A bit of personal stuff + Animu

First I'd like to apologize because I still have lots of messages and notes piled up. I'll reply to everything eventually, don't worry!

Okay so I'd like to talk a little about why I was pretty inactive in the past 1 month and what I've been up to.
I have no idea what happened to me, but I got this terrible allergy attack in mid-late August which lasted till mid-September. My nose was running and my eyes were tearing so bad it was hard to see sometimes. I had to start taking meds for it. And then when my eyes finally got better, a goddamn eye-lash got into my right eye and I couldn't get it out for many days. I started getting worried because my eye got inflamed and it looked kind of ugly. However, with the help of a wet Q-tip, some curses, praying to gods and satan and risking blindness, I finally managed to get it out somehow and it recovered.
Then the same thing happened to my left eye... (I'm not even kidding. I wish I were.) Except I managed to get it out much quicker this time. I think I became a pro at fishing eyelashes out of eyes by now.

So I couldn't spend as much time drawing and reading/writing long texts on the computer as I'd have liked to. Having issues with their eyes might be the worst nightmare for an artist. And not just this trivial thing; a lot of real life issues I don't even want to talk about came up recently and they took away a good deal of my free time. Even though I'm jobless now. I lost my job a while ago and I must find a new one before my birthday but it's so hard. Anxiety and depression are my friends these days. I often feel like I'm the worst most useless person in the entire world. Part of me wants to become a freelance illustrator so I could work from home and have minimal contact with people. But I don't have what it takes. I simply can't do anything wholeheartedly, everything I do is half-assed and mediocre and I'm so sick of this. I get distracted way too easily. orz

It's also possible that I'll have to pay a relatively large sum of money in the near future, uuh. This is bad because I'm saving up for a tiny house and at this rate it will take me decades to be able to buy even just a tiny apartment. orz
I've never asked for anything like this before, but could you please help me signal boost my commission info? (Big thanks to everyone who reblogged it on tumblr.) Even earning just $25-50 a month with commissions would be a big help in my current situation.

But enough about my whining for now.
I wanted to write about the anime series I've been watching because I promised that AGES ago. I haven't had much time to watch anime so I only followed a couple of ongoing series watching 1 episode per week of each.

These series are:

- Akagami no Shirayuki-hime. I'm not a big fan of shoujo romance, but I tend to like fantasy series with a strong female lead. However, this one just didn't appeal to me. Maybe it's too shoujo for my taste or it's because I feel the author is constantly force-feeding me ZenxShirayuki, trying to convince me how adorable and perfect they are for each other, both of them are beautiful cinnamon rolls too pure for this world and after a while, it just makes me go NOPE. There's too much romance in this series for me. Akatsuki no Yona and Saiunkoku Monogatari have a lot more subtle romance and there's literally zero romance in Twelve Kingdoms, so I liked those series more. A large part of Akagami no Shirayuki-hime is about Shirayuki and Zen's relationship, but the challenges Shirayuki has to face aren't that exciting either. The animation is nice, but the character designs aren't to my liking, it's a simple shoujo style. The ED song was unbearable to me to listen to.

- Arslan Senki. I found this boring. Arslan Senki is a high fantasy epic, kinda like Game of Thrones but with only one main character in a Middle Eastern setting and without sex and violence. Battles, politics, brothers and cousins fighting for power, making allies and crushing enemies, a bit of dark magic. It could be exciting, but it isn't. The characters are all pretty one dimensional with a single prominent trait and their interactions are mostly shallow and uninteresting. Since Hiromu Arakawa is only the artist of the manga, I didn't have high expectations. Arslan Senki is an okay series if you watch it for the battles (though the cgi can be jarring at times), but don't expect too much from the characters or the story. _{Also, Silvermask's voice is so bloody annoying. X'D}

- Durarara!!x2 Ten. I guess I'll have a more definite opinion of this once the 3rd part airs, but I enjoyed the 2nd part a bit more than the 1st part. I think the 1st season will always be better to me because it was "fresh" and original.

- Gakkou Gurashi! I started this because people called it the next Madoka Magica. I was afraid the moe overdose would be too much for me, but it's bearable. The series mixes lighthearted slice of life moments with darker psychological aspects and this makes the series relatively entertaining if you can overlook all the moe fanservice and squeaky voices. There are some scenes that come as a shocker simply because you don't always expect them right after the playful lighthearted moments. The beach episode was boring as hell, though. (Seriously, a freaking beach episode in the middle of a zombie apocalypse??)

