Review of Spring 2008 anime

(Originally posted here a while ago)

With Summer 2008 anime approaching and have been paying attention to my anime watch list since early April this year, you would notice that those mentioned here (and here) are hardly mentioned under "likely to watch" are currently there and some of "not likely to watch" are actually listed.

For most of them, I would just watch 1 episode and see if it's good. But for some of them, I might watch more and sometime more than half-way through the series before dropping it. For anime that falls into the latter include:

• Neo Angelique Abyss (just plain boring)
  
• Kanokon (far too much intolerable sexual scenes than To LOVE-Ru; character design is decent, but the picture quality is like crap)
  
• Kamen no Maid Guy (same as above; storyline doesn't seem to go anywhere; character design and picture quality looks like crap)
  
• Wagaya no Oinarisama. (I actually fell asleep watching this)
  
• Persona -trinity soul- [Winter 2008] (It looked like it had a lot of action, but there were hardly any; fell asleep watching the episodes prior to dropping it)
  
• Special A (storyline doesn't seem to go anywhere; character design and picture quality looks like crap)
  
• Vampire Knight (all of the episodes seems to be talking about the same thing with no major progress on the storyline)

[when I say that the picture quality "is like crap", I meant that it looked like it was for Standard Definition TV (640x480 with horizontal black bars), but the so-called HD version is actually an upscale of the SD version. So in the end, the picture is not as sharp. Use the SD and HD of CODE GEASS Hangyaku no Lelouch R2 or Lyrical Nanoha Magical StrikerS as a comparison.]

Anime that was listed as "unlikely to watch" and "some chance of watching" that I ended up watching are:
(those in italics were dropped later with reasons to why I dropped it listed above)

• To LOVE-Ru (I actually wanted to watch more of it)
  
• The Tower of Druaga ~the Aegis of URUK~ (quite interesting)
  
• Kamen no Maid Guy (I was expecting fighting off evil, but what I got was completely different)
  
• Toshokan Sensou (nice animation, soundtrack and decent storyline)
  
• Kanokon (wanted to know how different it is from "Wagaya no Onarisama.", but turned out to be worse than "Kamen no Maid Guy" and "To LOVE-Ru")

Friendster profile no. 5 updated

As I had an unsually long school lunch break of 4 hours, I decided to check all my emails, do stuff at Facebook and eventually logged into my 5th friendster account, which I haven't logged in for a very long time. In fact, I think since March.

When I last logged in, there were several friend request, messages, and requests comming every few minuites. Multiply that with my other accounts, including another 4 at friendster, well, the number would easily enter into the tens of thousands. Which is one of the reasons why I never logged in for a long time as I have my end-of-year exams around that time.

I currently have no plans to update my friendster profiles, except "currently watching anime" and "newtype monthy anime rankings". I have done new drawings, but I haven't uploaded them yet, though some of those that are already uploaded but not edited appears on my 3rd friendster profile's media box (and one of my blogs). Not sure how many there are to edit, but I have done about 2 (3 if you count this in) new ones for this month.

Of course since I found a lot of images since then (namely 2chan and flickr), I have acess to better images and possibly make a major revamp of those never-log-in-for-so-long accounts. It's just a matter of whether I feel like doing so or have the time to do so.

Dropdown list links and other changes

I have replaced the regular link list with a drop-down menu with a "Go" button next to it due to an already long list of links (mostly other people's blogs) and possibly add more. This would save a lot of space as the sidebar alone is so long that you can fit 12 (twelve) of my longer-than-average posts in it. Kind of a waste of space actually, especially when you are viewing only 1 (one) post.

I have moved "RSS feeds of the sites I go to", "My Profile" and "IMEEM music player" to the side where the posts normally appear, so less space is used since they are text and uses less vertical (top to bottom) space if there is sufficient horizontal (left to right) space. The height of the music player mentioned above and the "Tagbox" are reduced and the width.

For some of the elements of my content, I have switch to percentage (%) based width, so how big a thing will appear in your browser depends on your browser window. You would notice the size changing if you were to adjust it with the % based element in the window.

The YouTube videos of my friendster media box (an exact copy of it's HTML can be found on my main blog as a widget, though might appear different) are now percentage based so that I can put the exact number in a row and not bother with the pixel-based measurements. The last I looked, it looked fine, except that on my main blog, there is an unusually large empty space in between videos after every 2 videos. Also, adjusting its height using the percentage-based measurements doesn't make any difference.

