow. I haven't done one of these since 2005. I have checked out about 15 titles from the fall season. I thought I'd commemorate by posting again (that and Debi picked a fine time to NOT pick up new titles. So I have to do this for her too). Breaking it down to 5 titles per post. Links to ANN included for those who want a summary, as I suck at summaries so I don't do them.

( Gundam 00 S2 )
( Casshern Sins )
( To Aru Majutsu no Index )
( Kyou no Go no Ni )
( Kono Aozora ni Yakusoku wo )

Hello insomnia. Welcome back old friend.  I will now attempt to survive the day whilst completely braindead.  I owe people email/lj replies, have been rather occupied all weekend, but will attempt to reply to a few during random bouts of lucidity throughout the day.

For now, image heavy post since it requires minimal brainpower.


I normally don't do this, but I just had to take a pic of this particular stack of doujinshi. Henceforth to be remembered as the package where the Philippine Post Office TAXED ME WAY TOO MUCH for some porn. I've never been taxed for my manga or doujinshi before, so I was pretty much DDD: at them when I picked this up.

Most of it is Initial D doujinshi (Ryousuke/Keisuke ).  I reallyreally wanted to splurge on Gintama and Reborn djs at the time, but there was a reason I got the IniD ones instead. D:  I got the Acchicchi (Kanegae Shouko) collection mostly because I had never heard of the circle before and was curious to see if it would be worth getting her individual djs in the future. I probably won't because she mostly does Reborn/Lambo, but the anthology was a pleasant surprise and had me laughing a lot while flipping through it.  There were a lot of completely random CPs which alone made it well worth it.  I would not mind buying another anthology of her stuff if she ever releases another one.

Anyway, wanted to share a few of the more random gag stuff in the anthology.  Subpar pics behind the cut.  My scanner is currently still in its box, so I just took pics of a few random scenes.  Will get around to scanning some of the more amusing stories once I hook the scanner up. Still waiting for Em to read Reborn so I can force make slavedrive ask her to translate these.

( some non-worksafe pics behind the cut )

Decided to do a quick browse of Persona 3 english fen just to see if - in true fashion - it'd hate me yet again. It does.

So... am I the only one who thinks P3 main character is most seme? D:

And while I'm talking about P3, was there ever an "official" name released for the main character? I named my hero Suou Shura, because I am unoriginal like that, what.


In other news, World of Warcraft has finally spat my soul back out. There is only so much dailies you can take before you get sick and tired of doing them just for the gold when you no longer have anything to use your gold for. I mostly only log on for raids these days, as well as special events, like the Brewfest Festival this month. And so, I will regal you with a screencap of the best Brewfest quest there is. Getting rid of pink elephants, which you can only see when you're dead drunk.


The screen is fuzzy because I had to be drunk to see the elephants, I had the effects turned off (because looking for a tiny rabbit while dead drunk and having a fuzzy screen hurts your head), but I turned it back on to take the screencap. I was no longer in a drunken stupor when I took the cap, otherwise the screen would be fuzzier.

And the things one does when bored. Elyrianna (selfaro's paladin) was running my lowbie mage through ZF and on our way out we aggroed every damned mob remaining in the instance.


click to view
The Witchhunt addon was spamming like crazy, (the big yellow text on top) so it covered the huge line of mobs that was in front of me and running after Ely. It was rather funny to see. And excuse the messy UI, my UI is set up for my warlock (my main) who has a ton more skills at her disposal than a level 46 mage. Hence all the empty space at the bottom.

But first, a few rec links:
♥ amei's Geddoe/Flame Champion (Suikoden 3) pr0n comic goodness [here] and [here]. This was one of those pairings I never expected I'd actually get to see work for. :x Oh how I love being proven wrong.
♥ calintz also has Geddoe/FC art [here] (so much love for this pic) and [here] which are equally worthy of the few seconds it will take for you to click on those links.
♥ tongari has posted the first few pages of her comic [Hero] on her site, which is all kinds of awesome. Good art and good writing.


