Anime/Manga Update

Time for another anime/manga update.

3,000 Leagues in Search of Mother
Another older series. I heard of this a long time ago as I was looking into some of the Ghibli directors. I finally found it online and got to watch it. It's in the same vein as Heidi: Girl of the Alps, and Akage no Anne. I enjoyed it.


Anohana
A cool concept. A ghost trying to make her final wish come true.

Death Note
A cool concept, but it got old very fast XD
The two main characters may have been geniuses, but their powers of deduction quickly became unbelievable and overly predicable. I think you were supposed to have sympathy for "Kira" but I never did. I was waiting for him to die.

One Punch Man
A spoof on fighting manga.
I've never been excited about spoofs though.

Bambino
It grew on me the more I read it. I ended up liking it quite a bit.
Though when they got to the part of cooking for the mafia or whatever, that felt so ridiculously forced. It was like the writers were thinking, "how can we make a manga about cooking more intense? Oh, what if they're going to be killed if they don't win a cooking contest?"
Well, anyway, I liked it overall. There was a second run of this manga, but I could only find the first part. Ah well.
Hell this made me hungry though. Especially for Italian food.

20th Century Boys
The manga started out interesting, with jumps between the present and the character's childhood. It was neat how they drew from their past to try to defeat the big evil villain of the present.
But I read far more than I needed to. It kept dragging on and on. By the time we got to the second time skip, I no longer cared, and I stopped reading.

Bunny Drop
I started out liking this manga a lot. It was a fun story of a guy unexpectedly ending up with a little girl to raise.
But that ending drove me crazy. Married? Are you freaking kidding me? The guy seemed like he only agreed because the girl was so determined about it. Ugh.


Yu-Gi-Oh Duelist
Read the second arc of Yu-Gi-Oh.
I guess mostly because it was really popular when I was a kid? But it's also kinda fun in a ridiculous way. This arc mostly focused on the card games, unlike the variety of gaming in the first arc.


Mary and the Witch's Flower
A beautiful movie, no doubt about that. It was pretty good too.
But maaan, you could see so much Ghibli influence crammed into most of the scenes XD Moving lanterns, blobby creatures, broken broomsticks, following cats, talking flames, there were dozens of little similarities to other movies. I could list all of them, but that would take up too much space.
Anyway, lovely movie. I wish their team the best of luck.

(What pisses me off - those bad guys that were transforming animals? They had mom anteaters with their babies. Those creeps were transforming mothers with babies!)

My Hero Academia
Watching new seasons of the anime and new volumes of manga.
I freaking hate that creepy grape head. I hate him and I wish he didn't exist.
I've generally liked the series so far, but I'm liking it more now. Maybe because I've watched it get popular. Or maybe because I finally picked out my favorite character in it. I think I only realized it after I saw some cute fanart a couple months ago. But I like All Might. Specifically the scrawny All Might. He's so much more relatable when he's scrawny. I also think he looks better XP I never did like those overly bulgy, creepy muscles on characters.



And obligatory zoo photo!

Caiman lizard~

Is it bad that Evva's story feels like a mashup of "Princess Mononoke" and "The Last Unicorn?"
I didn't have either of them in mind when I started the story.

Embarrassed to Admit

There a few movies that I like, even though I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I really do like them.
I think the main one is Van Helsing. I enjoy it a lot, but some parts of it just feel so lame. Like some scenes with the vampire ladies (also I just realized that there's a TV show called Van Helsing? I have no idea what that is. I'm referring to the Hugh Jackman movie).


There's another one that I only thought of recently since I only mildly like it. It's the old Hobbit cartoon. I don't like it as much as I like Van Helsing. And if I watch this cartoon when I'm in a cynical mood, I just laugh at it XP
Though honestly I'd rather watch the cartoon than those new movies. I was so freaking disappointed in those. Even though I was so excited for them TT^TT The cartoon at least doesn't waste as much of your time.

There are others that seem like I should be embarrassed about, but I'm not. Like the Watership Down movie has some very strange parts (hoooly crud, there's a new Watership Down series coming out??! I hope it's good!). But I love that movie and book. I'm not embarrassed about that. I love it!

Same with the Last Unicorn. It's always been one of my favorite movies. Even my Dad loves it! Mom too. Who says unicorns have to be for little girls?


Sometimes someone will say that a movie is stupid, without knowing it's a movie I like. For example, during my environmental studies program, I was talking to a teacher about the new Lorax movie. They said it looked stupid. I just rewatched it recently and thought, "you know what? It is stupid. But I like it anyway." I've been known to like stupid stuff.
I'm not really embarrassed about that (unless I was talking to that same teacher. I guess context does count in some circumstances XP ). I'll admit to liking stupid stuff.
Hey, if a movie can make you cry when they cut down a tree, they've done something right.


