My last journal update was a rant about how stressful study was, so now that exams are over (), I feel compelled to remove it from my page xD

Artwork-wise, I've obviously been drawing more than I should have been considering I was meant to be studying, but now that I can work on it guilt-free, hopefully there will be more forthcoming. I'm making an effort to step out of my comfort zone and improve My goals are: working on digital painting, colour, anatomy and expressions, in no particular order

Okay, anime rant now follows, so feel free to stop reading any time _{Note that I don't know anything about anime as an art form, so the following is my uneducated opinion only - it's not about the merit of the series or how good it is, but how much I enjoyed it} Feel free to recommend stuff to me as well

My friend lent me her external hard drive, so I now have more anime than I can possibly watch However, here begins the hard part: they're all Chinese subtitled I try to just let it play and catch as much as possible, but seriously, the phonetic rendering of ' Ptolemaius' in Gundam 00 is at least six very obscure characters long, I'm only up to ' pu tuo...' before it disappears So when I can be bothered, it's the ' pause on every frame to read the subtitles' business xD Nonetheless, much confusion ensues

Gundam 00:
I was surprised that I'm enjoying this a lot; I guess I do like mecha anime after all, after watching Appleseed and Full Metal Panic I liked the artwork and animation (yay for random birds being shocked into flight by a Gundam mobilising; such details make me happy). A bit surprised to discover Teiria wasn't a woman. Even though he was clearly voiced by a man, it took Wikipedia to convince me; he doesn't even look like the standard ' pretty boy' type Also, the Gundam franchise seems to have a recurring motif of 'war to end war', of which the logic escapes me at the moment. I shall optimistically attribute this to the language barrier; it is, after all, meant to reference a post-9/11 world. I also really like the soundtrack. Thumbs up!

Zouko Natsume Yuujinchou
Unfortunately I haven't watched Natsume Yuujinchou, so the second series makes no sense to me. Which is a real pity, because I watched the first five minutes and loved it immediately The artwork is nice and the main character is immediately endearing. And the cat, Nyanko, is so cute ^^ In style, it reminds me a little of Spirited Away. No idea how the rest of it will measure up, but for now, thumbs up, for the first five minutes at least

Prince of Tennis Zengoku Daikai 1
Haven't watched the original series, but it's just so innocent and enjoyable Although I have to admit, part of it is due to the strange transliteration of their Japanese names into Chinese, such as 'hand+grave' (as in the type you find in a cemetery) and 'not two' I'm sure it makes sense in Japanese...

Hellsing:
Unfortunately, the art style really doesn't appeal to me yet, and I'm shallow and appearances matter to me in anime ^^" I'll persevere though. Especially because this one's in English ~ravenwing136, you might like it, it has zombies xD

Kuroshitsuji:
In the opening scenes where Sebastian catches a dart thrown at him in two fingers without looking, I was immediately reminded of Tokyo Majin (an old favourite). Unfortunately, no mop followed through to hit him in the face, so I was disappointed. Thus far, I'm pretty unconvinced; in the two episodes I've seen, it swings crazily between honestly creepy and utterly ridiculous. Also, I can't shake the feeling that the two main characters were designed to be fan-girled over and little else. But I can't really draw any conclusions just yet, and I guess the humour does make me laugh.

Naruto:
I randomly read volume 5 and 35 of the manga in English. Despite not getting the intricacies of plot and character due to jumping in the middle, I really like it! Normally, I hate the hyper/bouncy/idiotic characters, but Naruto is oddly charismatic Also, ~ravenwing136 once lent me volume 42 (I think) in Chinese, which was fairly amusing. I laboured over strange terms such as 'Akatsuki' (it took me nearly the entire volume to realise what that random word that kept popping up was ) and 'chakra'' (I kept thinking 'cha ku la? What could cha ku la mean???' Until I tried to say it aloud...)

So if you made it through the whole journal entry, the moral of the story is this: stick to your native language when reading/watching manga/anime, because otherwise you spend so much time deciphering the words that you don't get to look at the pretty pictures.