Warning! This post is full of NOTHING about anime! Read at your own discretion, risk, etc.

I’ve been trading around in everybody’s favorite hat simulator recently, using a combination of TF2 Trading Post, TF2 Outpost and TF2 Warehouse to get small profits.  I don’t go on trade servers mostly because booting up TF2 itself is a hassle.

But then again, in Maple Story, I never really stood out in the Free Market (or Perion for those older players) with all the other people yelling stuff using towers of “@” symbols.  I mostly browsed around the shops already set up, looking for small profits.

And in World of Warcraft, I never tried to dominate the auction house.  It was too much work.  And trying to find people selling in the middle of Orgrimmar?  Hah!

I think I’m too nice a guy.

In order to get rich on an online game (probably applicable to real life, too), you need a certain shark-type personality.  You need to be able to trick people into selling unusual hats worth over $800 (they do exist!) for a measly refined metal… and feel good about it.  I was a mid-tier merchant in MapleStory, amassing a couple billion of the in-game currency.  I was a low-tier one in WoW.  But even I know that “merchanting” and “morals” are two completely opposite concepts.

Enter the retards.

On the main page of TF2 Trading Post, arguably the most well known TF2 trading website around, there’s a link to a Google Doc blasting “sharks” and “scammers” and singling them out for community hate and destruction.

This is one hell of a misguided concept.  As you can see in the image above, the document creator draws an arbitrary line between the morally “good” traders like himself (who only go for 50% profit) and the dirty scumbag scammers who buy at 20%.  This is complete, utter bullshit.

If you want to rid the world of merchants, go uninstall TF2 and give all your items to random people.  If you want to trade for profit, go for the lowest price.  Don’t half ass it and think you’re a nice role model for the guys who are infinitely richer than you.

Somebody in the elite guild of really damn rich people is really butthurt that his friend just made $500 when he only made $250.  Or maybe that somebody just wants to discourage people from entering this elite guild.  It’s for the old traders who did things morally and only hurt poor TF2 players halfway instead of finishing them off, huh?

It’s all bullshit.

For lack of a more relevant Auction House picture…

Maple Story had organized crime, in a sense.  The richest people on the server used hacks to level up, auto clickers to lag you out so they could take your business, and employed a lot of other dirty tricks.  But at least they were honest.  You could tell they wanted money, and whether you gave yours to them or not, they would still be rolling in cash.

The Auction House in WoW emphasized the importance of teamwork and of monopolies.  To get rich, you had to force people to buy your stuff.  And to do that, you had to buy out everybody else who sold for less than you.  It was an obvious concept, but one that made it easy to see prices, easy to sell, and kind of tough to buy.  But if you had a keen eye, you could get rich pretty quickly.  There are a lot of different items around!

Team Fortress 2, on the other hand, has organized merchanting hate.  Every trade on TF2 Trading Post or Outpost has the same line: “NO LOWBALLING.”  In other words, “NOTHING LESS THAN 100% OF AN ITEM’S VALUE.”  Furthermore, you have this abominable thing called the “TF2 Spreadsheet,” which lists the approximate prices of everything in TF2.  This only serves to increase the hate against anybody buying things for less than “spreadsheet prices.”

So you have a very wide gap between your normal “plays TF2 to have fun” guy and the “has earbuds and seven unusuals” trader.  And the only way to bridge that gap is to either get really lucky (uncrating ten unusuals in a row), or to find somebody who hasn’t heard of TF2 Spreadsheet… yet.

But wait – you have the elite earbuds people who somehow think that what you’re doing is wrong!  When they did the exact same thing, and are continuing to rip people off!

Imagine the United States, except Bill Gates and Warren Buffet own Forbes and devote half of the magazine to the “Wall of Shame,” encompassing anybody who got more than two dollars in the past week.  And then imagine that Bill Gates has a monopoly over all things computer-related and Warren Buffet can directly control the New York Stock Exchange.

Moral of the story: If you’re an asshole, just admit it.  Don’t sit around on the fence and expect anybody to believe that you’re the paragon of virtue.

Allow me to rant a bit.

I’m at my quarter-life crisis.  I first heard the word mentioned while reading a review of Solanin.

A midlife crisis occurs when a person begins to judge how their life has gone, brought on by the realization that most of their life is over.  A quarter-life crisis, on the other hand, is the uncertainty caused by the transition to adulthood.

The characters in Solanin face their uncertain futures and resolve to take life one step at a time.  In Katawa Shoujo, Rin’s good end comes to the same conclusion: both Rin and Hisao decide to enjoy the present as much as they can.

