Top Manga and Anime - Take Two

Repopulating this earlier list of top anime and manga.
Here be the latest ordering:

1. One Piece [Manga + Anime]
2. Berserk [Manga + Anime]
3. Bleach [Manga + Anime]
4. Naruto [Manga + Anime]
5. Death Note [Anime]
6. Full Metal Alchemist [Manga + Anime]
7. Lone Wolf and Cub [Manga]
8. Monster [Anime]
9. Samurai X: Rurouni Kenshin [Anime]
10. Code Geass R1: Lelouch of the Rebellion [Anime]
11. Code Geass : Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 [Anime]
12. Gintama [Anime]
13. Black Lagoon [Anime]
14. Black Lagoon 2: The Second Barrage [Anime]
15. Ubel Blatt [Manga]
16. Vagabond [Manga]
17. Detective School Q [Anime]
18. Trigun [Anime]
19. Cowboy Bebop [Anime]
20. Kenichi [Anime]
21. Gun X Sword [Anime]
22. Nodame Cantabile [Anime]
23. Gantz [Manga]
24. Eden [Manga]
25. Akira [Manga]
26. Nodame Cantabile Paris [Anime]
27. Seirei No Moribito [Anime]
28. Fruits Basket [Anime]
29. Hunter x Hunter [Anime]
30. Avatar [Anime]
31. Zero No Tsukaima [Anime]
32. Zero no Tsukaima: Futatsuki no Kishi [Anime]
33. Fate Stay Night [Anime]
34. Elfen Lied [Manga + Anime]
35. Melody of Oblivion [Anime]
36. Macross Zero [Anime]
37. Hellsing [Anime]
38. Samurai Deeper Kyo [Anime]
39. Full Metal Panic [Anime]
40. Busou Renkin [Anime]
41. Blame! [Manga]
42. Bitter Virgin [Manga]
43. Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei [Anime]
44. Serial Experiments Lain [Anime]
45. Afro Samurai [Anime]

In the list:
Underlined ones are continuing, and still going good and strong.
Bold ones are new additions to the list.

Special Mention:
Watchmen - [English/Comics] - would have tied with Rank 7 in the list above.

Along the way while cooking up this list, came across these titles too:

• Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood
• Claymore
• Hajime No Ippo
• Samurai Champloo
• 20th Century Boys

Any of these worth watching?

Random:
Black Lagoon - Third Season is confirmed.
\m/

'Hello', he lied

For about a week now, a majority of the daytime has been spent in documenting stuff already done, stuff that needs to be done, and the way to do the stuff. Since I have been creative writing for days on end, and also as this blog is somehow turning out to be a place where I report what I have watched in the recent remember-able past, herewith lies one more in the same vein:

In reverse chronological order, here goes:
[Start date - 19/4/2010]
1. Saw Eddie Izzard's - 'Definite Article' (1996) because of a comment about this post - Top Stand Up Comedians - in Buzz. This dude will make the top 15 in the list. Easily. Had forgotten how good he was since the last stand up bit I'd seen of him was years and years ago.

2. Watched 'Like Totally' and 'Melbourne International Comedy Festival' by Dylan Moran. Added respect for the dude. Bumping this guy two places up in the original Top Stand Up Comedians list. One of the few guys who do not re-use 90% of their material from their first show in all their acts.

3. Watched the latest episodes of One Piece. This still remains as the best anime on the Top Anime list. Eiichiro Oda has still a God status. Berserk is up 50% or so from last week too. Mostly because I realized that Kentaro Miura has restarted drawing Berserk, after a long hiatus where he up and left to professionally learn to play Guitar Hero.

4. Watched the whole series of - The Wire - which according to Wikipedia "has been described by critics as the greatest television series ever made". And I must say, it is worth every single decimal point in the 9.7 rating in IMDB.

