I don’t know how many people have heard of Pandora.

The gist of the site is that it is a music discovery service. You create stations by typing in songs or artists that you like, and using the work done by the Music Genome Project, it finds songs that are similar and plays them. It is a really great way to discover new music.

However, since its conception, it has just been running into various roadblocks, mainly financial ones.

Since I’ve discovered it a few years ago and was happily listening to really interesting and new music that I have never discovered before, the service has been blocked to be accessed by just those in the US due to licensing issues, which means that if I am to go and listen to Pandora, I’ll need to make use of proxy servers in the US.

Now apparently the US has doubled the cost of Internet-based royalties and Pandora is reportedly close to having to pull the plug on the service soon.

Really unfortunate situation here, because Pandora is a really awesome service that I am pretty sure helps expose people to new music that they would actually like instead of all that mainstream crap on the media nowadays.

I just hope that Pandora doesn’t have to shut down. However, if it does, that’s just another stab in the foot of the music industry, done so by those organizations like the RIAA who claim to represent these artists. Pandora getting killed off is essentially killing off ways for obscure, yet potentially talented, musicians to be exposed to a fairly large audience, which would simply mean less exposure for these struggling artists and more exposure (to fill in the gaps) for the crap that’s out there nowadays.

At the moment, I am only following two series:

• Bleach
• Rental Magica

The lack of disk space is the key culprit in preventing me from watching more stuffs; the absolute lack of time due to a busy life comes in at a very narrow second place.
It honestly seems that I have this thing for anime that deals with magic to a certain extent. Looking back at some of the series that I followed in the past, a somewhat large majority of it had elements of magic in it…

Bleach (ブリ－チ）

If you follow Bleach, magical elements are made obvious with dealings in the supernatural (life after death, shinigami) as well as the whole kidou stuff. Fairly stereotypical shounen series though.

Death Note (デスノート)

Like Bleach, dealings with the supernatural. The exception here is that the concept of shinigami has them carry around a Death Note, where one to “accidentally” drop one on Earth because he got bored. Very enjoyable, although some people have said they got bored with the series; too much talking, not enough action. However, the action that really takes place is psychological warfare.

Fate/Stay Night (フェイト／ステイナイト)

Well, the entire premise of the entire show is based off of magic. It’s kind of hard to miss just what the elements of it are. The Holy Grail War, where seven masters (with magical talent) face off against each other with their summoned servants for the Holy Grail.

Mahou Sensei Negima (魔法先生ネギマ！) / Negima!? (ネギマ！？)

Since I enjoyed Love Hina, I figured I should check out Negima, since they are by the same author. That was not a bad decision because the series has been quite enjoyable, with its epic parts (the various story arcs involving magical combat), the RPG references (in the current part in the manga), and fair amounts of comedic situations.

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha (魔法少女リリカルなのは) and sequels A’s and Strikers

I came across this series by complete surprise. I don’t even quite remember how I found it these days, but it is a pretty cool concept, with high technology as magic. The combat scenes are awesome. If you need a quick summary of what to expect, refer to this quote from an old blog post: “The best way to describe the series is that it’s like a magical girl series with various deviations into mecha anime (your typical beam attack), pretty good combat sequences, and gun mechanics (from A’s onward).” Not your typical mahou shoujo.

Rental Magica (レンタルマギカ)

Revolves around Astral, a magician dispatch company who rents out mages for various different tasks. Takes magic from so many different inspirations it’s crazy. Also quite entertaining with good op/ed music and fairly epic battles.

Now hear comes my question. What’s out there that would be interesting enough to watch? By reading an anime blog post a friend wrote, it only has one that I find interesting enough to watch, and that would be Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 (コードギアス　反逆のルル－シュ R2), the follow-up to Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion (コードギアス　反逆のルル－シュ).

Would there be anything that would be interesting out there?

A new season of anime started a while ago (around beginning of April), so the list of what I’m watching now appears.

Bleach (ブリーチ) is still ongoing for quite some time now. It’s one of those series that just goes on for quite some time..

Death Note (デスノート) is still ongoing from last season. Canonically speaking, it’s somewhere past the midpoint now, although I haven’t watched anything past episode 23 so far (and the subs I follow are at 25 and the RAW’s at 27). I must say, it really does put the entire series on a whole new level of liveliness, simply because the animation is pretty good.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS (魔法少女リリカルなのはStrikerS) was something I ran across somehow on the vast tubes of the Internets. Despite its main genre lying in the realm of shoujo, its more of something for everyone, which makes it something that’s interesting enough to watch and enjoy. It managed to get me to watch the previous two seasons of Nanoha: Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (魔法少女リリカルなのは) and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s (魔法少女リリカルなのはエース). The best way to describe the series is that it’s like a magical girl series with various deviations into mecha anime (your typical beam attack), pretty good combat sequences, and gun mechanics (from A’s onward). It’s an interesting find.

