Took quite a long time to finish this one this time around mainly because of the exams and streak of assignments around the end of last year; been floating around the final chapter that whole period lol. It’s another sad one continuing from the style of the first book, this time with a little more depth. It was actually quite thought provoking, for one it effectively made me feel that zoos are nothing but a business of pure evil where humanity capitalize from the exoticism and rarity of animals imposed by humanity themselves, and that endangered species preservation is self serving. Anyway, as mentioned before in a post awhile back, volume 2 takes place in the same time frame as volume 1 but from a different perspective with a different group of characters at a different part of town.

The prototype illustration by Cuteg. The final Hime had twintails as default.

Tounishi Atsuya, the main character this time, is a first year highschooler whose trait is a scary face that always got him in trouble for things he didn’t do. After a fall out with authorities at school, Atsuya went to a hidden hill to cool off, the same hill where Fumiya met Mira, and he stumbles upon Hime, the witch who ran from paradise to visit the human world. And the story develops from there. As Atsuya has long been haunted with unjustified prejudices for his looks, he has all but lost most of his faith in the world and lives a loose life in apathy. The story basically portrays his changing world view as he spends more time with Hime who finds amusement in everything she sees in the human world. Alas not to forget Uchi Majo 1 was essentially a tragic tale (kind of), Uchi Majo 2 is no exception. The theme this time is perhaps ‘undefiable difference in origins and position’, drawing on the inevitability of separation in the face of disallowing circumstances of the world regardless of how much two wants to be together. I don’t know how to write further without spoiling lol. The trait of the series whereby minimal number of characters are used to draw the plot also lives on here where the whole story fundamentally revolves around only Atsuya and Hime. Really really good read, I would recommend this to anyone.

Next book I’ll read should be Shakunetsu no Kobayakawa san.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 13,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Seriously, of my two decade of life so far 2011 was definitely one that I felt most brief. Which can also mean it was a generally uneventful or uninteresting year. So anyway, it’s the last day of 2011 and I was thinking about taking a picture of the stuffs I bought in 2011. 2011 also marks the years of my light-novel boom which would explain the disproportionately large amount of light-novels compared to the other stuffs. There’s also White Knight Chronicles 2 and El Shaddai but those two aren’t with me right now.

Prudence in spending would be a fitting resolution for me during the new year.

I’m… so behind on the whole series…

Really have to find time to get to Shining Wind soon… been saying that for 5 years though lol… then theres Exa, Hearts, or what not… argh…

And my assignment is going nowhere too, yay!

It’s primarily for the PC this time it seems.  Service planned to commence sometime in 2012. Website is here.

I’ll be even happier if Sega finally decides to make a Phantasy Star Portable 3 though lol, just please don’t jump on the Vita bandwagon yet…

Went to catch Mission Impossible Ghost Recon with a friend today in the new IMAX theater nearby, god that was expensive. I won’t deny the experience was ok but… god that was expensive lol. Also, not sure if it’s because of the nature of the show itself but all the motion blur effects from the fast action kind of undermined the picture clarity of IMAX so it’s kind of underwhelming in that sense. As for MI itself, I’ll say it was average. Somehow I just can’t help but feel unconvinced with the story; quite a few questionable areas here and there. Being an action film, the action itself was ok.

In reality, I’ve been spending my days doing nothing productive.

Deja vu?

College classes ended for me as of last week, kind of. Taking the exams and a weird assignment stuck in the middle of the holidays out of the account, last week technically marks the end of college for 2011 as well as the final days for some of my one semester senior classmates. With it also was the end of my month long assignment death rush (almost, there is one more in the holidays like I said >_>) and now I can actually have some time of my own again. Along with that also came a lot of my anticipated goodies; stuff below.

Along the way my Thrive and my 3 books orders (HataMaou 3, MaouMura 2, OtoIsho 3) arrive, also another one I got sometime between them (Strawberry Vampire by Kaoru). Only thing left for 2011 is the BRS figma. No idea when that one’s coming. I’m still reading UchiMajo2 and then there’s still Shakunetsu no Kobayakawa-san from the last batch of books before I can dig into this new pile. Lots of stuff to read~ Also, D-frag 5 will be out around the end of December so I’ll probably be going to Kinokuniya again just for that :D My Japanese classes would be resuming from this coming Tuesday onwards as well so that’s another thing to look forward to I guess. I’m reading more than I’m speaking this days lol.

…

ok, there’s still the exam in two weeks time… BUT SCREW THAT!!!

