Animedragon

It's cold, misty, overcast and generally miserable. In other words every thing you'd expect for December, but at least it's not snowing.

I'm currently watching Golden Time. It's a rather good Slice of Life series set in a college rather than a High School, which makes a nice change and it has a good cast of characters all with interesting personalities. The series is based on a rather intriguing concept.

Extension

What do you call Santa’s helpers? - Subordinate Clauses. What do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire? - Frostbite.

Welcome aboard. Pull up a cushion, or a chair if sitting on the floor isn't your thing, and make yourself at home here.

I finished with the UK school system 53 years ago and back then it was a case of sit at your desk and be talked at by the teacher for the 30 minutes or so that their lesson lasted for. There was no incentive or encouragement to do any research or find things out for yourself. The Internet hadn't been invented so if you wanted to find out anything you had to use the school library and the reference books were rather old. In my final year the teachers were focused on getting us to study for the end of term exams, but there was no encouragement to think about what we would do after we left school, it was sort of assumed that the 'bright' students would go on to college and then university but there was no guidance, information or help about what subjects to study or what career paths were available. Those of us who were 'less bright' were thrown upon the mercy of the local job centre who tried to put us into whatever jobs were available. They offered me several places but I was fortunate in that my father found me a job which I enjoyed doing and stayed with for my entire working life. From what I've heard from the few of my friends that have school age children things are much better now and there's much more encouragement to find things out for themselves and more support from the teaching staff about their future once they leave school so they're no longer thrust out into the world with no idea about what to do.

I haven't been watching it because I don't have a Netflix sub, but if I did I'd probably avoid the series. I've never really been a fan of spin-off shows, especially new spin-off shows based on old classic series to me they always give the impression that the TV station wants a new series for their line-up but lack the imagination to create something new so they dig out an old series and use that as a starting point. To be honest while I watched the original Addams Family, and quite enjoyed it, I was never really a fan of the series and much preferred the Munsters.

Earlier it was bright and sunny but cold, now it's dull, overcast and still cold.

I'm just the opposite. I regularly watch an anime series more than once, I often find that I enjoy the series more 2nd or 3rd time round because I'm not so focused on following the story so I tend to notice all the little details in the background that I missed on my first viewing. Also I often find that knowing the way the story unfolds makes the interaction between the characters more interesting. Also, with the price of DVDs & Blue-rays I'm certainly not going to spend money on something to only watch it once.

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Nuclear

So, having watched Kanon, Your Lie in April, Violet Evergarden TV & Movie I felt I needed something a bit more light-hearted and less tear-jerking, so I've started on Sound of the Sky. Yes, I know this series gets more serious towards the end but in the early episodes the interactions between the various characters are great fun to watch.

Supersonic

Nice merch. The article on the Lunar Flashlight mission was very interesting, thanks for the link.

Lunchtime today I finished watching the Violet Evergarden TV series and I'd forgotten how sad some of those episodes were. Then this evening I watched the Violet Evergarden Movie. I ordered this back in July, so I've been waiting a long time to see it. It was definitely worth the wait, it's a wonderfully beautiful film with a fantastic soundtrack, amazing animation with an astonishingly high attention to details and stunning visuals and above all, a great story which is a fitting finale to the series and the story of Violet Evergarden. As you can tell, I really enjoyed watching this film and the 2 hours 20 minutes it ran for just flew by.

I wouldn't like to meet one of those on a dark night, they don't look at all friendly.

Welcome aboard. Pull up a cushion, or a chair if you prefer not to sit on the floor, and make yourself at home.

A few more suggestions for SoL series: Kanon. Golden Time. Clannad & Clannad After Story.

What counts as 'anime'? Well that's an interesting question. I've always understood that the word "anime" is used in Japan to describe any animated film and is used outside Japan to describe any animated film originating from Japan. Out of curiosity I looked up the word in an on-line dictionary and got these results: "A genre of film and television animation created in or influenced by the traditional style of Japanese 2D animation and characterized by highly stylized, colourful art, fantastic settings, and mature themes." "A type of Japanese animated film with themes and styles similar to manga comics." "First recorded in 1985–90; from Japanese, borrowing of English animation."

I think the whole "Black Friday" thing is just a gimmick invented by shops to persuade people to spend money they don't have on things they don't need. Although I think shops have 'dialled back' a bit on the Black Friday advertising, probably as a result of events a few years ago when a near riot broke out in a shop as customers fought with each other to get the best bargains and even resorted to taking things out of other peoples trolleys. I seem to recall that it got so bad that the store shut its doors and called the police, when order was restored the shop looked like an earthquake had hit it.

Welcome aboard. Pull up a cushion, or a chair if you prefer, and make yourself at home.

Now re-watching Violet Evergarden before watching the movie which came today.

Talking yourself into buying an expensive piece of kit is relatively easy. It's much more difficult to talk your wallet into agreeing with you.