And now, the Princess Princess-D jdrama. I'm sorry, it was some horrid sort of fascination that I found myself actually sitting through this and taking an indecent amount of screencaps. I'm not a very huge fan of the manga (in fact, I stopped reading by the first volume I think), and my anime watching is filtered by sofar, who tells me which episodes are amusing enough to watch (episode 10 for Teh Win!).

The drama is honestly quite horrible, as far as comparing the mediums go. The series is already way out there to begin with, and the jdrama takes it to an all new level, though still amusing to watch, if not painful in some parts. I think dillentanka sums it up rather nicely [on this post]: 'treat this as a bizarre alternate universe PuriPuri with completely different characters who just oddly happen to have the same names, because none of those characters really bore any resemblance to the characters in the manga.'

That being said, my biggest complaint, strangely enough, is the utter ruin that befell the student council. Where are my sparklies and shinies and hairdos with curls and flips? With the exception of Arisada (who reminds me of a very bad Atobe Keigo imitation), the rest of the council just turned into a bunch of utter dorks. I mean, they are dorks, you know, when they fanboy over Arisada when they remember how he was like as a Princess, but they were shiny, sparkly, imposing dorks.

I'm not going to say anything about the cast, as I don't know any of these people (dramas are dead last on my to watch list see). Bottomline is, we'll see how long my attention span for this particular series goes. I suspect not very long, but I've watched worst for crack value alone.

Downloads: Episode 1 raw (BT) | screencaps zip
- The screencaps zip are the original caps of the ones found behind the cut, before I resized them. So if you want bigger caps, the zip is the way to go.

( more screencaps than I'll ever take again )

[Kiba] broke my anime dryspell, as I've found myself unable to watch much of anything as of late. So actually watching episodes 3-12 in one day is a really big accomplishment for me (sitting through one episode used to be a big accomplishment, I've just been really listless the past few months). Anyway, it's not a series that I would say is really good, but the pacing of the story is good enough so as not to bore me and actually made me want to watch more. So I was talking to Debi about this in IM, and apparently, while I was not aware of this the entire time I was watching, I had some unresolved issues with the spirits' 'wanglessness'.

mithas: Also, THEIR SUMMONS HAVE NO WANG.
sofar: uhm, r u referring to the subbers way of wording summons or the anime itself?
mithas: nuuuu. the way they're drawn. they be nekkid and have no wang.
sofar: ......................
mithas: *looks for a nice shot of wangless spirit*
sofar: uhmkay you do that XD
mithas: i hear doubt of their wanglessness! *eyes you*
sofar: its not so much doubt as I dunno what the hell ur talking about XD
sofar: so a picture would be most helpful
sofar: seeing as I dunno how their summons look like
sofar: the conversations we have XD
mithas: http://www.fickleminds.net/junk/ihavenowang.jpg
sofar: *cough*
sofar: uhm, seeing as their spirits, maybe they don't need one?
sofar: or maybe the summons are asexual?
mithas: they should have just drawn them with clooothes.
mithas: *is disturbed by the wanglessness*
sofar: XDDD
sofar: *is disturbed at how fixated you are on their wanglessness*

And I have proof!


Too sleepy to say anything constructive about this series, besides I'm not really pimping it. We'll see how it goes after a few more episodes. I just... you know, had to share the wanglessness.

( random caps )

I finally finished the billboard design from hell, so I celebrate by puttering about and posting Zera caps for those who wanted to see how it looked in-game. I had over 100 screencaps, I trimmed it down to 12. XD Most of it was me capping like crazy on the dance emotes anyway, or trying to get a good battle cap.


The only time you see him smile is when he dances. XD

I would have flooded this post with caps trying to get all the nice shots of their dance emotes, as Zera has the best dance emotes I've seen yet in any MMORPG (though my exposure is limited). Well the male characters have funny dances, the females aren't as amusing to watch. Anyhow, since screencaps don't do the dances justice anyway, I went and took lousy footage of the dances with the digicam. Video quality is lacking, but you can see the dance clearly enough.

