In a word: Brilliant. I loved every episode of this series. It's everything I wanted Kaze no Stigma to be, without the incest.
The characters develop well, the back story to Shana is interesting, despite the fact it takes up ~three episodes in the middle of the series.
The plots are pretty repetitive unfortunately. "If I don't stop {this enemy}, the city will be destroyed!" But fortunately, they execute the plots, character relationships and development well enough that you can completely ignore the fact they always have to rescue this one city. Because no matter the task, there is always some character drama thrown in the mix.
The absence of the one annoying comic relief character is also a very, very good thing. As I've stated, comic relief characters can potentially kill a series because they're often overdone and unfunny. This series has no such one character. All characters will do something incredibly stupid at some point or another, but at least they do it with class.
(For the record, I absolutely love the music in this series. Epic and completely fitting the theme!)
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Mikau needs to stop telling me about Russian women, seriously man, I'm not interested. ;)
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I still haven't gotten around to posting about IainPeregrine's new single player RPG, Regressia, on BYOND RPG. My sincerest apologies for this my friend, I'll endeavour to do so promptly. For all those curious, it really is a fun game, and for people who were around for that time period, it does take you back to the golden days of role playing games. Seriously, give it a go if you haven't already. If you weren't around for those days and only have stimulating 3D games to measure with. Take a step back in time and discover what real gamers grew up with. ;)
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I got all my paperwork sorted for my pending Newstart Allowance. Which is really exiting. With any luck, come tomorrow afternoon, I'll be at most, $450.00 richer, which I'm really looking forward too.
One of the requirements was that I attend another meeting with an employment access company. This time they were far more helpful. Instead of just signing me up to a website I was already signed up too that no one in this rural town will check. They actually took my details and interests and are hopefully going to get back to me soon about potential jobs that match my criteria. I also applied for Nightfil in Safeway again. It's not looking promising. I'm about ready to give up on pestering them and move onto some other place. Either way, I'll find that damn employment soon, uni students are buggering off finally so the work place is opening up.
And of course, with semi-liveable income comes potential BYOND RPG competitions, as I can now afford to fund them in the coming months. So keep a look out for that. I'll see if I can come up with something sexy indeed.
Of course, since I haven't had a substantial amount of money for a long time, I'm going to waste it in the only way I know how: Over expensive electronics. More so, a Telstra prepaid mobile broadband setup. Which bumps me from a terrible 25kb maximum download speed to a 3mb maximum download speed, with a minimum of 550kb. This is an incredible improvement for me, even if it is absurdly expensive. (I've shopped around for better plans, but none of them offer speeds anything close to resembling this. Damn you rural city!)
I also opted for the more expensive mobile broadband, so I can use the internet on my laptop whenever I travel places, which is more common than it really should be. I get internet withdrawals after a little while. But generally, I'm only going to use it for multiplayer games. I'm sick of having the handicap of not being able to play to my full potential because I've already been shot even though I've unloaded a clip into an enemy.
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For those wondering, I have started a new project in an effort to better my understanding and knowledge of C++, DM -> C++ Communication (via call()) and C++ sockets. The project in itself is incredibly small, but for someone as inexperienced as me, it's already taken a hefty amount of time and reading. What seemed like an easy thing sent me into things like multithreading and Windows/Linux programming differences. Talk about painful, again, especially for the inexperienced. What can I say, console programs bore me to tears? I'm hoping to have made a dint in this project in about two weeks. I'll be far less vague and in-specific once I'm sure I have something worth showing. Otherwise, I'll probably never speak about it again. Then again, I do have compeition, and we all know how competitive I am. ;)
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Aside from that, my redesign of tiberath.com is going ahead slowly but steadily. With exception to the interruption by adding the above project into the mix. I'm hopefully going to have that out by the 21st. (As I plan on taking part of the Great Australian Internet Blackout (which I urge others to participate in!), and I can't do that without a functioning website. So for those who constantly bug me, you can expect a fresh page in the coming days. (I wont be taking the site offline, just displaying a protest message on the first page load, for a week.))
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I think that's about all I have to say for today. That's my life in a nutshell. Stay tuned for another exciting episode of