Tuesday, September 29, 2009

101 Things I Must Do Before My Light Burns Out!!!

I was advised to start a series, in order to try to establish a "regular blogging schedule".
All this because I only post sporadically...
oh well, it's not like anyone actually reads my blog...
Yes, its sad, I know... since I'm Portuguese and most of my friends don't have a blog, most can't even read English that well...
Still I will continue to write!
In the eternal belief that someday someone will read this, and review...
I hope that someone, is you!
or if it isn't, well I can just keep writing for myself, maybe just to reared someday!

So moving on to my series:
101 THINGS I MUST DO !!!
(They won't be in any particular order, just how it comes up to me!)

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Light A Candle For ANIME

This 'Light A Candle for ANIME' is my new project, the objective of this project is to enlighten people's minds to Anime and to definitively erase the preconceived ideas that some many people have about anime. The way some people consider it only appropriated for children, like cartoons, and don't look at Anime as a form of Art. So here it is! A list... that you should burn into your psyche!

THE LIST OF BEST ANIME EVER!


ANIMES I FINISHED (In order of Enjoyment)

1. Death Note (I thought this would be boring. The HELL it ain't! If you want a real show, look no further! It's violent, psychotic, full of mind games and has the deepest, sadistic, hottest badboy since Sephiroth, named Light! He just rocks my world. And there's just something about L to love and admire!)

2. Chrono’s Crusade (WHY DOES EVERYONE HAVE TO DIE?!)
A.N: This anime is in 2º place, because it was one of the first great anime series I saw on TV, 'sic radica'l. And Kaleido Star (I know this anime has absolutely nothing to do with “Chrono’s Crusade”, but it’s also an anime that I saw on TV, on 'canal panda' and helped getting me addicted in anime!) Urusei Yatsura! (It doesn’t have to do with anything! But it’s amazing! Really I can’t describe it, so I will just say it’s so damn FUNNY!)

3. Ouran High School Host Club (FUNIEST SERIE EVER!!! and I want a new season! THIS is my absolute favourite shoujo series of all time! Seriously, see it. You WON'T regret it!)
Second place on romantic animes goes to… Saiunkoku Monogatari (Tale of Saiunkoku is a Beautiful History Novel; Saiunkoku is an astonishing Main Character and so is the Emperor, and it’s just such a sweet, rewarding story!)…
Third place goes to: Skip Beat! (AMAZING! Fun, fun, fun! Striking love triangle and the secondary characters really make the story perfect, can’t wait for the second season. The manga is the best!)
Then at last, we have Fruits Basket (With cute characters, great references to Chinese mythology, and I never get the ending. It’s so emotional!!! Sad and at the same time, so sweet! It has one of the most adorable heroines ever! The manga sucks, though…) This anime happens to be an harem type anime, and some people don’t really like this genre, but I love harem types! Because harems always bring out the worst in people. Good stuff.lol.
Harem type is basically an anime where "the main character is a regular guy/girl, normally a rather awkward adolescent, and is surrounded by all kinds of beautiful, cute and funny people, who all, or most of have a crush on him/her" Other fun example is Vandread (This last one is a boy surrounded by women, but the others above are girls, surrounded by beautiful men. Except Skip Beat! That one is just a extraordinary love triangle!)

4. Yakitate! Japan (Come on it’s a serie about bread! And it’s so freaking funny! Lots of references to Japanese culture!) Cooking Master Boy (It’s the best Chinese cooking show EVER! With great references to Chinese history, culture and everyday life, it’s so yummy!!!)

5. The Prince of Tennis (This serie rocks! I cannot get enough of the boys and their moves. And he’s like... really cute! Greatest anime eyes ever! and believe me, in anime eyes, there’s a lot of competition, so this is a though spot to get! A must watch, even if you don’t like tennis you have to LOVE this anime!)
I LOVE SPORTS ANIME! Other very good one is One Outs (about baseball and gambling from the same guy, who made Akagi and Kaiji), and Eyeshield 21 (is about American football, and it’s really, like really great, beautiful character development, from a bullied, small cowardly kid, to a hero in making, with an extraordinary ability, and still extremely awkward, but cute. Then the struggle, the competition, the comedy, not to mention, the fascinating secondary characters and the deep, very deep love for the sport, get this anime in the top list of best sports anime, and really in the list of best animes ever) Initial D (haven’t finished yet, but so far so good- car racing), and obviously Hajime no Hippo (everybody always told me to see this one, but I always delayed it, and even thou I don’t like boxe I actually like this anime quite a lot), also Ginban Kaleidoscope (is about skating but at the same time it’s such a beautiful love story).

