You have probably heard: Taylor Swift suddenly dropped a new album this week and the world wasn’t ready for it. I was casually scrolling through Instagram on Thursday and saw her announcement and, well, forgot to breathe for a second for how excited I was haha.
She uploaded the entire album onto her YouTube page yesterday and I spent the day listening to it on repeat. And, thanks to Taylor, my site now has a “Songs of the Month” widget on the sidebar haha. That’s right, I created a “Songs of the Month” playlist in her honour and will be updating it semi-regularly with what I’m listening to these days. Feel free to play it as you’re reading my posts!
The link to the playlist is here, if you just want to check it out on YouTube (this will avoid the songs cutting out if you navigate to a different page on my site as well). You’ll notice that the majority of songs on the playlist are from the “folklore” album. In fact, currently it’s just the entire “folklore” album plus this video by Nomadic Ambience. It’s been a while since I’ve liked one of her albums this much, and it’s a refreshing change from her last two releases.
It’s no secret that I am a huge drama fan. I’ve loved watching Chinese dramas (too many to count), British series (Sherlock), US sitcoms (The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother), Japanese anime-turned-dramas (HanaKimi) and, since about 10 years ago, I got into Korean Dramas too.
I am well aware that I have an addictive personality, meaning once I get into something, I immerse myself into it so fully that often it consumes too much of me. I like to watch things once they’re complete so I can binge everything in one go.
Subsequently, I go through phases of being really into dramas, and anime, and TV series, and Cpop, Jrock, Kpop etc. followed by phases where I completely don’t touch them for months or even years.
That’s one of the reasons I am a spoiler queen. Not to say I give out a bunch of spoilers, but I actively search out the entire plot line on Wiki or some other review site so I can ensure that what I’m getting into will be worth my binge-time (awful, I know), otherwise I just won’t watch it.
The other reason is because I have a very specific type of drama that I like to watch. I am basically a 12-yr-old chicken in a 30-yr-old body. I can’t handle blood or gore, I can’t watch thrillers, I definitely can’t watch horrors or even anything remotely scary (Hotel del Luna scared the CRAP out of me. Heck, Harry Potter scared me). I also don’t have the mental capacity to handle depressing themes either (I think I had enough of those during my days studying WW2 Germany at Uni).
As a result, I’ve found that it’s better for me to just read the drama recaps to get the plot instead of actually putting the time in to watch the drama. After all, it takes a lot less time to read through even a detailed rundown of each episode than to invest my 16-20hrs into actually watching.
I’m currently at a stage where I’m very happily not addicted to any drama, haven’t really been following Kpop for a while and I think I’m taking things more in moderation where I can. That said, I’m still curious about what’s out there, as well as interested in the hype of certain shows. Now with Netflix adding a bunch of international shows, they’re even more readily available. Plus I have a Viki subscription for the rest of this year.
Here’s a list of the dramas I’ve been watching/reading so far this year, in alphabetical order under each heading, as well as my thoughts on them. Most of them are Korean dramas, many of them will be read-only, in which case I’ll have read the recaps on Dramabeans.
I’m thinking of doing a monthly “What Am I Watching” post and add some recommendations for ones I’ve really enjoyed. If I ever find the desire to, I may write my own recaps for ones I really enjoy.
Without further ado, here are my Dramas of the Month (#dotm). Let me know if you’ve seen any of these and what your thoughts on them are!
I’m aiming to upload reading through the entire Bible at some point.
My current uploading schedule is one chapter every weekday. These letters, however, are shorter and I feel they are significantly more cohesive when read in its entirety to get a better sense of the overarching message, rather than breaking them down by chapters. They’re also short enough to read in one go, so that’s what I’ve done. As such, my upload schedule will vary depending on the number of chapters in a book. Thanks for reading with me!
Okay first thing’s first: I just finished reading the entire Cardcaptor Sakura manga (original) and despite the issues I have with the romantic relationships, I still loved it. Mostly, I loved the artwork. It is stunning. The lines are soft, and the eyes are always drawn with such gentle care showing vast emotion.
I cannot say the same for the Clear Card artwork.
It’s a shame because I feel like the artwork for the anime has improved greatly, so why is it that it’s like the manga artwork has taken three steps back? I can’t stand Sakura’s 3 giant lashes, and the gently layered lines from the OG series has been replaced with harsh, thick ink.
Actually that’s my overall complaint for their artwork. Everything is thicker, plainer… Like their art medium went from HB-2B pencils to a single 1.0 gel pen.
Where did all the detail go? The soft backgrounds, the realistic flowers, the gentle shading… Right now it’s putting me off so badly that I almost don’t want to keep reading, but I do love CCS so I will force myself to continue because I am curious to know what happens next.
The start of Clear Card is basically the same as the ending of the OG series, and if you just compare the two artwork side by side… whoever drew Sakura back in the day made her look older, more mature, but also with the same beautiful, delicate art style. The new one looks a bit… comical, and reminds me of the artwork of a different shoujo manga I forgot the name of but also did not like the art for (so I dropped it).
And how did Yukito end up looking even younger in the Clear Card arc than the original series? And Yue now looks like a 10yr old boy, nothing like his majestic self from before. He looks like a permanent chibi version of himself, and I do not mean that in an endearing way. Part of his greatest charm in the original was when he would break away from his pensive, cool expressions to show a more animated side of himself… but now he looks like a permanent caricature.
Speaking of chibi forms, you can barely tell their chibi and non-chibi forms apart because there’s just so little extra effort in the regular art anyway. In fact, you know what? Somehow everyone looks younger after “ageing” 2 years.
Seriously, CLAMP, what? I know they have gone through artist changes so… I dunno… I’m just disappointed.
Here, I’ll just show you (read right -> left):
Heads up: this is an ending spoiler for Cardcaptor Sakura, though it is also the start of the Clear Card series and was published 20yrs ago, so I’m not sure it can be considered much of a spoiler anymore. But here’s your warning anyway.
Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card (2018) is the sequel to the anime Cardcaptor Sakura (1998-2000). You can watch the Prologue episode, along with the rest of the series, for free with (many, many) ads on Crunchyroll here.
I recently binge watched Cardcaptor Sakura on Netflix (though taking a break at episode 50 because I do recall watching most of it as a kid) and found out that there was a Cardcaptor Sakura sequel both in manga and anime form. I read good things, so I checked out the prologue episode. Here are some thoughts I had on it.
Major spoilers ahead for the entire Cardcaptor Sakura series – original, Clear Card, anime, manga and movies. You have been warned.
