happy new year!

[piranha]

the old one went quietly into that good night. i didn't make any resolutions (only one resolution has really taken for me some years ago, namely not to make any further ones, but to handle goals differently). didn't go anywhere either, not even to look at potential fireworks. it just never is the same as it used to be in europe, with all the church bells ringing. how odd that i would miss such a little thing so much that it basically over time has eroded whatever feelings i had for new year's.

but i am not in a bad mood, just a little wistful.

have continued to hibernate. am watching vast quantities of anime and reading the respective manga as well. will write reviews when i'm done with the current one; but i actually am liking everything i've been watching. i seem to have hit upon whatever trick i needed to select the sorts of things i will like, though i don't know that i could actually verbalize what that is, since what i've been watching is all so different from each other. besides hikaru no go which i've already burbled over, i've got:

• saiunkoku monogatari (the tale of saiunkoku), story about a young woman who wants to be a court official, set in tang dynasty china fictional equivalent.
• yamato nadeshiko shichi henge (perfect girl evolution), 4 pretty boys try to make over ugly scary girl -- this does not go as one might expect.
• death note, a shinigami's (death god) note book falls to earth and is found by a teenager who is upset at how rotten the world is. people whose names are written in this book will die as prescribed.
• furutsu basuketto (fruits basket), where our young heroine encounters the members of a family that lives with an ancient curse -- they turn into the animals of the chinese zodiac when hugged by a member of the opposite sex (yeah yeah, i know what you're thinking. me too. but it actually does not suck, despite the heroine being rather too shoujo-sweet for me.)

also have been watching the japanese dorama i'd heard about earlier this year, since some kind person has provided soft subs for it: busu no hitomi wa koishiteru (falling in love with the eyes of an ugly girl), which tells the story of ota miyuki, a fat woman who works at a ramen shop and tries to find work as an actress. she meets successful variety show writer osamu yamaguchi who's secretly dating a model, and still pines after his ex-girfriend who left him without a word 7 years ago. osamu finds himself strangely drawn to ota, but does the "ugly girl" really have a chance? i am having a fair bit of trouble with this one, but i love miyuki-san to bits, and it is great to see a fat lead character in a japanese romance.

my japanese is improving. :)

hope 2007 will bring you all much of what you need it to bring.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Happy New Year!

I only figured it out about the church bells this year. hobbitbabe was saying that where she grew up they used to blow the factory sirens, and I remembered them doing that in Lancaster and it mingling with the sounds of the bells. Why don't they ring the bells here? They have bells. I don't get it. I used to hear them and know it was midnight, ringing out the old and in the new.

church bells

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

thanks!

yeah, i have no idea why they don't ring the bells, but they just don't. come to think of it, i don't often hear church bells at all here, while i basically grew up with them, for religious events as well as for time keeping. we live too far from any church here -- still, i can't remember ever hearing church bells in nanaimo proper either. do they ring the bells in montreal a lot? like, for mass, and other occasions?

here there are quite a number of churches that aren't in a building with a spire, and they don't even have bells. i also know a number of churches that play a recording of bells instead (*ugh*). maybe bells are going out of fashion. i imagine they're actually very expensive.

strange. i am not at all religious anymore, but church bells always touched something primal in me, and i miss it.

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

Thank you for mentioning hikaru no go again. I've been meaning to take note of it because you're early writeups make it something I want to see. I just started a brand new for 2007 list o' things to do, read, watch, etc., and now hikaru no go is there.

hikaru no go

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i hope you'll enjoy it!

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

A bunch of local teens I know seem to have Fruits Basket mania -- I guess I should actually read it instead of just doing dumb things like pointing to a basket of fruit and saying "fruits basket!"

fruits basket

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

*heh*.

i ended up really liking it, even though the beginning wasn't so auspicious, what with the overly kind, gentle, hard-working, self-effacing and self-sacrificing female lead. but there's something behind that exterior, and even she grew on me, though i continued to watch/read mainly for the other characters. the cast is large, but all the major characters are well-developed, and even secondaries have their own personalities (not just different hairstyles).

i do like the manga quite a bit more, even though there are sections i could've done without (too many student council antics). but it features several members of the zodiac to which the anime never gets around -- which is a pity. the anime doesn't stop in a bad place; it's a decent resolution of one major issue, but the manga goes further and deals with the other major issue as well.

[firecat]

I'm curious how you decided to handle goals differently.

Have you seen Haibane Renmei?

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i'll reply to the goals question later when i feel more verbal.

no, i haven't seen Haibane Renmei yet, but it's on my long list. should i move it to the short list? what do you like about it, if you don't mind talking about it? spoilers are ok.

[firecat]

I don't know enough about your tastes to say that you should move it to your short list, but I have a hunch you'll like it.

What I like about it is kind of hard to articulate, and describing the premise doesn't help. The characters and the interactions between them are complex and well drawn, and it addresses life and death and friendship and caretaking and grieving and community in interesting ways.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

*heh*, yeah, i think i know what you mean. i read the premise (which is why it's on my long list). complex and well-drawn characters are good; really, are a prime requirement.

it might be easier to describe what manga/anime i don't like, and i think this one already obviously doesn't fall into those categories: fan service, stupid romance, giant robots and transformers, fighting as the prime thing characters do, superheroes, epic sagas where good battles evil, extreme seme/uke behaviour, very yasashii female main characters (fruits basket escaped this very narrowly).

i was gonna add "lots of chibi/SD" but i actually like yamato nadeshiko shichi henge which uses those devices hugely, and i like some of their use in fruits basket, so i am no longer sure about it -- are those exceptions? maybe i am simply getting used to it because i've now watched a fair bit of anime.

[firecat]

Haibane Renmei doesn't have the stuff you don't like, IIRC.

I've gotten used to some anime conventions that put me off at first. Others still put me off. One of the animes that has a lot of the things you mention not liking, but I still really like it, is Jubei Chan.