Thursday Notes.. Finished!....
No Mai-HiME today. Next episode is Jan. 6th, and it does sound rather interesting ;)
Anyways, I'm probably going to get stuff in the next week or so. So if there's anything out there as far as manga that any of y'all think I'd like now is the time to tell me. Here's the list I've got. Probably also going to grab the Feb. issue of Dengeki Daioh (comes with cute Miu figure and Ichigo Mashimaro's on the cover) and Feb. issue of Dengeki G's Magazine (Sara figure) as well. But I must restrain myself and try not to spend so much... ;)
So that's why we lost net access. Charter blames major outage on power surge (registration required):
Charter blamed the outage - which lasted one or two days, depending on the source - on a power surge at its Sugar Hill facility.
"Even though we took a power surge, we have a backup power supply," said Rob Bridges, Charter's director of operations for north Georgia. "When the backup power supply kicked on, it caused the battery to explode."
The outage primarily affected about 85,000 people in Athens, Gwinnett and Gainesville, Bridges said. "It was a major problem," he added.
So with Futakoi done that finishes all the 12/13 episode series I've been watching this fall. Turned out to be a decent season and I liked everything I watched :) Tsukuyomi, Gakuen Alice (next episode airing January 8th, btw), and Mai-HiME continue into the new year so I'll keep on doing those, of course. The first of the upcoming new winter anime is Magical Canan, starting this Saturday. Yet another h-game-turned-bishoujo-mahou-shoujo to watch :)
And before I leave... I have to counter this (scroll to the bottom). Quote:
"Popotan ranks in the Top 5 Worst Anime Shows Ever. Twice. With the exception of the moments I was drowned in the numbingly cute opening and ending themes, about every five minutes or so I contemplated taking out the DVD and throwing it out the window. Luckily, I reminded myself that littering is bad, and even the concrete didn’t deserve the misery that had infiltrated the darkest reaches of my poisoned soul. If the front cover isn’t enough indication, Popotan is about naked women, breasts, dandelions, and magical powers. The story may be vague enough (read: nonexistent), but the real damnation comes in the characters."
Yes, Popotan is mostly nothing but big boobs and service at first, and yes, the service continues, BUT! it has a story that develops later on, be patient, dangit! I definitely can't put it in my "Top 5 Worst Anime Shows Ever", no way... One reason why I'm glad us bloggers here can offer a different opinion on things that we watched in their entirety that are being released here on DVD a few episodes at a time. Here are my thoughts, The Sea Slugs, Jeff, and Stripey on Popotan. Anyways, I will be picking up the first Popotan DVD since I did enjoy the show :) btw, Here's AnimeOnDVD's review of the first DVD. And also, Stellvia gets better, believe me ;)
Well, AnimeNewsNetwork. Nuff said. ANN editorial content is among the most lightweight in the business, and they are particularly weak when it comes to assessing new series. They don't use any caution (because after 1-2 episodes they just MIGHT be wrong?) und bash series bigtime, hiding behind the "Hey, it says 'initial' review, right? I can write any nonsense as I please, because it's just an initial review" defense. I'll never forget how they concluded that KimiNozo was just a generic lightweight sugary highschool comedy crap, and when I got them to watch episode 2 they _stuck_ with their verdict.
*shrug*
I use ANN for objective reference purposes like who worked with who in which series - but their editorial work is somewhere between highly questionable and worthless. It's okay to harshly diss an anime - after you've watched it entirely. Not like this.
Popotan wasn't the coming of the anime messiah, but it certainly wasn't shabby either. The idea of the "life without roots", being driven through time and unable to build real connections to people, was original enough for me. And especially some of the later episodes were quite touching.
Popotan don't deserve this. Granted, the story had loopholes and some issues were still outstanding at the finale. But there were some really powerful moments in there. In fact, I found Mai's story arc was so touching that I was on the verge of tears when I finished ep 9. Here's my little review (also supporting Matthew's/Seaslugs') written earlier this year.
http://www.yayapapayaz.com/ent/popotan.htm
Lol, so many of these "reviews" are so fluffy since they are written after just a quick viewing, or even worse, after just seeing a few episodes. That's why I personally like to read the various blogs in the anime blogosphere for a more realistic review of series I am considering. As for Popotan, that is absurd that Popotan ranks as one of the worst ever. Yes it was rather flawed, due to the obsession with fanservice (it reached desensitizing levels), but around the middle of the series, it actually got quite good. I agree with Stripey that the Mai stories were the best, and the whole time travel thing was kinda interesting. One of the best series of all time? No. One of the worst? Definitely not. As a grain of salt, I'm not sure how high I would rate Popotan based on just the first volume, however.
Actually that's the second worst review I've seen for an Anime. The worst one almost prevented a show from ever making it to the US. In fact it almost killed it even as a FANSUB it was so bad. The show is Wedding Peach, granted not everyone's cup of tea, but certainly not deserving of this quote:
"...I watched this. Until my skin purpled with boils. Until my hair fell out in clumps. Until my brain ran out my ears. Did I like it? Golly, who wouldn't? Doesn't every girl want to be a preteen bride?" Trish Ledoux, in a 1996 Animerica review.
There's a scan of the actual article and more discussion on it here: http://www.technogirls.org/barbara/anime/peachprj.htm#Animerica_article_of_doom
Ironically enough, Viz (who owns Animerica) is now publishing the manga. ADV got the rights to the Anime first and are now releasing it. I'm happy myself, I like the show, although the manga's better. It's very over the top though, even for a magical girl show. Not many have double transformations. ^_^ (The first is into full western wedding dress (complete with bouquets), the second into battle outfit.)
Oh yeah, I have seen enough of it to tell you that Trish's comments couldn't have been based off of watching more than a few episodes.
My only problem with Popotan was that the creators turned Mai into their own personal whipping girl. she went through so much emotional trauma in that series.
Man that's a rather lame sounding excuse to the outage. I've dealt with this stuff (occasionally on that level) and the explanation makes NO sense whatsoever. Sounds like they had idiots configure the backup system, or the actual cause of the outage was their own fault and they don't want to admit it publically. (I'm voting for the second option myself. :)
Heh... the outage. I'm a project manager working for a hosting company, so I happen to know a thing or two about backup systems.
When there's a power outage, first the batteries must kick in, since no emergency generator could produce power in time so that no servers and other equipment would at least temporarily lose power (and thus crash). So the batteries are the first line of defense. Those however usually can only last a few minutes, and in this timeframe the external generators have to be powered up.
Theoretically, if the generators are incorrectly linked up with the batteries, they CAN indeed harm or even destroy them (and thus cause a total outage and longer downtime), but then they must really be set up by incompetents, and not be properly maintained and tested. It's very embarrassing in any case.
Charter's customers who were affected ought to demand they get a credit for the time offline, there's no excuse for it happening the way Charter said it did (basically it was Charter's fault, not the power surge) or Charter has lied about what really happened (so it was something else that was their fault.)
I'm betting they think enough customers will buy their explanation to not demand reimbursement. Make them pay for the incompetence! ^_^
My take on it, back in October of '03, is here:
http://greyduck.net/anime/index.php?p=8