The Life of a Foolish Mortal

Alright another week, more art.

Spent this week working on taxes, con scheduling and trying to organize a few things. So not much art post this week. I did do some sketches and started a necklace but nothing really worth showing.

I did at least a few cards from the Fandoms of Stupid Years Past series. This week it's the rather painful for me to admit series of Fushigi Yugi.

This was a series that looking back on I have no idea what I saw in it. Well besides the fact that there were 4-5 attractive (sort of) male characters who were there for eye candy. The lead was vapid and stupid, her only skill was getting kidnapped and having all these guys fall in love with her. Her romantic lead was also rather boring, and the plot was hideous.

It is as an old wiser person that I suggest, that if the story of a girl getting sucked into a magical fantasy land that may or may not have ties to Folkloric China sounds like something that interests you, watch 12 Kingdoms instead. Seriously 12 Kingdoms is so much better.

That being said, here are Miaka and Tamahome, the leads of Fushigi Yugi in the only way I remember them.

This is a busy hectic deadline week for me, so the Art Post this week is going to be one of my freebie weeks when I get around to posting.

In between projects and nervous breakdowns I've been reading the manga One Piece, this is partially out of curiosity and partially out of peer pressure and word of mouth. Yea Yea, I am STUPIDLY late to the party on this one, I just kept intending to check it out and kept forgetting. I got busy, and side tracked, and distracted, there was that rather beautiful year or so when Lacy and I were reading little known manga through interlibrary loans and then I got caught up in researching pirate puppies for The Project.

Anyways, One Piece. I so far have enjoyed it, its a nice fairly light hearted break from Deadline Hell. I might even break down and do fan art for it.

For those of you who have never heard of it, its a ridiculously popular manga series about a kid who has rubber-stretchy abilities who sets out to be King of the Pirates. In this series, being stretchy and bouncy is actually the least weird ability someone can have so character concepts in this series gets trippy. You've got the human/reindeer Doctor Chopper (who is actually quite awesome), Sanji the Pirate Chef who fights only with kicks so his hands are saved for cooking, and villains with abilities like shape shifting or turning into sand, or turning their bodies into blades.

So the main character Luffy and his buddies sail around fighting, righting wrongs, getting in trouble and doing insane insane things. Like punch giant sea monsters out of their way. This series feels kinda like someone made a series about pirates in the world of Yellow Submarine, but with a bit more logic involved.

The series like most manga for teen audiences preaches about the power of friendship, and like most shounen (boy) titles theres lots of fighting and fight scenes that take multiple chapters. The miracle is that unlike most other series of this type I've read, One Piece manages to do both acts without getting on my nerves doing it. For ene the characters while they are crazy have fairly well fleshed out characters, I end up actually getting caught up and caring about these guys but they don't get too bogged down in angst (I'm looking at you Naruto). Also the fight scenes while they do end up being long are at least fairly interesting. I mean how often do you get to see a rubber man (who actually uses his abilities creatively) fight a man whose bodies parts can seperate and fly from his body?

So yea, One Piece is beyond my ability to explain (I've just reached a section where they rode a geyser into the sky and are currently exploring an island on a sea of clouds, there are honestly no words for this.) But I'm enjoying this ridiculously so, and manages to do the whole pirate thing in a fairly new way.And there are bits where I get the feeling that the guy actually did some research and knows his stuff even if he chose to channel it into pure epic crack.

Anyways, back to work for me.

They finally got Hellsing volume 10 out for pre order.

Even if I don't end up graduating on time at least I'll get to finish something on May the 15th.

So my immune system is not as good as I had previously thought it.

Rather than fighting off con-crud and not getting the strange bronchitis mix my mother has my immune system has decided to pick and choose symptoms and I seem to have developed some sort of "walking crud" if you will.

I really don't feel any sicker than if my sinus' had revolted (which they do often) except for a slight temperature with the sensation of my head being not quite right. This is actually worse than normal crud where I just sleep it off till I feel better because I don't actually feel BAD, so I still feel stir crazy and have the urge to go places and do things rather than stay in bed.

So I'm sitting here killing time until my sleeping pills kick in.

Before my temperature rose I did manage to get to a book store and buy some comics with some of my con profits. I picked up the Clover omnibus and the latest Courtney Crumrin and was very happy with both.
( this turns into a review so click if you care )

Well now my sleeping pills are kicking in so now I go off to hopefully sleep and get rid of this crud. I will probably ramble on about Courtney Crumrin comics later so later folks.

So I finally managed to get me a copy of the Hellsing manga volume 8. It was supposed to be out in the beginning of July but the shipping got delayed and everything else and I started working so I didn't end up picking it up until this week. I finally got to read it last night and my brain exploded.

( click to find out why! WARNING BIG MUCHO SPOILERS )