Thank You-Tube! (Entry #2-Hana Kimi Taiwan)

Earlier this year I attended an anime convention which featured an event for anime and/or manga that had been made into live action dramas. One of them was Hanazakari no Kimitachi e, the story of a girl who transfers to an all boy school in Japan to get close to her sports idol, in hopes of inspiring him to get back into the game. Naturally she must disguise herself and she must always be vigilant about not being discovered. The Japanese version of this is quite good, there's a lot of humor and it has a fairly solid ending. After watching it you feel like you saw a pretty complete story with not much left hanging. What I did not feel satisfied with was the relationship between the two main leads. I found it difficult to believe she'd end up loving him, and I grew tired of his attitude and demeanor. By the end I felt sorely disappointed that she chose the moody and emotionally closed off Sano over the more openly caring Nakatsu.

In search of some expansion on the existing story, I thought I would look into the other versions of the story that I knew were out there. Which is how I came across the above video. The production quality of the Taiwanese version is not nearly as good as the Japanese, and I will admit to being extremely distracted by Ella's acting style, especially early on, but what sold this for me personally was their version of the Sano character, Quan.

Quan begins similarly to Sano in that he is put off by Rui Xi's overly forward attempts to befriend him. He's caved into the pressure and has quit was he loves doing and is not in a good place when she comes. He dislikes the situation even more when it turns out they're roommates and it seems impossible to get away from her. He quickly discovers her identity as a girl and due to the main girl's tendency to talk to herself, at times quite loudly, he learns more about how she came to be there, and why it means so much to her that she help him back into the sport of high-jumping. He softens in his attitude toward her and they become friends fairly quickly. They have their rough spots, but he is always looking out for her, while occasionally testing the waters to see if she'll finally confide in him about her true identity.

By the end of the series, you can definitely feel the love between Quan and Rui Xi and you can believe that they could have a future together.

It follows the manga far more faithfully than the Japanese version and covers several more storylines. However I strongly dislike the ending. It feels sloppy and thrown together and gives no sense of conclusion. If you like the concept it's best to watch both versions since both have something to offer.

Thank You-Tube! (Entry #1-Doctor Who)

Okay so, for a while I'd been hearing about this show called Doctor Who. I knew everyone was going nuts over it, but I had no idea what it was about, nor had I tried to remedy that. But this video showed up one day and I forget now if I was subscribed to Anine (harrydoesntknow) or if I saw her video as part of my 'friend' activity, but this was my first real exposure to Doctor Who. The description at the time explained that he was an alien known as a Time Lord and that he was the last of his kind and that he traveled through space and time having adventures

with his human companion(s). So I watched the video and thus began my love of both Doctor Who and Imogen Heap.

From here I went on to try to find other videos. Most revolved around what I had then dubbed the 'younger cuter' guy. I didn't fully understand regeneration yet. Upon further research on wikipedia I discovered that the first season of the new Who featured the Ninth doctor, whom at that time I thought of as 'the funny looking older one,' and that the 'younger cuter' Doctor wouldn't appear until the second season.

I figured however I could probably endure just one season of the 'funny looking older one,' so I went ahead and ordered the first disc of the first season from Netflix. And after just the first three episodes I was in love. I have a T-shirt with the Tardis on it and the words, "You never forget your first doctor." Even though I've loved each of the Doctors that came after, my all time favorite is still my first. This show is the first to also inspire me to actually go out and get action figures and actively wish that an alien would come and 'abduct' me. And I have primarily you-tube to thank!

Wow it's been a while since I posted. I guess like the rest of my journal endeavors, I've written a single entry then completely forgotten about it. So I'm going to take another stab at it! I've got a couple of series of entries that I want to do. First is a Thank You-Tube! series of posts where I share the videos that have captured my interest and introduced me to some of my now favorite shows! Second is something I'm doing on Facebook but I'd like to move over here as well, it's a picture a day challenge which, admittedly I've fudged up a bit. I keep getting distracted so it's more like a picture every few days now, but maybe after I move I'll get back on track with it! So anyway, on with the posting!

Testing

So this is my first post on here and I thought I'd just test out how things look. Plus one of the biggest things I wanna do is add videos so I'll test that feature out now! Hmm it appears I must upload it and it must be under 100 mb. I'll have to work on that some more. Anyway me and the family are going to see Avatar together tomorrow. Hopefully the kids will sit through it!