It is not, as I originally misunderstood—or rather, as it was originally conceived—Yui’s love song to her younger sister. Sure, it’s about their relationship, but it means a lot more than that to the show. Would HTT’s final concert end by focusing on Yui and Ui? Hell no. The final song of the final concert is a song about K-ON! itself, about the members of the club and how they live their lives.

It’s not just Yui who’s helpless by herself: remember, she’s the one giving energy, according to Mio.

No, “U&I” is more than all this: it is friendship, plain and simple a kind of friendship that is actually fairly complicated.

If K-ON!! isn’t slice-of-life for you, I highly advise you do something about it as soon as possible.

Go support someone and be supported back.

Go make friend to whom you can sing “U&I.”

Except apparently there’s some lame blog called chaosderivative or something and it’s run by some third-rate snob who thinks it’s his place to call Amagami SS ‘crass.’ I did pick that up.

But moving on—someone somewhere said that the cafeteria scene warranted more attention than the kneepit-kissing scene. Yeah it did. Because while the kneepit-kissing scene is just a mashup for Clannad’s PE storage room (with the obligatory nod to Jason) and Kimikiss’s Mao-knee-kissing scene, the debacle in the school cafeteria is, as far as I’ve seen new territory.

From a conversation I shared with lelangir earlier,

6:59:51 PM LK: the fucking cafeteria scene shit man
7:00:06 PM LK: that’s legit one of the hottest things i’ve seen in a ¬hentai
7:00:39 PM LK: fuck that
7:00:47 PM LK: that was legit one of the hottest things i’ve seen.

When I watched the first episode of this show, I believe I meeled something like “I AM DISAPPOINT.” And here I am now, certain that Amagami SS will be my favorite this season if not this year. And why? Because I am projecting humanity upon the characters.

Maybe chaostangent is right when he says that the characters are [barely even] archetypes. Maybe all the win in this episode was unintentional. Maybe the cafeteria scene was just the Japanese being Japanese—therefore, weird. Maybe the cafeteria scene is a fluke.

But I don’t want it to be.

So I asked myself: if these were humans, real living breathing eating sleeping loving hating crying laughing humans, what would they be thinking during this (more than fairly) bold roleplay session in the school cafeteria?

Think about it.

For Morishima to play along, to acquiesce. She’s not a total idiot. She’s not just looking for an interesting meal.

For Tachibana to step up, to instigate. He’s not a total idiot. He’s not just trying to make lunchtime interesting.

Allow me to don my Captain Obvious face: there’s something more going on here!

It’s that something more that makes Haruka restlessly kick her legs as she lies on her couch thinking about lunch. It’s that something more that makes her shiver, it’s that something more that makes her giggle until she starts sobbing. This is leaps and bounds beyond the ‘deep insights into the female’s thoughts’ we see in other shows of a similar genre: usually some irrational brooding, or, less frequently, simpleminded excitement.

What I see is a feeling that can cause an upstanding and respected member of the fairly rigid Japanese high school culture to put her arms behind her back and play along with an extremely sexualized hostage spoon-feeding fantasy in the middle of her school’s cafeteria.

I might call it “thrill,” something I don’t think is realistically represented often if at all in anime.

And maybe I’m a tool of my own psyche.

But I am thrilled for Amagami SS.

I like flames.

These guys are the Queen’s bollocks. I love them. They write run-on sentences and don’t afraid of anything. They compare themselves to volcanoes—you know who else did that? Kamina. Eat your heart out, TTGL fans.

Anyway, the mission is clear: these pleasant individuals wish to stamp out the “incorrect” usage of the term “otaku” in the EL aniblogosphere by publicly shaming bad animebloggers who “incorrectly” dub themselves “otaku.” A noble goal. I love crusaders, and the conviction and vitriol these guys pack remind me of my days spent raging against Lucky Star. Go get’em, anonytaigas! Pounce on those shitty Danny Choo-wannabes, pin’em down, rape the daylights out of them, and then pull back, in full ape form, beat your chests and scream “EEEEEEEEELIMINATED!!”

