What the fuck. I hate it when an anime just ends without bothering to finish the story. I would have much preferred the anime just have a bullshit ending that has nothing to do with the original manga, much like Fullmetal Alchemist did. Now I have to go and at least read spoilers about the manga to find out what the hell happens at the end. I hate that.

“Their journey will continue without end.”

Bah.

I got my iPhone 4 two days ago. I love it so far, but there are a few problems. The biggest one is obviously the band around it. You do indeed lose signal when you bridge the gap between the two antennae. This is remedied by either not touching them at the same time or getting a case. I don’t think you should be forced to make those decisions for a $300 product. The 2nd issue I have isn’t with the phone itself, but rather the lack of good cases for it. I know it’s early in the new iphone’s life, but I would have liked a better selection of cases at this point. I really want to get an Incase case, since they made what was, in my opinion, the best cases for the iphone 3g.

Now for the good. Everything loads SO MUCH faster on the new iphone. The screen resolution is much higher, but still on the same sized screen, resulting in sharper looking images. The camera has been stepped up to 5 megapixels as opposed to the 3G’s 3 megepixel camera. The best thing, though, is the ability to sort apps into folders. Holy shit. This one has been a long time coming. Now I have my apps across two pages instead of four. I can’t really begin to express how badly the older iphones needed that.

Overall, it’s a sweet upgrade to any of the older iphones. Upgrading to the 3GS wasn’t worth the price, in my opinion, but the iPhone 4 is. Just be sure to get a case or one of the bumpers to avoid the annoying issue with the band.

Now that I’m somewhat caught up in my studies, I’m trying to get back into the swing of anime. The first recent series I’m starting with is Durarara!!, which started airing back in January. I even made a post about it then. I’m seven episodes in so far, and I love every minute of the series. From its catchy as fuck OP to the ED, it’s one hell of a ride. According to wikipedia, it’s been licensed by Aniplex. Hopefully the DVDs come out soon.

Part 7 of the 7th Saga TAS run came out while I was in BMT. Check it out. It’s a pretty sweet project. They also found a neat glitch.

This doesn’t leave a whole ton of time for hobbies. When I’m not having planes crash into each other in the simulators(damn you PACER23 and RAPTR02!! *shakes fist*), I watch Japanese cartoons. I watched Lucky Star last week. Last weekend I watched Mnemosyne, which was delicious. I suggest picking it up if you can. It’ll be out on bluray soon enough, though. Might want to wait on that. I’m working my way through my Code Geass DVDs now. At just a few episodes a night, though, it’ll take about a week or two to watch it all. I haven’t watched anything new that has come out in Japan since before I left for BMT. I would like to see the new K-ON, but alas the internet connection in the dorms is so shitty. It’s hard to even download podcasts here. Fuck.

As for gaming, Angry Birds for the iPhone is pretty sweet. It’s got tons of levels, so you can play for short periods of time. Torchlight for PC is also pretty addictive, especially if you liked Diablo II. But the game that really has me by the balls is Star Ocean: The Last Hope for the PS3. I fucking LOVED Star Ocean: Till the End of Time for PS2. I don’t think this new SO game is as good, personally, but it beats the hell out of whatever else is out for the system at the moment. At least in my opinion.

So, the bad news. There is always bad news.  To start with, my iPhone is acting up. I’m not getting 3G access on it right now. I had it this morning, but now I get nothing. I’ve rebooted it multiple times and checked to make sure that 3G is enabled in the settings under the network tab. Alas, nothing. On the upside, the iPhone 4 was just announced a few days ago. So maybe I’ll upgrade when it comes out. My AT&T contract is up in December, but I read about AT&T giving discounts for upgrading early or something. Also, I won’t be going to Otakon this year. The USAF, being the slow inefficient machine that it is, held me here too long before letting me start classes. What this means is that I’ll be leaving Keesler AFB to PCS to my next base a week or two after Otakon is over, instead of a week or two before. I’d love to say that they had me doing something useful while I waited on classes to start, but they just had me waste time(RAKING LEAVES FOR YOUR FREEDOM) for my first month here. I did a lot of other shit too, but the worst was raking leaves. All. Day. Long.

It’s coming. I promise. ;_;

Instead of wasting your time talking about the plot, I’ll just direct you to wikipedia’s article on the show(click). What I do want to talk about is the style.

This show has style. I gotta give it that. It grabbed me from the beginning with its OP. This show was directed by the same guy that did Baccano!. This, I think, was pretty obvious right away. The OP for both series do the same thing, in that they have the main characters doing random things, then it freezes and shows one of them using just a few colors with what I’m assuming is their name on the screen. For example:

I’m sure that this technique has a name, but I don’t know what it is. In any event, it needs to be used more often because I really fucking like it. The song that is used is catchy as hell, too. I would link it, but it seems YouTube is pulling videos of the OP down as fast as they’re going up.

Now, onto the backgrounds. You’ll notice that only the important characters are colored in. It looks like all of the background characters will be colored in shades of gray. The buildings, lights, signs, and sidewalks are all detailed quite nicely. Anyway, the pictures:

In related news, I’ve begun packing my shit at home. I can’t take it with me to BMT or AIT, but afterwards when I come home to pack and move to my base, I’ll have it packed and ready to go. I don’t know anyone else that is packing as early as I am, but I feel it’s a pretty intelligent move on my part. In addition to saving me time later on down the road, it also keeps my nephew’s filthy paws off my stuff while I’m gone.

In completely unrelated news, I’ve been reading 20th Century Boys. I started it on a whim after seeing the review for the movie on Anime News Network. After I got about 40 chapters in, I bought the movie from Amazon. That came in the mail today along with the last volume of Genshiken 2. I haven’t watched it yet, but I’m hoping it will be good. It should cover the first five volumes of the manga. I’m around volume six, so there shouldn’t be any spoilers for later chapters of the manga.

Ohayocon is next week. I’m still really looking forward to that. It’s in Columbus, Ohio on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I check into my hotel Thursday afternoon, so I don’t have to rush when the doors open. It’ll be my last taste of freedom before I go to BMT.

Posting the newest update to Kirkq and Nitrodon’s 7th Saga speed run. I posted parts 1-5 here and here(links).

I think it’s pretty fucking neat that these guys are doing this. I’m very curious to know if they can finish the game in under two hours. I didn’t think so at first, but they’re getting close. They might just make it.