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.

I've made a lot of progress on various things in the past few weeks, schoolwork aside. For one thing, I read over 30 volumes of One Piece to finally catch up with the manga. It's strange: at times, I found myself thinking, "this comic isn't for me," but as I got further on, more and more I found that I was unequivocally enjoying it. Certainly, the comic grows deeper and more inspiring over time; but moreso, I simply found myself accepting the style and quirks of the comic, its own internal logic, and so forth. One Piece physics aren't the physics of our world; but they at least make some sort of wacky sense, and they're very, very, "Shounen Jump".

After that, I also found I had time to catch up with about 10 TV anime I'm currently watching, not counting Xam'd (which ended last week). Plenty of them are good, and may warrant future mention on this blog, but for now, the one I want to talk about is Toaru Majutsu no Index, and not because it's good, but because recently it has become apparent how poorly conceived it is.

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About a day and a half ago I posted an image I had finished coloring as a result of procrastinating from writing a story for my class. Not much later, Chloe (who had drawn the image about 2 years ago) scoffed at my efforts and told me to color something newer. Such as an image drawn to my request immediately. I thought a bit, settled on MISAKA Imouto (a nice design and one fitting for Chloe's art style) and no sooner said than done, a PSD lineart file had found its way to my inbox. Of course, I had to write a story first, which got dismissed as "just sci-fi" by many of my peers and by my professor, and ended up getting hardly any sleep... but after I was finally done with my long day of classes, I sat down and colored myself a picture. I quite like it.