Random Curiosity

And so OtoBoku ended without much fanfare – nothing really happened besides a dance and some more blushed sighs of ecstasy – but it was consistently entertaining to the point that it left me satisfied, ending up in my “burn” pile rather than a reluctant trip to the recycle bin. As one that’s seen his fair share of hgame based animes, I knew I wasn’t in for much, but c’mon! It was the dazzling debut of the ultimate trap character! Couldn’t there have been some spectacular wardrobe malfunction in front of the whole school? Couldn’t Takako have abused her position of power to get…something extra? Since they’ve already contrived this crazy scenario with some estrogen-enhanced athletically-gifted academically-superior Pantene commercial-worthy guy reaching the upper echelon of an elite girl’s school worthy of Lobelia’s ranks (whew), why not take it all the way instead of just settling back into another typical sappy romance blushfest? Well, it didn’t turn out all that bad so I won’t complain – luckily we have another show to shift our focus to, one with no qualms about finishing what they started.

Continue Reading "FreezeFrame: Extreme Makeover Home-o Edition"

Since it went up about 24 hours ago, the new server has been working very well and I’ve been very happy with the results. We should hopefully now be able to avoid the downtime and poor loading that plagued the previous two weeks, at least for a long time to come. I really want to thank Mentar for helping us get the server and Maestro for spending so much of his valuable time helping set everything up. It’s because of Maestro that everything got transferred over relatively smoothly, so I’m really grateful. I also want to thank my friend Patrik for providing a spot to host images temporarily while we were going through that period. For those of you curious, Mentar was the one who suggested and helped us get a dedicated server out of Germany that was significantly cheaper than the American solutions we were looking at earlier. It should be more than enough to allow this site to grow several times over.

That brings me to the second point of this entry. Instead of the $150 dollars I originally cited, the new server will cost 49 euros (~$63.28) a month. I’m delighted that it’s less expensive than I thought it’d be, but that’s still a hefty amount per month. Taking into considerations all the comments that everyone left when I talked about costs last time, the most reliable course of action was to add ads to the site. While I would have preferred to avoid them, the reality is that not everyone who wants to help out necessarily has the ability to send in a donation. I know this won’t make everyone happy – that includes myself – but I hope those of you who hate ads can try to overlook them. For those of you who love the site and still want to make a donation, I am indeed still holding a donation drive to help cover the costs since I’m not entirely sure how well the ads will do and since every little bit helps. I agree with all the people who said that asking for donations every month is a bad thing, so the goal of this drive will be to cover six months worth of costs. That’s a fairly lofty goal that I’m not sure we’ll meet, but that’s why we have the ads for support too. If you would like to make a donation, please visit AnimeBlogger’s Donation page .

I’d like to once again thank everyone who visits the site. It’s because of you, the reader, that this site has been able to grow so much. There’s a lot to look forward to in the coming months, especially in the spring and fall seasons, so I hope that you’ll stay tuned.

Continue Reading "Random Musings – The New Server And Supporting Random Curiosity"

The server move is now complete, although the DNS changes are still propagating out so some people will get sent to the old server. Those that do will see an error message about bad_httpd_conf. That’s normal, the old server isn’t setup to serve Random Curiosity any longer. (This was unavoidable.)

I apologize for the move taking longer than we expected. We ran into problems with the DNS change, namely the old provider’s system glitched and wouldn’t remove the old DNS entries for several hours. (I had to submit a support ticket to finally get the old entries cleared out.) At one point both IP addresses (old and new servers) were being returned so you had about a 50% chance of getting the correct one. Now the authoritative DNS servers are all returning only the new server IP, but it will take a while for all of the DNS servers on the Internet to sync up. As I mentioned earlier the rule of thumb on this is up to 48 hours for changes to fully propagate. Most people will probably see the change sooner (much sooner), but some may take the full 48 hours.

Comments have been turned back on so feel free to comment again. If you see any strangeness or something not working properly please let us know! We’ve tested the new setup and everything looks to be working but it’s always possible we missed something. :)

Continue Reading "Server Move Complete"

Hey folks, just a quick note:
The server move is in progress RIGHT now. All commenting will be turned off until it’s complete (shouldn’t take too long).

Continue Reading "Server Move In Progress"

As you’ve probably noticed, this site has been hit pretty hard with traffic last and this week – more than it’s ever been. Since the new year started, the numbers have been rising steadily, and this Thursday alone got about 24,000 visits, 145,000 page loads, and 2.4 million hits. The main problems right now are resource/CPU usage and maximum connections per period of time – the latter is the reason the site is giving all those “Service Temporarily Unavailable” messages. I, along with our friendly network administrator Maestro, have been considering moving us to a dedicated solution, but this would cost a lot more per month than either of us can afford.