THRIVE COME TO MIIIII

And here’s a recent revival of a certain nostalgia.

I’ll need to sit down one of these days to watch the latest Flowering Night… ON THE TAB BABY!

hahaha, damn

2 out of 5 assignments are done, one should be done by tonight, another one should be done by tomorrow, and the last one should be postponed up to the space and beyond!

And my Thrive will be arriving on Tuesday. HELL YEAH! Just hope everything’s done by then so I don’t get distracted the hell out of myself lol

And another batch of book orders may arrive in the next coming weekend.

And my Japanese classes should be resuming on the 6th of December after so long.

And something else.

And here’s some Flandre.

Damn I miss gaming…

It continues on with its formula of no apparent grand progress but with some character development; centering on Hastur and Lhuhy (not sure of the proper romanisation for that). This time, we learn that Cthulhu was responsible for the PSN hacking, and that FF14 was bad enough to warrant an intergalactic internet shutdown. lol, I’m serious.

At the pace I’m going, I might even be able to complete all my assignments within this week and have an extra week for whatever before the first due date. Awesumz!

As long as I don’t get too confident.

…

Damn I can’t wait for my Thrive!

Toshiba Thrive 16gb will be arriving around the end of this month.

There 4 assignments that due in the next 2 to 3 weeks. Each of the about 2500 words in length. Had only done 500 for one of them so far.

Not really playing any games these days because of the fear of towards the assignments.

Not really doing assignments because of procrastination (and a great deal of other distractions and easy gratification).

The vegetable life.

EDIT: Turns out ’4 assignments’ was really actually ’5 assignments’ ＼（^o^）／

Here’s a clip from half a decade ago, which theme song was from several decades ago.

Done reading this today. Last Kiss by Sato Kei is quite an old book, released around nine years ago in 2002… ok, maybe not prehistorically ancient but old enough. In that sense, this review would have been 9 years too late lol.

Anyway, the story is about the one last summer holiday the main hero Izaki Tomohiro spends with his younger sister Izaki Yuka, who is ailing with some form of terminal bone marrow disease or malfunction or something like that. Interesting point is that the brother speaks in a Kansai dialect so it was a nice opportunity to learn that.

While the theme and setting is quite cliched — brother with ailing sister, etc, something along the lines of Kana Little Sister — the story still delivers quite nicely. It’s a tragic story, of course; how Tomohiro gradually reflects back and regret on how he used avoid his sister all along from the past leading up till that summer the more time he spends with her was quite touching. That coupled with Yuka’s dairy at the end that described what Yuka really felt and hid away during all those time was just heartwrenching. All in all, the story structure was effective in drawing emotions. I liked it.

Well, that’s another book done. Last Kiss following right up after Uchi no Majo, that was two consecutive sad/serious lightnovels in a row there. For the sake of natural balance I’d probably go for the comedy Nyarko next, maybe.

I may love you, but I may not respect you.

I may respect you, but I may not love you.

Or any combination of those booleans.

What people get from me is what people have earned from me.

Superficial idiots. All of them…

If there was any of those things that removes all rationale, leaving only the most basic of desires and motivation, I’d probably had been the world’s greatest murderer, or hero; depending on the viewing perspective.

There is nothing beautiful about homo sapiens.

The full video would be released next year it seems. Great stuff as always.

P.S. I’ve been posting everything about Impulse all this time, maybe I should have a tag for him. hmm…

（ﾟДﾟ）ｵｴｯ

Ok, well, I was supposed to be ultra busy this weekend because of a certain group assignment being due this coming Tuesday but I was held back by completely incompetent group members who just can’t do things right and  in time, and since my part heavily depends on their part, without theirs properly done I can’t do anything despite it all. And they go about with their excuses for not finishing any earlier, so they can have weeks for it while I have only a day or two? Smart fuck. Anyway~ so I had time, so just to get my mind off the shitty world I went and finished White Knight Chronicles 2 yesterday, started El Shaddai a few hours after that, and completed El Shaddai today. Nice game, better than I expected actually. The trial didn’t really did it justice I guess; it just gets better along with all the features and skills that gradually gets unlocked later on. Particularly liked the whole art direction of the game; feels like a trip through R’lyeh or something lol. Definitely may not be everyone’s cup of tea but me gusta.

