I have noticed an interesting trend in the anime and manga I've been reading lately. It confuses me greatly.
Can someone please explain to me the trend of the angry, violent girls? In the series that I've been reading/watching of late (Ranma 1/2, Rurouni Kenshin, Samurai Deeper Kyo, and Love Hina), we're given two principal archetypes of characters: The overly independent, hot-tempered, female, who usually know some type of martial art; and the lovable masculine hero, who despite his best intentions, or as a direct result of his apparent stupidity, regularly gets the living snot beat out of him bu the female lead. Our hero however, seems to have lost his only set of testicles during the beating, and simply puts up with all this shit. Why why why!!?? Am I suffering from some sort culture clash here? Why has this become such a common theme? Are Japanese men naturally docile? Let me demonstrate how a scene from Love Hina would go if it took place over here in America:
(THE SCENE: Our hero, Urashima, has just done something mildly stupid again, like walking up to a girl on the street, or hell, lets just say he was born.)
NARU: AHH! You Pervert!, You Scum! (etc).
(Urashima recieves the beating of his life, judging by the arwork, it looks like he's had several joints dislocated or broken.)
URASHIMA: Ahhh! What did I do?!!
NARU: Idiot!
URASHIMA: That's it! I'm you landlord now, and I'm tired of putting up with your shit!! Pack your things bitch, because your ass is EVICTED!
NARU: No! Waaa You're so mean.... (etc)
URASHIMA: You should have thought about that before you started acting like such a tease!
But then again; Love Hina is really a comedy, but I'm starting to see so much of this it's kinda starting to not be funny anymore. I could be wrong.
As I write this I am again on a plane, about to fly back to Georgia and see the folks for Christmas. Actually, I just realized that I forgot to pack the sync cable for my PDA, so unless I do something incredibly clever, it might be a while before you get to read this particular entry. My PDA is cool, but not so cool as to have wireless web support.
Just a note, I did do something clever, and it's a secret!
Anyway, I brought the software necessary for site update with me, so you can expect to see some update around the site as things finish up. I know that I'm going to be helping my dad paint the upstairs, so I don't really know just how much free time I'm going to have while I'm here. We'll see.
Take that Die hard Tolkien fans! I now have three tickets to see LOTR: The Return of the King! Well, okay, I've got tickets to see it tomorrow but that's not the point. Or is it? I guarentee I'll get a better seat in the house than all but the most devoted of ticket-campers!
Hmm, well as should be obvious I am considering switching to a weblog-style system to handle the news page. It could be neat, allowing me to do some things with it that I could not do before. First off, Andy, or any other potential contributor will be able to post their own news here, and I won't have to convert their stuff to HTML and such. Also I will be getting the ability to add news from anywhere in the world, well with an internet connection, anyway. Leaving comments will be considered, we'll see.