It's not Fallen Angel Flonne, but oh well.

Happy Flonne. My new near-Summer wallpaper. Makes me smile every damn time I minimize everything to the Desktop. Also one of the select few pictures of the second batch that I'm truly happy with, the rest violate some of my minor tenants of picture choice but are well enough done for me to have said "aw hell" and saved anyways.

I'm fairly certain Diana is convinced I don't know how to navigate, but in my defense I only got lost twice, and both times it was because the lovely state of California decided that labeling cross streets wasn't a necessity so I don't find myself to be the guilty party here.

Okay, so the 90 minutes of packaging has set my schedule back a great deal, but I'm going to publish this regardless of what else ends up being poured into it. And I'll be damned if Flonne there doesn't cheer me up every time (that's the heart of a good wallpaper right there).

Not gonna blog California yet, though I have more of a weekend than I'm accustomed to and I've already burned most of the anime resevoir (I'll have to flip a coin to figure out what series dies off to make room for a Gurren Lagoon marathon in week or so, but till then I'm kinda low) since my return on Thursday. So just a few quick thoughts based on another 1-2 episodes (depending on if I read Jiaz's posts on the topics or not) of the series.

Idolmaster -- I really just want the records to show I made my post before Lawson made his. Other than that, I stand by my thoughts and I'll probably stick with this one till the end. I survived Tokyo Majin GK and that got pretty bleh after the inital awe value, plus I've still got hope, despite the addition of the twins.

Hayate -- I figured it out. Aside from the fact that it's a readily available show that is pretty easy to watch, this show is my Negima?! replacement. It's my supply of girl antics despite all other context, and it's not even very good at that. Negima?! really needs some more subs out, cause I enjoyed that. Hayate is just weak gags and a cast that is, for the most part, even weaker. I cannot believe they made a failure of a choker. That's a primary moe-element and I would've thought it impervious to fail, how wrong I was.

Lucky Star -- Lucky Star is awesome, Lucky Channel is not, the ED stuff is really hit or miss. And that's really all there is to it. Yui sucks, Tsukasa is swing, the rest are hits. It's 4Koma goodness and it fits the venue perfectly. Not a sleeper hit nor a wild success, but a solid victory with some extra polish anyways.

Darker than Black -- I wasn't kidding about the consistant cast thing folks, find one. Okay, so Hei's power is Electricity, that makes a hell of a lot of sense. Doesn't answer the Bulletproof Coat deal really, but the rest of it all falls into place now. Also, just 'cause it might scar someone else's mind I'm putting this concept out there. Could you imagine a relationship scene between Yin and Hei? Doesn't it just feel wrong mentally? Yeah, I got that stuck in my head for like 10 minutes, figured I'd share the pain.

Romeo x Juliet -- Tybalt is awesome, I'll be sad if he dies but I sorta figure they'll keep kinda related to the script, somewhat at least. Her and Hermoine would be a great couple, since they deserve better than the fates have ordained. I want to start a betting pool if Romeo and Juliet are both gonna survive the series run. (Actually Jiaz, that'd be a good poll one day if you run out of ideas).

Claymore -- SPOLIERS! Yeah, I put that there just in case, but I figure there's no way to dance the issue with all I want to say surrounding it. I probably won't spill it blunt, but putting 2 and 2 together isn't rocket surgery.

I don't know what to say. That wasn't what I expected in the least and I'm kinda shocked. I'm impressed that they had the nerve to do that, curious and anxious of the future because of it (hell, if the 5 strongest of the organization (a bunch of fucking racist jerks~) are downed by just one of these Menos-Grande parallels than everyone's in deep trouble). I didn't like Pris from the beginning, but the other 3 were pretty cool, variety of talents, decent synergy and relational work, fleshed out pretty well, better than any other show has done in that level of time investment. I always suspected that human-Claire was going to be a Claymore, I didn't expect it to come out of this though. It doesn't answer why she's not in the OP, but it did answer the other OP-centric question regarding imagery. Since it has a class, I can't help but wonder if we'll get a few more of these, not that I want them, that'd make this into DBZ-more, and uhh, they're all blondes already.

Part of me feels ripped, the rest confused. 10% power for the eyes and held her own, or did she? Was the entire thing a ploy to get her to a point for the strike without having to unleash the inner force, or was there actually a stalemate at that power point? I really feel that there's so much that I didn't get to see in terms of capability. It's like if Byakuya showed up for the first time back when he and Renji were collecting Rukia from the real word, but instead of just severing Ichigo's spirit link he instead just went Ban-Kai and Annhilationscaped him right out of the show then and there. We knew back then that Ichigo was capable of some pretty impressive output, given his schooling of Renji, but we hadn't seen anything but the tip of the iceberg. Same deal here, except I don't think we're going to have a Sunrise styled reset or revivial. Which might be a good thing.

EDIT: I just actually made sense of the spoiler I've seen everwhere about Claymore. Holy crap. That makes a shit-ton of sense in several respects. Also. O.o Rocking...

Mai Otome Zwei -- I'm not one to reject service. But can I have some more of the gritty and serious awesome, and less of the stupidly stupid? Service is fine, sillyness is not. For example. I loved Episode 2, with the exception of the banana peel. It didn't need to be there, and it really shouldn't have. Keep the intern or the little child away from the storyboard and deliver something that people will be proud of. The show gets enough abuse for bending the rules of anime drama with non-death deaths, don't give them an easier target.

Kiddy Grade 2 -- Hell yes. And that's all there is to it. Oldschool characters in oldschool action plus a fresh and full cast complete with rivalries and powers and a grand scenario to play it all out under.

Next time, California and the PSP game highs and lows (plus probably Odin Sphere, it looks amusing).

Edit's Edit: Fixed the spacing...go figure.