My crisis could not be more different from Hisao’s, and I’m not sure whether my predicament could even be called a quarter-life crisis.  While Hisao struggles to find a goal in life, my goal is fixed and specific to a fault.  I’ll earn a Bachelor’s degree in Physics, spend six years in graduate school studying an area of physics, move on to a post-doc for two or three years, and end up teaching physics at a university.  I will spend seven years or so struggling to earn tenure, and by the time I do, I’ll be almost forty years old.

It’s scary.  And Katawa Shoujo has come at an important step in this process.  You see, tomorrow I’ll head back to college.  And the day after, spring semester classes start.  This isn’t your average semester – it’s my first taste of upper division classes.  So today and tomorrow are quite literally my last chance to change my plans for the future.  Is this what I really want to do for the next twenty years?

Rin says no.  Shizune says yes.  Lilly tells me to enjoy it while it lasts.

Don’t get me wrong.  I like what I study.  I’m good at it, it’s interesting, and the very notion of “explaining the mysteries of the universe” is so romantic and appealing, who wouldn’t want to do it?  It’s just that I’ve been playing an on-rails shooter my entire life.  I hit all the marks and get a perfect score, but in the end I can’t venture past what I see.

To clear that up: My entire life has been planned out.  My family’s expectations of me, my peers’ opinions of me.  They all point to success.  I’m not going to be humble, and I’m not trying to brag, but I’m smart.  When you hit the books for twenty years, something’s gotta come out of it, and academic success is my end result.  But that only steers me further into academia.  I like doing what I’m good at, and I’m good at studying and researching because I’ve been doing it well my whole life.  A vicious cycle, though not an entirely bad one.

So this is why I like anime, manga, and gaming.  Something as ordinary as walking home from school with a couple of friends is something that I’ve never experienced.  Running late to class with a piece of bread in my mouth?  That could never happen.  (Though I did run late to band with a baritone in hand, so maybe that counts for something)  In the end, my hobbies are a window into a life that I will never lead.

And this explains a lot.

I don’t actually love Rin or love Mikoto.  I admire their outward personalities because everything about them is so foreign to me.  (Think Death the Kid and the Thompson sisters)

This is why I like Nichijou.  Because my life is so predictable, I search for unpredictability in my anime.  So even if the joke’s confusing or you don’t laugh, I still laugh.

This is why I like Katawa Shoujo.  A visual novel that plops me straight into the shoes of Mr. Arrhythmia, giving me a taste of uncertainty?  Fantastic.

Originally, I was going to write a post about my personal connections to Katawa Shoujo.

And then I realized that I have almost none.  I do have my share of experiences with solitude, but Inushinde hit all the points already.  I had a panic attack-ish thing before, but it was at my home when I was trying to sleep.  Hell, the guy in the ER room never told me what happened, probably because nobody knew what happened.  It was during summer vacation and it was annoying.

But aside from that, I don’t even share the inner conflicts that Hisao has about the future.  A big part of any route in Katawa Shoujo deals with what Hisao wants to do in the future.  And in general, there’s a theme in anime about career choices.  The “future career plans” form always comes up in school life anime (95% of all shows), and usually the conclusion is to take life one step at a time, waiting for the answer to appear.

Unfortunately, that was never an option for me.  I fear that my lack of a quarter-life crisis will end up in a severe midlife crisis.

Or not.

A couple of years ago, I was at a banquet for National Merit Finalists from my high school.  We each had to go up to the podium, fake a smile to the camera, and say something into the microphone.

Alphabetical order again?  Ugh.  I went first.

I got up to the mic, and leaned in way too close, testing it.  Several people in the audience nervously laughed as I asked if the mic was working.  The principal was standing behind me, and he urged me to hurry up.  We had thirty or so people waiting behind me.

So I said my name, then said that I’d do physics in the future, and the crowd clapped politely.  They were all waiting for their own children to go up, anyway.

As the principal was taking the mic out of my hand to give to the next Asian student (oh no the racism), I grabbed it.  I didn’t hesitate when I said, “I’m going to change the world.”

And that I will.

I have resolved to keep on going and see where life takes me.  I know that if I try hard and try harder, I will accomplish whatever I want to accomplish.

As long as games like Katawa Shoujo are a thorn in my side, I will continue to think deep and hard about myself, and why I do what I do.

Sorry for the depressing (?) ending.  I don’t have a satisfying conclusion to whatever I’m brooding over, so you don’t get one either.

