finally i got the 07-ghost ost in my hands. well i got it 3 days ago, actually. but i am a bit lazy to go through all 70+ tracks just to find that 1 short track that captured my attention.

for that 1 short track i hunted everywhere for the complete album and finally when i got it on hand, i guess i am too lazy to pull it out among the whole list of instrumental music.

also, i spent another 100 dollars buying books, again. been wasting a lot of money on books. at first i started off with english fiction, but when manga caught my attention and i switched over, my expenditure shot up. later when it was a little extreme, i switched to light novels again. japanese light novels translated into traditional chinese. at first i read a bit slowly, since i was not that used to it. and i thought that could help me reduce my expenditure. and well it did.

just that, now i read traditional chinese faster than when i read english, being brought up in an environment where we use english to do everything from studies to working to online chatting.

of course expenditure is still lesser than if i spend on manga, but... my cupboard is seriously running out of space! i had packed, arranged, repacked, rearranged, and repeated the cycle for n times, and now it is going to be full again.

*dies*

my house is small. my room is smaller. and my cupboard is even smaller. my precious books ~~

*dies again*

and now, i seriously need more money! my bank account is running at an all time low. oh! the horrors of poverty~~ (even though kinokuniya gave 20% discount to all members now, probably due to christmas)

*dies the 3rd time*

i have nothing better to do, so i guess i will just make a short post on the light novels i have finished reading so far, since i started reading them about 2 years ago.

since i am not remotely proficent in japanese, i read the translated version, in traditional chinese. i don't trust the english translation, the latest example you can see from what they did with wolf and spice (those english people decided to call it spice and wolf). a little complaint here: if they can do so much as to change the cover art into that, despite protests, because they think it is good for the audience, i have no doubts that for the good of the audience they will change the meaning of the original texts into something that will be totally and absolutely irrelevant beneficial for the readers.

this is the list i have read so far:

suzumiya haruhi series (9 volumes)
kara no kyoukai (2 volumes, completed)
kaze no stigma (5 volumes)

well on and off ever since i started reading light novels, i would stop and turn back to manga, or read manga with light novels concurrently. as you can see, 2 years reading 16 books isn't all that outstanding.

i bought the haruhi series 2.5 years ago, read 2 volumes, then stopped to read the 2 volumes of kara no kyoukai, which was already completed. then i went on to read another 3 volumes of haruhi, and stopping again to read 5 volumes of kaze no stigma, then the rest of the 4 volumes again. yeapx, when i bought it 2 years ago, i bought 9 volumes at one go.

haruhi series, volume 9, had its last release on 1 april 2007. no it's not april fool. well 2 years later, the 10th volume is still not out yet, which leaves many fans disappointed. because to all readers of the light novels, we all know that the end of volume 9 left everything at a cliffhanger, with the haruhi side and the sasaki side clashing. actually i kind of like sasaki. hahaha.

kaze no stigma, a little disappointing to me. nothing wrong with the story, except for the fact that the loss of kazuma to ayano in their battle at volume 5 was rather... lame in my opinion. what i found disappointing was that the story will never be complete. i have only read until volume 5, which was the latest book kadokawa had translated when i bought the set. it seemed that during these few months they had already translated 2 more short story compilations. why they did not translate main volume 6, i don't know. anyway, it left readers with many question marks as to kazuma's history, including the half-concluded part of tsuoi rin, as of volume 5. 11 volumes, consisting of 6 main volumes and 5 short story compilations. certain pasts of kazuma were made known in the short story compilations though, like his relationship with li lon-yue. but this story will always remain incomplete, since the author of this series passed away on 20th july 2009, which was a few months ago. yeapx, this was a disappointment which no one could do anything about it. a fantastic story though, i would wish that it could come to completion. but as it is now, this story had broken off just like that. well, at least i had a good time reading that few volumes.

