I'm sorry that there's not been much happening on this blog for some time. You'll have to have a little more patience.
There's a lot happening in my life at the moment.
Just before christmas my parents transfered their freehold flat and the rest of the debts to me. I have to refinance everything (it's a good time to do this). It was a lot to do, with the lawyer, notary and all the talks with the different financial institutions involved. So christmas holidays weren't as relaxing as they could have been.
Today I had (hopefully) the last meeting at a bank and until the end of February everything should be done. but it'll have cost me more of my reserves than I had planned.
I've also got to have dental treatment. I'd had to organize an estimate of costs and collect my "bonus books" from three different past dentists, to prove that I've been at the dentist every year for the past 10 years - because then my insurance will pay more. Still, it's going to be several hundreds of euro.
I have three tickets to go see Queen & Adam Lambert. Of course this is great, but with all else I hardly had time to look forward to it. I had to organize a hotel and train ticket for one conert, I still have to organize train tickets for the other two.
And then my fridge broke.
It's not simply a fridgy, I have a "pantry kitchen", which means that fridge, sink and cooktop are all together. I don't have much room, so I had to get such a small kitchen. The repairperson said it'll be uneconomical to repair the fridge, but he said I can take it out and replace it. So besides that repairperson costing me a hundred euro (even though he couldn't do anything) and the new fridge costing me several hundreds of euro, I'll also have to look for a small fridge that'll fit and a company that'll carry the fridge up to the top floor, uninstall the old one (completely with un- and reinstalling the sink and siphon) and take the old one with them.
It's so much at the moment that I sometimes feel like a deer in in the spotlight, paralysed, not knowing what to do next.
I'm away from home for 12 hours everyday, I have to make calls during my work time. The last week I got home and had so many things to organize that I didn't even have something for supper until after 9 PM.
I'm so mentally exhausted. So, so tired.
I have a history with clinical depression and sometimes I'm afraid I can't make it through, though I'm always telling myself that it's only some more weeks and I'll take one step after the other.
So, I don't really have a lot of time to write reviews at the moment.
Read more on this article...
Monday, January 26, 2015
Sunday, January 4, 2015
short reviews of Fall 2014 animes
I think I liked the Fall season better than the Summer season of 2014. There were a couple of surprises there.
For the first time I watched some really short animes, even two of them.
Gugure! Kokkuri-san
Kohina is a little girl who lives alone for some reason. To cope with things, she likes to pretend she's a doll. She also really, really loves instand cup noodles. One day she accidently summons a fox spirit called Kokkuri-san, who wanted to haunt her but then became more of a surrogate mother. Two more spirits start living with them, a pedophile stalking dog spirit and a drinking and gambling playboy Tanuki.
Kohina is really abit weird - she's drawn so weird, so small. And nothing is explained to why she lives all alone, as a little girl. And Inugami, the dog spirit was really creepy and too much of a pedophile, for my taste.
Kokkuri-san and Shigaraki, the Tanuki, were likable characters though. And the alien classmate was hilarious.
Gugure! Kokkuri-san is a light, enjoyable comedy. I really liked the opening credits, too, such a catchy tune.
Orenchi no Furo Jijō
This was one of the surprises. I didn't read the details before and so I was surprised that the episodes were just a few minutes long! But it soon became one of my favourites this season.
Tatsumi is a young man who lives alone. One day he finds someone collapsed on the riverbank and after rushing to help, he finds it's a merman. Wakasa from then on continues to live in Tatsumis bathtub. Wakasa is a bit childish, very clueless about the human world, enthusiastic and easy to impress. Sometimes his friends visit, there's Takasu the octopus who's good at fixing things and giving massages, Mikuni, the jellyfish who can shrink and doesn't need food and Maki, the tiny hermit crab.
It's really a bit of a strange set-up and with just about 4 minutes per episode there's not much of a plot. Of course there's some yaoi innuendos going on, but it's only hints for the fangirls, the anime itself is harmless. The opening is strange, too, it looks much more dramatic while the anime itself is pretty light-hearted.
Akatsuki no Yona
Yona is the princess of a small country, the only child of her kind father. She's in love with her gentle cousin Su-won, one of her two childhood friends. The other one is General Hak Son, a famous young warrior. On her sixteenth birthday, just when she decided to tell her father that she intends to pursue her childhood love, she sees her father being murdered by just this man, Sun-Won. Completely shocked, she's about to be killed, too, but Hak manages to save her and escape with her. Constantly on the run and in hiding, she takes some time to process what happened. Meanwhile Sun-won is crowned as the new king. Yona then decides to seek the help of four mythical humans with dragon.blood to take action.
At first this looked like another reverse harem with the annoying, helpless "heroine". But it's actually different. While Yona is suffering at first, I think it's rather understandable considering what she just had to go through. She gets herself together after a while and starts taking responsibility and changing and growing stronger.
Still, at the beginning it feels more like it's actually about Hak, he seems more like the main person.
I also like that Sun-won is not portrayed as a completely evil person. Even after you see him coldly killing his uncle, you're still not sure what drove him and whether he wasn't right after all...
This anime is going on for more than this season, so there's still time to catch on.
