An anime called Chobits

Chobits

This is one of the many animated series that started as a manga (aka comic book) and was later turned into a show by that lovely company named funimation.
Chobits starts off innocent enough. The main character is what I like to refer to as a country bumpkin out somewhere in rural China. He doesn't have anyone to talk to besides thr livestock so he has a bad habit or thinking out load.
Hideki Motosuwa wants to go to college but he doesn't get accepted so he decides to take what little money he has saved up and enlist in a prep school in town. Simple story line so far right?
Well his first day in the city he notices everyone has a personal android/robot/computer called persecoms. He really really wants one for internet exploring.....however he cannot afford one. The rest of the day he continues to talk outloud about wanting a persecom but not being able to afford one. Amazing coincidence happens soon...he is thinking out load about finding a cute persecom in the trash as he is walking past one laying in a pile of trash....he gets a few steps past and does a slow motion double take.
He realizes that these human shaped computers are quite heavy when they are not operating, but eventually he gets the unit back to his little appartment. It just so happens this persecom in particular is very cute and the main character is continuously affected by her looks. It takes him a while to figure out where he on/off switch is located and once he figures it out he almost has a heart attack. The main character is unable to see the persecom as a machine and keeps thinking it is a real person.
Okay so the plot is a little more interesting ...but still the viewer is confused by what is actually going on. I mean another anime about a boy and a pretty female robot??
If you have made it this far the plot begins to unravel around this urban legend about legendary persecoms known as.....you guessed it "Chobits". It seems as if Chi is one of these legendary machines however all of her data is heavily encripted..so it is difficult to know for sure. Eventually Hideki Motosuwa gets to see an email attachment with what looks like chi all wired up with a marking on her leg. The persecoms ARM is covering up the first letter but you can clearly see 'hobit' so its safe to assume the first letter is a 'c'.




Chi also begins to read these odd books about "the one for me and only me" ...its difficult at first to be sure but these books seem to be written for/about Chi.
There is now a plot and the anime is worth watching to see what happens to Chi...will she be abducted? Possibly taken back by her maker or so other unknown villan? Will she fall in love with a human? Will the human love her back?

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Darker than Black the anime

A night sky full of cries hearts filled with lies the contract--is it worth the price? a soul pledged to the darkness now I've lost it, I know I can kill the truth is just beyond the Gate

Another anime I have found thanks to netflix. This one has a plot right out of the gate. Plenty of action and the introduction isn't super lame like some other animes I know.
This anime takes place in a city somewhere in China. There is a massive wall that makes a boundry between the city and 'hells gate' ...which is an area where odd things happen. Apparently one day it just appeared and things began to change. The sky fell and all of the real stars vanished. The real stars were replaced by 'fake' stars, each one corresponding to a contractor.
There are these humans, kept secret from the masses, known as contractors and some know as spectors. Someone who is a contractor has some special ability, but at a cost. They are know to have an involuntary need to pay some price each time an ability is used. This is very interesting to see a reacurring idea of equal exchange across all sorts of stories. Contractors are known to be cold and methodical...with no regard to emotions
Anyhow the first episode show a man running from something and he is on a roof of a tall building, he gets cornered by some sort of police. The man begins to glow blue, which means he is activating his special ability, and he flies into the air. A few blocks away on another roof he lands and runs to a secluded area. This contractor then takes his own finger and breaks it. Our main character is there waiting for him and makes a remark about his 'price' ...the viewer now learns special abilities, like levatation, come with a sacrifice....sometimes that sacrifice is extreme and sometimes it is subtle. The man gets dealt with and the main character dissapears into the night.

Contractors are still mostly human...except they have lost all empathy and compassion for anything. Contractors are thought to be methodical and relentless by the rest of the world. While spectors on the other hand are more like dolls/robots with a human shape. Spectors can move outside of their body through a medium, water or even electricity, and can watch or spectate the things around them. The government has a massive network of these dolls keeping track of the contractors through some odd link to astrology. Every contractor has a star that appears in the fake sky that will 'activate' when that specific contractor is using a special ability. The story revolves around the a syndicate...some mysterious power pulling all sorts of strings. The main character is a unassuming school boy. However when he works as an assassin for the "syndicate" he is known as 'the black reaper'.

Examples of the price to pay:
There is a duo that works for the government and the male has the control over water....his price is smoking cigarettes. The female, who can manifest a storms, must drink beer. Those are the best prices I have encountered...

There is another male who works as a mercenary and his ability is to detonate any blood that is outside of his body...the price to be paid is the initial cut to get the blood flowing so his price is paid before he uses his ability. On the command of his finger snap anything that has his blood on it will explode.
Another woman has the ability to vibrate anything to any frequency using her voice....she has an interesting price. Her price is perpetuated from the previous life she lived....he daughter choked and died on cigarette butts and therefore he price is to swallow and hack up cigarette butts.

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Howl's Moving Castle - Absolute Perfection from Studio Ghibli

Howl's Moving Castle(100/100) 

This is my very close second favorite Studio Ghibli movie. It has wizards, witches and wars. Everything you could want in a movie. Beautiful scenery and exciting magic...also some very interesting life lessons to be learned. Howl's Moving Castle has a easy to follow storyline that most children will be able to follow and love. If you are not a child don't worry about getting too bored because the storyline is intense enough to keep everyone of all age groups interested.


