Like The Tomato
Nothing here but my musings about daily life, books, anime, and food.
- Title: Castlevania
- Episodes: Season 1 – 4 episodes; Season 2 – 8 episodes; Season 3 – 10 episodes; Season 4 – 10 episodes
- Where to Watch: Netflix
- Publisher: Powerhouse Animation Studios
I’ve been wanting to watch this and in all honesty, I did watch the first episode alone a while back. But I didn’t really get into it until I watched it with my partner. The series was an adaptation of a videogame of the same name, seasons 1 and 2 were based on Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, and Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, with Alucard’s backstory from Castlevania: Symphony of Night.
Yes I know, people (elitists) say that this is not an anime since this was not made and produced in Japan. However, I will continue to refer to this as an anime because technically this is still an animation.
This anime starts with Vlad’s human wife being burned at the stake after being accused of witchcraft. In return, Vlad declares to avenge his wife by declaring an all-out war against the people of Wallachia. I guess war is not really the word that I am looking for. The people of Wallachia have no chance of fighting the demons summoned by Vlad to overrun the country and slaughter all the people in it.
This anime introduced me to a favorite trio – one of my favorites anyway. Trevor Belmont, Sypha Belnades, and Adrian “Alucard” Tepes. These three were balanced. Each had strengths. Each had weaknesses. And I loved them. Well, I love them still. I enjoyed their scenes together. I loved the banter exchanged between these characters. Their relationship naturally progressed to friendship. Usually, I would hate someone in a trio or at least there would be one that I least like. But with this one, I liked all three of them. Of course, my favorite is Alucard but that is a given.
Why do I love Adrian Tepes? I mean, why not? Of course, being a dhampir has nothing to do with it. Right. Well, he had a good character arc. Starting from being alone, opening himself up to two people, being in a self-imposed exile, being like his dad, and changing again. Granted, him being a dhampir has a lot to do with why I gravitated toward his character but it was also the depth. His loneliness that broke my heart over and over. And his willingness to open up to others after being burned by an incident that drove him to be like his dad.
The choices that Adrian made was commendable. Okay there might be some bias here. But the fact that he continued to open his heart regardless of the betrayals that he experienced was great. It would’ve been so easy to close off and just be a recluse like Vlad. I mean, I wouldn’t have blamed him if he did choose to be a closed off person.
Another character arc that my man and I enjoyed was Isaac’s. He was Dracula’s (Vlad’s) human general (along with Hector). He was a forger, the same as Hector. He started as very dark. Basically, he aligned his ideals with Vlad and followed him, and agreed to what Vlad wanted. He believed that all humans are evil. So when Vlad decided to annihilate the human race, he was all for it. But throughout the whole series, as he started to meet different people, he started to see that there was goodness in them. And his beliefs started to evolve. Hector’s arc was good too. I mean, he was like a kid and we saw him grow up in some aspects. But I loved Isaac’s part more.
And like any other anime, there was a character who I hated with a passion – Carmilla. She was just something else. She was the “brains” in the Council of Sisters. I put that in quotes because when it all comes down to it, she was a dreamer. She tells her “sisters” what she wants to happen and then it is the other three who did all the logistics and the planning. What kind of bullshit is that? I hated her scheming and manipulation. But then again, maybe that’s why she was a good villain. I just really do not like her. All she ever did was boss other vampires around. She thought she was above everyone else including her “sisters”. I kept on saying that I wanted her to die right off the bat. I wanted her to die in such an anti-climatic way!
I honestly preferred Lenore over Carmilla. Lenore got underestimated a lot. She seemed so fragile and soft compared to the other “sisters” but that made her so scary. She was a diplomat and she knew how to manipulate those around her to do her bidding by gaining their trust and friendship first.
Overall, this was a good animated series. I enjoyed it. Despite the violence and gore, despite some intense scenes, I enjoyed the story. I loved the action, I loved how fleshed out the characters were (yes, including the characters that I really did not care for). I mean, it was about vampires for crying out loud. It was no surprise that I would love this anime, regardless of the fact that vampires were the villains. Anyway, the spinoff is coming out this month, and I cannot wait to see it.
Well, today is chilly. I wore a sweater this morning. And my feet are freezing as I am typing this, which is definitely a nice change of pace from the heat that we are experiencing. It really needs to be fall already. I want it to be fall already. Like tomorrow.
Anyway, I didn’t read the whole day. I mean, I did. Maybe a couple of paragraphs then allowed myself to be distracted by videos. I know. Horrible of me. Planning on reading tonight though so I am just a little disappointed in myself. I mean, what can I say? I was not in the mood to read earlier. I don’t really like to force myself to read when my brain doesn’t want to.
I was able to hang out a little bit with my man earlier until he lost power in their area. It has been a while. We didn’t watch anything because I was not in the mood to watch anything. So we just decided to catch up since it has been a while since we actually video chatted. My fault. It was good. We might try and watch something on Thursday. If my mood permits it.
Planning on reading tonight though. I’m going to try and read some pages of Craig & Fred. And if that doesn’t work, that means I am not in the mood to read nonfiction right now. And most likely, I would switch it to Heaven Official’s Blessing Book 3.
Well, today was a bust. I got absorbed in watching a streamer until about 2 AM-ish, woke up at 5 AM to go to the bathroom, and then went back to sleep until 10 AM. Yeah. It was rough. I did however end up being somewhat productive. I still did what I planned to do today – laundry, give Paco a haircut and a bath. So, my Monday was not totally wasted despite the late start this morning. The only thing that I had trouble with was writing my morning pages. Not sure why, but I felt like my brain was empty. Like no thoughts at all. Normally I would have something as mundane as “I want fried chicken” ingrained in my brain. But today, there was nothing.
