Friday, August 03, 2007

I can't call it a study break because I haven't done any studying >_<

Ah no this isn't a Harry Potter-related post again; I do run out of information and assorted randomness to post, you know, though certainly my Pottermania has yet to really cool off. Anyway, just another "normal" blogpost, probably the last one before SIP (Student Internship Programme - which is when we fifth year students go to the hospital and function like house officers, but with certain caveats e.g. not being able to prescribe medication, and which also equates to an almost non-existent social life for the next month). I may post during SIP if I find the time, or have things compelling enough to blog about, but don't expect too much from me haha.


The past two days have been quite the rollercoaster of emotions, stemming from the extremely startling discovery yesterday that I could not find my bound book of Paediatrics lecture notes anywhere in the house. If I had not decided out of a whim to really start doing some studying for Paeds, and thus needed to refer to something in the lecture notes, I would not have discovered the book missing, and I only saw the book last on Friday the week before so it took a long while to remember what exactly I was doing on that particular day and at which point of my day in KayKay I might have misplaced the book.

To spare you the details, I was quite traumatised by the entire experience, because I had made quite a number of personal annotations in my book of lecture notes, making it quite a personal set and as such irreplaceable. To have to face the possibility that I may never see it again in my life was rather heart-wrenching, and with some exaggeration I might say I felt like I had just lost someone dear to me. The events of the day I saw it last replayed itself so often in my mind it could not possibly get any clearer, and yet it was never clear enough, and I wished I could view a videotape of myself at every point to make doubly sure if I was carrying the book with me. I somehow kept thinking I probably had just misplaced it somewhere at home, and kept searching the same places over and over again, as if by some miracle the book's corner would peep at me where previously there was nothing.

The ending of this over-dramatised "ordeal" is a happy one, fortunately (and not because I indeed found the book in some corner of my house). Over these two days I made some calls to KayKay to get the help of the Associate Dean's Office and Security, and also made two separate trips to the hospital - one on Thursday evening to check my locker, and one on Friday afternoon (i.e. today) to look in the Neonatology Library/Meeting Room where we had our tutorial on Friday, and it was one the latter trip I saw my book lying rather nondescriptly on a shelf in the library. I'm so very relieved now, and thankful though to whom I can't be sure. It's true that we never really treasure what we have until we lose it, or almost lose it.

I'm trying to make finding my notes an incentive for me to do some Paeds studying before the break ends, but somehow that's not working heh.


So I'm not doing much studying (in fact, almost none) during this break, spending an inappropriate amount of time on hedonistic pursuits like Jap drama and anime, though those are indeed very pleasurable and quite addictive too.

Just finished watching Code Geass on Tuesday, so here's a short review (i.e. less than 1000 words, by my standards lol).

A summary of the story: the setting is an alternate reality where the U.K. is this superpower called the Holy Britannian Empire, which has annexed many areas of the globe under its rule, including Japan, which has been renamed Area 11, and its people termed Elevens. The protagonist is a Britannian youth studying in Japan, called Lelouch; he's actually a Britannian prince thought to have perished in the Britannian attack against Japan, and for his own reasons hates the Britannian Empire, especially his father the Emperor. So one day he meets a mysterious girl (some research subject of the Britannians "stolen" by Japanese rebels) who imparts a power to him, called Geass (obviously this comes from the English word geas) which enables him to give commands to others through eye contact, commands they are compelled to obey unconditionally. With this power, he gains the ability to exact his revenge against his father, and the Britannian Empire, all in the aim of providing his sister Nunnally with a better world to live in.

Quite the interesting premise, and the genre is a blend of mecha (since the armies utilise mecha units called Knightmare Frames with various interesting model names such as Glasgow, Sutherland, Lancelot and Gawain for the Britannian ones) and Death Note, for lack of a better description, since Lelouch uses this secret power of his to thwart the Britannians at every turn, combining his talent for strategising with near-genius use of his power (it is limited to one effective use per person) to thwart the Britannian army at every turn, leading a rebel army of his own to astonishing power. The plot thus unfolds very nicely after the preliminaries are addressed, and the scriptwriters work in a number of very engaging subplots and devices that play their own part in advancing the story, thus there is almost never a boring episode from episode 10 onwards; every episode makes you want to watch the next one, and some plot twists are so shocking and painful you almost wish they didn't happen. Unfortunately, even with such compelling plot design there is nary enough space for the story to develop by the time you reach the designated end of the series at 25 episodes, and indeed the story does not end. We are presented with a thrilling cliffhanger at the end of episodes 24 and 25 (a one-hour special), to be continued in a sequel starting in October. This was quite a letdown after much anticipation, but a shoddy ending with no wrapping up of the multiple plot-threads that have been introduced would be a much worse letdown, in my book, so for now my opinion of the anime is still pretty good.

