This won't make much sense to most of you. This is a badly drawn doodle of the characters from our latest Anime addiction: Full Metal Alchemist.
It's a wonderful and long series that starts with two brothers who use the magic of Alchemy to bring back their mother after she dies. It doesn't work out as they hoped: Ed, the undersized, blonde haired older brother, which Julie dresses up as, ends up losing his arm and a leg, and replaces them with Automail, a type of robotic limbs; and his younger brother, Al, who finds his soul attached to an empty suit of armor after he wakes from the spell.
The story is plot heavy, and each episode moves one of the many intertwining plots forward. There is very little filler, which is delightfully surprising for such a long series. We're very close to the last DVD, and were very thrilled by how good the series was. (We thought it would be another unfulfilling robot story.)
The actual doodle and tagline came to me while I was biking home after work. I had to pull over and write it down before I forgot it (I kept repeating it to myself, and since I'm a terrible multitasker, I was afraid I was going to crash).
To explain the joke for those who still don't get it: the armor is supposed to be empty because Ed is the armor. They dressed up as the characters and Julie was reprimanding the Little Guy (that's me, for those who still haven't realized). Yes, I know, funny doesn't need explanations. It's a good thing I never claimed to be funny.
As I said yesterday, this will be my last doodle for this week. I'll be back on Sunday night.
I spent many hours on this doodle. I was inspired by the wonderful anime, Kino's Journey: The Beautiful World. It's about the journey of a girl and her motorad, a talking motorcycle.
The anime has a cinematic style, and spends much of its time lingering over landscapes or pondering philosophical questions. The story takes a backseat to these meanderings. Kino is detached from the world, an atypical young woman with no goals or aims or relationships besides her motorad. I know it's a cliche, but for Kino the journey really is about the journey.
Each country she visits (which are never larger than a city) is different, and used as a parable for a societal issue or fault. You never know what to expect at the beginning of an episode. They don't always focus on the obvious truths, and not every story has a lesson or a purpose.
I haven't doodled since Sunday. Rebuilding my computer (or my failed attempts thereat) has taken my free time. While I still have a sizeable stockpile of Horribles, once the Marathon strikes next month, I might have to go on hiatus for a bit. I would hate to arrive at the end of November with an empty bank of Horribles. The bank is what keeps doodling fun: it doesn't feel like an obligation, since I'm not doodling for tomorrow, I'm doodling for next month. It's amazing how much pressure that removes.
I decided to not play with the computer today. I'll try again this weekend. Instead I managed to eek out a doodle. Oh, and I also wrote about a page of notes for the Marathon. You should fasten your seatbelts, you're in for a terribly uninteresting ride.
We do love our anime. I drew this after we finished watching Witch Hunter Robin. We watched it back in October, so my memory is a bit hazy of the actual anime. From what I do remember, the animation was excellent and the story was at first intriguing and then tiresome: I slept through a few of the middle episodes.
It had an interesting set up and then never delivered on the full possibilities of the story. It's about a quasi-governmental agency that hunts witches. The witches are powerful humans who tend to abuse their powers. The anime hinted at what the witch power was but never fully disclosed how it worked or where it came from. There is some discussion about an earlier time where witches could control and use their powers. Whatever knowledge they had then was lost in modern times. Most witches ran around killing people with their power, and most of the anime consisted of hunting down these rogue witches.
There were good witches, and Robin was one of them. Through the power of religion, witches, if caught early, could be trained to use their powers for "good"--as in what the church believes was good. At the start of the story, Robin used her powers to help the agency hunt down the bad witches. She dressed like a nun and was seemingly raised in a convent where she developed the control of her power (a control that she did not perfect until she purchased reading glasses to allow her to see far away targets--weird, huh). She joined a well-knit group of investigators, some with witch-lite powers, that hunted the rogue witches. The co-star was the man in the doodle, who led Robin's field unit.
The story part consisted of an inter-agency plot and the development of a weapon that allowed humans to use the witches' powers. This part was never adequately developed. While the writers managed to bring the anime to a conclusion, it was not terribly satisfying, and, like many animes, seemed glued together with little more than good intentions and lots of hand waving.
We gave it four out of five stars on Netflix. We reserve four stars for animes that while not perfect (usually because of weaknesses in story or a terrible ending), we enjoyed, and would enjoy other animes of similar quality.