Seeing that I can't think of a nice title, I just used a French (to make it cool) translation of "Through the eyes of someone" and "Hoping for a better future". The area where the title appears on the blog itself is replaced with an image. Besides the current one, I have yet to come up with another one. Not sure which, but it should be no wider than 1000px and the thing between the IMEEM player and the posts (Due to the rules and regulations, I can't say what it is exactly) should be visible, with an aspect ratio of around 16:9 or wider. Images might need to be resized and/or cropped to meet this requirement.

Friendster profile updates (18 April 2008)

(originally posted here a while ago)

The media box at the bottom of my Friendster profile's HTML would also be copied onto this blog as a backup should something go wrong. This has happened before as some malicious software would cause it to be modified after viewing an infected profile. Fortunately, I had offline backup done each time I make changes to it (at that time). Seeing that I would access from another PC, puting it online would be more pratical. I could use removable storage devices or online storage such as gmail (Google Mail in European countries), but it's troublesome to find it, wait for it to load, may be infected by viruses/spyware, and prone to file corruption or drive failure.

By putting it up here, they (Blogger) may also point out to errors in the HTML such as a missing forward slash (/) at the end of tags such as "br" (at the beginning of the end tag if it has a start tag).

Major changes made to the media box include:

• font size reduced to 5px from 6px for header, 5px to 2px for normal text
• Resized the width of drawings by adding "width=100%" to the code so it doesn't get cut off if it's too large and ensure that they have a standard width.
• YouTube videos resized and it's title above it removed. As YouTube removes videos due to legal issues quite regularly, title of the video being hard to find, and the fact that I get bored with the videos after a few months, it would be impratical to have to have the title there or have a large video window (larger than the normal youtube size) just to have the "Sorry. This video is no longer avalable." appearing at the top. The size has been reduced from 800*600 to 300*225. May be reduced further so that friendster, you could fit in at least 2 videos in a row.

Future/regular updates include:

• Putting up of new drawings. Existing ones may be removed if I don't like it.
• Currently watching anime (現在観賞中のアニメ).
• Newtype magazine monthly anime shows and characters ranking. I would update between the 15th and the 25th of the previous month (eg. May issue published in April) if i'm not lazy/busy.
• Upcomming new 2008 (and 2009) anime. Would update when I feel like it, but I would update the one on my anime blogs first though.

Another new layout

(originally posted at 10 April 2008 on my personal blog)

I know I just mentioned about a new layout just 3-4 days earlier. If you were wondering what happened to it, I used it on my japanese anime blog (the english one still uses the older layout).

If you happen to visit my blog regularly, you may be thinking: "What? Again?". Well, since it's the school holidays (until this coming monday) and am stuck at home with nothing to do, I might as well do some mp3 info, HTML & image editing and organize the files on my PC(s) that on normal school days would not have the time/mood to do so.

Anyways this layout (as at 11 Apr) is based on "Harbour", one of the default blogger layouts. I have done some modification of the same layout earlier on another blog, but kind of abandon on it and replace it with one of the default layouts without editing as it got kind of messy and confusing with all over the blog. Of course, back then, I didn't know that I could move the images around. Anyways, I found out earlier today (10 Apr) that I can make a transparent (not white or black) background with the image on the far left of this post in Adobe photoshop (which I never use) after taking a long time to manually remove the background in MS Paint. Only my main PC has this program installed quite some time ago. The image you see in this post here is the version before the white background was removed in Photoshop. To make sure the transparent background is still there on the final version, I had to save it in PNG (SVG works fine too) and then open it in a vector program (I used Inkscape) and (re-)export it in the specified dimensions as PNG.

The "第(01-11)話" that are not replaced with another image you see are the areas that the "Harbor" layout used an image at, but haven't found/made a suitable image to replace it at it's location. (For your info the 第01話 to 第52話 was originally used for the anime episode numbering at the media box of my friendster profile. When they introduced support for Unicode/UTF-8, I switched to the text version. The image ones still appear on the older ones as the (thousands) viewing that profile (3 out of 5 in total) don't have support of CJK characters.)