According to a site search, this is my first post containing the word “otaku,” disregarding a link to a post of digitalboy’s (digi’s post had the term “otaku” in its name). As such, I doubt I will come under fire personally, though it would no doubt be fun to. And I don’t say this in the “omg I’m so cute, I call myself a masochist” way in which countless losers begged to be on the OEG list. I say this because this shit is fun, pure, unadulterated barrel of monkeys.

Three hints and suggestions for the OEG folks:

- don’t force the cordiality. Be as angry as you like, by all means.
- review every EL aniblog. You can’t say shit like “digitalboy isn’t notable enough.” Be thorough. Really get into the bones of this. Don’t fuck this up.
- work faster. Do you really need a whole week for four disses? C’mon, chop chop.

And yes, I am only writing this post because one of the OEG dudes nodded my way in their latest blogation. But who the fuck cares? That’s how the ‘sphere has always worked, from before the fall of (the original) Blogsuki. Circle jerks and all that. Yeehaw.

That’s right, bitches. I’m releasing this one day early.

It all began one dreary November evening when I read a comment of CCY’s (“make ccy make a visual novel, the visual novel”) and opened Ren’Py. I began scripting and I never looked back.

Okay, that’s a lie. I’ve looked back many times. But never mind that. Now, I present to you the first major point release in my visual novel project CCY-senpai wa 17sai, henceforth referred to as simply “CCY17″ for convenience. This new version, in addition to the traditional expansion of the story, is packing character art, an improved background for the classrooms, several more bad ends, and music!

This version also heralds the arrival of the official CCY17 website:

http://not.dotq.org/ccy

There, you can find a changelog for this new version, download links, and more!

Now, I am asking three things of you:

1. Give me feedback. Lots of it. Whatever you can think of. Tell me what worked for you, what made you laugh. What didn’t work for you. Was the “Nice Ideeea” too annoying? Was “Ano Ko wo Rape” too long? Etc.

2. Spread the word. Tweet this announcement, post about it on your blogs, tell your friends, whatever. The more people know about the project, the more people play the game, the more feedback I get, the more motivated I am to deliver the next version sooner.

3. Donate. If you have a couple bucks to throw around, please consider helping me pay Sixten for his art. The game will always be free and I am not trying to make a profit—just to sink a portion of my costs.

That’s it—go download the game now.

Knock yourselves out, boys and girls!

Credits and special thanks abound in game and on the website, but I’d like to make some hollers here: Sixten and Choux, for their masterful art; lelangir, for his audio contributions; everyone who goaded me into releasing a day early (you know who you are); and everyone who has donated thus far (again, you know who you are).

A final note: I am still looking for community contributions to the project. Stray ideas, sounds, musics, and so on are more than welcome.

=-= This Friday, July 31st =-=
I will release version 0.1 of my visual novel CCY-senpai wa 17sai, a satirical epic featuring our beloved eternally youthful senpai CCY. Last version released was version 0.04, in which I introduced a ton more story and some background images.

This version will bring many new things to the table.

1. The first smatterings of Sixten’s contributions to the game. CCY’s sprite will be present in every scene, and one of the backgrounds is Sixten’s.

2. Music. lelangir transcribed some anime music, so we have suitably annoying midi backgrounds.

3. More story. Lots more story. More branching, more options, more bad ends, more good ends.

4. Character art from Choux: five beautiful character sprites to liven up the game’s scenes.

And there’s more… touched up dialogue, improved ending notes, credits, an opening, and, well, more. I won’t enumerate it all here. But there will be a changelog when I release the game this Friday. It’ll be good.

This is a major leap forward from last release.

And remember: this won’t be a final version of the game. It’s still very much unfinished. There will be more releases as I make suitable progress in the future. Continued community feedback throughout the game’s development is crucial to a good final product, so please: play every release and comment in as much depth as possible!

