Measure twice, cut once (GIP)

I really don't like animated icons; when I load my LJ friends page, the very first thing I do is hit "escape" to stop all animated gifs. So why did I spend nearly five hours making one for myself?

I have no idea.

Okay, maybe I sort of do: Once I started it, it became a challenge. I had to find, download, and learn to use a new piece of software, I had to re-learn how to do outlined text (which I later dropped), and I had to resize-resize-resize and make all the images fit together. I woke up at 8 this morning, and I sat right down and immediately picked up where I left off last night. I forgot about breakfast, checking email, and everything else, and it wasn't until I had a finished product (11:30) that I even noticed so much time had gone by.

Ironic thing is: I don't even overly like it now. I had to lower the quality way down to come in under the 40 Kb size, and I had to cut a few of the frames out. Oh well, maybe it'll grow on me like the Super Love-Love Juice one did.

For those who don't recognize it (which will be most of you reading this, unfortunately), the two guys are characters from Naruto. The father of the younger one tried to kill him and the boy ended up homeless on the street at the age of about 4. The older one took him in, but with the sole purpose of using him as a weapon. The younger one came to not only accept that, but to love the man and to *want* to be nothing but the perfect tool/weapon for him. They both ended up dead, the older finally acknowledging to himself that he loved the younger man right before he died. *sniff*

Measure twice, cut once (GIP)

I really don't like animated icons; when I load my LJ friends page, the very first thing I do is hit "escape" to stop all animated gifs. So why did I spend nearly five hours making one for myself?

I have no idea.

Okay, maybe I sort of do: Once I started it, it became a challenge. I had to find, download, and learn to use a new piece of software, I had to re-learn how to do outlined text (which I later dropped), and I had to resize-resize-resize and make all the images fit together. I woke up at 8 this morning, and I sat right down and immediately picked up where I left off last night. I forgot about breakfast, checking email, and everything else, and it wasn't until I had a finished product (11:30) that I even noticed so much time had gone by.

Ironic thing is: I don't even overly like it now. I had to lower the quality way down to come in under the 40 Kb size, and I had to cut a few of the frames out. Oh well, maybe it'll grow on me like the Super Love-Love Juice one did.

For those who don't recognize it (which will be most of you reading this, unfortunately), the two guys are characters from Naruto. The father of the younger one tried to kill him and the boy ended up homeless on the street at the age of about 4. The older one took him in, but with the sole purpose of using him as a weapon. The younger one came to not only accept that, but to love the man and to *want* to be nothing but the perfect tool/weapon for him. They both ended up dead, the older finally acknowledging to himself that he loved the younger man right before he died. *sniff*

Final Fantasy Unlimited

In the past I've seen this anime available for downloading. However, since I didn't know anything about it, I've skipped it. Since I'm now out of things to watch, FFU was one of the first things I hunted down and downloaded. Today I'm watching it.

During the beginning of it (before the initial credits/theme song played) I wondered if some other series was just taking advantage of the Final Fantasy name -- if it had nothing to do with the games' worlds at all. Then when the credits appeared, it did list that it was "Final Fantasy - By Square Enix" (Enix? Enox? I might be misspelling it, but it had the right logo and everything), so it's an official FF anime.

Exciting and wonderful, right?

Nope. Horrible, horrible animation (worse than Saturday morning cartoon level), dialogue which made me clutch my hands to my ears and yell "la la la la!" as loud as I could, but unfortunately that didn't block out the voice acting. (Speaking of which, I had to listen to this in English, and it took two hours even to get that to work! It was put out in gos awful .mkv file format. Yes, I had as much trouble as last time getting them to play, including making no other file types work and crashing my computer. Oh, and your trick didn't work for me, bouteillebleu. Thanks anyway though.)

The bad guy was some clown/mime thing which was just cringingly bad... but the second bad guy was worse. Mr. Fungus. A walking, talking, SMOKING mushroom. Bright blue. Smoking a pipe. At this point I thought maybe it was some sort of a spoof -- no one could come up with something this bad unless it was on purpose.

The two main characters (a couple of kids) are named Ai and Yu. Pronounced "I" and "U". I kept waiting for kids named A, Ee, and Oh to show up.

The one and only thing which caught my eye (and the reason I'm watching a second ep of this instead of just deleting it as fast as I can) is that I thought Jecht was in it. There's a mystery man with the same coloring (though later his hair was red instead), with the same scar across his nose. Mmm. If it were really him, I'd continue to watch this awful series. Wow, "awful" just doesn't do Final Fantasy Unlimited justice. It's worse than the worst Saturday morning cartoon, and worse than most every other animated thing I've ever seen.

Do yourself a favor, don't be tempted by the "Final Fantasy" name like I was. Avoid this at any cost.

ETA: Oh! I almost forgot. The Jecht-looking fellow has this giant gun attached to his arm. Before he uses it to blow away some bad guy, he strikes a pose and announces: "SOIL IS MY POWER!", which just makes me roll laughing. Then Mr. Laundry Soap Commercial shoots his gun, and a phoenix comes out. It's so funny and so bad... (And did I mention that the gun has a /beating heart/ inside it? In a glass chamber, so you can see it when he uses it?)

Final Fantasy Unlimited

In the past I've seen this anime available for downloading. However, since I didn't know anything about it, I've skipped it. Since I'm now out of things to watch, FFU was one of the first things I hunted down and downloaded. Today I'm watching it.