It finally hit fifty degrees yesterday in Seattle. We were growing tired of the cold and rain. We took Button and Ziggy to the dog park, and Button ran a bit. She's a fast dog. I watched from a distance as a dog started chasing her. She ran away from it at a normal pace, and when it got close, she shifted into super-speed mode. Unlike Ziggy, who when a dog gets too close when he's chased, turns his head and tries to run and look back at the same time, Button had no such concerns. She left the bigger dog far behind her as she blurred past a bunch of people who made comments like, "that is a fast dog."
Not that I need a fast dog to judge my self worth. Need is the wrong word: it's a deep-seated hunger brought about by my own clumsy past.
Yes! Finally, we hit upon one of my favorite Anime doodles. This one was for Solty Rei, a cute if somewhat schizophrenic story about a bounty hunter searching for his lost daughter. He is helped by his would-be-surrogate daughter, Solty Rei, who is a physically powerful girl with daddy issues.
We returned from our trip yesterday morning. I’m still recovering. We’ll post photos over the next couple of days. I know I keep talking about posting photos—I’m again having wireless internet issues with my house. I can’t seem to get a strong wireless signal from one side to the other. I’m beginning to think my television is somehow interfering with the signal—as before it was delivered, the signal was much stronger. I need more time for investigations.
Cowboy Bebop was an excellent anime with wonderful music.
I can't seem to get words out these days. My depressions mostly passed and I'm reading a bunch of books, but I've been quiet on writing and drawing. So it goes.
Man, I loved Street Fighter II. I was a big Chun Li fan because of the jumping on the heads and the sexy leg.
The new job is going well. I'm busy. It's a strange feeling to arrive at work and actually have stuff waiting for me. And this is good stuff: not just because it's interesting and challenging and we're making lots of monies, but because it's just so damn cool.
Okay, enough gushing.
Summer continues here in the Northwest. The evenings grow cooler, the morning light arrives later, the night descends earlier. But we've definitely hit a sweet spot temperature-wise.
Yesterday, while Julie spent time with her parents at their Buddhist retreat, I melted into the couch to enjoy Blue Dragon, my second JRPG. It reminds me of part anime, and part game. It has the wonderful character leveling, outfitting, and customizing that I love from RPGs, but does away with most of the action elements of the fighting. It's taken me a while to warm up to this genre. I started with Penny Arcade Adventures, and after receiving a copy of Blue Dragon for free at work, and seeing it on a list of underappreciated Xbox games, I decided to take the plunge. I think I'm glad I did. I'm not sure that Julie agrees with my choice, however.
That's not what I want to write about. As I spent countless hours on the couch, the iggies were roaming outside. We've hit a bit of winter weather lately, and until yesterday, they've been hiding in the dog room when they weren't watching Battlestar Galactica with us on the couch. I took them to the dog park yesterday afternoon when the rain slowed, and by late afternoon the outside was cool and mostly dry. The iggies roamed our invisible-fence-protected gardens. I brought them onto the couch to sit with me a few times as I played, but they were restless, and I let them out. I watched them through the glass when I wasn't engrossed in the game.
The invisible fence works by way of a wire installed around the boundaries of our home. The dogs wear a collar with a shock device that has two metal prongs. When the collar approaches within four feet of the wire on either side, it beeps once. If the dog backs away then nothing happens. If the collar beeps a second time (there's about a second between beeps), then the collar gives a mild shock. The shock is set to low, and feels a bit stronger than a common static shock. It's not debilitating, at least for me. Our dogs are much smaller, however. The collar continues to beep a total of seven times, administering a small shock with each beep.
There are two places that the dogs usually tempt the invisible fence: the first is near our main entrance, which is to the side of the center door. The entrance leads through a breezeway between the front of our house and our driveway. The invisible fence extends to the edge of the breezeway so the dogs cannot enter the breezeway or, more importantly, the driveway.
When we come home or whenever anyone rings the doorbell, the dogs run to this line to bark. They sometimes step near it and beep, but we've never seen them push through the line. The most worrisome behavior, the invisible fence dog trainer told us, is when the dog pushes through the shocks and realizes that they end at some point. Whenever the dogs receive a shock, they usually freeze and sometimes try to scratch at the collar with their hind leg. They normally back away from the beep, especially when we say "no" when they receive the shock.
