No Inuyasha this week... ;__;

It's Golden Week so there's no Inuyasha this week. I hope RT (Rumiko Takahashi) is thinking hard about how to end this series so everyone's happy with the outcome... (unless, of course, your favorite character has already been killed off or something... <__<)

Mostly, I'd like a satisfying conclusion that leaves few, if any, questions about where the characters will go from here. Something difinitive, like a wedding or two (or three, if you're a rabid Sesshoumaru/Rin fangirl like me).

That's probably expecting too much, though. I get the feeling I'm not the only one who feels this way, either... See? Starks is concerned as well...

D.Gray-Man 157

Komui: Please be careful there, General Cross.
Cross: What are you, my mother?
Komui: Are you sure you'll be okay? Any other time I'd go with you.
Cross: It's not like you to be worried about me, Komui.
Komui: I'm not worried about you! I'm worried you might disappear along the way!!

Lol... {chapter 157}

Also, apparently Leenalee's innocence is an evolved form of her original equipment type which they decided to call 'crystal type'. That's awesome.

Kanda and Allen 'swordfighting' is great... except they eventually start just pounding the hell out of each other...

And everyone gets their ears pulled by the head nurse for leaving the infirmary.

It's a fun chapter with lots of great faces, a big change from the last 15 or so chapters of ugly-ass akuma and mass slaughter.

And hey, it ends with Tyki Mikk alive and well and dancing at a victorian ball, of all things... And Road's there with a mysterious dude who might be another noah, but I don't know.

I hope the anime continues to stick with the story as it has been, although episode 80 goes off a bit with Jasdebi setting stupid traps... Oh well. Close enough.

369 wants to see Crowley fight!

Inuyasha 551

Yep. Naraku the blob's plan was to destroy the village. He was counting on Inuyasha and co.'s compassion for smelly humans and Kikyou's home to save his ass.

Did he forget about Sesshoumaru?

Inuyasha: "Damn you, Naraku!"
Naraku: "Didn't you realize where you were? If you destroy me now, my [shouki blob goo] body will poison the village!"
Sesshoumaru: *attcks anyway* "So what?"

Go Sesshoumaru.

NEXT WEEK! Kagome takes aim and the black shikon jewel and (presumably) shoots an arrow at it... It's supposed to be shocking, but pretty much the only thing that would shock me was if this concluded in a timely manner...

Read 551 now at Adinuyasha. Freelance will have pretty scans up in a day or two, I imagine.

xxx-HOLiC Kei episode 3

I have episode 3!! It's not subbed yet, but since I know almost everyone's lines by heart, it's not a problem for me. Plus, no subtitles makes for better pictures.

Not a problem with no subtitles, or so I said, but then there's this flashback scene that wasn't in the manga showing Zashiki Warashi bowing and politely asking for Watanuki's eye back... and I have no idea what they're saying aside from that... ;__;

They also added another couple of scenes with the Ame Warashi going to Yuuko's shop. All I have to say about that is... why does she have red hair? Rain maker =/= red hair and brown eyes. I guess they were going for consistency with season 1, but... argh...

ARGH! Your Tachikoma sunk my battleship! (who doesn't love Tachikoma?)

The main reason I was so excited to see this episode is because I was dying to hear Jurogumo's voice. I found myself a little disappointed. I guess I expected it to be more striking or something. It wasn't a bad voice, but I think it could've been better... They should have gotten Yoshiko Sakakibara (Queen Nehelenia, Integra Hellsing) to do her voice... That would have been awesome. I guess they wanted it to be a bit more dainty-sounding... I dunno.

I thought the confrontation between Watanuki and Jurogumo was awesome, what with the fireballs flying and the spider webs whipping about (because fire makes everything better. *__*). I'm a happy fangirl. I think I'll watch it again...

Anyway, if you read Garten's awesome anime blog Memento for summaries and stuff, he takes note of the quality of animation and really goes in-depth with the series he writes about. I found myself agreeing with his observations on the quality and the inconsistent animation of various characters... Read his take on episode 3 for a detailed summary and nice screen shots.

...but I'm more simplistic and easily amused, so I was happy regardless.

And I took a crapload of pictures of Jurogumo... because she's gorgeous.




And some more pictures...







Next week's episode: Yumekai (dream buyer)

I gave in...

So I've been really stubborn about downloading bit torrent... I just didn't wanna do it. I'll put up with Megaupload and Rapidshit if I have to.

Then xxx-HOLiC Kei episode 3 raw was out and I couldn't find any way to download it other than by torrent...