It looks like I still have a lot of editing to do with this layout like making sure the background and font colour makes the text more readable and nice at the same time (the current one doesn't). All of my images are hosted at Picasa and Photobucket (though some are elsewhere like Wikipedia). Older images and those exceeding 1024*768 or 1MB are hosted at imageshack.

13 April 2008: The layout is somewhat close to being complete with that image fixed at the bottom right of the window (the one mentioned above has been moved to the bottom left of the blog). I have also added background images for post and sidebar titles. The only thing left is for 第3話 and 第4話 you see on the top left and wondering where 第7話, 第9話 and 第11話 are as I don't see them anythere but are still in the HTML code.

new concept

If you have been to my personal blog lately, you might have seen an image split into 3 sections. One above the banner (uploaded at photobucket), another is the banner itself, and one as the image at the very top of the sidebar.

The blog layout plays a part of it. When changing the layout, you may need to change it again or edit the html of it. If you need to resize, use paint and not the checkbox that appears when uploading the image. If you know how to edit the HTML of the layout this should be easy, though finding the specific code can be a pain.

For the image at the very top, you need to upload it at a 3rd party site and then put the following code just next to the page title at the very top of the codes like this: < src="(image url)"> (the quotation marks (") and slash (/) are required as omitting them would result in an error when saving it).

Having the same background colour as the image is optional but can make it look better. Do note that when adjusting image for the bottom part, pay close attention to the margins. Make sure the with is fixed (in px) and not in percentages (%) or no border. The width of the sidebar doesn't matter but it's recommended that the width of the image uploaded there is the same as the header image.

Friendster profile updated

何が私のことを話しりたいあるの？

I have somewhat updated the 3rd Friendster account.

Changes include removing text that has something to do with colour rendering on the computer in Japanese and in place put up and extract of this post. For the media box here are the some stuff that are updated:

• removed some of the YouTube videos (not that they removed them, they were just outdated; I never checked if they were removed)
• testimonial pictures sent by other people on all of my friendster accounts are removed (too tiring to maintain)
• chatbox removed due to errors (I hardly use that chatbox anyways)
• drawings done since February 2008 are added (planning to remove some of the earlier ones)
• NewType rankings, Anime Watch List, and New Upcomming 2008 Anime updated to that as at 6 April 2008. Before the update, it was at 28 February 2008. (you can also go to this blog to view them)
  

Other changes include:

• removed text in Japanese mentioning something about how images are displayed in computing terms like 8-bit pixel rendering (mentioned above)
• display and background image. The display/primary image is of a girl about to throw a paper plane into the blue sky. Background is edited from the box art of the R1 (North America) DVD release of 5 Centimeters Per Second. (That same background is also used on my personal blog and IMEEM profile.)
  
• Konomi Hashimoto's display image updated.
  

Changed layout of this blog

You may have noticed that I have changed the layout of this blog. That was because the old one is quite outdated with content that was there can now be found on my personal and anime blogs. It looks like this blog would have some similarities with the IT news blog.

Speaking of blogs, I have created one not too long ago. I'm not sure if I should continue with it. I created it because I found some of my old school books dating about 6 years ago at that time.
On top of that, the former name of this blog ("My Randomness") is now the current name of my personal blog. Previously, that blog had the name (and layout) changed frequently. Due to the HTML layout of the previous classic blogger layout that has been in use since this blog was created on 30 July 2006, you might have seen names like "[[ORIGINI!!]]" or have "this blog was last updated on ()" at the back, but the name "My Randomness" still appears in the dashboard.

Spring 2008 anime

As I am lazy to list everything and the fact that complete information can be found online, I'm going to just list what I am going to watch. This post wont appear on the anime blog and it's japanese counterpart, though the links for those listed below can be found there. The finalized version would appear on the earlier mentioned blogs and my friendster profiles

Not likely to watch:

• Allison & Lilia (it's war themed)
  