6. Hikaru No Go (That serie was great! Love the rivalry! Love Go! It’s so emotional! And it has the second plance on the best anime eyes ever, for Hikaru, Sai and Akira!)
Site to play Go:
www.gokgs.com.
Now, SAKI (It’s the same thing as Hikaru no go but with girls instead! And its about mahjong! Which I love!) And Shion no Oh (I REALLY enjoyed this series!!! Such a deep main character and an extremely dramatic story, reminds me of those political stories. Still Hikaru no Go is better because it has many more cute boys, and nothing, NOTHING surpasses cute boys! Either way, I’m getting addicted in Games series!! Excellent and dramatic till the end!!!)

7. Yami No Matsuei (I LOVE IT AND IT WILL MAKE OBSESSED IN YAOI! A MUST WATCH! Pity it’s so small.) Gravitation (must I say it? Its yaoi! And there ain’t anything better than yaoi!) Antique Bakery (oh, well... it's yaoi...AND IT's BEAUTIFUL, can’t get enough of yaio, adore the characters, love the cakes!)
Kirepapa ova 2ep and Okane Ga Nai! Ova 4ep (I LOVE YAIO, yes I do! I love yaoi what about you? I love yaoi not shonen-ai ‘cause that’s just girls chitchat about feelings and blablabla and no action! I mean I got nothing against shonen-ai, it’s very pretty and all but nothing replaces the good old yaoi! and I don’t care if that makes me weird! I don’t force people who don’t like yaoi to watch it! So no one can make me stop liking it and watching it! And this two are lovely!)

8. Yu Yu Hakusho: Ghost Files (incredible!!! It reminds me of Dragonball, especially because it’s such a long anime, but in general, it’s an excellent history, quite the “go on” fun anime! Great quotes! The best characters ever! Love Kurama and his other self Youko, he just goes around constantly doing all kinds of stuff that would look totally gay if it was any other character doing it, but with him it really seems so sexy ! Hiei is just plain cute, Koenma and Botan are fun, Yusuke is a sexy bad boy when he wants, and all others are just adorable!)

9. The Law of Ueki (He’s the anti-hero, and I LOVE IT! Good story line. Really amusing moments in every episode.)

10. Full Metal Alchemist (BEST. ANIME. EVER! But it has way too much drama! Either way it’s amazing! The idea, the story, the drawings and most of all the extraordinary characters! Honestly beautiful, just beautiful!)

11. Detective Academy Q (This was the first online anime for me! I searched and watched it on veoh! It’s the best detective story ever! Personally I’m not a fan of Conan, so this anime does the TOP of detective stories in anime, for me!)

12. Akagi and Kaiji (I put this two different series together, ‘cause I watched them at about the same time and because their style of drawning it’s praticaly the same. Also they are both basically about gambling, which I love! Akagi its better, because the main character is so cool, but kaiji has more games, so they tie in awsomeness!)

13. Kyou Kara maou (It’s great, and I have no idea why! It’s just a watch and see the cuteness yourself, kind of serie. And in order to understand, you have to acknowledge the deeply intricate Japanese culture, or else you won’t get it. It has a hot tempered bishonen and lots of mild yaoi references. The main character the Maou, it’s the sweetest king ever!)

14. Hellsing (just because), Vampire Knight (One word: vampires. You can't go wrong... and I love the art! Vampires rule and sexy-badass-possibly-evil-vampires are even better! “Oh mighty Creature of the Night Kaname Senpai… suck my blood! Onegai!”) Black Blood Brothers and Trinity Blood (Both have such awesome stories, it puts together all tales of vampires but at the same time it has some logic. Great characters! Love all the biting scenes! Love the end in BBB! They should make a second season, this one is too short! TB is soo complex! But I love it! Also love the costumes in TB!) Also Karin, Chibi Vampire (Vampires again. Damn, they sure pop up everywhere in anime/manga, eh? Karin's just cute, and an actually believable heroine. VERY comic storyline.)

15. Saint Seiya or Knights of the Zodiac (Now, I used to watch this serie with my older brother in the mornings before school and it was one of the only things we enjoyed doing together, so I’m partial to this anime… but the drawing is pretty good, and the story is solid and interesting, very mythological and there are a lot of tournaments and fights, like in dragon ball, but in the end the characters are very beautiful even if with a little too much angst. It’s a pretty good anime!)

16. Higurashi No Naku goooooood! I love psychological, supernatural thrillers.
In this section also:
Umineko no Naku Koro ni by the same author, also Monster.