The two obvious ways to generate the money needed to keep this site running are ads and donations. If we were to run ads, most likely you’d find them on the sidebar and maybe right above the comments box. If we were to ask for donations, it would have to be a monthly thing. I’m not quite sure yet what the target would be, but a safe estimate would be about $150 per month. Running ads might be the most surefire way of getting to that amount, but I hate to do it because it goes against everything I stand for – you may have noticed that there have never been any ads on this site for the year and a half that it’s been up. That being said, I’m also uncomfortable running a monthly donation drive because it would mean that you the readers would have to pay out of your own pockets, and I’m afraid we might not always get that amount.

Neither solution is particularly to my liking, but this site cannot stay as it currently is, so we’ll have to do something. All in all, I’m incredibly frustrated right now because I really don’t want to have to deal with any of this – I just want to blog.

Comments/Suggestions/Solutions are always welcome, especially if you voted “Other” in the poll.

Continue Reading "Random Musings – The Current Situation"

The site was horribly overloaded yesterday, which has caused all the downtime in the past ~20 hours. If you’re having trouble viewing a page, try refreshing until it appears again. Please bear with me as I try to figure out what my options are.
We seem to be fully back online now, thanks to the help of Matthew and DH tech support. You might notice that the Recent Posts and the Poll on the sidebar are gone at the moment – I’m doing a little testing to see their impact on CPU load. Hopefully I’ll be able to re-enable them tomorrow.

Continue Reading "Site Overload"

Come this time of year, most anime series take a week or two break (last year was no different). To clear up any lingering schedule uncertainties that you may have, here is a table of what’s airing and what’s not for shows that I’m currently blogging.

Series	This Week (12/25 to 12/31)	Next Week (1/1 to 1/7)	Following Week (1/8 to 1/14)
Pumpkin Scissors	Episode 13 on Monday	No Episode	Episode 14 on Monday
D.Gray-man	Episode 13 on Tuesday	No Episode	Episode 14 on Tuesday
DEATH NOTE	Episode 12 on Tuesday	No Episode	Episode 13 on Tuesday
Negima!?	Episode 13 on Wednesday	Episode 14 on Thursday	Episode 15 on Wednesday
Bleach	No Episode	Episode 109 on Thursday	Episode 110 on Wednesday
Soukou no Strain	No Episode	No Episode	Episode 10 on Wednesday
Kanon	Episode 13 on Thursday	Episode 14 on Thursday	Episode 15 on Thursday
CODE GEASS	No Episode	Episode 12 on Thursday	Episode 13 on Thursday
Ayakashi Ayashi	No Episode	Episode 13 on Saturday	Episode 14 on Saturday

Please make particular note that Negima!? and Bleach will be airing episodes on Thursday, January 4th. They are being preempted from their normal Wednesday spots on January 3rd by an Enka New Year’s Special and then the Japan vs. Mexico Boxing Grand Prix. Unfortunately, this means that that particular Thursday will be completely hellish for me since it’ll be four shows on one day (maybe even five if I end up watching Saint October). And on that note, you can probably expect the Winter 2007 Shows Preview to go up sometime later this week.

Continue Reading "Random Musings – The Big Winter Break II Edition"

With the end of 2006 almost upon us, here’s a look back at some of the best series this year had to offer. Also included at the end are the final results to the Reader’s Choice Poll.

Disclaimer: These are purely my personal opinion based on the shows that I saw in the past year. For a show to qualify for consideration, it had to have met the requirements I outlined in the Reader’s Choice Poll. There is also a big spoiler for those of you who haven’t seen Canvas2 and still plan to do so, but hopefully that’s not many people.

Continue Reading "The Best of Anime 2006"

The end of the year is always a good time to reflect on what we’ve seen these past four or so seasons. I’m still in the process of writing up my opinions on the Best of Anime 2006, but I was wondering what everyone else thought. And so, listed below are 99 series that aired in the year 2006 (plus “Other” at the very bottom to make an even 100). I have my suspicions on how people will vote, but I’m very curious to see how this really turns out. Choose your favorite and the winner will get included in next week’s post!

Disclaimer – The methodology that I chose was to include series that:

Started in Fall of 2005 but aired the majority of its episodes in 2006. Examples: Mai-Otome, Blood+.

Started in Winter, Spring, or Summer of 2006.

Started in Fall of 2006 and aired the majority of its episodes in 2006. Examples: Soukou no Strain counts because it airs the majority of its episodes in 2006, even if it doesn’t completely finish until February because of large breaks. However, CODE GEASS does not count because it will have only aired 11 episodes by the end of this year. GEASS fans will have to wait for the second poll coming later this week on favorite Fall 2006 series.

