Food

Today’s entry shall be food based in honor of Thanksgiving. Though it is not a holiday for glory if you look at the true historical aspects of it…… a man comes and invades a culture’s homelands and rapes and kills them, brings disease and such. Anyway back to the food. Asian food of course, I shall start off with Miso, みそ. Miso is a traditional ingredient in Japanese food, most people know it from Miso soup but miso is found in many soups and other foods. It is made by fermenting, the process of converting carbs to alcohols and carbon dioxide or organic acids, it uses yeast or bacteria. It also eliminates anti-nutrients which tend to suck out the nutrients foods tend to claim they give.  Fermenting rice, barley and sometimes soy, there are some misos found without soy for those who are allergic, be sure to check though, most miso is made with soy.  It is high in protein, vitamins, and minerals. Most people say it is salty and bitter but I find it has a bittersweet taste. It comes in multiple kinds, mainly red or white. It is easy to use, most recipes I have seen you tend to add it toward the end by dissolving it in a small amount of the food’s hot liquid then reheating the food to activate enzymes. I recommend trying it.
Next Soy sauce, a very common soy(obvious) ingredient, it is also fermented, I recommend getting Temari or good soy sauce with no gmos. The little packet’s in the Chinese restaurant are not recommended. Soy sauce originated in China but it used presently all over the world. Primarily in Asian food this condiment is salty, no doubt about it I will admit I use to hate it but now I use it a lot, probably should I heard a good soy sauce sub is Braggs Amino Acids which is really good for you. Both are good in moderation though. You can eat it with, on or in any food just about.  Make sure to put some in your Ramen ;].

Next! Ramen, the most common food in America I am sure, most people hear Ramen they think of the long noodles and poor college students, it is cheap, actually the food store last time I went had it on sale 6 packets for 1 dollar :D I was happy. Now information about it, it is made from Chinese wheat noodles and normally found in meat or fish broth.  Not needed though you can do it with Veggie broth or plain water you season with your own seasonings. Normally found in a traditional Ramen is soy sauce and or miso, toppings like sliced pork or mean, dried seaweed, kamaboko which is a white fish paste like thing commonly related with Naruto, also green onions, and corn.  Honestly I just use the noodles ditch the seasoning packet put in some garlic and onion, powdered normally but sometimes fresh minced garlic when I have a cold, then marjoram, thyme,  sea salt, fresh ground pepper and cayenne. Then I put in extras, a teaspoon of miso, soy sauce, and green onion sometimes sesame seeds on top. Nothing like the traditional Ramen but I like it.
I may talk more about food in a later post but these three things are the most common in America I think.

FLCL review

FLCL, Fooly Cooly or Furi Kuri, depending on what variation of the name you hear doesn’t matter they are all the same anime. FLCL is a pure spoof comedy, taking random things and placing them in the show to make it funny, but at the same time it keeps the mind working in a psychological way. FLCL was viewable a few years ago on Adult Swim but was taken off the air, no reason said but I have a feeling people complained about it, perhaps for over airing it since FLCL is a 6 episode anime it ran over and over many times, least 10 run through which normally it is hard to have Animes run through twice in a month while FLCL had 4 runs in one weekend.

FLCL is about Naoto a 12 year old boy who encounters an alien woman Haruko who is on Earth for her own personal reasons; mainly it looks like she just wants to cause trouble always getting Naoto into bad situations. The first episode she even ran him over with her vespa, if that isn’t a weird hello then I do not know what it. There are other major characters, Mamimi, Naoto’s brother (who is never seen in the anime)’s ex girlfriend who shows she is also close to Naoto, though I think it is just her way of coping with the lost of her boyfriend who is studying aboard in America at the time of the show. Canti, who is a robot from Medical Machina, a supposed to be governmental organization whose plans for  the town are not revealed until the end, I won’t say what they are since that would spoil the ending.

There are also Minor characters,Kamon, and Shigekuni, who are Naoto’s father and grandfather, Amarao and Kitsurubami who are agents of Interstellar Immigration in charge of getting rid of Haruko. Then Ninamroi and Naoto’s other class mates, their importance is minimal. Then there is another character that in my mind is important but he is never seen till the end, Atomsk, you will learn about him if you watch FLCL.

FLCL is a crazy anime featuring spoofs of South park, and Lupin the III, among other things, it even uses manga style art as a joke in it for humor. It is a highly recommended anime if you ever have a rainy day with nothing to do and need a laugh. It gets a 4 out of 5 rating.

Highschool of the Dead (学園黙示録, Gakuen Mokushirok, "Academy Apocalypse") is a mature, I repeat mature anime and manga, I know I said I would try to keep it to pg-13 reviews but… where is the fun in fluff? In this review I will be talking about the 1^st season of the Anime not the manga, both are still ongoing but season one of the anime is complete with 12 episodes. It can be found on animeready.com or through torrents.

