Congo Gum

Let me start with my apologies. It has been almost two months since I’ve written anything at all. Anywhere. Life has gotten to that stage at the moment where days seem to be measured in seconds and I have no idea where it all goes. To say I’ve fallen out of the loop wouldn’t be too far off.

The last anime I watched was Kiki’s Delivery Service on channel 4 when it aired over Christmas. The last show I watched was Angelic Layer back in November, and I still haven’t finished that yet. I’m sure there is a smorgasbord of shows that I need to see. After all, I still have shows from 2006 to watch. But at the moment I just cant find the time to sit down for an hour, watch a few shows and then do something else. That’s not to say that I’ve fallen out of love with anime but rather, as time goes on, I have more things to do with less time to do them.

This leads me on to my next few points. 2008 is going to be a big year for my writing. I’ve got another project that I’m working on that, I hope, is going to be a huge success for the Tenchi Community. I’m also going to be making a few changes to this blog.

Style – To be fair, I like this layout. But I buggered around with the kubrick theme in wordpress and I’ve noticed that this page loads like crap. I’m going to ask some of my more theme friendly bloggers to design something better in exchange for beer tokens so that’s one improvement.

Writing – When I first started this blog I was aiming at delving into the deep, artistic beatuties of the anime environments. But as I look at them it turns into more case studies on the ideas of the show, and I’m not sure if I want to do that. I’m not going to drop the idea, but I’m changing my style. Instead of big, long winded posts (which are great and interesting to read, but a pain to write) I’m going to aim for a shorter, better written and more regular postings. Once a week is fine, but ideally I want to update it more with things on my mind.

So I’m still here, I’m still going to be posting. But boy, there are going to be some big changes around here.

Over the past few months, Read: since February, I’ve spent quite a few chunks of money and bandwidth either buying DVD’s or the fansubbed series (Don’t even think about starting a fansub discussion, I will give you a one way ticket to the river Styx.) This has all accumulated into quite an impressive collection, but leading to quite a damning situation.

Now for anyone in the real world, for example anyone who works full time and doesn’t live in their parent’s basement. The day is short enough as it is. Throw in friends, family, tending to adult matters and anything else the amount of time left to watch any Anime is surprising short, let alone write about it.

This results in one mammoth of a backlog that would take me around about 25 days of 24 hour marathon watching. Now who can do that? I have DVD’s still in shrink wrap, files that (more…)

Since the demise of Geneon USA Anime forums across the globe have been infected by a lethal mind numbing virus. Scientists are reporting these incidents as being the worst cases of the Fansub Syndrome they have seen yet. After returning from a light slumber and with no end in sight, Anime fans the world over will be forced to listen to mindless drivel day in day out.

Sound familiar? (more…)

Now that I’m in the process of compiling my first anime environment review I came across a little piece I wrote before I started this blog. I’ve decided to finish it and here’s the outcome.

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In any form of work there are typically three levels of detail; too little, too much and the right amount, or in other words, the perfect medium. Now I’ve been writing fictional works since I could hold a pencil and over the years this has been the one thing I’ve tried to develop most. Others may argue and say that things such as character development or story are vital to a writings success. While this is true to an extent, putting all your eggs into one writing basket is a bad idea.

One of the best weapons in any creator’s arsenal is the viewer/readers mind. Everyone has their own thoughts and preconceptions about everything and anything. Now how does this fit into finding the right level of detail? The best way to do this would be to look at some examples and then derive at the right level of detail. For this well use the following scene, (more…)

Welcome to the very first post on my very new blog. It’s going to be an interesting project to say the least and i have a few goals i hope to achieve.

Over the years of watching Anime and Reading manga i’ve found myself more and more watching an episode or scene twice or three times. But not actually for the characters or that amazing one liner, but because of the background or the “world” in which the characters live, eat, fight and generally get upto no good.

(more…)