Volume 5 of Baku-man will be released on November 4! The cover features Fukuda and his gang. ^^ It's really funny... and I can totally relate to Fukuda's anger and anguish. ^^;;; I rarely work with traditional ink these days because I ink everything in Paint Tool SAI, but I remember the pain of seeing an ugly blotch on your drawing... ;o; Hehe. And because I'll get paid for my translation work very soon, I'll be able to buy it without problems. Hmm... you know, I actually enjoy working as a freelance translator. I mean, I wouldn't want all of my jobs to be freelance, I DO need a regular job in order to feel safe, but it's still nice. Well, ideally, I'd like to be a cat or a panda in a zoo. Much like Hiramaru. ^^;;; Incidentally, I want volume 6 to have Hiramaru on it! Or maybe Aoki. Or both.

Ah... why can't Kimi ni Todoke be a daily anime? ^^; And I still haven't found the raws of chapters 39 and 40, even though they supposedly contain some really interesting and important scenes with Sawako and Kazehaya... I've started reading Crazy For You though - it's also a romance shoujo manga done by Karuho Shiina-sensei. It's very interesting, though it also seems to be darker than Kimi ni Todoke. I mean, it's a teenage romance and not a thriller or anything, but it's psychologically dark in my opinion. Or maybe I just feel this way because I'm not a very passionate person, unlike the heroine. ;;; Anyway, it's pretty great. Also, this is completely off-topic, but in case you're into such things, I have a Plurk account now. I'll probably use it to kill time at work (because in some cases it's easier to use than my normal blog). ^^; Feel free to contact me there! My username is hiramaru, which is the last name of a certain character from Baku-man who resembles me in several unflattering ways. ^^;;; He's extremely lazy like me.

October is going to be hard for me (due to yet another conference ;;; I've just received the list of tasks and boy, I don't like the way it looks - too damn long and quite intimidating >.>;), but I'm planning to find some time for Avatar: The Last Airbender. I think I need to watch this series after all. Nearly everyone around me seems to like it a lot, and I did enjoy the first 3 episodes. I'll probably end up shipping Zuko x Mai - I don't even know much about them, only some random spoilers, but... I suspect that Mai is my type. There's something highly attractive about her face, and it's not only her features, it's her dark, sarcastic expression and everything. And really, I just want to know more about modern Western cartoons (that are not Pixar's animated movies).

I'm going to have an extra day off this Friday (because it's our university's 50th anniversary). This is exactly what I need right now, to be honest. Also, my art lessons are about to start again! Yay. AS ALWAYS, I NEED TO DRAW MORE.

I... didn't really do anything useful today. Um, well, I wrote a very silly Death Note fanfic for my favorite contest community. I also saw the finale of Aoi Hana and loved it immensely, even more than the corresponding parts of the manga. And that was my day. Tomorrow's going to be tough for me. My Fridays tend to suck. >.>;;; Only Friday evenings are okay because you can really feel that you're done with your work... at least for a while. ^^;;; Ah well. I need to stop complaining, most of my friends work so much more than I do. ;;;

The dean's secretary is giving out small info pamphlets about the H1N1 virus. Haha... um, I think I have a couple of symptoms (the milder ones). o.o;;; Thankfully, it's not NAUSEA or PAINS IN THE WHOLE BODY, as the pamphlet says. ^^;;; I'm not scared, just... uh, curious? I don't want to get sick though, or rather, I need to be healthy on Wednesday because I'm planning to give my friend her (somewhat late) birthday present, damnit.

I'm slightly drunk (today we had a small party at our department... I took one sip of red wine and my mind went completely blank in less than a minute @.@;;; I'm not a drinker at all, and I don't even act funny when I'm drunk, I just become sleepy and apathetic like a brick), but I still want to talk about Baku-man! The newest spoilers are behind the cut because they're pretty big. ( SPOILERS ) Man, do I love rambling about this series. Death Note is my top favorite because I'm fiercely loyal to Teru (that's why I torture him so much, OBVIOUSLY), but Baku-man just... has nearly everything I'm interested in, and it's realistic. I want my volume 4 to arrive soon. *.* Unless I'm mistaken, it contains the chapter where Aoki appears for the first time, among other things. ♥

This is completely random, but our doujinshi project fills me with happiness whenever I look at the main site or at the list of buyers. *.* Seriously, this book is more successful than some of our university department's publications. ^^;;;

So how are you, folks? I'm searching for freelance job offers (somewhat desperately because most of my skills are useless ;;; and nobody needs people like me) and reading The Flower of Evil, a Korean manhwa about incest. It seems interesting so far, very dramatic and twisted, though I guess I can't recommend it to people who are seriously squicked by incest - the heroine is extremely obsessed with her brother and their relationship is quite dark. I like creepy love stories, so it doesn't bother me at all - rather, I find it absolutely fascinating. And the artwork is pretty, too. Oh, and the title is a reference to Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, which is awesome in itself.

