Mid-week memeage.

[nenena]

Yoinked from chiikaboom.

So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me, something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about, or something you've always been curious about but have never asked, or something completely silly that you'd like me to answer for kicks. No limits on the range of questions, either: ask me anything you want to know about, whether it's a fannish opinion or a question about a fic of mine or trivia about my real life or my thoughts on events in the offline world.

Ask away. Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don't know about you!

Comments

[sagemuraken.livejournal.com]

OK. Maybe a standard kind of question but it comes in the form of a triple threat. XD

What is your favourite anime? Your favourite manga? And what do you think is the best manga-to-anime adaption?

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Favorite anime: Still a tie between Escaflowne and Princess Tutu.

Favorite manga: Phoenix by Osamu Tezuka. There's just never been anything like it, before or since. Nothing even remotely in its league.

Best manga-to-anime adaptation: Definitely Ouran High School Host Club. Runner-up would be the first half of Soul Eater, which actually *improved* upon the original manga by leaps and bounds. The second half, not so much.

[sagemuraken.livejournal.com]

Interesting! There's so much I haven't seen/read yet.

[neocloud9.livejournal.com]

You haven't seen Princess Tutu yet?

[sagemuraken.livejournal.com]

I have seen/read a very small list of anime/manga (if you don't count the yaoi ones XD).

[neocloud9.livejournal.com]

WATCH IT WATCH IT WATCH IT WATCH IT

[sagemuraken.livejournal.com]

I'll add it to my list. ^_-

[neocloud9.livejournal.com]

Okay. What color is you hair? What color are your eyes?

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Hair: brown
Eyes: Hazel

[neocloud9.livejournal.com]

HAZEL EYES ARE AWESOME.

[dogandshit.livejournal.com]

What is your favourite anime-manga-interpretated game?
LOL.
something like that 8D

[nenena.livejournal.com]

The Suzumiya Haruhi PSP game. It was straight-up fanservice and the Koizumi route was awesome.

[tricianna.livejournal.com]

I've been hesitant asking you this before, because it's always felt impertinent :P But could you explain the Ah! My Goddess love? I'm in awe of people who stay loyal, as it were, to a series that feels like been going on forever, so I'm curious about your own reasons for it.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

That's a good question. :) My reasons are...

1. Most of the story arcs in A!MG are short and self-contained. So if a particular story arc kind of sucks, that's okay, something completely different will be happening a few months down the line anyway. And the good parts are worth waiting for, because when Fujishima really brings his A-game, he blows most of his contemporaries out of the water.

2. The worldbuilding is interesting enough that there's room for decades-worth of new stories still, without ever having to repeat or re-tread over old ground. And, to Fujishima's credit, he rarely repeats any elements from past story arcs in his current stories. For a manga that's been ongoing for twenty years, that's saying a lot. And I really do love the worldbuilding and all of the crazy stuff that Fujishima keeps coming up with: Welsper and the doublet system, all of the creative science-based demons, the badass broom racing, the wacky robotics, the Valkyries, the little Gate girl, the parasitic angels, the Yddgrasil and Nidhogg computer systems, the most excellent rules of magic, etc., etc.

3. Likewise with the worldbuilding, the cast is solid, varied, and large enough that - once again - Fujishima has a lot of room to tell many, many more stories about the core group of characters without ever having to repeat himself. There's an amazing cast of women in this series, particularly Urd, Skuld, Peorth, Lind, Chihiro, Megumi, Keiichi's mom, Hild, Mara, etc... And even Belldandy, when written by the pen of Fujishima (as opposed to when she's handled by various anime directors) is a lot funnier, more nuanced, and more entertaining to read about than many of the insipid seinen manga heroines that she's since inspired. Keiichi is a good deal more entertaining and likeable of a character than most seinen romance leads, to.

4. The artwork is very, very pretty. Fujishima is a master character designer, hands-down. And he also does really interesting things with viewpoint and perspective, too.

Hmmm, I'll stop now. But I think those are the major reasons why.

[ilikebigtoes.livejournal.com]

What are some of your favorite breeds of dogs?

Favorite icecream?

Best thing to do on a Saturday?

Most l;oved book from childhood?

[nenena.livejournal.com]

1. SHETLAND SHEEPDOGS!!!!!
2. Spumoni
3. Go hiking
4. The Bunnicula series by Deborah Howe

[kalium-kx.livejournal.com]

Would you prefer living in japan or in US?

You can state the pros and cons too of both if you'd like..

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Definitely the US. Mostly because I want to have a large house and a big yard so that I can have dogs. ^^ It's really impractical to live with a dog in Japan, let alone multiple dogs.

Also, I'd rather live in an English-speaking country than not.

