Selected Pandemonium / Hyakki Yakou Shoko

Stepping aside from the popular genre of martial arts and action in manga stories, I found another favorite among the supernatural.

Hyakki Yakou Shou, or Selected Pandemonium, is an ongoing manga series, created by Ima Ichiko. I wonder why this manga isn't that popular. It mixes the supernatural and old Japanese beliefs with that of modern lifestyle. I like how the story doesn't go over the top with human-to-demon fights and demonic possessions and such. The story flows calmly, and seemingly realistic. After reading Naruto, Bleach, Claymore, and other popular mangas with exagerrated scenes and circumstances, Selected Pandemonium offers sanctuary from all those ninjutsus and swords.

Iijima Ritsu has a sharp sixth sense that he inherited from his deceased grandfather. This ability makes him a magnet to supernatural beings, some of which are not so friendly with humans and are dangerous. To protect him, his grandfather instructed one of his pet spirits to inhabit Ristu's father's dead body. This spirit-demon, named Blue Storm, is still passing off as his father in front of his mother, grandmother and other people. Only Ritsu knows the truth, and of Blue Storm's mission to protect him.

Ritsu is not the only with a sixth sense in their clan. Although not as strong as him, his two other cousins, Tsukasa and Akira, can also feel spirits and demons. Both of them used to disregard their abilities, Tsukasa denying hers and Akira forgetting her own. Tsukasa is especially reluctant to admit her ability, although her sixth sense is just as sharp as Ritsu's.

The manga mainly tells distant stories of each other. One chapter will focus on one story at a time, all concerning Ritsu and the people connected to him. Another thing I like about this manga is how it somehow connects with everyday life, at least for someone like Ritsu who has sixth sense and attracts a lot of spirits.

I'm now looking for the live action Japanese series of Selected Pandemonium. I can't find any online, and there're no sub versions for me to enjoy. Really, why isn't this popular?!

Manga direct downloads: ETC

99 Books Meme

Bored and surfing aimlessly through my friends' blogs, I read up an old post of demigod031's blog and decided to try the list myself:

99 Books Meme

Here’s a list of 99 books that I may or may not have read (or even desire to read). The rules are as follows;

- Bold the ones you’ve read
- Italicize the ones you want to read
- Leave unaltered the ones that you aren’t interested in or haven’t heard of

And away we go…

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (JRR Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (JRR Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (JRR Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (JK Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (JK Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (JK Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (JK Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (JRR Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (George Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (F Scott Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (JK Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
68. Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)
69. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
70. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
71. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
72. Shogun (James Clavell)
73. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
74. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
75. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
76. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
77. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
78. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
79. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
80. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
81. Of Mice And Men (John Steinbeck)
82. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
83. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
84. Emma (Jane Austen)
85. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
86. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
87. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
88. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
89. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
90. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
91. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
92. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
93. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
94. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
95. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
96. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
97. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
98. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
99. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Time Leap

Two of the movies I watched yesterday had time as an important concept. Time leap is where we get to take a short travel or a kind of jump into another time, whether in the past or in the future. The movies reiterated the importance that time can either heal or hurt us and those around us. It also emphasizes the notion that you've got do what you've got to do.. as soon as possible and as right a time as possible. In the words of Chiaki Mamiya in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, "Time waits for no one!"

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time: This Japanese animated movie has been in my collection for weeks now, but I've only had the chance to watch it yesterday. It has a very flowing plot, and the story is very heartwarming. There were scenes that made me cringe, particularly the episodes where the main character, Konno Makoto, and her friends are supposed to be killed in an accident. But I guess it was part of the impact that the movie wanted to give to the audience. Time leaping, when used in an irresponsible and careless acts of selfishness, can cause hurt to others. Makoto was really hapy about being able to leap back into the past to correct her unlucky cicrumstances, but in every episode she changed there was always a person who gut hurt. And they get hurt harder than she was. A fellow classmate was constantly bullied, and her friends got killed. And before she knew it, she only had one more chance to leap through time and fix everything.