Hmm... now that I'm done with my doujinshi work, I really need to start doing something else. >.>;;; The problem is that I honestly don't feel like doing anything even remotely big, which... is sad and alarming, I'm not supposed to be tired after a whole month of vacations without ANY kind of work (short part-time job doesn't count, it wasn't hard at all, heck, it was actually kind of entertaining, in fact). But... I really don't want to return to the office, I'm not in the mood for drawing, which is awful because drawing IS my greatest hobby, in theory (or rather... I simply like it more than most other kinds of activities ;;;), and don't get me started on my dissertation, I don't want to touch that thing with a mile-long pole. I guess I'll have to continue writing it someday, but, argh, it's painful to even think about it. =.=;;; There are moments when I totally feel like Hiramaru from Baku-man, and I don't work as much as that guy does, to be fair. x.x;;; Bah. Or maybe I just hate mornings, especially rainy ones.

Hah... I feel so guilty when I look at my favorite artists' galleries, they dedicate so much of their time to drawing, while I... eh. Sorry, I'm in a weird mood. Perhaps I should just go and find myself some more freelance work and improve my mental state by manipulating people into giving me money. Oh well. It's not that bad. I'm reading Skip Beat! and Bride of the Water God (a Korean comic based on an old legend). Skip Beat! is very funny, but somehow it's hard for me to read... I have no idea why, but it makes my eyes feel tired. @.@ It's odd, I have excellent eyesight and normally I never feel tired after reading (and I read A LOT all the time), yet there's something about Skip Beat!'s page layouts that makes this manga difficult for me to digest. It's seriously strange and a bit sad because I actually like Skip Beat!, and Nakamura-sensei's style is just so pretty, and heck, I want to be able to discuss it with my friend who's a big fan. Eh. Whatever. Bride of the Water God is amazing though, and the author is only 4 years older than me! I don't want to be a professional comic artist... being a doujinshi artist is enough... but I must work harder in order to catch up with these awesome people. I like how it is connected to the ancient tradition of human sacrifices. Another great manga is Mousou Shoujo Otakukei, which you can read here! It's a story of a BL fangirl who loves yaoi and doujinshi more than anything else, but as far as I understand it, there's no actual BL content (only in her fantasies). ^^;

Yesterday we went to the beach (for the second time this summer!) and Kito brought us our huge manga package. Heh... group orders are awesome because you can get something for yourself and look at other people's books for free. Anyway, I got my 3 new books (Baku-man, Vampire Knight and Natsume Yuujinchou) and flipped through my friends' manga. I also received the payment for my, er... random freelance work. ^^ I have to thank Kito for this, too. ♥ Greed is my favorite Fullmetal Alchemist character for a very good reason, yes. I'll probably waste it very soon, but right now it looks so nice in my wallet... ≧∇≦ Alright! Let's look for other money-making strategies! \*∆*/ Oh, and Vampire Knight is just too pretty with its Yuuki x Yori cover, and so is Natsume Yuujinchou, and Baku-man, well - I finally have a book with lots and lots of fantastic Eiji-centric scenes in it! Hmm... Oh, yeah, I saw episode 2 of Aoi Hana today. I won't blog about this series regularly (I'm afraid I'm too lazy and unorganized for proper anime-blogging), but I definitely will fangirl about it from time to time because it's beautiful and I love Akira to death.

I downloaded a DVD rip of Twilight from our local P2P network and watched it during supper. Hey, I had to relax after several hours of freelance work! The movie was... slightly more entertaining than the book. Edward and Bella's interaction felt awkward and some scenes creeped me out majorly, but overall, it was... amusing? And I liked Alice. She was pretty and rather charming. Heh, I have a feeling that most people like Alice even if they aren't exactly crazy about Twilight in general. Oh, and I... loved the woods around Forks. I'd like to take a walk at such a place (...not with Edward though; his sparkly skin makes me think of various icky diseases and... not sex, sorry). We have woods here where I live, too, but they're different, and what's worse, they're getting cut down... =.=; but that's a whole another story, I'll rant about it later. Hmm... now I want to work on my original vampire stories again. I don't read that much vampire fiction (I only really like Vampire Knight and Dracula, as well as various movie adaptations of Dracula, preferably parodies), but I do love vampires as mythological creatures, and my own stories... well, I'm not planning to write them down anytime soon, but they're just fun to think about. By the way, my vampires are not undead humans; they're a different species, so you can't get turned into a vampire in my universe.