Also I hope that what you take away from this post is not “flomu is an arrogant bastard.”  You should have known that beforehand.

And yes, I am typing all of this right now in order for there to be a lot of text at the bottom.  I hate seeing small amounts of text between pictures.

P.S.: Play Katawa Shoujo.  I did.

Published as part of a blog project I’m not participating in.  Honeymuffin.

Yesterday, I read glothelegend’s post comparing Gintama and Nichijou.  Glo, like me, thinks both of these shows deserve a 10/10.  But he argues that Gintama is better because it has more to offer.  Not only is it top-notch comedy, but it also has action, romance (?), and more.  ”Literally EVERYTHING,” glo exclaims.

In response, I wrote that I liked Nichijou more (you don’t see me fanboying over Gintama) so I’d say Nichijou is better.

But it’s not just that.  To me, a 10/10 is an accomplishment.  It means an anime is perfect or near perfect for its genre.  Nichijou was my perfect comedy.  Gintama was near my perfect comedy.  But it’s not that slight difference between “near perfect” and “perfect” that separates them.  If it were, I’d peg Nichijou at 10 and Gintama at 9.

No, there has to be a moment.  I talk about this a lot, and I’m not sure if any of you have any idea what I’m talking about.  This moment is when I suddenly realize that I’m watching something amazing, or that the manga I’m reading will stick with me for years.  It can come with a specific scene in an anime, a specific page of a manga, or just anytime.  It can come early on, like it did with Nichijou.  It can come at the end of the series, like it did with Eureka Seven.  Or it can come way after I’m done with the series, like with Welcome to the N.H.K.

These moments make me truly grateful to have spent so much time mucking around in the anime fandom.  It’s rewarding.  It’s makes swimming through waves of trash shows worth it.

Okay.  I get it, they’re good.

No, you don’t get it.  They’re great.  They’re beyond great.

Anime and manga like this are so good that they make me want to exclaim to the world how good they are.  And I do.  It’s not that I’m trying to convince you that Nichijou is good.  I know full well that some of you will never like Nichijou.  But, as I touched on in my last post, I love Nichijou so much that I want to spread the joy.  I want to convince you that some anime are so good that you can devote your entire blog to it, and I want you to give Nichijou a shot so that maybe you can experience what I feel when I watch Nichijou.

Well, why don’t you just reserve 10/10 for these “beyond god tier” shows?

You know what?  I will.

There.  Now Gintama’s a solid 9.

The second half of this post is devoted to Katawa Shoujo.  This is (tangentially) related, I swear.  Katawa Shoujo is beyond-god tier.

I’ve been playing this visual novel for the past three or four days, and I’ve been consistently impressed.  The best reaction (and that closest to mine) to this game comes from Youtube, of all places:

So you’re telling me that a bunch of 4chan anime geeks came up with a Eroge about cute disabled girls? And not only it’s not a joke but it’s also very well made and tastefully written?

This is why I would hand Katawa Shoujo a 10/10 (now revised to 9/10).  But what takes it to and over the top is the script.  I’m not an avid player of visual novels, but even I can tell when something’s well written.  I feel it in my sides when I’m gasping for air while reading Rin’s lines.

You take all the sarcasm I wish I was capable of, add in all the randomness that made Nichijou so incredible to me, and stuff it all into a deadpan grin, and you’re left with Rin.  I don’t want to hype up the game too much (despite what that last sentence sounded like, I put Katawa Shoujo on par with Nichijou), but damn, is it good.

I could write a couple paragraphs on the advantages of visual novels as a medium, but I’ll leave that to somebody else.  I’ll just mention that Rin is more dynamic and interesting a character than any character in any anime or manga I have ever come across.  It has to do with:

1. The game focusing on solely Rin for more than four hours straight.  No anime character gets that much screentime, except maybe Luffy and Conan.
2. The game’s audience versus your average anime’s audience.  The former is quite the niche.  The latter is a mob of moe-loving paying customers.  You need to rake in the cash, and some things must be sacrificed.  (For example, what if most people did not like Rin?  You can’t make four hours of an anime devoted to a single character when four hours with four characters means four times the figures and four times the fanbase.)
3. The person who wrote the script is a genius.  Also, five years of development for an indie game (aka “we do what we want, and it just so happens that what we want is the best visual novel ever made”).

I wish I could take the time to elaborate on this, but I’m busy.  I promised Shizune and Misha that I’d go see the Tanabata festival with them.

