mDuo13

Imagine you have a friend who's an alcoholic. You know, they're kind of a good person, fun to hang out with once in a while, some good qualities, but they keep showing up drunk and getting these crazy ideas that don't make any sense, and they have a bunch of other annoying bad habits and tendencies. It's not enough to make you stop hanging out with them, but it really gets on your nerves to the point where you're kind of relieved when they leave you alone. This friend is Toaru Majutsu no Index.

Then imagine that this friend goes to rehab and comes back a wholly improved person. I'm talking, like, they really cut back on their bad habits, they're more humble and respectful in everything they do, and all of a sudden you really like being around this person a lot more. It's still the same person, and it's not like they're flawless now, but it feels like you took the qualities that made them a likable person before, and filtered out all the crap that really pissed you off about them. Suddenly you're not ashamed to call this person one of your close friends. That's Toaru Kagaku no Railgun.

Now imagine that this same friend starts getting cocky and starts relapsing. They show up on your doorstep drunk again, shouting incoherently, maybe not as much as before, but it's still annoying. Sometimes they have these little moments that remind you what a good person they were right after rehab, but you can see that it just didn't last. Can you imagine how frustrating and ultimately depressing that scenario is? You thought they were cured, but in reality it was only a temporary lapse -- isn't that just totally irritating? That's how I feel about Toaru Majutsu no Index II.

Shiki is probably my favorite among anime that I'm currently watching. It's probably best described a horror show, a genre I don't normally get much involved in. I don't mind being scared once in a while, though. I'm not sure if I'm jaded, or if it's just the media I tend to involve myself in (horror being especially rare in anime, somewhat outside my normal range of games, and not really common in the novels I read, either) but it feels like it's very hard to genuinely scare me with a work of fiction. I've been following Shiki since episode 1, and I'm utterly impressed, in part because it managed that feat, but also for other reasons I'll elaborate below.

While selling a friend on it early on, I described it as a Japanese twist on Salem's Lot. At this point, the show has grown beyond that. The mystery unravels such that the cat's well out of the bag and by the halfway point, after which it transitions from being scary into being chilling and thought-provoking. A certain 21st Century Digital Boy apparently found enough impact in the show to prompt not one, but two posts more or less spurred by the series. His reaction was distinctly different from mine, so I started to type a reply on his blog, but pretty soon the comment had grown out of proportion and I decided to spin it up into a full blog post of my own instead. As such, the rest of this post contains massive unmarked spoilers through episode 20 of Shiki.

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Dennou Coil is a 2007 anime by Madhouse, cryptically subtitled COIL A CIRCLE OF CHILDREN, which indeed follows a circle of children (and some adults) involved with mysteries related to cyberspace-viewing glasses and the strange beings reflected in them. Along the way it manages to explore themes of compassion, coming of age, and the nature of reality. The show's also known as Cyber Coil, which makes sense because attaching den- (electric- or cyber-) to the front of anything and everything is kind of a running theme.

As a quick aside, I had been kind of thinking about watching this show for a while, but receiving it as a recommendation Reverse Thieves' Anime Blog Secret Santa project was the impetus that forced me to get around to it. I also intend to watch and maybe review the two other recommendations I received, the Ghibli-sans-Miyazaki1 movie Only Yesterday and Yoshitoshi ABe's classic Haibane Renmei — but not before Christmas. As it is, with this season of anime being particularly above average in the number of enjoyable shows, and DJ Max Technika 2 also releasing around Thanksgiving and subsequently commanding a shameful amount of my time, I ended up putting off the show until the last few days and watching 23 of the 26 episodes in a whirlwind of 2 days.

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Heroman. It's a title that's sounds so generic and trite that the show could just be amazing. As a collaboration between the reputable Studio Bones and Spiderman-creator Stan Lee, it seemed like a show that could really deliver. I watched one episode when it aired, and decided that it didn't seem to be the case. But due to the prodding of a certain someone, I'm giving it another chance. So far, while there are things to like about it, there are many more aspects of the show that get on my nerves. I'm hoping for many of these to change, but until they do (if at all), I need to vent. The rest of this post contains spoilers for episodes 1-5 of Heroman.

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Ah, sleep. One of the great mysteries of life. A state in which we spend a third of our time, doing seemingly nothing. A necessity and yet the first thing to get trimmed from our schedule when push comes to shove. Wild plans exist for those who want to do more with less. But nothing can do away with this essential dead spot in every day.

I think it was about 4 or 5 years ago, around my freshman year in college, that I noticed how my sleep schedule worked. No matter what time I went to bed, if left unattended, I spend about 9 hours, including the time it took to fall asleep and to get out of bed. If I cut that short with an alarm and something to do, it would come back later. I would get out of class feeling hazy and end up dozing off for just about long enough to make my total sleep time 9 hours. I read that the best way to reduce wasted time sleeping was to stick to a consistent schedule, but with the dorm experience, that was not particularly viable. There was one up-side to this, however; I discovered that when my sleep schedule is broken and insufficient is when I have the most interesting and memorable dreams, a fact that remains true today. (Last night's, or rather, this morning's humdinger involved a huge condor, nearly getting attacked by a wild tiger, $5 gas, and a prototype 17-inch iPad. Go figure.)

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Missing Cycles starts here.

The video was a snowy mess of noise. Axalis suddenly felt himself with a splitting headache. Text began to appear unbidden in the view of his mechanical eye:

Cymanager override complete.

Firmware compatibility confirmed.

Beginning data merge.

Axalis blacked out.

* * *

Jordan Burk checked the time on his watch. 20:15. He realized he should call his wife and let her know he would be missing dinner again. He desperately did not want to do so, but he forced himself to withdraw his handheld PC and press the buttons to dial his wife's handheld. After a couple rings, her face appeared on the screen. Jordan's wife was attractive, a light blonde with big eyes and soft features. But right now those features were glaring at him.

"I suppose this isn't to let me know you're on your way?"

Jordan hesitated, then finally bit the bullet and said it. "No. We're under pressure to get the case wrapped up before the election, especially with the jumper yesterday, but there's not enough evidence to close it. I need another few hours to look into some more of these loose ends. You should eat dinner without me."

"You know, Jordan, some of us manage to finish our work within the normal eight hours and come home for dinner. Maybe you would make more progress if you took some time to relax?"

"I'm sorry, it's... just this one case. I promise when it's done I'll take a long vacation and we can spend the whole two weeks together."

"I'm not asking for that much, Jordan. I just want you to have dinner together sometimes."

"I'm sorry," he repeated.

"Look, I'll tell Mags to put your portion in the fridge. You can flashheat it when you get back. At this rate, I'll already be asleep by then."

"Thanks," he said downtroddenly, and sat there as his wife ended the call. Finally he returned to his work rig and began reviewing the facts of the Morse Biotronics case again.

To be continued...