My motivation to blog seems to have died out with my desire to play games and anime. It is not as though there is nothing for me to write about it is just that even fewer people care about what I have to say about my life than what I have to say about anime.

For example; the other rainy day I had a meeting with someone at his “office” which is a converted doctors office replete with a restroom that has a nailed shut cabinet for sample collection. This person is a small time player and keeps sporadic hours so he has no secretary to greet me when I arrive early and I always just head directly to the meeting room rather than sit forlornly in his lobby. As I sat there I could hear him typing away in his private room and became a bit miffed that he was keeping me waiting even though I knew he would be aware I came in since he has bells on the door. A few minutes pass and the typing seems to stop, instead a sporadic banging begins. I grow wary and call out. No answer. I go to the door and call again. No answer. I knock lightly. Nothing. I knock firmly. Nada. Through this three distinct possibilities are in my mind, either he isn’t there, he is there and being assailed somehow, or he is there after being assailed. The first seemed most likely in spite of being really stupid, leaving your office with easy to steal moderately valuable items (computers etc.) unlocked,  that gave me the courage to open his door even though there might be someone else there. And of course there was no one there and almost right after that he comes in through the front door saying he was late from lunch.

It turns out that since my hearing is so good and the building so thin the typing (if there is one thing I recognize it is the clack of nails on keyboard) and other sounds I was hearing were from the offices above and beside his own. Which opens up the question of whether something untoward was going on elsewhere that I was unaware of. It also occurs to me that with his fortuitous entrance he might have been playing a trick on me. But in the end I found out that even though I did not respond in the most courageous manner to “what if this guy I know is in trouble” I did respond rationally and honorably. How much good I could have done him if he were being assailed is open to speculation. At the time because there was a distinct absence of noise (remember that I can hear well enough to pick up typing in adjacent offices) I was leaning more towards “perhaps he is tied up in there” and I could have gotten him free of that since I carry a sort of rescue knife (it can’t really be used as a weapon but can be used as a bottle and package opener or to cut someone free of ropes) on my person the majority of the time.

To be frank about the matter I still feel guilty that in my youth I only strove towards self-preservation and that cost people dearly. One could rationalize it as a product of the times, the situation, or my age but there were others who put themselves out there that were my same age. It is not as though this one incident erases that or alleviates my guilt but it does put my mind at ease to know that I have changed.

To detract from any kind of message here, after the first 11 episodes I thought that there was no way Code Geass was going to end this (R2) season but after 13 I think that it just might after all. Whether that is good or bad I can not say but I am now of the opinion that splitting shows really detracts from them. I liked Higurashi no Naku Koro ni much more than its sequel HnNKn-Kai (what the fuck is that acronym?) and as for Code Geass it is wearing itself out. In the first season Lelouche succeeded in the most bizarre of times but in R2 he seems to be failing in the most absurd of ways, mostly as a human. And the story has just gotten insanely stupid. OK I’ll admit it, it’s more like I’ve just come to realize how insanely stupid the story is. But that would not have happened if the series would have just been 50 something episodes in the first place.

The reason I bring this up is that as the new season of anime has started (whether this is summer season or mid-summer season I’m not sure) two series that are continuing from a certain amount of blank time have my attention. First is the third Zero no Tsukaima series which is a guilty pleasure for me even though it’s a total pile of crap. The one that I’m more surprised about, although if I followed along with anime and game news any more I would have surely heard about months ago, is that there is a new Slayers tv series! It’s called Slayers Revolution this time and I can only assume that if it is true that scheduling conflicts caused there to be no 4th season 10/11 years ago there are no such conflicts now that most of the people involved in it aren’t in nearly as much demand. We~ll supposedly the story of this series is original as opposed to being based on the novles by Hajime Kanzaka although I have never been clear on the relation between the various slayers anime series and the novels. I’ve never tried to be frankly. I am however a fan of the series even though its brand of fiction has few redeeming qualities (moderately amusing, a little bit interesting, trite moralism and little real tension) and so I would recommend it to any casual fan that comes across it. I seem to recall the series from the 90s not looking very good but most anime has a flat attractiveness these days so I doubt that will be much of an issue. I am aware that the novels have become available outside of Japan this decade as the series popularity cooled off, I have personally read the first 6 of the 8 released by Tokyopop in America and was not greatly disappointed. I have always felt that there are inherent problems with a man writing as if from a woman’s perspective, and vice-versa, but it is not a major issue. There are any number of books you’d be better off reading for the price they retail at but not as many series that you are likely to enjoy more.