I swear it's worth downloading and watching. They're like 10 seconds of sheer entertainment each. Each file range from 3-5mb in size, so they're not that big. *prods you all to download and watch* The male mage dance remains to be my favorite. XD

Downloads:
Male: warrior | summoner | ranger | mage
Female: warrior | summoner | ranger | mage
Extra: female ranger taunt emote, cause I thought it was cute

( On to in-game screencaps. The game itself is just as pretty. )

So, you know how there are tons of things you'd love to make an LJ post for but which you're much too lazy you can't decide what to talk about first? I have that problem constantly, so I solve it by not posting at all. And I smite you if you say I'm just being lazy. Even if it's true. Anyway, I promised Bhex I'd eventually share the prettiness of Zera to the flist. This isn't exactly an attempt to pimp something, since the game is currently only available in Korean open beta, and I don't think a lot of people would be interested in coping with a game where they can't even read the login screen.

Although before anything else, SUIKODEN V MAKES ME HAPPY. Gameblog some other day.


But first I bring you the prettiness that is [Zera].
For the curious, that's the mage/summoner/ranger/warrior respectively.
[Go here] for more concept art.

Downloads:
[Zera Gstar Playmovie ]
[Zera CG movie]

Worth downloading and watching just for the eyecandy? Hell yes. (And good music.) Screencaps behind the cut are taken from the two movies linked above. Will post in-game caps another time.

Full gallery [here].
I also posted two batches of Lineage 2 caps [here] and [here] that I just never bothered to link.

( I flood you with eyecandy because I can't be bothered to write a proper post. )

Back to playing SuikoV for me.

Wanted to clear the folder out of old screencaps, so beware image heavy post behind the cut.

+ Rhombine is m.e.'s character. I've just been playing her the past week since m.e.'s not had time to log on.

( Click for the pretties and the ghei. )

Soooo... anyone on my flist want to play? ^___^

Also, finally got my PS2 back. <3

GIP. Bucky is the greatest thing ever!

Kingdom Hearts 2 ending screencaps. Obviously spoilerific, but strangely enough, I find the ending to be the most spoiler-free FMV of everything in the game. Kingdom Hearts isn't a game I feel strongly enough about to care about spoilers though, so those who really don't want any kinds of spoilers probably shouldn't look at this. Though that goes without saying. XD

I took too many caps, so I'm only posting a select few here. Also, I was laughing more than I probably should have while taking caps for this. I dub the KHII ending as Square Enix managing to be as ghei as they normally are right under Disney's nose.
Full gallery: 106 screencaps

Downloads:
Opening video
Ending video (full ending, without credits, no audio)
Full secret ending (no audio)
Edited ending video (includes scenes from the secret ending)
Links for the opening video and the edited ending taken from younger.

( Wherein Square Enix shows the truth about Disney characters! )

I would have added screencaps from the secret ending, but really need to work on a deadline now. You can see parts of it from the edited ending included above though.

Never had a use for LJ's scrapbook before, but with 10gbs of space I'm now using it for hosting screencaps and whatnot. Lessens the traffic on my server and should prevent hotlinking problems. Now I can disable hotlinks on my servers completely. <3 I stopped taking screencaps midway because BSplayer hung on me twice while I was capping Jigoku Shoujo. Will post about other series' on a later date.

Series: Mushishi
Eps: 1-8
Gallery: 26 screencaps
Probably my favorite from the autumn releases. The only title other than Ginban Kaleidoscope that I watch almost immediately after getting the new eps. Was initially disappointed after finding out that it was episodic as I liked Shinra and Lenzu from the first episode. ;_; It has not failed me yet however, and each episode leaves me with much love for it. It has a very calming effect to it, so I find I prefer watching it during a particularly trying day.

Series: Blood+
Eps: 1-10
Gallery: 13 screencaps
Watched episodes 8-10 a few nights back. I'm glad to see it's finally picking up. I found the pacing not quite to my liking from about eps. 3-7 (though Em liked it just fine, so it's probably just me), because despite there actually being something going on I found story and character progress completely lacking until it finally started to pick up by episode 7. I'm not as pleased with present-day Saya, but I don't dislike her either, just that I prefer her in the movie and during the flashbacks in Japan. In other words, I just prefer her kicking ass.

