浪客劍心

Also known as Samurai X, this is by far the comic I like best. Oh.. I love the Meiji era setting, I love the samurai code of conduct-Bushido, I love the fighting, the martial arts, the use of a reverse blade sword, the never-say-die attitude, and of cos the cute cute Sanosuke 左之助 who always has either a fish bone or a stalk of grass stuck in his mouth. I love the way he fights with his bare fists, and how he manages to win all the time despite not having a weapon. Well, not saying Kenshin is no good. He's pretty great too.. managing to defeat all his opponents with his reverse blade sword, without killing a single one. The story got pretty dark in the middle, when Kenshin's ex-brother-in-law came and took Kaoru away, giving Kenshin the impression that she was dead. Kenshin lost all hope and gave up trying to maintain peace in Japan, chosing to live desolately in the slums with a group of people who could not keep up with the Meiji Restoration. Yeah.. but in the end, Kenshin found out that Kaoru was possibly not dead and finally managed to defeat his ex-brother-in-law anyway.

Those who don't read comics or watch animes probably do not understand why I would think this way.. but in any case, I was super infatuated with Kenshin and Sanosuke for the whole period of time I was reading this comic. They are sooo cool!!! Yeah.. infatuation with comic characters does not make u a weirdo k.. It juz proves that the comic artist is really great and can draw really well!!!

Yeah.. talking about that artist, he now has a new comic! 武裝煉金! In the process of reading the 3rd book now. In Singapore, currently, for the Singaporean version, up to the 5th book of the series had been published. Yeah.. but recently too busy with work, didn't read very fast. And dun wanna read it so fast either.. cos I dun like the feeling of waiting for the next book. If I read it too fast, by the time the next book comes out, I would have forgotten what happened in the previous book, which means I would have to read it again! Makes no sense, does it?

Oh right.. I bet anyone who's reading this is juz waiting for the most important part now.. what this comic is all about! Yeah.. this comic basically, is about a typical high school boy, who gets killed by a monster while trying to save a girl from the monster. This girl is actually a saviour with superpowers given by some special metal 煉金, and in return for this boy 武藤和树's saving of her life, she imparted skills of the special metal to him. And he joined her league to defeat all these monsters who were created by an inventor of 煉金術 determined to take over the world. Yeah.. so.. feeling the temptation to go get this comic this very minute?? Do it now!!!

Another comic that I've been meaning to buy, but due to shortages of finances, have been putting aside, is Deathnote, or 死亡日记. Heard it's pretty good. And yet another one is 最遊記 Reload. Caught the anime one day on board 179 home from NTU, on TV mobile. I've yet to find out which is the exact channel showing it. It's not kids central.. I dunno which channel.. it's so frustrating! So I came up with this great idea of juz going to get the VCD straight! I mean, in this way, I can like, chiong all the episodes in one day! Ok.. that's exaggerating.. maybe 2 days.. yeah.. but my point is, juz getting the vcd will solve all problems of trying to find what channel is broadcasting the anime! Right?? So one day, I happily went to Tiong Bahru Plaza.. thinking maybe 40 or 50 bucks is enough for me to buy the whole series.. yeah... what a fool I am. Ok.. yeah one set of VCD costs about 40 bucks that's right. But guess what, those wily distributors juz had to split that nice complete series up into like, 4 or 5 sets of VCDs!! That's the trend now isn't it.. like, the first set of VCDs for a certain idol drama, then after 1 or 2 weeks, the second set etc.. yeah.. and guess what.. the price of each SET of vcds (maybe about 5 episodes?) cost the same as what the entire SERIAL in vcd form used to cost!!! So in effect now the distributors are earning like, 4 to 5 times as much as they did before! And their excuse? They had to release the VCDs set by set cos in the native country showing the drama, the drama was not completely broadcasted yet. Oh.. what nerve they have.. if u r like the fool I was, went to buy some of these drama vcds, u will realise that these vcds are juz basically obtained by recording the drama straight from tv! U can even see the channel at the top corners of the screen. Urgh.. sometimes I really wonder how much profit they gain from doing such shady business.. Maybe it's not such a bad idea to study business after all!!!