Stuff I got this time includes

• Haiyore! Nyarko-san 8
• Uchi no Majo Shirimasen ka? 2
• Shakunetsu no Kobayakawa-san
• Last Kiss
• Manga de Wakaru Shinryounaika 4
• Nekogami Yaoyorozu 5
• Ice Cream Baby sugary

lol, there, I went and got the second book of Ice Cream Baby right after the first yesterday. Incidentally, I was just about done reading the first book this morning so the second book came just in time. The two books were actually released a year apart but that doesn’t really apply to me in this case lol.

As for all those new goodies, maybe I’ll read Last Kiss first. That one’s legendary.

Later on at night, I went out to consolidate a deal and finally got myself this:

Not really sure when I’ll be getting around to it, but Yukito, I’m sure you’re happy now lol. Sonna soubi de daijoubu ka? DAIJOUBUDA! MONDAINAI!

Anyway, went out to catch Sector 7 in the cinemas today with a friend. It’s some Korean monster movie taking place in an oil rig. I’m not calling it horror because it feels more action than horror; perhaps due to the movie producers deciding to reveal the monster quite early in the movie so out the window most of the suspense element went. That, and I noticed the movie used a lot of stylized camerawork, slowdowns and those kind of techniques that’s usually confined to action and would look absolutely wtf in a typical horror.

Horror? Not much there is to be afraid of if everyone's armed...

I can’t help but note the monster reminds me of Lost Planet lol… and the monster’s cosmetic change in the end looks cool. As for the story, maybe because we went in almost half an hour late so I missed most of the context but I was finding many of actions and decisions of the characters strange, I have absolutely no idea what their motivation was; why so adamant at staying? Why are there so little personnel working on an oil rig? etc. Another thing that bugged me was the persistence of the monster to actually go to the trouble of looking for and killing each of the human characters, not to eat them or for breeding, but just for the sake of killing them. Unless one argues revenge (then we are assuming the monster is sentient, but I don’t believe so), the course of action the monster actually takes is absolutely questionable. In the principle of self-preservation, if something’s harming an animal in anyway (more so if burning yit alive), with all its might the animal would leave the harming thing, run away, and avoid it for the rest of its life. Much more so when there really isn’t any survival reasons to persevere (e.g. monster  not eating victims or using them for anything). Of course, the human side didn’t stay unharmed all the while but there’s something really masochistic about the monster in this film that just persistently comes back for more injuries. I mean, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhes, the fly, the xenomorphs, they all had some sorts of reasons to attack people. That aside, the story progression was also very straightforward with absolutely no sidetracking or subplots so the movie feels compact and shorter than what it really is. With all that said, it was a nice action movie (action movie, yes).

After that, I went around to a book shop and got myself this ↓

The book format is not in landscape, just that the cover's horizontal.

Never mentioned it in the blog (lol, I’m just never short of those am I) but, along with several others which I still haven’t found, I’ve been searching for this in a very long time. Not that easy to find because it’s somewhat old by now. So yeah, finally found it. In the very same book shop I also saw the second volume which I didn’t even knew existed, but since after lunch and the movie I only have enough left for just one so I didn’t get the second. At home I learned that the second book came out just two days ago, what luck lol. At the same time I’ve also received a mail telling me my orders in Kinokuniya has arrived so maybe I’ll get the second book together with those stuff over there. Well, I’ve been quite down these few days. Some diabetically charged moeness may be just what I need to cheer up a little.

That’s the effect of turning from mostly internal to partially external for me. Just partial and this is what I got, what more to expect with the decades of life ahead? Perhaps the only true way out is for me to achieve my dream, my greatest dream. Any other outcome and my psyche is doomed. Lovecraft, more likely than you think.

Anyway~

p.s. material urge sure dies with time. I remember how I used to itch and rage restlessly wanting to play Tales of Xillia in the past ever since I first saw the PV the night I got back from Japan last year and later despite glaring doubts, but after months later in the present I no longer feel the same even though it’s the rage now. Material urges, heh…

sigh…

これは間違いなく日本人の思考に近付きすぎたせだろう、それというか日本人もどきの思考。なんかこう、よく回りの考え方とかみ合わないんだよなぁ…この辺では普段皆気にされない事でも気にしてしまうんだし。こう言ってるけど日本に長いあいだいたらたぶん同じことになるんだろう。初めから判っていた事なんだけどさぁ、本当の問題は自分自身の中にあること。うつすぎる

At first I loled,

and then I wtfed,

and then I loled again.

Black Drill Digger, the result of Kasane Teto in BRS’s shoes. A 30 minutes 3D feature of it is in the making, to be uploaded on Nico Nico Douga when completed. It’s a 31 year old BRS, with drills, possibly also with french bread.

