Some of these are from a couple weeks ago, but sinc this is my first batch I might as well include what I’ve taken so far:

Screenshot 1:

Anime: Hayate no Gotoku 2
Episode: 23
Why I Took It: This is exactly what I do when I have a ton of work to do, except Hinagiku actually looks kinda cute doing it.

Screenshot 2:

Anime: Umineko no Naku Koro Ni
Episode: 11
Why I Took It: This is from a long time ago, but when I first saw this scene I instantly thought Tako Luka! No one can tell me that Maria doesn’t look like a head with octopus tentacles sticking out right now. The creepiness factor just skyrocketed because of the resemblance.

Screenshot 3:

Anime: A Certain Scientific Railgun
Episode: 6
Why I Took It: I think the screenshot speaks for itself. Kuroko is AWESOME!

Screenshot 4:

Anime: Kobato
Episode: 3
Why I Took It: Holy crap, it’s Chii (Chobits), and there’s two of her!

Screenshot 5:

Anime: Seitokai no Ichizon
Episode: 4
Why I Took It: This was just too adorable, even if the cover of that book she’s holding had to be censored.

Screenshot 6:

Anime: Umineko no Naku Koro Ni
Episode: 19
Why I Took It: A girl jumps onto a car and smashes the roof and just walks away, I just lol’ed at that.

Screenshot 7:

Anime: Seitokai no Ichizon
Episode: 5
Why I Took It: Aka-chan is now my favourite Seitokai character; and I just love the slanted Mio hat.

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I guess I should make a post about this before I completely forget. I got volume 16 of Megami Creators a couple months ago which is when I took these shots so I can’t’ remember who the artists are (and I don’t have this volume with me). Anyways, here is some of the art featured in this volume:

Sometimes I wish the girls here would have the same fashion sense  as this young lady; all I see are jeans and tank tops. Gotta wonder what kind of drink she’s holding though, blue hawaii maybe?

Seeing a girl in a dress would be nice every once in a while too. I think I’ve only ever seen 1 girl wear a dress without there being a special occasion (like a dance or formal event).

The thing about art is that it doesn’t have to make sense. This one looks really nice, but if you take a look at that clock you’ll notice that it’s going through that brick wall.

I was kinda surprised when I finally noticed that this girl was sitting next to a dinosaur fossil since I didn’t notice it at first.

Glowy balls of light always make an image look better.

I didn’t think there was anything spectacular about this one. The black-haired girl’s head seems a bit too far to the left to me.

puppies!

I wish I knew who the artist for this one is, the girl is just so cute.

Never really understood headphone-philes, but there’s a couple pages dedicated to those of you out there. The one on the top left is really nice though.

For anyone interested, Kara no Kyoukai is now available on DVD. I still need to watch that anime.

Both sides of the poster that came with this volume were summer-themed, but I guess it’s kinda late for that now. My favourite out of the two is the first side, it’s hard to beat a combination of nekomimi and striped pantsu ^.^

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Nadesico first aired in 1996 and ran for 26 episodes with 1 movie that came out in If you haven’t been watching anime long enough to know of Nadesico, here’s a quick breakdown of the series from Wikipedia:

The series takes place in the year 2196 and Earth is warring with a race of alien invaders called the “Jovian Lizards”. To combat it, a company called Nergal designs a space battleship, the ND-001 Nadesico. While the ship is powerful and its crew consists of the top civilian experts in their fields, these individuals tend to have “some slight personality disorders”.

The primary protagonist, Akito Tenkawa, is a boy with a mysterious past; once a resident of Mars’ Utopia colony, he escaped its destruction by the Jovian Lizards and arrived on Earth, with no memory of how he got there but a terrible fear of the invaders. He hates fighting and only wants to be a chef, however, he is constantly called on to act as a pilot of one of the Nadesico’s Aestivalis – humanoid combat robots. While on board the Nadesico, Akito has more problems to deal with than just the Jovians; nearly all the female members of the crew, especially the vessel’s captain Yurika Misumaru, seem to be head over heels in love with him, though all he wants to do is cook and watch his favorite anime, Gekigangar III.
 

