Obviously someone has to fail the cut. TJ, Omo, SDB with his cane, Crusader, BigN, Kuro, Evirus, Aroduc, Zyl and his brother, John and Zepy the newsmen — all went under the knife.

Well, for one thing, Omo is definitely in the game (receiving lots of mutated-clit-penetration from Owen). For another, I’ll say this: now that character art is in the picture, the overhead for adding characters has increased dramatically. If I want to add a character, I need to charge Sixten—onto whom I have already piled work—with the character’s artwork.

That said, I can find some outside sources of help.

Otou-san, for instance, has volunteered to make me a ghostlightning.

And some characters don’t need amazing character art. TJ won’t be appearing in my game, but I intend to make use of RIUVA‘s mascot: Tripeman. I hereby humbly request permission of the RIUVA staff. If it’s denied, I will bear Tripeman’s children and bring lawsuits against Jason Miao for removing RIUVA from Blogsuki in 2006 (in all honesty, its largest popularity bid to date), as that obviously will have led directly to my bearing of Tripeman’s tripenile mangobat children. If not explicitly denied, it will be taken for granted.

Man, I’m on a roll with the funniehz.

I already began my campaign, as CCY-senpai noted, when I launched Miao on My Mind on October 24th. If ABA’s schedule is the same in 2009 as it was this year, that means that I’m giving myself approximately half a year to run.

That’s similar to the US Presidential Elections, where candidates campaigned for two years for a four-year office.

I want to be Obama to the McCain of whoever else thinks they’re a good Satire Aniblog.

To that end, I’m going to have to ask you, my readers, to support me. I know that one of the things that propelled me to victory in May was my tsundere campaign of “vote for me and I’ll fucking hate you.” ( Exhibit A | Exhibit B | Exhibit C ) This, much like campaigning quickly, is a trick I won’t repeat. Please. I fucking love all of you, and everyone who votes for me gets one round of fellatio. If you nominate me in the first round, I’ll let you put it inside. If you nominate me and blog about it, you can do it raw, and if your nomination secures me someone else’s nomination, I won’t make you pull out.

Seriously, guys. I’m spreading my legs for you.

Preemptively.

The ABABABABAB 2009 site isn’t even close to up yet. For all I know, there may be a rule specially disqualifying me. But. Barring all such horrendous hypotheticals, I want to win. I will do anything for it.

Even if that means wearing nekomimi and a maid dress, or erasing my sidebar, or being professional, or loving sports, or liking bad things, or pretending to be intelligent.

I will do it.

And how appropriate is that? By dropping, I am referring to the ceasing of following a show that is airing. Like, the “Dropped” list on MyAnimeList. Funnily enough, this first set of shows I’m dropping only has an overlap of one show with the list of shows I said I would flame to hell and drop.

Here’s the list:

4. Casshern Sins – even Megaman would have been better. I know, I know—Owen called it fiber of the anime diet—but still, it’s kind of…lame? CJ says that she’s sick of its pretentiousness, but Episode 4 (that is, the last episode that I dropped) didn’t give off any pretentiousness. It just sucked. Sophita was a nutcase and Casshern’s jug of emo has gone sour. There’s no fun in Casshern Sins and there’s no deeper meaning that I can discern, either. And this isn’t me being a dick. This is me scratching my head.

They throw a lot of philosophical shit at us, but it’s totally boring. And the center of the whole thing—Casshern—is so confused and empty that he isn’t even a subject worth studying. All we really get are the feelings of others—mostly robots, so lol@feelings—regarding death. Maaaaaaybe there’s something deep in contemplating death, but whatever it is it’s not interesting to me.

Also, lol @ John Lichman:

Casshern Sins: Rewatching Ep 1. I think this is the stand-out for Fall 08. So far, this and Detroit Metal City OVAs are the year’s best.

No, dipfag, no—even if Casshern were as good as DMC, Aria the Origination owns this year. But I guess it’s possible that Mr. Lichman just doesn’t understand Aria because he’s a Republican. I’m noticing a trend—they tend not to understand things.

3. Kemeko DX is being dropped for obvious reasons. Or at least, they should be obvious. If they’re not, you’re TheBigN and your taste buds have been ravaged by one bad show too many.

2. Kurogane no Linebarrels is absolute trash, as DiGiKerot so carefully explains to us with his masterful weekly comics. I expected this show to be trash; I hoped I’d be able to sit through it. Just as planned, it was trash. Thankfully, I’m not broken enough to keep watching it.