Official trailer:

Official website.

Well, I guess I could do whatever I like now… at least until Sunday anyway…

Unlucky enough to get caught up in some interview by some government agent about some stuff earlier today as well.

Hmm… what else to say…

Ah, right, since having too many Youtube instances per page would epicly rape the ram, I’ll be placing them under the fold from now on so the main page won’t have 7 Youtubes per page at any given time. Not really sure if the instances under the fold gets preloaded anyway or not though. No harm trying I suppose.

aaaaaaaand here’s the last song I heard on an international radio station on the last airplane I was last on last time. Can’t help but reminiscent the breezy winter morning streets of that foreign country every single time I listen to this.

I’ve seen this song uploaded and deleted on Youtube several times already lol. Columbia Music is t3h aggressive. Lets see how long this one survives.

Damn, just look at what you’re reading right now lol

My internal urgency receptors have been completely numbed these days… oh geez

Anyway, here’s to possibly reviving an old tradition

Also unlike how some (ok, probably not many lol) would post up these kind of blog entries accompanied by an image with “*****HITS! THANK YOU!” superimposed on it, I shall defer and put up this awesome audiorgasm instead.

And today:

Finally! Delicious cake! Now if only I was done with Rorona… Currently busy with White Knight Chronicles 2, not to mention Demon Soul is in the queue as well. Hmm…

Ah, also, I’m going to screw refraining from buying books, a whole bunch of awesome shit will be around in two weeks ＼HA HA HA／

p.s. this blog has already exist for 3 years and I can’t believe there never was a tag for delicious cake. Epic fail, I am. A search showed there wasn’t much delicious cake mentioned in here anyway I guess… maybe I’ll make one lol.

This one… is a sad story… I think. ‘Witch’es exists in the world but they aren’t the witches of lore that uses magic or lurks in swamps but instead are a biologically distinct and extremely endangered species of being that looks exactly like human females, called ‘witch’ because they look like one. Kashiwazaki Fumiya is a son of a hardcore ‘witch’ enthusiast who goes all over the world looking for traces of these witches hoping to arrive at the supposed witch’s ‘paradise’. The story starts with news of Fumiya’s father going missing in the Himalayas along with the news of the witch ‘Sayaka’, the last surviving witch, reported dead in custody. At school, Fumiya’s friend, Moriya Ryouta, also a hardcore witch enthusiast, discredits the extinction of witches and suggests that they visit the forest where the authorities found Sayaka 7 years ago, believing that there may still be witches around. There, Fumiya meets the young witch, Mira.

This is quite a gloomy story in disguise. It was heartwarming throughout most of time but deep down there was always that implied sadness and loneliness where Mira, being the last witch in existence, is all alone in the world, in addition to several other things that gets revealed later on which makes it even more saddening. Even at the ending where Fumiya and friends finally managed to secure Mira’s safety for the rest of her life, the price they had to pay was enormous, ultimately making it difficult to tell whether it was a happy or sad ending. Some very complicated feeling it gives. Terrible world Mira lives in, poor Mira. Well, what the ending ultimately mean is very much open to interpretation though. One other thing that stood out earlier on was Fumiya’s incredible whimpiness; several actions he took (of didn’t take) really made me feel like punching him in the face if he was around, but he overcame his cowardice (some of it) towards the end so I suppose that contributes to character development then.

ephemeral

There’s a volume 2 out by now but that one will not be a continuation of Fumiya and Mira’s story but instead is another story of another set of characters taking place concurrently with Fumiya and Mira’s timeline at another place. I guess that means there is no salvation for Fumiya and Mira’s conclusion. Poor Mira… poor Fumiya.

But then again, I currently have a surplus of delivery budget left from BRS. I’m not going to convert it back from yen, such a waste of money to do that. Hmm…

Giving in to impulse, I went ahead and pre-ordered it. Full payment made yesterday. HA HA HA HA

駄目だこいつ・・・ 早くなんとかしないと・・・

Aside from that, I’ve also completed the Black Rock Shooter game on the normal ending earlier this week, better ending some days ago, and should be done with the extra story tonight. Might play a little more after that to try and get all the skills. PS3 been collecting dust again so I guess I’ll get back to that once I’m done here.

Fortunately, for how much I could not control my random impulses internally, I compensate by placing physical resistance in the real world; like locking my money away from myself lol. Thank you, my past self!

