After finally being able to watch the final 16 episodes of Marmalade Boy (also known as Jam Boy ^_^) I thought I'd like to share with you some of my thoughts. Here's a quote that I was thinking of throughout the 8 hours straight that I watched those tapes...

"Watching Marmalade Boy is like repeated suicide and living. It's like you stab yourself in the heart after every episode, expecting yourself to die, and yet not getting it quite right. The worse part of it is that you actually can see a part of you in the characters, so that the characters feelings seem so much more real, and you're hurting inside as much as the characters are."

- Asuma Shinohara

1. Doesn't Doris look cute in glasses? =P
2. People to add to my Hit List:
   1. Jinny. I don't care if she hooked up with Bill. What she did to Yuu and Miki was despicable and she's the worst character I have ever seen.
   2. Michael. Man, get a haircut, you Yuu wannabe. Better yet, grow up! He's the most immature AND annoying character I've ever seen. I was glad that Kei-kun won out over him for Miki's feelings, but of course, no one can beat Yuu. ^_^
3. Who would've thought that Bill would end up with Jinny? I always thought that he would stay with Anju, just because they have the same color of hair. =P
4. I wished they could have developed the Brian-Doris relationship. Doris is the most underrated character in the series. Glasses, mature, cute freckles, great friend...
5. Brian: Ginta clone? You decide. ^_^
6. Kei-kun has won at least some respect from me. Of course, no one compares to Yuu, and Ginta is close behind, but Kei-kun would be third. Smart and caring, and knows when to let go. Who knows? Maybe sooner or later Suzu-chan will hook up with him. ^_^
7. I really feel sorry for Anju-san. Very cute and likable, but knows that her love will never be fulfilled. *sniff*
8. Meiko has suddenly become counselling superwomen. No, really. In the last 16 episodes, she has all the answers for Miki, like she has a handbook or something. Annoying, but at least it keeps the story moving along.
9. I WANT MORE MARMALADE BOY!!! ^_^;;
10. The whole cast deserves to be in the Cute Zone. Unfortunately, I don't have time for 20 odd pages. ;_;
11. I think Yuu is the perfect guy. Although he does have his flaws (like not confronting the people involved for the truth), he is a person I'd like to be and strive to be.

1. Hentai sites. Sure, we've all surfed them, inadvertently or not, but some of those pictures are absolutely disgusting. Sure, nudity is a fact of life for the anime fan, but don't rub it in our noses like we WANT to see this trash.
2. hentai / cute anime. Lately there's been a trend for cute characters cavorting around almost nude, or hinting at it. Case in point, Pretty Sami. Puleez, that is the worst cute anime I've ever seen. Can you make a skirt any shorter than that? And, she's only 12?? I received an e-mail from a visitor (the person's name escapes me), and he suggested that cute anime may only be a way for sick individuals to fantasize about their fetishistic desires. The sad fact is, this may be true of some of the cute anime being produced, and the worst part is that the animation companies, producers and directors may be exploiting this just for money. This makes me sick.

1. Cable modems. Get off of your butts, cable companies, and get cable modem service to my house! The faster you do that, the quicker I can transfer my website onto my own server and not worry about disk space. ^_^
2. 57.6 modems. What a waste of money. You only get that kind of speed if you have zero line noise, your telephone switcher is the correct type, and the modem at the other end is of the same type.
3. Ugly websites. I know some of you out there don't have the prettiest pages, but all I ask for is the effort to make it nice. That's all I ask for. People who make their pages intentionally difficult to view deserve a big fat zero. Most of the time "ugly" is equivalent to "I'll be dead before this page loads up", so keep that in mind. =P
   1. Huge pages. Pages with oodles of info on one page. Slightly annoying, but depending on the content, I can live with it.
   2. Huge inline images. I definitely am not going to wait for multiple 100Kb images to load just so I can read the page. And, for those web authors who counter by saying you can turn off your images, that's a very bad excuse. I surf the web FOR the images and text, to see good web design and layout. (Of course, I may be guilty by overloading my pages with images, but at least they're smaller than 100Kb, and I'm hoping that cute fans will wait for ultra-cute images to load up. ^_^;; )
   3. Huge backgrounds. Big background images that don't tile well detract from web pages. As well, if the colors of the background aren't toned down, you can't read the text. Big no-no.
   4. Embedded MIDI with no off button. Music is fine if it suits the theme of the page, but not being able to turn off those sharp MIDI tones drives me crazy. In fact, if I come across any page like that, I immediately jump to another page. No mercy. Plus, if I'm listening to a CD, the last thing I want to hear is the MIDI drowning out my CD.
   5. Webring city. I believe that the web is for content, content and cool web design, and not images or links. What really irks me are pages that are one quarter content, and three quarters webrings (which are, essentially, links). And, these rings are only vaguely associated, if at all, with the subject of the page. I've visited dozens of sites with up to 12 rings on them! Incredible. The funny thing is, not a single one did I visit through the rings. I got there the tried and true way -- The Anime Web Turnpike (there's a plug for Jei. -_^)
   6. Webrings part two. There are too many rings of the same type!! There are at least 6 different Sailor Moon rings, and at least 6 different general anime rings. Funny thing is, most of them probably have the same sites on each of them. As for the general anime rings, there are probably so many links on them that they are no better than a link page. I believe that webrings should be small (no more than, say, 50 sites), and very subject specific (Cute Cute Anime Ring and Anime Ring of Cuteness are examples).
4. General Internet Slowdown. Getting a faster modem doesn't necessarily mean you'll get faster access! If the internet is slow (which it often is), getting a faster modem won't help.
5. Planned Obsolescence. Why does my 10 month old computer feel old already? Because Intel, Cyrix and Motorola are having chip wars. My Pentium 100 is now a low-end machine, even though when I bought it it was a mid-range machine. Fortunately, the RAM (48Mb) and peripherals will ensure that it will have life for at least 1 1/2 years. That sucks.