10 Second Anime - Soul Eater Not! - Episode 4

Soul Eater Not! - Episode 4

Tsugumi tries to figure out her goals at Death Weapon Meister Academy. Bloomers, 1; Anya, 0. Clay could write for soap operas.

Heh.

Gargantos watch: nope. I was looking for it too.

Tsugumi's so bold! Kyaa! Asking Akane out to a café just like that.

I like the little touches this fua-fua cute girls doing cute things show does. First, we have Tsugumi making sure that Akane has the cheesecake instead of her. Then we have her shuffling her chair next to Clay to ask him a question.

Clay may be able to add a lot of details when he's surprised, but the original thought of trying to place Akane's "interest" on someone else to keep the cover on their mission was where he went wrong. It seems clear now that Clay and Akane's mission is to protect Anya, and probably because she just ran away from home, but the royal family is keeping tabs on her just the same.

Meme likes to roam around in her sleep, but how does she get naked AND dirty? I hope we get an episode where we join her on her nightly excursions.

Anya may have overcome the short skirt for her maid uniform, but bloomers for her PE uniform? Impossible!

Finds from the Grind - San Dimas Fruit Stand

San Dimas Fruit Stand

Starberry Farms in San Dimas, California.

10 Second Anime - Yowamushi Pedal - Episode 29

Yowamushi Pedal - Episode 29

Climbing rivals get their chance at a final showdown. Peak Spider versus Forest Sleeping Beauty/Ninja. The ace race begins soon after.

Heh.

Toudou had his fan club out in force, but he couldn't enjoy it because Makishima wasn't there.

The look of pure joy Toudou had when he realized Makishima had caught up had me totally shedding man-tears. All that anticipation for their final climb during the week, to be disappointed by a crash, and then to have their last chance to race each other in a high school tournament realized, all that was solid gold.

That poor guy from Nagano thought he had it in the bag, and then he saw these two just yelling each other's names as they passed him. Heartbreak.

If only they could have shared this one moment for longer:

10 Second Anime - Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Episode 4

Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Episode 4

Tatsuya has some explaining to do. No, I mean, he explains a lot about the magical world and its factions and enemies. Plus, blushing power and frozen jealousy.

Heh.

People are starting to get the lovey-dovey siblings routine. Except for Mizuki. She's still hoping!

Our BAMF didn't have much to do this week, except show off another one of his superpowers: the ability to make any girl blush!

Finds from the Grind - Azusa Roundabouts

Azusa Roundabouts

Rolling through the roundabouts in Azusa.

Omake Gif Anime - Seikoku no Dragonar - Episode 1 - Navi

Seikoku no Dragonar - Episode 1 - Navi

NSFW for animated... something

Navi sure likes to have "fun" with Ash during his dreams.

I've been watching the Funimation simulcast, so I had no idea how high the degree of censorship that was going on with this show. Whole minutes and scenes are being cut out, and there's not even nudity, just very suggestive stuff. The scenes must be the extra "service" that will be on the Blurays, but the other amount of censoring is very heavy handed, and deserved. There's a scene with the zombie dragon in a later episode when it takes Eco into its body, and the orifice looked just like a vagina. The Funimation version just blacked everything out, so it looked like Eco fell into a dark hole. And the tentacles springing out of something that looks like a sphincter... Let me just say, this show is great!

10 Second Anime - Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou - Episode 4

Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou - Episode 4

Sayaka's mindgames provide much fodder for misunderstandings, but also examination of friendship rules and narrow perspectives. Shiro can sound cool, sometimes.

Heh.

I realized that Sayaka could be a play on 災厄 (saiyaku), which means disaster, calamity, or accident. It's certainly true from what we've seen so far with how she wraps men around her little finger.

Usa deliberately narrowed his perspective so he would not take hints from Ritsu to leave her alone. Somehow he convinced himself it was okay to be "pushy." Oh boy, girls really don't like pushy guys, Usa-kun.

The show made it pretty clear we should watch out for this narrow perspective by showing us a frog in a well, and then by showing us one of the books Ritsu reads is titled "A Frog in a Deep Well." This is a Japanese idiom for illustrating that a frog in a deep well doesn't see much except for the small hole looking up at the sky.

Mayumi can't hide her disappointment and mean-spirited joy that her uppity friend broke up with her rich boyfriend, but this means the little party with all the rich boyfriend's friends won't be happening.