I am also wondering whether Haji was the chiropteran that she left alive in the end of the movie. It makes the most sense to me, but I'm unsure whether this was ever confirmed officially. If so, wasn't he the one in drag? *is amused* I will laugh, because he's being all uber-bishie cool right now. Uh-huh.

Series: Jigoku Shoujo
Eps: 1-6
Gallery: 38 screencaps
While I like this series, like the art and like Ai, it's not going anywhere fast. It's predictable and repetitive and starting to get boring. I continue to watch it just waiting for something else to happen. It's still a better watch than some of the new titles, but aside from the nice art and what would have been an interesting premise, it becomes stagnant after a few episodes. Here's to hoping something else happens later on. Behold my Ai icon, because I like her and she makes the series worth watching. :D

Series: Cluster Edge
Eps: 1-6
Gallery: 21 screencaps
*laugh* If you go in planning to take this series even semi-seriously, then you are better off watching something else. Unless you're prepared to be amused and grit your teeth through all the (numerous) shamelessly cheesy parts of the series, then you'll probably want to throw something huge and highly destructive at your monitor. It is best watched with friends, with humor and sarcasm to match. It has shoujo bubbles and men pining over would-be lovers, as well as men in capes who like to pose with big, shiny swords and frolicking in flower fields. What more can you ask for? ;P

HAHAHA! Not cutting those caps mainly because I demand that everyone on the flist sees this. :P Otherwise nobody's gonna look behind the cut.

16gb torrent that was so slooow. Took me about a month to finish downloading. But worth it? You betcha! Memories! I still want to see the Tagalog dub again. This was like, the third anime series I ever saw as it started airing in local tv shortly after I got into anime. I am now convinced that Hotta Yumi and Obata Takeshi are Zenki fans. Goki was named Akira, and... *gestures at his character design* Lol. *amused*



DORKS 'R US
mithas: OMG SO CUUTTEE! *DIES* ZZEEEENKI!
cugami: DO NOT MAKE ME ENVIOUS!
cugami: *keels!*
cugami: but zenki <3
cugami: ahahaha cutest demon
mithas: XDDDD SO CUUTE.
cugami: slap!
mithas: *TAKES HIM HOME*
mithas: Lol. We should all have like.. a Zenki marathon or something.
cugami: we should!
cugami: i'm all for it XD do NOT WATCH NOW

I am now forbidden to watch Zenki until said marathon. WOE.

I've disabled my livejournal e-mail address because it was getting spam at least once or twice a day. So if anyone needs to contact me, my livejournal address is not the way to do it.

Anyhow, have watched a bit more of the new series' out. I've discovered I have more chances of sitting through episodes if I get something I can work on productively while watching (even if it's something as mundane as punching holes through paper so I can file them away properly), or if I have someone over to watch it with.

Hence, the only time I got around to watching Trinity Blood was when Debi came over. Snippets of our comments while watching the series behind the cut. I think it pretty much says what I thought of it.

( Screencaps and commentary. Why it's always good to be watching with someone with similar taste as you. )

And the other series' I've watched more of since my last post.
( MAR, Eureka Seven, Gokujou Seitokai, Honey and Clover, The Law of Ueki. )

Whenever embai comes over she always spends a good 2-3 hours slaving in front of my PC downloading BL game previews/openings for our enjoyment. I have a whole folder of them I've always meant to take caps of but never have, so I make up for it in this batch.

( Pretty boys. )

Shit. I felt like angsting, but since I don't do angst, (because normally this just causes me to be more depressed and wallow in self-deprecating scorn) I'm going to post long overdue Final Fantasy: Advent Children screencaps instead. I took these weeks/months ago, but never posted it. And it has to be posted and everyone should see if they haven't already, because TIFA KICKS SO MUCH ASS.

Want to replay FF7 before it comes out, but no longer have a copy of the game. ;_; *prods cugami* Pahiram.

