Favorite Anime/Manga In Order: Rose of Versailles (manga only), Claymore, Utena (anime and movie only), Crimson Hero, Brother Dear Brother (manga only), Inuyasha, Hayate X Blade, Sailor Moon (manga only), Serial Experiments Lain, Bleach, Yu Yu Hakusho, Maria-sama ga Miteru

Anime/Manga I Follow Out of Habit That Are No Longer On My Favorites List (aka Rant Section): Naruto, One Piece, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, Vampire Knight. I've also watched and appreciated the Fullmetal Alchemist anime, but got bored of the manga. I tried to read Nana but stopped at chapter 72 because I was sick of the way all of the characters were becoming emotionally dependent. I finished Godchild, but hated the ending. (Riff's good side comes back and Cain dies with him?!!! That is so CLICHE!) I've also watched the Rose of Versailles and Brother Dear Brother anime, but after reading detailed spoilers about the manga series, I have to say that their animated counterparts are better than average, but still not as good. Fukiko was (more) spoiled and insane in the BDB anime, and why the hell did Rei die in a train accident?! The ROV manga handled Oscar's romances better. She's not supposed to give up her independence to follow Andre's dreams! That ruins the entire point of the series!

Anime/Manga I REALLY Want To Read Except They're Not In English :( : They Were Eleven, Aim for the Ace. FINISHED manga translations of Rose of Versailles, Brother Dear Brother, Window of Orpheus, and Hayate X Blade would also be nice.

Favorite TV Shows In Order: Grey's Anatomy, Gossip Girl; will tolerate Desperate Housewives and Private Practice

Favorite Children's Book Series In Order: A Series of Unfortunate Events, the Twilight Series, the Tudor Women Series, Harry Potter

Favorite Serious Books In No Order: The Robber Bride, The Blind Assassin, To Kill a Mockingbird, Jane Eyre, Raisin in the Sun, Flowers for Algernon, The Birth of Venus, The Scarlet Letter, and I hope to like The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I've recently gotten into Octavia Butler's Patternist series and the short stories in Bloodchild.

My ROV fic will prolly be the only fanfic I'll ever write or post because I'm working on a novel right now while being slammed with work during my sophomore year at high school. I wrote the fanfic for an anime contest which ultimately ended up not happening. I was REALLY apprehensive about posting it on the net, b/c I'm afraid that other people might steal quotes from it. But my thirst for having my writing appreciated outweighs the fear.

Things Worth Talking About (Contains Spoilers)

Rose of Versailles: This will prolly be my favorite series of all time for a long time. Not only does it have the basic requirements of action and excitement, it's also a very introspective story about the nature of human life. The historic events of the French Revolution are made impossibly real with Riyoko Ikeda's brilliant storytelling and characters. I love the way Oscar watches and agonizes as everyone around her remains trapped by social limitations and their own narrow viewpoints, and as the country's most powerful make incorrigible errors, they drag the rest of the country down with them, and the result is complete upheaval of peace and order. Torn between devotion to her beloved monarch and compassion for the common people, Oscar ultimately chooses to fight for the freedom of both the country and herself. Ultimately, she cannot save the world, her loved ones, or even her own life, but she ends up saving her spirit, and in the end, that is enough.

Oscar Francois de Jarjeyes (Rose of Versailles): Of course I'm going to talk about the main character of my favorite series! What else do you expect!? After years of skimming through bad shojo manga in an effort to find a heroine I actually identify with, (I've never quite forgiven Fruits Basket and Fushigi Yugi for letting me down so badly.) I came across my beloved Oscar towards the end of the summer of 2007. She revived my faith in the quality of literature in general. Oscar is so hardcore and awesome, but she never feels overwhelmingly unreal. She's steel inside and out, but has just enough problems and insecurities to keep her human. Too many shojo heroines are overly ditzy and insecure. Even if they do grow stronger, this flatness of character stays with them, and their behavior never really changes as much as they should. Consciously or unconsciously, I was looking for a character with a strong, smart, core personality, but who fights through many outward chains and inner difficulties to find herself despite all her kick-ass coolness. Oscar did that for me. She's not a static Wonder Woman. She couldn't save the world, or in this case, her country. She couldn't avoid death, and didn't even fight for a pure cause. (France was still politically unstable well into the 19th-century.) But while she could not save the world or her life, she ended up saving her self. She lived the way she wanted to live, she fell in love without losing herself, and she ended up breaking free from every entrapment binding her potential and her spirit. This, combined with the turmoil and energy of the series itself, makes her impossible not to love. To the disillusioned and cynical about storytelling in general, this is my gift to you.

