The pre-tens in review (2000-2009)

As the year comes to a close, so too does the decade. It almost seems like yesterday that I was in year one...

Actually, no, it doesn't feel like yesterday at all.

Anyway, this blog post shall try and review humanity's first decade in the new millenium. How did we go? Well, let's find out.

2000
International Year for the Culture of Peace, World Mathematical Year, Final Year of the 20th Century and 2nd Millenium.
In this year, the mini Y2K story arc came to a rather anti-climatic ending, with nothing much actually happening. While the author of Peanuts, Charles Schulz dies, America begins its period of shame and stupidity, when George W. Bush gets elected. ILOVEYOU gets created in the Philippines, cementing the threat of computer viruses. Australia hosts the Olympics this year; go us, and the International Space Station starts its continous manning, meaning that there will always be a human presence out there.

2001
Officially the first year of the 3rd Millenium
Wikipedia, the most 'reliable' source on the internet, is born. Nothing much else happens, meaning everyone was taken by suprise when planes suddenly crash in the World Trade Centers, heralding the beginning of the 'War on Terror' arc, starting much bigotry and bloodshed.

2002
Year of Ecotourism, Year of the Outback
"Weapons of Mass Destruction" get continually said in this year. Aside from that, nothing much actually happens.

2003
Year of Freshwater
The year everyone says "Bullshit!" to the supposed 'War on Terror', yet America invades Iraq anyway.

2004
Year of the Rice (I don't really get it either)
The CIA admits the 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' were all fabricated. The Lord of the Rings wins 11 Oscars. Madrid get bombed. Athens says "Olympics, welcome home." John Howard beats Mark Latham. Bush also gets relected, which decreases everyone's view of American voters tenfold. At the end of the year a Tsunami strikes south-east Asia, killing thousands.

2005
The Year of Discovery
We discover tha t North Korea has Nuclear weapons. We discover America and Australia and big twats when it comes to climate change. We discover that John Paul II wasn't immortal, but awesome none the less. We discover that the 'War on Terror' had been effectively useless as bombs go off in London. We discover that the American Government is incompetant even with home affairs when Hurricane Katrina hit. We discover Australia was being targeted when the Bali Bombings occured. We discover we aere one second behind, so we added another one.

2006
Year of Deserts
Fittingly, Sydney has its hottest day on record in the first day of the year. The Beaconsfield Mine collapses, causing two men; Todd Russel and Brant Webb, to become acquainted. Wii and Ps3 get released, and England records this as their hottest year. Oh, and Pluto loses 'Planet' status.

2007
Year of Anniversaries
Final Harry Potter book released. Howard defeated by Rudd.

2008
Earth Year
Kevin Rudd says 'Sorry' to the Stolen Generations. Earthquake rocks China, before it hosts the Olympics. Global Financial Crisis begins. Bush finally out of office, replaced by Obama. Another second added.

2009
Year of Astronomy
Victorian Bushfires after the hottest fucking (sorry) day recorded in Melbourne. Swine Flu breaks out. Michael Jackson dies. Massacre happens in Maguindanao.

---

And that's it.

Irrational Philosophy no Ichizon

One must consider the differences in media...

Absolutely correct, Student Council President.

Congratulations on your new anime, by the way.

---

Some anime just run on referencing others.

Okay, just two.

One is the phenomenal Lucky Star (or the anime with the really annoying theme), while the other is Seitokai no Ichizon.

Ken Sugisaki has finally got what he wanted. A whole 'harem' of cute girls to himself in the form of the Student Council. However, his goal is the extremely lofty harem end, and Ichizon isn't really an eroge...

What a sane person would have done would be to go after the one girl that takes his fancy, but Ken confesses his love to the entire council at the same time. Um.

To be fair, I would have come to the Visual Novel conclusion as well; the council girls do fulfill their respective stereotypes (tsundere, loli, etc...), yet I would go after... uh... Actually that's quite difficult... Well, I wouldn't go for all of them at once.

