Finally a Break

Deprived of Sleep

I don't I've ever had such tiring week like this before. By tiring I don't mean by exercising and going out (because that usually gives me more energy), but it's more from work and lack of sleep. And believe me I was lacking A LOT of sleep... 

Typically I go through my school hours running on at least 5 hours of sleep. But stupidly enough I kept staying up later than usual to try to catch up on my anime so 3-4 days of the week I've had less than 3 hours of sleep on each day. If it I were still in High School I would have skipped every class haha. Thankfully enough my classes were interesting enough for me to want to wake up for school and go on that 1 hour and 30 minute commute. But even so I'm pretty disappointed in my performance this week. There were some really important things that needed to be done early that I overlooked and ended up suffering for. So from now on I can't let myself slip in anyway. Hopefully my grades haven't suffered too much, but what I'm really worried about is my health insurance.

There are some things you should never procrastinate on.

Yup. I went and fucked up on health insurance. I sent in my application for a new health plan the day it was due. So now I am without health insurance, and I have no idea whether or not the application will go through until perhaps a week from now. To make matters worse I have an oral surgery appointment coming Tuesday. If I don't know by Monday if I'm covered or not then I'll have to cancel the appointment. And I hope that I won't be charged late fees for canceling the day before the appointment...

But at least this weeks over. Even though I know that there will be a lot of "hair pulling" action going on for next week I should do what I can to relax and prepare beforehand. I think this time around I really need to settle down and do some work over this weekend rather than doing things at my leisure. So tonight I'll watch more anime (I have like 10 Episodes to watch...) Get some practice done, especially watercolor since my professor just gave us an assignment to do a watercolor bit on a sphere density exercise (I think it'll come out pretty cool). And I'll possibly be able to add something to that new Animetology tab I put up. I like writing analysis and review for anime in a serious fashion. It annoys me to no end when people put out low level reviews on those anime forums. Light analysis I can bear with, but I never ever have seen anyone other than myself and the denizens of 4chan do hard analysis on anime. Sunday, get shit some real shit done so on Monday I can relax and contemplate about what to do about my health insurance and my car (my car broke down too WTF). 

Bunny Drop

I'm glad I went and did a little manga shopping while I was at Borders with my friends. So on trip to and from school I read the first volume of Bunny Drop. For some reason I'm a real sucker for seinen slice of life mangas. It's probably because I'm always thinking about the future and whatnot. I mean, it wouldn't much of a  surprise if I got married in a couple years from now. Time really does move that fast @_@. But anyways, Bunny Drop, as you can see here, is very similar to My Girl. Which is basically the plot having a single Father raise up a little girl. Except in this one, our main character, Daikichi, starts off much older- at 30. 

30 is an extremely interesting age for the protagonist to start off at. Almost all the time the oldest protagonist you will see is in his early 20's or mid 20's. Late 20's obviously is just too depressing. At 30 is just the right age since you're basically coming to acknowledge that you will be in the process of preparing to enter your "middle-age" phase of life.

Its a really mature story

I put my detective skills to work and found out that the mangaka submits her work to a magazine aimed towards young adult women. She has several different random works published but Bunny Drop seems to be her biggest and main project. The manga has some really nice thought provoking moments where your adulthood gets challenged. And what's great is how all of those moments are based off on the real thoughts of her friends as they go through parenthood. So all of it is quite genuine.

The manga industry seriously needs more slice of life series to get published... They are just soooo good. I mean most of the eccentric otaku population is made up of older men in their 20's and up, so it would only make sense to make more of them. Because I'm seriously getting tired of the typical harem and ecchi series that keep showing their ugly face.

Well I'll probably be back later tonight with some sketches to talk about. I want to revisit male characters after reading bunny drop. Unita Yumi does a really good job at creating a mature male character, not just art-wise, but personality wise as well.