Pirates of the Burley Griffin

Oh look more Planetes posts: Scenery with a Rocket, Gender, Diversity and Politics, Turning Point, In Her Case..., and finally Ignition.

That's about it for the week, although I have been watching Xam'd: Lost Memories with some friends recently. I'm enjoying the rewatch, and so far  I'm standing by my original review.

Well, it is all Planetes all the way this week. The posts for this week reviewed the Extraterrestrial Girl, A Place To Cling To, Regrets, A Sky of Stardust, Boundary Line, and A Modest Request episodes.

Unfortunately work was productive but brain melting this week so I've run out of buffer and missed a day. I'll try to keep the momentum for the next few weeks, but I will miss some posts.

In other news my flights and accommodation for Swancon have been booked.

angriest has recommended AKB0048, and now that it is on CrunchyRoll I may have to take a look at it. However this depends on my To Review pile being reduced from Leaning Tower of Pisa levels to something manageable. I did however manage to complete ef: a tale of melodies (spoiler free).

I've also started Thirty Days of Planetes with Outside the Atmosphere, Like a Dream, Return Trajectory, Part of the Job, Fly Me to the Moon, The Lunar Flying Squirrels (really!), and Sub vs Dub (the dub is excellent BTW) posted this week. I also wrote a side note on the useful surprises that Zemanta can throw up. These have detailed synopses and are, by definition, not spoiler free.

I just drafted the Day 13 post for A Modest Request which is still the master class in how to script infodump if you have to.

In about a week or so I'll start posting Thirty Days of Planetes, I've got about 4 posts drafted so far.

The Hanabee release of ef: a tale of memories was missing the last of the textless openings. I did find a YouTube comparison of it with the standard version.

Finally, I discovered that the reality of the Idol Culture in Japan is worse than even Perfect Blue or Key the Metal Idol led me to believe.

I know this is a day late but I was at Cancon playing boardgames, and I have a bit of a mixed bag to report.

ef: a tale of memories proved to be much better than I was expecting. I also read Admirals: The Naval Commanders who Made Britain Great, an excellent book that does not include Nelson (and for the right reasons IMO).

Finally I saw the astonishing Les Miserables, but I did have a few problems with the changes made to the stage play.

I'm currently planning out Thirty Days of Planetes, but will delay actually posting the reviews until I have a bit of a buffer.

I made the mistake of watching Chihayafuru season one last week: I should have waited 6 months so I could have watched season 2 immediately. As it is I'll have to put up with one episode a week for a while.

Hanabee's blu-ray release of the first half of Bodacious Space Pirates is a nice piece of work. I'm looking forward to seeing the second half.

I'm currently watching the review copy of ef: a tale of memories (TV Tropes link), and it has been impressing me much more than I expected it to. I'm 8 episodes in so far.

One of the stories about changing the Monopoly tokens amused with an inane quote. It prompted me to lis 10 board game things more innovative than changing the Monopoly tokens.

I also got round to reading, and greatly enjoying, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin.

I did watch the anime movie King of Thorn last night but I'm struggling for things to say about it. It is a very visually pretty science fictional take on Sleeping Beauty, but I'm not sure what I feel about it. In other news the Winter 2013 season has begun and I'm watching bits and pieces, but nothing concrete enough to write about yet.

I'm back in Canberra but still dealing with overly hot weather. Back to work tomorrow.

On the review side, I finished Say "I Love You" (the ending is good, the final episode isn't) and finished my Rocket Girl posts by reviewing the anime.

I did the obligatory 2012 in Review post, discussed a proposed panel for Continuum (suggestions and co-panellists wanted), and noted that there is an actual Victorian fan taking over the Chronos Awards.

I may get an Ah My Goddess review up later this evening, watch this space.

I am now in Perth and on holidays. On the flight over I finally managed to complete my review of Oh My Goddess! volume 25.

In the last fortnight or so I reviewed Toradora!, posted second thoughts on Girls Und Panzer, and ranted about the decay of Sword Art Online into Harem Art Online.

I suspect that I'll be having a fairly quiet Christmas break, and that I need to. I'm sort of awake at the moment but still fairly tired/jet lagged.

This week I began to correct the lack of Rocket Girls reviews (a shocking oversight on my part) with a review of the eponymous light novel, and the first sequel. Alas, a review of the anime may be some time in coming. 

I have received review copies of Toradora and Arakawa Under The Bridge Season 1 from the nice people at Hanabee, and I will be reviewing those first.  These discs will be auctioned off for charity (probably cancer research) at SwanCon.

I received a lovely postcard this week from leecetheartist and rdmasters' tour of the southwest.  This cheered me up quite a bit as I was sick for a chunk of last week (I sort of still am, but I'm trying to ignore that).

I've been lending The Vision of Escaflowne to one of the Pathfinder players one disc at a time. The anguished cliff hanger screams have been quite sweet. :)

A fair bit of boardgaming has also cut into my writing time, so I'm a couple of weeks behind on the Pathfinder writeups at the moment (and also missed a session anyway).

Finally I'll be flying to Perth on the 23rd.  And that's it for the week.