I guess today marks the twelfth year of me maintaining this particular internet domain. I should say the twelfth year of running this blog, but the sorry excuse of a post-rate I’ve been maintaining hardly really constitutes running anything.

Honestly, I had been intending to start just posting weekly random, psuedo-stream-of-thought posts about recent goings on or viewing material, without particularly stressing myself out about having something specific to say about it. This wouldn’t be particularly interesting for anyone to read, I’m sure, but it’s more to force myself to get back into the habit of actually writing things. I mean, it’s not like I’ve not been watching anything recently or anything, but motivation is a hard thing to start building up steam on again once it’s been lost, I guess.

That being said, this weekend would probably be a good place to start, given I’m hitting up the screening of The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl in Glasgow, which director Yuasa himself is scheduled to be hosting a QA. Maybe I’ll actually take notes or something, but I’m sure I’ll at least have some thoughts about the movie. I’m looking forward to it, anyway.

Speaking of thoughts and movies, probably something to elaborate on later, but tickets the majority of the Edinburgh wing of Scotland Loves Anime went up on the Filmhouse website yesterday. I say the majority, as the suspicious gap on the Sunday is not seemingly an accident – there’s still a TBD film that has yet to be confirmed, apparently.

I said this on Twitter yesterday (the real reason behind blogging apathy, I suspect), but the line-up is, in many ways, a reflection of how spoilt we have been in terms of regular anime theatrical releases nationwide in the UK this year. That is to say, it’s what happens when a mid-to-major anime movie is released practically every month from January through to October. Things like Napping Princess, Genocidal Organ, In This Corner of the World or even Ordinal Scale or Fairy Tail, which are the kinds of things you’d ordinarily see scheduled at SLA, have already been screened and seen by the kind of people who frequent the event.

I guess what has been scheduled isn’t to everyones taste, but I’ve no particular problems personally. It works out partially to my advantage, honestly. I’ve been meaning to rewatch Venus Wars for the first time in about two decades recently – I even bought the BD from Discotek at Otakon for that very reason – so seeing it theatrically works for me. I like Yuasa’s stuff in general, but I’d been holding off on the Kickstarter paying out to finally get around to Mind Game, so, again, seeing it theatrically works for me. I’ve not opened my JP copy of Kizumonogatari yet (mostly because it turned up just before I went on a trip and forgot about it by the time I got home. Whoops).

I did hear kind of questionable things about that Eureka 7 movie from the folks I talked to who actually went to the Otakon screening that have tempered my expectations, but I’ll deal with it.

Honestly, I’m mostly curious as to what the turn-out for Venus Wars will end up being like. I know what it is, because I’m an old-ass 30-something who was watching anime VHS tapes back in the Manga Video days, but at the same time, it’s not an Akira or a Ghost in the Shell or even a Ninja Scroll – one of those fondly-remembered things that comes up constantly. It’s never had quite that degree of exposure over here, and I’m not sure it’s something are super-nostalgic about. It feels mostly relevant due to Yoshikazu Yasuhiko being involved in Gundam The Origin, though this is now just reminding me I have a copy of the Crusher Joe movie sitting here I probably should have watched weeks ago.

I might have to collar someone and suggest they show Hells next year, though, or something equally old and weird, especially with Hells getting that new BD release in the US in the coming months. That’s something interesting that few have seen that feels like it’s in the purview of the kind of thing the festival shows.

On another note, the Puchimas plush situation has gotten a little more… space consuming since this time last year. It’s probably easier at this point to say that I’m only missing a small Yayo, and large Chibiki, Takanya and not-evil Harukasan at this point. Suspect I’ll probably have to hit the internet to get ahold of those at this point – wild Takanya’s don’t tend to appear at events all that often.

(PS. I finally got around to starting to read that first Sound Euphonium novel, and man, KyoAni added a lot in terms of content in the process of making the anime adaptation. It’s one of those things where it feels like there’s, say, an awful lot more Shuichi in there than in the anime, whereas in reality it’s more that there’s exactly the same amount of Shuichi, only the ratio compared to everything else going on is completely different. I’d imagine such comments will probably put a lot of people off reading this)