Finally finally finished all my exams...and just my luck that the internet connection died again yesterday morning (although it definitely made me study!)...I'm going to have a lot of trouble downloading about 15 episodes over the next week before I have to leave......just hoping I passed all my exams...some of them were particularly bad...but I need to pass or I'm probably dead when I get back to Melbourne, in more ways than one...

News from the anime/manga world that I've heard in the last few weeks...

chibiyuuto posted a link to a Japanese site (which I won't link from here) which explains why X has been on hiatus since 2003...and it's hinted at in the CLAMP no Kiseki X interviews which Jamie (iamsocool12345) so generously translated. Turns out that Kadokawa weren't happy with the next chapter/ending of X, and wanted CLAMP to change it. I'd prefer to have CLAMP's ending thank you very much...even though waiting is so damn difficult... On a brighter note, chibiyuuto also pointed out that another X artbook (Infinity) is going to be released later this year! I am soooooo excited about that, cos it'll contain the more recent colour images which CLAMP has done, and I particularly like those...

Selphie on the Fruity Group ML also reported that the French editor for Furuba had been told that Fruits Basket will have 22 volumes, "no more, no less". That seems about right to me too...it's about 21 chapters...which, at the rate Takaya-sensei is releasing them, will probably be end of next year...exam time again (*sighs*).

(Last time for a while, promise...) Ep.31... Shinn is an...idiot...(at least realize that it's your responsibility to 'take care' of Stellar if you do indeed have to fight her again). He is such a damn selfish character with such a selective conscience. Also, Talia is useless...maybe I should say that she has been compromised so much in so many situations by Dullindal's decisions that she has virtually no authority on her own ship in some ways. But all those characters are stupid...someone could at least have told Shinn directly since he wasn't going to think it through himself. Knock some sense into their heads please...damn frustrating, so why am I still watching it???

Why X-box isn't doing well in Japan...I've always wondered exactly what "batsu-gemu" was...and I think I understand a bit more after surfing around a bit...it's a penalty game which is 'played' when you lose another game...basically you have some sort of penalty action. I've also read an article about why a certain group-activity failed in Japan...not only because the Japanese are a lot more reserved than Westerners, but because the activity didn't include the 'batsu-gemu'. (Still, I'm going to ask k_chan009 to explain it fully...)

Finally, one of my friends has been waxing lyrical about the joys of Mac computers...yes, I agree that the graphics potential (both hardware and software I believe) is much greater than anything that Microsoft releases, but for ease of use, I like XP. Still, I regret that we didn't get what could have been... And from the same columnist...my favourite opinion on copyright so far....

That's all for now...I'm tired...

edit: ((2005-06-09) since it doesn't really belong on the post I just posted...) Last week was Horie Yui (堀江由衣)'s and this week is Takahashi Naozumi (高橋直純)'s turn...