neko’s thinkbox

…a blog might be craving for attention. After the jump, etc.

So…. Where should I begin? It’s been over three months that I haven’t posted anything on my blog, and a metric crapton of things have happened in the meantime. tl;dr? Click here.

1. Anime oversaturation, or lack of motivation to watch more.

Too many sweets can be harmful.

I really was so much into ARIA, I just couldn’t toss it aside to watch another series. Usually I get over my addiction with making wallpapers of the anime (or writing fanfics, but I haven’t done that in 6 years), but more and more, I find myself distancing myself from anime in general. But perhaps I just don’t feel like watching anime at all, but considering the growing list of the series I absolutely have to watch yet… Frankly, I don’t know myself. I had this already 3 years ago after Galaxy Angel ended, but I didn’t think this would happen so soon. Perhaps now it is time to start anew, though.

2. Disgaea and Disgaea 2.

Dood!

Those games have been lying around on my shelf for quite a while (almost half a year?), and I really never got into playing them. Taking that involuntary break from anime, I just kept away from Internet and my computer altogether to focus exclusively on my Playstation 2 (which is also why I did not log onto MSN, IRC, A18, etc. either, not to mention this blog…). I spent over 250 hours on the first game, and I’m already at 110 for the second game – subtract roughly 30 respectively 10 hours for idleness, I often fell asleep in front of the game. As you can imagine, I had pretty intense gaming sessions these past few weeks. But now I’m a bit tired of grinding exp, so I gradually returned to my computer with IRC and pangya.

3. Of course, I also had finals at school uni.

Reading books. Boring.

Interesting enough, I didn’t fail my year (by now it’s pretty much sure that I passed) as I first expected it, considering the petty amount of work I delivered in the last few weeks. With Disgaea, I also had too great of a reason not to care too much about uni.
Well, now that I’m done, I’ll most likely waste at least another half of a year, since I’m not going to Japan (refer to my emo entry from February), and if I’m going to the US, I’d start in Winter semester only. But perhaps I’ll have problems with expenses and then go to the UK… in over a year. In the meantime, I guess I’ll return to uni and do something relevant to my interests.

4. My anime-related expenses…

LOLWTF FLATSCREEN!1

…are 0 for the past few months (perhaps I failed to report about the ARIA posterbook and some other stuff, old news) – however, I got a new widescreen monitor (Samsung 206BW) and a new gfx card (Leadtek WinFast 8800 GT). For a die-hard CRT user like me, this was a rather abrupt change (yes, it happened on a whim, as always) – but so good, indeed. Even though its brightness struck me at first, I absolutely love it. And since my old Radeon x1900xt kept giving me glitches and crashed during/after the first 3DMark06 test, I decided to upgrade. Now I get 8k points with 8x FSAA and 16x AF in the test suite, neat.

5. Most probably the most exciting and interesting part.

I want to be on the Rialto bridge, too.

I am going to Venice in exactly one week! Hooray. Well, it happened on a whim – as always – and after a sleepless night last week, I decided to book my flight and hotel room. I’ll stay there from the 10th until the 14th, and I hope I can visit most places I saw in ARIA (except, of course, the ARIA Company T_T). I guess there is no better way than a pilgrimage to Venice to confirm and conclude my ARIA addiction, and finally move on. Ruki already had inspired me to go there, but even without his input I would have gone there sooner or later. He went there a few weeks ago, and already sent me a few pics – absolutely gorgeous! I can’t wait to go there! Oh, and an IRC friend of mine, muz, will come to Venice as well – two ARIA addicts on the road, oh god the awesomeness is so immeasurable, it’s OVER 9000!

tl;dr

I have had my reasons to stay away from the computer for a while, and you did not miss me – good. That’s all you need to know, refer to points 1-4 for more info. Also, I’m going to Venice, see 5.

That’s basically all I need to say for now, unless someone wants some more ranting from me. Did I promise a True Tears and Gundam OO review in the past? Scrap it, I deleted my drafts, I can’t remember anything anyway :( Some other time, perhaps.

As for what’s going to happen next here, well it’ll take a while until I can find my old posting rhythm back (as if I ever had one in the first place, duh). However, I do predict that I won’t be very active before my Venice trip.

But for now, what I’ve been thinking of doing here: short term, I’ll put up a new poll, and I’ll start watching old series again. I’ve been thinking of marathoning the Nanoha series, or Shakugan no Shana, or something completely different – I will pick at random a series from my “to watch” list. Reviews may or may not be written and posted, and recent anime series may or may not be watched. Strike Witches looks lolifyingly interesting (yet fanservice-ish), I might take a look at it. I also heard of a DVD-only episode (ep 5.5) of ARIA the Origination, so I might watch it before going to Venice.

Long term, I’m looking for one or more writers to join my one-man team, because I predict that I will most likely be on a similar hiatus again sometime in the future, and I don’t want this blog to be lethargic as it has always been during my absence. Also, I guess it’s because I can’t be as awesome as other single-writer bloggers all by myself, so reinforcement wouldn’t hurt. Interested in anime, manga and random Japan-related stuff? Motivated to keep company with a lonely neko/Hisui lover/ARIA addict on his small and lonely blog? Drop me a mail (see contact page), and I’ll contact you for more info.

Now to clean my Spam Karma 2. And I need to fix that annoying backslash in my blog title once again, it looks stupid. Another ticket for support, great~

…Heck, I can write so much in the shortest amount of time when it’s not a review or an essay…