Artwork is fantastic, and that's to be expected, I suppose, since it's a CLAMP anime (it's so good it makes me want to start drawing the characters, which no anime has made me feel since Gundam Seed). I've never watched any CLAMP anime aside from CardCaptor Sakura, but I totally loved the art of CCS especially with the whole array of costumes that Sakura ended up wearing in the series. Code Geass' characters are quite different from CCS' in terms of design, and their trademark is a lack of hips and skinny legs, I should say. Terribly unrealistic looking, but then again anime characters are almost never drawn to look like real people. And since this is a mecha anime, you have the customary array of multicoloured hair, including even a pink-haired princess in the form of Euphemia, that would be immediately mistaken for a Lacus clone since she is pretty, has long pink hair, is peace-loving, and sometimes rather strong-willed. Doesn't sing or carry talking bouncing ball-toys though. The comparison to Lacus is really unavoidable since her character outline is quite similar, and she turns out to be not really as strong as Lacus, though she makes an extremely good attempt near the end of the anime, to much surprise of the other characters, so that's impressive. How she ends up is [spoiler] heartwrenchingly sad though; I wish there could have been an alternative ending [/spoiler].

Ah yes, yet another mecha cliche is the best-friends-since-young-but-fighting-on-different-sides in the form of Lelouch and his childhood friend Suzaku, the son of the last Japanese Prime Minister, who is now pledged to fight for the Britannian Empire as an "honorary Britannian", doing so even though he is mistrusted by many in the army, being Japanese. This is actually quite tiring because you keep hearing Suzaku trumpet his lofty ideals and criticising Lelouch (he calls himself Zero when he's doing rebel work to keep anonymous) and it gets really annoying. The fun part is that neither party knows that the other is his enemy, and thus when the revelation finally comes there is a lot of drama.

Music is so-so, not particularly enthralling, unfortunately, and even sometimes inappropriate for the scene. They seem to have very limited tracks and keep re-using the same themes without much variation, thus making the background music almost non-existent since it doesn't make much of a difference. This is sad because mecha anime tend to always have such amazing music to support the fight scenes.

I think this anime series succeeds on having excellent writing full of suspenseful twists and revelations; it's not that kind of mecha anime that enters existential or metaphysical discussions and makes you more confused than ever, the plot is easy to follow though there are definitely more than a few niggling questions that fail to be answered even at the last episode of this first part. For a mecha anime, also, it's atypical in that the battles are less haphazard and you see a bit of how Lelouch strategises to enable his lesser units to triumph against a well-organised military front, often using underhand methods which have quite the dramatic flourish. I'm hoping that the sequel will be as good as this one since it is a continuation (it better be, there is simply too much going against good sequels in anime) and finally answer those unaddressed questions.

(eeps that was 1015 words.. overran my word limit)

I think I'd recommend Code Geass as one of the better animes I've watched this year, but we should probably wait for the sequel before setting a final rating and conclusion on this interesting anime.


On the Jap drama front, I finished downloading episode one of Nodame Cantabile yesterday, and found it quite hilarious; the two leads Tamaki Hiroki as Chiaki Shinichi and Ueno Juri as Noda Megumi (a.k.a. Nodame) are really fantastic and highly comical. I last saw Ueno Juri on Engine as a rebellious teenage girl with a gentle side, and it's amazing how versatile she is in playing Nodame's kookiness and disregard for hygiene. And I thought Chiaki would be the angsty brooding type of character watching the first 15 minutes, but he shows a totally wacky side after meeting Nodame! (and he's also really cute) It's quite a breath of fresh air to watch an anime filled with cartoonish oddities (it was a manga originally I believe, explaining those) so I'm quite enjoying it, but now I have to wait for episode two to finish downloading on my slow-as-a-snail-in-a-freezer Bi.t.to.rre.nt.


I have no idea what to do to prepare for SIP, so my plans are to get lots of sleep (since I'll be having very little of that once SIP starts) and brush up on practical things like reading ECGs. I doubt I'll get very much work done with all the lazing around I'm doing, though. Haha.

Avaris / 8/03/2007 11:34:00 PM

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