5. Discovered that the DVD release of FRIENDS has some decent amount of un-aired footage in every episode. And this realization after having watched the aired version over four times completely. /facepalm

6. A bunch of decent movies - will try to make a honest post out of this.

7. Briefly tried to continue watching Samurai Deeper Kyo. Still does not seem to show any more promise than the usual action anime.

8. IPL. On and off.

9. Simulation Waveforms. In VCS by Synopsys.
[End date - 19/3/2010]

Action Items:
a. Re-populate this anime list.
b. Do something about Point 6.

Random information:
Presently listening to - 'Breath of Life' by Shamindra from the Album: Secrets Of Zen - "Japanese Chill Out" Volume.1

Guess with the picture added and all this post may be of a decent length by now.
/kthxbai

Gmail: Set status here [Part 2]

After having seriously considered putting up a blank post tagged Life is still like that, for about 10 minutes, I thought since all the gchat status message space is being occupied these days... I would just put up random lines here that probably might have been put up there:

These follow no particular order. They make no particular sense too.

• Been to Hyderabad. Attended cousin sister's wedding. Came back. That's about all that happened.

• Read the Watchmen comics. The only non-manga comics till now. Liked them better than the movie. The movie wasn't that bad to be fair too.
  

• Read Ender's Game. Best science fiction I have read till now. Though the only others I remember reading are Asimov's 'A Child of Time' and Arthur Clarke's '3001, The Final Odyssey'. I do remember reading a book about sci-fi short stories, but its too far into the past and all too vague.
  

• Saw Harry Potter -and the Half Blood Prince in Inox, Forum. Liked Ron and Luna's acting. Liked the scene with the fire and Inferi in the end. The rest of the movie was trash. Re-reading the book to get over it.

• One Piece and Bleach manga are reaching amazing heights these days. And if you in any way like anime or manga, I would really recommend that you start on these. Naruto Shippuden is not too bad too. But the first two over shadow this.

• Been watching a lot of Joe Odagiri's movies. Yet to see one movie of his which was not downright brilliant. Saw Dream last. New respect for the dude.

• Watched the second season of Black Lagoon. Hate that they stopped at that. It was really good.
  

• Watched Trigun. Liked it better than Gun vs Sword, which is of the same genre.

• Started watching Samurai Deeper Kyo. Seems better than Buso Renkin. But still don't feel it measures in any way up to most other anime series that I have seen

• Read A Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follet. The last paper back I read. Again, since I mostly used to read bits of it on the bus, and it was not all in one sitting, it didn't feel all that great.

• Have a Wilbur Smith(Wild Justice) and a Arthur Hailey (In High Places) now. Yet to start either. Miss reading books in one sitting.

• Saw the trailer for Dexter 4. Hate that no decent serials restart in the near future.

• Listening to Tool after a long time. Sounds good.

• And from 11:10 pm to 11:17 pm these are the only things that came into the mind.

• Life goes on.

• Sigh!

PS: Gmail: Set Status Here was posted April 16th,2008. Thus the [Part 2] in the title.

According to brilliance...

.. the Manga/ Anime I have read/seen till now:

1. One Piece [Manga + Anime]
2. Berserk [Manga + Anime]
3. Bleach [Manga + Anime]
4. Naruto [Manga + Anime]
5. Death Note [Anime]
6. Full Metal Alchemist [Manga + Anime]
7. Samurai X: Rurouni Kenshin [Anime]
8. Nodame Cantabile [Anime]
9. Ubel Blatt [Manga]
10. Vagabond [Manga]
11. Kenichi [Anime]
12. Gun X Sword [Anime]
13. Gantz [Manga]
14. Eden [Manga]
15. Fruits Basket [Anime]
16. Avatar [Anime]
17. Macross Zero [Anime]
18. Akira [Manga]
19. Hellsing [Anime]
20. Busou Renkin [Anime]
21. Black Lagoon [Anime]
22. Blame! [Manga]
23. Bitter Virgin [Manga]
24. Elfen Lied [Manga]
25. Afro Samurai [Anime]

PS: Found half of this list lying around... just added whatever else came to my head.
PPS: The list doesn't include other famous titles like Dragon Ballz, Samurai Champloo, Cowboy Bepop, Inuyasha, Fate Stay Night, Full Metal Panic, Full Metal Alchemist: Part 2: The Brotherhood, Gintama, Seirei no Moribito, Code Geass, Detective School Q etc. 'coz I haven't seen enough of these to fit them into the list.
PPPS: Got nothing good watch right now. Looking around for some decent anime (not necessarily from the list in PPS). Suggestions welcome.

