Mahou Meido Meganekko

Write about the most popular online game outside of Asia, and look what happens: Spam, spam, spammity spam. All about buying g o l d (currency) for use in said game. Bah. Thank some computer programmer for Akismet.

In other news, I notice that Steven closed yet another discussion thread over at Chizumatic. Really, what’s he got against discussions of doujinshi lesbo orgies, anyway? (Oh God, what kind of spam am I going to get now?) Maybe it was really because Pixy brought up that Steven was mentioned as being quoted in the NYT for quoting Mickey Kaus. And if you can figure that out in one reading, you probably knew what I was talking about in the first place.

If Steven finds being called “unstoppable” by Glenn Reynolds embarrassing, I hope he doesn’t read much John Ringo, or Tom Kratman. From p. 594, in the Afterword to Yellow Eyes, a novel in which the American-led defense of Earth against alien invaders is being hampered by Tranzis of the EU and UN…

“Tranzi is short for “Transnational Progressive” or “Transnational Progressivism.” For a more complete account of their program, look up John O’Sullivan’s Gulliver’s Travails or some of what Steven Den Beste has written on the subject. You might, dear reader, also look at John Fonte’s The Ideological War Within the West. Lastly for purposes of this little essay, look up Lee Harris’ The Intellectual Origins of America Bashing. These should give you a good grounding in Tranzism: its motives, goals and operating techniques. All can be found online.

(Note:Searching BN.com for “ideological war” generates results involving The Federalist Papers. See #3, #9, and #10. Also, #2 is intriguing. Things that make you go, “Hmmmmmm.”)

An electrical engineer by trade, getting mentioned by best-selling authors as a reference — in the same paragraph as guys published by major think-tanks. One of the original “four horsemen of the ‘Ablogolypse,’” years after hanging up his political blog, and he’s still influential enough to be (mis-)quoted in the NYT. And we’re privileged to debate animé with this guy. Sheesh.

Life just ain’t fair. There’s times I want to go “man, I haven’t paid my dues, to be writing to (or about) him, or posting comments on his blog.” Then there’s times I just want to say, “C’mon Steven, watch more Godannar, you know your id wants to!”

So…..Hey Steven, when can we expect more Shizuru fanservice?

I suppose I could watch some animé, but for some idiotic reason, this struck me as much more amusing. As some of you know, I started playing Worlds of Warcraft back in March. It is a lot cheaper than buying hundreds of dollars of animé every month, or obliging myself to buy series through massive fansub downloads (Ouran, here I come. That I don’t mind. Otome wa Boku, I mind.)

So I started on the same server as Master Plan, as a hordeling, and I now have a 45th cleric, a 31st warrior, and two lower level characters. In the meantime, MP has played so much he’s taken his main all the way from 38 to 43. Five whole levels. Bah. Dr.Heinous has almost kept up with me, having a 42 mage, a 35 38 pally, and two other characters in the 20’s. (Actually, in terms of aggregate levels, he’s ahead of me. I don’t play my alts as much.) Several other mutual friends have played with us, off and on, but they had lvl 70 Alliance characters, so they weren’t keen on spending a lot of time working up from scratch on yet another server.

I finally decided to spend a little time on their server, and started a gnome rogue there….only my sense of absurdity got the best of me.

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Just some random nonsense that was running through my head one morning but I never posted it: I needed a picture like the one below the fold (safe for work), but I was either too lazy or too something to load up Divergence Eve to get it. I figured I’d start watching the show again and forget about the picture. On the other hand, I knew if I sat on it long enough, Steven’s top rotation would cough up what I needed.

You see, I named my computer system “Misaki” after I reloaded the O/S. I’m not sure that really means anything except that I’m a fan of the series, but it’s an amusing bit of randomness. (It’s old name was Rogue. Not the X-man.) Anyway, the point is that I decided I’ll name the next one “Lyar.” After all, it’s going to be a DUO-core, with DOUBLE data rate memory and a top-notch FRONT SIDE BUS.

The reason I needed the picture was to explain the (alleged) joke to folks who haven’t seen Divergence Eve…and this one was perfect.

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So last night, I had this spastic two hours where I started about six different projects and actually finished only one of them. Fortunately, that one was the sorting and shelving of my animé collection. For some time now, I’ve had a ridiculous portion of my collection sitting just anywhere I left it, including stuff I hadn’t removed from the crate after my last trip to Dr Heinous’ place. So last night I grabbed a dustcloth, started yanking crap out of my bed’s headboard to make room, and stacking DVD cases in there. (What… bookcases? No way, they’re full of books!) Only halfway through, I decided, “You know, it’s stupid to have Nadesico all the way on the far side, and stuff I’ll never watch right to hand…” Half an hour later (it’s not that large of a collection), and I’ve got some semblance of a system.

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Recently, Steven pointed everyone over here to a discussion he and I were having. I didn’t expect an Instalanche or anything, but since he has about a bazillion more readers than I do, I figured a freewheeling debate might break out.

Imagine my surprise, when not one person had anything to say. “WTF?” I thought. “Not even the semi-regulars?”