The other trouble area is the front steps. For aesthetic reasons, the wire was installed in the dirt at the bottom of the stairs, and up along the rocks that surround our front lawn. The dogs quickly discovered that they can go four steps down before hitting the boundary. When we first installed the fence, white flags marked its location. The dogs were trained to associate the white flags with the beeps and shocks to encourage them not to pass. After a month, you were allowed to remove the flags. Two white flags still remain at the edge of the fourth step, more for the people on the road than for the dogs. Or so we thought.
First, the mea culpa: besides the cost of the installation (which is not cheap), the collars use proprietary batteries that the Invisible Fence Co. sells. The batteries need replacing every three months, and the first year is free. I received the replacement batteries a couple of weeks ago. Since the green light on the collars still flashed, and the beep sounded strong, I decided to delay the replacement to save money. It wasn't until Ziggy broke through the steps invisible fence that I immediately replaced the batteries, and brought him to the front stairs to go through his training again with the stronger shocks.
With this experience in mind, I watched the iggies from the couch to ensure they weren't experimenting on the front stairs again. When they stood on the stairs looking out, I could see their backsides from my video game perch, and all was good with the world.
It's growing dark earlier in Seattle, and it was dusk when the phone started ringing. I checked the number and it wasn't familiar. Usually, I ignore such calls but I picked up hoping to hear from our real estate broker about the Castle (which, must to our growing chagrin, still hasn't sold). A lady sounding very worried was on the other side. She asked if I owned small dogs, and if I knew they were walking along East Mercer Way, the busy road in front of our house. I asked her if the dogs were on the road, or on the stairs leading to the road. She assured me, in a very judging voice, that they were indeed on the road, and they scared her when she drove past. At least one other person called, probably when I was outside grabbing the dogs and locking them in the dog room.
Clearly I'm a terrible dog owner. Our dogs were almost squished last night, pancaked into the road. While they are exceptionally fast for small dogs, they are no match for a speeding car rounding the curve of East Mercer Way. The dogs freedom has been restricted as we call on the Invisible Fence people to help us. Besides increasing the shock, we're also thinking of installing chicken wire along the bottom of our front gate and the nearby trees that make up our front fence. The dogs clearly can no longer be trusted on the stairs. And, clearly, I can no longer be trusted as good dog owner. Stupid Blue Dragons, and their gripping hold on my weak-willed addictions.
Tsubasa is an anime series that started strong, sputtered out, and was unceremoniously cut before finished. It's been a while since we watched it, and most of the details have escaped me. I like these breaks before posting: the good stuff will always remain wedged in my brain (or worth a trip to Wikipedia). The ordinary stuff will leak out before I post. On the good side, the characters were distinctive enough for the doodle, especially the little animal/alien thing. We never did figure out what he was--although I remember what he did: he swallowed the other characters to teleport them to different dimensions. Yeah, animes are very weird.
It's cooled down in Seattle. We've had a bit of rain lately, and today it's clear and cool. Hopefully it'll remain clear so we can take the Iggies to the dog park this evening. They're going a bit stir crazy in the dog room hiding from the rain.
We've been playing a lot of Warhammer Online lately. Similar to most of these games, it is a bit of a time sink. Unlike other time sinks, we've enjoyed almost all of our play time. In some past time sinks, some of the play required grinding: doing boring activities to reach the next achievement. So far, we've avoided that in Warhammer. I've almost completed my attempt to addict Steven. When he plays once, his fall to the dark side will be complete. (Hopefully he won't read this until he does play.)
I almost forgot about posting a Horrible today. I just sat down to start pounding out words for the Marathon when I remembered. I'm better today after another Advil day yesterday.
This Horrible is from Noein. The story got a little away from the writers at the end, but it was an enjoyable run with an interesting style of animation (notice the scribles in the eyes).
I almost forgot what anime this was taken from. Luckily I tagged it when I drew it: Gun Sword, or, as Julie and I remember it, the Western with the tuxedo and mechas (that's big robots for those who aren't into Japanese anime).
Even with the sun peeking through the cold clouds, today has been a bit of a drag. I slept badly and now my head hurts.
This is taken from the strangely entitled Fate/Stay Night, an interesting anime that went on a bit long with a moderately satisfying ending. We've been dabbling with the Netflix online offerings on Xbox 360 with some success. What we haven't found is any good animes. I guess we'll have to stick with 30 Rock (what a great two seasons so far).