that made me think of trinity blood. i had wanted to buy the trinity blood novels at first, but the author had died while the series was still incomplete, and his friend had came in to finish the series. well, personally i don't know if the whole story followed the plot meant by the author. as an author myself (yeah i am just an unknown.. hahahaha), i would have already planned out the whole story, decided its ending and everything while writing. but the thing is i don't know if the continuation of the story was followed faithfully by his friend, assuming that he did indeed leave behind his notes, which his friends were given access to. so, because of that, i did not buy the series, which had sparked my interests when i saw the anime. i don't want to see an ending that was off. you see, everyone would know, the head and the middle has to match the ending, which was the 'perfect ending' came up by the author. everything has to be in harmony and synchronized. if you only has the head and half of the body, it is kind of hard to come up with a 'perfect ending' for which the published series existed to support it.

kara no kyoukai... well i must admit, one of the best i have read so far, given all the books that i had read, including english books. a dark story, with very few yet developed characters, and a good story plot. for those who don't mind dark stories where you deal with split and twisted personalities, gore(?) and murder, this book is definitely a recommended one. oh, i forgot to mention. basically every single character in each of the individual chapters has at least one single tragic character with a tragic end. satsuki, tomoe, fujino are some of the examples. typical of nasu's works, tsukihime, fate stay night and kara no kyoukai, all of them have one thing in common. tragic characters with tragic ends. that's why nasu is my favorite author.

so i am off to read my next series, zero no tsukaima. hopefully i will be able to complete them soon, and move on to other series. i have a lot i want to read, such as wolf and spice (definitely not going to buy the lousy english version), shakugan no shana, fullmetal panic and many many others.

oh yea, if you are interested in what was the change of wolf and spice, continue to scroll down to see it. don't westernize every single thing on earth. what the hell. any japanese literate people would know the original cover wrote wolf and spice, and any english literate people would know their version of the cover wrote spice and wolf. the title being not much of an issue, the cover perhaps created a much more racket.

original:

english version:

someone tell me, is the above picture a guy with long hair and slender body, or a flat-chested woman? i have no offence to flat-chested woman, i am just curious about the picture. you see, horo (or rather, holo, in the english version) is a 600 year old fox deity, not some vampire or werewolf in underworld.

i have not been coming here recently, and well today, as usual to give myself an excuse to waste another few more minutes of my life, i am going to write this post which i had been dragging for months.

kaze no stigma, to those who already knew, orginally came from the light novel series, which later turned into an anime and manga adaptation. having seen both the anime and book, but not the manga, as usual, you would expect the book to be much better.

one difference between the anime and the book, is that the anime is the toned down version of the story. well, children watch animes but they don't read books with nothing but words for a few hundred pages, except for a few insert pictures here and there.

for today, i am just going to talk about the book.

the story goes like this: yagami kazuma, orginally known as kannagi kazuma, had returned to japan from overseas, and from there a ton of things happened which will later reveal his past and his character. well this is a crappy introduction i am giving.

well if you think i am going to spoil you, then don't read the below section.

kannagi kazuma was originally born in the family specialized with the control of fire. but him, being an untalented person in that area, lost to a girl few years younger in a fight for the next head of the family when he was a teen (and when the girl was 12). because of that he was kicked out of the family, and he changed his family name to yagami. don't ask me why of all names he chose yagami.

in the story, kazuma was protrayed as a cold-blooded person who would not hesitate in the slightest to kill those who stood in his way, whether they are innocent or not (compared to the anime). it was later revealed that he had lost the woman most important to him while he could not do anything. it's the usual thing of because people had not shown him any mercy when he needed it, so he did not show it to those who needed it.

he returned to his home, well not return, but to make an appearance there, as the most powerful wind mage in the world. i don't know what the author is trying to say, but the story was that he left as a failure in fire magic, but came back being the most successful wind mage, being born in a family of fire mages.

the story, generally is darker. definitely it is not the kind of light hearted stories meant for children, nor is it the kind that you will smile as you read. overall, you can say the mood is created to be on the side of heavy.

