we're finally notdotq anymore

but it turned out to be a broken-off honey comb, you know. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Hatsukoi: favorite of this season. This is still spring right? I forget. I like the dynamics, especially Kusuda/Enomoto. Yamamoto is hawt, too.

Saki: I semi-marathoned Akagi whilst Saki aired, and I instantly lost interest in Saki after that.

Eden: *yawn* (not enough motivation to watch ep3)

K-ON: soooooo disappointing. A music anime could have potential…Beck needs rewatching…but the malignent cancer was getting to me. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of was really enjoyable, but when there’s about 3 seconds of music in an episode it’s kind of like wtf.

ristorante paradiso: wwwwww reverse pedophilia.

haruhi s2: first episode was nice. want moar.

[re; 117]Situation: someone’s life is in danger, but saving this one person puts into jeopardy the lives of many, many more. What do you do?

Would a moral person assign priority to the short term and save this one person? The reasoning was that Koiji and Ikumi couldn’t sit around and watch someone die. Yuki, on the other hand, views all lives equally regardless of context and stops the two from jeopardizing the lives of man others.

Perhaps Koiji and Ikumi were deluding themselves from the more crucial fact that they were hypocrites? – if Yuki had asked them “what would you say if you were that one person in danger?” would they respond “I’d be selfless and say ‘leave me behind for the sake of many others’”? If so, they would be contradicting themselves. If not, they would appear selfish, but that too would contradict their position of “selflessness” because they’re putting their lives at stake for the sake of one person.

[If 'what if' statements are not legit in philosophy then oops.]

But I think we can use ‘what if’ statements because Koiji and Ikumi were thinking not of the person in danger but of themselves, of their egos. Perhaps, the central theme here and thing which undermines the position of the two is the fact that Koiji and Ikumi wanted to save not so much the concrete existence of the person as their own abstract selves. This is supported because, as it were, this “concrete existence” isn’t even concrete to Koiji and Ikumi – they never see this person, only their representation on a digital device. Maybe.

Thus: does knowledge alone of a real thing make it concrete? If I know it’s there but do not, with my senses, perceive that it is there, does that still make it as concrete as if I were really perceiving it with my senses? If, then, suddenly I can perceive this real thing with my senses – I can see it, touch it, hear it – does that change the nature of the thing or, perhaps moreso, my own perception of that thing not in simple terms of the magnitude of my emotions directed towards the thing, but in terms of why these emotions arise within myself and to what they are really directed?

[hermeneutic sidepoint: essentially, considering the anime, trying to draw a conclusion is futile because we can never know the true intentions of Koiji and Ikumi (unless they admit to us the nature of their egos).]

Pragmatic conclusion: a life is a life, we should ignore our abstract selves and save as many lives as possible, thus, the person dies.

Realist conclusion: the effect of the symbolic representation of this real person has on us is worthless because a concrete person exists beyond our idea of it. Do we save it? – ask the deontologists!

Idealist conclusion: the effect of the symbolic representation of this real person has on us enormous effect. Do we save it? – ask the pragmatists!

Deontological conclusion: focus on the immediate effects of the act – you are directly neglecting to save a life, thus not saving this life is morally wrong. Save it!

ObersteinConsequentialist conclusion: yes indeed a life is a life, that is why we should save as many as possible. The ends justify the means.

[note: it may seem like I'm misinterpreting idealism because, nevertheless, this person is still real and exists outside our immediate ideas of it, though it is only known through the proxy of an abstract representation. I do not know of any ethical philosophy which deals with semiotics...though I've never really read much of any of the philosophies I've cited except a bit of The Prince.]

Dear Gargron et. al,

You recently wrote a short post called “Will we get better comments?” to which I responded in a troll-ish manner here. With Impz penning his thoughts on team blogging referencing you, I would like to give my opinion on your blog in general.

You should get rid of the registration thing. You situate your blog in the public sphere, but really, when you effectively disable comments, you’re positioning it in a private sphere meant for IRL friends. Anitations and Ani-Nouto are different because they exist in a different paradigm of the sphere – the metaverse. Essentially, and not to offend, your blog seems like a contradiction – why exist on twitter when you have no interaction with those bloggers? I know it’s not hard to register (I just did), but people are so lazy they won’t even click on an RSS feed to subscribe to a blog. Have faith in people but realize they are lazy and unappreciative.

Best,
lelangir

p.s: your forums are down I think…

←[99] SHAFT + School Rumble + Strawberry Panic. That’s the impression I got.

One half of the lead character binary is Kanako: lesbian, tall, tomboy, deretsun for Maria; only becoming insecure (tsun) once her homosexuality is put into question. Her character design and personality remind me of a cross between Yakumo and Tenma. Her external side is amiable, unconfident, pretty darn moe; her internal side is yuri. She contains both the lady-like grace of Yakumo and the horribly klutzy comical antics of Tenma. Her internal/external tendencies can reflect both Maria’s “split” personality and that pleasant Tenma/Yakumo proportion. Maria in fact breaks the fourth wall and calls her out for her lack of verbosity.

The other half of the duo is Maria, the trap. Without drawing needless parallels to Eri Sawachika, it seems established already that Maria is the seme and Kanako the uke. Maria’s façade is humorous enough now that the entire universe has been spoiled of the secret, though it’s the masculinity that is paradoxically accentuated by the feminine appearance, making him much more conniving and serpentine. In some ways he reminds me of Light – not overbearingly GAR but with enough boyishness to possess “best” (or worst?) of both gender.

What’s significant is that the viewer experiences the anime through Kanako – we see her internal monologues. By positioning the viewer “outside” of Maria, [s]he is effectively transformed into the incrementalist, the character that is revealed bit by bit. Reaction porn for some hopeful action porn? I think what this means in the long run is, unless SHAFT starts dealing out paradigm shifts and situating the viewer within Maria’s soliloquies, it will be expected of the viewer to find humor (1) in that incremental revealing of Maria’s secrets and (2) Kanako’s predictable reactions – all the super deformation is reserved for her. The anime, replete with Kanako-colored lenses, establishes a sort of Unlimited Poetic Justice Works: since all of Kanako’s yuri actions are laced with guilt, it’s only natural that we expect Maria to backlash with hypocritical masochism (HUH?).

Anyway, this show is really hilarious! Its comedy does not downplay at all the yuri, and even if you DO NOT WANT trap, you’re basically forced to temporarily forget about it because we’re observing Maria via Kanako. Kanako the flaming lesbian.

Final verdict: if you liked the characterizations in School Rumble, the yuri/catholic(?) themes in Strawberry Panic, and SHAFT’s crazyness, you will definitely enjoy Mariaholic. [note: I did not catch a lot of marimite in here - marimite isn't really even indirectly satired.]

BTW, 100^th post, dedicated to lolikitsune, mai dear waifu.