They said it couldn’t be done.

OKay they really said it shouldn’t be done.

But I have done it!

Behold! The Dragons of Heaven and the Dragons of Earth (plus a few others)!

The girls: Karen, Arashi, Yuzuriha, Satsuke, Kotori, Hinato, Kanoe

The boys: Kamui, Sorata, Subaru, Seichirou, Fuuma, Yuuto, Nataku, Kusanagi, Kakyou, Seishirou

Remember, I don’t do it for the money, I do it for the art. And because I don’t want to study.

Fruits Basket boys – Yuki, Kyou, Shigure, Momiji, Hatori, Hatsuharu, Ayame, Akito

Fruits Basket girls – Tohru, Uo-chan, Hana-chan, Kisa, Kagura. Just ignore the fact that Kisa has, uh, boobs.

Noir – Mireille, Kirika, Chloe, Altena.

My doll magnum opus should be finished soon so stay tuned. And fear. Oh yes. You will fear.

I’m fairly positive that we’ve already established that I am a big fangirling dork. Okay. So, I discovered a dollmaker program a few weeks ago, and immediately starting making little avatars from some of my favorite series. And now I will force them down your unwilling gullet! Bwahaha! A warning before we start: all these files take a little time to load.

The girls of Card Captor Sakura – left to right, Tomoyo, Sakura in a Card Captor Costume, Sakura in everyday wear, Meiling, Nadesiko, Sonomi, Ruby Moon
The Boys of Card Captor Sakura – Yue, Touya, Syaoran, Eriol and Yukito. Yukito’s pretty crappy, but what can you do.
Clover – Suu, Oruha, Kazuhiko, Gingetsu and Ran.
Escaflowne girls – Hitomi, Merlulu, Millerna and Varie.
Escaflowne Boys – Van, Allen, Folken, Dilandau, Dryden. The boys came out much better than the girls.
Final Fantasy X Girls – Yuna, Lulu and Rikku. Believe it or not it took three tries to get Lulu right. It’s the damn dress.
Yet more Yunas! – In her wedding dress and FFX-2 gettup
Final Fantasy X Boys – Tidus, Wakka, Auron, Seymore and Kimahri. I think this batch is my favorite so far.

And then there’s me and, because he asked, Greg.

since I’ve last written on this blog. But shut up, you ingrates, I have a recommendation for you.

First of all, Toriyama’s World is Your Friend. This site offers, free of charge, quality scanlations available for download of a variety of high quality manga that otherwise would not make it over to the U.S. It deserves your love and worship.

Poking around there today I discovered bleach and was unaccountably charmed. It’s yet another rip-off I mean interpretation of the Shinigami myth, this time involving pissy high school boys who can see ghosts and even pissier tiny female shinigami and verily I was entertained and even sniffly at certain parts. Go read.

And after finishing episode fourteen, I have verily been smacked over the head with plot.

Yay!

I’ve been using this laaazy Saturday to eat goldfish crackers and catch up on my Witch Hunter Robin. I haven’t watched it in about a month, and with a show like Robin — in which the over-arcing plot and general purposes is so subtle, relying on a few enigmatic clues each episodes and some wistful but signficant exchanges of looks — it’s hard to get quite back on top of it when all you can really remember is that Robin’s a pyrokinetic with cute hair and Amon and Sakaki have probably groped each other on a drunken night of which they never speak.

But it’s still a good show, even if it does consider itself to be Very Serious Anime. The atmosphere is, of course, perfect — dark and gloomy and soft in the way approaching footsteps can be soft, and the characters are intriguing and real, if only because the series lets us watch what they do rather than actively explore them. I’m on episode fourteen now, and I’m getting the suspicion that The Plot is encroaching or has encroached. I’m looking forward to seeing where it’s going, and what the secrets will be. I only hope that Robin doesn’t consider itself above letting us in on what the deal with witches and hunters really is. I could very easily imagine it ending much too vaguely for my tastes. Not that I have much against vagueness in general, it just shouldn’t be a substitute for good writing and plotting, and it also shouldn’t be a cheap ploy to make internet geeks hypothosize (i.e. wank) about what really happened and therefore talk about it months after the series ends. (coughEvangelioncough)

I will go one step further than k-chan and say that most fanfic shouldn’t be written, but this may be just because it is morning and I am cranky.

I think the last entry just proves that David needs a blog of his very own to huggle and feed and pet and love.

And now I bet you’re all expecting me to post my top ten favorite series, but since I delight in being obnoxious and contrary and – in no small part – lazy all you’re getting out of me is a list of series I like, in no particular order:

Escaflowne, Cowboy Bebop, Clover, Card Captor Sakura, Fruits Baskets, X, Full Metal Panic, Saikano, Inu Yasha, Hikaru no Go, Nausicaa, Yami no Matsuei, Gravitation, Hunter X Hunter.

Oh, fanboys, fanboys, fanboys…

Ladies and gentlemen, yet another has succumbed.

For a few years now as my hormones have been hitting full stride, I’ve been a fan of yaoi. For the uninitiated, yaoi is (in slightly innacurate layman’s terms) a romantic relationship between two anime men, which may be canon (thank god for Clamp and Yami no Matsuei) or just the product of the minds of deranged fangirls such as myself. It is, mostly, a chick thing because, well, two hot guys. How many of you straight men dig the idea of h0+ g|_|r| 0n g|_|r| 4c+10n? I rest my case.

Anyway, the standard response I recieve to telling people this (especially guys and especially straight guys) can usually be summed up as “….” and so I usually try to reserve my essays discussing the relative merits of Seishirou/Subaru vs. Subaru/Kamui for my other fangirl friends, except for some casual ribbing.

But, somehow, I still manage to infect people.

First was David, who enjoys X, and who I think is fascinated by yaoi even as he sees the inherent silliness of parts of it and who is fun to come up with cracktastic pairings with (Sin/Tidus!) And now, our very own Greg has succumbed. No really, judge for yourself.

ImSnooze: I did my best to cover, just in case you were truly going crazy
goldalyon: I obsess over the UST of /cartoon characters/. It wouldn’t be that far of a trip.
ImSnooze: UST?
goldalyon: Unrequited Sexual Tension.
ImSnooze: do they tend to have a lot of UST?
goldalyon: You watch anime. You tell me.
ImSnooze: hee. Good point. The new gundam series is full of it.
ImSnooze: Gundam Seed (We’ve already got two main characters who were boyhood friends, on opposite sides of the war, and when they realize who each other are they cry out each others names longingly)
goldalyon: ….I’ve contaminated you, haven’t I?
ImSnooze: you have damn you

That’s the thing about yaoi. Even if you don’t believe in it in most cases, after you’ve been introduced to it, you can usually still see it.

Mweheheheh.