I also have premium edition Atelier Totori and Twisted Metal ahead of me. Damn it!

yesterday:

today:

OH YEAH

lack of any more photos is because I haven’t open it any further lol. Kind of busy right now, maybe tonight or tomorrow.

also, I hereby no longer have anything to look forward to for the rest of the year. Nothing epicly major anyway.

Another single week reading! I actually thought this took much shorter than a week until I matched the date of my last light novel blog entry to the calendar just now; my past one week was that uneventful.

Maou na Ano Ko to Murabito A (abbr to Murabito A hereon) is a playful parody of the traditional fantasy medieval JRPG (read, Dragon Quest) where the main character is the Hero and the villain is the Maou (argh, that again, I’m not going ‘devil king’ this time, it’s a lot worst of a context this time… another reason why it’s such a sticky translation). In the world of Murabito A, everyone are naturally assigned a ‘class’ at birth; be it ‘magician’, ‘swordsman’, ‘necromancer’, ‘villager’, etc. However, this does not mean they would have the powers associated with these classes but these ‘classes’ will manifest in their personality; for example, necromancers will have an unusual affinity to corpse or dead bodies, heros would have a great sense of justice and also walk right into home of strangers and start going through closets for items and treasures (just like in RPGs lmao), etc. Eventually as they grow older, they will be sent to other fantasy worlds where they will fully practice their ‘jobs’ in those worlds as their respective classes.

The main character, Satou Jirou, is a ‘villager’. His childhood friend, Hikarigaoka Tsubasa, is a ‘hero’. In the first year in high school, Jirou ends up in the same class with Ryuugamine Ouko, a ‘maou’.  One thing leads to another, Jirou ends up having to hang around Ouko a lot. Since ‘hero’ class people and ‘maou’ class people are natural born enemies of each other, Jirou being around Ouko didn’t sit well with Tsubasa, and stuff happens. That’s the premise of the story without going into spoilers. Below onwards may be spoilerish.

As for my impression, I like how the author played with the theme of ‘people and things around you that you don’t usually notice’ in this novel, with how they portray the people with special ‘classes’ do not take particular notice of the ‘villagers’ unless they explicitly have reasons to approach them just like how player characters in RPGs do not put much attention to the town NPCs unless they have reasons to. That, in the necromancer arc involving the dead cat, was quite thought provoking. It also delivers with its comedy, especially with how Ouko tries to destroy humanity using the most ridiculous methods any maou have ever thought of. While I thought this was a one off novel without any sequel books before reading, after I am done now I’m left thinking that it might get a sequel lol. It is both possible to end the series with the ending in this one book alone, or to continue on after this maybe by winding Jirou up with character of other ‘classes’. The ending for this book wasn’t really a cliffhanger but the final page threw out a sudden vague revelation, and then it just ended. If there is any sequels planned, that part may be the signal or something, but idk. Still, pretty fun read. Next up, ‘Uchi no Majo Shirimasen ka?’.

The camera I usually use wasn't within my immediate surrounding so instead of going to get it, I used my ultra suxorz phone camera instead. In comes photoshop, the pseudo beauty generator.

This time I got these (from right to left):

1. Tsugumomo vol6
2. Touhou Ibarakasen ~ Wild and Horned Hermit vol1
3. Nico Nico Douga Fanbook vol1

Yes, that’s a Nico Nico Douga magazine… oh what have I done… OTL and it’s vol1 zomg…not to mention that it’s so expensive…

Went to watch this with some friends today. Well, it was from around 9:20pm to 11:30pm so… yeah, still today. Conan, barbarian born in a battlefield, grows up in village, village gets destroyed, revenge, damsel in distress, distractions, damsel in another distress, kill villain, venue of final showdown crumbles, ending. Hmm, what to say, well, it delivers decently for action and gar, the story -ignoring the fact that there is nothing the world haven’t seen before- was decently executed too. Can’t really say much about the acting though; I wasn’t paying attention to really tell a difference to be honest, why should I anyway, the carnage is all that matters lol. However some plot devices were of questionable relevance and that kind of stuck with me at the end… like… ‘wait, whatever happened to that!?’, something like that. The presentation of the savageness of it all was nice too, with the degree of gore you’d expect from barbarians fighting using sharp objects and more. The actual movie I saw had quite a number of scenes obviously (jumping bgms) cut out though, no thanks to the local ignorance preservation council (aka the local censorship board). All in all, it’s good if you’re watching it mainly for the violent madness and gar, I suppose. lol

I guess I’ll just have to forget about getting No More Heroes.

lol meh

Done reading Hataraku Maou-sama 2 today. Took much longer than a week this time, crediting to various distractions. Below would be (hints to) spoilers for the first book if you haven’t read it.

