Spent today mostly just cleaning up the apartment and occasionally watching tv when I took a break. I bought an anime I’ve been meaning to pick up for well over a year now, but totally forgot about it till last weekend, titled Paranoia Agent.

I spent my evening watching the first DVD and I quite like it. The art style of each character varies stylistically and it’s not as flat as some anime I’ve seen (animation-wise that is). The last anime I’ve seen which I really enjoyed was FLCL. Paranoid Agent is not as good as FLCL in my books, but I am enjoying it and it’s got me wanting to watch more, so that’s saying something for it in my books. I can’t say if anyone else would like it though. It’s definitely kind of an acquired taste in some aspects. I’ve only watched 4 episodes and there’s another 3 DVD’s to go, so who knows. It might take a turn for the worst. Boogiepop Phantom (another series I bought to watch years ago) kept me interested for the first episode, then after watching the second and third, I just completely lost interest. The rest of the series is still sitting on my shelf unwatched.

I find the opening and end sequences really odd in Paranoia Agent, yet strangely enjoyable to watch. I’m really digging the end theme of it too, which is the soundtrack they play on the flash site for this anime. It’s a very soft and subtle tune that goes well with the ‘sleeping characters in a field‘ sequence. You’ll have to watch it to see what I mean.

Edit: Ah, interesting. I thought when I was watching this, it had a lot of similarities in both story and art direction as Perfect Blue, and now watching the extras, I just realised the creator is the same guy who was behind Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress. No wonder it’s appealing to me so much. Perfect Blue was amazingly fucked up.

I’ve been making button banners. Why? Well, if you like us and would like to help us spread the word of our upcoming book, it would be quite nice if you used one of the following buttons on your site or maybe even in a blog post and link it back to the following url:

We thank you very much indeed.

From the blog pages of PurityBrown:

Fehed Said & Shari Chankhamma’s “The Healing” is just beautiful: evocative, moody, and with that sense of inevitability to the final plot twist that doesn’t prevent it from being surprising;
# read full review

And that was from a gal who has “two degrees in philosophy”!!

From the pages of Maehara.co.uk:

[…] another beautifully-drawn fantasy strip that takes a stab at the old premise of being careful what you wish for, in case you get it.
# read full review

Found an LJ post too which has a nice bullet-point style review:

- 48 page comic by writer/artist team, fehed and shari (heh - just had to re-write fehed instead of fred ^_~ )
- has a fantasy theme, detailed artwork, and altho its not a silent comic it doesn’t overdo the narrative ^^
- i can see a definate manga influence, but twinned with a western horror/cute influence…like the guy behind invader zim […]
- the artwork has a lot of lovely detail…but i think the tone/shading lets it down just slightly - a little more contrast might have made it easier to immediately see what’s going on, rather than poring over it for a while…
- i liked the ending - nice twist…i wanna his adventures next XD
# read full review here

Couple of ups and downs with that last one, but it’s fair to have mixed opinions. We know it’s not perfect, but it’s the end result that either makes a story good, or sinks it. And this reader in the end seems to be hooked. I give that a thumbs up!

So for those of you who haven’t picked up the book yet, Go Freakin’ Buy It Online! Or next time you’re in a bookstore, hunt around for it ^^