This is truly a magical tale about two people who fall in love.



A quick summery:
The story starts out with a young girl who is a hat maker. Unfortunately it seems she happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time...however after you watch the movie a few times you will realize her fate gets tied into that of Howl's and the entire storyline is destined to happen over and over and over again. The young hat maker is closing up her shop when an ugly woman enters the place and curses the young girl so she will eventually meet up with Howl and deliver a letter.
The moving castle itself doesn't look much like a castle at all but a sort of run down collection of buildings on moving legs. As we proceed through the movie we learn the castle is magical and being held together mostly by the power of a fire demon who has made a deal with master Howl.
The wizard in question is fighting both sides of the war trying to make the senseless struggle end. He has at least two aliases and two places of residence in either of the major cities that are at war. He eventually gets called to serve in the war for both sides.

Eventually he keeps pushing his magical skills too far and turns into a massive raven when he fights off the battleships. After too much longer the storyline gets a little tangled and you will have to see it to believe
 it....so I certainly suggest watching this movie.

At the very end of the movie we get a glimpse of his new and improved moving castle....if you are like me then seeing castle in the sky is something only in dreams.

Frisbee Golf - Caroll Marty Iowa

Carroll Marty: Ames Iowa 

This is a video that follows a good friend of mine (find him on youtube @ OneLewdH22) discing. It is mostly footage of him playing through the Carroll Marty disc course which happens to be one of my favorite so I will defiantly make more posts about that course in particular with a more in depth review. This course is a great course for any level of disc-er. There are even pro tees for the more advanced players and a general lack of irritating pins makes this a great course. 

However this post is simply for the video that features a nice birdie putt by yours truly....if you don't want to watch the entire film skip forward right to minute 2:00 and you will see me make a nice shot.

Casshern Sins the animated series

Casshern

Casshern Sins

I encountered this anime on netflix. The plot is pretty simple to understand yet this anime was compelling to finish. This anime was drawn with some detail but not to much, it was elegant to watch. 
The story starts out with this character in all white without a scratch on him. He apparently has done something very traumatic and unforgivable. Casshern has killed "the sun called moon". Mortality is a thing for only humans to worry about. There are not many humans left in the world, they all tend to be wanderers watching the ruin destroy the robots....however once the sun called moon was killed the world began to succumb to 'ruin'. This is the main idea behind the storyline.

Buraiking Boss

There is a massive robot army lead by a big baddie named Buraiking Boss (Braiking Boss), but he has left his armies in search for an answer to the 'ruin'. All the robots have gone crazy about their sudden mortality and really want to destroy Casshern. He is unarmed except for some really weird pistols that never get used except for jet propulsion. Casshern can easily dispatch foes with his bare hands....except for some other androids who are trying to take over the world. They are built in the same style as Casshern however they are succumbing to ruin slowly....the lead android is a woman with some interesting armor, she has interesting weapons that actually get used as swords once or twice.

Casshern vs robot

Eventually Casshern and his crew, a robot dog called friender, some humans and a small child robot,  discover that the sun called moon, Luna, was actually killing robots not healing them....however there has been whispers about a new Luna born to end the ruin. I don't want to spoil too much, but this simplistic serious drama is a definite must see for all anime fans.

Frisbee/Disc Golf - Beginner Walk Through in Stability

Picking the right disc

This is a little more difficult than one may think. For the longest time I was using the wrong disc for the wrong hole. If you have no idea what the difference is between overstable and understable then I suggest as a beginner you need to chose a driver and a mid-range that is "stable" this is right in the middle between overstable and understable.
The main idea here is that each specific disc has a natural flight path if thrown level. Some will tend to curve right or left at the end of their flight depending on how you throw the disc.

Scroll of the Dragons Breath. Fire blowing Montage

This little video took me a while to get finished...but as we all can see my fire jutsu is defiantly level two. Fire blowing is a dangerous thing to attempt if you do not know what you are doing. There are certain precautions you should take before you start...the biggest things to keep in mind are fire hazards...Duh.

Keep a towel around to wipe your mouth and face.

Keep a bucket of water, or a hose close by in case your fire gets out of control.

The Hunger Games

The first book of the trilogy by Suzanne Collins.

Katniss

The Hunger Games

Compared to a Heinlein this book was written for middle school kids...and maybe it was written simply to appeal to the greatest number of people. I was out of books and heading into a long and arduous night at work so I decided to give Collins a try.

When I first started reading the novel I was almost bored...the story seemed to start like many others but with a few differences to set Collins apart. The world as we know it has failed and out of the ashes rose a new empire with 13 smaller districts...our heroine, Katniss, was from district 12, one of the poorest districts. She spends her day breaking the law by foraging and hunting in the forest beyond the gate with her friend Gale. We get some background story on the girl, her family and the boy and his family....nothing interesting happens until the day of the 'reaping' ...which is like a lottery except the person chosen must compete to the death with the other districts in "The Hunger Games". The heroine does not get picked however her twelve year old sister does and Katniss cannot let this happen so she volunteered to take her sisters place.