[Zyl] Shizuka Itou at STGCC 2011

As per normal, no photo-taking/video recording were allowed the moment she came on stage
It's been more than a month since I went to STGCC for the express purpose of seeing/hearing Shizuka Itou live and now I finally have some time to do a quick write up of the experience. First, I owe many thanks to SaiNano for getting me into the VIP area; we were literally just within single digit metres of the main stage.
Going for live events can be risky for one's fandom. When you normally experience the product of a performer, it's usually been gone over, prior to consumer release, by production staff with all their technical wizardry to make a product that could be quite different from what a live performance or appearance can deliver. I'm glad to say that I've come away from this encounter as an even bigger fan of Shizu-sama.
The first surprise was how pretty she was in real life. Her publicity shot for this event and even the cover photo of her mini-album, Devotion, seems to over-emphasize the oblong longness of her face. Maybe it was her bright smile. Or maybe it was her blue yukata with yellow flower prints. Or maybe her solid voice performances. In any case she came across, right from the moment she walked on stage, as a performer with quite a lot of charisma and stage presence.
A Certain Shizuka Itou Index (Generating the Data Set)
While listening to her latest release Devotion (enjoyed it, will buy), I have finally gotten down to preparing the data set for one of those power pentagon/spider/net graphs (PDF).
Selection of sample set was based on those character names highlighted in bold at her ANN profile. I'm not thrilled that it excludes Momiji Miyabe but, on balance, it looks like a good representative sample of roles where she is a recurring character with decent screentime.
Also more than a little ashamed at how many series I have not seen. Which is where the crowd-sourcing part comes in. I've created a Google Document (set to: share and edit without sign-in) and will grateful if you could share your knowledge.
Coding is binary (0 for no, 1 for yes), taxonomy descrption is as follows:
- Oneesama - is she an elder sister to another character or addressed honorifically as such?
- Yuri - is she in a yuri relationship, has yuri feelings for another girl, another girl has yuri feelings for her?
- Oppai - has cup size above A?
- Pink hair - self-explanatory (not red though)
- Attack - offensive capabilities (including weapons, mecha, special abilities etc.)
- Tsundere - self-explanatory
- Hitomi Nabatame - also acted in a bold name capacity in the same series?
Any help, inputs, advice etc. would be greatly appreciated!
Nodame Cantabile Finale

By the power of old age and treachery, I will defeat the young ones!!
I was pretty disappointed with the manga's ending and so, despite retroblogging the first season and Paris-hen, held off on episode blogging for Finale. I did watch it though to see if the anime would change my mind about the manga's conclusion. It hasn't.
Hayate no Gotoku!! 22-25 and Review

Ep 22: Hina serves the plot hook and opening for Nagi's cafe arubaito
djwhack03 wittily used Hina's line from Ep 25 to ask if the second season of Hayate no Gotoku was "good". Frankly there's a lot of incommensurability between the worldviews of the many different viewers so a more useful framing might have been: "Did you enjoy it?" Nonetheless, in the course of answering the first question, many bloggers answered the second with great passion and eloquence.





![Yes, bwana, yes, bwana. [/sarcastic] Yes, bwana, yes, bwana. [/sarcastic]](http://hontouni.com/zan/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/nodapari1009.jpg)











