Erufailon4

When did it all begin? If we're going all the way back, I could say September 22, 2018, the day on which I watched Spirited Away for the first time and kickstarted my now 6-years-and-counting love for Japanese fiction. Or maybe July 14, 2019, when I heard Revo's music for the first time in the form of Attack on Titan's first opening. But the fifth anniversary I'm commemorating today is not of either of those. It's of February 21, 2020, when I watched 5th Story Concert Roman on YouTube. And the rest is history. It's crazy to think about how different the world was - how different I was - five years ago. Those were the early weeks of the coronavirus spreading across the world. I was still living in what I consider my definitive childhood home. I was a 9th grader, about to graduate middle school and move onto high school, utterly unaware of how much that experience would be shaped by the pandemic. I was fifteen when I discovered Sound Horizon. Probably the best pos...

It's been a very eventful year for me, but in the middle of everything I still managed to watch a pretty good amount of anime. From wolves and deer to kaiju and losing heroines, here's my top 10 of this year.  Top 10 New Anime: 10. Spice and Wolf Nothing extraordinary in terms of art and animation, but it was still nice to have a more down-to-earth fantasy anime. The second half in particular had many good episodes. Ami Koshimizu is great as Holo.  9. The Elusive Samurai I had high hopes for a Jump anime from Team Umehara, and sometimes those hopes were met and even surpassed, but far too often I was left disappointed. Some of it was due to the story not always knowing which tone was appropriate, some was the usual Aniplex planning causing visible melting. It really was a series of ups and downs.  8. Senpai is an Otokonoko Despite the modest production and sometimes mistimed mood swings, I ended up getting really invested in this one. It's always nice to see LGBT stories ...

It's that time of the year again. I may have watched less anime on average than on many previous years, but I think the amount I did watch was perfect since selecting the 10 best openings and endings presented no difficulty. So here they are! A bit more laconic descriptions this time due to poor planning leading to very little time - truly the way of the modern anime industry.  Top 10 OPs: 10. Shoshimin: How to Become Ordinary OP "Sweet Memory" Quite stylized and sometimes very symbolic, but it does get across the most important things: sweets, and that Yuki Osanai is cute but also scary. The song is one of Eve's better ones.  9. Spice and Wolf OP2 "Sign" The Spice and Wolf remake didn't exactly have the best of luck in its animation department - serviceable but not remarkable in any fashion - but this OP makes the best of its circumstances with very effective imagery that doesn't need flashy animation to leave an impression.  8.  Alya Sometimes Hi...

Yeah, I know I'm a week late with this blog post. Been a lot going on so haven't been updating this blog much. But that should change in Near Future™. Anyway, happy (Around The) 20th anniversary, SH! The major debut album is a couple of months younger than me, so our ages match for most of the year. Fun coincidence, perhaps divine foreshadowing. And right off the bat, we already have anniversary projects from SH, including the shortly upcoming Halloween to Asa no Monogatari and its already released lead track Halloween Japanesque '24 - fun song, that. Also concerts but those I won't be able to see since they're in Japan. Here's hoping for a Blu-ray. In fact there's many concerts I'd like Blu-rays of. As for fan projects, ICYMI my  365 Revo Songs  Twitter bot is now up and running and will tweet one Revo song every day until the next anniversary. I had a lot of technical problems with getting it to run reliably, which I might talk about in another blog p...

A lot has happened since I last updated this blog. I went and touched grass (well, snow for over half of it - dear god it was cold this winter) and served 165 days (fairly standard length for rank-and-file soldiers) in the army. With my citizen's duty now fulfilled, I'm a free man once again, at least until that dim-witted dictator on the other side of our eastern border decides to mess with us. If that happens, Signalsman [redacted] may have to grab an assault rifle again. Here's hoping that never happens. With that out of the way, it's time for some more long-lasting big changes in my life. First of all: I'm now in my 20s! As of today. Happy Around 20th Birthday to me, yeah~ (as you can see, still a brainrotted Laurant). Secondly: I'm going to university! In a different city! Since it'd be a bit of a long commute, the third thing is that I'm moving on my own for the first time in my life! In fact, I'm celebrating my birthday in the middle of packin...

... or snow, I guess? With it being winter and everything. Almost minus 20 degrees Celsius at the time of me writing this! Let’s hope it warms even a little before next week. After all, I'm starting my military service next week. I've already written about it here months ago, but to recap: Finland has mandatory military service, 6 to 12 months depending on how important stuff one ends up doing. I'm aiming for 6 because it would fit my future plans, but who knows. What this means is that I'm going to be very busy for a few months starting from next Monday. So, I'm officially(?) putting this blog on hiatus. It's not like I updated it very often anyway, but it's likely going to be at least 6 months until I expect to post here again.  As for social media, I might still tweet every now and then but definitely less than usually. So, uh... if you really need to contact me for some reason, feel free to DM but don't expect a quick answer. It's going to be int...