Ahoy there buckeroos, I apologise for not blogging in a while since I've been strapped for time and I couldn't be arsed.  Easter's made me lazy, need to get back to Aber and back to the gym fast!  While we're on the subject of Aberystwyth, I'll be heading back on Thursday morning some time.  Can't wait for the warm weather; I've always been a t-shirt and shorts man myself and having long hair, anything with a high collar like jackets feels kinda awkward.

OK, first things first.  I have been a busy beaver and have finished a number of anime series recently (current count is 210 different shows and rising) since it is that time of the year again.  The new anime season starts this week so the meatier and more impressive autumn shows will be ending.  Of these, Mai-HiME was the first to conclude itself.  I love Mai-HiME to bits; pretty girls, fanservice, mecha, big budget fights, drama and angst, death and destruction, yada yada yada.  The last 8 or so episodes have been god damn amazing, killing off major character after major character to get the message home to the viewers.  Sadly, the last episode laid a partial world reset on us all so most of what had been built up before it was rendered null and void to a certain degree.  Most infuriating and this is what prevented me from giving the series the almighty 10/10 score; still one of the best shows of recent times which'll make you laugh, cry, and scream at the TV, though not necessarily all at once.

AIR also finished with a cheesey-ish ending.  Everything got resolved nicely, though I really wish they didn't use a vision of Haruko flying with Sora in the sky...  I really need to get my hands on the theatrical movie soon.

Speaking of which, the Naruto movie has been announced as the first ever anime release on Sony's UMD format.  You can bet I'll be getting it, despite it not having subtitles.  I've yet to test out the UMD movie playback on my PSP and since that particular feature is region locked, I'm somewhat limited in my options for feature presentations.

I feel I must also mention the sleeper hit, Cosmopolitan Prayers, or CosPrayers for short.  The series consists of 8 x 12 minute episodes following a group of sentai-esque girls who transform into religious roles such as nuns, miko priests etc, who basically beat the crap out of monsters and save the world.  And there's a giant robot too.  Now, whilst I watched and enjoyed this series, I couldn't help but feel it didn't really make much sense at all narrative wise and there was definitely something missing here and there.  Doing a bit of research, I discovered that CosPrayers should actually be followed up by it's sister-series, Smash Hit, to gain a better understanding of the situation.  Smash Hit is also an 8 x 12 minute type of series, and it actually follows the producer of CosPrayers from beginning to end.  Almost everything is explained and I thought it was a fairly clever trick to pull; kinda like the whole Gekigangar 3 - Nadesico or Kujibiki Unbalance - Genshiken idea, but taken a stage further.

BECK is now over and all the manga fans are bitching left, right, and centre,  about how the ending skipped through ten or so chapters to reach a suitable place for an ending.  Whilst I am intrigued to read the manga, I'm glad I haven't yet since I did enjoy the ending to the series very much so.  They all managed to fulfill their dream and I don't think they'd have been satisfied doing anything else except playing in BECK.  It also seems Taira was actually playing with The Pillows at that gig of his according to the end credits!

And now to the daddy of 'em all, Yakitate Japan!  SnoopyCool have been gracious enough to release the next few chapters in the long running manga and this fanboy's sure excited at what's to come.  Having just finished the Monaco Cup (I won't say whether they won or not), the gang have all returned to Japan to face a new obstacle.  St Pierre have challenged Pantasia to, you've guessed it, another bread tournament!  The stakes are high like never before; if St Pierre lose, they'll quietly withdraw from the bread world for good.  If Pantasia lose, St Pierre will own Pantasia's ass for good.  The tounament itself is a whirlwind tour of Japan, taking place in 25 small towns and cities.  The task is to bake a winning bread utilising what famous ingredients each location has to offer.  Click here to see what you're missing out on by not reading the manga (because you should be).

Now on to my other love of my life, games!  As mentioned previously, I was incredibly excited to receive wipEout purE for my Sony PSP but as time went on, I grew less and less impressed with the game overall.  Lacking analogue buttons, this makes piloting a futuristic hovercraft running at high speeds incredibly difficult.  I'm not crap at racing games by any means, but I simply couldn't run a clean lap without scraping against a wall of some sort.  The only redeeming feature of the game I could find was Zone, which required the player run through the same course repeatedly, with each lap increasing in speed with no energy replenishers or use of brakes.  I have since sold the game and am currently trying to hunt down a copy of Bleach - Heat the Soul in the UK.

Just this evening, I acquired Doom 3 for the Xbox through shady means.  The game looks stunning, definitely similar to the PC version on the lower settings.  Controls are pretty good, similar to Halo and Halo 2 in that it has been fine tuned for a joypad from a mouse and keyboard setup.  The load times aren't terrible and if I rip the game to the hard disk, they're much shorter as to be expected.

I've been playing Initial D - Special Stage again after an extended absence from the game.  I decided to try out some cars which I normally wouldn't touch, namely 4x4s.  I've found a very nice car which suits my driving style perfectly in the form of the Celica.  Despite being a 4x4, it provides a good amount of oversteer so is ideal for courses such as Irokahaza.  It also performs brilliantly on Akagi, allowing me to shatter my previous record by a few seconds; Akina's record still belongs to my 86, but I'm creeping up on that ever so slowly.

I went to Memorabilia again last weekend with Daniel.  For the first time ever, I didn't actually buy anything though I was so tempted by the replica Resident Evil/Biohazard STARS pistols on offer.  They were only gas powered air-soft guns but came in at £125 a pop.  A number of similar guns on offer were only £80 or so, an extra £45 for the Resi novelty was a bit much.  Saw David Carradine there who looked like a bitter, drunken, old man.  He didn't look pleased at all to be there and the queue to see him looked pretty damn immense.

Today was my very last day at Quizno's.  Ever!  I've decided I've had enough with the place and will not be returning in the summer.  I'm setting about trying to find myself marketing work experience and will be speaking to my personal tutor about leads to follow up.  Speaking of marketing, I have an essay due in for Monday which I haven't even started yet; needless to say, I'll be working on it for most of Friday and Saturday...