Strike the Blood is one of my favorite recent anime titles. I've rewatched it several times. A 2-ep OVA is coming out soon, with the first episode supposed to show up on Wednesday. Sunday morning it suddenly occurred to me that I should order it from CDJapan.

They usually preorder a big chunk of BDs for things like this, and if you get your order in soon enough, they will ship so that it arrives on street day. I've been hoping I was lucky, but if I were I'd have been told by now that it's shipped. And I haven't. So it looks like I'll probably get my copy next week.

The second episode is due December 23, and I just ordered one. This time I got in soon enough! (It said, "11 more copies left".)

UPDATE: And somehow the guys at Fapservice already scored a copy (NSFW). They say there's an extensive and uncensored bath scene featuring most of the major female characters.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 11:27 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 168 words, total size 1 kb.

I just saw this:

If God wanted the Red Sox to win the World Series, He wouldn't have created the Yankees.

I think that applies to the Cubs, too.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 09:08 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 30 words, total size 1 kb.

I find it a bit hard to believe that anyone could stand like that without losing their balance and falling over, but I'm willing to grant it on the assumption that it's an advanced Yoga position and that a yoga expert can do it.

On the other hand, I do not believe for a moment that anyone could get into that position without help. I don't believe anyone could raise their foot like that and catch it with their hands without someone else lifting the foot that high. No way. I don't care how good, how flexible, how strong Meme is; not gonna happen.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 02:45 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 107 words, total size 1 kb.

I suppose I should have expected that they were going to stretch this out. Leohart (the usurper) has challenged the good guys to a tournament consisting of seven individual duels and for whatever reason (mainly to prevent a full-out civil war) the good guys have accepted. So they've travelled to Leohart's capital and spend a bunch of time preparing. The rest below the fold.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 02:08 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 433 words, total size 3 kb.

I was going to make a post today about the next episode of Shinmai Maou no Testament BURST but it hasn't come out yet. Sorry about that.

UPDATE: I got confused. Today is Thursday, not Friday. So it'll be coming out tomorrow.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 07:34 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 46 words, total size 1 kb.

The keyword is "card (medium)". What are these (NSFW) from? One of those smartphone games, maybe?

A bunch of them are from High School DxD, but I've also seen Senran Kagura (NSFW) and some idol as a loli maybe? And idolmaster and Madoka? And I've seen a bunch from IkkiTousen, too.

Haruhi?

Negima?

Fate?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 10:11 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 58 words, total size 1 kb.

There are two peculiar things about the dialog in Yozakura Quartet I've been curious about.

First, a lot of the characters (and particularly Hime) greet each other with something that sounds like maidou instead of something like konichiwa. "Maidou" isn't a word but "Maido" means "thank you for your continuing patronage". It's something a clerk in a store would say to a customer. Is that really what she's saying?

Second is more complicated to explain. One of the youkai in the show is named Rin. She works for a ramen shop and does deliveries. She is a zombie.

She doesn't stagger around and say brainz brainz and in fact if you weren't told she was a yousei you wouldn't know it. Regardless, Akine calls her Rinoji. In the show's wiki, that means "Rin-shaped person".

OK, so I got that "ji" means "person". But how do you get "shaped" out of that? Is it Rin no ji that he's saying?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 09:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 163 words, total size 1 kb.

Today French air assets dropped 20 bombs on Raqqa, a town in northern Syria which is the ISIS capital. The bombing targeted military and government installations and "they were all destroyed".

Which is fine, and congratulations to the French. The real question is "what comes next?" Back when Bill Clinton was president, a couple of our embassies in Africa were attacked by Al Qaeda, and he responded with individual bombing attacks -- one each. The results of those attacks may have been serious (though one of them hit an al Qaeda training camp that had been abandoned), but that half-hearted response is a lot of what convinced bin Laden that the US had no balls.

If tomorrow the French say, "Let that be a lesson" and return to quiescence, it's going to have the same result this time. So I want to see the French (how strange it is to be saying this) hit them again and again. This shouldn't be a single response, it should be the beginning of a sustained bombing campaign, and I mean a serious one. Today's bombing raid was made by 12 planes. That's a good start, but there needs to be a lot more than that. They need 40 or 50, each flying a mission every other day.

The worst thing they could do is what Obama has done: just enough bombing so that he can say he's doing it, without being so great as to have any practical significance.

(How odd it is to say this:) I hope Hollande has more balls than Obama.

12 years ago I spent a lot of time cursing at the French. Now it's an odd feeling to find myself placing my hopes in them.

UPDATE: However... though the situation is catastrophic, to some extent it's giving me a bit of schadenfreude.

Obama is the president that the Europeans all hoped for ten years ago. They despised Bush; they wanted an American president who was more European. And with Obama they got one. When he was elected the reaction in Europe was, "America has finally come to its senses."

Well, now they're complaining about it. America is too weak. America won't lead. America (or actually, Obama) won't fight.

America is now trying to free-ride, the way Europe always has. Obama wants to "lead from behind", which is a fancy way of saying "abdicate all responsibilities in the world". Obama wants someone else to do the fighting and take all the risks.

Europe, be careful what you wish for. You might get it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 06:21 PM | Comments (24) | Add Comment
Post contains 427 words, total size 3 kb.

A few days ago I wanted to add a suggestion for a product to a thread on ask.metafilter.com. So I hit google with a few keywords and found the thing at LL Bean. I linked to it, and done. (And as I think about it, the link I followed was one of those "sponsored search results.)

Now I keep getting ads for that thing at LL Bean on web sites all over the place. They're using Google for their ads, and Google has decided that I want to buy thousands of copies of this gizmo.

They aren't giving me "things which are similar", they're giving me the exact thing I linked to originally. It would be annoying if it weren't so funny.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 10:50 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 125 words, total size 1 kb.

I plundered the first Shinmai Maou no Testament series, which I expected to be a total pander akin to High School DxD, which really royally sucked. Such story as it had was merely a skeleton on which to hang fan service, and I assumed this series would be the same way.

So as is my habit in such cases, I turned off the volume, turned off the subtitles, and went through the series backwards, beginning with the last episode, in order to plunder it.

But yesterday I was looking for something to post about, and since I've dropped the two series I was posting about (sorry for not telling you, but they both suck) I thought it might be interesting to see just how BURST was.

Before checking it out, though, I actually watched the first series, in order, with sound on and subtitles active, and you know what?

It is pretty good. Not spectacular, but it is telling an interesting story, and the characters are not charicatures, and though there's a lot of fan service (especially in the BD rip, which is what I was watching), and it's a bit excessive at times (you never thought I'd ever say that, did you?) it actually fits into the story. During the rather extensive fondling sequences I just skipped ahead, and as to the rest, it's nicely drawn.

Having finished it, I downloaded BURST up to ep 6 (the most recent one) and started watching it this afternoon. It picks up right where the previous series ended, and I mean right where, like seconds later in the same scene. And for the first three episodes it is mainly concerned with story. It introduces a lot of new characters and gives us a big reveal about one from the first series, and has lots of action. Then in ep 4 it stalled, and I was afraid they had lost their pace. But it picks back up with eps 5 and 6, and ep 7 should be pretty amazing.

There's still ridiculous groping scenes, which I am still skipping. I could do without the magic spell that requires that. But since it was magic cast by a succubus, I guess it's in character.

I think I'll keep watching.

And now for the pictures, below the fold!! (NSFW)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 08:25 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 696 words, total size 4 kb.