Update on the Season (and me)

Well, I’ve had a lot of time to watch anime this season, for reasons I’ll go into later. Not that I’ve taken major advantage of it; this season is definitely sub par. Does it still reek? I’d have to say that overall, yes, it does. Still, there’s two shows worth watching, that I’ve found.

Of course, the first is Railgun S. I know most of the story from the manga, and anyone who watched Index knows how it ended. Doesn’t matter; this is the story I’ve been wanting to see animated since I read it in the manga, if not earlier. What I’m curious about are the battle scenes in the OP. If they’re to be believed (and I don’t think they are) then both Kuruko and Touma are involved in the fight much earlier than they should be. Canon in the manga and three series so far is that Kuroko never finds out the full story, and Touma only gets involved at the end, but in the OP we see them involved in a major fight that (in the manga) involved Mikoto vs. a group of five mercenaries, two of which were also level 5’s. The fact that she held her own in the manga against that caliber of opposition goes to show just how badass she is in a battle.

Background Speculation: This also goes to show just how wrong the researchers are. They claim to have deduced from examinations of the various L5’s that only one of them, “Accelerator”. has the potential to reach Level 6. But we already know from the first Railgun series, that Mikoto is more powerful than she lets on. I doubt very seriously that the tests include some of her more hazardous tricks, like running on walls, building insta-cover out of steel rebar and concrete against attacks, shooting helicopters while falling through the sky, bouncing off concrete walls unscathed, hacking secure databases, etc. We know that her capacity to learn and work ethic are high; she made L5 through “hard work”, evidently at a very early age. (Oh, no. I just conceived of a series about extra-kawaii Mikoto and Kuroko at age six, learning about their powers and getting into trouble. Moe-moe-squeeeee! Please God let it not happen….) Anyway, my thinking is that they should have drafted Mikoto into Judgement or even Anti-Skill, then thrown her into every hazardous situation they could find. She’d be L6 in no time.

The other good series is Gargantia. Ostensibly a giant robot series, it is (so far) really a fish-out-of-water story (with an edge) involving a no-nonsense warrior who finds himself in an alien, but not entirely peaceful, environment. Chances of rescue seem slim, so he has to learn how to deal with the people he has fallen in with. This show distinguished itself in the first fifteen minutes, which included a desperate space battle against an overwhelming foe. The battle was anything but a confusing montage of missile and beam spam in which you wonder who’s doing what to whom. Furthermore, the show did the very difficult task of explaining without lecturing, resulting in a very comprehensible fight in which it was easy to get involved, follow the ebb and flow, and root for one side. I’ve also not mentioned the other major element of the story; the AI in the mecha. Its personality is even more no-nonsense than its pilot, yet human enough to be distinct and engaging in its own way. And lets face it, the eye candy as the show goes on just keeps getting better and better.

Just for the record, I spent a few hours catching up on Samurai Bride last night. It is not one of the good series, so I’m still trying to figure out how to properly serve penance for that. And wondering what the presumably uncensored series will cost at retail. I’d already decided to just pretend it was a different series with the same characters — then they turned a monkey into a master samurai. Not the bottom, yet: Gisen showed up and joined the group. Yeah, ok, completely different series.

So why am I having so much time to watch such crappy anime? Why have I blogged so little in the last few months? Well, because I’ve not been to work in a month, and was having severe problems before that from a pinched nerve. It started around the beginning of the year, though I didn’t realize what it was, and I didn’t feel like typing much, after doing it all day. Around the beginning of March, it got serious, with constant pain in my neck and radiating down to my left shoulder. I thought of it as being due to poor posture at work, so I rearranged my workplace, to no avail. By early April, it was extremely difficult to work (or sleep or anything else) due to the pain, and I realized it had to be a nerve. A couple of visits to a chiropractor and my primary doctor confirmed I had some vertebrae out of line, and I was in need of therapy — which I couldn’t get. The chiropractor was concerned about the after-effects of my stroke and wanted clearance from a heart doctor that I could take the full course or even surgery if necessary. That took another three weeks to obtain. During this time, my daily schedule was basically:

1. Pain.
2. Take painkiller.
3. Wait 30-60 minutes.
4. JPain fades, fall asleep for 1-2 hours.
5. Wake in pain, use salves and pain relief patches to bring it under control.
6. Spend 1-2 hours somewhat coherent, but with pain beginning to grow again.
7. Take painkiller after 6 total hours had passed.
8. Repeat.

Literally, regardless of day or night, that was my schedule for about 3 weeks, during which I saw the cardiologist (clean bill of health) and got an MRI (bad news — the problems were worse than we thought). About the beginning of May, I got to visit a pain clinic and a series of steroid injections gave some relief, allowing a more normal day-night schedule to re-assert itself. Well, diurnal anyway. Normal might be pushing it. Also, just this week, the chiropractor began a full therapy schedule, instead of the limited one I’d been on. This has helped; I can sometimes skip the painkillers for a few hours, but that doesn’t mean things are getting better. My left arm is constantly tingling and numb, and is losing strength. Any physical activity involving either shoulder can start it hurting enough to require a painkiller. Surgery is a distinct likelihood, but I won’t know more until I see a neurosurgeon during the coming week.

I haven’t wanted to talk about it online because in all the pain I was, I figured it would come out whiny, and I hate whiny. I’m doing a little better now, but I’m still . A good decision, as it happens, once I read about Brickmuppet’s travails! At least I’m not pulling medical devices out of my wang and peeing blood. Damn.

I am, however, reaching the limits of my endurance typing (the above took me two hours), so I’m going to bail now. Maybe post pics later. Maybe not.

Edit: Not. Overdid it.