Black Bird

This time I've only been absent for a month. A month is not so bad, but it does make me wonder where the time goes when I feel like it has only been a few days. However, I have enjoyed my Christmas break and Christmas was fantastic. I still have two weeks to go before I will be forced to return to school and join the real world, but for now I have been pleasantly busy with reading, watching American Horror Story, playing video games, and doing a little winter cleaning. Yep. Winter cleaning.

I wanted to talk a little bit about this manga I've been reading for a few years now called Black Bird. Yes, I've been reading it for years, but have actually yet to write a blog about it and now the more I think about it, the older I feel because I know I have been reading this manga for at least 4 years. Oh well, time to get to the point.

Black Bird is most definitely a romance with a little bit of a demon love story intertwined in there. Ok, a lot of a demon love story. It is so beautiful though. The manga centers itself on two people in particular: Kyo (a Tengu demon chief) and Misao (the senka maiden). Now, the titles of these two probably seem like Greek to you, but the manga is very easy to read and follow. In basic terms, Kyo is a powerful black-winged demon who fought his way to the top in order to protect Misao from the other demons who just want to use her blood to make themselves more powerful. Kyo did this all out of love and nothing more than love. Kyo has no desire to use Misao for anything. However, Kyo is a demon and his own love may prove to be all the worse for Misao, but Misao's love for Kyo prevents her from wanting to be away from him.

I'm on the 17th volume of this manga so far and I'm extremely hooked. The manga seems to have a good bit more to go through too even though it's supposed to be approaching the final stages. I do not know what I'll do with myself once the manga actually ends though. I also fear that it may not end the way I want it to.

Gatsby (Movie)

I remember reading parts of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby in my 11th grade American Lit class (which was many years ago--four to be exact) and being completely amazed with this novel. The character of Gatsby makes you feel so much sympathy for him even if you know nothing about him and even if he happens to be a little bit on the aggressive side. The love he shows for Daisy makes a person overlook all of that and really love this mysterious Jay Gatsby. Now, I've seen The Great Gatsby movie that was done in 2000 and it was pretty fantastic so I decided to watch this movie when it came out, but--I confess--with somewhat low expectations. Even still, I had been nervous waiting for the movie to come out. I feared the movie would flop (simply because everyone seems to have bad taste in movies) or worse, Hollywood would destroy this story and add their own little spin to it. However, I remained positive because Leonardo DiCaprio was cast in the role of Gatsby. I didn't think life could get any better because from the beginning of reading that novel when I was still in high school, I had pictured DiCaprio portraying that wonderful Gatsby. And I still believe he did a spectacular job and played his role brilliantly even if he has yet again been overlooked for an award. However, this blog is not being posted to describe to you in every slow painful detail why I think DiCaprio is one of the best actors out there, this blog's purpose is to convince you to give this movie, Gatsby, a chance. The actors/actresses line-up was fantastic and although, I still like the 2000 movie better, I do believe this one is still super great. There were only two problems I had with this movie (none of which involve DiCaprio.) My problem lies within the horrible modern taste in the music that was supposed to portray music from the 1920s. I mean come on people, how hard is it to stick with the right time period. I can see why they chose the music they did, but to me, it is just bad taste. My second and final problem with this movie is the character of Daisy they portrayed in this movie. The Daisy I know from the book was bubbly, always happy, and pretty smart. This movie portrayed her as down-right depressing and even a little ditsy. Despite these two problems, the movie is very much worth seeing and I will definitely be watching it more than once.


The Civil Wars

I haven't been writing or doing anything exciting with my summer and I'm sorry for that. Between getting a new job, summer classes, and transferring to a university now I've had very minimal time to do what I actually enjoy. However, I decided with a week left before my classes start for the fall semester that I am going to blog about something. Now, I just said I haven't really been doing anything new and it is true. I've been playing League of Legends and the Sims 3 in my spare time so the only thing I could think to blog about was some of the music I've been listening to.