Like I said this anime is mature, it is basically a fan service series with women with large breast put into awkward sexy positions, but that is not all it is about. It is also an extremely psychological thriller highly recommended.  The basics of the series is following the main characters, Takashi Komuro, Rei Miyamoto,  Saeko Busujima, Saya Takagi, Kohta Hirano, Shizuka Marikawa, Alice Maresato and Zeke…. Zeke is a dog just so you all know. Takashi, Rei, Saeko, Saya and Kohta are high school students who up until one day were going about their lives normal, as normal as it could be. They all had their ups and downs. Takashi was love smitten with his best friend Rei who when they were children promised to marry him in the future but when they were in high school she began to date Takashi’s other friend Hisashi, this character is minor he doesn’t last long, but after Hisashi is gone Rei is back to loving Takashi basically, and jealous of any of the other girls if they get too close. Typical and realistic personality for Rei, Takashi is one of those, not wannabe bad boy, but the border of a bad boy, doesn’t really care about school too much but still tires, he Is a driven young man who will work hard to protect those he love. Saeko is a “traditional Japanese girl” as says Saya’s father in a later episode, she is the president of the school’s kendo club, extremely skilled at swordmenship, this is her primary weapon, she starts off with a wooden sword though, still kicks butt with it but that is because she is simply awesome. She tends to show some romantic attraction to Takashi but it isn’t confirmed if she likes him or not, she does though say she loves a man, but doesn’t say who. I cannot wait to find out whom. Next is Saya, self proclaimed genius, she may get perfect grades and know just about everything, I would not call her a genius, just smart, she lack some of the common sense and is a spoiled little brat in the start. She uses Kohta to keep her safe and alive so she can meet up with Takashi who she has a crush on. So far she is the best off because she knows her parents are safe, Kohta was bullied in school and Saya doesn’t help that. He is a “gun Otaku” knows just about every gun under the sun it seems. Next to Takashi and Saeko I think he is also cool, he maybe fat and nerdy but he knows how to keep himself and his friends safe.

Now the other main characters, are Shizuka, the school nurse…. She is an air head and a dimwit honestly, pure dumb blonde syndrome on that woman, most of the blood in her body must be going to her breasts and not her brain…… anyway, she helps very little with the fighting but helps drive the vehicles that keep them safe, at first they use a microbus the school would use for club matches, then a tank like truck…. Actually I think it was a tank… a small one but still a tank they got from her friend Rika who is a part of the Japan’s SAT (special assault team), along with guns and some clothes but that’s trivial facts.

The next two are major but minor characters at the same time, Alice is a 2^nd grader Takashi and Kohta saved and Zeke is a random puppy they found, not much on them at the moment.

Now I bet you are wondering why I am talking about being saved, or weapons and stuff…. Well the main part of this series is zombies. The is a Zombie pandemic and within a few hours of their normal morning everything goes downhill and they are now on the run to try and keep themselves safe and alive and find out if their families are alive or not.  Like I said the anime is only done with season 1 so I do not have much on it, the manga is further but why split hairs over details.

High School of the Dead gets a  9.8 out of 10, amazing animation, plot and character development but nothing is ever perfect so I can’t give it a 10, but that is as close as I will go. More will come for this in another review when season 2 is done and subbed.

Fan Fictions

Fan Fictions, my love, my true and only love. What is a Fan fiction you ask, the name says it all it is a Fictional writing by a fan for their favorite show, movie, game, and everything else under the sun. If it exists somewhere there is a fan fiction of some form written about it. You can read just about anything in a fan fiction, found on many site, two most popular ones are Fanfiction.net and Adultfanfiction. net along with some minor ones like animespiral, you can find live journals of only fan fictions, deviant art accounts where people write their fan fictions. There are many degrees of fan fictions, simple child ones where they take an event in a show and change it to be cute and fun, too hard core erotica fan fictions where they take two of their favorite characters, sometimes not even in the same show, have them meet and put them in the raunchiest sex ever. Some terms one should know when going to look for a fan fiction is, slash, het, fluff, the / or x, yaoi, yuri and more. Now if you are against gays or do not like reading things about gay sex avoid slash, yaoi, yuri or stories where they have / or x with two character of the same gender. If you do not like sex avoid yaoi, yuri, het (which stands for Hentai which means pervert in Japanese and is used to tell you that the story has sex in it.) also avoid common words like erotica and sex. Now if you just want a cute fanfic avoid M rated ones, T and lower maybe your speed, also look for the fluff ones, they will sometimes be labeled Fluff.

the girl who leap through time

The Girl who leap through time, an amazing, realistic drama movie, sad and heart aching toward the end. Highly recommended, and easy to find using animecrazy.net, only bad thing about the site is the mirror they use for streaming is megavideo which has a time limit, the movie goes over this time limit so you have to watch it in 2 sittings, unless you can figure out a way to get around the time limit.
The girl who leap through time is about a girl, Makoto who was living an easy life, had its normal up and downs, her two main friends, the two other main characters Chiaki and Kousuke would play baseball after school or just hang out. One day, one very bad day for  while doing afternoon duty at school Makoto needed to bring the class books up to what looked like a science room, I am assuming this is the storage room for their books, the movie didn’t come out and say why she was in that exact room to put the books away. While putting the books away she heard a noise in the closet, going into investigate she found a nutshell looking object on the floor while inspecting it she heard a noise behind her, while turning she tripped and fell on it. After that she started having weird moments, before she learned this was a “leap” she simply thought of it as feinting. When she told her friends about this they simply thought she was crazy and had head trauma.  To explain what a Time leaper is exactly is easy, a time leaper is someone who can travel through time. To choice moments of life, when Makoto first learned she could leap she did it for personal trivial things. , going back and eating her pudding instead of letting her sister steal it, to doing Karaoke with her friends Chiaki and Kousuke over and over.  Then she started think about doing things for others, to help them, but as she started this her aunt warned her that fi she altered certain events, worst things would happen. While she redid her bad day, she ruined the life of a boy who had to put up with the humiliation of ruining a cooking class and starting a fire, and then he was bullied aggressively. After that, as things started to look up she was working on setting up her friend with a girl, avoiding the confession Chiaki only to almost lose Kousuke to an accident when her bike breaks didn’t work. It was then she realized she had a limit of leaps, and only a few left, she worked then on correcting her mistakes and making everything better. Too not spoil the good parts of the movie I shall end here. This movie would be a 4.5 out of 5 rivaling to movies like spirited away and howl’s moving castle.  With that, remember Time waits for no one.