Retreads

I've noticed my writing's been a bit lame lately. I get the feeling it's because I keep going over the same old ground, over and over again. I mean, sure, it's been a while since I've watched "MADLAX", but really, another late-night bout of "Posting While Intoxicated" doesn't really provide anything insightful. And after the 20th time, probably not anything amusing anymore either.

Still, I'll admit I had a lot of fun with it, so that's not really the problem here.

I'm hitting a bit of a "same-ol', same-old" kind of rut, I think. Not much progress in the new series out of Japan for anything that's been intriguing me very much. Or with the series I've been renting from GreenCine for that matter. I watched the 2nd disc of "Otogi Zoshi" last night, and it was so uninteresting and lifeless that I nearly dozed off on a number of occassions, and actually went to bed early after I finished. I guess that's understandable seeing as "MADLAX" not only kept me up late Friday night, but was a million times more lively and enjoyable. I suppose the story in "Otogi Zoshi" had some redeeming value, as does the concept, but the execution of it was so vanilla and bland that I was really dissappointed.

This evening I got through disc 8 of "Twelve Kingdoms". Which isn't quite as bad at all. In fact, by the end of the disc, the story picked up a few interesting moments of momentum. But after 8 discs of this, it's really still just more of the same thing. And it's almost enough to make me retract my whole worship of "attention to detail" -- sometimes there's just a bit "too much information" about the politics and procedures and weird little rules of that universe. Which I guess is part of the point of it all, but it gets a little tiresome. That all said, the last two discs are on their way to me, and I'll try to finish the damn thing off once and for all by next weekend.

Back to the fansub world for a moment. There's been a dearth of new releases of the few shows that I'm even bothering to follow. An episode of "Musishi" just showed up and I'm downloading it now, but I probably won't get to it for a while. No sign of "Noein". I watched another "Popilocrois Story", which still managed to be clever if a bit over-sweetened, but nothing really stood out about it. No sign of "Monster" for weeks now.

I suppose I could chalk up my current mood as a "Post-MADLAX Syndrome"... (*ahem*) But seeing as I've seen it already, many times, just means that I'm just trying to recapture the magic that I felt when I was first pointed toward it and saw it for the first time. So I suppose in a way, I'm probably reaching the end of my "catching up" period. I've found all the great shows. Now I'm trying to differentiate the "good" shows from the rest of the pack. And that's getting a little tedious. I should probably take a break soon.