just realised the eyeshield21 manga continued from the end of the anime. and all this time i've been wondering who on earth yamato, taka and kisaragi was.

left a trail of carnage all the way to tenchi and carted back volume 25 to 36. i know, i've gone crazy. they're actually rationed, one book after the completion of one prelim paper.

couldn't help but smile when i read the part about the formation of the all-star japan team to take part in the world cup against the american, german, russian, (western) teams, who obviously would look down on the japanese (asians) who are supposedly 'not naturally endowed with physical abilities.' it's such a knee jerk nationalistic reaction, because, even without reading on you know that the japan team will trounce the western teams somehow. for some reason the prince of tennis story developed like this in the end, too. but i guess it's not based on nothing because japan did win the first two IFAF world cups.

アメフトやろうぜ。if anyone forms a women's team in singapore, i'll be the first in line.

and uh yea, i'm supposed to reading the 2009 econs prelim papers now, which i am, technically. A levels start in 2 weeks, and i'm disturbed by my indifference. will study as usual, but somehow i get very tired and uptight whenever i imagine what will happen if i get Ds and Cs and Bs instead of As. so along the way i began not to care so much, because the whole situation becomes rather silly.

you see, i'm not hiruma. i dont believe in anything below the probability of 0.1%.

decided to de-stress and be a pervert by going online to read any anyone x sena yaoi fanfics which i can find. realised that hundreds of fangirls have beaten me to it.

really, the things that some female writers think of.. can be so deliciously screwed and warped that i tend to wonder how the cogs work in their minds. and i'm slightly frightened by the ferocity and glee with which fangirls attacked sena with all sorts of different people.. hiruma, agon, musashi, unsui (unsui?!) etc etc. imagine agon in the picture.. and sena's either bleeding, crying or trying very hard not to, wailing, sobbing, screaming, struggling, gone catatonic, white and shaking with fear or fervently begging agon to stop whatever's he's doing. 0.0 write something like this in perfectly fluid, descriptive english language with proper plot development (like user:hadaka from fanfiction.net does, link to her profile here) and the effect's wonderfully cathartic. please dont blame me for unleashing my inner sadist, i just finished the horrible AJC 2008 math paper and was in a really foul mood, aka in the mood for some extreme uke mental and physical torture.

i'd like to see anyone try anything with gaou and sena in it. i'll probably laugh the apartment down.

curiously enough, most writers try to depict hiruma's gentler side, while agon technically remains the cruel brute he was created to be. either way, sena gets the shorter end of the stick. or semi-literally, the stick itself. ;P

cruelty is actually attractive. i think i've said it before. i'll try to rationally explain why, once i find a way to.

if only i could write too.. i used to try, i still have the many unfinished stories still in my notepad from years ago, and many more still in my head. but i always stop long before any bedroom action, because it's difficult to describe an act that i ultimately dont know anything about. i feel rather stupid doing so too. so i wont. on a wistful note, when i can finally pen things like those mentioned above, i'll be long past fanfic writing age.

am ashamed to say that i broke my internet fast and decided to do a short entry. hopefully it'll be my last one till end of november.

cant stand it, i have to shout it out loud even if everyone is offline and studying now, i love the way sena's character develops throughout the series. it's really heartwarming. it reminds me that even an unclever little pipsqueak can still make it if only she tries hard enough.

it's taking me quite a fair bit amount of self control to not touch episode 95 onwards, because that's the start of the kantou tournament. i know, i wont watch. i know my obsessive compulsive disorders, i most definitely wont put my ipod down again if i do give in to my compulsions.

as for A levels.. doryokuMAX de ganbariMAX ^^

...足は棒のよう　腕は上がらない　オレのすべてが通じない
my legs are as stiff as poles, i cant lift my arms, my entire being wouldn't heed my commands
敵はでっかくてすげえ力だ　泣けてくる程かなわない
the enemy is enormous and terribly strong, i'll never be their match

