Olá a todos ~ヾ(・ω・) tudo bem?
I’m a little hungover today, but fine otherwise. Hard to believe, but this month was just as hectic as the previous one. I got more done, but I didn’t have the time to prepare anything more immediate for you. Let’s see how June goes.
Some cool stuff happened, though. I saw System of a Down live, I upgraded my desktop (which entirely changed my life) and did some decent work. Some stories I’ve been writing for a bit have had some more significant developments, which is relieving, to say the least… I’d like to snatch one of the shorter ones and see what I can do with it soon.
Things are freezing up where I live – we’re one month away from Winter. It’s exciting because this is the only time of year when I get to comfortably wear a jacket. It’s also the only time of year where I actively crave canjica… good thing I learned how to make it last year ( ・ω・)っ♨ what a delicacy!
Cardcaptor Sakura
Considering the demographic here, this might be the most trivial recommendation yet, as I imagine 99% of you have already watched it. But, I must confess… I had never watched Cardcaptor Sakura before starting it back in March. If only you knew how many anime & manga I never got around to seeing, you’d probably want to kill me. Don’t even get me started on videogames… I’m still catching up.
There’s tons to say about CCS, so this will be a bit scatterbrained．．．．．． I love Yukito. Okay, now that I’ve got that out of the way, I can get to the other stuff.
The animation from MADHOUSE is truly sickening. How did they do that? All the different outfits, the compositions, the character acting — the way Kero (quer o que, mano?!) moves and acts throughout the series always makes me laugh. I love seeing the backgrounds transition and noticing slight angles and details change, because they had to paint the same thing twice; I love when they have strategic color palettes based on the environment and lighting, like in the ‘Create’ card episode, where both Sakura and the card have this really strong, nearly black shading to convey the scale… the dragon is this screamingly-saturated pink color too, it’s all so confident!! The music is just incredible, every BGM and vocal track is a hit, and the performances, ah, I just love how everyone talks and enunciates… What a nice show. I watched one episode per day for most of it and I consistently looked forward to that little 20-minute time slot in my schedule.
By the time I got to episode ~35, I bought all of the manga to read after the anime, which is what I’m doing now that I’ve watched everything. The art in anything CLAMP is just indisputable. I’m so envious of how they use fine lineart so perfectly, all the expressions, eyebrows, screentones (Tomoyo’s hair in certain panels has a really cute loose screentone cut; honorary mention to the squares, dots and action lines in sillier panels etc.). The pacing is certainly more brisk in the manga too. Have to say though, the teacher/student stuff (all multiple instances of it) is insane. It was already weird in the anime, but the manga is straight-up startling! As the Angry Videogame Nerd would say: WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
As for Clear Card, I might read it in the future, but I don’t think I’ll watch it, mostly for an extremely trivial reason: I don’t like the bloom in modern anime. For certain anime, I even think it fits, but especially in CCS’ case where there’s something else before it to compare it to, it just doesn’t appeal to me that much ヽ( ￣д￣)ノ
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The last Cardcaptor Sakura recommendation I have is geographically specific, so I guess this is mostly aimed at my Brazilian friends (especially for those around São Paulo):
I went with some friends to the Café Cardcaptor Sakura at Liberdade a few weeks ago and had a lovely experience.
It was quite a coincidence, since I started the anime before I even knew such a place would be opening, but way back in April, my friend sent me a link to the opening date announcement, and I put it on my calendar.
I was excited to go with my friends, but really, I figured that the place itself would probably just be a regular café with marked-up prices like most places in São Paulo are. I was pleasantly surprised, however, by how nice the experience was! The line was short, the decoration was super cute, the staff was nice & attentive and the food was great! For the area, the prices are really not bad at all, even a little cheaper than I expected. My friend has been talking about tamago sando for the past 2 weeks now because of the one he ordered there. I got the ‘Kero’s Parfait’, which is one of the pricier items (like R$45), but it could easily serve two people, or one fat-ass basterd (me). It was fantastic. I’d like to go back soon.
I haven’t been able to work on zona.plankton as consistently as I’d like for the last 2 months or so, which has been bugging me constantly when writing these posts. I’m not forced to update or write monthly, obviously – I’m working on these because of an agreement with myself, and I believe I’m learning something from doing these in such consistency. I’ve been working better with deadlines, for example… Did you know this month’s poster drawing was made a day before this update? I drew it on the bus (big surprise) while coming home from work. I had literally no idea of what I was going to do beforehand. I think it turned out interesting, at least.
It’s hard to look back and weigh your efforts with a clear mind during day-to-day life… things are way too hectic. You need to really find the time for it, and I feel like the end of each month is an appropriate opportunity to do so ٩(ఠ益ఠ)۶
I hope you have a beautiful day :-D
Signed, with love,
noo.dll__〆(￣ー￣ )
see ya!