I guess some adults might be embarrassed to admit that they like cartoons or kids stuff like Pokémon. I'm not one of those people. Probably because most of my adult family loves cartoons and stuff too XP


Random zoo zebra photo!!

From the Viewpoint of a Creator

When you've made your own story, it changes the way you see other stories.
I don't mean sketching out an idea or typing a draft of something. I mean revising, researching, and getting feedback from many people. Refining your story as much as possible, and then doing it again with different stories.

Once you've done that, you no longer see other stories the same way. You can understand why creators made the choices they made. Or if they did something dumb and its grating on your nerves.
But it also means that it's a lot easier to see through big hunks of the plot, and plot twists.

Although I guess once you're trained in any kind of art form, you never see it the same way anymore.


Guanaco (much like one of the characters in Evva's story. Evva's teacher has an animal partner - a vicuña. Both of these animals are wild relatives of llamas. Though Guanacos are direct ancestors of domestic llamas and alpacas.)

Wooly Bear

Last week at the zoo I helped gather some caterpillars that were falling out of one of the trees. We rescued some that fell into the pond too. They'll be in the insect zoo for a while. They're super cute and I went back a few times this week to move some other caterpillars out of danger.
They're called woolly bear caterpillars, and they turn into the tussock moth.

My goal is to name one of the zoo animals, so I named one of the caterpillars I caught Bear (Since he's a woolly bear caterpillar). Not that I can tell which one he is in the display. Or that anyone else will know XD
But here are some of the caterpillars now in the insect zoo.


I still want to name one of the longer-lived animals though XD

How to be Happy

I found an article that I though would be interesting to mention. It's about what makes you ahppy. And who doesn't want to be happy? (That's a hypothetical question. I don't want to know if someone enjoys being grumpy all the time).

The article is more thorough. But here are things that can help make you happy:

Be with smiling people
Be a smiling person yourself
Grow plants
Listen to music
Help other people
Be with your pets
Be active



Here's the hippo playing with his birthday cake (he knocked it right into his pond, but he was very excited to have it).

Dragons will Always be Popular

A family friend read some of my dragon story. They said it was good, but they only read part of it because they said that dragon stories are dead.
I can't help but scoff at that. Seriously, dragons have been in fantasy stories since the beginning. "The Hobbit" had dragons back in the 1930's.

And in the 1960's, "The Dragonriders of Pern" made it cool to ride dragons and befriend them.

It's not like dragons have gotten any less popular. I mean the third How to Train your Dragon is about to come out (I don't think it's out yet, is it?).


Maybe some people aren't as eager to publish dragon stories because too many people want to write dragon stories. But that seems to be a different story altogether.

I'd bet my hat (and every hat in the country) that dragon stories aren't going anywhere.



In an unrelated note, here's some more zoo photos! I've stopped trying to relate my photos to blog posts. I just want to share cute animals with you XP
Sifaka!

The Coolest and most Beautiful

I thought I'd post about the most beautiful creature designs I've seen.
In my own biased opinion, of course.

I can't decide who's in first or second place, but it's one of these.

The gorgeous dragon from Spirited Away


And Pepita from the movie Coco



I think third and fourth place go to these.

Marahute from The Rescuers Down Under


And the awesome lizard from Star Wars 3. I've seen her name listed as Boga.



Here are a few runner-ups
Neytiri's Ikran, from Avatar


Buckbeak


Cloud Jumper (And Toothless of course)



Wolf Link and Midna (Always loved Midna's design - she's still my favorite Zelda character)


Loftwings


The dragons from Breath of the Wild


Maybe a couple Pokemon like Suicune or Ninetales.

La Musica

It's rare that I find a movie where I like the entire soundtrack. The Greatest Showman is one of them. The songs are all super catchy. Since they're dance songs, you want to move to them.


One of the songs from this movie was nominated for an Oscar: This is Me.

When I heard that, I was conflicted about which song to vote for (at least in my own head, since I can't vote for the actual Oscars XD). On the one hand, there's "This is Me," which is from a movie with my favorite actor (though I hadn't seen the movie at that point). On the other hand, there was "Remember Me" from my favorite movie, sung by my favorite character.


I had to vote for Remember me, though I felt bad voting against my favorite actor.
Then I learned that Hugh Jackman doesn't sing "This is Me," so I didn't feel so bad voting against that song XD

But seriously, every time I see even a little bit of Coco, I melt all over again.
Madly in love with that movie.

Counter-intuitive Name

So, the villain in Evva's story is a lady who's "pretty as a princess." She has a lovely name too. Dahlia.
Dahlia's are beautiful flowers. I love them, and we used to grown them in our yard. I would like to grow them again.


I wanted to give the villain a deceptively pretty name, to match the rest of her.
But I still feel guilty using the name of such a pretty flower for her? @_@ There's a beautiful garden of dahlia's at the zoo, and I feel guilty every time I admire at them.



Male mandrill