Where was I? Oh yes. The number of references in this anime is staggering, unfortunately making it rather bland once you remove the references. But I'll keep an eye on it, just in case...

The Melancholy of Irrational Philosopher

If there was one anime I would blame for ruining my life, it would be The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Picture the scene. A boy, who doesn't really like anime, gets shown a clip of Hare Hare Yukai by his friends. He immediately dismisses it as more anime crap. Then, later, he is shown two episodes of the anime, namely the Baseball episode and the Day of Sagittarius episode. Thus, I fell in love with one character; Nagato Yuki.

I completely and utterly blame that utterly adorable Artificial Interface for grabbing me by the heartstrings and thrusting me into the world of anime and those related.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that Yuki is the only reason I like the series (well, that's not completely true; I like Sasaki too, but she hasn't appeared in the anime yet).

Speaking about things not shown in the anime yet, I am absolutely pissed that they haven't shown The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya yet, instead showing eight episodes of endless bloody recursions of time. Oh, poor Yuki, having to endure 3 billion cycles of that...

Ahem. Well. Melancholy. This is the anime that introduced me to the adorable badass known as Yuki, and thus thrust me into this world...

What an idiot I am.

Touhouproject.com is dead.

Touhou-project.com is born.

It's different from the old site. The new one is split into two sections: 'General Touhou' and 'Stories'.

General Touhou
Basically where everything except stories end up.
/gensokyo/ is the 'General' general board. 'I think Keine has the sillest hat', lol. The important threads here are the story recs (coincidentally, there has been a huge leap in the number of new stories. Hmm...) and the author roll call (to see if the author of your fav project has made it to the new site).
/i/ is where the drawfags hang out. Of course, when in a world of writefags, anyone that can draw two eyes and a mouth can be condiered a drawfag. Questionable quality.
/tt/ is touhoutube! Yes, that rarely updated board is here! Don't expect quality.
/at/ is where NSFW material is supposed to go. Now excuse me, I'll be in the Patchouli thread...
/words/ is... uh... I don't exactly know.

Stories
Is still exactly the same, except with /underground/, meaning higher chance of Parsee love.

Parsee loev...

Touhouproject, you...

...thing.

It's up again, kinda.

Good news is that I can stop posting these horrible 'reviews'.
Bad news: No new material to read.

So if the site's a bitch, next time I visit it, it might be offline again.

Eh, might as well read the parts of Fallout Gensokyo that aren't archived.

Expectation of Sanguine Disorder (Waiting for a bloody mess)

Now here's a good one. Expectation of Sanguine Disorder is the 6th Project and the first one written by the now legendary Hungry Youkai. In fact, this is quite probably the main reason he is so legendary.



This would be the second 'limited' adventure, that is, one that is supposed to mainly take place in one location. This one mainly takes place in the SDM, after 'Belmonymous' suddenly wakes up there, in vampire hunter fatigues and meets Remilia Scarlet, who would become the primary romantic interest. But the mansion holds some dark secrets...

Hungry Youkai really pulled off a nice one here; creating the first satisfying ending of a project with you sexing Remilia and punishing Sakuya (who deserves it for being a complete and utter bitch throughout the tale). Meiling and Koakuma make nice appearances, but Patchouli doesn't appear as much as I hoped (she does, however manage to cause a suprising BAD END). Flandre's sanity has been brought up a few notches, making her a sweet imouto character.

Anon still shows some of his shizophrenic tendencies having more BAD ENDs than SHaG, leading into some nice discussions (like should we kiss Sakuya? and should we trust Mima?). Belmonymous manages to be killed by Koa, Patcthy and Remi. Not Sakuya, interestingly enough.

A tale worth a read.