Rosalie Lamoliere (Rose of Versailles): By the technical definition, there is no reason why I should like Rosalie so much. At first glance, she's very much like Furuba's Tohru and the millions of other tiresome shojo heroines I talked about in Oscar's entry: cute, but untalented and lacking in power, yet her "purity of heart" and "power of love" allow her to "save everyone". But after watching ROV a second time and reading a short analysis about her online, I found her growing on me until she became my second favorite character in the series, tied with Jeanne Valois. Why? I think it's because that for all her sweetness, Rosalie is too human to hate. She's well-meaning, but not unrealistically pure and innocent. She desperately attempts prostitution to get money and tries to take revenge on her mother's murderer, after all. Her nature is sweet enough to brighten Oscar's life and win her love, but she cannot completely cure Oscar's pain, capture her romantic love, nor save all the lives of the ones she cares for. She struggles through the turmoil of the Revolution just like any other human would and reacts with anger and tears just like a normal person would. Her pain is very palpable and easy to identify with. If Oscar is my idol, Rosalie could be my friend.

Jeanne Valois de la Motte (Rose of Versailles): Jeanne is a character fans either love or hate. Me, I love her. She's one of history's most perfect villians. :) She's 9/10 confident cunning and 1/10 deranged angst, and it's that deranged angst which exponentially multiplies her awesome personality and just overall fascinatingness. Unless you can fully appreciate the power of Jeanne Valois, it's impossible to fully appreciate the power of ROV.

Marie Antoinette (Rose of Versailles): Antoinette is a person I neither love nor hate. I view her as a girl/woman forced into the worst possible position for her intellect and personality, but who couldn't control her emotions and multiplied her bad luck several fold by making a string of downright horrible decisions. As a character she's interesting to examine and analyze, but as a person, she's just...a person to me. I feel the same way about Fersen, who is more of a neccessary plot device than a fleshed-out being. In a way, Andre is too, except I like him a lot better than Fersen. I hope to find Alain and Gerodere really cool one day, but their. personalities are more fleshed-out in the manga, and I haven't read the manga yet.

Claymore: Four words: BEST SHONEN MANGA EVER!!!! Finally, an action series which actually manages to be intelligent! Sick of lunkheads like Luffy? Driven nuts by Naruto? Claymore's characters are smart and serious--and seriously deadly. The fact that almost all of the major warriors are women certainly does not detract. There's also a lot of interesting plot twists, emotionally heart-wrenching irony, and several characters who are above and beyond sociopathic, and they're all the more interesting for it! But if you think intelligent = boring, then you're dead wrong. The fights in Claymore are more graphic than Yu Yu Hakusho, but far better drawn. It's certainly aimed for the 16+ demographic, so if you're sick of kiddie shonen, this is the right manga for you!

Revolutionary Girl Utena: When I first starting watching Utena, I was far from impressed, but out of boredom, I checked the Empty Movement webpage, and was surprised by how interesting the essays were. I figured that a series which inspired so much good writing had to be good, so I continued watching and I'm sure as hell glad I did. I have never seen a fairy tale more complex and intriguing than RGU. The characters and plotlines are deeper and far more multifaceted than anything I've ever seen before. The irony, the mystery, and the absolute breakdown of stereotypes makes me wonder how Be-Papas could be led by the same person who was the episode director for Sailor Moon. I am not ashamed to admit that Utena is a major inspiration for my novel.

Utena Tenjo (Revolutionary Girl Utena): She blends all the innocence and naivete of the simple shojo heroine with the grit and coolness of a shonen boy. The result is the most fascinating, dysfunctional, and ultimately loveable Prince that I have ever seen in the entire history of fiction.

Anthy Himemiya (Revolutionary Girl Utena): I do not understand how anyone could hate Anthy once they truly understand her. Of course she's going to do bad things, of course she's going to want to hurt people. If you're looking for the altruistic, naive princess who's going to be kind and pure-hearted and help everyone no matter what she goes through, then why the heck are your watching Utena! We don't want you here! Go back to Sailor Moon!

Juri Arisugawa (Revolutionary Girl Utena): Favorite character in the series. If I wanted to, I could write an essay on her and submit it to Empty Movement. I think it's because she's so brilliant and tragic at once. If I were into cliche's, I'd call her a beautiful disaster. A former Prince and warrior who falls...that's the story of the lives of most teenagers.

Crimson Hero: FINALLY, a serious sports manga for girls! Nobara has all the persistence and spirit of Naruto minus his annoying mouth.

Brother, Dear Brother: It is no small feat to write about BDB due its dark and tragic nature. But its dark and tragic nature is an intoxicating sort of dark, the heart-wrenching kind which inspires you and makes you fall in love with the characters.

Rei "Hana no Saint-Juste" Asaka: A weaker Oscar, indeed. Her relationship with Fukiko is like what Oscar's relationship might have been with Antoinette had Antoinette been deliberately malicious and Oscar more dependent. Both Rei and Oscar have an extreme capacity for love and the strength to fight for what they believe in and support what they care about, but while Oscar has the endurance and stability to ultimately make the best decisions in her life, Rei's childhood gave her none of that security, and thus she latched on to a self-destructive relationship with Fukiko to fill her emotional voids. Favorite character in the series, though Kaoru comes close.

Kaoru Orihara: I love her character, but I will forever hate the director of the BDB anime for making her so effeminate at the end. She's better in the manga, just like Rei and Fukiko are too.

Fukiko "Miya-sama" Ichinomiya: Ummm...obsessive much? That's all that I could say about her anime counterpart.

(Will Add At Least One Entry Per Day.)