Now with Sentucky Fried Chicken as a rival

It is 2 months after the ending of the first book and Lucifer is now a new tenant in Maou Sadao’s household, taking up the name Urushihara Hanzou and acting as the devil king’s IT department of sorts, as well as being a hikikomori. Emilia now has the upper hand against Sadao as she now has access to the means to recovering her powers at anytime unlike Sadao who could only use the collective despair in the events of a tragedy to recover his powers, yet Emilia was hesitant on fighting Sadao immediately as she was starting to doubt the higher ups of the faction she was fighting for. This volume also sees the introduction of Kamazuki Suzuno as the new neighbour that moved in next door to Sadao.

Volume 2 raised an interesting question for the series regarding the reason why Maou wanted to conquering the world. That should map the direction of the series to follow. Although volume 2 was physically thinker than volume 1, volume 2 definitely was less eventful compared to volume 1; it was touching a little bit of many things everywhere but didn’t really go much further, like it’s building up a foundation for something to follow, which it probably is. I’m also curious on how the author would work out succeeding major battles with Sadao requiring a large scale disaster to recover his powers; there was a disaster during the battle with Lucifer, there was a disaster again in the final battle this time, another one the next or the following time would be stretching it too far.

Extra awesome because it manages to collage actual scenes from Touhou 6 to Touhou 12 to correspond with the original Chrono Cross opening.

about MMD杯: MMD, abbreviation for MikuMikuDance, is a freeware 3D program thing mainly used to produce much of the 3D clips in NikoNikoDouga nowadays, character models are created by anyone in the community and useable by everyone else. Ones that cost money have been surfacing these days as well apparently. And MMD杯 (MMD Cup) is an event held every several months or so in Nico where users will create videos using MMD based on a number of themes designated by the MMD Cup committee. Fun comes in where the given themes are mostly single words or phrases and interpretation is open so users often come up with some surprising stuff. 第7回 just means it’s the 7th MMD Cup. The theme in this video is 魔 for 魔理沙 (Marisa)… I’m out of brain juice, just go here if there are anything else you want to know.

EDIT: here is another participant to the competition the following day that kind of embodies what is MMD.

Been playing a lot of doujin games the past week. Might be posting something about those soon. Also, I probably won’t post about Touhou 13 after all, on second thought after the last time I figured there are probably some other millions of blogs out there which has already covered Touhou13 anyway, so yeah.

wtf lmao

but thinking back, I kind of know how those phrases got in there lol. Also, DELICIOUS CAKE!

First thing’s first, after all these years, I still can’t convince myself to an accurate English translation of ‘maou’ (魔王). Commonly it is alluded to something along the lines of ‘devil king’, ‘devil lord’, ‘demon king’, or ‘demon lord’. Sometimes it’s even translated to something extremely ridiculous like ‘magic leader’. What I felt ‘maou’ should be, floats somewhere between the former four common translations. To ease my explanation, I’ll split the words into a graph as follow:

‘Devil’ translates to ‘akuma’ and the ‘ou’(king) of ‘akuma’s IS ‘maou’ so ‘devil king’ is technically correct. However, ‘devil’ have an Abrahamic overtone to it which is wholly absent in ‘maou’; ‘maou’ have no religious nuance. In this case, ‘demon’ is the next best thing but ‘demon’s on the other hand are like minions, it just somehow doesn’t really give justice to ‘maou’. As for ‘lord’, I totally forgot why I even put it in that chart by the time I completed the html for that table lol. Oh well, I’ll just refer to ‘maou’ as devil king in this post.

