Lets all congratulate Griffith for finally getting his kingdom of Falconia as of chapter 307, which coincides with the 20th Anniversary of Berserk!! You go, baby!

Pandora Hearts has been moved up to #3 on the Top 10 Anime/Manga Seris list! On an equally if not more shocking note, Kanda has breached the top 5 on my Top "10" Anime/Manga Guys list, bumping Ichigo down to #6!!

How did this happen? In my assessment of how much I love a character, perhaps the biggest indicator is what my obsession with them has driven me to do. Dante made me dress up as his brother and kiss random guys at anime conventions, Griffith made me write a ridiculously long essay analyzing his psychology, Ichigo has several music videos praising his awesomeness, so on and so forth. This is how my obsession usually manifests: web shines, essays, music videos, and (in extreme cases) cosplay. Kanda has yet to make me do any of these things. Indeed, my lack of creative expression in his name is quite baffling to me. And yet he drives me absolutely crazy.

It then hit me that my Kanda obsession manifests in much more bizarre ways. These include screencapping most of the D.Gray-Man (DGM) anime, splicing together several episodes into one that features only Kanda. splicing together several manga chapters into one that features only Kanda, getting an emotional high from sniffing lotus oil, and even culinary ventures making tempura lotus root. On top of that, I seek to collect every single Kanda pic on the web. Indeed, Kanda has not one but two picture folders on my computer! (Sure Dante's general "Devil May Cry" folder is a virtual labyrinth of multimedia folders but... Dante is Dante.) Also, like Dante, Kanda is the only one to whom I have dedicated a physical binder filled with picture and fanfiction printouts. So... yeah... before this gets too creepy, suffice to say that Kanda does indeed have a lot of obsessive behavior associated with him from my end which more than qualifies him for his promotion.

Why now? Well, DGM just came out of hiatus with a bang. Chapter 188 fulfilled virtually every Kanda fantasy I ever had and rendered me incoherent from excitement for several days. I used to joke that the reason Kanda's backstory was withheld for so long was because they were working hard to make it epic. I never expected to be right. Kanda's backstory is more detailed than perhaps any of the other characters' and of utmost importance to the endgame of DGM! The person Kanda has been talking about through the whole series, the one he couldn't die before finding again, was finally revealed! My Kanda obsession has stood the test of time, and now that he has a full-fledged backstory (at least by DGM standards), he can finally take his rightful place among the "Immortals" of the top 5.

Which leaves us with Ichigo. Poor, poor Ichigo. His meteoric rise is only matched by his unimaginable fall. To be perfectly honest, I don't care about him at all right now. Bleach is getting more and more boring every chapter and reading it feels like a chore. However, I can't simply disregard how much I cared about Ichigo during the Soul Society arc and probably still would if I watch it again. This is why I didn't drop him lower than #6. :P All in all, Kanda should really be higher and Ichigo should really be lower, but I leave them where they are for now as a tenuous waiting period.

As always, the countdown on the Beliefs page has been changed to Yule, and news from the month of September '09 has been moved to the Old News page.