- Gangsta. I saw a poster/key visual of this long before it started airing and I thought this series would be my aesthetic. And it kind of is. However, this doesn't mean it's that amazing. Most of the plot gets drowned in flashbacks and random slow scenes and I find the pacing quite slow. The main storyline is... um... what was this about again? There are 4 different shady groups in a city called Ergastulum and some sinister group is killing the special people known as "twilights". That's all. However, the characters almost make up for what the plot is lacking in, I find pretty much all main characters extremely charming and many cute interactions happen between them. Nicolas is a big favourite for many people and I can see why. I think it was a great and refreshing idea to have a deaf main character. You don't see many action heroes who communicate with sign language. I also love the relationship between him, Worick and Alex. Gangsta is quite angsty, but this doesn't mean it doesn't have any lighthearted moments. I think the series also has the best opening of this past season, it really gets you pumped. However, the animation quality can drop from pretty cool to abysmal. They probably did a special episode 9.5 because they couldn't finish episode 10 in time for airing. It's a shame because Gansta could have been a pretty decent anime even with the slow pacing.

- Gintama°. Gintama has always been a mixed bag of shit (literally) and hilarity. I don't know if Sorachi's jokes got weaker or I became less tolerant of toilet humour through the years, but this series is not as funny to me as it once was. The only episode I really enjoyed from this season so far was an episode focusing on Gintoki and Hijikata (the one where they found a winning lottery ticket or something), that one made me remember why I used to liked Gintama. Anyway, this series is just a big hit or miss.

- God Eater. Started watching this for the animation. I don't have much to say. Very mediocre uninteresting series. The animation is weird. It's 3D but more detailed than Sidonia no Kishi. The main heroine is fanservice. OST sounds good with many songs with vocals (probably the only good thing about this anime). The studio (ufotable) seems to be having trouble producing the episodes, they aired like 3 or 4 special programs so far in place of actual episodes. This show is a trainwreck.

- Kekkai Sensen. This series aired a while ago but the last episode is coming only in October. I'm a fan of the manga author's other series, but this series just didn't do it for me. The anime is as zany and random with overwhelming visuals as everything else Rie Matsumoto has directed so far *cough*Kyousougiga*cough*, I don't even know what the story was about, the only relevant thing was Black and White's backstory and their relationship with the main character, Leonardo. Everything else is a complete mess and you keep asking yourself "WTF am I watching?".

- Ore Monogatari!! Just finished this. That was a cute series. Yes, it's repetitive as hell since the main characters go through very little change throughout the series (the side characters who become important for only a few episodes tend to get more development than the main ones). But still, this was a really cute and fun series. It's pretty episodic, but not as random and 4-koma-like as Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun. The unconventional main character was a great original idea, though unfortunately pretty much everything about him gets a little repetitive (for example he saves someone from dangerous situations pretty often). The thing that makes the series enjoyable for a slice of life is that enough stuff happens in every episode, there's humor and fun character interactions. Nothing epic, just a simple romance series. It's actually pretty great to watch with family. X'D

- Prison School. Best ecchi I've seen in a while. (I haven't seen that many ecchis tho.) This series is just downright silly. Everybody is so dumb and/or perverted it's hilarious. The most irritating thing to me in this anime is the glasses chick with the giant boobs. There are so many boob, ass and panty shots of her it's almost too much even for ecchi and is it supposed to be hot that she keeps sweating like crazy? XD; The animation is actually nice in this (there are lots of censors tho) and manga readers say it's a pretty good adaptation. I like the awkward comradeship between the guy characters that formed over the dream to see a wet t-shirt contest. Prison School is disgusting, crude and vulgar but genuinely funny at times. Guilty pleasure, I guess.

- Rokka no Yuusha. This anime deceives you in the first few episodes. It seems to be a generic action fantasy but then it turns into mystery. I found the main character likeable along with a few other characters, the others aren't very well developed. The biggest part of the story is about trying to guess who the odd one out is (the "7th brave") and if you like this kind of thing, it can be enjoyable. It's kinda like Dangan Ronpa but centering around only one "who's the killer?" mystery. However, I think the mystery wasn't presented well enough. I guessed who the 7th brave was several episodes before the ending (it's not too hard to guess) and then the whole "who's the 7th" thing started again...?

- Shokugeki no Souma. Tbh I had very VERY little interest in this series in the beginning since I have little interest in cooking in general, but someone recommended it to me because of the great art. I looked up the manga first and it reminded me of Oh!Great's stuff, but it was nothing too special to me. Still, I started watching the anime out of curiosity and it's not that bad. It's like a generic battle shounen but instead of superpowers, we have food. Naturally, every character has an ability/specialty in connection with cooking and they constantly have to enter different competitions to impress their teachers or a group of selected judges who are all big names in modern Japanese cuisine. We get all these ridiculous or bizarre "food-gasm" ecchi scenes where the character is naked and surrounded by visuals the food makes them experience. Surprisingly, there's a lot of tension in Shokugeki no Souma, you somehow end up rooting for the characters and this makes the anime relatively enjoyable to watch. The characters have some cute/funny interactions too. I don't know anyone who actually watches this for the food/cooking, but if you like battle shounens with some ecchi, Shokugeki no Souma might be your thing.

WHEW. Finished. Now I can get to answering messages...

********

Art for me


Active clubs:


Inactive clubs:

CSS Journal Coded by FleX177