June 01, 2003
Good News, Everyone!
AnimeSuki is back! If you get the "Those idiots..." page, you'll just need to hit reload. Or if you're running IE, which is a bit fuzzy on the whole "reload" concept, you may need to reboot a couple of times.
May 25, 2003
Good News, Bad News, Good News
Good news is that Azumanga Daioh has been licensed by AD Vision. Looks like it will be a while before it hits the shelves, though; ADV are notorious for sitting on licenses, sometimes for years. ADV are also releasing Full Metal Panic, a fact that I had somehow missed. Have to get my pusher to add it to my standing order.
Bad news is that AnimeSuki have had their server pulled for being the victim of multiple DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks.
Good news is that they'll soon be back on a better server with a different hosting company.
Unsurprising news is that Blogger ate my post. Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Post&Publish. Get it stuck into your head.
May 16, 2003
The End Of Guu
Episode 6 was sadly the last of Jungle wa Itsumo Hale nochi Guu Deluxe. I think there's a short special around somewhere, though. I'll have to see if I can dig it up.
And this quiz tells me I'm Hale, which is no great surprise.
You are Hale! You are a gamer and a very
sweet person, but your friends, family, and
your life are constantly causing you to stress
out. Hang in there, things will get better!
Which Jungle wa Itsumo Hale nochi Guu character are you?
May 15, 2003
More Guu
Jungle wa Itsumo Hale nochi Guu Deluxe Episode 6 is available now on BitTorrent. Which means that by tomorrow it will be on Kazaa, and by the weekend it will be everywhere.
Meanwhile, why not waddle on over to AnimeSuki for this and a huge amount of other anime goodness.
April 28, 2003
April 24, 2003
April 19, 2003
Sugar Baby Love
Okay, so I've been watching Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar. So? Want to make something of it?
Phear the power of the cute side. Phear!
April 16, 2003
Anime Quickies
Two of the best anime series I've seen recently are ones I didn't buy, but downloaded from the net. I didn't buy them not because I'm cheap, but because they're not for sale. Not in English, anyway, dubbed or subbed.
The first is Jungle wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu (Jungle Guu for short), which translates roughly to The jungle was always nice, then came Guu. Which is pretty much the story. Hale is a young boy growing up in a jungle village with his mother, whose name I can't remember right now. Hale's quiet life is turned upside down when his mother adopts the little orphaned girl Guu, who is not quite what she seems. Having watched only 15 (out of 26) episodes so far, I can't actually say what Guu is, and I'm not at all sure that it becomes clearer in later episodes. But it doesn't really matter. Guu is weird, her facial expressions are wonderful (you get a taste of them in the opening credits) and is the perfect foil for Hale. Jungle Guu is definitely off-beat, but in a way that quickly grows on you. I could give you more details, but I'd likely spoil something. Just watch it.
The second series is Azumanga Daioh, the story of a group of high-school girls. They don't dress up in combat suits and battle alien invaders. They don't transform into mini-skirted magical maidens and save the world. They don't even fall into a parallel universe and find themselves forced to examine their own identities.
They just go to school, like more-or-less normal girls. But that's more than enough. Azumanga Daioh was originally produced as 130 5-minute shorts and has been resewn as 26 half-hour episodes, though you wouldn't know it except for the sub-episode titles and the unflagging pace. Frequently rib-crackingly funny, sometimes poignant, never dull, Azumanga Daioh is a delightful study of high-school life.
If you want to watch these - or other anime that hasn't yet been picked up English-language distributors - hop on over to AnimeSuki, which is a nifty directory of BitTorrent downloads of fan-subbed anime. (BitTorrent has to be the least annoying file-sharing program ever, and works not only amazingly well, but also on Linux. Which is a good thing, because for some reason it crashes my otherwise stable WinXP box.)