Weekly Ride Report - 4/21/14 - 4/26/14

Date	Route	Course	Ride Time	Total Time	Distance	Avg Speed	Altitude	Max Altitude	Max Speed	Odometer
04/21/14	Rose Bowl Laps	Flat	00:54:21	00:57:43	16.4	18.1	658	962	27.2	32101
04/22/14	ToC Circuits	Climb	00:58:29	01:01:04	16.6	17.0	892	949	34.2	32118
04/23/14	Rose Bowl Laps	Flat	00:55:11	01:00:48	16.4	17.8	676	952	27.2	32134
04/24/14	Rose Bowl Ramps	Climb	00:55:52	01:00:34	15.3	16.4	829	978	28.7	32150
04/25/14	Rose Bowl Laps	Flat	00:55:59	00:57:47	16.4	17.6	697	959	28.7	32166
04/26/14	San Dimas Fruit Stand	Rolling	02:41:28	03:22:03	43.4	16.1	2459	1001	36.5	32210
		Total Time	07:21:20	Total Distance	124.5	Total Climb	6211

Shock Block is over, so now I get an extra day of rest. This last week was hard, and I only made one new personal best for the year, but the other times were terrible. This was to be expected though, since I was working parts of my legs that need improvement, but the rest of the time loss was due to windy days. Especially my Saturday ride, where I had a headwind for an hour on my way back from San Dimas. Plus, I lost all my momentum with having to change a flat when the headwind got the strongest.

You know, I like looking at happy clouds, but when those happy clouds are moving across the Sun, that means you'll have a windy time. Happy for them, not so much for me on the bike.

10 Second Anime - Blade and Soul - Episode 4

Blade and Soul - Episode 4

Aruka's fevered dreams show informative flashbacks. Bad things happen to those who use the sword for themselves.

Heh.

Elle Karen is pretty good at dodging rice buns.

The kids who were taking care of Aruka had the running joke of stealing food from the butcher, but that string of thefts will end at 16.

Eh?!

Aruka's master is a little old dog-type person?

Geh.

Two of the Pleasure Gang dudes survived, and one of them was the biggest, dumbest one they had.

Hmm.

We had quite a bit of exposition through Aruka's fevered flashbacks of her master, the butterfly mark, and the blue flowers. We still don't know exactly how the pink mark works, but it is effective against dark powers. The master had said that one can't fight the darkness through the sword alone, and I found it interesting that the mark finished curing Aruka of the Impurity only when she picked up her sword to defend the kids from the local mafia.

The master also called the blue flowers poison, but a poison that can be used to show or identify demonic powers. There might be an illicit trade in them because they make people high by altering their perceptions. We know the Flower Monks are using them to juice up their own mercenaries.

I appreciated the ambiguous handling of the two kids Seto and Pia. Seto may have always had a dark streak in him, or perhaps he was traumatized by seeing someone cut down in front of him and then having to kill someone in self-defense, but whichever the case, holding the sword changed his personality, or revealed it. This tied in neatly with Aruka's dreams of her master explaining that one must use the sword to live, not to kill. That Seto died trying to protect his sister offered some redemption for his actions, or perhaps just added another layer to his tragic story. I like that. Sometimes bad things happen, and it's up to the observers to make their own sense of the events.

Also, Pia showed that she was the stronger of the siblings, by mourning her brother, and immediately changing her circumstances by asking Karen for a job. Maybe Seto was always holding them back from rejoining civil society, and now Pia can have a chance to shine. This was all good. You don't see this kind of straightforward storytelling in anime very much, with inner dialogue, or long scenes of outer dialogue, being very much the standard practice. Perhaps having a laconic hero without a lot of lines lets the other characters also tell their stories by doing stuff, instead of standing around talking to themselves.

SchmoBlog 50,000!

Sometime last week (Sitemeter gives total sums from visitors with data a week old), Joeschmo's Gears and Grounds hit 50,000 unique visitors. I only hit 40,000 last September, but the other big round numbers of 30k and 20k each took two years to aggregate. What happened, besides just me blogging more? Take a look.

Something happened last August, and the September numbers started to reflect that. What happened in August? I added the feature 10 Second Anime. People like pictures, and if they move, they like them even more. Add in niche culture with not uncommon flights toward art, and people will jam their search engines looking for it.

I have been watching anime since before I started the blog, but never wrote much about it. But once I found a quick workflow for making animated gifs, and married it to one of my interests, which can make blog posts that aren't just walls of words, my own blogging hobby revitalized. I don't write much about coffee these days, and the gears and grounds parts mainly refer to my cycling habit, but anime is definitely technology in pop culture. Blogging used to be the social media back in the mid-2000's, because even then, adults didn't really want to be on myspace. Now with more mature social media platforms, blogging has become more corporate, because the personal blog for most people was what they were looking for before Facebook, and then Twitter, provided that way of easily sharing stuff found on the web with their friends.