Devil king Satan, first class McRonalds employee

Like how the title and cover suggests, Hataraku Maou-sama is about a devil king living and working in modern day Tokyo. It’s a twist on the traditional RPG theme of hero vs devil king (yuusha vs maou); at the end of a long struggle between the humans and the demons as the hero Emilia defeats the devil king Satan, the injured Satan along with his only surviving aide Alsiel makes a desperate escape by diving through a dimensional gate, vowing to recuperate his strength and eventually return to conquer back the lands. As with formula, they arrive in modern city Tokyo through the gate which they have no control over its destination and find that they are quickly losing their powers and magic with the complete absence of magical energy (mana?) in this world that they ended up turning into humans themselves. Shocked at turning into humans (they hate and look down on humans) and also the cultural shock of being in a modern day city, Satan and Alsiel concluded that to fulfill their ultimate return to and recapturing their previous world, they first have to replenish their powers lest they aren’t even capable of reopening the gate back, as well as surviving in this new world through out the searching process. Hence the devil king Satan decides to work to earn a living for both of them while Alsiel does research on possible power source in this world while doing the house keeping of their rented apartment. Eventually, in pursuit of Satan, the hero Emilia also arrives in Tokyo. With the hero also experiencing a loss of power, she 0nly manages to maintain a small amount only enough to either open the gate home or kill Satan but not both, hence she’s stuck in a dilemma of whether to kill of Satan immediately and be stuck in this world or to go back to their world without killing Satan and risk having him returning to their world in the future. With a temporary truce (kind of) in place, things get interesting with them constantly bickering but couldn’t kill one another. That’s about how it goes. It’s quite an engrossing read; of all my recent lightnovels this was probably the first where I almost finish half a book in a single sitting. Of course, unlike a science fiction like Otousan to Issho, Hataraku Maou-sama is very much easier to read so that may have contributed to that somewhat.

…

……’devil king’ still sounds weird to me.

Edit: a word for those who didn’t know, this is a representation of the entire Touhou 7 (Youyoumu ~ Perfect Cherry Blossom) in 19 minutes. It is voiceless and this is not a glitch, it is a conscious decision by the producers, if you want a reason to go with that, just stomach this: 【because Touhou being more like a collective fan community entity by now that everyone has a different expectation for the voice of each characters, no one seiyuu will ever fit any one Touhou character without everyone making a fuss (ultra huge fuss(so huge that heads will roll)). Hence there is a subtle agreement amongst many (most?) fans that keeping it true to the game (voiceless) would be the best】 Is that the real reason? I don’t know~ I just made that up lol. But then again, there might be some truth in there… meh, it’ll probably end up being a wall of text and drown this post if I even try to explain properly so I’ll just leave it at that ┐(´ー`)┌

Here’s the trailer from the other time btw.

P.S. btw, earlier this post when I say fan, I’m talking about fans in Japan.

P.S.S. I’ll make another entry about Touhou13 soon. Thinking whether I should take my own screencaps or use those by other people. I know I’m not epic enough to play Touhou and capture screens at the same time lol.

Two daughters now, oh wow

Starting from last Monday, this one clocks at just one week. Not bad, not bad at all. The story takes place shortly after the first book, where Ru are still and Nono are now under Ryuu’s custody in the human township (where Ryuu stays) while the flying capital city (where the world government resides) undergoes recovery from the massive chaos and destruction during the first book. Then a new threat appears and the already half destroyed city gets messed up even further lol. I’ve always thought the citizens must be some extremely resilient and patient people to be able to put up with all the chaos time and time again. One thing I felt in this second book is that it didn’t have as much ‘volume’ as the first book; the first book –while actually covering only one arc– felt as if many things have happened by the time it reaches the end; there were multiple villains and it wasn’t until the very end before the true villain was uncovered hence the characters went through lots of detours along the way. Whereas in the second book, the villain was pretty much identified from the early parts so there was little surprise in terms of direction all the way in. Still, it’s an interesting read. Looking forward to the third book. Next up, Hataraku Maou-sama. Oh, also, I’ve been trying to challenge myself to read two books at the same time! I know it won’t work but anyway, the second one should be Maou na Ano Ko to Murabito A~Osananajimi ha Yuusha desu~

Onto a separate story, today I tried cycling to the neighbouring town where my college was. Something I think I knew but forgot: my college is on higher ground compared to my house OTL Bloody uphill all the way there. Adversely, the trip back was epic quick and effortless. I was practically just sitting on the bicycle on the trip back instead of cycling. Fun stuff.

Well, crediting to financial considerations, it’s not perfectly inline with what I initially wanted but it suffices. Tried it around the neighbourhood recently and realized how much I suck at paddling in a straight line lol. Can’t blame me though, last I rode a bicycle was more than half my entire lifetime ago. Nothing repeated usage won’t overcome though. The saying that one can never forget how to ride a bike once they learned how still somewhat holds true however; took just several seconds for my body to recall the motor memories and it was smooth cycling from then, albeit in a chaotic non-linear path lol.

Anyway, with the public transport getting more and more expensive these days and my utter refusal to join the ever so popular petroleum corporation cock sucking legions, this bicycle will definitely be seeing more daylight.

