wApr 29, 2007


Then, I am still and wait here in the silence...

You may or may not be wondering what books I decided to mooch after seeking your advice. It turns out that I spurned you all! I went for the Star Wars manga instead. Manga is more expensive, even when used, and more difficult to find at both bookstores and libraries.

As for my computer, my boyfriend Antoine told me to download the free anti-virus program avast! and I did. It took a while to do its huge scan-thing, but now my computer seems fine again. Apparently, it caught 75 corrupted files that Symantec Antivirus and Spy-Bot could not. Ridiculous.

I'm still at my parents' house for the weekend, which has been very peaceful. My sister has her parents-in-law staying over, so at nights I don't even hang out there - I've just come home and worked on homework, watching anime, and reading. It's a nice break from everything before I go back to school for three more weeks of hell before summer.

My purpose in coming home was to attend a family gathering at my sister's house, celebrating my niece Amelia's fourth birthday, my niece Olivia's First Communion, and my cousin Sami's Confirmation. Going to church for Olivia's First Communion was so nice. I've felt so disconnected from my faith lately, and have felt bad about it. It's part of me and I need it in my life, but I haven't yet found a way to feel okay about it at Madison yet. While I sat in the pew with my family during the mass at which Olivia made her First Communion, I looked up and saw Carrie, one of the most amazing people I've ever met and so very much a part of what my faith was in high school, and Alex, my good friend Jennifer's younger brother and a member of a youth liturgical planning group we had formed at the church when I was a freshman to create "youth masses." Sitting by them made Nativity feel like home again. I hope that this summer, when Madison is much more quiet and I have no stress of homework, I can find a parish, or find my place in a parish I've already attended. This feeling of peace and strength is part of who I am, and I can't keep losing it.

My thoughts on Spring 2007 anime thus far
Or, at least, what I've been able to watch. So far, I've been using anime as a reward for working on my mountains of readings or preliminary paper-writing work. So, I'm behind on most series and still haven't watched all of the ones I want to sample (not even Victorian Romance Emma, season 2!).

Romeo x Juliet, ep. 3
I wrote so much about this episode that I gave it its own LiveJournal post, complete with screencaps. Enjoy! Link is here.

Bokura no anime, ep. 1
This series looks pretty meh. 15 kids at a summer camp randomly walk into a cave and discover a man and his computer (which get plugged into what, boulders?) network. The man promises a "game" which needs beta testing, and each kid, minus the fourth-grader (the rest are seventh-graders) touches a metal panel to seal a contract. They then watch the creepy older man fight a mecha robot with his own mecha robot. What the mecha robots are doing is unexplained. I found the premise pretty unbelievable. Additionally, the characters seem very one-dimensional. Each one has one defining personality characteristic.
After the creepy guy battled the other mecha robot, he disappeared. My prediction is that each episode will focus on one character, and come down to a will-they-won't-they-fight psychological stuff. I'll try one more episode to see if the premise gets a little more believable, but for now I'm not a huge fan.

My friend Louise has a detailed post with lots of thumbnail screenshots here. It also appears as though she enjoyed the episode much more than I did, so you gain another perspective there.

Claymore anime, through ep. 2
The main character is a half-demon, and her job is to slay demons, being employed by a faceless organization that "creates" Claymores, females who become half-demon and fight demons so long as they control their sanity (at which point they have to be killed). The stories in the first two episodes were pretty not-surprising nor imaginative. It seems like a pretty common fantasy story, actually. A young boy follows her from the first episode and becomes her cook. Clare tries to remain emotionless and detached from him. She kills demons in various towns. Yawn. Which is a shame, because the animation quality is pretty nice. I'll try to keep an eye on what other anime bloggers have to say about future episodes, in case it starts to look interesting, but I'll stop watching for now.

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scribbled mystickeeper at 1:08 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:

I miss NATIVITY >(. I think you'll find your church. It's too diverse not too. Yeah, we definitly are going to have to watch anime or read Manga this summer. Bye whore >)

By Blogger Unknown, at 10:37 AM, April 29, 2007  

"The Ryan and Jackie Reading/Watching Schedule"

And then when you don't do your assigned task, I will yell and swear at you! It will be great!

By Blogger mystickeeper, at 10:55 AM, April 29, 2007  

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