I’d told myself that I wouldn’t watch visual novel adaptations based on some negative stereotype of them that I conjured up. Of course, after watching Byousoku 5 Centimeters, I was in the mood for some more sadface anime. Of course, where else would I get more sadface than some good old visual novel adaptations?

It’s a good thing that I knew where to find some quality ones. Up until this point, I’d dabbled in two. Chaos;HEAD turned out to feature a ridiculously unlikable main character, so I dropped it almost immediately. And I watched School Days out of curiosity, and it lives up to the rumours that it ruins lives. So, I decided to head over to the well of VN adaptations that people won’t shut up about, Kyoto Animation.

Based on the summaries, I decided to go with Clannad. I ended up watching the entire thing in three days. The most surprising thing about Clannad was that none of the characters filled me with rage or made me facepalm. As expected, every episode couldn’t finish without some sort of drama happening, and also expected was the injection of some supernatural happenings. But, I found the characters pretty likable.

This is a big deal, of course. If either the main character or the entire cast pisses me off, that show gets dropped. At the same time, there aren’t too many shows that don’t have at least one character that makes me hate them. I like to point at Honey and Clover as an example of this. H&C has been praised and suggested to me as a quality anime. By all standards, I should be hopping on it without hesitation. It’s a slice of life anime mixed in with a bit of romance and focuses on students at an art school. But I can’t bring myself to keep on watching it because I find every single character annoying.

Anyhow, Clannad has put me over the edge with respect to Kyoani’s visual novel adaptations. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed Kyoani’s work after Lucky Star finished. Clannad has also forced me to actually take a look at what Kyoani’s been doing. I had no idea that Haruhi was only the second thing they did, right after Air, or that Kanon came out right in between Haruhi and Lucky Star, or that Clannad came right after Lucky Star.

Anyhow, I am looking forward to the rest of Clannad After Story, which is actually currently airing. I have picked it up and caught up and I’m anticipating some major sadface moments. And finally, the dango daikazoku is awesome and anyone who disagrees is a terrible human being.

The American Presidential elections are a week away. Time for some comprehensive opinion.

John McCain

My first impression of John McCain was during the primaries, in which he struck me as a very ardent supporter of the Iraq war and as someone who is aggressive and uncompromising when it comes to foreign policy. Later, I picked up on the fact that he wasn’t seen as a Republican and was deeply unpopular with much of the party since he was seen as someone who wasn’t bound by the party line.

In retrospect, his victory in the primaries seems analogous to that of Stephane Dion’s in the Liberal leadership: everyone else was out by default. Romney was a Mormon and wouldn’t get the support of the Evangelical base. Huckabee was unpopular with the corporate Republicans. Giuliani’s strategy just sucked.

However, his biggest mistakes were made in the last few months, leading up to and since both party conventions. Like Hillary Clinton, he began being a respectable second choice should Obama lose, and like Hillary Clinton, McCain began to squander that goodwill by running a dishonest and dirty campaign. And in both cases, as we near draw closer to decision day, both campaigns were imploding.

The problem for McCain is that no one actually likes him, unlike Clinton. Clinton was able to continue to maintain control of her supporters and ultimately brought them over to Obama. McCain’s supporters are clearly prepared to throw him into a ditch the first chance they can get.

The other problem for McCain is that he’s not as cool and collected as Clinton was. Clinton had the stones to continue for a few days before suspending her campaign after June 3. On the other hand, we have McCain acting on impulse, throwing random crap at us since the DNC convention. We’ve had the impulse pick of Sarah Palin as running mate, the haphazard drama over the financial crisis, and the inability to stay on message over the last few weeks.

And unlike Clinton, he’s unlikely to have a chance to regain whatever positive opinions the public may have had left of him.

Sarah Palin

Interestingly enough, I had heard of Palin before her pick as running mate for McCain. It was on the PA forums, where people were throwing out possible female Republicans who may take a shot at 2012. At the time, we knew as much about her as we did when they introduced her: a young reformer and wildly popular in her state. And of course, when she was announced, there was a slight panic and speculation about how it might change the race.

This will likely prove to be McCain’s biggest mistake. Palin’s inexperience and ignorance of any issues beyond managing her state was clearly demonstrated in an entire series of interviews. She was under investigation for abuse of power. And yet, she is far more popular than McCain among Republicans. Even now, there is speculation that she’s turning on the campaign and looking out for herself. However, her extreme right-wing views and ignorance probably drove away independents and undecideds that McCain desperately needed.

She started off as a fairly dangerous and aggressive candidate, but ultimately was trounced by both Obama and Biden and has now ended up as a liability to McCain.