For me, I still like writing long posts, but for people to find your posts, you also have to make something to go with it. Blogging has to include some kind of media now for people to find it, to grab their attention, or to react to it. That could be pictures, video, or even links. Facebook looks more like a blog these days, with multiple columns, but a main body with many "blog posts." News sites look like blogs. Time wasters like I Can Has Cheezburger still follow the same form. So, blogging never really went away. It's just that people found a way to make money at it. Not me, though. This is pure fun for me.

To the people who actually read every post, thanks for coming along for the ride. To all the google image search people curious about the main page, thank you too, but just scroll down quickly to get your animated gif fix.

Finds from the Grind - Recovery Drink

Recovery Drink

After a nice recovery drink (used for decades in the pro peleton!), with real sugar, from Mexico (I guess the corn lobby has a different agenda over there), I was 5 minutes from home when this happened.

Omake Gif Anime - Fairy Tail S2 - Episode 4 - Cheesecake

Fairy Tail S2 - Episode 4 - Cheesecake

How do I know Fairy Tail is all the way back? Natsu and Happy are trying to make Lucy take off her clothes again! Aye!

10 Second Anime - Naruto Shippuuden - Episode 360

Naruto Shippuuden - Episode 360

Kakashi Shippuuden continues. Mr. Kakashi seems to be a harsh teacher, compared to Guy's burning passion, but his students don't think so.

Heh.

Guy's way of teaching teamwork is to take a hit to the face. Of course! Seeing Ten-ten, Neji, and Lee all together again smacked me with feels.

A master may teach his students, but it's the students who teach the master. Blushing Kakashi learns that from a crowd of cute kids who appreciate his flunking them, and that they took slightly different, but specific lessons about teamwork from their failure.

The Hokage's plan to soften Kakashi's heart seems to be on track before he gets the new Legendary Three for his students.

Geh.

So nostalgic to see Asuma and Kurenai hanging out with Guy.

Hmm.

It was neat to see Kakashi build on his own teacher's training method for testing teamwork. Minato, the 4th Hokage and Naruto's father, devised the 2 bell test to see if all 3 students would work together to get both of them. But Kakashi added the real test: lunchtime. If the 2 students with lunches would break the rules to feed the 3rd, that added on to the Ninja Way he learned from his own father, and from Obito's death.

A ninja is worthless if he doesn't complete his mission at all costs, but he is less than worthless if he leaves his teammates behind.

Even Neji got that when Guy's team all decided to wait another year to join the Chuunin Exam, because Lee didn't feel he was ready.

Next time, we have the famous meeting of Team 7, Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura. Will Kakashi Shippuuden continue after that? I'm getting a little impatient here.

10 Second Anime - Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Episode 3

Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Episode 3

Five minutes to explain 1 second of action. Fun characters everywhere in school. The BAMF show continues at the kendo exhibition.

Geh.

Tatsuya is going to take on the entire kenjutsu club for taking down their captain. How BAMF was this takedown? This BAMF.

10 Second Anime - Fuuun Ishin Dai Shogun - Episode 3

Fuuun Ishin Dai Shogun - Episode 3

The Sex Witch attacks. Susanoo goes beast mode. Kiriko sprays flowers.

Heh.

Ceiling Kiriko is watching you fap. Wait, is that how that goes?

荒 (arai), the last character shown on the pilot's screen before Susanoo turns into steam-powered Mecha Godzilla means wild, violent, or rough. As a verb, it could mean run wild, devastate, or lay waste. Beast mode sounds good to me.

You want more jokes with Hyakusuke's hair? Okay, there you go!

10 Second Anime - Soul Eater Not! - Episode 3

Soul Eater Not! - Episode 3

The witch of the dorms isn't all that bad, even if she does give out bad stage names. Clay and Akane used to be in the EAT class. Hint of the Big Bad?

Heh.

Gargantos... This is going to be a thing to see how Tsugumi uses this exclamation each episode. I guess it's like "Dude," for me.

Clay and Akane better not be a reference to Clay Aiken.

Kim, the witch of the girl's dorm, used to be so cute. What happened?

Why does it take a spinoff story that's basically a prologue to the original Soul Eater to explain why Soul Eater, Black Star, and Death The Kid had such weird names when their partners had normal ones? Eternal Feather (heh) uses her strange stage name as an example of a naughty thing Kim did, submitting the paperwork for her.