1. Kuroshitsuji – I think that these two tweets explain my feelings for this show with incredibly concision:

Kuroshitsuji doesn’t accomplish a whole lot. It’s not going anywhere, and if I’m going to be watching slice-of-life I’d rather be observing the antics of good people than those of rich evil people. I don’t sense Kuroshitsuji heading for a “Ciel is evil and greedy so good people take his shit and give it to the needy” end, so I’m dropping it. I’ll admit that the show is nice eye-candy for shotacons but that’s not really my thing. Really.

Why the sudden dropping of shows? I have a disgustingly heavy load this season. Before this dropping, I was watching 28 currently airing shows. That’s like, the same kind of load I was taking on back two years ago when I was a depressed brat. Guess what? I’ve been mildly down for a couple months. Recently, I’ve been getting back into a groove with my fiction writing and some art, and, as such, have begun dispelling some of my worries and doubts. Along with this improvement, I’m finding less time for shit.

Less time for shit means less time for shit anime, and less time for shit anime means it’s time to drop the above-mentioned shows.

It also means it’s time to drop ChäoS;HEAd. But I won’t yet. I’ll give it another episode to win me over. I really shouldn’t—it’s like a mixture of NHK ni Youkoso and Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni and, much as how baby+baby=baby, shit+shit=shit—but I will. I’m doing it for CCY-senpai, and for my unfounded faith in all things otaku.

Anyway. There’ll be another wave, I’m sure. I’m trying to hang in there for a number of shows—Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka, for one, and Yozakura Quartet, for another, but I’m sure they’ll come swooping down like so many disgusting brown-white smears.

October 24th, 2008

BERKELEY, CA—Miao on My Mind, an anime blogging and anime blog blogging site, has been launched to the public today by enthusiastic admin and gold-winning satirist lolikitsune. Already, it has been the target of much fanfare and many rotten oranges tweets. It is both a bitter day for the aniblogosphere and a sweet day for the aniblogosphere; in essence, it is a bittersweet day for the aniblogosphere.

It is a bitter day, because the birth of Miao on My Mind signals the death of notdotq, an aniblog and aniblog blog previously run at the same URL by the same admin. Many long-time readers will be shocked to see their favorite site mysteriously missing when they load their only bookmark.

“I’m not worried ’bout dat,” said lolikitsune, who prefers to go by the more intimate monicker of lolikit, when he was questioned about the issue of reader loyalty, expectations, and potential betrayal. “If a long-time reader looks around with the critical eye I have trained my readers to have, he or she will notice that all the old content is still intact, and that all new content follows in the footsteps of the old.”

When we asked him about the aforementioned “training,” he likened it to a high school education.

“I keep throwing nonsense and utter bullshit at them, you see,” he patiently explained. “Eventually they learn how to cut away that bullshit and get to the heart of things.”

He went on to add, “of course, there isn’t always a heart. Aniblogging is heartless business. But that’s the point, you know? There’s no real substance, anywhere. A true notdotq reader won’t be disappointed by the new shell—the same old lack of meaning is still pervasive.”

Miao on My Mind promises to be “the same old shit” in a “refined package.” The fifteen-day redesign shows lolikit’s hard work in the field of CSS, especially.

“[lolikitsune] learned how to create classes the names of which mean nothing,” said a noted expert from the World Wide Web Consortium. “This is no mean accomplishment. We at the W3C are all very impressed with how far he’s come since he learned HTML 4 in the ninth grade.”

One contact in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Communications Department revealed that the W3C was in fact so impressed with lolikit’s abominable coding habits that plans to file three different lawsuits were currently occupying two entire 1.5TB hard drives. When asked for further details, our contact—who asked to remain anonymous—said that the rest was “classified information.” She also sent us an animated .gif file of a red-haired anime character winking.

But the W3C aren’t the only ones taking notice of—or offense at—lolikit’s latest shenanigans.

“It’s atrocious,” stated Impz of THAT Animeblog [@] and the Anime Blog Awards [@] Committee. “Simply atrocious.”

Owen S. of Cruel Angel Theses [@] concurred with Impz, adding that “lolikitsune is an unthinking douche, and should be removed from the internet with post haste.”

Some, like Shirukii of Anime Blog ga Arimasu [@], merely shrugged when we asked them about the news. “lolikit’s an old friend,” Shirukii said when we pestered him. “I can forgive him for liking flat chests more than <ul> tags.”

Others are on the other side of the love/hate spectrum.