During the beginning of it (before the initial credits/theme song played) I wondered if some other series was just taking advantage of the Final Fantasy name -- if it had nothing to do with the games' worlds at all. Then when the credits appeared, it did list that it was "Final Fantasy - By Square Enix" (Enix? Enox? I might be misspelling it, but it had the right logo and everything), so it's an official FF anime.

Exciting and wonderful, right?

Nope. Horrible, horrible animation (worse than Saturday morning cartoon level), dialogue which made me clutch my hands to my ears and yell "la la la la!" as loud as I could, but unfortunately that didn't block out the voice acting. (Speaking of which, I had to listen to this in English, and it took two hours even to get that to work! It was put out in gos awful .mkv file format. Yes, I had as much trouble as last time getting them to play, including making no other file types work and crashing my computer. Oh, and your trick didn't work for me, bouteillebleu. Thanks anyway though.)

The bad guy was some clown/mime thing which was just cringingly bad... but the second bad guy was worse. Mr. Fungus. A walking, talking, SMOKING mushroom. Bright blue. Smoking a pipe. At this point I thought maybe it was some sort of a spoof -- no one could come up with something this bad unless it was on purpose.

The two main characters (a couple of kids) are named Ai and Yu. Pronounced "I" and "U". I kept waiting for kids named A, Ee, and Oh to show up.

The one and only thing which caught my eye (and the reason I'm watching a second ep of this instead of just deleting it as fast as I can) is that I thought Jecht was in it. There's a mystery man with the same coloring (though later his hair was red instead), with the same scar across his nose. Mmm. If it were really him, I'd continue to watch this awful series. Wow, "awful" just doesn't do Final Fantasy Unlimited justice. It's worse than the worst Saturday morning cartoon, and worse than most every other animated thing I've ever seen.

Do yourself a favor, don't be tempted by the "Final Fantasy" name like I was. Avoid this at any cost.

ETA: Oh! I almost forgot. The Jecht-looking fellow has this giant gun attached to his arm. Before he uses it to blow away some bad guy, he strikes a pose and announces: "SOIL IS MY POWER!", which just makes me roll laughing. Then Mr. Laundry Soap Commercial shoots his gun, and a phoenix comes out. It's so funny and so bad... (And did I mention that the gun has a /beating heart/ inside it? In a glass chamber, so you can see it when he uses it?)

Ghost Ship, TeniPuri, Into the Light

It's been ages since I've been bored on a weekend. With little downloaded to watch, I've been trying to watch TV. Boooring. Because of a lack of anything better, I'm checking out Ghost Ship, a horror movie from last year or so. Well, I should put 'horror' in quotes -- it's gory as hell, but it's not scary for reasons other than that. Who needs to see graphic images of people cut in half? Of someone hit in the side of the head by a giant metal hook and swung back and forth by that until dead, spraying blood all over the place? Of people being smushed slowly between metal cog-things? Not me.

On the plus side, TeniPuri 100 is out! Yay! Here's a link. It's nearly done downloaded! Yay for 20-something minutes of entertainment! :)

So since I was so bored today and have nothing to do tomorrow, I'm probably going to actually go out. (Please, stop your gasping.) I want to buy a new desk, but more importantly I've been wanting to go to the Japanese mega-supermarket place (even more now that I know there's another Japanese store right next to it that probably has some stuff I've been looking for). So unless I'm not feeling well tomorrow, I'll likely go there. Yay!

Hm, the movie is over already (yay!). Under an hour and a half long. Isn't that really, really short? (You can see how often I view movies in the last few years.) Used to be, all movies were two and a half or hours long... I'd be annoyed to pay $8 to see a movie that's only an hour and a half long -- that's like a fleshed-out single ep of something! Oh well. On the rare occasion I want to see some movie Hollywood puts out, I have other ways of finding them. *hugs BT*

ETA: ( Ep 100 spoilers: Pairings made canon! Hee. )

Ghost Ship, TeniPuri, Into the Light

It's been ages since I've been bored on a weekend. With little downloaded to watch, I've been trying to watch TV. Boooring. Because of a lack of anything better, I'm checking out Ghost Ship, a horror movie from last year or so. Well, I should put 'horror' in quotes -- it's gory as hell, but it's not scary for reasons other than that. Who needs to see graphic images of people cut in half? Of someone hit in the side of the head by a giant metal hook and swung back and forth by that until dead, spraying blood all over the place? Of people being smushed slowly between metal cog-things? Not me.

On the plus side, TeniPuri 100 is out! Yay! Here's a link. It's nearly done downloaded! Yay for 20-something minutes of entertainment! :)

So since I was so bored today and have nothing to do tomorrow, I'm probably going to actually go out. (Please, stop your gasping.) I want to buy a new desk, but more importantly I've been wanting to go to the Japanese mega-supermarket place (even more now that I know there's another Japanese store right next to it that probably has some stuff I've been looking for). So unless I'm not feeling well tomorrow, I'll likely go there. Yay!

Hm, the movie is over already (yay!). Under an hour and a half long. Isn't that really, really short? (You can see how often I view movies in the last few years.) Used to be, all movies were two and a half or hours long... I'd be annoyed to pay $8 to see a movie that's only an hour and a half long -- that's like a fleshed-out single ep of something! Oh well. On the rare occasion I want to see some movie Hollywood puts out, I have other ways of finding them. *hugs BT*

ETA: ( Ep 100 spoilers: Pairings made canon! Hee. )