As of my realization as to the importance of art in my last entry, I'm feeling that familiar developer's itch lately. I'm going to look into budgeting some time towards the workshop again.

However, for the time being, I've been enriching the emotional centers of my usually logically-fixated mind with quite a few animes. Since the last entry:

• Special A - This anime focuses primarily on a club of the seven highest graded members of a prestigious academy, fun characters all. It is primarily played out from the perspective of the second ranking member, a regular but hard-working girl, and her perpetual childhood rival she can never seem to beat: the number one ranking member of Special A, a boy who apparently has everything and can do anything... and adores the girl (much to her knuckleheaded ignorance).
  
  
  A sublime romance anime, and absolutely hilarious besides, Special A received a rarely-awarded "excellent" from me due to the relatively high frequency of laughter and heart-tugging moments. (Special-A is still reasonably light-hearted - "Masterpiece" rank goes to much more powerful stuff, like Clannad.)
• Nanaka 6/17 - The focus of Nanaka 6/17 is unique: a snobby 17-year-old girl undergoes brain damage that causes her to regress to her bubbly 6-year-old state. Her childhood friend and father attempt to cover it up. While it's funny at times and the Japanese do have a bit of a fetish for immature-acting ladies, the actual focus of Nanaka 6/17 is more about growing up a well-rounded person, and the kind of differences 11 years of life can make to a person.
  
  
  While there are certainly both funny and touching moments in Nanaka, they are relatively few and far between. This is redeemed somewhat because (contrary to most animes) Nanaka 6/17 has a definitive start and finish across its 13 episode story arc. This singularity deserves at least a "Very Good."
• World of Narue - Currently freely streamed from Anime Network, World of Narue focuses on hopeless okatu Kazuto Iizuka and his relationship with the cute-but-weird fellow high-schooler Narue. Narue makes no effort to hide that she's a half-alien of a somewhat genetically identical race, something nobody else believes, and possesses the ability to teleport thanks to her telepathic link to a ship in orbit.
  
  
  Narue's alien origin introduces both zany alien antics and a secondary plot of Narue's struggles with the intergalactic community to remain on her native born planet, the titular World of Narue: Earth, which is treated as a very special place by the anime. Aside from her alien origin, Narue is a remarkably perfect girlfriend, and the anime actually weaves some pretty solid dating advice within its zaniness.
  
  My main critique of World of Narue is that it's far too tame, there's very little actual conflict, and no real character development. For this reason I can only give it a "Good." Maybe this improves in later volumes of the manga which has been ongoing since 1999 - there's 10 volumes, 5 currently available in English, and this anime series only covers up to about the second volume.

That about does it for the series I've finished lately. Moving on to things I look forward to watching...

I really enjoyed Special-A, and so I'm happy to see that Maid-Sama, which has only just begun getting uploaded to Anime Network, works on a very similar vein with only a few differences here and there:

• From what I've seen so far, it focuses mostly on the main boy and girl's relationship, where Special-A had about 9 significant characters that were kept in focus.
• The girl, Misaki, is significantly more economically disadvantaged than the Special-A girl, this forces her to take a job as a maid in a Cosplay Cafe, something she needs to keep secret as she's also the iron-fisted student council leader of a school that has recently converted from being all boy. She hates boys, partly because her father abandoned her family with a large debt (although she is not a lesbian like Kanako in Maria+Holic).
• The boy, Usui, is still a somewhat affluent and greatly admired individual, but not quite as high-and-mighty as the Special-A boy, and a bit less tactful.

That's about it for the differences between Special-A and Maid-Sama. It's still a romance between the knuckle-headed hard working girl and the affluent boy who has come to realize he has feelings for her.

For the time being, I'm watching Hayate The Combat Butler. If, like me, you're bored sick of the typical shonen power struggle, this anime is custom made for you. They pretend that this is a battle anime where Hayate is a powerful combat butler... but then constantly cop out of major battles with an off-the-wall happenstance: this a zany comedy anime, though and through.


There's also some lighthearted drama here. Hayate's master, the young heiress Nagi, believes Hayate is in love with her due a misunderstanding (when they met Hayate asked her to come away with him because he was desperate to avoid the mob collecting on his debt and thought to kidnap her - something he failed to follow through on because it was just against his nature). Hayate is now eternally grateful to Nagi for buying out a tremendous debt (~150 million yen - almost 2 million dollars) but is a pure-hearted fellow who looks at Nagi in the light of a little sister.

So, yeah, I'm having a lot of fun lately. However, clearly I need to get back to work. I'm probably going to start scheduling actual time to develop in between my anime. Given as much time to myself as I've had lately, I've ample opportunity to work on changing my life habits.