“I think the jasonisms are totally out of hand,” said CCY of Mega Megane Moe [@], in reference to the fact that lolikit’s XHTML stopped being very semantic with the redesign. “But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, you know? lolikitsune has always been an out-of-hand kind of guy. And he’s doing something 100% original, bringing a new style of anime blog to the table.”

100% original, it might be noted, so long as you count “recycling the memes of others” as original. To lolikit’s credit, most anime bloggers recycle crowd memes (see: 4chan) or their own memes, and the reuse of other anime bloggers’ memes is a rare practice. Devoting a site to this is an even rarer practice, and indeed lolikit’s efforts might be the first in the field.

The new genre of website that Miao on My Mind purports to be—”aniblog, aniblog blog, and aniblogger shrine”—may sit stagnant for months or even years before lolikit sees new neighbors joining him, rushed studies show. Only 1 in 17 anime bloggers even recognize the term “aniblog” as official jargon in the aniblogosphere, and only about 1 in 25 read other anime blogs. With those numbers, it is extremely unlikely that anyone will be joining Miao on My Mind anytime soon.

“I did quick studies of my own,” admitted lolikit when we asked him about this. “Ran some quick simulations through Technorati, converted the results into some pleasing graphs, and quickly discovered that the most likely candidate to start up another site like Miao on My Mind in the next two years is yours truly. Now THAT is Web 2.0!”

We appreciated lolikit’s jovial tone, but we noted the despair in his eyes. He’s a true pioneer.

When asked about the future of Miao on My Mind, lolikit lightened up significantly.

“Oh, it’s going to be awesome!” he declared. “The site looks different, but behind the scenes, nothing’s really changing. Working on notdotq was almost always fun, so Miao on My Mind will be a barrel of monkeys as well, I’m sure.”

We asked him to be more specific about his plans.

“Well, at some point I’m going to have to acknowledge those Oi, Hayaku! guys. Riex has been clutching onto my epenis for dear life. He’s even stalking me on Facebook. I feel like the guy from LME in Skip Beat—if I don’t satisfy this fellow, he’ll follow me to the grave. That aside… I guess I’m going to be blogging some anime this season, Mouryou no Hako, and whatever else catches my fancy. As for aniblog blogging, I’m long overdue for some good Versus posts. Expect to see the following before the year is out: Baka-Raptor.com VS. LovelyKitsune.com, Natsuneko VS. TheBigN, and the big one that everyone’s been waiting for, anime|otaku VS. Cruel Angel Theses.”

In short, lolikit’s spirits are wavering back and forth like Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni‘s per-episode quality, and his ambitions are soaring like the proverbial (and actual) paper airplanes of noted symbolism anime ef. It will be interesting to see what comes of this transformation, and where Miao on My Mind goes from here.

In the meantime, we can satisfy our hunger for lolikit’s obscenities by examining the various new pages of information that he has set up around the site, including, but not limited to, a fresh page about the admin in question himself, a new page of frequently asked questions, and a page about blogging awards.

Lastly, lolikit expressed his desire to thank selected members of the aniblogosphere. We have published his message along with our article, and you can read it just below.

FUCK JASON MIAO!

Thank you, lolikit.

lolikitsune, also known as Flak, is a first-year student at the University of California, Berkeley, where he will begin exploring the fields of Cognitive Science, Rhetoric, and Legal Studies in January. He spends half his time working in the Communications Department at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and in his free time he enjoys writing stories—such as Miao on My Mind’s featured Night Switch—and maintaining websites, both activities he’s pursued for several years now. You can learn more about him at his main site, Dreams of the Quill.

The former notdotq was part of the second generation of anime blogs, rearing its little head around the same time as other now-notable anime blogs, including the award-winning Minaide! Hazukashii… and the award-winning RIUVA (recipients of Bronze and Silver in the 2008 Anime Blog Award’s Satire section, respectively). notdotq has come and gone four times in the last three years, appearing and disappearing with the seasons and lolikitsune’s mood swings.

So it looks like ef ~a tale of melodies~ is going to be the first in a long awaited new series of posts here on Miao on My Mind: A Certain Whoredom Index. Basically, what this means is that ef ~a tale of melodies~ is deep. Like a whore.

Before I go on, I want to make something clear: admittance to the Index is not necessarily bad. “Whore” is usually used as a derogative, but on this site it only means “thing that has some semblance of depth.” You know. Like a standard Kyoto Animation show. Or like Author’s incisive postings. Or like CJ. I could give more examples, but I’d rather add to the Index with further posts. That said, let’s examine our current specimen!

I called it before anyone else! Eat my dust, bitches!