Even with these requirements, there were still a few minor/kiddie/unpopular shows that I didn’t include. If for some reason you felt that Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club was the best series this year, then you can always vote under “Other.”

Note: This poll will close Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 at 11:59 PM.

The Reader’s Choice Poll is after the jump.

Continue Reading "Reader’s Choice – Favorite Anime 2006"

A few news items and updates – which you may or may not have already heard about – on this tenth day of December.

Neo Verona… A winged horse… An armored Juliet fighting with a sword… Well, this is a lot different from the Romeo and Juliet I remember reading years ago in junior high. For those of you who haven’t heard, GONZO is going to be animating a version of Shakespeare’s work and is calling it RomeoXJuliet. They still credit Shakespeare for the original story, but this really couldn’t be more different. GONZO’s version is about Romeo as the son of the oppressive Montague dictator and Juliet as the daughter in the Capulet family who rebels against them, all set in an aerial city. It would seem that they’re really only keeping the names and the basic star-crossed lovers concept the same. The reason I’m mentioning this now is because the official site now features a trailer for the show, and it really made me sit up and pay attention. I assume the tragic ending will still be kept intact, but that doesn’t mean that this won’t still be interesting to watch because of all the changes. RomeoXJuliet is set to air April of next year. The official GEASS site and blog have announced that Jinn (of Blood+ OP4) fame will be handling the upcoming second OP and SunSet Swish (of Bleach ED6) fame will be performing the second ED. I’m a bit uncomfortable with Jinn because OP4 was my least favorite out of all the Blood+ songs, but I have high hopes for SunSet Swish. The few of you who still watch Ayakashi Ayashi may have noticed that I didn’t blog yesterday’s episode (never mind last week). I’ve been fairly busy with finals and have an important one coming up Monday, so I decided to go ahead and do OtoBoku in the time I had to spare. Hopefully winter break will allow me some time to catch up. AnimeBlogger needs Donations! Our network administrator Maestro has recently hit some hard times, so I’m once again asking for donations on his behalf to help keep these sites going. All donations would go directly towards our hosting bill, so there’s no danger of money being misused. Even a small bit will go a long way. More information can be found on Maestro’s own blog, which also explains alternate ways to donate if you don’t have a Paypal account through which to do so.

Continue Reading "Random Musings – Neo Romeo And Juliet Edition"

Some of you may be curious why I asked “Have You Seen Kannazuki no Miko?” in the poll. The reason is because of Kyoushirou to Towa no Sora, aka. KnM II. Well, it may not be quite a sequel, but there’s a lot of familiar characters – Chikane is now Kaon, Himeko is now Himiko, and Oogami Souma is now Oogami Jin. And that’s in addition to the new cast (seen in image above). I’m very curious to see if they can pull off as impressive a first episode as KnM had; I still can’t watch the end of that episode without breaking out laughing. It’s just a shame that KOTOKO isn’t doing the OP and ED (at least not the OP, which is being handled by CooRie), though being reminded of this series means that I’ve been listening to agony quite a bit in the past week. I’m looking forward to seeing another mecha/yuri series of KnM caliber, and the promo trailer is quite promising (also on YouTube). Kyoushirou to Towa no Sora is tentatively set to air Fridays at 13:30 on AT-X starting January 5th, 2007.

SHUFFLE! MEMORIES got air-times announced today. Looks like the first airings will be Sundays at 24:00 on Chiba TV starting January 7th, 2007. This probably means that it won’t be R-15 anymore. On the plus side, it’ll be good to hear the old cast at it again. I’m still not entirely sure if this is going to be worth watching, but we’ll see when the time comes.

And finally, I hate finals week. Well, technically it’s weeks (plural) for me, but that just makes it worse. In any case, certain updates this week might be later than usual. I can’t say more than that because I personally don’t know for sure how my schedule will turn out.

Continue Reading "Random Musings – Kannazuki no Miko Redux Edition"

A few news items and updates – which you may or may not have already heard about – on this first day of December.

