Setsuled's Journal

I was pleased to have some guy teabag me yesterday. Oh, you people are too smart, I shouldn't even try. Of course I actually mean I watched a guy take some tea leaves out of a jar, put them in a little white envelope, staple it shut, and place it in a cup of very hot water. This is how they do it at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. I know it's still not the proper way to make tea, but it's a hell of a lot better than Starbucks.

My sister thought she'd acquired a couple small bottles of absinthe for me yesterday, but it turned out what she'd gotten was Absente, which, according to Wikipedia, is actually more of a pastis due to the fact that it contains southern wormwood instead of grande wormwood. Still, it is very nice stuff. For something that's 110 proof, it goes down remarkably smooth (though I ought to point out I mixed it with water). It tasted a lot like a black jelly bean.



Seeing that Adult Swim is going to start showing Death Note, I finally talked Tim into downloading the series. I'd been interested in seeing it since I'd found out it'd tied with Code Geass and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya for "Best TV Anime Series" at the Tokyo Anime awards--I'm very fond of the other two series, especially Haruhi Suzumiya.

But Death Note actually seems to have a lot in common with Code Geass, in that it's about two hot guys who're geniuses, battling each other without knowing their opponent's identity, and neither individual is clearly the "good guy". And like Code Geass, Death Note's main character, Light Yagami, actually demonstrates his genius instead of asking us to take it on faith, as many a lesser anime series would do. I'm up to the fourth episode, which is entirely concerned with Light crafting a plan to discover the identity of someone who's stalking him and then executing that plan. It's like watching a chess pro, it works so well.

The "Death Note" referred to by the title is a magical notebook given to Light by a Death God named Ryuk. Anyone whose name Light writes in the book, whose face he can clearly picture in his mind, dies of a heart attack within forty seconds. Or Light can specify the manner of death, in which case he's granted an additional six minutes. There's a lot of Death Note stationary available at Mitsuwa, which is a marketing strategy I've loved even since before seeing the series.

I'm disappointed, as usual, that the series is getting an English dub. But I'm a little curious how they're going to handle all the English that actually is used in the series.