all sorts of negative emotions you could think of appeared in the book: sadistic behavior, cruelty, despair, grief, anger (of the extreme kind), hatred... all of them appeared many times. on the other hand, positive emotions and behavior appeared much lesser, and tend to be concentrated on 2 people, kannagi ren and kannagi ayano. with the appearance of the 2 of them, the mood became more balanced, having more positive as well as negative. but i need to emphasize, the overall mood is still overwhemlingly on the side of negative. it is not a sad story that you would cry over it though, so don't worry if you don't like that kind of stories.

if you want to compare it to kara no kyoukai, although it is also a dark story, there is a very obvious difference. the negative moods from kaze no stigma came from the situations and circumstances, meaning people became the way they are because they are forced to. for kara no kyoukai, everything came from inside oneself. hence, the despair, the grief, the anger, the sadistic behaviors, all hold much different meanings.

i would say the story is very captivating, to me. perhaps i like this kind of stories much more, and i was able to take in 5 books in mere weeks. note that i only read when i am travelling on buses and trains, so there was not much time for me to read.

another spoiler: i don't like it the way how the 'madness' of kazuma ended. he had gone crazy after seeing someone (i won't spoil you) and went on an unstoppable rampage (since he was already the world's most powerful) until another feller came to stop him. the reason given on how the fight concluded was a little... lame in my opinion. but well, the series is still worth a read.

crap, i have not completed my haruhi series. it is darn long. i am already on the 7th, or is it 8th book? well 10 books in total now, last i checked. but i had already bought the whole set available for zero no tsukaima. lolx.

someone introduce me a series which had a darker mood.

there are many things i want to share with the world on this blog. but out of the many things, a lot of them are stuffs that will land me in prison if i type it out. in order not to go to prison, i have chosen to write some stuffs that will not disturb my peace in the civilian world.

and today, as the title goes, i am introducing the suzumiya haruhi light novel series.

yes, i know. the haruhi party had started long ago, and many of you have already watched the anime or even picked up the light novel. but there are even more of you who had not yet watched the anime or even read the book. light novel, is just a novel with insert anime-styled pictures, targeting at teenagers and young adults. you can say it is manga in word form. that's all.

i didn't watch the haruhi anime. i only read the light novels. i must say, it is interesting, in a way. of course, like i said before, it is very different from books like kara no kyoukai. haruhi series focuses on school life, told from the perspective of an ordinary human called kyon.

the story goes like this: haruhi has enough power to be called 'god'. because she wished strongly for it, an esper, a time traveler and 2 aliens (1 of them died) appeared in her school, joining the club she set up, called sos brigade. however she did not know the true identity of her friends, who were there to supervise her and to make sure she didn't create havoc. i rephrase, there are there to make sure she doesn't create a havoc they cannot handle. haruhi herself did not know of her ability and the rest, especially the esper had to keep putting in effort to maintain that secret.

as for the style and mood of writing, it is much more light-hearted, comedic in a certain sense (especially the way kyon 'worships' mikuru and yuki). maybe you can say it is the story of a very interesting student life. i think, throughout our student life perhaps we would have held such fantasies like kyon, wishing for aliens and espers... the actions and words of the characters in the story are kind of exaggerated, which often makes me smile when i read it, which never happened when i read other books.

perhaps i prefer darker stories, but i always stop for sometime whenever i read the haruhi books. i am unable to read it all at one go over a period of time, as i did with others. after reading a bit, i have to stop, because i got bored with it. then i move on to other novels, and then i come back again. the cycle continues. why did i still read it even though my preferences are those of darker types like kara no kyoukai and kaze no stigma? because i think the story is interesting.

indeed, stories like kara no kyoukai makes me get a little sad (which i somehow like it, since i always look for stories like that), but i really love the writing style in haruhi series. among all the books i read, it is the most suitable as a bedtime story, although i only read it in buses and trains when i travel to work or to study.

all in all, i would say it has a good story, unique style of writing and nice insert pictures. if you had not yet read the light novel, i would recommend you to read it. especially if you are a fan of light-hearted stories, this is definitely a good read for you.

i wish i can replace kyon. then maybe i can drink tea which asahina brewed, play chess with itsuki, ask yuki for help and then complain about haruhi. wow, that is bliss.