Something's Happening at Gensokyo

Since Touhouproject is down, and I've read all the archives in sheer boredom, I've decided to do a review of each until it's up again. (Which could be a while)

Something's Happening at Gensokyo (SHaG) is the 5th Touhou Project (I've decided to call each of the fanfics a 'project') and stars what I believe to be the first female protagonist created (after the author, Vodka, slipped and used the pronoun 'her'). Introducing herself as Adahn, she ends up in Gensokyo and moves in with Aya and Moizimi in their home on the mountain of faith. Soon after, Adahn acquires a sentinent Claymore, and alerts the attention of Remilia Scarlet. After the Claymore somehow creates a body, it sparks a confrontation between Remilia and Adahn.

Also, Adahn wishes to become Hina's shrine maiden, and the story shows the complications involved as well as the abilities she recieves.

The romantic subplot involves both Adahn and Moizimi as the primary couple (leading to the story's only bad end caused by TAIL FEEL SO GOOD) and, suprisingly, Hina and Claymore.

The tale has completed its first arc and is in the middle of its second, where the events of Subterranean Aminism destroy Adahn's newly created shrine. With the responsiblities of the Gensokyo Shrine Maiden, Adahn goes out to resolve the incident.

SHaG may be the first truly epic Project. While in no way the best, Vodka gave Anon the right chances, while Anon properly took them on board with excellent write ins and discussion. A true example of author and anon working together.

Goddamn Touhouproject.com...

Usually, when I get home, I sit in front of my computer, get on the internet, go to Touhouproject.com and then...

Pure and utter bliss.

Of course, reading the title you should figure something's gone terribly wrong. Well, it's not extremely terrible, just extremely annoying as the site is currently changing servers and is experiencing an extended amount of downtime.
So the best I can really do is read the archives. Problem is that I'm a fast enough reader to do so in the time it apparently takes to change a server. Now I'm reverted to the sad habit of clicking on the link on my favourites bar, waiting for it to load and reading in disappointment the somewhat irritating Oops! This link appears to be broken. message.

If for some daft unknown reason you are reading this and have no idea what I'm talking about, let me give you an explanation.

Touhou Project is a series of Japanese shoot 'em ups which involve you as a girl to go out and shoot fairies. Now take that unpromising premise and jam the AWESOME meter up to as far as it will go. You will get a series with:

• Hard Difficulty
• Mediocre to Non-existant storyline
• Bad art
• Absolutely Incredible Music
• And the most creative fanbase that is mathematically possible

Yes, unlike so many pieces of fiction, the fans do not ruin it, they enhance it. Great fan art, kickass remixes, memes by the bucketload...

When a fanbase gets powerful enough, they start to write fanfiction. Usually, it's horrible. Could the almighty Touhou fanbase writefags break the trend? A person now known as Gensokyo Man started a thread in the 'infamous' image board 4chan. The thread gave Anonymous the responsibility of controlling the main character as he traveled the land of Touhou known as Gensokyo. Apparently, this proved so popular that it got kicked out of 4chan, and it had to move to a new home with the address 'Touhouproject.com'.

This website would go on to hold a series of stories where the fickle will of anon were the actions of the protagonist. Most failed, but some rose to glorious heights. That's why it's bliss.

...if it wasn't down.

Character Profile: Irrational Philosopher

Age: 16
Birth Date: 10th July
Hair: Black
Eyes: Dark Brown
Birthplace: Melbourne
Other Details: None
Dress: Jacket of Black. Nice hat of same.
Description of home: A normal, two story house.
Dominant Character Trait: Thoughtfulness.
Secondary Character Trait: Smartness.
Sees self as: A thoughtful fellow.
Is seen by others as: A person too smart for his own damn good.
Sense of humour: Absolutely dismal.
Temper: Almost non-existant.
Basic Nature: In thought.
Ambitions: To be satisfied.
Educational background: Private Education
Work Experience: Umm...
Philosophy of Life: Think more. It's never enough.
Habits: Holding a lot of spends
Talents: Thinking.
Hobbies: Reading.
Entertainment: Reading

And so it begins...

*Dramatic Music*