Anime and Manga reviews
I watched a few episodes of Darker than Black
I asked myself “Give me one good reason why I’m watching this crap” and came up with zilch, so th.at’s was the end of Darker than Black for me. I won’t go so far as to call it completely horrible, though, since a lot of people enjoyed it. If you like conspiracies and mysteries and that sort of thing, you’ll probably get something out of this.
I think I need something either more light-hearted or more straightforward next time
I’ve been meaning to post for a while, but I always find some reason not to. As planned, I finished Teach Yourself Cantonese at the end of February, and I’ve been working on Colloquial Cantonese while listening to Cantonese radio and watching Canto TV, i.e. the ATV live stream. I guess part of the reason I haven’t posted in a while is that I felt I had to write a review of both books, but nobody reads this blog anyway so I don’t know what I was worried about.
Teach Yourself Cantonese was a pretty decent book, it taught me a lot of high-level vocabulary by the end, and it used hanzi all the way through so I could enter things into my SRS. Colloquial Cantonese is a near-total waste of money. It barely teaches anything over 15 worthless lessons, and barely teaches any characters at all. The one great thing I learned from the whole book is how to understand weather reports. And those Hong Kongers love their weather reports, they’re always going on about it. Now I can understand when they’re talking about clear skies, or relative humidity, or advising people to wear more clothing because it will be cold.
I was just listening to an announcer going on about it on RTHK 2 just now, and I was so chuffed when I understood every single word that I came over here to post about it. 😀 Up next I’m going to mine the Lonely Planet Cantonese guide for more sentences while continuing to grab vocabulary from Cantonese news broadcasts. I learn about 20 new compounds from each news broadcast, just by following the Mandarin subs closely while listening to their words. It’s hard to explain, but if you’ve studied Japanese and a bit of Mandarin before, it shouldn’t be too hard. I get the gist of each news item mainly because of that prior background. Here’s what I’ve learned today:
接力 zip3 lik6 – relay
走勢 zau2 sai3 – tendency
出現 ceot1 jin6 – to appear; to emerge; to arise
動作 dung6 zok3 – action; movement
表明 biu2 ming4 – to clarify
要求 jiu1 kau4 – request
估計 gu2 gai3 – to estimate
投資者 tau4 zi1 ze2 – investor
完全 jyun4 cyun4 – completely
薪金 san1 gam1 – salary; wage; pay
討論 tou2 leon6 – to discuss; to talk over; to debate; discussion; talk; debate
休息 jau1 sik1 – to rest; to take a break; recess; a rest; a break
答案 daap3 on3 – [n] answer
出發 ceot1 faat3 – to set off (on a journey)
海水 hoi2 seoi2 – [n] seawater
質疑 zat1 ji4 – call into question (truth or validity)
功能 gung1 nang4 – function
重開 cung4 hoi1 – to reopen
範圍 faan6 wai4 – range, scope, limit
輻射 fuk1 se6 – radiation, irradiation
反擊 faan2 gik1 – to hit back
Hayate no Gotoku! a.k.a. Hayate the Combat Butler
I started out by watching an episode sometime in November and really liked it, but didn’t have time to really dig in until earlier this year. I spent a couple of weeks blasting through both seasons of the anime and then read the manga from chapter 148 onwards. I’d like to go back and read it from volume 1, but I’ll save it for another time.
I tend to prefer character-driven manga to story-driven manga anyway, unless the story is really good. HnG has a number of interesting and likeable characters (Hayate, Maria, Nagi, Tama, Hinagiku, Isumi) and not so interesting and not so likeable characters (Sakuya, Wataru, Saki, Klaus), but even the less interesting ones still make for a few good laughs.
I enjoyed the constant spoofs of and references to other anime and manga as well. I actually got a lot of them, which shows I’ve been watching too much anime… That said, I thought the quality of episodes in Season One was really iffy. Some were good, some were not so good. Later on I discovered that most of the ones I thought were bad were actually filler, which just goes to show that Hata’s unique touch isn’t so easily imitated.
Anyway, after putting the anime behind me, I’ve finally caught up to the current manga chapter, chapter 309. That was a whirlwind ride, especially the Mykonos arc where Hayate ran into his old flame Athena. I like Athena a lot. This is may sound like blasphemy to Hinagiku fans (of which I was one until Athena showed up), but I think Athena fits Hayate better in a lot of ways. She understands that he has feelings, that he’s often in pain, that sometimes that smile is just a mask. Hinagiku still doesn’t really know Hayate, deep down inside. To be honest I think the main frontrunners for Hayate’s affection right now are Maria and Athena, with Hina in third place. Athena x Hayate forever!
That being the case, I’m rather pissed off at this whole Alice arc, wiping out Athena’s memory and turning her into a kid again for 3 months. That puts a halt on any romantic development for the next 200 chapters or so. Boo! Hiss! Hata’s also added another girl called Luca/Ruka to the mix, we’ll have to see what she can bring to the party. It might be time to drop this for a while and see how things work out.
I watched the first 20 minutes of a Cantonese movie called Basic Love today. I was bored and had nothing to do, so I went to a streaming site and tried a few movies at random. A few betrayed me, in that they said they were Hong Kong movies, but then when I started them up, the only audio option was Mandarin. Even for movies clearly made in Hong Kong, like Chow Yun-Fat’s “A Better Tomorrow”, which I really wanted to watch. That’s the power of 1.3 billion speakers vs 7 million, I guess. Cantonese is going have to fight hard to be heard from now on.
But I digress. So, I found a movie called “Basic Love”, about a love triangle between a guy, the girl he loves and the girl he doesn’t love who happens to be the other girl’s best friend. They try to have this “We’re all friends” thing going on when they are in high school, but of course it doesn’t work. About 10 minutes into the movie, girl-he-likes, named Ling, suddenly falls ill and is taken to hospital. Hmm…I thought.
A few minutes later they visited her and she wouldn’t say what was wrong. Even later, she refused to take her medicine, saying “No matter what I take, I won’t get well again!” Uh-oh, I thought. This isn’t one of the dozens of movies about love in the face of terminal illness, is it? I hastened to look it up on Google and alas, it was. Damn, I hate that kind of movie. All weepy and sappy and sentimental. And that was it for me.
I watched it with English subtitles, because I’m still not brave enough to go it solo. I found that with the subtitles, I could understand not just the basic sentences like “what’s wrong with you” and “what do you want”, but also slightly more complex ones as well. Without the subtitles I’m not sure how far I would have gotten. For now I’m content to keep studying and keep watching movies for enjoyment. The time will come, soon enough, to do away with the subs.
What appears to be a series of short stories by Masaru Oishi. The cover is nice, but Aqua Planet Chronicle Blue