Thank you, and look forward to Friday.

Damn. What a manly man.

I continue to be very pleased with Sixten’s work.

If any of you are as pleased as I am, feel free to help fund this artwork.

The full portraits can be found at Sixten’s site, with on-the-mark character descriptions he wrote himself. [ Baka-Raptor | Scott ]

So far I am quite pleased with Sixten’s work.

If any of you are as pleased as I am, feel free to help fund this artwork.

Click for Sixten’s blog post.

Sixten continues to please with the male character designs for CCY-senpai wa 17sai. I quite like how my character turned out–it’s a welcome change of pace from most of this stuff.

And oh man, I’m looking forward to Owen.

I would do a retrospective like lelangir did, but it wouldn’t be too interesting—every few points would be interspersed with “then lolikit gave up aniblogging in an emo rage fit, and closed down notdotq for five months.” Not that I ever stayed away for long, but…

… I do have a habit for, shall we call them, disappearances.

Instead of a retrospective, let’s do a highlights, and without dates, because I care more about the feelings than I do the historical accuracies:

- after one year of animeblogging, notdotq is born on wordpress.com, one of the handful of “first” anime blogs to use wordpress.com, along with jp meyer’s fairy tale of love and courage.

- Jason Miao promises to put notdotq on Blogsuki.

- Jason Miao removes newcomer RIUVA from Blogsuki, refuses to put notdotq on.

- Various bedraggled anibloggers realize that Jason is a cancer.

- Hung builds AnimeNaNo, invites Jason Miao.

- I start spreading my name by creating and maintaining the AnimeNaNo IRC channel. The community is thriving. Mr. Pippers is still an aniblogger.

- Jason still doesn’t join AnimeNaNo.

- So there are no killer lolis in Higurashi, mmmkay?

- Jason says that Japanese anibloggers are better than English-speaking anibloggers. Reason: graphs.

- Beginning of holy anti-Jason crusade.

- Oh by the way Haruhi sucks balls.

- I go to France, where I finish Fate/Stay-night and die a premature death due to suck. While in France, AnimeNaNo takes off like a flock of majestic birds, Japes becomes my friend, and Haruhi 12 blows me away.

- Hung, Japes, and Hinano–later, Japes’ girlfriend, now, his wife–start the AnimeNaNo podcast. Pips and I parody: podcast.dotq.org.

- wait, this is turning into a chronological recounting. SHIT.

Okay. Deep breath.

Here are my top ten moments in animeblogging.

#10. The founding of AnimeNaNo. Shit was so cash.

#9. Blogging Kyoushiro to Towa no Sora, Sola, and Aria the Origination with Shirukii.

#8. That time a newbie added me to her initial blogroll along with the big names–Jason, Jeff, Japes, Omo, etc.

#7. Baka-Raptor informed me that I was the king of trolls. (Or maybe it was ‘trolling king,’ either way.)

#6. Konoe and I enjoy many philosophical discourses over AIM, I publish these discourses (“on disagreement,” etc.), ghostlightning realizes that love needs explanation just the same as hate, various anibloggers begin defending their stances more rigorously, “lolikitean” invented.

#5. Kyousora.com is registered and built. My first exercise in hilarious satirical porn stories, perhaps the genesis of my visual novel project.

#4. Graphs. So fucking many of them. Everywhere. All the fucking time.

#3. When Jason stopped posting for three months. Hell yes. This was also when lots of people (ghostlightning, lolikappa, lelangir) were posting on notdotq. I was being extremely productive and the ‘sphere was looking happy.

#2. Miao on My Mind.

#1. So, CCY-senpai, I herd u were maiking a gaem?

I’m going to stop the nostalgia train here because I’m not being very coherent or classy. This was really just a poor excuse to post more.

Love and peace and rock my song,
-Dr. lolikitsune