でも前を向けば
but when i look in front of me
何度でもぶつかっていく仲間
i see my teammates slamming into the opponents, again and again
ボロボロなのに諦めちゃないんだ
despite being worn out, they haven't given up
今耳すませば友達の途絶える事のないエール
if i open my ears now all i hear are my friends' never ending yells
ガラガラ声で叫んでるんだ
in chorus, they're shouting now
オレなんかを信じてんだ
they're even believing in someone like me

息を切らして　かけだして　つまずいて　傷ついて
to be out of breath, to break into a run, to stumble and fall, to be hurt
笑われて　あきれられても　何度だってそう　立ち上がって
to be laughed at, to be given up on, yet no matter what i'll get up
最後まで　最後まで　諦めない　炎のランニングバック
till the end, till the end, i wont give up, honoo no runningback!...

->炎のラニングバック from eyeshield 21 by short leg summer

seems that no one liked this half-assed sounding, 2 minute long song enough to translate it, but i do, so i had fun writing out the english translation for the first part of the song. it cheered me up during morning runs.

have been rewatching eyeshield 21 with glee. apparently this anime is a goldmine for yaoi fangirls, because hiruma x sena and shin x sena are literally staring at you, if you bother to notice. but as the demographics of eyeshield 21's fans are quite different from prince of tennis's, so i guess one cant expect too much fanservice.

which is pretty okay. i think i can do a great job of entertaining myself with just my imagination.

perhaps that's why i think having a sense of duty will make you powerful. even when you have lost all will to or have become too weary to do something (hopefully something right), you will still continue to push on and carry the burden simply because you feel it is your duty to do so.

その所が好きだったんですよ。

誰が何を言おうと、君がそのままでいてほしい。

it was pure coincidence that i was rewatching ai no kusabi (1993) yesterday, when i read the news just now that anime studio AIC and ken media will be doing a 13 episode remake of ai no kusabi, which will be released in fall this year. i think i was star jumping all over the room for awhile.

the classic ai no kusabi remake woo hoo!

watched the promotion trailer on youtube, and truth is iason and rikki looks abit different and thus strange, and also the anime looked more flashy and sparkly, with cg effects and all. tanagura looks more like some futuristic metropolis in today's context, iason wears a strange white garb with high collars instead of his previous shoulder things and lycra tights, and rikki ditched his loose, sloppy black singlet for a nice looking black biker jacket. and they have more realistic body proportions and muscle mass. i believe it will also include more extreme SM to meet today's extreme needs. in other words, ai no kusabi has been modernized.

but somehow i think it'll be missing something that the 1993 version had, despite the older version's stark, simple, undetailed and uncluttered animation, when most expression was done by the seiyuu's brilliantness (i hope they dont change the cast!). ai no kusabi 2009 looks suspiciously like just another BLanime, and the sad fact is that most BLanime aren't much to talk about.

besides, iason depicted in the old version was sexier bwahaha.

anyhow, i hope to be proved wrong this fall. till then, i really cant wait.

there's a reason why ai no kusabi has been called the magnum opus of the yaoi genre, both by fans and even western critics.

and mind, the two part ova was released in 1994, more than a decade ago. it's quite amazing how much feeling it can convey without the cg animation and resolution and effects.. since the story itself is.. well. a classic.

it was a pity that the ova had only enough run time to show the more physical side of iason's and rikki's relationship, when the novels went deeper.

i cant possibly do a summary, so the wikipedia article's here. the boysonboysonfilm review's here. a thorough synopsis of the ova can be found here.

many people have said the title was untranslatable, and yes it is, i have to think for awhile to actually make sense of it. it's just impossible to put it in one phrase, which is why 'wedge of interval', the offical translation, doesnt make sense. 間 means space, or interval, basically a sort of seperation. in ai no kusabi, it refers to the different social classes that iason and rikki are in.. one in the uppermost elite of tanagura and the other the lowest of the low, from the slums. while 楔 means wedge, or link pin, or some sort of thing that bridges gaps. which in this case is a metaphor for love, that is able to join iason and rikki together despite the different classes.


famous illustration of rikki and iason

sakura sakura on classical guitar



one day, i'll learn.