I'm not happy with how the doodle came out. I had high hopes for this one, particularly the girl, but I was burnt out on animes. I should have delayed drawing it.
It's freezing and sunny in Seattle. It feels like NYC. Such a strange almost-start to what I'm predicting will be an even stranger winter.
We haven't watched an anime in a while. We've been too busy with the streaming Netflix on the Xbox.
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, a name I could never remember for obvious reasons, was a very different anime. It imagined a high school girl, Haruhi Suzumiya, who could alter reality with her thoughts. It turned out she only thought about different genres of anime: sci-fi, time travel, aliens, robots, spikey hair, and inappropriate (or exceptionally appropriate, depends on who you ask) outfits. The last is what is known in the biz as "fan service," as reflected in my Horrible.
For all of its lack of a consistent or even rational story, it was an enjoyable few discs. I miss anime. It might be time to dust off and return some of our rental discs and try out some new anime.
Keeping with timely posts, we watched My Neighbor Totoro, a cute anime by Hayao Miyazaki. We watched Howl's Moving Castle last weekend, and Julie is netflixing all of his films.
The anime is about a father and his two daughters moving into a new house in the country. Their mother is sick in the hospital. Near the house is a large tree where Totoro, an oversized wood sprite lives. We watch as the girls discover the fantasical Totoro and go on an adventures.
The weather is beautiful again today with highs in the fifties. Dog park, here we come!
We finished Utawarerumono (we never learned to pronounce the name) last night. It was an engaging anime that managed to tell a single story with few deviations. Most amazingly, the end almost made sense and was enjoyable.
My mother leaves for NYC tonight. She brought the cold and snow to Seattle. I'll forgive her as long as she takes the weather with her. The sun did manage to break through the weekend's rain-snow. Now if only the temperature rose above forty.
Julie's choir performed this afternoon. My mother seems to arrange her trips around Julie's performances. This is the second time she's catching one. It's nice to hear traditional choir music. I thought I would like her Jazz choir better. I was wrong.
Skipping around a bit for the Gears of War 2 Horrible. Steven, Julie, and I finally beat the Horde mode on level 50 last night. We had to lower the difficulty to Casual to do so, but we've now completed the game and received the Achievement. It was quite an achievement. It took strong strategy and lots of patience. Not to mention some chainsawing.
I checked, and I don't feel much more violent this morning. I think it takes a while for violent video games to reorganize the brains.
There's a 5k/10k/half marathon going on outside my window this morning. I caught the tail end of the walkers when I woke up. There's now just orange cones to prove it happened. Those will be gone in a few hours as well. So much for healthy Seattle.
I doodled this after we finished watching Avatar: The Last Airbender, a surprisingly good Nickelodeon cartoon, last weekend. This is one of the few animes where there was a great story and almost no filler. We highly recommend it.
I'm off to NYC tomorrow through Tuesday morning. I won't be posting for the next two days, so you'll have to enjoy this one for a bit. I almost forgot to post today. I guess late is better than never.
We interrupt our normally schedule Horrible for this timely update. We went to see Ponyo this past weekend. The movie was enjoyable if you're prepared for a slow cute story. The art is a stylized rendition of the children's book drawings. At first it's a bit jarring, but quickly it becomes charming. A few hours after watching, I realized there was no bad guy. Julie thinks the ocean or nature was the bad guy. I don't buy it. It's a story without a true villain.
It's another warm sunny day in Seattle. The evenings are becoming cooler and the sun is rising later. I know fall is right around the corner. I hope it holds out a bit longer.
We finished watching the first season of Legend of the Seeker. It was surprisingly enjoyable given that it is based on that terrible Terry Goodkind series. I read the first book and hated it: it reads more like an old-school adventure video game than a novel. You find a shiny purple sword. You see a monster. The monster can only be killed with shiny purple swords. You kill the monster! You see a magical key. Three rooms later there is a door. Only a magical key can open the door!
Okay, maybe it wasn't that bad. There were some elements of the magic and world in the television show that appeared to be taken from the book that were quite enjoyable. I might not have given the series a proper chance. Speaking of chances, I've been speed reading through a bunch of fantasy novels. I'm not sure what brought on my new addiction. I'm hoping it's my body's way of preparing for November.
