Procrastination/General

First off, a request. If you buy figures from sites other than HLJ and get them shipped via EMS, could you give me an example or two of a figure, the store you got it from and the shipping cost? I'm working on a sort of data-based review of some of the biggest figure sites and I just need a few more numbers than I can get from my own records, considering I mostly use SAL.

So anyway, I'm falling further behind with my study despite it only being the fifth week or so of the uni year. Every semester I decide that this time I'll study regularly instead of leaving it to the study week before exams, but it's yet to happen. I was going to go over some lectures this arvo and maybe start on an assignment but seeing as it's bloody 35 degrees hot here and my fan's broken, fuck it, I'm going to blog about the anime I'm watching this season instead. A bit behind the times I know, but I've just caught up on my backlog (turns out I'm quite capable of procrastinating on watching anime too).



What I'm watching

Quality and consistency

have always been

central tenets of Shaft.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Yes, how mainstream of me. I know it's /a/'s show of the season and even has its own general threads (a practice I vehemently oppose), but I still like the show itself. I generally enjoy Shaft's shows, and the dark atmosphere along with Shaft's signature trippy visuals for the fight scenes really do it for me. I don't like the OP and ED as much as some seem to. I think Shaft has done some of the best OPs in anime, and this one just seemed a little generic in comparison (mostly the audio, it looks nice enough). Still, this is the show I look forward to most each week.

Kore wa Zombie desu ka?

Fabulous

Unlike Madoka, I really had no expectations coming into this one. The last show I'd seen by Deen was Umineko, and that was bad. Really bad. I was very surprised when the first episode actually had me laughing out loud, something I rarely do with anime. The plot's certainly nothing much worth mentioning, but the visual gags and slapstick are very decent. The MC becoming a "masou shoujo" is a great concept (are there any mahou shounen shows? With frilly dresses and all? Someone should get on that).


Yumekui Merry

She could have been
a Touhou with a hat like that

I wasn't initially going to watch this after I misread the description as "mysterious catgirl meets normal highschool boy" (it's actually just a mysterious girl. WHAT A DIFFERENCE!) and assumed it'd be something along the lines of Asobi ni Iku yo!. I looked into it again recently after liking the look of the artstyle in some of the screencaps I saw, and found out that it wasn't actually just a fanservice show. Merry has a great character design and the plot, while hardly deep, is developing well enough for me to stay interested in it. Also, the number of forced awkward moments between the MC and Merry are surprisingly few for this type of show, which is refreshing.

She's since been changed to a
redhead but I won't hold it
against her

Fractale
Eh, I don't know. I liked the Ghibli-esque setting/art and the non-black-and-white morals hinted at in the first few episodes, but I really thought the latest episode was shit and I'm suspecting that the show will continue in this direction. If so then it's dropped, but I'll still get the OP single when it comes out.



Index 2

Pic still not related

At this stage it's more to do with my completionist tendencies than anything else. The current arc actually looks interesting, but most of the episodes so far have been shit. I don't know whether the problem's with the source material or J.C. Staff's adaptation but the characters are just utterly one-dimensional. I'd still watch the fuck out of A Certain Adorable Last Order though, or a SoL about the Misaka sisters.

This one frame comprises
the entire visuals for ep 5

Haiyoru! Nyaruani
Kind of amusing, and it's not exactly much of a time investment to keep up with it (the ED is half the total episode length). The flash animation is dodgy as hell but it fits in well with the feel of the show.


What I dropped

Gosick
I thought it was going to be a serious mystery show. Oh how I was mistaken.

Dragon Crisis!
It was nice to see Rie Kugimiya not being type-cast as usual, but the rest of the show just didn't stand out in any way whatsoever.

Level E
Something of an unpopular choice to drop seeing as everyone else is raving about it. While I get the humour on a cerebral level, I just don't find it particularly funny.

And that's it for the list. Feel free to tell me exactly how shit my taste is and I'll try my best to reciprocate. I'll probably do something similar for next season when it arrives, although I haven't had a proper look at all the upcoming shows yet.

Stormclouds are starting to gather overhead, so it's looking like I'll be able to postpone dying of heatstroke until tomorrow. Heat aside, I've actually had a pretty good last couple of days. On the weekend I caught up with an old high-school friend I'd fallen out of contact with for a while, and we played Civ IV over LAN all night. I don't think I've played any game over LAN for years now, but I had some good memories of playing Warcraft III with friends back in high school so it was quite a nostalgic experience. I'm still having some pretty severe motivation issues, but I'm just taking it easy and hoping that impending deadlines will eventually push me into getting some work done.