Edit: White Noise (Header)

The full screen F11 screen shot on my computer looks something like this. Scrolling down is absolutely essential for every small thing. This is in no way user friendly. And me being the most frequent user, it doesn't help in any way. And as the blog is creepy as it is, I can get rid of the huge picture.

Anyway, since there was some effort in choosing that particular picture and caption, and since the net keeps stabbing every five minutes or so, I thought I would write a couple of lines to justify why they were put up in the first place, before discarding them.

The header picture is the theatrical poster for the movie - White Noise, released in 2005.The caption is a play on the original quote by Don DeLillo on his own book called White Noise."It's about fear, death, and technology. A comedy, of course." -- DeLillo quoted in 1984. And I duly changed it to - "It's about randomness, life, and philosophy. A comedy, of course."

What the book - White Noise by DeLillo is really about -
From the DeCurtis interview, DeLillo:

"In White Noise in particular, I tried to find a kind of radiance in dailiness. Sometimes this radiance can be almost frightening. Other times it can be almost holy or sacred.... Our sense of fear--we avoid it because we feel it so deeply, so there is an intense conflict at work.... I think it is something we all feel, something we almost never talk about, something that is almost there. I tried to relate it in White Noise to this other sense of transcendence that lies just beyond our touch. This extraordinary wonder of things is somehow related to the extraordinary dread, to the death fear we try to keep beneath the surface of our perceptions."

I try to do exaclty the same, as evident from any random post of mine. :P

The idea was to continue ranting till the net stabilies. And it has now. /Rant thus
Btw, this blog made the status message of some 8 people in my gchat list simultaneoulsy. It is worth a read. :)
PS: The full screen F11 screen shot of the blog looks now like this:Only the font remains. Way better now. LQTM at Leo Tolstoy Quote though.
PPS: For those who follow anime - Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood has started. YAY!

The Blue Folder

And so I found this thick blue folder this morning. I hadn't come across that for a very long time now. It used to be the source of all knowledge and wisdom. It also used to be the storage space for all creative outpourings before the advent of Web 2.0.
The contents of the folder included old question papers, random NTSE exam problem solving tips, humorous quotations and random quotations printed on the huge computer sheets with holes punched on both sides, the message of Gandhi and other leaders, random quiz questions, articles about the environment, culture, teaching in the mother tongue as opposed to English etc.. And more importantly it contained most of whatever I had written (with a lot of help from my dad) for the various essay competitions, speeches, debates etc. It also contained arbitrary pieces of poetry, random sketchings etc.
A good part of today was spent in posting the stuff that was in English here. That explains the four posts that follow this one.
:)PS: Both pics were ripped off the internet. Neither of them accurately describe the blue folder. The second one comes close though.

Four Stages of Life

#define random

Updated: Titles
1. A fifth grader's plan to take over the world.
2. Some of the most expensive paintings in the world
3. Tōshirō, Hitsugaya. Captain:10th division. Bleach.4. Yo, Picasso by Pablo Picasso
5. Vagabond. Manga by Takehiko Inoue
6. Hugh Laurie as House MD. [Portrait 1]
7. Different kinds of Geeks8. One Piece. Manga by Eiichirō Oda9. False Start by Jasper Johns.
10. Jim Jarmusch:
11. Hugh Laurie as House MD. [Portrait 2]

Reasons...

... to explain September (4)

PS: Images from top: Naruto, Naruto Shippuden, One Piece, One Piece