Joe Biden

I had three picks for Obama’s running mate: former General Wesley Clark, Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, and Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware. And lucky me, Obama chose Biden.

Biden is one of the senators that I’ve heard about outside of the campaign, and in fact, for a few years now. He’s always struck me as the type of guy that doesn’t take crap and will call you out on your crap. He’s incredibly experienced and is incredibly knowledgeable in foreign affairs. He’s an excellent speaker and is very likable.

I’d watched his speech as Obama introduced him as his running mate. Right out of the gate, he was taking excellent jabs at McCain and introducing his story at the same time. It was then that I knew that Obama made the right choice and that the rest of the campaign was going to be awesome.

I think it speaks volumes about the difference between Obama and McCain in their selection of their running mates. Biden was carefully considered and was chosen to compliment Obama in his administration. Palin was chosen without much vetting and was an obvious political move.

Barack Obama

Like Biden, I’ve been following Obama for a few years, ever since I heard about him on Slashdot. It was my English teacher that said that words have power and Obama is a clear example of this. He is one of the most eloquent and powerful speakers that I’ve personally seen. Even if he didn’t run for president, it’s evident from his speech at the 2004 DNC convention that he’d have a lot of influence.

It bugged me when Obama’s opponents attacked him for his oratory, mostly because it preys on people’s stupidity. People constantly ignore the fact that the world’s most influential leaders are such because they were powerful speakers. The argument that style and substance are mutually exclusive is a retarded one that only stupid people would buy. Unfortunately, the fact that this election might be considered a contest at all is proof that much of America is still dominated by stupid people.

But of course, Obama isn’t all style. His legislative record is proof of this, like the law that’s colloquially known as Google for Government. He has a comprehensive platform. Unlike McCain, he’s able to give detailed explanations of his policies. Beyond his progressive policies, he’s committed to things that everyone should want, like increased government transparency and accountability.

And even if he has relatively little experience to McCain, he’s proved that he’s able to manage and organize a campaign far better than he has. Where he might be inexperienced, he will surround himself with smart people. He’s collected and makes measured decisions. And of course, Obama is intelligent and has a charisma aura and is just plain awesome.

So yeah, I sort of implied that there’d be more days of fall impressions, but I got lazy and wanted to talk about other important things as well. To make up for my failures, I will offer up my watchlist for this season.

From spring

There’s one show that’s still around from spring, and that’s Soul Eater. Soul Eater follows a fairly standard shounen plotline, having to save the world and get powerful and all. The gimmick for this series is that the protagonists are students that fight as weapon/master pairs. Yes, the weapons are people. Also, the overarching evil theme in this world is insanity. But as typical as it might seem, it manages to pull it off with a unique style, and stellar animation and music, and coupled with pretty good pacing, it hasn’t really hit a weak chain of episodes two seasons in.

From summer

Summer would have been fairly uneventful if it weren’t for Xam’d: Lost Memories. It’s an original BONES production, which you can tell right from the very start, with its style very reminiscent of Eureka Seven. And like Eureka Seven, it offers an interesting and mysterious world to explore with a very strong cast of characters and very high production quality. It’s gone through half the series and it is shaping up to surpass Eureka Seven. The only downside is the terrible, terrible method of distribution: exclusively on the Playstation Network.

Fall!

Although it started strong, I had a feeling that Toradora! might end up making me hate the characters. I’m glad to say that three episodes in, that hasn’t been the case. At the same time, it’s been entertaining, and I’m looking forward to seeing where the series takes us.

The most surprising show I picked up this season was Casshern Sins. I’d seen a tiny pic of it in the fall preview picture and wasn’t too impressed with it, but it turned out to be completely unrepresentative of what the actual show was like. I’m not too familiar with Casshern, which is from the 70s. However, what I did know was that Casshern Sins has really beautiful art and animation and a very distinct style, which is given to us by Madhouse, the fine studio that brought us Death Note. The setting and story are still a mystery, but it’s a really dark one. I can’t see this one going wrong.

Kuroshitsuji was interesting based on the description, but was panned almost universally as being nothing more than yaoi-bait. Luckily, we were all proven wrong, and we were treated to a dark rendition of England and a first episode that oscillated between amusing and creepy. Having a look at the manga, I’m still not entirely sure where it’s going, but it looks like it shouldn’t be too bad.

The first season of Gundam 00 felt rushed to me, because of the fact that it seemed like the writers were trying to do a typical 50 episode Gundam series in 25 episodes. Now, I suspect that that was what they were trying to do for whatever reason, but what we have left in the second season is something that doesn’t fall into that sequence of events anymore. So far, Gundam 00 has managed to stay interesting, as we take off four years after the end of the first season. If it continues to go well, it may make me reconsider how I thought about the first season.