So I was watching episode 3 of ef ~a tale of melodies~, and the OP came up, and I was like “lol” because the OP makes me lol. But then I stopped myself—”lolikit! Get it together! This show is srs fkn bsns!!” And I forced myself to take a second look at what I was watching. One opening of VLC, a shitload of play/pause syncing, and half a minute later, I was looking at the OP sequences of episodes 2 and 3 side by side. As I’d remembered, the OP had once been far more monochrome. It’s got colors now! Lots of them! They clash and look bad!

Shinbo must be up to something!

Furthermore, the girls have faces now. I remember when, in ef ~a tale of memories~, the OP visuals were changed so that the girls were like, no longer chained, or something (I don’t recall all the details, geez). But that was for the last episode, and this is episode three. If the changes were less subtle, I’d guess that the animators finally got comfortable with their budget, but really, it’s just a matter of colorizing something.

I guess another difference is in the amount of text displayed in the background at any given point.

Speaking of text… the text in the last ef’s OP was the text of Chihiro’s novel. What could this OP’s text be? The “policies” of Himura? It’ll be interesting to see where this ef goes, since Kuze seems to be on a 24 hour clock at this point and Himura’s backstory is not cool at all. He’s much better sitting on a church altar playing Isako than he is being angsty about his dead sister. Well. He is better. I’m not sure the plot is. But it’s all questionable either way.

And we’re left wondering, did the lily exploding and fading like a firework inside the dark recesses of Kuze’s mind at 00:26 somehow symbolize his chance at raw sex with Mizuki disappearing as his death draws nearer?

Fear not, Kuze! You can make like Narcissu and disappear into the waves, and then you’ll have no regrets because you didn’t die at home or on 7F.

Lily’s less important than that, right?

Eventually, Mizuki will get over you and begin screwing her love interest’s twin sister. After a couple weeks, Renji will find out and bow out of his relationship with Chihiro like the true wimp he is. Maybe, in desperation, he’ll settle on his mother (whom, incidentally, people seem to be forgetting is just as delicious as Furukawa Sanae). But no matter what happens there, everyone’s happy—including Himura, ’cause he got to send you off with some poorly-pronounced German.

Did I do a good job of presenting an “omg stylistic thingy omg” element, pretending to begin analyzing it, and then launching into rabid fanboyism? A good impression, right? You guys are impressed, right? I could take over for Owen anytime, right?

lol lights don’t work that way and neither do shadows

I have to confess to something shameful—Shirukii’s no-nonsense straighter-than-a-Euclidian-line anime blog has, in fact, affected my sense of humor. I’ll always remember a playful response by one of his readers to a comment by “Raigomaru“—”chickens don’t work that way, and neither does death.”

Alright, that’s all from me for now.

Hopefully that’s all the ef blogging I do for the rest of this season. We really don’t need more pseudo-intellectual elitist pricks around here, right?

Day 8

Day 8 was Friday, the last day of my internship at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. We were crammed into an auditorium all day, watching each other give boring talks about our work. I was hella nervous for the first hour or so (I’m not so comfortable with public speaking) and then I had my turn and then I was just uncomfortable. I’m too large for the auditorium seats; it’s like being in airplane where there’s no leg room, etc. I found myself unhappy with the situation. I couldn’t find anything wonderful to think about it. After work was over, I got my paycheck (woot, tons of money) and then cleaned out my cubicle (sniff).

Went home, changed, finished packing, caught a train to the San Francisco airport. It was time to make my first trip on my own—my trip to Otakon 2008.

My airport experience was fairly wonderful, surprisingly. See: I have to travel with artificial blood protein due to my hemophilia, and that stuff can’t go through the scanners. <abbr title=”fucking bastards”>TSA</abbr> is great at molesting/raping people with special needs in security. I have some beef with them. BUT this time stuff was fairly painless. In fact, my passport (which I was using as my ID) proved more of a problem; the photo’s from about nine years ago and doesn’t look like me at all.

I sit around a bit, loaded down with Clif Bars (my mom thought I might starve/my plans with Pip might fall through due to him being an internet weirdo and she gave me a hefty supply of rations *rollseyes*)
, waiting for my plane. It comes, I get on it, and off I head for Charlotte.

On the plane, I offer Starbursts to my seat neighbors. They decline to partake. Phooey.

Day 9

We land in Charlotte without trouble—a little early, in fact—and I wait around for two hours for my connection to Baltimore. I talk to some nice folks in the gate who were even more sleep-deprived than I. I can’t sleep on planes due to extreme discomfort; these people had had a flight canceled and had been in the airport waiting for far longer than I’d been in my plane.

