Recently, meaning today, I started reading a new manga series by the name To-love-ru. I stumbled across this series when reading a post on Hongfre. It just happened to be mentioned. Very little was said about it, but I decided to check it out due to curiosity. I’m really glad I did. It’s an enjoyable mix of romance, comedy, and ecchi.

When I was writing my previous post about the game, I knew that I would be finishing the game soon, but I didn’t think it would be THIS soon. After about 27 or so hours of playing it on normal, I finally finished the game.

I was actually kind of surprised with the ending of the game. Surprised in the way that I thought something surprising would happen, but nothing did. The whole plot was kind of linear from beginning to end. Odin tells you what you are going to do at the beginning of the game and you strictly adhere to it the full way.

First let’s start of with some Haruhi kits.

Finally, a kit of Haruhi not in her infamous school uniform. I’d say this is probably the cutest kit of her.	I’m sure we’ve all seens Bubba’s new Yuki kit, but I still wanted to post it here. It’s a really cute kit.	I have one thing to say to this kit, just one thing: nyoro~n!	I’d say this is the second cutest Haruhi kit I’ve seen.
I’m not sure if it’s just me, but this kit looks really petite looking. A nice companion to the next kit.	Another kit of Tsuruya-san. I don’t like her face that much. Other than that, much like the kit ot the left.	Ah, goth loli Nagato. One of my favourite costumes from the series. The paint job on this one looks a bit creepy…	What a surprise, another bunny girl version of Mikuru. This one accentuates certain features of hers.

And now for some cute kits.

Just in time for the Holidays are two Christmas-y Plenair kits. The left one is cuter than the right one, imo.		I have trouble describing this one. I don’t know whether to call it ecchi or kawaii. Perhaps it’s a bit of both.	At first, the eyes really creeped me out on this one. I like the detail on the sukumizu on this one.
This might be one of the figures that I would call “too cute.” It kind of creeps me out in a way. Kawaii overload, maybe?	I really like the artist who did Kino’s Journey. The eyes are so awesome. I’m glad that that art style was brought into the model. I really have to find his homepage sometime.	This one might also have been from the summer, but I don’t care. This Behomi kit is too cute for words!	I really like this trio of models, if it really is three different models. It almost looks as if the parts are interchangeable. I would really like this one my shelf one day…

And the rest.

Of course, since I’ve never been to Japan before, I had no way of getting these pictures on my own. It would only be right if I were to give credit where credit is due. Pictures courtesy of: Clover Note, 寄港界我利庵, Models Uzumaki, plus alpha, 猫鯖のパテ缶, みだれうち, EARL.BOX, Danny Choo, Temporary Feeling, and Meoyo.

And the worst part is that this crazy sounding headline is actually true. BBC wrote an article on this on Wednesday.

That is what some polite Japanese tourists suffer when they discover that Parisians can be rude or the city does not meet their expectations. The experience can apparently be too stressful for some and they suffer a psychiatric breakdown.
…
This year alone, the Japanese embassy in Paris has had to repatriate four people with a doctor or nurse on board the plane to help them get over the shock.
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On average, up to 12 Japanese tourists a year fall victim to it, mainly women in their 30s with high expectations of what may be their first trip abroad. The Japanese embassy has a 24-hour hotline for those suffering from severe culture shock, and can help find hospital treatment for anyone in need.

Oh yeah, and Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas image courtesy of

I would recommend some caution for those currently playing, or planning to play, Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth. This post will probably contain some spoilers for the game. If you don’t care, continue on.

The “new” game will be titled: Final Fantasy Tactics: The Lion War. Of course, it’s just a remake of Final Fantasy Tactics. Not that I’m complaining, I never got to play the original. There’s always a chance that this will never come to America, much like many other remakes that were released for the PSP in Japan. By the way Sega and Konami, I’m still waiting for Sakura Taisen 1 & 2 and Suikoden 1 & 2 to be released here.

Firefox 3 Alpha release (Gran Paradiso):
It seems as though the alpha 1 for Firefox 3 was released with me not knowing about it. I’m not sure if there’s that much difference between this version and Firefox 2 that users will actually notice. It appears that most of the new features are aimed at developers, not end users. The graphical capabilities of the browser are apparently enhanced. Seeing as I don’t notice that much of an improvement yet, I doubt I’ll use Firefox 3 Alpha 1 as my main browser, unlike what I did with Firefox 2 Alpha 1.

Truthiness voted as the Word of the Year:
If you refer to a post I made earlier in the month, you might catch that I mentioned Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year poll. Although haruhiism probably didn’t get close to getting on the top ten (I would be surprised if it got ten votes,) at least truthiness is a interesting word. I was afraid that the word would be boring again.

It seems that Dragon Quest IX, ninth entry of the most popular Japanese RPG series in Japan Dragon Quest is slated for release for the Nintendo DS. The new game comes equipped with the subtitle: Defender of the Stars. Level-5 seems to be handlign the development again

From what I can tell from Jeux-France’s article, it seems to be some sort of Action-RPG. I guess that means that the Dragon Quest series will no longer be retro, which puzzles me since many people who love the games love them because they are so nostalgic. I’m actually kind of hoping that Jeux-France is just being inaccurate and that DQ is still turn-based.

The graphics seems to be pretty good for a DS game. It would look just as pretty as the PS2’s DQ VIII if it weren’t for the ugly lines outlining the characters and all. Oh well, I’ll be looking for it in the future. The original article can be found here.

My last class is on Wednesday, I believe. Final exams, all which I’ll have to study for rigorously in all classes except for 18.03, are the week after. After that, I’m almost entirely free for the next month and the half (except for a robotics competition.) I’ll be sure to end this post drought soon enough.