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.

I was a bit distracted by several gaming sessions over the last fortnight, many thanks to vegetus and nevryn for organising at least one of those. Another distraction was the attention brought to my Bumper Sticker Feminism post by leaving a comment on a relevant Whatever post. Behold the Awesome Power of Whatever!

My first thoughts on Puella Magi Madoka Magica were to compare Kyubey to Mr Morden, my second thoughts are about the resonance to the Arthurian mythos. Both posts are mostly spoiler free.

I'm still watching Harem, er, Sword Art Online (although I'm not sure why), Say "I Love You" (cautiously optimistic), Girls Und Panzer (still fun), and Shin Sekai Yori (which may still end up on the watch once only list that Madoka Magica nearly ended up on).

Session 15 and Session 16 of the Pathfinder reports are up, my extensive notes for Session 17 are unlikely to be written up any time soon.

At this stage I'm still not entirely sure what to make of Shin Sekai Yori, and Say "I Love You" (spoilers) is also making for interesting viewing.

The session 14 Pathfinder report is up (session 15 is being drafted, but I'm going to watch some Puella Magi Madoka Magica first).

Finally, my earworm today reminds us all that there are many dumb ways to die.

To my great surprise this week I have been enjoying Girls Und Panzer. Note that the end credits are a total earworm, and feature a different chibi-tank each episode.

I've also started catching up with Shin Sekai Yori, however this is not a fluffy popcorn anime so I'm reserving comment on that one until I see another couple of episodes.

On Friday I had a couple of games of the deck-building adventure game Thunderstone.  It was fun, but I want to play it a few more times before making a judgement.  I've also noticed that there's a new Seven Wonders expansion out.  Has anyone played the Cities expansion, and is it any good?

This week there's a spoiler-free review of Redshirts by John Scalzi (well, apart from the spoiler that's on the cover of the book), plus two session report from the Pathfinder game - session 12 and session 13.

I'm still watching Harem, er, Sword Art Online but I'm really not sure why.  At least Asuna has started getting some agency back.

I managed to get back to the Pathfinder game the week before last, and also edited the first instalment of the in-character journal of the Bard. I was also there this week, but haven't written that up yet.

I've just finished watching the first half of Toradora and remain interested enough to pick up the second half when I see it on the shelves.

I may have to look at doing a write up on Kokoro Connect, it seems that the 13 episodes to date will be it for a while.  I've just started watching Shin Sekai Yori (From the New World) and I was amused to see that the BGM includes Dvorak's From the New World.

I also watched Inu X Boku SS which was enjoyable but had some unfortunate implications arising from the set up.

Very little this week as my returning energy is going to work first and blogging second. 

I put some final comments on Tari Tari together, and also commented on how rewatchable Bodacious Space Pirates is (very as it happens).

The only other thing is comment about the subtler misogyny implied by the Seanan McGuire thing.

I have spent the week being sick and rewatching Bodacious Space Pirates for distraction purposes.  It stands up to rewatching surprisingly well.

Whilst there's no session report this week (sick), I did manage to finish editing the origin tale for the dragonrider. The in-game chronicles of the bard will be following in instalments later this week.

I geeked out a lot (didn't everyone?) over the amazing Click and Drag XKCD.

As I've been recovering nicely over the last couple of days, I managed to see From Up on Poppy Hill this evening.  Well worth seeing, and that's it from me.

Tari Tari features some fabulous design work for a the High School that looks brand new, but is supposed to be old.  I found the disconnect to be somewhat jarring.

Wolf Children is currently screening as part of Madman's Reel Anime season.  Go see this film. You may want to see it twice.  Unfortunately I've been sick all weekend and haven't seen any of the others in the season, I hope to be fit enough for one of them tomorrow.

In the Pathfinder game the party went shopping, started setting up a guild, and went looking for work.

I'm suffering a degree of writers block with the Oh My Goddess! reviews right now.  There's an interesting and enjoyable story there, but Fujishima doesn't handle combat scenes well, and that's what I'm struggling with at the moment.  That's it for the week.