I watched a few movies today. Mean Girls (2004) and Clueless (1995). Classics. At least to me, they are classics and definitely something that I have fun watching from time to time. Then I found this movie called Cursed (2004), a werewolf movie that flew under my radar. I feel like this movie was something that would’ve been right up my alley to enjoy. It was an okay movie. It was from the creators of Scream and it has a pretty star-studded cast which includes Christina Ricci, Joshua Jackson, Jesse Eisenberg, Judy Greer, Milo Ventimiglia. I don’t think it was a good movie, but it was fun. I mean, I had fun watching it. I mean, this was a horror comedy after all. There were some jump scares of course. And I appreciated it.
No big plans tonight. I just really want to read and chill. That’s it. I do have a headache right now so I just want to take it easy. Tomorrow is another day.
I often find myself staring at the ceiling when I wake up. You know why? Because I wanted to keep sleeping and not do anything. But I needed to feed the dogs of course. Then I had to go downtown for something. Well, technically I didn’t have to go but you know, I haven’t been downtown for how many months and I miss the food. So I tagged along.
It was a pretty okay day I guess. I did some grocery shopping and then gave Phoebe a bath. And now, I am cooking chicken. I am winging the recipe. I just used whatever we had in the pantry for the cause. A little bit of vegan oyster sauce, with some Shaoxing wine, a little bit of dark soy sauce. Planning on adding some broccoli once it gets closer to getting cooked. It’s simmering right now.
I finished a book 5 of 10 of Haven City last night. I read it in just a few hours. So I cannot complain. I just started reading book 6. Tomorrow, I’m going to read Craig & Fred. I didn’t end up picking it up on Friday. But I will definitely continue that tomorrow. No big plans tonight either. just continue reading and relaxing. I mean, it’s still pretty hot right this moment. So I just want to minimize my movements as much as possible.
- Title: Tomie
- Author: Junji Ito
- Genre: Manga, Horror
- Pages: 752
- Publisher: VIZ Media
- Published: 2016
I am not a horror reader. So picking this up for a read is out of character for me. What made me interested in it? My roommate and I went to a Japanese bookstore a while back and she bought this tome. She read it and liked it. And I wanted to see what this is all about. As I flipped through the pages of this chunker, I got hooked on the artwork. So I decided to read it.
Tomie was Junji Ito’s first published work which led to him winning a Kazuo Umezu award. This has been serialized in Monthly Halloween and ran from 1987 to 2000. This work has been adapted into film and television series. Let’s just say that this manga was (is) well-loved, gathered a following, and has been praised by fans as well as critics.
The titular character is Tomie Kawakami who acted like a succubus. She has the power to make any man fall in love with her. Of course, the power does not end there. This ability of hers drives men to violence oftentimes leading to her being killed and mutilated. Each body part regenerates to create multiple versions of Tomie across Japan. I mean, interesting right?
This manga is pretty graphic. I mean, one of the reasons why I decided to pick it up is the fact that the author did not shy away from the illustrations of violence. This manga definitely delivered some skin-crawling artwork that lives rent-free in my brain. There is a story in this collection that still makes me itchy just thinking about it.
It’s easy to complain about recurring themes in this manga. I mean, how many times can someone read and see Tomie being murdered and mutilated by the men who fall in love with her. However, Tomie showed a level of toxicity when someone is manipulative and narcissistic. It showed obsession and the desire to possess remarkably well. And jealousy too. These themes heavily reflected society – manipulation, humiliation, misogyny, violence, and sexism.
Bottom line, I liked this manga. It was a good read for sure. Some stories were better than the others of course. My favorite stories were Tomie (the first one, we got introduced to Tomie) and Hair (which involved two girls using Tomie’s hair to make themselves “beautiful”). If I could redo my first read of this collection, I wouldn’t have read the stories back to back. I personally think that the reader was not meant to read this back to back to begin with. However, that didn’t really minimize my reading experience. Just the symbolism found in this manga kept me reading. It almost made me want to read all of Junji Ito’s works (almost, I have not committed myself to them yet).
I was struggling this week. I found myself sleepy, tired, and exhausted. I was fighting to stay awake. It didn’t matter if I was sitting or standing. I was fighting to keep my eyes open. All I did was yawn all day. That was frustrating, to be honest. Why? Well, I was getting some decent hours of sleep on a daily. I had no excuse. I had no reason to be this tired. The thing that sucked though was that once it was time to go to bed and sleep, I would be wide awake regardless of whether I took a nap during the day. Yeah, my sleep schedule has been nonexistent lately. Not that a schedule was necessary at the moment. I had nothing going on in the daytime anyway.
I was finally able to finish Lolita. It took a while. And I did take a break from it. Not the book’s fault. I was having some focus issues last month and I had to put the reading of this novel on hold for a bit. But it was done. I was glad that I read it. It was a good, solid read. My main complaint really was having to look for translations of a lot of French phrases sprinkled on the pages. It really did take me out of the reading experience. The next one that I was planning on reading would be Craig & Fred. Again, I had to put reading this nonfiction on hold as well. Focus issues. So I will be continuing with this one. I read a couple of chapters already before I placed this one on hold, so I would just be picking up where I left off. Not going to lie though, the daily reading schedule and goal that I made for myself helped a lot with my finishing Lolita.
Not planning on doing anything today. I just want to chill and read. I don’t have a social life really. My hobbies are pretty solitary, which reflects my personality really well. Besides, I am in a constant bubble of tiredness and sleepiness. So I would be fighting to not stay awake as well.