Screencaps taken from 3 different trailers.

( TIFA! and some pretty boys. x37 )

But first things first, our dog [bit me]. I took a pic of my arm/hand cause Athene wanted to see it. It's not a very pretty sight, so don't click if you get squicked easily. It's really affecting my left hand though, hurts like a bitch if I move it (and of course here I am still typing). My mom was worried that it had hit a nerve cause my hand was shaking so bad right after, but I can still move it, just can't clench my fists fully. Bah. How'd I get bitten? I gave him a bone, checked on his water then decided to pet him. Yea yea, don't pet a dog while they're eating if they're not used to it.

And now, dj pics by Aogiri Mikoto [E-PLUS]. I remember loving this djka's art back when auction.yahoo.co.jp and I were still the best of friends. ;D That was a long time ago and she wasn't doing TeniPuri yet at the time, but well, her Fuji is fabulous. *_* Nevermind that she does Fuji/Kikumaru, but she does seme!Fuji really well and so prettily. <3 At least from the [sample scans] on the site. I gave the links to caillen and she ended up buying 4 djs. ;P I'm demanding scans. She also did a Niou/Marui dj which is NOT available. *weepweep* (Though I really should be thankful, cause I would have bought that in a heartbeat.)

( Sanzou/Goku & Fuji/Kikumaru sample scans )

( Niou/Marui gets its own special cut, because I love the pairing. )

In other less interesting news, I went and decided to play around with fserve features in IRC, which only means another way for me to share files with people other than the normal 'upload to my server give people links' method. It's a little less gratifying in the sense that well, the people getting from you are complete strangers and you don't get the chance to cackle gleefully when they say they hate you for pimping something new to them. >D

The fserve's only been up for a week give or take, decided to make new releases available through XDCC/TDCC the whole day yesterday/today and I can honestly tell you that it really isn't any fun when people keep hammering your triggers. It's insane. My flood protection was banning people left and right every few minutes (it unbans after 30 seconds, it just keeps me from getting flooded). I'd probably have gotten d/ced due to excess flood a great number of times if not for it. So you know, to those people who download in IRC and have never tried running an fserve before, people who run fserves and who can be complete asses about not hammering their triggers and/or meeting minimum CPS are asses for a reason.

Alright, I admit to that nearly all the time. I will admit to following a series purely for the fanservice though, as is the case with the Tactics anime. I'm not particularly fond of the series as a whole (the anime at least), but I continue to download it and skim through the episodes just to watch out for the fanservice scenes between Haruka and Kantarou. Besides, it amuses me that Kantarou is more often than not, coming to Haruka's rescue instead of the other way around. The norms of seme-uke dynamics in yaoiland you see, sees this phenomenon as a relatively alien occurence, which probably explains why I'm so amused by it.

Needless to say, although I only have the vaguest idea of what's happening (because I've only been skimming and have not been watching anything properly), I will dump screencaps on everyone, because it's what I do best.

This was really supposed to be a Star Ocean 3 gamepost, but that was only half-done and I was sleepy. Until I get my hands on my own copy of Suiko4, I am in a temporary state of hate for everyone on my flist who are playing it. (This does not go out to those who've already played it. In Japanese. Because I already had time to hate you back then. :P)

And so... ( ...screencaps behind the cut. )

So I've always thought including an extra, happier ending for the Xbox was rather blah, since I think the Crimson Sacrifice ending was perfect in and of itself. Better even, than the ending you get when you finish hard or nightmare mode. However, there is ONE good thing about the Xbox version, the screencap of which can be found ( behind the cut. )

For those who want to see the xbox Promise ending, you can download both the english and the japanese versions from the links below:
[ Promise ending - english ]
[ Promise ending - japanese ]

It's actually better than the Hard/Nightmare ending for the PS2 version. If only because the end theme starts playing in the middle of the ending sequence as well, pretty much the same way it does during the Crimson Sacrifice ending. Something which didn't happen during the Hard/Nightmare mode ending, which imho completely ruined the effect. I like the ending song. I like watching the ending if only to listen to that song.