17. Puchi Puri Yuushi (magical girls and a princess story, but at the same time such a beautiful love story, and very funny and original story idea) Shugo Shara (magical people yes! But it gets second spot ’cause of it’s amazing main character!) Fairy Musketeers (a Fairy Tale world, magic, cute and interestingly problematic characters, the great colours all around, and the beautiful story line, make this a serie worth watching!) Card Captor Sakura, Doremi and Fancy Lala (GO GO MAGICAL GIRLS!!!) And Tokyo Mew Mew Power (Cutesy. VERY cutesy. Sometimes not in a good way... Only thing that kept me watching was the occasional funny line. And it's so colourful! Green, yellow, Pink and blue and shiny! Yes, I know shiny it's not a colour...lol)

18. D N Angel (Too small. But, Dark is awesome. What more must I say? It's a... interesting story; to say the least... I love thieves and with angel wings it’s even better!)

19. Yu gi oh (no offense to all the Yu-Gi-Oh fanatics out there, but... this looks like just another Saturday morning cartoon! in terms of art, of course! I've seen the entire serie, the several seasons, and it’s a good story, but it’s just sad to see how some people actually think this is a really good japanese anime… oh well, I suppose it is kindda entertaining. Besides when I watched it I was very, very young, and I got the card game, so it’s in a good position on my Anime Top.lol. What I think is the best about this anime is The Abriged Series by LittleKureboh!!! I love to mock this anime because I remember when I was completely addicted to it! LOL. I also like yu gi oh GX! I know everybody hates it, but I think it’s really funny and it has some awesome quotes! Yes, it has no plot whatsoever, but once again I didn’t saw it because of the story, I saw it because it was funny and I was bored!!! I never thought it was going to have a plot anyway, come on let’s be honest the original yu gi oh didn’t have a plot either, it had something that resembled a story, but in fact was just some crazy ideas and historic references glued together with a piece of gun!) A/N: Everytime I see this series I remenber the other serie I was whatching everySaturday morning, right after this one: Beyblade. Ah, good old days!

20. Princess Princess (sweet, sweet… come on! The entire serie is boys dressed as girls! What’s not to love! Just adorable.) And Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru I think the name of the serie just sums everything up... 'HELP! Maidens are falling for me!' It's about a simple guy, whose grandfather dies and says in his testament, that the boy has to go to the same private school his mother (who also died some time ago) went to. Problem? It’s an only girl’s school! So he has to masquerade as a girl. And he's pretty good at it, but girls start falling for his 'female' self! lool. It’s just so fun and cute, beautiful characters!

21. Princess Tutu (This one gains two awards! One for the extraordinary musical and dance scenes and one, for best pairing: Fakir/Ahiru -How can you not a love such an angsty, assertive boy (A knight and a writer. That's LOVE!), and who wouldn’t like, anger management paired with a clumsy and naive DUCK, even if she becomes a girl, she's still truly a duck. They rock my world.)

22. Gankutsuou: Count of Monte Cristo (Its cool! But it’s a completely different story from the books! Pity! Passed in a future scenario! With great characters and amazingly drawings in the cartoons, they could really have done much more… Really creepy ending!)

23. Trigun (Okay, let's get this straight. Vash is God. Really. Just watch the series, dammit! He's the ideal hero and we love him for it!) and Cowboy Bepbop (don't know why one anime just remainds me of the other).

24. Shaman King (Thought I would hate this since I’m not a big fan of English dub series. Instead, I LOVED IT! Really original and funny!)

25. Angel Sanctuary (It’s pretty good. But very small, and it doesn’t end. Also, it’s very sad. But it has great characters and the drawings are pretty neat. Besides I LOVE the manga!)

26. Tactics ( In a way, it was a big disappointment… it had such a great idea for a story but they start to go mysterious and it gets confusing, then by the end It’s just sad, but it’s still worth it , ‘cause of the beautiful characters and sweet yaio scenes.)

27. Full Moon O Sagashite (I love the musical scenes... i love japonese music!!!lol... also the story is very good, deep and emotional, yet simple and really sweet!) and on the subject of music: Mermaid Melody: Pichi Pichi Pitch (Beautiful voices!!! This is about a girl who is a mermaid and her trying to tell the guy she is in love with that she is one. If she goes out and says she is one, then she will turn into bubbles. It is also about her and her friends fighting other evil creatures with music! There are 52 episodes.)

28.
xxxHOLiC (charismatic to say the least…)

29. Inuyasha (Hey, everyone else is watching it, and I can see why! both English and Japanese!)

30. Bleach (It's just Bleach. What's not to love, except for maybe the English dub? Basically, every character on that serie is awesome) .

