Although it has been a relatively quiet week, I’ve been quite busy. I’ve done a lot of RPG work, gathering up files and laying some of the ground work for the major project that’s been eating up my free time – putting together 600 – 800 odd pages of roleplay material. With that and a lot of school work, there hasn’t been time for much else, the else including writing the next episode of Psionic Six (which I really need to do, as well as catch up on autoclover) and exploring Korea. So no funky videos of strange statues, I’m afraid.

However, check this out:



How fucking cool is that! SPD umbrella! On Monday it was raining really heavy and, as Becky and I only have one umbrella between us and she’d already left school, I was going to get soaked. So I was told I could take one of the umbrellas left by the kids. Unfortunately I had to give it back, in case the kid ever wants to claim it, so I had to take a snap to remember it by. I have every intention of getting my own (although now I might not be able to get an SPD one, I’ll likely have to settle for Treasure Force or Wild Spirits) if I can find where they sell them. And if I get caught without one again, since I did put it back, it’ll be there again. And the more often I get to ‘borrow’ it, the more likely I am to ‘forget’ to return it. Heh – I’d feel bad but it’s obviously been there a LONG time (like 2004) and it is slightly rusty and broken.

Speaking of Power Rangers, today I finally caught the Korean version of Jungle Fever – Wild Spirits. I loved it. It was, much like Ninja Storm and it’s Sentai counterpart, infinitely better than the American version. I was looking out for any shoddy work during the filming of the suit fights and, thanks to all the (comical) CGI, I couldn’t notice any. That does make me wonder if the footage I was seeing the flaws in was the American filmed stuff (it’s been getting harder and harder to tell since Lightspeed Rescue, which, incidentally is one of my students’ favourite series).

/>The characters are a lot more fun – the animal masters are all big furry suits and the tone is much more comical, including some bizarre CGI. The episodes are shown in blocks of 3, so I got a good feel for what it’s all about. One of the episodes featured the yellow ranger having her Chi blocked (I can only assume) and losing her sense of who she was. Which obviously involved dressing up like a schoolgirl, wearing bad-girl make up and forming a baseball bat wielding gang who loved to dance. Awesome.

As the suits haven’t been changed for the American release, my opinions haven't changed on the original suits, however I love the design on the powered up suits. They’re white with colour trims and feature lots of ‘techno-bumps’ which act like thrusters to allow the rangers to fly (!) (remember them “jetting” in Season 2 MMPR? LOL) and deliver high-speed blows. They look cool. What makes them even cooler is how they’re activated – by the ranger using their (in English) “Super Wide Claw!” I’m so tempted to buy a toy one. Becky had to put up with me playing with my Super Wide Claw (I was pretending whilst wearing our oven glove) all morning. I’m going to be tuning in next week – we met the soon-to-be-Violet-ranger this week, but it’s not until next week he gets his suit. He’s angst-eriffic, a la the Luna Wolf ranger from Wild Force. When I get paid it’s going to be hard to not buy the toys, if I can find a toyshop.

There was a degree of injustice though. During the commercials I was taunted by adverts for the Wild Spirits Musical Stage Show! I couldn’t read the text so I have no idea where it is or when it’s on. I may have to do a search and babelfish to see if I can go. That would be too cool, but I’m realistic about it happening.

The only other things that happened was watching a little more of B5 (S5) and replaying FFII, on the PSP this time. Loving it so far – I still don’t know why people don’t like it, it’s awesome. Ah well, no accounting for taste.

Oh - last minute P.S.! I had to laugh when one of my students was trying to write about how excited she feels listening to Big Bang, a Korean boyband that are everywhere at the moment. Apparently "When I listen to them they make me throb." It was difficult to explain to an 11 year old why that's wrong....