• Macross Frontier (the characters looked ugly and uses too much use of gundams)
• xxxHOLiC Kei (not my type)
• To LOVE-Ru [pronounced as "trouble"] (too much fanservice, as displayed in all of it's trailers)
• kure-nai (storyline don't seem interesting, character design not good)
• The Tower of Druaga ~the Aegis of URUK~ (medieval themed)
• Itazura na Kiss (don't know much about it, website don't seem appealing)
• Blassreiter (zombies=horror/scarry genre, not my kind)
• Zettai Karen Children (somewhat like a kiddy show, the visual quality somewhat reminds me of those from 10-20 years ago)
• Neo Angelique Abyss (reason is the same as "Macross Frontier" and "Tower of Druaga" above, without the gundams)
• SOUL EATER (reminds me of "Shaman King" and "Naruto". Not that they are bad, but compared to what I may/will be watching, I should skip this.)
• Monochrome Factor (boring)
• Kaiba (I give the character design a WTF rating)
• Junjou Romantica (Yaoi and humor)
• Golgo 13 (50 episodes long that is based on a manga that started in 1968 with volume 148 out this month. It's too long. "Hayate no gotoku" was 52 episodes long too, but somewhat lost steam by episode 10)
• Nijuu Mensou no Musume (the character designs made all the women look like men in female clothing. The way the trailer is made is similar to "Crystal Blade" below; full of static images and text)
  

Some chance of watching:

• Amatsuki (interesting storyline and good character design)
• Kanokon (somewhat smillar to "To LOVE-Ru" above but not as extreme)
• Da Capo II Second Season (the storyline of the 1st season was a letdown, despite everything else being nice)

• Kamen no Maid Guy (some weird guy in a maid outfit is protecting a girl who has legal rights to own her grandfather's massive wealth)
• Wagaya no Oinarisama. (the summary don't seem attractive, but the trailer does somewhat)
• Nabari no Ou (a guy with hidden powers wanted by ninjas)
• RD Sennou Chousashitsu (Nice visuals, but the storyline isn't)
• Crystal Blaze (the trailer was full of text and static images)
• Himitsu (Top Secret) ~The Revelation (psychological + mystery > medieval + zombies)
• Toshokan Sensou (the armed forces based in a library to go against the changes in the law of the media. Huh?)
• Kyouran Kazoku Nikki (bunch of weirdos joined together in the hope that 1 of them would not destroy the world because of a curse made 1000 years ago)
  

Will surely watch anime and anime carried over:

• Persona -trinity soul- (24 episode Winter/January 2008 anime)
• CODE GEASS Hangyaku no Lelouch R2 (Liked the previous season, which ended as a cliffhanger. Somewhat as popular as "The Depression/Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya")
• Special A (the setting somewhat reminds me of "Ouran Host Club")

• Vampire Knight (A show that is based on a shoujo manga that is actually interesting to watch, not like "Kyoushirou to Towa no Sora" aired in Winter 2007 and "Itazura na Kiss" listed above)
  

Updates to anime blogs layout.

After playing around with the HTML coding of my main blog, I have decided to change the layout for the anime blogs for both the English and Japanese language versions.

Currently, I have only change the colours to the same as what you saw on my main blog (at time of post). I plan to use the same template from the main blog and apply it to here. The problem is that I can't copy directly due to the problems with the header image; you had to manually edit from the lengthy HTML code and have to upload the image at 3rd party image hosting sites.
I plan to change the header image, but have yet to find a suitable replacement despite haveing tons of images. Also, I am clueless on using image editing software, so I might end only cropping, changing the saturation (richness of the colours) and stuff I can do with Paint and Windows Live Photo Gallery. (the default colours in paint for vista is better than the ones found in the earlier versions btw). I may sometimes put up a drawing or vectorised when I feel like it, but unlikely. I don't know how long it would take, but it may take a while.

You may have noticed I didn't post anything there lately. The truth to that is that I am clueless as to what to post there and have to type/edit the same thing again in another language. Kindda stressful to do so frequently, but can help improve language skills, except I don't have the time to do so with all the work around me.

Anyways, I may have changed the colours of my anime blogs, but it looks as though something is missing. It could be the random images. Once I'm done with the layout, I would see how.

PS. As the English version of the anime blog used to be my main blog, you might see some of my personal posts from mid-2007 and earlier and links to my friends' blogs there. Would move them to my current main blog, but can't decide on keeping or deleting the posts there. I might also change the url of that blog too as it's so bloody difficult to remember. (asuan888, the1iam, induration and past-school-assignments are okay but yukarifujimi or fujimiyayuki? Hard to remember.)