First Impressions / Series Introduction

Hayate no Gotoku! – CM

As many of you may already know, it was confirmed last week that Hayate no Gotoku! (aka. Hayate the Combat Butler) is getting animated. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, Hayate no Gotoku! is about a boy named Ayasaki Hayate who is left with his parents’ massive debt after they abandoned him. In trying to kidnap a rich girl named Nagi for ransom money, Hayate mistakenly gives her the impression that he’s confessing his love. After a series of unlikely events, Nagi pays off Hayate’s debt for him, and he becomes her butler for the next 40 years to repay her. It’s a very amusing manga with some great chapter titles that make references to all kinds of popular anime.

The purpose of this commercial was to promote the special DVD with six minutes of footage and narration by Wakamoto Norio. Those six minutes are already available to see on Youtube, but the caveat is that it’s camcorder quality. On the commercial and on the promo video, you get a chance to hear the seiyuu as their characters, including Kugimiya Rie as Nagi. When I learned that she was going to be doing that voice, the first thing in my mind was whether or not they would repeat Shana/Yuuji and Louise/Saito by casting Hino Satoshi as Hayate. Unfortunately, that’s not the case and instead Shiraishi Ryoko will be voicing him. The other announced seiyuu are Tanaka Rie as Maria, Itou Shizuka as Hinagiku, Nabatame Hitomi as Yukiji, and Toriumi Kousuke as Himuro.

Hayate no Gotoku! is set to premiere sometime this year, but it does not yet have a specific air-date. It’s high on my list of anticipated anime, so hopefully the wait won’t be too long.

Hana Yori Dango / PV

Utada Hikaru – Flavor Of Life -Ballad Version-

Utada Hikaru’s newest song Flavor of Life comes in several flavors, and the one featured in Hana Yori Dango 2 and this PV is the ballad version. Unlike her some of her other PVs which have been flashy and high production value, this feels more down to earth in showing the recording of the song with an orchestra. Of course that makes it less exciting to watch, but I don’t really mind because I love her voice and this song.

Miscellaneous / Random Musings

Random Musings – The Current Situation

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.