SVMS-01X

Ooof, I got incredibly off-course with these and it'll probably take a little while to catch up. ^^;; But here's a start!

Mobile Suit Gundam Wing Endless Waltz: Glory of the Losers 1-5 (Katsuyuki Sumizawa, Tomofumi Ogasawara) - I have had all of Glory sitting around for ages and have tried to read it more than once only to repeatedly have Stuff happen. This time, I will grab my swords if Stuff gets in my way. While normally I'm fine with the Sunrise stance of "only animated is canon", this is a firmed up version of the story featuring a lot of amazing redesigns, extra info, etc. Looking forward to reading the rest.

My Love Story!! - anime, since I'd just watched the live action. Honestly, I liked the live action more. I thought the anime was only 12-13 episodes but it's 24 and it really drags in places. It's nice to have the setting and characters filled out, but it really drags in places. Can probably let it go since I can't imagine wanting to watch it again.

Tsukipro The Animation - S1, like with any idol anime, I'm here to listen to the songs as much as anything. One of the guys looks a bit like RS2's Noel so he's automatically my fave. I have S2 waiting in the queue.

Cyborg 009 vs Devilman - this is a lot of fun and a complete mess. Should you watch this if you don't know either franchise? No. Should you watch this if you do? Probably not. But you'll do it anyway, just like I have multiple times now.

The Omen 1-4 - ah, boycritter brought these over because I'd made a comment about never having seen the first one (or being aware of there being more than one, I guess). The first one was pretty good, 2 had me laughing uproariously at the bad special effects, 3 was decent, and 4 was atrocious. Good fun, but more ridiculous than scary and I also feel like 4 forgot half the plot of 3.

Yoroiden Samurai Troopers/Ronin Warriors - technically the latter since I watched the dub. Absolute fun except for the middle part which I want to edit down with a knife. This is one of those "I have watched good chunks of this in the past but never made it all the way through" shows, and yay, now I have. (Except the OVAs which... I can continue skipping, lol.)

And now, I can't believe I'm watching these before even the halfway point of the viewing period - JFF Theater!

The Lines That Define Me - culture drama about a young man finding healing through sumi-e. Absolutely gorgeous and takes the time to explain sumi-e and demonstrate beautifully without feeling like it's taking away from the plot. Also very tropey, as far as culture dramas seem to go. Definitely recommended if you can watch JFF stuff.

Bonsai Warrior - a documentary about a guy traveling the world teaching and demonstrating bonsai. Interesting watch, worth it also for the information about bonsai practitioners around the world.

Thermae Romae - if you can watch any JFF film this quarter, watch this one. It's fucking hysterical in every way. The gist is that a Roman bathhouse architect is in a slump and ends up magically transported to a modern Japanese bathhouse. This happens again and again, and he experiences all sorts of interesting things (like a bidet, lol) but not really understanding what's happening. At one point, a group of old Japanese men end up in Rome.
(Roman slavery is a fairly prominent concept, however, if you would rather not.)

The weekend was honestly nice.

Sunday was my mother's birthday and we surprised her after breakfast with flowers, cake, cookies, and her actual gift (socks! she asked for socks!) and she seemed really happy. I peeked out the doorwall in the living room and the snowdrops were up and blooming! (No sign of the crocuses yet, but none of us were expecting the snowdrops and those are always first.)

Saturday's nerd show was also good. If I could change one thing, it'd be moving the hours from 11-4 to, like, 9-2 or something. Big afternoon die-off.

It was sunny earlier, I had the energy to get quite a few chores done (or at least worked on) and got the all-fi set up. A few weeks back, I got about fifteen notices that the phone company is discontinuing landline service to this area. So my options were try their device that I assume uses the cellular network (yes I know that's not really what it is anymore, but for description's sake here) or go to the reliable and fast and absolutely miserable to deal with cable company. Their device, the 'all-fi', which sounds like a cult, has a free seven day trial to see if it'll work/have a signal so I finally got it and set it up. Unexpectedly, quite literally unexpectedly, I have a good signal and internet that's probably a hundred times faster than previous (not an exaggeration). I'm going to keep adding devices as I only have two tablets connected right now, but I think this is going to work out okay. (And the dire cable company is still always an option.) The set-up was obnoxious (an app that had to go on a phone, not a tablet) and I haven't entirely ruled out ornamental hermitude, but... so far so good.

Built: one small lotus flower brick kit from the nerd show, black Levinix, white Iglight (getting lots of customization, lol), dorky Zeta Gundam 'marble' shooter.

I'd also registered for CitrusCon but I really didn't do much with it because I was busy with the nerd show and also just... didn't really enjoy trying to communicate on the discord. Textual equivalency of being in a room with a thousand people yelling to each other.

I feel like I'm having more and more days where I would like to wander off and become an ornamental hermit.

That is probably also a post on its own... This is, thus far, a weekend of feeling very old/turning to dust and blowing away, and general enshittification annoyances.

Beyond that, I have finished the Destiny Astray as far as I'm going to for now. Absolute nightmare, would build again in an instant. Though I suppose I'd much prefer to be able to afford the ridiculously difficult-to-get official version of the kit and build that. (I remain tickled that the not-actually-wrong translated name of the bootleg kit translated back as Heresy of Fate. So I suppose I should be calling it that.)

I will have to get some photos posted because while building it absolutely sucked, it looks gorgeous and absolutely passes the two-foot rule.

I am going to make good on my promise to build a bunch of 30MM kits for the next little bit...

There are no fewer than four gunpla/plamo contests with deadlines in March. One of which I am definitely committed to (Redacted III), another I strongly intend to do (30ML), and the others are if I have a brilliant and fast idea that I can knock out quickly and easily.

I have a lot of other projects I need to get (back) to, but at this point I just need to get myself together to get to the nerd show today and do that. One thing at a time...

(Please go vote in my poll if you haven't.)