The Civil Wars is a newish duet. The two lead singers are, of course, a man and woman combo and their names are John Paul White and Joy Williams. The first time I ever heard of these guys was when they did a song with Taylor Swift for The Hunger Games. The name of the song was Safe and Sound. I never really liked country, but the lyrics to this song were so beautiful and I do believe that Joy Williams has the voice of an angel. I got hooked on that song. Not long after hearing Safe and Sound, I heard an original song by The Civil Wars which was also used in The Hunger Games called Kingdom Come. This song was yet another favorite of mine and I blared it constantly. I had never heard country music done this way. All of their music spoke to me because it took love and it made it truer, stronger, and more morbid than I had ever seen people do when they write music. Another thing that probably hooked me into their music is that Williams and White sing so beautifully together and they both show so much emotion in their songs that you really can believe they are singing from the heart. I had never heard any other duet sing songs that made you feel their pain and feel what they were feeling so vividly.

In my obsession, I bought both of The Civil Wars CDs. Barton Hollow and their newest release which is self-titled The Civil Wars. Both CDs are amazing in their own ways. I cannot decide which CD I like more because they make you feel differently. Their self-titled album (which just released on August 6th this year) focuses on the sadder parts of love and how you can't always choose who you fall in love with. It is a wonderful CD and sadly, their last for a while. It seems there was a squabble between the duet like there usually is with duets, but no real details have been given for the band going on a hiatus for an indefinite time I fear. Williams hopes the band will move on and go back to recording music soon, but I think this might be it for the band and it depresses me so. However, I will leave you with a music video from their new album. I watch it constantly.

The Civil Wars-The One That Got Away

Shinobi Life

It's been a few months and if I thought I'd have more time over the summer to keep this blog up, I was dead wrong. I ended up taking a summer class so that I'll be prepared when I finally transfer this fall. Anyway, I've actually been reading this manga for a while, but due to homework and a lot of other stuff going on, my reading of it has been interrupted several times, but I'm making progress on it once more.

Shinobi Life is another one of those romance mangas that I like so much, but this one involves ninjas from the past! What can be greater than that, huh? Kagetora is the super hot, ninja guy in this manga who happens to get separated from his princess and ends up being transported to the future where he meets a girl who is also named Beni (the name of Kagetora's princess) and happens to look just like her. Beni at first seems to despise Kagetora who has taken up the role of protecting her since he has no real concept of what he should be doing, but after a short period of time Kagetora and Beni become really close. Like really, really close. Unfortunately, the two now-lovers are facing a lot of obstacles and Beni is always worried that Kagetora doesn't really love her and is just using her as a replacement for his Beni-hime. However, I believe Kagetora's heart is pure and that he loves Beni and will soon find her. Whoops, let that slip. Well, before I give too much more away. Here have a picture!

Vampire Knight

   Yet again, it's been a while. This time I have a valid excuse for being delayed. I'm not always on League like a freaking zombie anymore, this time I actually got started on some good mangas and I'm learning how to speak Japanese so I've been keeping myself busy people.

   I'm not here to bore you with these excuses though. I'm here to talk about the wonderful manga I've just finished. Yes, finished up till now at least. I devoured Vampire Knight like it was candy. It is just that great. I'm a super huge vampire freak anyway, but I'm telling you that it is a really good manga because it's not that girly in all honestly like most guys think when they see a vampire novel or manga. It's not Twilight reincarnate people. Now, I admit there is a love story involved, at least, I think there is. It's hard to tell when she's swapping guys up all the time and making you fall inlove with one guy then he turns out to be super bad and you spend half of your time confused, but it's a good sort of confusion.

   Wow. I haven't even started discussing the manga itself. Well, there are 3 really important people that you absolutely will have to know: Yuuki Kurosu, Zero Kiryuu, and Kaname Kuran. All of the action, well, I should say most of the action takes place at Cross Academy where both vampires and humans attend school. The humans during day time and the vampires at night. Yuuki and Zero are part of the day class and it is their job to make sure none of the humans go snooping around at night for a glimpse of the beautiful vampires. Kaname is the leader of the vampires, but this doesn't make him a bad guy at all. In fact, he actually loves Yuuki and keeps the vampires well-behaved.

   Well, I'm afraid I can't give away too much information because that will ruin the whole story. I admit this manga even surprises me with how things turn out. If you're one of those lazy people that would rather watch the anime than read the manga then you will be pleased to find out that there is an anime and it follows the manga plotline very well. At least as far as I have made it through the anime. I spent more time devouring up the manga. Now to give you some visual imagery to make you even more interested :p.