...

So I downloaded bit torrent and, while I have little to no idea what I'm doing exactly (it seems somewhat similar to Kazaa, which I became very comfortable with before the whole 'illegal' thing), I have managed to download episode 3 raw.

Huzzah.

D.Gray-Man 156

Yay Bak and Reever are alive! I certainly am fond of the science dudes. (Especially since Bak is so awesome... and he knows it). No major casualties, except Tapp and a few miscellaneous unimportant peoples. And what's this? Cross is going to cooperate with the Hitler-looking dude Le... something or other?!? Wow. Amazing. He must've hit his head.

It was great when he goes "atchoo!" and shoots the still-talking head of the level 4 akuma... "Ooops. I guess I won't be using you for my experiments after all..." (or something to that effect).

Mari and Miranda were all huggy and it was cute...

And Bookman... "I hope my hair hasn't burned off..."
Lavi: "Oh, who cares about your hair!?"
Bookman: "... I care"

And poor Allen's all beat up again. That poor boy... always worn-out and crying. He's such a cutie-pie... Hoshino-sensei should take better care of him. ;__;

ANYWAY, read it online here, good quality from Binktopia. Did I mention there are color pages? Yay color pages!

xxx-HOLiC Kei episode 2

This episode sticks closer to the manga than the first did. It's not totally a big deal, but they skipped a few events and went right to Watanuki going to save Zashiki Warashi from the Jurogumo. I wonder if they'll go back over the incident with the moving picture. That was pretty cool... I guess it doesn't matter if that comes before or after the eye issue is resolved.

I don't understand why they changed the 'unfortunate incident' that occurs after Watanuki parts company with Himawari from a transformer off a power line falling to a woman getting hit by a car. It seems trivial to me.

In the manga, Watanuki stops walking when he sees something strange with his missing eye (it appears to be the Zashiki Warashi). A second later, a transformer falls from the power line right in front of him. He is shocked, realizing that it would have hit him if he hadn't stopped just then. Before he can ponder on it further, the Karasu Tengu show up and demand to be taken to Yuuko's shop.

In the anime, he still stops after seeing a flash of something in his eye, but instead of a falling transformer, he sees a woman get hit by a car right in front of him. It could be interpreted that if he hadn't stopped, he would have been hit instead, but basically it just puts him in the right place to see an accident occur. Like I said, not a big deal, so I don't see why they changed it.

Come to think of it, they changed the traffic accident in the first season too... The woman who had a bad habit of lying takes of the ring Yuuko gave her in the middle of a busy intersection, and because of all the lies she told, her body wouldn't move. She got hit by a truck and it was quite bloody. It doesn't say in the manga whether she lived or not, but in the anime it shows the woman in the hospital where Watanuki had taken her. That wasn't a big deal either, really, except I imagine they changed that scene to tone down the show for TV or whatever...

...which is why I don't understand why they decide to put Watanuki at the scene of another traffic accident as opposed to near-death-by-falling-debris. Perhaps they think it's too obviously related to him being with Himawari moments before, and they want to hold off on that issue for now (since I imagine Himawari's bad luck and its eventual toll will be this season's climax).

Anyway, I went on quite a bit for something I deemed 'unimportant'. What a spedly I am.

...and I didn't mention it before, but I wanted to now... I loved the Alice in Wonderland tea party set up from episode 1... That was super.
Yuuko, the queeen of hearts and Watanuki serving her tea... "And why am I dressed as Alice?!" he asks, to which she replies "because it's more interesting that way." And we can't forget Maru and Moro, who are dressed as the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. Too cute!! ♥

So... New episode tomorrow. I can't wait to hear Jurogumo's voice! >__<

Inuyasha 550

Holy crap! It's officially the final battle. No one has died, yet (except Byakuya and it was such a sad, pitiful death that it only took up half a page). Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru seem to be dealing devastating blows to the giant stinky ball of shouki that is Naraku, who is transforming into something even uglier. Kagome can't purify the shouki around her for some reason, perhaps due to the seemingly pointless swipe Byakuya made at her with his sword before he died, so of course, it won't be over that easily.

So what is Naraku doing? Why, he's floating his giant blobby self to Kaede's village, of course.

So I'm like "WTF?"

I guess if he's going to fight to the death while releasing large amounts of evil poison vapors and goo, doing it over the village where Kikyo lived is the place to do it, right? Inuyasha and his bleeding-hearted companions will probably be at some disadvantage trying to keep innocent bystanders from getting killed, but surely there's more to it than that...?
It seems he has some plan, but as to what the hell it could be that involves a smelly human village, I have no clue.

