Sometimes I just don't want to read 400 page novels. Not very often, admittedly. But sometimes.

[marshtide]

I'm waiting on a start date for my next course still, and in the meantime I'm doing some adjusting and taking life a bit easy where possible.

I've actually been watching some anime, too! I confess to having picked fairly brainless or low-effort things this time around, which describes almost nothing in the list of things I've been working my way slowly through otherwise, so new stuff all around! More or less.

1. Chi's Sweet Home. Adorable kitten anime? Tailor made for my current non-existent attention-span at just a couple of minutes an episode. Possibly the only thing I could realistically marathon 20 episodes of at the moment. So far gloriously content-free and pretty much like watching a cat in gleeful play mode without having to clear up the aftermath. (The demon kitten watched it with me, with some interest. But not so much interest as he displayed in the Wild Russia nature program that SVT ran over the weekend, which was basically the most exciting thing ever.)

2. Azumanga Daioh. I have to admit I haven't read the actual manga yet, which isn't the way around I usually do things when given an easy choice between the two. The manga is sitting on the shelf in the bedroom and everything. But it's the omnibus, which is to say, slightly larger than my Swedish-English dictionary, which is a disincentive to carrying it around with me. Anyway, I love Yotsuba&! so very, very much, and I had no reason to think I would dislike Azumanga Daioh, and naturally I don't. It's pretty great in a random way.

2. Mushishi. This one theoretically isn't new, but I started watching in in 2006 and only saw an episode or so before getting lost somewhere under university work, so we'll call it new. Beautiful and oddly peaceful? Yeah. It's doing good things for me just now.

I've got some other things lined up that I could watch, but these are all working for me, so I think they're basically what's on the agenda right now.

Comments

[annotated_em]

*delighted* Yay, you're watching Mushishi? Isn't it gorgeous and lovely? I swear I like to just sit and drool over the animation.

[marshtide]

It really is beautiful, I'm impressed with it. And it's working ever so well for my general mental state this week.

[dancing_moon]

The Mushishi manga is also a very nice read - it's all these lovely gray-toned watercolor-y images and sparse dialogue.

The feeling in that manga, this sense of awe before the nature and associations it manages to ewoke (I swear I could smell autumn during one chapter of Mushishi) is quite relaxing. Meditative manga, somehow

Have you seen Lucky Star? It's very much like Azumanga, yet many people only like the one or the other. I personally prefer Lucky Star, but I'm always interested in hearing what people like in series I don't like (that is, if my dislike is for reasons others than "meh, mainstream crap, seen this before")

[marshtide]

I haven't seen it, no! I'd maybe be willing to give it a shot, and I'd definitely find it interesting to compare them properly (in the past the visual style has made me wary of Lucky Star without knowing much else about it, I think). On the other hand the whole genre isn't one I've looked a huge amount at, and I picked up Azumanga Daioh in the first place largely because I knew the manga was by the guy who did Yotsuba&!, which I think is brilliant and hilarious. I'm not convinced that Azumanga Daioh is as good, but I'm still enjoying it so far. (I haven't seen huge piles of it; Mushishi is the one which I've really latched onto just now. Meditative is a pretty good description for the anime, too, I think.)

[dancing_moon]

I'm not all that into the slice of life genre either, but I've seen Azumanga Daioh at cons (and I agree - Yotsuba is much better). And a friend showed me Lucky Star

I've heard Lucky Star dissed as "cute girls for nerd boys to watch" but, honestly, as a pretty damn nerdy girl I really recognized myself in their little discussions about nothing. It's also not as overtly sexualised as many for-über-nerds animes, so I enjoyed it. But it's veeery mellow, not a good series to marathon

[crystal]

I love all three of these <3