Oh yeah, I remember

Since I was seven, I always said I wanted to draw for a living. I've forgotten all that. Used to draw some in high school. Ugly mimic of anime style. I've always wanted to develop my own style of the human form.

I found Jaryu Dokuro's website, was looking at her art (is it a girl?). I've read Sugar Milk (yaoi from Digital Manga Publishing) and have downloaded some scanlations of some of her other work, and I just love her art style and her story telling. Looking at the images on her website made me feel excited about drawing. I want to draw!

But I get discouraged so easily when I do, cuz I'm a lousy artsit. But its cuz I never practice and haven't tried. I've never been a very diligent artist, not too self motivated. I just don't have an obsessive drive to draw. All excuses, huh?

I think we all want to be heard, feel we're worth knowing, want others to want to know what we're thinking and to care about what we think and know.

Someday, I'd just like to put out some fuckin comics. But people who don't try don't accomplish much, eh chickadee?

Oh yeah, and finding out Dokuro was born in 1985 really bummed me out. The chicks my age... shit. She's living my dream baby. But she's worked for it, haha, I'm a loser.

Here's her website (in Japanese), click pics to look at her art: msic

The amazing library

I've never been a big library goer, I don't read books much, just my comics. But then my boyfriend showed me that libraries have comics. I've been impressed by the amount of manga the one closest to us has, not an awful lot, maybe 100 books or so, but after years of spending hundreds on manga series I find I don't even like that much, this is a welcome change in manga reading.

Well I decided to check out the library near my work and my heart was a flutter. They had a wall with twice as much manga as my local library. Plus a section of over 200 anime DVDs. holy moly! I'm signed up at Rentanime.com and have to wait weeks to finish series becuase the demand for some is so high and their stock is low. The library didn't have many series on my rental list at Rentanime, but series I've been curious about at some point in my life none the less. Its amazing! To suddenly have all this at my fingertips, for free!! Anime and manga/comics is such an expensive hobby. Rentanime was a huge change in my anime watching life, before then I'd have to buy DVDs of series I'd only read articles about. 

But one of the funniest things was one set I saw there. They have Sailor Moon Sailor Stars on DVD at this library. Sailor Stars is the last season of Sailor Moon, one which was never dubbed in English and never even released in the U.S. on TV or DVD or anything. They must be copies of fansubs. Years ago (6 or 7 years?) I had to hunt down VHS fansubs of Sailor Stars, and poor quality at that, and it was so thrilling. Now they just have these fansubs chillin' in the local library, I cracked up like a mad woman on my drive home. I am indeed easily amused.

Life is good!

Ouran High School Host Club

So I just finished watching the Ouran High School Host Club anime series. I began it about a week ago, finding it on demand with my cable company. It seemed so silly and pointless, that I wouldn't get into it. But a few days later out of boredom I tried some more, and spent the last couple days glued to my computer watching the rest online.

So the story centers around a group of boys, and one girl disguided as a boy, and their club at the rich kids school, Ouran. Haruhi, a tomboyish middle class girl who got into Ouran on an honors scholarship, stumbles into the host club's room, breaks an expensive vase by accident and the handsome boys of the club decide she must pay for the expensive vase she broke by being their servant. They soon find that she is good with the girls who come to their club and put her to work as a host (a male host). All the boys in the club grow to love Haruhi. Tamaki, the leader (king) of the club, says he feels for Haruhi as a father would a daughter. Then there are the mischeivious twins Hikaru and Karou, ultra cute Honey and his constant calm and aloof companion Mori, and finally the guy who holds the club together by managing it, Kyoya.

At first, the episodes just follow the antics of the club members and trying to keep Haruhi's true gender a secret, but as this 26 episode anime progresses, we find out more about the characters; their pasts, their troubles, and their true feelings. So this frivolous show became a bit more meaningful, going into the joys of getting to know those you never thought you'd associate with, and showing how certain people can change how you view the world around you and live your life.

 The ending was cute and satisfying. Ouran High School Host Club left me feeling warm inside and was fun to watch, teaching me that I shouldn't judge an anime by its looks and a short summary.

Visit the Anime News Network's (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com) encyclopedia section. Look up the anime you want to see, and under episode titles, they just may have episodes available to watch.

Clean Up

I'm going to try to clean up this website. Under the anime and manga titles sections, I list everything I own, whether I actually like it or not. I'm going to ged rid of the pages for stuff I don't like so much and try and make the pages for the stuff I like a little better.

 Its so lonely out there on the web. Can anyone hear me? There are so many bigger, more beautiful, more informative sites. After all, a lot of my sources for information are other websites. My website is just one star in the vast sky.

working away

I've been tinkering with this website a few times a week for a couple months now. Reformatting the pages, and even adding some info. Most recently I've created character description pages and image galleries for manga titles Vampire Knight, Loveless, and The Demon Ororon.

 I feel kind of silly spending my time on this site, there are many other anime and manga websites out there. Bigger, more informative, and prettier. But I love anime and manga so much. I like to write about my favorite stories. 

 I hope someone out there can appreciate my small effort on the huge, endless internet.

Too much to do
I'm getting a lot of photos back up in the Sailor Moon character profile section. I'm thinking I want to organize it a new way as well, since the current format just doesn't work for me anymore.

There's so many screen captures I want to get up for the entire site. Like new ones for Lain, Magic User's Club, Escaflowne, and I even will put back the character profiles for the X movie. God, but it's so tedious and tiring sitting in front of the computer and going over all this anime.

I wonder too if any of this work is even worth it. Is it worth it for the 25 pages views I've had over the past month? My site is so amateur and incomplete. I wonder if it even offers anything unique to fans. I guess I just want it to be a fun look. Maybe its moreso for myself. I mean, its a hobby to keep me busy and I have fun with it and it makes me feel good to finish up projects, but I think I may be the only one looking at it. heh, oh well.

my very own screen captures
I'm so happy. I finally got around to hunting down and buying a screen capture program so I can take my own pictures for my website. No more searching the internet and feeding off others! I'm so proud! But boy, is it tideous. Maybe cuz I'm so picky, but I sit in front of the computer for a good amount of time watching anime and snapping the right pictures. It feels great though. There had always been certain pictures I wanted from an episode or show in general and could never get a hold of it, but now I can. Oh lovely lovely.

work to do
I've been trying to clean out old things on JAAS. I'm going through all my pictures, probably 1/3 of which I don't even use or remember are even there. I have to fix up a lot of broken pictures from those few days in June of 2004. I have to get shots of all the characters from all seasons of Sailor Moon again. God, what a chore. This is why its hard for me to accomplish anything with this site. Sometimes it would just take too much time and some of the coding is so tidious. I could be online for 2 hours working on my site, but it may just be reformatting a sections html.

I would like to buy a screen capture program to make my own pictures for my site. My sites pictures are usually composed of pictures I nab from others... eek. But I do respect people's rules if they say, "Don't use my pictures".

Ah, there are sections to tidy up. I want to make most pages black and white, or at least more bearable colors, not all the shade of red on blue I have, heh.

old sites, old times
I was looking over my old Sailor Moon site I created in 2000 to see if I could recover any pictures I recently discovered that I lost on my current website, "Just Another Anime Site". Just looking over it made me nostagic. I had so much passion and ambition and creativity back then. I remember sitting in front of the computer for hours at a time and working on my Sailor Moon site. I was such a dork too, randomly using japanese words in my sentences, calling myself a "moonie". It's dorky, but I miss being that excited about my website as well.

There's a lot I want to update and improve on the JAAS, but I either don't have the time, or I get tired of it after an hour or so. Makes me miss those old days.