Hah!

[telophase]

See, THIS is what I can now do with my new office!








Leftover Chinese food, rice cooked in my little microwave steamer, and anime! I've got an hour for lunch, which is enough to grab two eps.

The anime is Rental Magica season 1, lent to me by youshou. For the anime con PR committee I'm on, we're considering having a group blog (debut to be some point in the future), and I suggested that I could do a column on Japanese creatures/spiritual/religious themes, as they show up in a lot of anime, and I've done a lot of reading on it. I'm also catching Occult Academy on Crunchyroll, but the Rental Magica box set has a booklet devoted to information about all the various elements it pulls on, which is highly useful. :)

Anyway, while Occult Academy has better animation and (so far) characters and storyline, Rental Magica is entertaining enough. I am also watching it in broadcast order instead of chronological order (I was confronted with a choice on the first disk, so picked that; it's been sort of interesting picking clues up out of order), so I may be missing some of the development here, but so far none of the characters really stands out as exceptionally well-done. The main character, Itsuki Iba, is your standard sort of bland character that a lot of manga and anime put in to allow as wide an audience as possible to identify with him.

Itsuki also has that standard anime trope, a missing eye! (rachelmanija alert!) He wears a large eyepatch that covers it and part of his face and I am not actually revealing any spoilers here to say that it's possessed - when he takes it off, he reveals a scarred face and a red eye with a slit pupil that often CRIES BLOOD. And which, during the first broadcast episode, EATS A CROW.

Let me repeat that. HIS EYE EATS A CROW.

Itsuki is the president of the Astral Group, a small company staffed by CHILDREN of young employees that are rental mages - they can be hired to clean up spell contamination, to intercede with the gods, exorcise areas, etc. Itsuki's dad was the original president, but disappeared mysteriously so Itsuki inherited the position. He doesn't know much about the business and isn't very good at it.

The other employees include:

Honami Takase Ambler, a girl who specializes in Celtic magic. She wears a big witches' hat and cape.

Manami Kuroha, who I won't mention more about as her backstory and nature is in an early episode.

Mikan Katsuragi - a second-grader who is a Shinto miko

Ren Nekoyashiki - a Shinto priest with a focus on onmyoudo. He's obsessed with cats and has four of them which act as familiars. Named after the four gods that show up in every anime as well: Byakko, Suzaku, Seiryuu, and Genbu. He's the one I'm most intrigued by, as he's drawn to hit all the Evil and Untrustwothy tropes, which include white hair and thin, slanty, kitsune eyes. So far, there's no indication that he's anything other than what he seems to be. We shall see.

The primary antagonist so far is Adelicia Lenn Mathers, who is a descendant of King Solomon and a practitioner of his magic. She's the head of a rival group, Goetia. And is also in Itsuki's school grade, along with Honami.


I shall stop there, and I won't bother to write up anything on Occult Academy and just point you at inkstone's Occult Academy posts, because she explains exactly why you should see it. And why Maya is such a fantastic character. (although she is so fantastic a strong female character that she has to wear a miniskirt, stockings, and heels all the time to reassure people that she's not actually going to take over the world. We can't be having with a woman getting *too* uppity.)

Comments

Re: almost totally off-topic

[estara.livejournal.com]

Ah, interesting! I shall have to try it, although I can buy one-serving pre-packaged rice cups that only take one minute to nuke over here (because they already added some water beforehand). But they only come in certain rice combinations and I might like to try parboiled rice, which isn't one of them but my mum always uses this when she makes rice.

Especially the time needed for soaking and steaming is interesting (and also not what J-List says about their rice cookers, but yours looks like mine).

Re: almost totally off-topic

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yeah - when I tried it without the soaking and steaming, it was pretty hard. Yesterday I nuked it for 8 minutes instead of 10, because the microwave was a bit higher power than the 500watt one assumed in the instructions, and that wasn't quite long enough. Next time I'll do it the full 10. I also had very old rice, which may have needed longer soaking or a little bit more water.

ETA: I also meant to say that I think I can get some rice packets like the ones you talk about here, but they're long-grain rice and I prefer short-grain rice.

Re: almost totally off-topic

[estara.livejournal.com]

Yes, when you use the pre-done stuff you are at the mercy of what the sellers think will likely be bought *nod nod*

Re: almost totally off-topic

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Old rice does indeed tend to dry out and cook up firm rather than sticky (http://news.curiouscook.com/2007/02/rice-scented-and-un-old-and-new.html), so if the cooking-time adjustment doesn't help, tweaking the soak-time/water level may be needed.

And I've only ever seen the microwave-insta-serv-rice in shortgrain (http://www.amazon.com/Shirakiku-Instant-Cooked-Rice-Pk/dp/B000643THQ/ref=pd_sim_gro_1) around here, but that's from shopping at Korean and Japanese markets -- I'd imagine non-Asian supermarkets might be more likely to stock similar products in long-grain.

Re: almost totally off-topic

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I've only got one serving's worth of the old rice left, so I'll give it an extra-long soak and nuke it for the full ten minutes next time. :D