Xenosaga 2. Another Nietzsche subtitle. Another clear winner.

This big news this update is the addition of two rather significant things: a new anime review (Now and Then, Here and There) and a new feature (Evangelion: Take Care of Yourself). The review is important because it is the first new review with the longer format; Berserk and Evangelion came first, but those were merely revisions of previously written reviews. The latter feature is something that I have been wanting to do for quite some time... specifically, as soon as I finished watching Evangelion for the first time.

The past few days have been spent in near-constant, deep reflection of Evangelion. It could be said that I was actually drowning myself in it, and that would not be entirely too distant from the truth. I had this primal impulse to analyze this anime in such detail after a friend of mine recently completed the series, and was understandably distraught. After talking about the show with her for over three hours, I began to realize just how little of the show I actually knew. Were my explanations correct? Was I mistaken over the important details? I just had to find out. But after scouring the web for a combined total of 56 hours, I came up with only three sites that were able to talk about the series with any sort of cohesion at all. And they all disagreed with each other. So I decided to make my own FAQ, my own explanation. It resides in Features, and more specifically, here. Clocking in at over 5400 words, it is by far the most ambitious and extravagant piece of work I dedicated to the site. As I've said once before, Evangelion deserves no less.

In my general lucid state of the past few days, I have also came to the conclusion that this site needs redesigned. I have not bothered myself over changing the site visually after the version 2.0 switch because what the original Razor Witt taught me is that I am writer/reviewer, not a web designer. But as I constantly cruise by other sites which have the unique visual quality of "deliciousness," it is getting harder to justify keeping it simple. Especially considering keeping it simple is really just a convenient way of disguising my complete lack of artistic skills; Sketch keeps the insidious left brain sated while being a somewhat painful reminder to the right about how far away I remain from being able to do stuff like these guys. And yes, I realize all this Evangelion has probably warped my mind a tiny bit.

In the meantime, I have cleaned the site itself a bit including with how the anime reviews were listed. Very minor changes, all in a sort of prelude to the changes that are to come... when I get to convincing someone else to do them. As to what to look forward to next (week's?) update, I say more anime reviews. A lot more. In fact, I have 17 new anime reviews and 7 revisions that I could theoretically unleash upon the internet public at large in time for the next update. Unfortunately, none of them have been written yet. And you should know by now that I would never do something as silly as that in the first place.

Anyway, with Evangelion fairly squared away in my mind, expect some more reviews soon. And maybe some new sketches. And maybe a complete site revision. And maybe world peace. Just don't hold your breath, yes?

Ciao.

You may have noticed that things look different around here. And no, it is not because I talked to my doctor.

Before I get into that though, I must point you towards Evangelion: R. For the uninitiated, it is a fanfiction which expands upon the end of the Neon Genesis Evangelion television series. I use the term "fanfiction" loosely as the story itself resides on the border to the Plane of Absolute Perfection - a plane filled with flowers, sunshine, and harmonic symphonies composed by the children of Yoko Kanno and Yasunori Mitsuda. This is not to say that the story is full of flowers and sunshine - goodness no; it is an emotionally exhausting journey every bit as engrossing as the Evangelion series itself. Indeed, I have done nothing other than consume the work for the past four days, and I don't even usually like fanfiction. This fact, if nothing else, should speak volumes.

Unfortunately, over-consumption of said fanfiction has delayed a more meaningful (read: content-filled) update. In the meantime however, I have been doing quite a bit of behind-the-scenes work. Forefront among them being the changing of fonts, to Arial. I have already recoded every single page of this site (all 95 of them) to reflect this font change, in addition to catching a few other HTML-related mistakes here and there. Equally pivotal are the two changes I have made to the reviews. The more far-reaching change was the discovery of the forbidden secret of captions. Elusive for years, this forbidden knowledge now allows me to add a visible caption to any and all screenshots. While I have not retroactively added captions to every picture in every review yet (58 reviews * 173 pictures = a lot of work), I nevertheless am making progress towards that goal and should have it done by the time of next update. The second semi-major change is the addition of a new scoring category to all anime reviews: Characters. Simply put, I was getting tired of merging Story and Characters into one score - Plot - especially considering how many anime shows usually feature fantastic characters in otherwise normal settings. This change takes place immediately, and some of the reviews have had their scores moved up/down. Finally, I was finally able to figure out how to add the navigation bar (featured to your left) to pages "deeper" into the site and actually have the links still work correctly. In other words, the navigation bar has been added to all of the entries in the Archive and to the two pages in the About section.

Please, hold the applause.

With everything shaping up the way it currently is, there is a good chance that the next update might actually see some content. Beyond reviews, I have been toying around with new logo ideas, new Razor Witt layout designs in general, an update to the Evangelion feature, additional sketches, and perhaps the completion of the highly-anticipated Bio page. The major roadblock which has delayed the latter page - aside from the fact that I have yet to write it - is the lack of a "suitable" picture of myself. When I say "suitable" I, of course, mean "a picture that makes me look like the biggest badass ever to grace God's green earth." There's a chance I'll break down and simply post my college ID picture (the one where I appear to be 11 years old) since something tells me if I continue to search for a "suitable" picture I might be looking for quite some time. We will just have to see how that turns out.