Kyuuki-chan
There's just one thing - dad's been claiming he can't afford to spend money to hire someone to finish the bathroom, a project he started while I was still working at my old job over half a decade ago, yet he somehow managed to afford $17,000 in cash to pay for his new little toy car. Mom is justifiably miffed at that, although she did find it fun riding in the car. We're still trying to figure out how he decided a little sportscar like that was a good thing to spend money on when we still need to get a lot of the remodeling projects for the inside of the house dad started done (all started around the same time as or before the redoing of the bathroom). Someone suggested he's having a midlife crisis, but he's a little too old for that, leading everyone involved to decided it must be a 3/4 life crisis instead.
As a joke I'm getting him vanity plate for it reading either GEEZER or G33Z3R.
On to more geekish matters: I squee with joy since I found out Darker Than BLACK's second season (Darker Than BLACK:Ryusei no Gemini/Meteor's Gemini) starts in October.
For those of you unfamiliar with the title DTB is a seinen anime about spies, secret agents, assassins, secret organizations, and special powers. It takes place in a slightly futuristic setting (the technology seen in normal settings is similar to what's high tech now, but some other technology is significantly more advanced) and pays homage to film noir. The premise of the series is that about 10 years before it starts something triggered the appearance of abnormal spaces (at least two of them Hell's Gate near Tokyo and Heaven's Gate somewhere in South America, which somehow cataclysmically vanished 5 years after appearing) and the appearance of humans with special powers. Those humans with special powers get separated into two kinds; Contractors with a special power which differs from individual to individual who have to perform an act of payment after using them (which also varies) and become amoral when their abilities start to manifest, the other type being mediumistic Dolls who can use "specters" to view what's going on elsewhere and lose their emotions when their abilities manifest.
You'd think a series like that would be some huge mystery/action series which may start out a little slow then dive right in to uncovering the mysteries about the Gates, Contractors, and Dolls but refreshingly it's not. Instead it's simply about the people in that world and how they go about their lives. You get to see how they live in a world like the one set up and you never get to know more than they know, plus since what we find out is simply what they believe some of the information may not even be correct even if it seems correct. What's given more focus is what's relevant to the characters, like Hei's desire to find out what happened to his sister when Heaven's Gate went poof while they were on a mission in that area. It also really makes use of the setup to use noir aspects, sometimes played straight, sometimes played for laughs. The story is divided into a series of two episode arcs that about halfway through start building up to something with a bigger scope.
What really brings this series together to the point it could be called a work of art is the fantastic animation work by Studio BONES and music by famed anime composer Yoko Kanno. Just knowing there's going to be more of their work makes me happy, but I have to admit the biggest draw will be the little bits of mysteries that may be answered as because of the focus not being on those in the first season there's a LOT more than can get hinted at, maybe even making much more sense when the hints from both season get compared and discussed.