I think the crew’s “slight personality disorders” is really what give Nadesico its high entertainment value. For example, Yurika’s ditzy and sometimes absent-minded behaviour combined with her role as captain of the Nadesico makes for some comedic scenes as she tries to win over Akito’s heart. However, the heavy industries company, Nergal, which built the Nadesico didn’t choose Yurika to be the captain for nothing. Time and time again Yurika is able to step up to the plate and prove her abilities as captain by overcoming adverse conditions.

Yurika’s moments in the spotlight is also something I enjoyed in Nadesico but find lacking in other anime. Unlike other anime where winning battles depends on how much you believe in yourself/friends/special powers, battles in Nadesico are won with a sound strategy (and sometimes overwhelming firepower). My favourite battle was when the Nadesico was fighting a ship with a new weapon that they couldn’t defend against. After failing to run away, they were able to fight back by shutting off all of their systems (essentially becoming invisible) and playing a game of cat and mouse. I enjoy these types of battles over ones where the protagonists win with no real strategy and only because they now “believe” they can win.

 Very few anime have their characters thought out as well as the characters in Nadesico. In elementary school, I was taught that one of the major components of any story is character development, something that I thought was done pretty well here. Akito, for one, starts off as an apathetic character wanting nothing to do with the war, but with all that’s happening around him, he begins to take on an active role in the fight against the Jovians. The death of a close friend (yes, a main character dies) helps with Akito’s development as a character as he experiences sorrow, anger, and helplessness; and finds a way to overcome these feelings and become stronger.

One little thing that the director of Nadesico, Tatsuo Sato, did which I really liked was that he researched the material he put into the anime. What I mean is that unlike other sci-fi stories where almost everything is made up, the stuff about bosons and time travel might be possible, based on what was known in the 90’s. I actually got interested in that stuff way back and read a bunch of articles on the subject. Thanks to Nadesico, I aced elementary quantum physics in high school. Of course, we won’t know if any of the stuff in Nadesico is actually possible until the Large Hadron Collider gets fixed and is up and running.

Despite all the seriousness in Nadesico, there’s actually quite  bit of humour, mainly from all the girls fighting over Akito, but there is some stuff worked into the story. The Jovians, for example, treat a certain robot anime as their bible and worship the main characters; they even have little mecha figures which you can see in some scenes. There was also one fanservice episode in which an idol competition was held to determine the next captain of the Nadesico. 

Speaking of fanservice, that’s another thing that older series like Nadesico did differently (and I think better). Rather than bombarding viewers with panty shots ever 2-3 minutes, there were 1 or 2 episodes dedicated to dressing up the female characters in swimsuits and whatnot.  I think doing it this way is better since it doesn’t take away from the main plot, but still gives some viewers what they want.

Of course, some people might not agree with me about Nadesico being the best anime ever, but if you haven’t seen it then I suggest you at least watch the first three episodes. If you don’t like it after that, then there’s not much I can do for you. For people that have seen Nadesico, what did you think of it?

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Anyways, a major part of being a hikikomori is not stepping out of your “lair”, be it your room or apartment or in my case, a basement. So after getting home on Friday night I put my shoes away and told myself not to go out until Monday (something I regret now because it looks like that was the last weekend this year with temperatures above freezing). The next step would be the irregular sleep schedule. I could only think of one way to change my sleeping habits on such short notice and that was to stay up as long as I could on Friday night. It was sometime around 4am when I fell asleep and I have no clue when I woke up. Considering the fact that I live in a basement with the windows covered, once my sleep schedule was thrown off, it didn’t matter to me whether it was night or day and so I just took naps whenever I was tired. Thinking back on it, I can’t even make a distinction between Saturday and Sunday since I had no clue when one day ended and the other started.

Since hikikomori don’t go out, I’d imagine they have a large store of frozen and instant foods, so that was what I ate during my weekend. I didn’t feel too bad about my diet afterwards, but I can only imagine how unhealthy someone would be after a long period of only eating that stuff. Then again, there are hikikomori out there that still live with their parents so they get healthy home-cooked meals every day, even if it’s just slid through the door.

