[Stripey] Legend of the legendary heroes – Light haired bishie Shion Astarl

Has my love for lighted haired lolis finally breached the gender barrier?!?

You know that age of the tanuki is on the wane when instead of devoting his precious weekend to the bishoujo cast of Amagami SS, Stripey was beguiled by the charms of the light haired bishie – Shion Astarl – from the Legend of the Legendary Heroes (LH).

LH is like Rental Magica meets Chromed Shelled Regios (both very excellent productions by ZEXCS save for the lackluster ending) except it is penned with the ruthlessness of SUNRISE writers. While the intriguing plot drives me to devour the episodes with possessed frenzy, it is the characteristic ZEXCS characters that have left a deep impact on my 2D psyche, the chief perpetrator being Shion Astarl.

Watching Shion, a line from Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight strikes a chord with me –

“You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

Whenever Wife chan and I encounter a ‘near-perfect’ character in movies, we foresee 2 outcomes

1)      If he’s a side character – He probably dies.

2)      If he’s a main – He probably becomes the penultimate villain or sometimes the final boss.

[Stripey] Kirishima Shouko is awesome

The comrade-in-anime (AKA the no. 1 Nanoha fan in Singapore) who handed me BakaTest in a thumb-drive (thanks bro!) had these parting words - "Shouko is awesome." Having just caught ep 7 (mock wedding) last evening, I want echo once more The Truth -

KIRISHIMA SHOUKO IS AWESOME

We all know that tanukis are partial to the childhood friend archetype (of which siscon imoutos are a subclass of if you hadn't realised). I have loved many MANY childhood friends (in anime) but few are in the league of Shouko whom I'd willing let burn ALL my ero-books.

[Zyl] OPS DEMONLORD After Action Review

Be Proactive; Begin with the End in Mind; Put First Things Out of the Way First

This post is not actually about Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou but about my catching up with watching Daimaou.

State of the passion – 2D harem bliss

One of the defining moments of a man’s life is when he resolutely puts down his hunting rifle and swears an oath of everlasting fealty to only one woman; knowing full well that younger, shapelier models are emerging even as the ink on his marriage certificate dries. There are various reactions to this act. Parents see it as the attainment of true adulthood. Single friends (a small minority) of the happy couple decry the union as the ultimate betrayal while other swinging bachelors deem the forsaking of the forest for a tree to be utter insanity.

That would describe the current state of my 2D passion.

Well, almost with one major difference. The great thing about 2D passion is that you’re not bound by law to have one love/wife. You can have as many as 3000 concubines (ala kings of ancient China although the tanuki disapproves since there just ain’t enough love to go around). The reason why my entries are drying up on Hontouni is instead of raising time and emotional capital to follow current series, I’m spending the well-deserved time on tried and tested old loves. In other words, my daily allotment of anime is reserved for my anime DVDs/artbooks

Confessions of a bishoujo-enthusiast

If you haven't realised, the tanuki is actually a chauvinist. Not in the sense of how women should be subservient to men (which I don't believe in and in fact despise the insecure, little men who demands that) but rather the chivalrous debt that men owe women (yes especially the beautiful ones) since they are the fairer sex and ought to be cherished with utmost loving care. That explains why imouto moe is so big in my 2D psyche. Few things call forth the knightly impulses in me more readily than a needy, moelicious imouto (or in RL - the frantic yelps of my lovely wife when faced with the abominable cockroach).

Stripey in Akihabara (2) ~ Not everyone in seifuku is a bishoujo

It troubled me a great deal that I was paying more attention than I should to the seifuku when in Japan. Whenever a seifuku came into my field of view, it warranted a second look. Reflecting on this abnormality (while kneeling on a durian - a consequence of sharing too much with my beloved wife in the day), it dawned on me that I had to find a scapegoat fast my RL bishoujo radar has been poisoned by my penchant for 2D beauty.

My contact with the Japanese seifuku has mostly been limited to anime and works of highly esteemed 2D illustrators. But years of exposure to the seifuku has conditioned me to believe that -

Not just any seifuku but the Japanese seifuku in the various forms. That explains the chain of events that occurs in between the synapses in my brain when in Japan.

See seifuku -> 'seifuku = bishoujo' flag triggered -> Verifying against wife-chan commandments database -> Permission granted -> 2nd look executed.

Of course not everyone in a seifuku is a bishoujo and it shakes me to the core to think that my 2D passion has overridden common sense so easily. Extrapolating from that thought, I wonder what's it like to be a Japanese high-schooler when Japanese eroge and porn feature the 'schoolgirl' so prominently. Never mind the occasional Singaporean otaku oddball who thinks seifuku = pretty girls, what's it like to be in a society that has 'seifuku' as one of the pornographic genre? Maybe that's why of my 2 Japanese cousins, the female adores Singapore while the male has sworn to never leave Japan. Personally, I think fables of short skirts in Tokyo are hugely exaggerated.

"Daddy daddy, why you like bishoujos ah?"

My wife caught me drowning my pool of drool, having passed out from Saki-nee loveliness while watching Hatsukoi Limited last week. After a brief resuscitation (via a mildly discomforting but highly effective technique involving durians), I was tsked-tsked about my guilty pleasure of appreciating adolescent female forms in seifuku. Not that she was a stranger to my 2D preferences but this suddenly seemed a relevant topic since we’ve been on the subject of children quite a bit lately.

“Do you think our teenage daughter would find it weird her dad likes bishoujos? Maybe she wouldn’t dare to invite her friends over?”

Not if I bring her up like Konata (Lucky Star), I thought. Of course the problem is imaginary at the moment and will not happen for another ten odd years even if we’re blessed with a daughter tomorrow. Plus, there is a insurmountable gap between 2D and 3D that it would be unlikely for me to place my daughter’s classmates in the same class as 2D bishoujos. However, this does highlight an issue that has been nagging at me for quite a while –

While I don’t do face-rubs on MEGAMI magazine covers, I do occasionally go into Chizu-mode (see her reaction on gourmet food in Mahoromatic) over 2D related merchandise. And trust me, at my age, it ain’t cool to be seen hyperventilating over a moelicious illustration even if it’s divine Tinkle artwork. Wait, do an age bracket exist where bishoujo fanboying is deemed cool?