It's been a while since I've done that anime thing.

New term of CAS showings. Continuing with Hikaru no Go, and started Kiddy Grade, Witch Hunter Robin, Melody of Oblivion, Last Exile, and Saiyuki.

I always hear the name Kiddy Grade but I didn't really know what it was about. For all that it seems like a guys' type of show for some inexplicable reason, it's actually pretty interesting. It's fun to watch, and I like the setup. Not really sure what else to say about it.

On the other hand, I don't like Witch Hunter Robin as much as I expected to. It's one of those shows where you feel like everything happens in slow motion or with people half-asleep, with a lot of those still moments, like staring at a blinking light or listening to the cicadas. WHR doesn't use those clichés, but it's the same feeling. Of course, there are the action-packed moments during a hunt, but I don't feel like those are very engaging either. Overall, the first two episodes just didn't hold my attention very well.

We're showing Melody of Oblivion because at the last minute we became unable to get Magic Knight Rayearth without renting it. I'd been watching it on my own and just starting to think how it might be neat to put it on the schedule next year, so it was the perfect opportunity. Although I guess it's true, now that I think about it, that the series rather needs an acquired taste. It's very surreal and bizarre, and pretty dark, too. Not the kind of stuff I usually watch, either, but somehow I've found the series so far really good. I tend to watch it an arc at a time, which the title screens conveniently number and split up for you. I'm around episode 20 now and while things have progressed somewhat, I'm still not sure how it'll end, and whether there will be closure. It might come down to a big exposition-fest in the last arc, kind of like in Scrapped Princess.

There have been so many shows lately based on H games, and MoO has random moments when I seriously wonder if it's not one of them. I mean, the first episode introduced us to the Monster that could unclothe people with a gesture. [In general, Hor just annoys and weirds me out. The other Monsters are a lot better. But the Monster Union people are worse.] And later, the female Meros Warriors always seem to have their tattoos in much more . . . provocative locations than Kurofune and Bocca, who have them on their arms. Their attack sequences aren't exactly ecchi, but their facial expressions seem that way. It's kind of like the preting sequence in Pretear. But as far as I know, MoO is a stand-alone series that's not based on anything, so maybe it's just fanservice. I can't really complain, I suppose, because I really dig the bishounen humanoid Ivermachines. <3 Why does Bocca only get a boring one?

Last Exile is kind of so-so. When it first began, I was thinking, "Yawn, not my genre," but by the end of the second episode, I was somewhat interested, at least. Depends a lot on what the larger plot will turn out to focus on -- the politics or the two Vanship kids, for example -- but the music is gorgeous.

Saiyuki is fun, if I ignore the mess they've made of the original story. A bit repetitive with their gags and their overuse of freeze-shots of the characters in cool poses, but I'm not expecting much more than fluff from the series anyway. [It was scary, how the opening scenes between Goku and Sanzo totally reminded me of Shuuichi and Yuki from Gravitation.] Mmm, Hakkai. Always good to find more tasty Ishida Akira roles. ^o^

This weekend's feature was Here is Greenwood, which we'll finish next week. I don't know if it's just the effect of watching it in a group -- I tried watching School Rumble by myself and found it tiresome and not nearly as funny -- but it's a really cute, funny series. Their dorm's weirdness does seem to parallel the hovses in some way. I like it in the way I like KareKano, although that probably doesn't mean anything to you. I don't know if I'd read the manga, but I should get a copy of the OVA, considering it's only one DVD.

In other news, it's the start of a half-season! Lots of first episode raws released this past week. I might look into Jinki Extend, which appears to be mecha, but has nice character designs. I watched the first episode of Mahou Sensei Negima (raw), because I've heard so much about it. Definitely a fun series I'll continue to watch, though I'll probably switch to fansubs because 1) I don't consistently catch raw releases and 2) if they start getting technical about magic, I'll be completely lost. My listening comprehension of high school comedy seems to be a lot higher than I would have expected, though.

Meanwhile, I still struggle to keep up with older series. Meine Liebe is still cool, although I don't think I ever mentioned in here my observation that it sometimes feels like drama without the emotion. What I mean by that is, shocking or moving things will happen, and the characters don't even blink. But somehow this doesn't detract from the series, at least for me. Still waiting for something bigger to happen, though, not just episodic character development. Episode 6 managed to point towards something, with Isaac's report on the Strahl candidates and the conspiracy of gardeners, but it also annoyingly answered nothing and used the blatantly obvious gimmick of unfinished sentences to build suspense. Also, I really need to get the series' music. The OP is one of those slightly off-tune-ish songs that grows on you a lot, and the ED is cool, too. And considering the BGM carries much of the burden of creating the "drama" in the series, it's got to be pretty good.

I've also kept up with Phi-naru Approach, which manages to have all sorts of developments without you feeling like anything's changed; in a good way. Except episode 11, which explained a lot of stuff about Shizuka, was incredibly sad. Two more episodes for them to kiss and make up and live happily ever after...

Kyou Kara Maou continues as well -- I wonder when they're going to start releasing the American DVDs. The first 26 episodes ended on a fairly positive note, and with fitting pseudo-closure. But then the new season immediately took a plunge towards the darker; much more so than the show has been so far. Their arcs definitely stretch out and flow into one another a lot now. Agh, so much suspense. Need next episode! [But since when did Murata have blond hair?]

Other than that, I think I'm hopelessly behind. From last season, my backlog gained Tsukuyomi, Bleach, and Tactics, all three of which are still going, as far as I know, and I never got more than four episodes or so into them. From further in the past, there's PLANETES, Maria-sama ga Miteru ~Haru~, and Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon. And this term I have Disgaea to keep me busy, too. Man.

Oh yeah, I did catch up on one old series, which was Mahou Shoujo Tai. Episode 19 is definitely well into the deeper story now, and the show feels almost completely different from the beginning. The characters have grown a lot, although Alice still annoys the hell out of me. I hate characters who, when faced with bad guys who are trying to kill her friends, will just petulantly scream, "No!" and refuse to fight or hurt people. Anyway, with sporadic releases and ten minute episodes, my biggest problem with this series is forgetting what's happened so far.

Mmm, linguistics.

joulesm posted a link to this article on color and, more specifically, terminology for colors. I think it's a bad sign for my career as a chem-e that I found that mix of anthropology and linguistics so much more interesting than most of what I've studied here at Tech. Then again, I also think the whole "puzzle" is kind of self-evident if you just think about it.

For example, they say that the spectrum is continuous, so cultures will divide it arbitrarily. Well, duh. Whatever Roy G. Biv may say, most people, and basic Crayola sets, don't acknowledge indigo as its own color.

The lack of colorful descriptions in literature probably has less to do with a psychological inability to perceive color than a psychological inability to care about color. I didn't read much of the Greek classics, but my general feeling was that the writers tended to be less interested in telling us what things looked like than in listing the lineage and past glory of every last soldier.

It's also pretty easy to speculate about the "rules" for color words. The theory about societal complexity sounds good to me. You don't care about fine shades until you get artistic. Also, I would think of the colors as being in order of prevalence and importance in a more natural world. Don't we all learn that animals use red as a warning signal? Yellow/green is everywhere. And so on.

I guess I always knew that I prefer to understand things rather than apply what I know. But by definition, that's just not productive. I'd probably get sick of the whole researching and finding evidence to back up my theories thing anyway. It's more fun just to speculate.