Finally in the third episode we get an explanation for the title of this show. They're not just telling us it's "not" the same Soul Eater story, but there are two classes for the Weapon and Meister students. NOT, for Normally Overcome Target, and EAT, for Exceptionally Advantaged Talent. It's all the kids in the EAT class that we saw in the first Soul Eater storyline. Two tracks for magic using students? This sounds familiar... Interestingly enough, all the kids share the same dorms, and there doesn't seem to be any animosity between the kids for having different abilities.

Tsugumi is such a nice girl, thinking that anyone that hums while making food can't be a bad person. Nice, but naïve.

Hmm.

We got the barest glance at the Big Bad for the season, after she's been sending out minions under the moniker Traitor, and asking Death Weapon Meister Academy students if they slept well last night. We know that Kim is having nightmares of her old cute self attacking her, so this might all be related.

Clay and Akane used to be in the EAT class, and they are indeed operating undercover, going so far as to address their old classmates like Ox Ford as their senior. Mr. Sid seems to be in on the covert operation.

Anya mentions that she ran away from the castle to enroll in DWMA, so maybe this is why she needs secret bodyguards? And was Traitor attacking students just to look for her?

Why is Ox trying so hard to protect Kim anyway? He goes so far as to take part time jobs to pay back the money she takes from other people. Is she still the school idol to him?

I will say that anyone that carries cute Band-Aids and uses healing magic is probably not a bad person.

Finds from the Grind - Twenty

Twenty

10 Second Anime - Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Episode 2

Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Episode 2

Miyuki joins the student council because of her test scores. Tatsuya joins the disciplinary committee because of his "skills." The VP Hattori gets a good demonstration of those skills.

Heh.

President Mayumi sure is a live wire, giving funny nicknames to her council members.

And did Mari the Disciplinary Committee Chairman give us a dat ass moment? She must get lots of exercise making sure magic using students don't get out of hand.

Trolling big brother is trolling.

10 Second Anime - Yowamushi Pedal - Episode 28

Yowamushi Pedal - Episode 28

Onoda passes 100 riders, and shows us how legends are made. No one is happier than Makishima that he caught back up, even if he can't say it out loud.

Heh.

"Was that little guy singing as he passed me?" Oh man, this episode was my favorite so far! Everything we've seen from Onoda in past episodes was brought back. Finding his rhythm by singing the Love Hime opening song. Knowing he's got another 30 rpm in him to get rid of Midousuji. Crazy fast pedaling with amazing innate balance.

I loved it when Arakita claims that even if their second climber makes it past all the other groups on the hill, there's going to be one big pack that no proper cyclist can make it past. Lots of knowing smiles at that moment.

10 Second Anime - Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Episode 1

Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Episode 1

An actual BAMF for a main character? And someone who has worked hard to become one? And they're actually showing this in Japan?

Geh.

I am not kidding when I call the main character, Tatsuya Shiba, a badass motherfucker. Three years before the show starts, he was a child soldier with the equivalent magical power of a thermonuclear warhead. We pick up his story as he enters high school, and for some reason his magical power has been handicapped so that he joins the Magic Academy's Track 2 for irregular magic users. Never mind that he's still the foremost ninjutsu master's best student. Never mind that he still has all the analytical skills he had on the battlefield. He wants to keep a low profile at school, but his admiring younger sister hates the idea that others can't recognize his skills. He can't hide his skills all that well, because all the force multiplying techniques he uses make the meager magic he can use still way too powerful.

Heh.

This is still high school, so we're going to have fun characters when the show throws the viewers some slice of life. We've got our too friendly student council president, overprotective student council officers, and just normal young boys and girls interacting with each other.

It looks like we're going to get the admiration Tatsuya's younger sister Miyuki has for her older brother played for laughs with some incest jokes. Tatsuya seems oblivious to how attached Miyuki is to him, but he is a little bit aware of how others can misconstrue their close relationship.

Hmm.

This show starts out right. We're introduced to the idea of how capable Tatsuya actually is, but part of the show's mystery is why he's been handicapped, why he's trying to keep it a secret, and why he chose to go to high school instead of working for his father, in some obvious magical military type work.