Danna ga Nani wo Itteiru ka Wakaranai Ken
As long as the title is, as short are the episodes, again only about 3 minutes. And of course, there's not much of a plot, it's more a slice-of-life anime.
Kaoro is a hard-working OL (office lady) who for some reason married an otaku. That's really all there is to day about the story.
It's funny though I probably didn't understand half of the references to other anime. But it's not as good as Orenchi no Furo Jijou.
Donten ni Warau
The three Kumoh brothers Tenka, Soramaru and Chuutarou live in a shrine together with former ninja Shirasu in an area where the sky is always cloudy. The reason for this, according to a myth, is that the region is cursed by a giant demon snake called Orochi who resides there and is reborn every 300 years within a human host.
The brothers have the job of delivering criminals to a big prison in the middle of a lake, but the Kumoh family is also part of an alliance against the Orochi. Something the two younger brothers know nothing about but will soon enough have to learn - the hard way.
One warning: this anime is really sad at times. It does have a somewhat happy ending, but it's often rather dark.
I really liked this one, enough to buy the German mangas. The art and character design is really beautiful, the characters are insteresting and there's one or two big surprises in the plot.
Read more on this article...
For the first time I watched some really short animes, even two of them.
Gugure! Kokkuri-san
Kohina is a little girl who lives alone for some reason. To cope with things, she likes to pretend she's a doll. She also really, really loves instand cup noodles. One day she accidently summons a fox spirit called Kokkuri-san, who wanted to haunt her but then became more of a surrogate mother. Two more spirits start living with them, a pedophile stalking dog spirit and a drinking and gambling playboy Tanuki.
Kohina is really abit weird - she's drawn so weird, so small. And nothing is explained to why she lives all alone, as a little girl. And Inugami, the dog spirit was really creepy and too much of a pedophile, for my taste.
Kokkuri-san and Shigaraki, the Tanuki, were likable characters though. And the alien classmate was hilarious.
Gugure! Kokkuri-san is a light, enjoyable comedy. I really liked the opening credits, too, such a catchy tune.
Orenchi no Furo Jijō
This was one of the surprises. I didn't read the details before and so I was surprised that the episodes were just a few minutes long! But it soon became one of my favourites this season.
Tatsumi is a young man who lives alone. One day he finds someone collapsed on the riverbank and after rushing to help, he finds it's a merman. Wakasa from then on continues to live in Tatsumis bathtub. Wakasa is a bit childish, very clueless about the human world, enthusiastic and easy to impress. Sometimes his friends visit, there's Takasu the octopus who's good at fixing things and giving massages, Mikuni, the jellyfish who can shrink and doesn't need food and Maki, the tiny hermit crab.
It's really a bit of a strange set-up and with just about 4 minutes per episode there's not much of a plot. Of course there's some yaoi innuendos going on, but it's only hints for the fangirls, the anime itself is harmless. The opening is strange, too, it looks much more dramatic while the anime itself is pretty light-hearted.
Akatsuki no Yona
Yona is the princess of a small country, the only child of her kind father. She's in love with her gentle cousin Su-won, one of her two childhood friends. The other one is General Hak Son, a famous young warrior. On her sixteenth birthday, just when she decided to tell her father that she intends to pursue her childhood love, she sees her father being murdered by just this man, Sun-Won. Completely shocked, she's about to be killed, too, but Hak manages to save her and escape with her. Constantly on the run and in hiding, she takes some time to process what happened. Meanwhile Sun-won is crowned as the new king. Yona then decides to seek the help of four mythical humans with dragon.blood to take action.
At first this looked like another reverse harem with the annoying, helpless "heroine". But it's actually different. While Yona is suffering at first, I think it's rather understandable considering what she just had to go through. She gets herself together after a while and starts taking responsibility and changing and growing stronger.
Still, at the beginning it feels more like it's actually about Hak, he seems more like the main person.
I also like that Sun-won is not portrayed as a completely evil person. Even after you see him coldly killing his uncle, you're still not sure what drove him and whether he wasn't right after all...
This anime is going on for more than this season, so there's still time to catch on.
Danna ga Nani wo Itteiru ka Wakaranai Ken
As long as the title is, as short are the episodes, again only about 3 minutes. And of course, there's not much of a plot, it's more a slice-of-life anime.
Kaoro is a hard-working OL (office lady) who for some reason married an otaku. That's really all there is to day about the story.
It's funny though I probably didn't understand half of the references to other anime. But it's not as good as Orenchi no Furo Jijou.
Donten ni Warau
The three Kumoh brothers Tenka, Soramaru and Chuutarou live in a shrine together with former ninja Shirasu in an area where the sky is always cloudy. The reason for this, according to a myth, is that the region is cursed by a giant demon snake called Orochi who resides there and is reborn every 300 years within a human host.
The brothers have the job of delivering criminals to a big prison in the middle of a lake, but the Kumoh family is also part of an alliance against the Orochi. Something the two younger brothers know nothing about but will soon enough have to learn - the hard way.
One warning: this anime is really sad at times. It does have a somewhat happy ending, but it's often rather dark.
I really liked this one, enough to buy the German mangas. The art and character design is really beautiful, the characters are insteresting and there's one or two big surprises in the plot.
Read more on this article...
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