The one huge advantage in terms of living conditions that Japan has over the US, however, is the national health care system. Seriously, if I ever get a chronic disease, I might just move back to Japan.

[kalium-kx.livejournal.com]

i see..i have a dog phobia myself..i miss my hamster..is that the only thing Japan has over US D=

Tho'yeah i'd do the same..the last time i was in japan i was 4 T-T
even if i live in a tiny island city in asia

[atelierjoh.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever asked this, but what was your first exposure to Ah! My Goddess?

[nenena.livejournal.com]

I *think* I watched the OAV when I was in high school and just discovering anime for the first time. As for the manga, I remember that my dad took me and my sister to a Barnes and Noble in Chicago during summer vacation one year. And they had a tiny little shelf of manga in the back of the store, which my sister and I had never really seen in a mainstream bookstore before. (This was in 1997 or thereabouts.) I saw the Oh My Goddess! manga, and the covers looked pretty, so I picked up the first four volumes. And then I was hooked.

[ladykleo.livejournal.com]

If you could ask any fictional character any three questions, who would it be and what would you ask?

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Oh god this is a haaaaaard question!

I'm still thinking about it... Let me get back to you later.

[ladykleo.livejournal.com]

Waiting. :)

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm going to cheat a bit and choose Draupadi from The Mahabharata, even though it's dubious whether she was entirely fictional or based on a real person. Anyway, I would ask her:

1. At any point leading up to your quintuple-marriage, did you ever have a moment where you just stopped dead in your tracks and though "AW HELL NOES"?

2. Why did you let Ashwatthama go?

3. Did you ever do both twins at the same time?

I have a dirty, dirty mind.

[corinn.livejournal.com]

Let's go for a different angle.

Three-in-one! What anime/manga/book(single or series) can you not stand / drives you up the wall / infuriates you? Why?

And I totally ganked this for my own journal.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Movies by Makoto Shinkai.

I think I wouldn't be so infuriated by them if they weren't upheld as critical masterpieces and if Shinkai weren't consistently praised as a "master storyteller." The Place Promised in Our Early Days was SHIT storytelling. Utter, absolute shit. Trite, stupid, and full of ethical (in-story) and dramatic (meta) cop-outs. 5 centimeters per second was worse. I will say, however, that Hoshi no Koe was freakin' awesome, but that doesn't count as a "movie" since it was an OAV. :)~ And Shinkai's short films and commercials are awesome, too. He just needs to stop sucking at the whole feature-length film thing.

[corinn.livejournal.com]

I remember liking Hoshi no Koe back when it first came out, but I haven't seen the other two. Looking at the Wikipedia entries, The Place Promised in our Early Days sounds really crappy and far-fetched and possibly incoherent. 5cm/sec sounds interesting, in that slice-of-life understated, frustrating, depressing drama kind of thing. Which is, I suppose, rather trite. But how is it worse than The Place Promised in our Early Days? Sheer triteness, or what? Because the plot as outlined in Wikipedia is simply ridiculous, in a totally unfunny way.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

What you said - it was the sheer triteness factor. The sci-fi elements of PPioED were incoherent and ridiculously stupid, but at least they served as a welcome distraction from the insufferable characters and their crappy "romance." 5cm had no such distractions.

[chiikaboom.livejournal.com]

I obviously have my own reasons, but tell me, why do you like Soul Eater so much? O:

That, and what do you think is the probability that Kidd will get any backstory relatively soon? |:

And when will Endless Eight end?

... Oh and do you have a pet?!

(I like pets.)

[nenena.livejournal.com]

1. Awesome premise, great characters, completely insane plot twists, and the fact that Ohkubo deliberately subverts a lot of gender, race, and mental illness tropes that annoy me about most manga. He drops the ball and gets things horribly wrong sometimes, too - particularly when it comes to race/gender stuff. But when he's awesome, he's awesome.

2. Pretty high, actually. Now that the Book of Eibon is in play.

3. I think it'll go on for eight episodes total. Yeah I know "LOL eight!" and pretty much everybody has predicted that already. But KyoAni's probably going to do it anyway.

4. Not right now, no. But growing up I had hermit crabs and a Shetland Sheepdog. And once I spent a summer pigsitting for a friend. Pigs are awesome.

[the-terrible.livejournal.com]

We've never really had much of a conversation about Yohko, just acknowledgment from both of us that it's awesome. So let me ask: When did you first see Yohko (the anime)? Had you ever read the manga prior to my requesting it? What do you think of it, on its own and against the anime? Ever played any of the games? If so, how were they?

