Wednesday 22 January 2003

Pic of the day: It isn't easy being a fictional angel sometimes ... picture from anime of the day:

Happy world

I got up in time to get to work, even though I was a little bit late. I was very tired, but less so than I had expected. I did not fall asleep for long at work, which is a good thing, because I had things to do. I did not sleep on the bus home, which I ought to do, because it is a good time to sleep. When I come home, there are too many exciting things to do in front of the computer!

While I had been at work, the computer had finished downloading a bunch of Japanese cartoons (anime), just like I wrote about yesterday. Despite being in a somewhat reduced format, they're still 60-200 MB for each episode. I have a free fast download of 1GB per month, which should be plenty. Well, it isn't when I download 500MB in one day. No biggie, though: The only punishment for going over 1GB is that my download speed is set down to 64 KB/sec, from a theoretical maximum of 10 MB/second. It is still almost twice as fast as my old modem, so I'm not complaining. I cannot upload or download other stuff while playing DAoC, but that's hardly a big deal when I am away like 9 hours a day at work. Not to mention the night, if I trust the computer to not catch fire while I sleep.

Incidentally, even though download is limited to 64 KB/sec, upload is still 128 KB/sec. So I can still help share fansubbed anime with the hungry world ... just not while I am doing other stuff online.

***

One anime I'm not going to help spread is Møuse (or Mouse, as it is called in file names). It's about a master thief who can steal anything, and the extremely well endowed chicks that try to force their carnal attention on him. The message seems to be that if you steal you can't avoid getting some hot girl action. I don't think this is a message for our time. It's not even true. Also, the ecchi (indecent) scenes in the movies seem tacked-on, poorly integrated with the plot. It's like "Oh we must have indecency". Meh. I deleted the two files I had downloaded. Anti-recommended.

***

In contrast, I am surprisingly cheerful about Happy World, despite actual nudity and near blasphemy. Which just goes to show that I look a lot more at the message than the envelope. And the message in this story is that the innocent will be protected, the responsible will be rewarded, and the good guys will occasionally end up with naked girls. (But being good guys, they just grow very very red.) This is so much more congruent with my own outlook. The graphics in this anime are also colorful and bright, and women are portrayed much like women only with big eyes and small mouths, rather than caricatures with extreme female attributes.

Oh yes. The story, not to spoil it all, is that some ancient curse demands that one person in the world must get only sadness, not balanced with happiness. However, an angel is sent to protect the chosen one. As long as the angel is near, the curse is averted. That's not to say that other strange things won't happen, though ... especially when the angel is very inexperienced and has somewhat overly optimistic notions about the world of humans.

Viewing this episode (sadly there is only one, at least yet) left me in a cheerful mood, as well as wishing to see it one more time. As a matter of fact, I intend to do that now.