Eventually we leave Charlotte. I offer a Starburst to my neighbor and he graciously accepts, twice!

Get into Baltimore, meet Pip, and whoa, whoa, suddenly it’s real, it’s happening—the crazy idea of flying to Baltimore for one weekend just for Otakon, I’m there, I’m talking to Pip!

Some un-wonderful things come to light: Erica Friedman has run a yuri panel, and at it, she dubbed Aria yuri. Otakon has too many people and too many lines. Omo failed to get an aniblogging panel through. Os is a Hirano Aya fanboy that will always irk me. Etc.

A lot of the weekend was a blur. I had so much fun just being around the people I met—
Pip, Os, Pip’s sister, Os’s friends, Baka-Raptor, TheBigN, Moy, Omo, Wildarmsheero, Link, maybe more I’m missing here…

My behavior most of the con was fairly not-Mizunashi. But I don’t think that made it un-wonderful. I think that it would have been extremely lame if I had refused to have fun and let go around my friends, if I hadn’t made jokes about trashing Friedman’s booth, if I hadn’t recorded a podcast with Pip, if I hadn’t spouted anti-Hirano shit constantly. I mean, this is me. This is who the people I was with knew. We all had a great time and I don’t think I made anyone feel uncomfortable.

Actually, I might have upset Baka-Raptor by being too wonderful once or twice.

But yeah. It was wonderful.

Other anime bloggers have done a better job covering what actually happened at the con better than I could. Yeah.

Since the con is covered and this is an anime blog blog, allow me to instead say some things about some of the guys I met:

Never get into Os’s car. He is the Yukari-sensei to my Chiyo-chan.
Pip doesn’t actually want to put his penis in my butt.
Baka-Raptor was really quiet the first few hours. Then he started singing anime songs in response to questions and comments. That was badass. Maybe he was just shy ;)
Os is really nice and gregarious. It’s kind of scary.
Baka-Raptor tells the saddest stories; he reduced me to tears three times in two days.

At about eleven, Pip and Os and I returned to our hotel room, where we dined on Clif Bars and recorded a podcast. Pip showed his underaged sister porn. We lol’d. Eventually I fell asleep in Os’s arms.

Day 10

Woke up Sunday sad because Pip was leaving. It was a short dream, but it was fun. We bid our farewells and then Os and I hit up AMVs. After some time of that, we ran into Baka-Raptor again and took to the dealer’s room. Baka-Raptor and I returned to the AMV room after a while where we laughed and discussed ideas for Maid Guy and ef AMVs. Mmm.

After failing to get our hands on swords, Baka-Raptor and I reconvened with Os and we got lunch. I cried into my tuna sandwich.

Baka-Raptor, I am never eating a meal with you again!

At three, the entire thing was over. Os drove me to BWI and I waited around for hours for my fight. Caught two planes back—getting lost in the Las Vegas airport due to gate changes—and then spent the night at my bro’s place in San Bruno. Again, I offered Starbursts to my neighbors and again one declined while one accepted. Things were pretty suteki, I guess.

I don’t know.

There’s so much to talk about. It was really sad saying good-bye to Pip and Os. I wish I could have spent more time with them. I guess there’s always next year, though. I’m definitely burning a the time and money again. It was so worth it.

I didn’t take many photos. In fact, I only have one—of Os, and Pip, and Pip’s sister, and Os’s friend, at a table at a grill where we ate burgers and cheesecake. I’m feeling a little selfish so I wanna keep that pic to myself for now.

From the beginning, Mizunashi Mode was never “let’s pretend we’re little girls on Mars.” The point wasn’t to be Mizunashi Akari, but to examine human interaction. I discovered that there are still people out there who like graciousness and kindness and reciprocate wonderful gestures. Smiling evokes smiles. Peace and calm can be obtained. There are things out there that ruin wonderful mode, like Hirano Aya and my hatred for her, and you know, all the strife and shit in our world, but the idea of being kind for its own sake and making others happy is a good one.

I’m ending my time with Mizunashi Mode prematurely because I’ve found what I wanted to find. I’m still going to abide by some of the rules of the experiment because they’re good rules for living. Be wonderful.

I’m not going to write any more reports, though, unless something groundbreaking occurs—and if such a thing should happen, I wouldn’t need an “experiment” premise in which to discuss it in this blog. So yeah. No more updates, but I’ll still be examining the world while attempting to be kind to others.

It’s been great and it will continue to be great as I hone my suteki powers.

Expect a return to trolling and meta-anibloggery some time this weekend.