[nenena.livejournal.com]

I first saw Yohko when I was in college. My then-boyfriend lent it to me, and I thought that it was awesome. I think I flipped through the manga once before that time that I bought some for you, but I didn't read-read it. Anyway, I really like the manga, although I think that the anime does a better job of handling Yohko's sexuality (striking a better balance between "teen girl in charge of her own sexuality and refusing to deny it = empowereing" but also "yes she is a teenager and yes she will be STUPID about sexual things too.")

I've never played any of the games.

[the-terrible.livejournal.com]

I was also in college when I first heard of it; the first one I saw was the music video collection, which I spotted at a video rental store. (The pic on the back cover of Yohko naked with her arms crossed over her breasts --mid-change, in other words-- really got my attention. :D) My friends and I rented that and Akira, and after seeing the music videos, I was insanely curious about the series and immediately went to get my hands on it. (5 and 6 had not yet been made or released.) I wouldn't come to find out about the manga until years later.

I've never played the games either; I once tried to download an emulation of the Mega-CD game, but I either had a dud or was missing some important component, because I never was able to make it work. I've been interested in it for years, but I don't think I'll be playing it anytime soon. XD;

[wannabe-tenshi.livejournal.com]

What is/are your favorite sweets, snacks and Japanese food? :3

What do you like and dislike about Japan the most?

What is your favorite region of/city/town in Japan?

Where exactly are you staying? I mean- not in which city/town/village, but- in rented flat? In acquaintance's flat? In some other place?

What is your favorite doujinshi and why? (Since questions about manga/anime were already asked.)

And your favorite book? And movie?

What character traits do you like and dislike the most in people you meet?

Do you think you could keep writing Soul Eater summaries after you'll be back in the States? *hopes* >-<

(I hope I'm not too late. x-x Also- sorry for the amount of questions... ^^;;)

[nenena.livejournal.com]

1. Ice cream of just about any flavor, potato chips, and unagi.

2. Miyajima Island, in Hiroshima Prefecture.

3. In teacher housing. So basically like a townhouse, but with tatami.

4. Probably my all-time favorite is a Sailor Moon doujin called "Over the Lights, Under the Moon" by Jesus Drug.

5. Book - Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King. Movie - I like too many to choose, but Jurassic Park is the one that I keep watching over and over again, so I'll pick that one.

6. I like people who are strongly opinionated but willing to listen to others and to admit when they're wrong. The only character traits that really make me want to disassociate with people are open displays of sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.

7. Yes, but I'm going to have to rely on scans to do so. Which is ironic because usually the raw scans of each chapter are released before I can get my hands on a physical copy of GanGan each month anyway.

[wannabe-tenshi.livejournal.com]

1. Unagiiiiiiii~ ♥ >-< Unagi sushi is my absolute favourite. I could eat it everyday and not get bored of it EVER. (I think people working at my favourite sushi restaurant can now safely make bets over whether I'm going to order unagi maki or not, when I go there.) Too bad it's so expensive here... v-v Oh, and btw. do you happen to know what is the sauce that unagi maki is usually served with?

5. King! ^^ *adds to the to-read list* (I remember reading "Carrie" some years ago and liking it, so...)

7. YAAAAAYYY~ :D

Oh, and two more questions that came to my mind recently. (If I may ask.)
1.What is your dream/ideal job? And why?
2.If you could live in any time/epoch/period in any country/place/world (be it real or not) and language wouldn't be a barrier... Where would you like to live and why?

Btw. you skipped the second question. (Just saying. Disregard this, if it was on purpose. =X)

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Unagi is expensive everywhere. A decent unagi steak at my local grocery store costs 700 yen. You can buy enough chicken breast to feed six people for that price.

(And the sauce is called unagi sauce. It is actually made from unagi. No kidding.)

I didn't realize that I skipped the second question. Okay, likes/dislikes about Japan...

Like: the health care system.
Dislike: racial discrimination, both overt and covert.

New questions:

1. Teaching, because it's what I've always wanted to do.

2. Right here, right now. I wouldn't want to live in an era without speedy international travel, electronic money, the internet, laws that (on paper, at least) protect me from sexism and racism, or the medical advances that we have today, particularly in regards to mental health.

[wannabe-tenshi.livejournal.com]

Oh wow. o-o;; I wonder if it's the fish or preparation process that makes it so expensive.

Teaching, because it's what I've always wanted to do.
*admires* *____*
Really. Theoretically, when I graduate from one of my faculties, I could be a teacher, but... I just can't deal with the stress of presenting stuff in front of the bunch of strangers, having to deal with them, and the responsibility that comes with the job. So I think people who are motivated enough to be teachers are really admirable. *__* (This, and I was always one of the kids that looked for support in teachers/teacher-like figures, instead of rebelling against them, like some of my classmates did.)