Props to RT for getting Rin out of harm's way for once. And I loved Sesshoumaru's "..." when Rin gives Sango her gas mask back with a 'thank you'. Of course, the poor child was unconscious at the time so she doesn't know that Sango was about to kill her, but Sesshoumaru sure as hell knew.

Anyway... It seems it really is the end... even so, it may be another 100 chapters before it's actually over...

<_< mu... Until next week...
Read 550 now at Adinuyasha. Freelance is waiting for their magazine to do their nice pretty scans, so it could be a day or two before it's out there. I almost always read theirs, but I'm impatient...

Horitsuba Gakuen

Thanks to the Erbear... yet another great fun thing bouncing around inside my head. I'd read a couple of the omake comics HERE and HERE, but I hadn't heard any of the dramas until Erbear showed me.

All I have to say about the first one is poor Syaoran...

(drama cds on youtube with subtitles)
Horitsuba Gakuen Drama 1

part 1 part 2 part 3

Horitsuba Gakuen Drama 2

part 1 part 2 part 3

Horitsuba Gakuen Drama 3

(actual size image 2464x1570)
part 1 part 2 part 3

I can't find larger pictures of the first two drama cds at the moment, but I'll put up links to big versions when I do.

And last but not least, the Horitsuba character profiles, also on youtube by hipanda89. The proper credit and sources are in the video's description, in case anyone was wondering.

The internet is a great and wonderful thing. T__T

King of Fighters - Another Day

Finally got around to watching King of Fighters-Another Day. It was pretty cool, for being ridiculously short. Don't bother watching it if you don't know anything about the story because it won't make any sense.

To sum it up, there wasn't nearly enough Iori. Or Mai for that matter. Still, a fun way to kill about 40 minutes...

...even though I should be doing other things this time of day like getting dressed or doing some homework... but where's the fun in that?

>__>

xxx-HOLiC Kei

Finally out. Airs on Thursdays. Shinsen does subs. The ending has multi-colored Mokonas.

The awesome is overwhelming and I want them.


White, green, red, light green, blue, yellow, cow spots, tiger stripes, blue and white stripes, cheetah spots, hairy, robotic, and panda.

Cyuuuuuute~!

Air Gear!?

So what's up with Air Gear? Why is there only one group translating it? Fucking hell. Chapter 200 is out and having the raws but being unable to understand them is probably worse than having nothing at all.

*pout*

If this were Naruto, there'd be an uproar. Hell, even Inuyasha gets done every week with little trouble. I want to know what the hell's going on! Has Kazu joined a Satanic AT cult or what? >__< Argh.

Naruto 397

Itachi died. No real shock there. Emo boy Sasuke won. Wow. Tobi is Uchiha Madara. Yeah, I'd been wondering...

Wait, what's this? Itachi was trying to protect Sasuke all along? It's kind of surprising, but I guess it takes a bit more than that to shock me anymore. Maybe I'd be more interested if I liked Sasuke as a character? Meh. In the mean time, where the fuck are Naruto and his friends with expert tracking capabilites?

I know! Maybe I'm still mad that Jiraiya had to die. That's it. Kill Asuma. That's fine. I won't really miss him. BUT JIRAIYA!? JIRAIYA DIED AND I'M STILL PISSED ABOUT IT!

*pout*

Why did I stop reading Harry Potter? Because Dondon spoiled book five before I'd finished it and told me Sirius dies. So I was like 'fuck that. I quit.'

I didn't love Jiraiya quite that much, but the let down is the same. D:

I'll get over it eventually, I imagine, but I haven't gotten over it yet.

Inuyasha 549

Inuyasha chapter 549... It's the beginning of the end...? Still...? I don't know anymore. There was a whole 'triumphant group pose' thing going on, but I don't know...

Erbear's take on the matter... "well it has the makings of it, what with all the main characters being in one place... against mega death blob..."

Well said, Erbear.

The First Post

This is the journal of san roku kyuu, also known as 369. Here I will do what I do best; complain, rant, and procrastinate. Basically, this is where I will babble on about meaningless shit that has to do with manga and anime. Because that's what I do when I would be doing something else.

Like homework... or sleeping.

So yeah, that's pretty much it. And there's plenty of room here on the internet for me to waste...

So feel free to comment or whatever. It's open to anyone so you can post anonymously or use openID to post from LJ and stuff.