umadoshi: (Tohru & the pretty boys (flamika))
Ysabet ([personal profile] umadoshi) wrote2025-08-19 04:12 pm

Next-gen Fruits Basket fans

Over the last...several months?...[personal profile] wildpear introduced Pumpkin and (to different extents) a couple of other teenagers to Fruits Basket. Pumpkin got the double anime experience, starting with the 2001 anime and then going on to the 2019 anime, and while they were still working their way through the latter, they also restarted it to show it to two different people, including M, Pumpkin's agemate among our local friends' kids. Throughout, [personal profile] wildpear texted me intermittent reaction updates, which was a delight.

Now that they're all finished (on the anime front), [personal profile] wildpear brought Pumpkin and M over for an intergenerational fandom yard hangout last week! (Of the 2001 anime, M has only seen the very ending, in a sort of "must know what the horror actually is". For anyone who doesn't know, the original anime is mostly really charming and has a lot going for it, with most of its weaknesses being pretty understandable given when it was made and where the manga was at that point, but its ending is a straight-up travesty and an abomination.)

Jumping ahead a bit: you may notice the absence of the manga in the above, which has now been resolved! I initially had been like, "Well, I have a lending set, and its day has come!", but by the time the visit actually happened and I'd unearthed said set (a combination of the five 2-in-1 hardcover volumes Tokyopop managed to release, and the rest of the series in the standard Tokyopop edition), I'd talked sense into myself and decided to make it a gift instead. I'm not actually sure the lending set had ever gone out of the house (other than [personal profile] wildpear, the only person who'd ever read my hard copy was my sister, and that predated the lending set, IIRC), and I didn't honestly need four sets* in the house, even if one of them is in Japanese. So that box has gone off into the world, and while I warned everyone that manga spines aren't as sturdy as anyone would like, they don't have to worry about keeping the books pristine for me.

Anyway! Seeing the three of them was lovely. cut! )
umadoshi: (fancrone - china_shop)
Ysabet ([personal profile] umadoshi) wrote2025-08-17 10:56 am

Weekly proof of life: mostly media

Reading: [personal profile] scruloose and I finished listening to Artificial Condition and have started Rogue Protocol (but only barely--we've listened to however much of chapter 1 we could get in over supper on Friday before [personal profile] scruloose had to be doing something else).

We'll Prescribe You a Cat (Syou Ishida) was a very quick read and hard for me to pin down. It's a story in the vein of "~mysterious~ place provides X [often wishes granted or strange/deadly creatures, as in xxxHOLiC or Pet Shop of Horrors], but the actual cats being prescribed mostly appear to be just ("just") cats. I think this is the first in a series. Alas, I find the prose of the translation awfully flat, and can only hope I would've found the book more engaging in different hands.

I also read The City in Glass, which was my first time reading Nghi Vo. Gorgeous prose, a neat concept, and a great read overall.

Watching: We're six episodes into The Summer Hikaru Died (which is, I suppose unsurprisingly given the premise, touching on a significant existential question from Newsflesh [and from plenty of other places]). It continues to be very good. ^_^

I think we also saw an ep. of Silo sometime last week.

And on Friday I started watching Glass Heart on my own. As so often turns out to be the way, choosing it from my horrifying to-watch list was mostly random. Sometimes the choice is made simply because something is short (ten episodes, in this case) and I've seen several friends talking about it very recently. I'm six episodes in now.

I knew going in that Machida Keita is in it (who I knew only from Cherry Magic). I did not know in advance that Satoh Takeru is one of the leads, and then couldn't place him until I caved and looked up the cast. (He played Kenshin in the live-action Rurouni Kenshin movies [of which I've still only seen the first], and was impossibly good in the role. I keep meaning to rewatch the first and watch the others, despite my feelings about the franchise overall being irrevocably poisoned now by the horrible revelations about the creator. I still need to offload my set of the manga. >.<)

Weathering: The drought continues. Parts of the province are on fire, although the uncomfortably-close-to-me wildfire is under control, last I heard.

