Opening Move, by Ravenna C Tan #
Ogata/Touya, NC-17, under 1000 words. Summary: Touya receives an unexpected lesson from his senpai.

Ravenna wrote this ficlet for me and it's designed to hit all my HikaGo rare pairing kinks :) Paraphrasing my comment to the author, awwwwww! It's Ogata/Touya! It's so lovely! And it's for meeee! I do wonder how Ravenna manages to combine detached with hot and make lovely things without shmoop.

If you like Ogata, go try it!

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9 [] Rated PG-13 for violence and scary images. Runtime: 79 minutes. Director: Shane Acker Summary: When 9 first comes to life, he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world where all humans are gone, and it is only by chance that he discovers a small community of others like him taking refuge from fearsome machines that roam the earth intent on their extinction. Despite being the neophyte of the group, 9 convinces the others that hiding will do them no good. They must take the offensive if they are to survive, and they must discover why the machines want to destroy them in the first place. As they'll soon come to learn, the very future of civilization may depend on them.

My notes: BFF ordered me to watch this film 'cos she had seen a couple of scenes from it and fell in love with the visuals. So I did.

I liked it fine, especially the visual side, yes. Landscapes, the dolls, those factories and machines. If you like steampunk, go for it! I did find it very, very pleasant for the eyes. Not quite an eye candy 'cos it's all greyish-brownish and raw and dusty but it looks really nice.

I even liked the story for the most part. It's quite charming, and the story of a small individual becoming a hero in order to save the world, figuring things out, gathering courage and strength, well, it's cliché of course but it's a sure win as far as modern action/adventure goes. But at the same time, I found it annoying. I mean, if you have such a well-established heroic cliché, there's no need to make it even more cliché by making the villain a Hitler in such a non-metaphorical way. I mean, sometimes it's OK to believe that your spectators aren't completely stupid, so there's no need to put things in their mouth and chew for them. Sometimes you can create a more far-fetched metaphor, say, as Tolkien did in LotR or as Hiromu Arakawa does in Fullmetal Alchemist, and your audience will get it. Or on the contrary: make him Hitler, no a Hitler-like something. Don't dance around trying to side-step every dangerous thing.

Another thing that annoyed me was 7 at the very end of it. The dolls are more or less sexless, more boy/men-like than girl/woman-like but whatever. I liked it that the story wasn't about love, that it wasn't about how family saves everything -- which, let's be frank, Hollywood feeds us so much as to make one want to stay single forever. But then [spoiler]7 acquired some distinctly lady-like expressions, nearly batting eyelashes. WTF? Will they now hold hand and knit baby dolls or something?[/end spoiler]

And this leads me to the following. I liked Dragon Hunters much better (my review). They are seemingly nothing alike, Dragon Hunters and 9. It's just that they both are about small people saving the world and that something in the animation looks similar to me. So, while I'm ready to rave about Dragon Hunters for ages, this review is about 9 and regretfully, I'm not prepared to squeal about it. Yes, I enjoyed it. Yes, it's a real pleasure for the eyes. But I expected more. The animation made me expect more originality from the plot, and it might be completely my fault that I was so ready to fall in love but in the end, merely liked it. But like it I did. Give it a try!

Literal as well as virtual, which I find most fitting :) It's snowing heavily for the first time here! Late winter this year.

Thank you very much for the snowflakes, guys! You know who you are :)) [and a with a few of you, only you know but I'm grateful anyway :)] I'm so clueless! I thought it was some LJ holiday animation first :)

Regretfully, I can't join the fun sending them 'cos I'm still too newly employed to have any spare money Whoa! ok but I'll try to gather my two remaining brain cells and post a review a bit later. THANK YOU!!!

This is bloody awesome! Naruto, Bleach-style from Naruto 10th Anniversary Special Fanbook 2 (Via lyssaphra and Bleach newsletter).

And this clearly shows why I love Bleach better than Naruto (although I like Naruto too): among other things, it's simply a question of art style preferences. If Naruto were drawn this way, I'd fall head over heels for it despite its first 20 volumes :D