Computer still down, hope to be able to do something about that this weekend, or at the very least the coming week.

In the meantime here’s the opening for 1999′s Cyborg Kuro-chan.

I think Lady Q’s work here makes a good argument for more Dancehall opening themes in anime.

Due to the PC that I have the next 7 days entries written on being inaccessible at the moment (curse you Windows Update!), Lum-A-Day is on hiatus for the forseeable future (probably a fortnight).

Another Ran episode. I seem to recall not being too keen on this one.

Ran & Lum meet at a restaurant so that Ran can guilt trip her with tales of how Lum used to repeatedly get her into trouble as a little kid. Today’s flashbacks involve how Lum blamed Ran whenever she wet the bed, cruelty to space dinosaurs and breaking her mothers favourite doll.

*Continuity error alert! Lum’s mum is shown speaking Japanese rather than the gibberish she is normally depicted speaking!*

Lum finally admits it’s her fault Ran has turned out so twisted. But then walks out leaving Ran to pay the whole of the bill.

After the break, Ran enrolls at Tomobiki High in an yet another attempt to drain Ataru’s youth. First she sends him a strange sweet that makes him choke, so he heads to the infirmary. Soon Ran arrives there too, reporting that she’s feeling faint. However Sakura keeps guard on Ataru, which in turn prevents Ran from kissing him.

There’s a whole lot of back and forth as Ran tries to kiss Ataru and vice versa, until they finally kiss. However because Ataru accidentally drinks Cherry’s youth restoring potion beforehand there is no effect.

Blimey that was a chore to write up, and only slightly less of one to watch. Ran episodes aren’t my favourite. And the next one is a Ran episode too…

—

Screenplay: Kazunori Ito
Storyboard: Kazuo Yamazaki
Director: Kazuo Yamazaki
Animation Director: Kazuo Yamazaki

Yes, Kazuo Yamazaki was all over this. There are a some really nice sequences animation-wise, for example, the flashback with the dinosaur. The difference in approach isn’t as noticable as in episode 31, but there are touches here and there that feel different to the series as a whole so far.

More crisp talk!

Fish and Chips

This tastes a lot like the old fish and chips “crisps” that used to be available in the UK. And as such doesn’t really taste like Fish and Chips.

Not a keeper.

Builders Breakfast

They’d done something similar in the past, but this has one distinct difference to just tasting like sausage and/or bacon.

FRIED EGG

Yes, fried egg flavoured crisps. And they are weirding me out.

And the taste still hadn’t gone away 3 hours later. If you like the flavour of a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin in crisp form, then this is for you. It’s not for me, though.

So those new Walker’s Crisps flavours finally made it to Didcot, and I’ve picked up 2 bags of each to try.

Cajun Squirrel Flavour

These taste familiar at first bite. It reminded me of either their Roast Chicken or possibly some variant they’ve done in the past. However it has a strong hot after-taste and checking the ingredients list it’s loaded with spices and herbs in the flavouring.

Of course having never tasted Squirrel I can’t say if the flavour’s particularly accurate. It is however, suitable for vegetarians.

Not as exciting as the name suggests, I felt a bit let down by this crisp.

Chilli & Chocolate

This however, was great.

First off – yes, the flavourings contain cocoa powder! In fact it’s the main ingredient. The second is Chilli. It’s a straight forward flavouring that works surprisingly well. You first get the hit of chocolate flavour, then the chilli heat afterwards.

Two flavours in, and I’m not sure I can see anything beating this one. There’s definitely something to be said for flavours being what they are rather than trying to fake something.

via PCL LinkDump

Yay!