The literal translation of the show's title is The Poor Student of Magic Specialty High School. The school has two tracks of magic studies, one for pure magic users (which applies to Miyuki), and the other for poor magic users who have specialized skills. In this world, magic is used like any other technology, and Tatsuya ostensibly wants to be a magic engineer. With his analytical skills, that seems like a plausible cover story, but he's really acting like a hacker: exploiting the capabilities of the magic tools in non-obvious ways. Not just h4xx0r with l33t skills, but m4xx0r, because he's hacking magic.

Tatsuya notices that a lot of the students have numbers in their names. From the Student Council President who has the character for 7 in hers, to two others and himself who have the number 4 in theirs. Related to why he's attending high school? Or some character trait where he sees numbers in everything which accounts for his magic analytical talent?

We don't get many anime where our hero starts out strong. Usually in action thriller type shows, we get accidental pilots, or kids who try hard and will get capable and skilled as the show progresses. This one has a great mystery in our BAMF who used to be even more BAMF. We have a bit of world building and more character and setting establishing to go before we get to that mystery, but we're going to have fun as Tatsuya kicks some high school ass.

10 Second Anime - Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou - Episode 3

Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou - Episode 3

Ritsu will raise your rent if you keep teasing her. Mayumi gives her ex a short-lived second chance. Books are Ritsu's weapons of choice.

Heh.

I am liking this format of mini-episodes inside the main episode. In a character driven comedy, spending a little bit more time with all of our boarders, and how they relate to our two main characters in Usa and Ritsu, makes for a relaxing visit filled with laughs.

In the first story block, we see how Ritsu's foible of not wanting attention because it leads to teasing hurts Usa's feelings through a misunderstanding. Wha? A misunderstanding exploding into a chain reaction of events in a comedy? I've never heard of such a thing! Specifically, riding on the back of Usa's new bike implies a closeness between them, which their house mates would exploit for some good-natured ribbing, and it would take her away from reading books on the way to and from school. But she didn't explain it like that, at first. "Absolutely the worst!" is much more economical in speech, but could be taken the wrong way. Ritsu grows a little when she apologizes to Usa.

Usa is so transparent. In a big scene of utter chaos, he only has eyes for Ritsu tearing up in the corner. Mayumi is annoyed that he didn't peek at her underwear. Sayaka's point is a good one, though: if you're not matching your tops and bottoms, then you're not combat ready for the battlefield of love.

Ritsu shows off another personality foible in Mayumi's story block: she only openly empathized with her love crisis because her book had a similar situation going on. But once she's finished the book, no empathy for you!

What kind of man would treat this lovely vision so poorly?

Omake Gif Anime - Kenzen Robo Daimidaler - Episode 3 - Tail Polisher

Kenzen Robo Daimidaler - Episode 3 - Tail Polisher

NSFW for animated boobies.

A little blond girl who likes penguins and suffers from morning, er, motion sickness joins the enemy. Kouichi learns the power of abstinence.

Well, that's the story, but what about the, uh, plot?

Weekly Ride Report - 4/14/14 - 4/19/14

Date	Route	Course	Ride Time	Total Time	Distance	Avg Speed	Altitude	Max Altitude	Max Speed	Odometer
04/14/14	Glenoaks Blvd	Climb	00:51:58	00:55:24	13.6	15.7	982	1411	30.2	31992
04/15/14	Glenoaks Blvd	Climb	00:52:55	00:58:15	13.6	15.4	986	1411	31.6	32006
04/16/14	Glenoaks Blvd	Climb	00:51:25	00:56:27	13.6	15.9	998	1405	31.1	32019
04/17/14	Glenoaks Blvd	Climb	00:53:03	00:58:10	13.6	15.4	1017	1395	32.7	32033
04/18/14	Lida Single Loop	Climb	00:58:10	01:01:12	16.1	16.6	842	1402	27.8	32050
04/19/14	Santa Fe Dam Loop	Flat	02:04:21	02:08:14	35.7	17.2	1329	893	32.7	32085
		Total Time	06:31:52	Total Distance	106.2	Total Climb	6154

Shock block continues. This week was all about blasting my legs on long climbs, and then try to use those stressed out muscle groups on the long flat ride on the weekend. I set personal best records on the Glenoaks climb this week, but I threw in a Lida climb on Friday because that's the day Glenoaks has trash pickup. The goal for the flat ride was to feel the pain of the crosswinds on the Santa Fe Dam, because it feels like you're climbing, even if it's pancake flat. I had a nice conversation with a cycling fitness trainer who joined me in Pasadena all the way to the dam, and we compared good routes, how her work with teenagers has to account for growing bones, and our annoyance with "nice" drivers who wave us through Stop Signs. I'm not the only one who hates that. Heh.