the end.

Right. So. Blogging more often.
This weekend has been nice. I already wrote about Friday night. Since then, I've washed a load of laundry, changed the sheets on my bed, and have gone to church.

Princess Tutu
I finished watching the anime Princess Tutu. You may remember that I have squeed about it before. After watching the entire series (through Netflix), though, was it worth it? YES! The ending was excellent, and I ended up caring for characters for whom I previously hadn't.
One of the cute things that I love about this series is that each episode is named after a different ballet/opera, and then features the musical score from that piece throughout the episode. I wasn't familiar with all of the storylines, but in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," for example, I noticed that several side characters were named after the ones in Shakespeare's play, and many actions and plot-points were lifted from the source material.
All of my good comments were already made by me in the link I just gave, after watching the first DVD (I don't want to give spoilers!). I guess that the only critique I have of the series is the animation quality. The colors are just right, and the lines are crisp - it's not the drawing that's bad, but rather the motion, or general lack-thereof. When the characters dance, it's generally very beautiful. But otherwise, the camera moves around zooming on people's faces or panning across a background instead of having a character move. I expect it's a technique used to make money. In the same vein, the series gets pretty flashback-heavy toward the last few episodes, but it's tastefully done and adds to the story, so I forgive it. If you're looking for a new (but slightly old) series, then I recommend this one.

Series Currently Airing in Japan
I haven't seen enough of either series to make much of a comment about them, but we had a "sampler" evening during movie-time this week at Anime Club, and I found two series that I liked a lot: Pumpkin Scissors and Tenpou Ibun Ayakashi Ayashi. I was already watching the series Nodame Cantabile before Saturday (it's pretty fun, but not gripping enough for me to devote time to stay caught up when I should be doing homework), and I found Saiunkoku Monogatari to be pretty "meh" despite the raving reviews I've heard from everyone and their mom. It's pretty, but....meh.
Too bad I don't have time to watch any of these series!!

Anyway, I've wasted lots of time somehow, and all I wrote about was anime series. How lame. Good night.

Link Spam

Part of what sucks about not blogging as often as I'd like is never posting all of the links I come across in a day of Internet-browsing that I think are interesting enough to put into a blog entry. So, today you will actually get to see them!

This evening, I went to a History lecture given by Chad's Roman History professor on "the real 300." I haven't seen the film based on the Frank Miller comic yet, but I plan to. Here's a Newsweek review, where you can also watch a preview. Speaking of Frank Miller....I'm almost done with the first volume of the Sin City comic, rented from the campus library. I really feel like his stuff works better as movies than as graphic novels. The bridge between comics and movies/TV series is weird like that. Some art styles and stories simply work better as comics, and some work better as anime series. Weird.

The next Studio Ghibli films have been announced. They both appear to be original series. Does anybody know when the Ghibli version of 'Tales of Earthsea' is going to be released in the U.S.?

Former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson is throwing his hat into the 2008 presidential race. The only thing I can think of when I think of Tommy Thompson is every time I ever rode past the Wisconsin state Capitol in the car with my dad because he would say, "You see that building? The governor works there. I know the governor! He used to come into my uncle's drugstore when I worked there. He knew my name."
So. If nothing else, my dad will be pleased.

And lastly, this is very random, but today's Wikipedia featured article is....Final Fantasy VII. :D