Frequency: There wasn't exactly a person leaping through time in this movie. But if you consider talking to a person from another time through a battered old radio as leaping through time (like I do), then let us consider time leap as one of the modes in the movie. John Sullivan gets a chance to talk to his father, Frank Sullivan, who died in his fireman duties when John was still a child, through a radio control system that his father owned when he was still alive. Through this, John was able to warn and save his father from getting killed in a fire accident. But while his father got to survive to see John grow into a cop, his mother was gone and murdered years ago instead. In a race through time to save his mother, both John and his father track the serial killer who killed his mother. I especially like the ending of the movie, where both father and son were assaulted by the killer in their own times.

It goes without saying that time leap can have disastrous consequences. There will always be a losing end to the bargain. But it also shows us how time can help and heal. In John's case, they were able to save his mother and keep their family intact. In Makoto's case came the knowledge that time still flows and balances equations even if you go back and make yourself an addition, thereby realizing that in every happiness there is pain. All we can do is learn how to cope with it and flow with time.

"Time waits for no one!"

Getting Over Joongbo.. Finally

Slowly but surely. This is how it goes when getting over an addiction that was never meant to last. When popular lettuce couple Kim Hyun Joong and Hwang Bo said their goodbyes on the reality-variety show We Got Married (We Just Married / Sunday Marriage), there was nothing else to do but accept the finality of it.

It's a little hard, though. I think it's the same for any other kind of addiction. The Korean show We Got Married was one of the things I looked forward to every week. I enjoyed watching the lettuce/ssangchu couple enjoyed their married life. It was a fake marriage, but Hwang Bo and Kim Hyun Joong displayed showed such sparkling chemistry between them that left many fans wishing their "love" and marriage was real.

Count me in among the Joongbo fanatics. They were my favorite couple among the cast of WGM. Despite many criticisms and discussions about their marriage --- Kim Hyun Joong being one of the hottest idols of Korea and Hwang Bo being six years older than him --- the lettuce couple showed that marriage can be fun and happy indeed. They showed that it's not all about candlelit dinners and romantic conversations, that a peanut necklace would be more than enough as long as it was given with the whole heart.

I guess it was also because of the wife's and groom's personalities that also attracted me to the couple. I am now a huge fan of Hwang Bo, because of her honest and outgoing personality. She's my definition of what a woman should be --- independent, living life to the fullest while also helping others out and doing charity, very spirited, and has a really big heart. As for Kim Hyun Joong, hmmm.. he's really a unique one. I actually like him better when he's with his Hwang Buin, but I can't deny that he also has some charm of his own. His 4D personality makes him say unpredictable things, and he has this drive for success and a passion for music and his work. He has a very blunt personality that can be a little contradicting to his pretty boy image.

It's been more than a month now since their last episode together, and I'm slowly getting back to reality. I still keep tabs on how Hwang Bo is doing with her projects. Hyun Joong is apparently doign well with his still increasing fame with Boys Over Flowers. I'm also still reading Joongbo fanfictions. But time will come when all this really has to end.

Despite this reality, I still hope.. that in the future Hwang Bo and Hyun Joong will get together again, and maybe really end up for real. :p Haha... oh, but that would really be fantastic news!

Federer and Nadal Broke My Heart

Rafael Nadal did it again. He dethroned Roger Federer once again, this time in the Australian Open last weekend. I cringe whenever I recall the match. Federer made a lot of mistakes and they contributed a lot to Nadal's victory. On the last set, with Nadal leading at 5-2, I was seriously hoping that Federer would turn the tables and catch up to become the champion. But alas, Nadal was persistent and Federer crumbled.

I felt like crying together with Federer. I have nothing against Rafa. He's another one of my favorite players in lawn tennis, and I'm glad that it was he who took over the World Number 1 title (instead of some egoistic bigmouth like Andy Murray). But in choosing between him and Federer, I'm all for Roger Federer!

They broke my heart, especially when Federer cried in the end. To the greatest player of all time: It's killing me, too!