Kimikiss Pure Rouge

For all my disappointment with H₂O, I've been comforted recently by the excellence of Kimikiss Pure Rouge.  Mao-neesan's really taking things hard, and I've been getting flashbacks of School Days, though I'm sure that's not in the cards here...

Posted by: mparker762 at 07:59 PM
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Spice and Wolf

"Spice" in the title would be Craft Lawrence, an itinerate spice/fur/whatever trader.  "Wolf" in the title would be Horo, aka Horo the Wise, a Wolf kami (animistic spirit) who's previous occupation was guardian of the fields and guarantor of good crops.  But when the church moves in, and brings with it farming technology, then the villagers no longer believe in Horo and she decides to move on.  In her human form, of course, because wolves don't have the T&A that humans do.

Horo from the intro...


Villagers worshipper her in her salad days...


Horo hitchhiking, and a very surprised Craft Lawrence...


How the villagers can disbelieve such an attractive young wolf-girl is beyond me...


Horo dressed decently.  And pretty happy by the looks of her.  I've never figured out why a wolf spirit has fox ears and tail though...  They don't have phones in this era, so we don't know if she can say "moshi".


There are a lot of gorgeous scenes in this show.


Horo, happy again.  Once again food is involved.


The Trading Game.  This is actually the episode that got me interested in this show - in this scene they're trying to figure out if the silver content in a particular coin is trending up or down.  Horo's wolf ears help tremendously here, listening to the clinking sound they make.

Posted by: mparker762 at 07:42 PM
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H2O - Footprints in the Sand

So the big secret evil that that gets her called "Roach"? The one that causes her to get beaten to a pulp by the schoolkids?  The one that so inflamed the villagers that they came out out with torches and pitchforks to burn her ancestral home and kill her grandparents and parents?  The one they've been building up to for five episodes now?

Turns out her grandparents weren't sufficiently charitable towards the villagers.

Barf.

I'm washing my hands of this one.  Anime can be wierd and still be good (and the correlation is surprisingly high), but this is just stupid.

On the other hand, Spice and Wolf is turning out to be a lot more than just a T&A vehicle.  Episode 3 with the trading intrigues and currency manipulation really hooked me.  Hopefully it won't jump the shark like H₂O did.

Posted by: mparker762 at 06:38 PM
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Stropping is king

It's easy to forget when you've got a closetful of hones for dealing with those old ebay razors, but the guys in the old days frequently made do with just their strop.  The linen on the back is a slow polishing hone, but is sufficient to keep a razor sharp if you use it enough.  How much is "enough" depends on a number of factors, like the coarseness of your beard, the pH of your water, and the quality of your preparation, but somewhere between 20 and 50 laps should do it.  Just keep a light touch, since as with all honing the lighter the touch the finer the edge will be.  The coarse linen bangs the edge around, so after sharpening the razor on the linen be sure to follow it up with 20 laps or so on the leather to straighten the edge back out.

Another option I've been playing with is denim, which is also a very fine slow abrasive, but because it's a finer weave than linen it doesn't seem to knock the edge off kilter as much.  I've had great success stropping on the denim and going directly to the shave.  Unfortunately denim is much flimsier than the linen used for strops, so I put it on a paddle strop. 

Posted by: mparker762 at 09:18 PM
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TI Worked Back 6/8, with barber's notch and thumb notch

I've been shaving with this razor for the last few months straight.  The Trumper's Violet soap was the lather of choice this morning.

Posted by: mparker762 at 08:01 PM
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Shigofume Ep 1

A "shigofumi" is a letter from the dead, and Fumika is the deliverygirl responsible for getting them to their destination.  Keeps the restless souls from hanging around in ghost form scaring peope, I suppose - why hang around as a disembodied spirit when you can lounge around the afterlife's pool, nibbling on sushi, and just dash off a letter that will get your message across just fine?

Fumika is a Shinigami (literally death-god) - she's Death incarnate except that unlike the stuffy old western tradition of rotting robes and a scyhe she's got snappy clothes and a talking staff, possibly because her particular job doesn't involve collecting souls.



And the first episode is a doozy.  A dead man sends a letter to his oldest daughter's lover.  Only they haven't actually done the deed yet, which leads to some amusing bits where the poor guy tries to bring himself to confessing and getting the girl in bed.  There's two big twists at the end, the first one was a good one, but the second one was totally unexpected and really floored me.  Shigofumi has propelled itself to the front of the "must watch" list.

Posted by: mparker762 at 07:52 PM
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Spring 2008 season

Rosario to Vampire seems like this season's Goshushuu-sama Ninomiya-kun.  Episode two even introduced a succubus, though vampire-girl is much more amusing (developing a crush on her first victim? brilliant!)

True Tears looks interesting so far - I'm curious what the deal is with chicken-girl.

H2O ~ Footprints in the Sand initially turned me off with the girl that keeps getting beat up by the bullies, and the blind kid really annoyed me as well.  But after two episodes the blind kid can mysteriously see again and I'm really curious what's up with the girl - the other kids call her "roach" and "monster", and she seems to want to be a pariah.  It's gotta be tied in with some Ancient Sin of the Village or something, but still I'm curious.

And that's about it.  Still waiting for the second half of Kimikiss Pure Rouge and Miname-ke, and I still haven't finished the fall season run of ef ~ a Tale of Memories, Myself; Yourself and Bamboo Blade ... I think Bamboo Blade and ef continue on into this spring season as well.

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Goshushuu-sama Ninomiya-kun final episode

Surprisingly enough not a train wreck.

Posted by: mparker762 at 10:24 PM
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Merry Christmas

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Goshushuu-sama Ninomiya-kun Ep 9

They're all incubi and succubi.

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