if you are a typemoon fan, chances are... or rather, most definitely you would have known about this story. nasu kinoko, the man behind the famous fate/stay night and tsukihime, wrote this book. kara no kyoukai is very similar to tsukihime in quite a number of ways, however it is different enough for one to enjoy reading it without feeling repetitive. this is because knk is so called the story concept from which tsukihime used, or you can say it is a parallel world to the tsukihime world.

as usual of his writing style, knk is a story with a dark theme. for those who like this kind of stories, it will be a good read. of course, it contains sadness and tragedy, unreachable hope and despair as a major element.

for those who know how to read japanese, i guess you would have read it a long time ago. for those who know how to read chinese, this 2 volume novel had been translated to traditional chinese. i read that, the translated version. it's great to know chinese, particularly if the manga and novels i want kept getting translated to that language.

as for those who only know how to read english, i guess you have to wait a bit more. the translation is kind of slow. i seriously don't know what the official translating company is doing, letting money just flow away for every single day they dragged the production. fan translation had been dropped because it had been licensed. but you don't have to wait for long, it appears. this year, 2009, del ray will begin printing the translated version of this story. let me add a word of my own opinion: i wouldn't expect much from their translation from the way they do their sypnosis. i didn't read the sypnosis from their own source, but from a third party source which got it from them.

one thing about translation, is that during the process of translation meanings get lost sometimes, and it spoils the story, or even change the whole meaning of the story. for example, if in japanese a person says, 'i want to sleep,' the translation may turn out, 'i want to rest.' essentially, there might be no change in how the story goes. but you see, the actual meaning is changed. i have had too many experiences dealing with crappy translations to trust official english translations. no offence to those translating it but this is my personal experiences. fans translations often do a better job.

regarding translations, if i had to choose between chinese and english, both of which i am confident to say i am proficient, i would rather choose the chinese version, as opposed to others who would choose the latter. for those who know the same 2 language as me, allow me to give you my advice.

the japanese writing system borrowed heavily on the chinese system. hence there are many words, idioms, ideas which can be easily translated across. as all who learnt 2 languages or more know, there are words which cannot be translated into another language, simply because, there are no words in that language. not convinced? let me give you an example.

in english, we can have these 2 words: happy, glad. in chinese we can have these words to describe the same thing: 高興,開心,快樂,愉快。if you cannot see the 4 set of words in the previous sentence, you would need to enable your computer to see east asian language words.

as you can see, there are words which cannot be translated as easily into english. you can say they mean essentially the same thing. but if they all mean exactly the same thing, there won't be any need to use 4 sets of words when they can be replaced by 1. so my advice is, if you know both chinese and english, read it in chinese. the japanese kanji is practically, chinese.

knk is an old story, but its story is relatively new to many. because of typemoon's recent popularity, nasu's works had been published and adapted into anime. this had brought out a good story which was otherwise hidden only to the circle of i would say, light novels and typemoon fans. as we all know, many people rather watch the anime than read that thick book. but the book has a better story. oh well...

in any case, i finished reading the story a couple of weeks back. i had stopped reading haruhi (i had just finished reading the 3rd volume then) to go into knk, and is now back to haruhi (5th volume now) again. you can't read the same kind of story for too long, if not you will start to get sick and lose interests of a very well-written story. haruhi and knk are both good, it is just that they cater to different audiences and their story settings are too different. i would dare say all of you would agree with me on that.

anyway, so i am posting the pictures of the cover of knk 2 volume books. there are a few covers around, it seemed. but i am posting the cover of the books i have at home. they are in black and white though, because the picture i found on the net seemed to be off-color. so to make it more presentable i have set it to black and white.

and as for the picture below, i really like this picture. shiki looks real cool. not that the 2 pictures above is not cool, just that this is cooler. i would rather have this picture as my book cover. but of course, this is not a book cover. this is the cover for the anime disc. totally cool. (obviously the bottom left of this pic is blurred, but don't mind it, ok?)