Planning: We don't have tickets yet, because there aren't yet showtimes for it, but the plan is to see Dongji Rescue late in the week. *fidgets*
umadoshi: (Hakkai picks locks (dawn_icons2))
Ysabet ([personal profile] umadoshi) wrote2025-08-10 02:49 pm

Upcoming media things!

Three unrelated things that have been announced recently:
  • K.B. Spangler says that the sixth Rachel Peng novel is coming out in late October!
  • Discotek has announced that they're releasing Monster: The Complete Series, which is very exciting since AFAIK only the first chunk was ever released in a physical edition the first time it was licensed. (I think the whole series is on Netflix, but I want to own a copy.)
  • ANN reports that Minekura-sensei is not only resuming Wild Adapter after a nine-year hiatus but aiming to wrap it up in its eighth volume. If it's actually completed, I imagine that increases the odds of it being re-licensed in English. (I was more attached to Saiyuki, personally, but even though she resumed that last fall [and ANY of this is pretty miraculous, given my vague understanding of her health], I'm not even hoping for anything on that front. If I'm pleasantly surprised, that'll be awesome.)
(Not an announcement, but FYI for fellow Canadians, Z1L's Dongji Rescue has made it to the Cineplex site with the expected August 22nd date. That's...that's next Friday! Less than two weeks! At some point, there should be actual theatres and showtimes! *_*)
theladyscribe: (oh captain my captain)
a subtle sort of brilliance ([personal profile] theladyscribe) wrote2025-08-09 08:44 pm

MCU Meme

Stolen from [personal profile] snickfic.

Bold = Watched Entirety
Italic = Watched Part
* Watched more than once.
† Watched in the first few weeks of release (at least initially, for TV shows).

the whole MCU under the cut )

In looking at this list, lmfao you can see precisely what year I quit the MCU. I have seen none of Phase 5 and don't really have any desire to seek any of it out. I honestly had not realized that there was a four-year gap between the last Marvel movie I'd seen in theaters and Fantastic Four! That is almost as long as I was actively in MCU fandom!!

Doing this meme also made me realize how few of these movies I have rewatched. Almost all of them were one viewing in the theater and then never again. Winter Soldier is definitely my most rewatched - I saw it four times in theater and have rewatched it more than once on DVD since then.

FWIW, I really liked Fantastic Four, and I have been thinking about going to see it again before it disappears from theaters. I liked that it was self-contained and that it felt very old-school both aesthetically and in its plotting. (It's tightly written, especially for a superhero movie. There are no scenes I'd cut, and that includes the big fight scenes/set pieces.)

I have negative interest in the Phase 6 movies that are to follow it, though. I don't know who the Avengers even are anymore, and I don't really care.
umadoshi: (peaches (girlboheme))
Ysabet ([personal profile] umadoshi) wrote2025-08-09 03:23 pm

Weekly proof of life: reading + foodstuffs

Reading: [personal profile] scruloose and I finished listening to All Systems Red and are now maybe a third of the way into Artificial Condition.

Yesterday I finished The Hands of the Emperor, which I think I read some of every day and still took me something like a week and a half even though I continued to really enjoy it all the way through. (I did find myself wishing that some of the emotional arc with Kip and his family had been shorter; [ROT13] uvf pbzcyvpngrq srryvatf nobhg uvf snzvyl abg ng nyy tenfcvat jub ur jnf be jung ur npghnyyl qvq jrer inyvq, ohg gung jnf n YBG bs cntrf qribgrq gb znal vafgnaprf va n ebj bs ehaavat vagb lrg nabgure crefba jub qvqa'g trg vg naq jnf qvfzvffvir be vafhygvat, be fbzrbar jub QVQ xabj jub ur jnf naq univat na vagrenpgvba, naq va rvgure pnfr gurer jnf gura lrg nabgure yratgul qryvirel bs rkcynangvba, naq vg jnf whfg...n ybg.

After finishing that last night, I completely at random started reading We'll Prescribe You a Cat (Syou Ishida), about which I have no particular feelings at this time.

Eating/baking: fruit, baking, salad (HelloFresh), sadness about still not liking tomatoes )