It's another week. I wish it was a good week. I did manage lots of doodles. Sometimes my doodling reflects my mood. You'll find out the type of mood in a few months when these Horribles come around. At least we're having good weather. See? Always a silver lining of sorts.
We watched Avatar on Christmas Eve after we participated in the rest of a traditional Jewish Christmas by eating at a (vegetarian) Chinese restaurant. I ended up getting sick probably from a cold virus mixed with the 3D effects and a very nasty Avocado milkshake. Thinking about Chinese food now makes me nauseous, which is hard on the Julies.
Avatar is a beautifully rendered movie. I wish I could say the same for its characters and story. There will one day be a movie about a benevolent corporation that is trying to save the Earth from runaway Nature and the do-gooders who try to protect her by deifying her. Oh and there will be military people who are, like, real people who don’t want to fight just because they can, but actually care about their soldiers and civilians. And there won’t be any giant robots in this movie. Or flying blue people.
Otherwise the weekend was nice and long. We finally took the dogs out of the house thanks to the sun and mild temperature.
Ah, Borderlands, it feels like it's been such a long time since Julie, Steven, and I visited its dystopic world. Besides an occassional dip into the tried and true Horde mode in Gears of War 2, Borderlands was the last serious video game we played. That's something we're hoping to remedy one of these days when someone ships a decent three-player co-op game.
Saturday creeped into the seventies while Sunday teased us with sunshine followed by Houston-style rainstorms. It was a long, relaxing weekend filled with the doodling of too many Horribles, and a startling lack of Naginata (thanks to the Mercer Island Rotary Half Marathon).
Happy Monday!
I refreshed the design of Cast of Horribles this weekend. I tried to clean off the dark lines and used handwriting instead of a font for the titles. I also added a nifty navigation section. Julie thinks the navigation is confusing. I decided to stay with the grays instead of move to colors. I tried different colors but nothing stuck. Don't forget to refresh the website (F5) to clear your cache. I didn't think to rename some of the graphical elements when I recreated them.
Another glorious day in the Northwest (and by glorious, I mean alternating between clouds and suns). Now if only I can get through this busy, busy week.
It's been a long time since we've watched a good anime--or any anime for that matter. Here's my take on Morbito - Guardian of the Spirit. It sort of looks like she has naginata if you squint and forget that it's a short spear.
It's warm and sunny again today. Soon I'll stop bothering you with weather reports. You can just assume it's low seventies and sunny.
Happy Tuesday morning! It's warm and sunny, and expected to get more so. Too much so, if you ask me. We go from a bad Spring to a bad Summer, all in a single day! Yeah!
. . . from the heat. And they're not doing a terribly good job of it. The unseasonably hot weather is descending on Seattle. I know it's bad form to complain when NYC wallows in triple digits. But that's what I do: complain about the weather.
This Horrible was based on a Justice League cartoon, with a wonderful art style, a strong beginning, and a boring, drawn out conclusion. For that reason I won't bother linking to it. Western cartoons are missing humor. I used to think it was annoying and childish in the Japanese animes. Now, when I see a cartoon without it, I miss the personality it provides to the story.
Blood+ is an anime series based loosely on Blood:The Last Vampire, which was turned into a feature-length movie of the same name. Phew, figuring out that history was tiring.
In terms of enjoyment: Anime > Movie > Anime Series
The Horrible is based on the anime series, where Saya, the main character (the co-sire of all vampires) is followed around by a coffin-wielding vampire as they fight against Saya's sister (the other sire) and minions. It's as convoluted as it sounds.
Long time no speak. It's been a busy few days.
Here's a goody. Julie and I saw this movie back in April before Dalia took over our lives. It was a surprisingly good if bloody movie. And since it met the bar and had interesting visuals, I had to Horrible-ized it.
Another excellent Bollywood film: Rab Ne Bana Di Jod. The plot takes an unexpected twist in this romantic comedy (but, don't worry, it has the Bollywood happy ending).
Happy thoughts. Just think happy thoughts.
This Horrible was based on the Claymore anime series.
Ah, this is one of my prettier Horribles. It's based on the beautiful Anime, The Place Promised in our Early Days.
We had a wonderful long weekend hosting Steven in Seattle (I'm sure you've already seen the photographs.) Dalia did great in the car trips and the walks around different neighborhoods in Seattle (mostly strapped to my chest).
Count down to the last Cast of Horribles: 3 after this one.
