The Awakening

Let's pretend I'm actually good at tracking dates and say that two full weeks have passed since I started watching Bleach. To be honest, it's not that good. It's long-winded, has a tendency to underplay emotions, and to paraphrase Mary, "half of the series is spent with Ichigo trying to learn bankai." At least it was up to the point where she dropped the show altogether and gave it up as a bad job. Then again, Mary and I usually don't see eye to eye when it comes to these things. She loved Clannad, which I gave up on after Episode3. But, well.

Point is, Bleach is interesting. For all its unnecessary (in my opinion) emphasis on battle scenes - which are mostly predictable, given this is Kurosaki *freakin'* Ichigo we're talking about - Bleach keeps me hooked because of its characters. Fine. I admit to having a soft spot for handsome men (ehem, boys) with troubled pasts and stormy eyes, but even if Byakuya and Toshirou weren't there, I'd probably still watch the series. Probably. The zanpakuto are interesting in their diversity, and the enemies are swell, too.

My beef with this series (the main one) is that it gives very little thought to death. Of course, you could argue that the story deals with people who see death as a natural, inevitable end (the shinagami being what they are) but still, I watched this series after Gundam SEED, where Kira was all "What have I done? How do I atone? Can I atone? No, I can't!" I suppose it's somewhat wrong to judge one series based on another one's criteria, but still. I think Bleach slaughters too many people.

Joyce, who introduced me to the world of Bleach, once complained that the series puts too much emphasis on Toshirou. And having seen a considerable part of the show, I say, Hell yeah. But given I was a Toshirou fan even before I started watching the show, I don't mind much. Not really, no. Although I wish they'd feature Byakuya more often, too.

Love this series for its music, its characters. I also like Kubo Tite's way of creating "romance", where he doesn't explicitly say if his characters love each other or not - it's up to the audience to make sense of the "It's complicated" relationship. I hate it for a lot of things, including its length. And Ichigo being all-powerful, invincible. And the fact that a lot of things keep popping up halfway through the series - the King's Key, for example, which is apparently what Aizen's really after - just to make the plot more complicated that it originally was. Gah. A Meitantei Conan in the making. Only with hotter guys in kick-ass uniforms. Roy Mustang would drool if he saw Matsumoto in her battle gear.

PS Ep146 is in wmp min mode right now. Photo courtesy of the unsuspecting KalvinK, deviantartist extraordinaire.

Undas 2010

As I've mentioned in my previous post, I have no idea how to flip pictures like this. In any case, this is a picture of me taken just a few moments ago, sitting on top of two connected beds in Rm6 of the UP Alumni Hostel. Basically, I'm here because my dorm doesn't open until tomorrow, and I have to race to my college early so my thesis partner (Sunshine, who didn't tell me she had suffered from dengue over the sembreak) and me can get a decent adviser. And yeah, I'm scared as hell, so scared I'm plotting possible attack maneuvers vs both live invaders of my privacy and spirit fiends. Most of them involving my rather heavy water bottle and screaming at the top of my lungs.

Shame though, 'cause as I was preparing for my undeniably long evening, the idea for a story came to me. Shame 'cause it's a horror story, of all things. And yeah, I've a tendency to jump headfirst into things without thinking them through, but I'm not reckless enough to forcibly attract spirits floating around relatively peacefully by increasing the negative aura in my room through writing horror-farce. I may be in the non-sensitive side of the Uriarte Clan, but I ain't taking chances.

On the soft side, I came across a brief reference to Super Gals! earlier - natsukashii! I wanna watch it, not for the sake of watching Kotobuki Ran rule Shibuya singlehandedly, but just because I want to fall for, get hurt by, and fangirl over the Rei - Aya pairing. Sigh.

Modern Methods of Torture

A month or so ago, my friend Trisha forced me and a couple of our other friends to join the SDP "Spotted! Ikot-picture-taking-contest". Given my friends were so into winning the thing - though we didn't even know what the prizes were at that time - I won two gift certificates to Spa101 in Maginhawa. Plus, I managed to leech the GC Sunshine won, so in the end, I had three GCs to play with. [Which Julian asked to offer as a prize for the ICTUS raffle, a request which I selfishly declined.] But I digress.

Early this afternoon, I finally mustered the guts to visit Spa101 to claim my prize, and to get a much needed half-leg wax. And you know how many hours I spent there? 4. 4 freakin' hours. The ates were really nice and more than highly competent, but seriously. 4 HOURS. To think some women engage in practices like this on an almost religious level.

Then again, my waxing took too much time because I had a lot of ingrown leg hair - due to shaving, and because of this, I will forever campaign against leg shaving of any sort. Also, I had my nails done; they got ruined as I was going home because I wasn't patient enough for my nails to dry. But the thing is, I don't really care. As long as my nails are black enough to show in my creative pic, it's fine.

Although I did wait for about ten minutes for my nails to "dry". And because I was so bored, I tried out the Super Macro effect Phill had been playing with in my camera, producing very satisfactory effects. Wanna take a look?

And I actually took more pictures, but as I'm technologically illiterate, I don't know how to post them flipped.