Goodbye, 2008

… and good riddance. It was a crummy year, and I generally had other things than anime on my mind. Consequently, there won’t be any Kawaii Menace awards for 2008; I haven’t watched enough to choose the year’s best idiot or worst computer rendering. Instead, I’ll borrow a meme from Mark and Amy to review the year at The Kawaii Menace:

The gist…Retrieve and share the first sentence [or two, or three] of the first blog post of each of the twelve months of (r.i.p.) 2008.

January: In the recent Kino no Tabi movie, The Land of Sickness — For You, Kino visits a country that seems mostly deserted.

February: I’ve been studying yet another treatise on father-daughter dynamics, Petite Princess Yucie.

March: Yeah, it’s been quiet around here. I haven’t seen much anime lately, and what I have watched have been mostly old favorites, such as the first disc of Haibane Renmei last night.

April: When I read that BOST is offering DRM-free downloads of their shows, I figured I ought to check it out. So I registered and purchased the minimum quantity of BOST “points” (a disorienting process: the PayPal page was initially specific to Japan, but I live in Kansas, not Kansai).

May: The good news: Not only can I walk (albeit slowly, and with a cane), but as of today I can ride my bike again.

June: How Obama can win:

Hey, McCain has been ignoring the catgirl vote throughout the primaries, I say Obama should take advantage of this. As a matter of fact, a strong anti-tentacle monster platform would bring in both the catgirls and the Lolis.

July: I’ve been doing my bit to support legal anime downloads by keeping up with Strike Witches at BOST.

August: I just watched the first five minutes of Strike Witches #5, and the hell with it.

September: Sailor fuku … American style.

October: The “Touhou Project” is a family of shooting games. According to what I’ve read, they are mostly the work of one person, “ZUN,” who, as “Team Shanghai Alice,” writes the code, draws the art and composes the music. They are noteworthy for their complex bullet patterns and large casts of pretty girls.

November: Sailor Moon has her own orchid, a distinction she shares with Dracula and Kim Il Sung.

December: If you were planning to tour Venice this week, you might want to cancel your trip and visit Neo Venezia instead.