I need to get pass this…

Gloom and doom aside, I’ve went to watch Captain America with a friend today in an attempt to get my mind off things. If you are to judge purely by good or bad, it is somewhat on the decent-ish side. Action’s fine, story development is fine, some review highlighted the goofy costume but they made fun of it in the movie itself anyway so that’s fine as well. The down side though is the somewhat vague motivation for why the antagonist does what he do, yeah, he believes in and seeks the power of the gods but why? It was briefly hinted that he just wants to destroy the world but again, why? Aside from that, half way through the movie the Nazis just mysteriously disappears and attention goes completely onto Red Skull and his own personal army. Then there’s the blue laser of t3h godz that pulverizes people, explodes objects/buildings/tanks, but gets cleanly deflected by vibranium. Nothing a little suspension of disbelief can’t fix but it varies on how much you are willing to forgive, I suppose.

As for today, I went down to KL with several things in mind; pick up the 6 books I ordered (yar, they arrived much earlier than I though orz), drop by Tokyo Street, maybe also drop by the Digital Lifestyle Expo (DLE), and also to calculate compared the total cost of alternative routes to the city as the cost of the usual route I take are increasing outrageously as of late. My parents caught wind of this and decided they wanted to have a look at the Digital Lifestyle Expo (didn’t really felt compelled to mention the rest of my plans) as well so instead of going there myself using public transports I’ve went with my family in their car so calculation and comparison went down the drain there. As I would not like to be carrying blocks of heavy paper around, the books would come last and since my family came for the DLE anyway, it was DLE first of course. Nothing outstanding there, the Western Digital booth did have some tempting prices for their stuffs but I’m not in a hurry for that so didn’t get them. Moore’s Law; by the time I need stuff later, the price’s going to be much cheaper by then anyway. Next was supposed to be Tokyo Street but the weather looked like it wasn’t planning to stay nice so that didn’t really happen (@#%^#!!!). So I just went and got my books and went home with my parents.

Was just 4 days ago when I was done reading OtoIsho and now I have the second book. I couldn’t wait to read the 2nd book at the point of time 4 days ago when I flipped the final page of the first book but now I’m not really feeling as excited… such speed people could lose their interest lol. Well, I’m not saying I’m not going to read it, it’s definitely the first one of the 6 I’m reading, just saying my hype subsided somewhat in just 4 days. Short attention span, like the rest of the modern world.

Also, this I only found out the other day:

!!!

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Good thing it’s only out in October… >_> Budget overload damn it.

Extra points if this is actually supposed to fill in for Twisted Metal: Black 2 aka Twisted Metal: Harbor City

According to the author, OtoIsho is a simple heartwarming story of a father and daughter’s life in the backdrop of a futuristic science fiction world. Indeed it was a science fiction world; it depicts a world many generations — probably hundreds of generations — after humanity started ‘evolving’ and ultimately gained the ability to subconsciously connect with one another, with time and numbers, this eventually develop into a huge pool of subconscious energy and these evolved people could draw these energy into reality as well, hence also manifesting as something of a pseudo-special powers kind of thing. Presently society are split between those who have completely evolved as the greater majority and no longer identifies themselves as humans, and those who are still old version humans remain a very minority.

Cute cover eh? Never judge a book by its cover lol

In a nutshell, OtoIsho is nowhere near a simple and heartwarming story lol. It has death, assassination, betrayal (many MANY betrayals), stratal discrimination, government conspiracies, and a whole lot of technobabble. Well, I suppose you can say at the heart of it it’s really about the relation between the father and daughter. A review I read also likened OtoIsho more to a hard-boil crime novel which after reading the whole thing, I have to agree as well. The main character, Ryuu, has a pistol and his own special flame blade thing as a weapon so he could defend himself but aren’t particularly specialized at fighting. Of the many battle that took place only a handful had him explicitly defeating the opponent, most others he either escapes or lost. This was a somewhat realistic touch I guess. He would also not get particularly shaken when characters get badly hurt or die, unless if it affects his jobs. That’s hard-boil right there.

lol I’ve skipped on actually touching on the story itself because otherwise I would then have to explain all the technobabbles, which I’m not going to do. Bought this on an impulse thinking it was a one off story but apparently a second book is already out. That’s one of the 6 book orders I said I made. In fact, 5 of the 6 books are light novels. Light novel boom zomg. Well, I’m out of things to read now, time to go back to eroges again.