So you’re probably wondering what I did over my weekend as a hiki. According to wikipedia, some activities of hiki’s are “watching TV, drawing, playing computer games, surfing the Internet, reading, listening to music, and other non-social activities.” I decided to go with games, surfing the internet, and listening to music for my non-social activities. These three activities can all be done from my bed so for the whole weekend (minus going to the washroom and getting food) I was actually in bed. At first it was great because I could stay wrapped in my warm blanket while on my laptop or eating and if I got tired I just rolled over and went to sleep. By the end of the weekend though I just felt really dirty, probably due to having so many crumbs in bed and not showering or changing clothes for the weekend.

After living a weekend like a hiki, all I can say is that you’ve gotta be nuts if you actually want to live like this and isolate yourself from the world. The lack of human contact was already starting to have an affect on me even though it was only for a weekend; I was finding myself keeping the spider in my washroom company. The hiki lifestyle is also very different. Taking naps at random times, eating packaged foods, and just surfing the web made me feel like I was rotting away in my room since I really wasn’t doing anything. It really makes you want to go outside and take a walk or go to the mall just so it feels like you’re actually doing something. I should also mention that since I didn’t say a word for a whole weekend, the first sentence or two that came out of my mouth on Monday morning were less comprehensible than I would have liked. I guess that’s why some hiki’s have a hard time speaking to people.

Now when I see people online bragging about how long they were able to live as a hiki, I just ask why? Is rotting away at home for a certain number of months or years really something to be proud of? It’s like saying you’re better than someone because you spent more time than them in solitary confinement. I guess I’ll never understand people that voluntarily live as hikikomori. The ones that are mentally ill though or feel they have no other choice really need help, and I hope they get it.

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Once again viewers are exposed to the basics of trade such as supply and demand, which is useful to know if you happen to be a merchant in the middle ages. I didn’t think Spice and Wolf II had much to offer in terms of educating the average Joe about economics compared to the first season. There was a bit about timing the market, but I’m sure anyone with experience doing that can tell you how things usually end up. The rest of Lawrence’s business dealings seemed to deal more with trusting the other party and had very little explanation of his profit-making techniques.

Although I was upset that there was less emphasis on economics this season, it was mainly due to spending more time developing the relationship between Lawrence and Horo. The romance factor wasn’t very prominent in the first season, but they did bump it up a bit in Spice and Wolf II. At the beginning of the series, Lawrence wouldn’t have made any deals that didn’t make any profit, and Horo just cared about getting back to her hometown. As the show progresses, Lawrence starts to take risks in order to keep Horo close, and whenever he’s alone with a woman Horo starts to get suspicious. It’s not the kind of romance you’d find in a movie, but a jealous Horo is cute sometimes.

The animation for Spice and Wolf II wasn’t the greatest, but it was better than the average anime. The backgrounds had quite a bit of detail to them and really helped set the atmosphere in some parts of the series. The characters could have used a little improvement though. At some points Lawrence’s unshaved facial hair just looked like a kid scribbled on his chin. On the other hand, I thought Horo looked perfect throughout the series, not to mention I really like her character design; I guess it’s not surprising considering she’s the main selling point of Spice and Wolf. I’m sure many otaku would like to have their girlfriends (or imaginary girlfriends) dress up as a nekomimi, or in this case an okamimimi (okami = wolf).

The music really didn’t stand out all that much for me. Most of it was really soft and relaxing-sounding, not something I really notice when watching anime. I didn’t find the opening and ending songs were any better either, but if I had to pick one to listen to, it would probably be the ending song since it’s a little bit happier sounding.

Spice and Wolf II is just one of those laid-back anime that you probably wouldn’t regret not watching, but if you’re bored and stuck at home one day it’s a good way to pass the time without boring you even more. Then again, if you’re really into anime girls with animal ears and a tail, then this is a must-watch for you.

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