Damn, I don't want to work on Sunday. =.=;;; But I'll probably have to, which is a shame because I really want to go to the anime club and eat some Japanese food and have fun. x.x;;; But since fun is, apparently, not the most important thing in life, I'll have to come to the office on Sunday and do some mind-numbingly dull stuff. And... yes, I know that adult life is all about jobs and duties and responsibilities and such. It still doesn't make me want to work on Sundays (even if it's just one Sunday, IT'S STILL ONE WHOLE DAY OF MY PRICELESS LIFE), especially since I will never get any extra payment for this. BUT I can't refuse because my permanently butthurt co-workers won't allow me to. Meh. I guess I need to make up a religion of some sort and tell everyone that I absolutely must attend my church on Sundays or God will smite me into oblivion (Teru might work as a prototype of this deity, he does tend to be rather harsh to people who dare to disagree with his loony ideas). You miss one day, you get a divine roundhouse kick in the face, kind of like that. Only, you know, nobody's gonna buy that because I'm an atheist and everyone is very aware of that. >.>; And yes, I always whine this much when I get extra hours. I've already told you about my laziness. ^^;

My blood pressure dropped pretty drastically after lunch. It was... quite unpleasant and it rendered me helpless for the rest of the day. I'm mostly alright now, but I guess I won't be able to exercise or draw in the evening. x.x; Meh. There's nothing particularly unusual about that, I'm not an Energizer bunny in general, but it's annoying... sometimes I refuse to do various important things out of sheer laziness and sometimes I don't feel strong enough to do them, and in the end, I... just don't do much at all (it's a miracle that I STILL have a job, actually). =∇=;;; I like sleeping and spacing out. ;;; I wish I were a purebred domestic cat. Nobody scolds THEM if they spend the whole day doing nothing, it's even considered kind of cute. ;;; Haha, okay, I'm just kidding, but... yes.

Meh. I hate the fact that I always get headaches after almost any kind of group work. ~.~;;; ALWAYS.

If my work doesn't kill me (PRAY FOR ME, FOLKS), I'll draw the last page of my doujinshi next week. Please don't expect anything impressive though, it'll be a drabble with several pictures, pretty much (b-but I guess all Teru x Kiyomi works are at least somewhat valuable because they're so rare? RIGHT?). =.=;;; Gah. I can't stop looking at Sumomo Yumeka-sensei's manga... she's so good, I don't even know how to imitate her style. It's completely beyond my understanding. I mean, I don't want to copy her, that's not the point, my goal is simply to reach her level (her and Obata-sensei's... and Himemiko-san's...). Which... is too high, unfortunately. Then again, if the rumors are true and she is a Studio Ghibli layout artist, she has to be very talented. Hmm... Perhaps I just need to calm down and learn how to treat manga as pure entertainment, especially since I will never become a pro artist for many reasons (and I honestly don't want drawing to be my job, in fact, I'm not suited for creative jobs), so my fierce competitiveness is rather pointless, but. I dunno. I love art and comics so much, my passion is greater than my actual skills. =∇=

Episode 9 was very cute and less dramatic than the previous ones. ^^ Yui's entire family (even her little brother) fell for Eugene and Liren! ^^;;; It made me laugh. But Yui's one true love is still Kajika because EVERYONE is in love with Kajika. By the way, I'm planning to buy volume 6 of the new edition of the manga in summer. I'd like to draw some Hanasakeru Seishounen fanart, too... only, you know, LATER. Right now I'm busy with Teru-related things. Not that I MIND being busy with Teru-related things, no, I like Teru much more than, say, my job or my dissertation. Ha. =.=;

Writing fanfiction at work is slowly becoming a little bad habit of mine. Today I wrote a story about Teru's poor crazy mom. Warning: in this fic, she's convinced that Teru is a demon child (although she does love him very much), so she might come across as a... somewhat... spooky individual. Normally I don't write her in this manner, but eh. I like horror stories that involve insane mothers and creepy children? Also, I'm extremely interested in this project. I've always wanted to draw something for a Death Note anthology - something about Teru, of course, because it's not like I have any other hobbies or loves. ^^;

Huh. So one of my worst enemies is known in some circles for her blatantly racist remarks about our Siberian-Asian students. Well, damn. I used to think that our mutual animosity was simply a result of our psychological incompatibility and my own bad social skills, but no, it seems that she's a hateful and arrogant person who treats nearly everyone like dirt for stupid reasons (and I do believe that racism is not a sign of great intelligence because... um... well... do I need to explain it?). Ugh. I'm... seriously disgusted because racism is the very last thing I want to see in my region's most important university.