One of my friends has been watching the super-popular Nodame Cantabile drama and was so thrilled about it that he got me interested in the series. For those of you unfamiliar with Nodame Cantabile, it is a series about a guy who aspires to be a conductor and the free-spirited, piano-playing girl who attaches herself to him. I haven’t seen the drama yet, but I did pick up and read some six volumes of the manga, and I really enjoyed it. I’m planning to watch the drama once I get a chance sometime next month during winter break, but more exciting to me (for now) is the upcoming anime version. The reason is because of the strength of the cast and staff that were announced. They include Kawasumi Ayako voicing Nodame, Seki Tomokazu voicing Chiaki, and Noto Mamiko voicing Sakura. On top of that, it’s being animated by J.C.STAFF and directed by Kasai Kenichi (aka. the director of Honey and Clover). This being a music-oriented series, I’m most interested in hearing the quality of the classical pieces they include and how they use them in the show. And since I like the manga so much, this has quickly become my number one anticipated series for the winter 2007 season. The anime version of Nodame Cantabile will air Thursdays starting January 11th on Fuji TV’s Noitamina block. Many of you who have seen the Death Note live-action movies have seen the actor who plays L, Matsuyama Ken’ichi. Well, Mainichi Shimbun reported yesterday that he will be voicing a role in the anime version of Death Note (as the Shinigami Jealous) and will be also getting a spin-off L movie set to be released in 2008. At the rate they’re going, Jealous should appear in the anime in a month or two. I’ve got the song God Knows… from Suzumiya Haruhi stuck in my head again thanks to this video on YouTube of KURIKINTON FOX playing the song. It sounds really good to me, but I’ll also be the first to admit that I’m not that musically inclined.

Continue Reading "Random Musings – Nodame All-Stars Edition"

Have you ever seen something so pretty and so touching that it made you want to cry? I don’t usually label myself as the sentimental type, but the trailer for Byousoku 5 Centimeter (5 Centimeters Per Second) (mirror) evoked those emotions so easily. I think it’s a combination of the amazing art and a fantastic piano piece. A very similar piece (if not a different part of the same song) is also played in the teaser trailer, which is equally beautiful. I’ve got it playing in the background right now because it’s such a serene, almost sad song. If you haven’t yet seen these trailers, you must go download them right now.

For those of you unfamiliar with this film, it is acclaimed director Shinkai Makoto‘s latest work that features three short stories titled Oukashou, Cosmonaut, and Byousoku 5 Centimeter. They all revolve around a boy named Toono Takaki (voiced by Mizuhashi Kenji) and take place from the early 1990s to the present day. The first and third stories, Oukashou and Byousoku 5 Centimeter, will have two different voice actresses (Kondou Yoshimi and Onoue Ayaka) playing the part of a girl named Shinohara Akari. It seems that Takaki and Akari got separated at the same time they graduated from elementary school, and the Oukashou part is about his reunion with her. The second story Cosmonaut is about Takaki after that reunion told from the point of view of a classmate named Sumita Kanae (voiced by Hanamura Satomi) who has feelings for him. The third and final Byousoku 5 Centimeter is the title work that depicts the wandering of their souls once they’ve grown up. The movie’s theme song is going to be Yamazaki Masayoshi‘s One more time, One more chance from his 1997 single by the same name (Watch a live version on Youtube).

Byousoku 5 Centimeter, which has a running time of approximately an hour, will premiere in early spring of next year at the Shibuya Cinema Rise.

Continue Reading "Random Musings – Five Centimeters Per Second Edition"

Alright, since there have been some complaints, here is a brief explanation of my beginning-of-season methodology:
I take the shotgun approach, which means that I will try to watch and put up initial impressions of as many series as I can. Some of you may ask, well why don’t you write up do a full write-up for Series X? The answer is that it’s very hard to tell what will be good and what won’t be without watching an episode and seeing what others have to say about it. That’s why I try to do as much as I can early on, so that I don’t miss something good. The shows I write full entries for during the first week are either shows that I can summarize quickly or shows that I know for sure will be popular. As for what I will continue to follow through the rest of the season, I take into consideration 1) what series fit my schedule 2) what series I enjoyed and 3) what series seem the most popular – in that order of importance. That’s why comments are so crucial, because I use them as one of the gauges of popularity, and I keep track throughout a season.

Continue Reading "Random Musings – The Shotgun Approach"

Just got back from school (11PM EST). One of my prototypes broke and I had to rebuilt it from scratch. *grumble grumble* Anyway, Lovely Idol, Pumpkin Scissors, and/or Tokimeki Memorial coming very soon.

Edit: Well I got two of the three. If I had gotten home six hours earlier like I had planned, then I probably would have been able to write up Tokimeki and Pumpkin Scissors. Unfortunately, it’s now 4AM and I’m dead tired, so that’s not going to happen. And given that this week is all new shows, it’s looks unlikely that I’ll ever get a chance to cover Pumpkin Scissors unless Lovely Idol and Tokimeki both are complete crap in their second episodes and I decide to pick PS up.

2nd Edit: Ok I lied. I decided to watch Pumpkin Scissors and liked it enough to post some pics. Remember, if you want me to blog a certain series, leave a comment under that first episode entry so that I don’t assume that people have no interest in whatever show because it’s got few or no comments. And now I really am going to bed b/c it’s 5AM…and I have to get up in 3 hours…

Continue Reading "Random Musings – Incoming"