In two years, you’ll be scratching your head and saying, “what was this from, again?”

2009 was not a good year for anime, and many people focused on how bad Haruhi S2 was or on… how bad Haruhi S2 was.  There was really nothing to talk about that year.  That’s exactly how SHAFT boosted out of obscurity and got mainstream attention with a sub-par anime like Bakemonogatari.  It and Eden of the East were the two memorable anime of the year (unless you really liked tea time).  If you included the winter season of 2008/2009, then Clannad After Story and Toradora were up there too.

Which brings me to my point.  Do you remember GA – Geijutsuka Art Design Class?

No, of course you don’t.

It also came out in 2009, and it was completely pushed out of the scene by people ranting about Haruhi S2 and commenting on how deep Bakemonogatari’s black screens were.  I named it my second favorite anime of the year, right after After Story.  But now?  I couldn’t even remember the title of the show.  I had to look through my anime list to find it.

Nobody’s going to forget Madoka Magica.

2011.

Madoka Magica and Steins;Gate were the clear winners this year, with Mawaru Penguindrum coming in at a close third.  Usagi Drop, Hanasaku Iroha, AnoHana, Fate/Zero, and a whole ton of other popular anime came out this year.

And this time, I can’t disagree with the majority.  All of these shows had some kind of appeal to them, and I would rate them at least a 6 out of 10.

So where does this leave Nichijou?

If GA failed to make a ripple in the murky pond of shit 2009 anime, did Nichijou even reach the pristine waters of 2011 anime?  Admittedly, no.  And that’s pretty sad.

If anything, my Nichijou fanboyism has taught me that favorite shows aren’t always the ones everybody else likes.  So while Nichijou may fade into obscurity, I hope that my persistent Nichijou posts have convinced you to at least give it a chance.  And in the future, I hope you will try out anime no matter what somebody else says about it.

If you decide that Astarotte no Omocha is a great anime or Idolmaster is the best anime, I will definitely judge you.  But if you really believe it, don’t give a crap about what I or anybody else could say to you because everybody deserves their own Nichijou.

Or their own Eureka Seven AO.  SO PUMPED.

Moral of the Story

Even if you forget Nichijou, remember that you should watch obscure anime and find one you love beyond human comprehension.

Quote me on that.

There’s a certain feeling I get after watching a great anime or after reading a great manga.  Some people describe it by saying that it’s hard to start another series because their minds are so preoccupied by the one they just finished.  After watching Eureka Seven, I had a hard time sleeping because I kept thinking about it.  The same with Welcome to the NHK.  Nichijou, too.

And now I can add Suzuka to that short list.

So I knew I had to write a post about the series.  I was originally going to compare it to Kare Kano (shoujo romance) and bash shoujo while singing the praises of Suzuka.  Killing two stones with one post!  I also wanted to write about how realistic the relationship between Suzuka and Yamato was.  I even considered dropping out my Editorial Day post for one on Suzuka.  It’d probably be more on-topic (aka less meta), too.

But I concluded that the best way to show you why I love Suzuka was to… well, show you.  Below is the break up scene, from Suzuka chapter 112.

Amazing.

At first, I thought my computer froze, or that the scanlation was just bad.  But I found myself mouthing “oh fuck.”  Three full-page spreads covering a split-second of shock.  Suzuka’s words sink in for six pages.  Yamato tries to say something, but sees Suzuka’s smile.

This smile is literally a side of Suzuka that’s never been seen before.  I could call it shitty art, but the style suits the purpose.  It’s a smile that could break hearts.  By showing only Suzuka, the mangaka puts the audience in Yamato’s position.  As Yamato tries to stare down this smile, we do too.  And as we catch another glimpse of the resolute Suzuka, we grit our teeth and give up.  Who can blame Yamato?  How can any guy respond to such a determined face?

The mangaka, Kouji Seo, could have gone with the classic break up scene where the girl slaps the guy and runs away.  It would have been clean, predictable, and boring.  But it would have been an easy read.  This chapter was by no means an easy read.  Seo forces Yamato and Suzuka to confront each other, face to face.  And he forces the reader to watch.  It’s a depressing scene, and so realistic that it feels like you, yourself, have just been rejected.

And that makes it brilliant.  For anybody who thinks I’ve just spoiled the series: you know they’re going to be together in the end.  It’s a romance, and there ain’t no Nagisas here.  It’s the whole package that really matters here.  Reading Suzuka is like going through a relationship – one hell of an experience.