Well, I was reminded today that people who want to comment here are often off-put by the registration. Sigh. I’m sorry about that, but it’s necessary to stop the spambots. You don’t need a “WordPress Login,” just one special to this site. Needless to say, I don’t do anything with the e-mail addresses of my registered users — although for full disclosure, there’s a never-yet-activated “send email to all registrants” feature I could use, were I inclined to do so.

Your first comment will be held for moderation, just so I can be sure you’re not a particularly clever bot. Because of work, it may be several hours before I release it (although I confess to having accidentally let a couple go for a day or two when I’m super-busy and too frazzled to think.) After that, you’re good to go. If I were to open comments again (as Houblog’s used to be) I’d be fighting off the usual culprits; Akismet has captured 4,000 spam in a year for Mahou Meganekko, but over 22,000 in slightly less than two years for Houblog. For simplicity’s sake, I’d like to leave the comment policy the same on both sites, so this is actually a case where Houblog is driving Mahou Meganekko’s policies. Back when I maintained both regularly, Houblog had about five times the readership and higher rank on Technorati. So it gets about five times the spamination.

Anyway, I finally hacked the template files for the footer and registration screen to explain the registration to readers. WP seems to love convoluted template files that call each other into recursive oblivion, which makes me both leery and frustrated when it comes to meddling with them. I do hope more of you will be inclined to register and comment in the future; I enjoy discussing animé, and sometimes it seems like it’s just me and Steven talking. Out of the last 20 comments, exactly two aren’t from one of us.

Random speculation: I noticed a drop in the number of comments right after Steven moved to Pixy’s hosting in May, and opened up comments on his own blog. I’m wondering if some of the comments here were essentially “displaced commentary” from mutual readers who couldn’t comment on his site until he opened the new one? I can’t link the two events for certain, because that’s also when Mother’s hospital stay forced a hiatus for about three weeks.

I just watched the first DVD of Ikkitousen last night.

O. M. F. G.

I’m not sure where I read it, but somewhere I saw a comment that “Ikkitousen sounds like an excuse for girls to lose their clothes repeatedly while fighting.”

Uh, no. Try “lose their clothes repeatedly — and engage in sexually suggestive poses, acts, and talk — while fighting.” Plot? What plot? Just openly steal from history, throw logic (and its relative, reason) out the window, stick panty shots in the opening, and get it on. In more than one sense of the phrase. Well, it’s not an actual hentai title, but it isn’t missing by much. I’ll include the screenshots, but you bet your bippy they’re NSFW.

I mean, to start with, this is what greeted me after I opened the first case and popped out the DVD. Yeah, the Not Safe For Work cover’s reversible: Show ▼

“No, no, really! I didn’t buy animé porn!” (looks at the rating: Mature: 16+) “Um, well, maybe I did.”

I say again: NSFW.

Yeah, the “c’mere and bang me” girl on the right is Hakufu Sonsaku, and is apparently Excel Excel’s better-stacked cousin. She’s that ditzy. But since she burns off the excess energy beating the crap out of people just for the fun of fighting, she talks a bit slower. She apparently has no body modesty at all, one of two traits she shares with every other female in the show. The other, is of course, “booby bombs” as they’re constantly referred to.

She’s got a rival, Shimei Ryomou (the “leave me alone” girl on the left, above). She normally wears an eyepatch, although her eye works just fine. You won’t see the eyepatch from this NSFW angle: Show ▼

At this point, Sonsaku has just ripped the eypatch off, which really gets Ryomou worked up, enough to unleash the NSFW thighs of doom. Show ▼

This kind of makes what happens next seem… ambiguous. Maybe not NSFW. Show ▼

That’s as tame as it gets…. I mean, next second, Ryomou crows that she’s cut off the blood supply and all of Sonsaku’s muscles are relaxing….In a very NSFW way. Show ▼

Ummm….

Oh, I’m sorry, did I forget to mention that is is also apparently a school for NSFW fetishists?. Show ▼

But hey, there’s six more schools of fun out there, and they’re all fighting. Including this chick that forget her bra. And blouse. At least you can tell which school she attends. Nice thing, is, there’s no need to make a choice between going for the babe with the green hair, and the babe with the big breasts, when you’re dealing with Ryofu Housen. (At work? Taking your chances here…) Show ▼

Although it’s a bit of a downer that the last time we see her, she’s busy running her tongue down the bad-guy’s chest. Incidentally, her seiiyu has got another one of those “reaches below the waist” voices (where I’m concerned, anyway). I thought it sounded familiar, so I checked. Sure enough, she was the voice of Villetta in Code Geass, Tiamat in Shana, Lt. Yun in Divergence Eve, and Chachamaru in the original Negima!

I notice that I have yet to discuss much plot and backstory. Well, don’t worry, the writers haven’t either — other than to acknowledge that they’re completely stealing the Three Kingdoms period, right down to many names and character fates. Did I mention that the winner of all these fights among high-school kids will somehow be the country’s ruler? Yes, kids. I mentioned school, didn’t I? Not that you ever see the first teacher, or even a class being conducted through the first DVD. A few other well-worn tropes, characters, and plot devices get trotted out, including an oversexed MILF and secret powers.

Well, I think I’m going to give this one another day or two before I continue. I need the time to perform CPR on all those dead brain cells.

Warning! This entire post is a major set of spoilers for the series. If you haven’t seen it, don’t go there!

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