Apparently, the only thing short of a disaster that would force me to post nowadays is cute little boys in shorts and perverted teachers that like to molest them... or something remotely like it anyhow. ;D Took luminata's suggestion to watch Gakuen Alice (mentioned after a passing comment about how my attention tend to zero in on little boys rather quickly.) and now I demand that all the perverts people on my flist watch it too. bathala, you'll love this series. Little boys and crack.

Gakuen Alice in a nutshell is about a girl (Mikan) who follows her childhood friend to a school which cater to people with an Alice ability. 'Alice' pertaining to supernatural powers inherent in an individual, that of which differ from person to person. The series I assume, will focus on Mikan's life in the school and the people she meets. I've only skimmed through the first two episodes, so I can't really say much about it.

Also, any anime that has even a vague mention of a sea otter gets my vote. Love Mikan and her expressions. She makes me laugh. Succeeded on not going screencap happy on this one, so a bare minimum behind the cut. I love that Paku Romi is getting more roles as of late. <3

( Mikan is amusing. )

... for what has always been my biggest yaoi kink to date.

Anyone have anime/manga/book titles to suggest to me which have yaoicest in them? Tell. Now. *points at comments link* Please?


Since I've been pimping to a bunch of people in AIM, I might as well do so here as well. Read Ouran Kokou Host Club!

Ouran Kokou Host Club by Hatori Bisuko
I know I've seen others in my flist mention it, but I only paid attention when hyukta mentioned the twins. >D (Yea, one of the keywords to make me sit-up and take notice. ;P) Incestuous twins aside, I did like the story (of what little I've seen). I love the main character and basically nearly everyone in it. Which is rare in nearly any given series, and even more so in shoujo manga.

Come now, a private school for the extremely rich, whose classes are separated by pedigree and which has a host club comprising of six beautiful young boys with a mix of varying personalities and twisted humor. Enter unwitting commoner studying at the school on a scholarship who accidentally breaks an 8 million yen vase and is then forced to work on the host club to pay the debt. Sound like fun? Extremely. ;D

Now, a few pics of Hikaru and Kaoru, because the twins make Arc happy.

( show me a host club with twins like these and I'd be there daily )

Chinko no Tsubuyaki by Nase Yamato
Two words. Talking penes. kitsune_jade forced it into my harddrive during one of her visits. I read. I liked. team7 has shared it on her server and has had it kill her bandwidth. I now I understand why I only distributed the link to this through AIM (well in truth I was too lazy to post about it at the time).

For those who have yet to see it, you've got to see it to believe. Both the Host Club and Chintsubu chapters can be downloaded from my server, but if you wish the URL plus the username and password, please leave a comment asking for it. Replies will be screened so I hope you have your e-mail for comment notification activated. I will reply to every individual request, but doing this would help monitor the traffic on my server. Also, I don't think it needs to be said, but please do not distribute the url/user/password around.


Tactics by Sakura Kinoshita & Kazuko Higashiyama [anime]
Just screencaps from the first episode. I wasn't planning on saying anything about the new shows this season but I was pimping this to cirnelle and decided to make screencaps and post it here as well. I take my laziness to new heights and barely comment at all, but I'm hoping the subs would be enough.

( screencaps. a bunch of 'em. )

Didn't understand a thing? Go download it and be enlightened. The manga has also been licensed by ADV with the first volume already out.

( Link to MUD blog, because I wanted the username. )

Yo. I'm back on LJ. :P Not that I ever left it, only that I haven't been posting. Will be going through my friends list when I have time. Adding and deleting. As is obvious, I've more or less stopped following PoT, so anyone here only for the PoT posts are free to take me off, unless if you want to listen to me ramble on about other series'.

So, screencaps from the FFXII trailer. This 'trailer' was released months ago and I've had the file up on my server and the screencaps done for a while now, I just never got around to creating a post about it. For those who want to see the trailer, you can download it [here]. And for those who just want to see screencaps, click on the cut. I was lazy when I made the screencaps, so it's very minimal.

( might contain minor spoilers for the very picky. )