The most surprising first episodes of a series this season goes to Ga-Rei Zero for a super plot twist at the end of not one, but two episodes. It’s certainly got me hooked and I hope that it will continue to deliver interesting stuff while we get into the series proper. Also, I enjoyed the fights, especially the one with the bike.

The only anime that I’m still not 100% sure about is Skip Beat. I’d heard excellent things about the manga, and in my impatience while waiting for the second and third episodes to be subbed, I dove into it. It’s been pretty good so far and it’s got me fairly interested in Kyouko’s development as an actress. The anime looks kind of off visually, which kind of bothers me. I guess I’ll reserve judgement for it later.

The show I was waiting for this season was Nodame Cantabile Paris Chapter. So far, it’s been more Nodame Cantabile, which is everything I could have hoped for. The only thing that is bothering me is JC Staff’s pacing. A huge amount of stuff takes place in Paris in the manga, and based on the characters that I’ve seen in the OP and the pacing of the second episode, the amount of content that’s potentially going to be dropped is fairly worrisome.

I haven’t seen Legend of Galactic Heroes and being a 100+ episode OVA released over the span of a decade, I probably never will. However, I hear that Tytania could turn out to be a taste of that epic space opera. So far, it has brought space combat at a grand scale, political maneuverings in houses of nobility, and a hotshot protagonist with Kamina’s voice. What could go wrong?

I finally watched Byousoku 5 Centimeters the other day. This was done at the prodding and poking of a friend a while ago and I just wasn’t in the mood for an animu movie at the time. This suggestion resurfaced as I checked out Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora, which attracted me because of the background art.

Anyhow, I acquired a 1080p version without considering whether or not my computer could handle it. Thankfully, it seemed fine, but barely. Even though I expected it to be visually stunning, my first impressions were still of the amazingly beautiful art and the stunning shots. I couldn’t believe Natsu no Sora was compared to this. While that had almost photorealistic backgrounds, and Byousoku 5 Centimeters didn’t, the style and art simply blew it out of the water.

Byousoku 5 Centimeters is a series of three short stories about two childhood friends who, under various circumstances, are forced to move away from each other, gradually growing further apart physically and emotionally. During each story, we see them at a different point in their lives, starting in elementary school and ending up as adults. Each story is about the length of a normal anime episode, so the entire movie ends up being about an hour long.

The movie is sad. Don’t watch it unless you’re prepared to have your day ruined. Seriously. The sadness is something that is pervasive throughout the entire movie. It’s in the voices of the characters as they’re talking. It’s in the sad piano music and it’s in the stunning scenery. It’s fairly depressing.

I’d come into it knowing that it wouldn’t end happily, but after I started, I sort of couldn’t help but hope, especially as the first episode ended with them meeting once more after they’d moved away already. It didn’t seem that bad during the second episode either, until, of course, he’s all like “I wonder when I got into the habit of sending text messages to no one…” At which point I began to feel that the ending was not going to be swell. And of course, in the last episode, we see the ring, and I know it’s over.

So yeah, go ahead and watch it, and get blown away by the art and feel terrible emotionally afterwards.

So I’ve decided that web development isn’t for me and I can see why everyone has a fairly negative view of web development.

I tried to keep an open mind when applying for jobs last term and ended up working at a web development studio. I went through about a week or two of mindless work, doing tasks that really should be scripted. Then, I went through another week or so of learning new technologies that I’d need to know to work on development. So I managed to finally get around to having a look at Flex, PHP, JSP, and get a better understanding of JavaScript, which was a surprisingly interesting language.

After that I began to get smaller development projects, which consisted of adding some sort of functionality in some existing site. It was at this point that I realized that all web programming was was gluing various objects together and sticking a smidgeon of simple logic in between. In other words, I’d gotten into the type of development I so desperately tried to avoid.

But I guess I understand now what it was that I was so interested in. When I have nothing to do, I like to think about myself all meta-like. I thought that I was interested in web development and it turned out I wasn’t. I was really into web standards though, what with the XHTML and CSS and the whole semantic web and separating structure and view.

It turns out I was interested in languages. I’m far more interested in XHTML and understanding its uses and purpose than actually writing it. The most interesting technology I learned was JavaScript, when I learned that it was a functional programming language and I went off to play around with it and learn more about functional programming. I was far more interested in learning the design philosophy and architecture behind Flex than learning how to throw some buttons on a page.

So, note to self: don’t get a job programming for businesses.