31. Strawberry Panic (Girls, girls, girls! And the cutest outfits!)And more girls! High School Girls (Damn! This is so hentai, but without the sex! But it’s cute and fun in a perverted sort of way. Either way it’s worth watching ‘cause it’s so damn funny, it can make pervert, look funny and that’s a talent!)
32. Author's Note: this List is in constant growt, for obvious reasons...
ANIME 4 EVER
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Tuesday, September 8, 2009

The Burns of Yet Another Year...

So... here it comes another year in university.
Well, honestly I thought it was going to be easier this time around, and guess what?
It isn't! It HARDER! so much harder, because its everything you messed up in the first year, yet again! worse! because its all of it over and over again, but with the knowledge that you should be better, that you should know better!
Its like you're a failure right from the start.
I'd kinda felt that way last year to because I was a second stage student so I entered in the middle of the semester.
It was bad to try to choose the disciplines in a hurry and already have a couples of classes I couldn't take 'cause they were full, the worse part was the confusion, the feeling that I was doing it all on top of my knee, without really pondering my choices, and these were choices that really had a very important role in my academic life, come on!
These were the disciplines, the classes I was going to attend for an entire year, these were the professors which I had one year to learn all this stuff from!
And it was bad cause I felt like I wasn't caring enough about those choices, and since they would have great influence on my future, it was like I wasn't caring enough about my future...
And I care! I care, I am really concern, I'm in university to learn, not just to pass the year and get a degree.
So I felt really bad, but not as bad as the stigma that some of my teachers and even classmates passed, like for some reason just because a I entered in the middle of the semester I don't have as much right to be there as they do!
Well, screw them 'cause I so am! besides I only entered in the middle because I entered with my second stage exam results! even more, I only entered with those because I decided to try for an exam that wasn't even in my curriculum, and I just had such a great grade that I decided to enter University with that grade.
It just felt like the right thing to do at the time, and in the end it was. Still this is all in the past, I got over all this crap, all the pressure from my parents, my peers, my professors, well everyone really, but I prevailed and against the odds, succeed.
And arrived to the second year.
And its all the trouble I had the first time, yet again! God, its like a bad movie sequel!
AT UNIVERSITY PART II -or- THE WAYS UNIVERSITY FINDS TO SCREW WITH YOU! PART II. yeah, that's a good one!
Oh well, let me try to explain how this 'screw-with-the-students-mind' thing works: personally I think its all the bureaucracy, where the big problem starts.
First, a committed student just came out of vacations in Spain, with its parents (not my case, but it could be... if i was rich, which I'm not so i just had to spend my vacations here at old 'home sweet home' we're in crisis you know?) but either way, the student comes back from his or hers vacation time with plenty of time before the star of the scholar year, which only starts almost in the end of September.
But since this student is so committed to his or her studies he/she goes immediately on-line to check what are the dates to mark his/her classes, and until when he/she has to pay the entry fees.
And what happens? the entry fees have to be payed until something like 10 of August? what the fuck? you just think its a mistake of some sort 'cause it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever... but its not, its just the way it is! its university bureaucracy, it doesn't have to make sense, actually I think that's how they choose their rules and schedules and time-lines for payments and even the dates from the beginning, vacation times and ending of classes, they chose the ones who make the least sense!
Oh i can just imagine it! All the politicians and the bureaucrats and all the other people involved in this processes, just bundled up together in a tiny, tiny room with lots and lots of paper work, (because these kinds of people just love paper work!) discussing it:

"-So when shall we start the scholar year, this year?" say the professors, or the syndicates leaders that represent them.
"-Well i kind of have plans for August, i must be running my side business as a owner of a chain of hotels in Algarve, and August is such a great time for tourism, you know?-" says one of the politicians.
"-Okay then how about we start in September?"
"- Oh no September is a aw full time!-" say the bureaucrats"- That seems like a good time!people will be expecting it! It makes sense! and god forbid us from making decisions that actually make sense!"
But let's get back to business, as if all this wasn't enough, when the poor student goes to the university to see what he/she can do to fix this, he/she has to wait in a line for hours until he has wasted almost a day, only to be told that all the information on how to make the payments of the fees, can be found on-line, and thats actually the only way to do it, but to not be concerned because he/she is like the 40º person to come and ask about exactly the same thing!
And last year was the same thing!
Oh come on! this is ridicolous! last year it didn't work, this year aparently its not working either and this has been going on for ages!
Why am I not surprised about it?
Do these people even think?!