I GOT THE INTERNSHIP

*JUMPS UP AND DOWN*!!!

I start on Monday. Details forthcoming. :DDDD

On the anime front, I happened to stumble upon this brief trailer for an upcoming movie called Hotarubi no Mori e:

• The story was written by the same mangaka who writes Natsume Yuujinchou. (!!!)
• The voice of the male lead sounds JUST like Natsume's. Seriously, this dude must be Hiroshi Kamiya's brother or something. (EDIT: On second listen, this dude's voice is deeper and more nasally. If Hiroshi Kamiya and Takahiro Sakurai had a lovechild, I imagine he would sound like this. :P)

Also, started watching the Gundam Unicorn OVAs and it is SO BEAUTIFUL HRNNNNNNNNG. The last time I was THIS impressed with animation quality alone was probably Kara no Kyoukai. And I don't know who did the score, but the music is absolutely gorgeous too. Seriously, I don't even remember the last time I took notice of the score of an anime. *o*~

HAPPY POST

The first ep. of Natsume Yuujinchou San is out! :DDDDD

Nyanko-sensei has gotten even fatter than when we last saw him. :P

Solid episode overall. My favorite part was one major "AWWWW" moment at the very end. I was reading people's episode impressions on MAL and one comment really struck me:

I think there hasn't been another show where I started tearing up just because of the fact that I'm watching it.

^THIS. Right when the first few seconds of the OP started playing, I was already getting emotional! *sap*

New OP song is pretty~ Still wish Natsume was real and my boyfriend. He's so sweet. ;_____;

Also, spent a large chunk of yesterday rewatching Baccano!, which reignited my love for RAIL TRACER-SAN. He's such a bro.

growing up.

A couple days ago, I received some bad news from one of my best friends. She's been hospitalized for over a week due to a serious recurring illness she has. She's doing better now, but still. It was a very unpleasant reality check.

This probably sounds totally asinine, but I feel like my adulthood has been slowly creeping up on me this past year. It's strange to think that, just over a year ago, the fact that my best friend wasn't paying enough attention to me was such a MASSIVE CRISIS. The sadness I felt then seems so puny now in comparison to the huge burdens some of the people close to me have been carrying.

I suppose in a lot of ways, it's a good thing that the people I'm close to feel that they can use me as an emotional crutch. But at the end of the day, I'm still a kid. I have no idea how to solve these people's problems. I feel like a hypocrite when I tell people that life is wonderful and all of the other optimistic crap I whole-heartedly believe in, when these people's lives have clearly been much more difficult than mine. I don't have any real life problems/regrets because I'm too young to have fucked up big time yet. I'm not saying the things these people really need to hear and it just feels terrible.

I'm starting to think that the older I get, the more I realize I still have a lot of growing up to do. Like it or not, I'm graduating in a year. And honestly? I'm scared. I really hate to admit it, but I'm still so fragile inside, like my heart (and my ego) is made out of porcelain. How can I expect to take any real risks when, in so many cases, I've been too much of a coward to play my hand in the first place? The logical solution is to toughen up, but go overboard, and I might lose a part of myself in the process.

Is it possible for a kind heart to be made of steel? Maybe with a heart like that, and a bit of intelligence, I can avoid getting ripped to shreds. And then maybe, one day, I can give help to the people who need it. :(

actual news.

Off roadtripping with my siblings around the New England area at the northern tip of the US. Won't be back in Chicago until the 4th. :)

Also, waiting for news on a possible last-minute internship. Should receive confirmation tomorrow. Wish me luck! @_@

Live. Even if it is only for a day.

So I just got done with a one-volume manga titled, Watashitachi no Shiawase na Jikan (Our Happy Time). It's a painful, but very beautiful story, and to my surprise, many of its themes resonated a lot with recent events in my life.

Not sure if I ever wrote about it here, but I visited a women's prison for a couple days while in S.Africa. This manga illustrates very well the most important thing I learned while over there:

...that sometimes the only thing separating a prisoner from a 'normal' person is literally just the fact that one person is behind bars while the other isn't.

Even that aside, the story explores several other heavy themes, a few of which have had a big impact on my life as of late. And from what I can tell, the manga deals with these issues in a way that is truthful without being exploitative or overdramatic.

To top things off, the last chapter contains one of the most emotionally affecting scenes I have ever read in a manga. The last time I cried that hard was over a year ago, literally.

brb tissues ;__________;