Romeo x Juliet (ロミオxジュリエット) is an anime adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, the Shakespearean play. No, there aren’t any mecha involved, nor are there any guns or weapons named “Sword” or “Long Sword” like in the modern-day adaptation movie. In this one, the setting is in a renaissance-esque environment on a floating city named Neo Verona with pegasuses. As well, the Capulets end up mostly murdered by the Montagues, save Juliet. It would be interesting to watch.

In addition to all these, I am still waiting for the final two episodes of Code Geass (コードギアス) to air as well as School Rumble Third Semester (スクールランブル三学期), whenever that comes out because the story really picks up.

As well, I’m currently in the process of getting Azumanga Daioh (あずまんが大王) because of its awesomeness (from various people).

(Note: If you’re wondering “What’s with the Japanese names for the anime?”, the answer is “Because I feel like it.”)

My parents, my dad especially, are TV drama addicts. Every so often, they get DVDs full of dramas from Asia, with a Cantonese dub and watch it for rather long periods of time.

Most recently, they watched the 2005 Japanese drama 女王の教室 (Jyoou no Kyoushitsu/The Queen’s Classroom), an eleven episode series talking about a sixth-grade teacher who is generally referred to as the teacher from hell. While watching only a very little bit of the series, mainly the introduction, a bit of the middle, the ending, and some of the specials which talk about the teacher’s past, one thing really struck me, especially from the specials: children these days are really sheltered from the world around them.

(Spoilers follow, but if you want to watch the series, you can go here and start off your torrents. I would recommend watching the eleven episodes first before the two specials)

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Looks like I’ll be quite busy next week.

I went through co-op intake yesterday. Just a few hours after, I was notified that I have been accepted into the program. Woohoo!

But I probably won’t be applying to stuff until the week afterwards. Lots of stuff to handle next week.

The big events are the CMPT 307 quiz/midterm that’s coming up on Monday and my self-imposed deadline on Wednesday, which I technically have an extension till Thursday now since that is when I am meeting up with my boss to talk about it. But hey, a deadline’s a deadline and it must be kept. Hopefully I’ll be able to work wonders with my time and avoid the distractions to get things working nicely. Something to pray for.

There’s almost a Scout leader’s meeting sometime during the week as well that has yet to be scheduled. I’ll need to throw that into the schedule somewhere once the time’s decided.

According to Timbo, the practice questions for 307 are quite hard. That has me worried a bit. But then, the fact that there isn’t that much time to really study is also worrying. Saturday’s pretty much occupied with WCCCLC training stuff, Sunday morning’s occupied with Mass, and Sunday afternoon with a WCCCLC promotion team meeting, which really means I have a small block of time Friday, a few hours Saturday night, and all Sunday evening to study for this potentially uber-hard quiz. Something else to pray for.

Then mom’s coming home after three weeks in Hong Kong on Tuesday, and she’s bringing home some 香片 (jasmine tea), which makes me a happy camper. I love that stuff. It’s so delicious and fragrant. And she’s got her birthday coming up on Saturday, which means going out for dinner. Thankfully, by that time, the busy week is over, so it’ll be like a cooldown period.

As an aside, Code Geass is awesome. And from what I heard about it from Dan, Afro Samurai sounds pretty ludicrously awesome as well.

How so you might ask? Let’s see here. Besides the fact that Samuel L. Jackson provides the voice of the protagonist, a black samurai with an afro, they have a mix of feudal and modern technologies, one example of which is fully automatic crossbows with RPGs mounted underneath. I think that warrants a WTF.

Well, wish me luck and/or pray for me. I’ll be needing it.

A “for the curious” post.

• Bartender – Apparently, there’s only 11 episodes of this nice anime. The beautifully told and reflective stories, as well as the amazing drinks that they put on display each episode make the series exceptionally enjoyable for myself.
• Bleach – Yay! Fillers are over and now it’s back to the storyline which, according to the manga, is going to be quite awesome.
• Death Note – Follows the manga quite closely, from the looks of it. Despite knowing just what will happen for every single episode, I still enjoy the whole story of Death Note such that I look forward to watching each episode that comes out.
• Negima!? – Every single episode I watch of this spinoff series of Mahou Sensei Negima makes me like it more and more than its predecessor. I guess it’s the whole magical combat action thing that takes place frequently with the series.

Well, Bartender’s technically a complete series – I’m just waiting for subs to be released. As for the remaining three, they should be interesting to follow in the days, weeks, and months ahead.