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I AM SO FUCKING SICK THAT SICK THINGS WITHER IN THE PRESENCE OF MY SICKNESS. THAT IS HOW SICK I AM. I have come down with some bizarre-as-only-Japan-can-be illness. I have had it for a week. It keeps migrating to different parts of my body. The only three constants are: Skipped all my afternoon classes this week to lay in the futon and attempt to sleep but to absolutely no avail. Every time I doze off, I end up waking up in a fit of hacking man-coughs. It's so bad that my roommate gave up and slept in the neighbor's room Thursday night because my coughing was keeping HER up, too. Midterms - spring break - midterms - sick. That was mid-March up to now, in a nutshell. You would think that, with me having been away for so long, and with me actually having gone out and done shit finally, I'd have a lot to write about, but I find that when I try to write diary entries about Japan I don't feel particularly inspired to continue. There's so damn much, and I just find it much easier to talk about it out loud than write it down, which is a first for me, because usually I prefer it the other way around. I totally gave up on keeping a Japan journal; it didn't work out at all. You know what I do love rambling about in writing, though? Fandom. Fandom is the shit. I currently have two new fandoms that I'm enjoying immensely. Fandom the first I can't really be involved in yet, because I don't have a PS3. There's this game out called "Folklore" ("Folks Soul" in Japan) that I played the demo for when I was in Tokyo. Cuz while I was in Tokyo there was no way I wasn't going to the SONY building, because I'm such a SONY fanthing. Anyway, for anyone (haha) who was planning to go there: don't bother. The SONY building itself does not have playable demos. They moved that area of the place to another building entirely, called Playstation Square. The Lonely Planet Guide to Japan is full of lies and deceit. Anyway, one of the PS3 demos I played was for this bitchin' game. There are two playable characters, Ellen and Keats, and they follow two separate (but connected) storylines. It takes place in a town in Ireland called Lemrick (or, in the English version, they changed it to Doolin for some unknown reason). Lemrick/Doolin is a place where the living can meet the dead. Ellen goes there searching for her thought-to-be-dead mother, who sends her a mysterious letter telling her to go there. Keats goes there because of a strange telephone call he received from a stranger, a woman who tells him that "they" are going to kill her. The two end up sucked into the world of the dead and become what the locals ("folks") refer to as Netherworld Travelers. Once there, they cannot leave until they find what it is that they're looking for. Using their newfound Netherworld powers, they suck the souls from their enemies and summon them to fight on their behalf. So that right there is frickin' cool, right? You get to run around the world of the dead and rip the souls out of things. If you think that sounds like fun, you're absolutely correct. The PS3 controller, like the Wii-mote, has a motion sensor. In order to suck souls, you lock onto your target(s) with R1, then shake the controller until the soul comes out. :D Pretty freaking awesome. The graphics are also to die for, and we all know what a whore I am for shiny graphics. Here be the (Japanese version of the) trailer for it, with a translation of the Japanese text in the uploader's notes if you actually go to the youtube page. The original dialogue was apparently all in English (rare), and yet for some reason, even though they kept the same voice cast for the English one... they re-dubbed it just to change the name of the town from Lemrick to Doolin. Me no get it. But anyway, trailer. Totally watch it, even if you're not interested by my summary: You know, the song makes it about twenty times more badass, too. I heard that shit and I said, "Holy crap, it's TM Revolution! I'd recognize that voice anywhere!" and I was correct. Apparently he started a new band called Abingdon Boys School, and their song "Nephilim" was used for the game. Sweet deal. I hope THAT carried into the English version... And then there's new fandom number two. That would be Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's. Yes. The third YGO spinoff. I watched the first episode (it aired on April 2nd) and... and... and... oh god. It's so much better than that piece of crap GX. I'm already hooked. With the original YGO, all it took was the sequence where Yami first comes out of the Puzzle. I was like, "Damn, that guy's got purple eyes. Hell yes he does." With this new series, it was the background music that did me in. Duel Monsters + motorcycle riding + techno music = yes please. The main character is already a lot more loveable than Yuuki Judai ever was for me. Yuusei (yes, the main characters' names all have the same kanji "yuu" in common, har har), the new guy, has some damn funky hair (although Yuugi's still wins) and he's the type who only speaks when necessary, but you can tell from how he interacts with his friends that he's a good guy under that layer of cold silence. Jack Atlus, Yuusei's rival-to-be, has an ego like Kaiba's, a coat like Kaiba's, an obsession with winning like Kaiba's, and even a voice and manner of speaking like Kaiba's. Seriously, when he opened his mouth and started talking, I thought he WAS Kaiba. Kaiba Corporation at least is still around. It looks like they added more floors to the damn tower, too. Snare and I agreed that that freaking thing could probably survive a nuclear war. Possibly it already did; a good chunk of Domino City appears to be in ruins (as of yet, unexplained). According to Kazuki Takahashi (YGO's original creator; all bow before him), 5D's is supposed to be set in Domino's "near-future", but how near is anyone's guess. GX I think took place ten years after the main series (putting the main cast in their late 20s). 5D's is apparently sometime after that. A lot of fans are geeking out at the prospect of getting to see the children of the main cast, but I would much prefer that not to happen. Seriously, leave the shipping out of my canon, plzkthx. As much as I'm all for Yuugi/Anzu, for instance, if they flat out told us "they got married and had three kids :D" I would be like, "Um... yay?" Please don't, 5D's. Stick to the characters you've got. If you want to call Yami back from the dead again to duel Yuusei (and kick his ass) in the last episode (again), then fine. But PLEASE don't pull a Digimon and make everything all neat and tidy and crap. I liked the ambiguity of the romance in the original series. ; . ; Aaaaaaand I got interrupted by the phone and now it's 1am, so I'm going to bed. Abrupt ending is abrupt! :O
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