Hope those few of you who actually read me continue to do enjoy doing so :)

The obligatory bleach episode falls on episode three this time. The early “yay playing at the beach” portion was pretty satisfying too; the well-endowed female characters were pretty well-drawn.

The episode as a whole wasn’t anything especially great, but it was definitely quite a step up from the previous one– there was a greater sense of urgency and tension this time, along with less pointless dillydallying. Still, for a series only twelve episodes long, I’d expect there to have been more development of plot and character than there has been up to this point. It’s a full one-fourth of the way in and the viewer still hasn’t really been given a whole lot of information concerning the setting and the characters all still seem pretty flat.

In any case, I’ll give this another episode or two to pick up before I give up on it; the art and music are enjoyable enough for it to not be a complete waste of time. As I mentioned last time, it’s really not that there’s anything bad about the show, but it doesn’t do much particularly well either; there are just better shows going on that are better to spend time watching right now rather than something merely average like this.

Downey, 24, has pleaded guilty for operating a botnet and computer fraud. Asking his reasons behind performing DDoS attacks U.S. District Judge Nancy G. Edmunds heard his reply: “I was doing it because I could, more than anything,” Downey replied. “It was a dumb thing to do.”

Downey will hear his sentence on October 10th.

I hope this doesn’t mean that the Rizon network is going to go down, assuming this is true. I’d imagine that being quite inconvenient for a large number of people.

This is an impressive video of someone drawing a picture of Reisen using only html. You might want to turn your volume down or off before watching the video though, because I found the song playing throughout quite irritating.

Simon and Nia were both up to mostly more of the same this episode, with Simon being the central element of the battle plan with Nia mostly cheering from the sidelines. Nia wanting to find a way to help out was certainly cute, even though the results don’t seem to have been particularly great. Simon, on the other hand, managed to make the Gurren-Lagann even more powerful by attaching a pair of wings to form the GUNDAM-LAGANN. (It would’ve been awesome if they actually called it that.) Also, I enjoyed the more large-scale battle here; instead of simply being some duels between the Gurren-Lagann and a beastman officer, this was a large battle between everyone on the Dai-Gurren and everyone on the Dai-Ganten, with the “grunts” on both sides doing a fair amount of the fighting. As much as I hate to think about it, I have a feeling that she’s eventually going to be killed. And now it looks like both the Gurren-Lagann and the Dai-Gurren are going to be able to fly. Neat.

Yoko’s character seems to be moving towards playing a more mother/older sister relationship with Simon here (perhaps Misato-like would be the most fitting comparison here, since this is a GAINAX show). This is probably the natural direction for her to take since Kamina’s no longer around, and her having an actual romantic relationship with Simon would be more than a little creepy.

The most interesting character to me this episode, though, was definitely Viral. Him finding out that he had been losing not to Kamina, for whom he had already shown a high level of respect, but to a child was obviously crushing to him, but then later on he shows having grown a respect for humans in general. This drove him to even daringly ask the Helix King a question that does not appear to have an answer that would be pleasant to most Beastmen. I really wonder what the Helix King is going to tell him about humans.

Jaalin said it best, so I’m just going to repeat him: “In terms of sheer volume of enjoyment, the other shows don’t even come close to this.” Also, the title of the next episode is “Farewell, Everyone.” I certainly hope that doesn’t mean what I think it might.