& Domain-Specific Computing

So, I went to the public lecture at UCI today (the one I posted an event for on my Facebook page). These public lectures are by various guest speakers on a wide range of topics; each one is usually something of an overview of a particular field, often ones which the average computer science student has minimal or no exposure to in their classes. As with last time, there were free brownies and coffee/tea.

Note that this post is all from memory. I didn't take notes or anything, so there are likely to be omissions and vagueness compared to the actual lecture.

The topic this time was domain-specific computing. Essentially this refers to the use of some manner of special-purpose hardware to offload work from a general-purpose CPU, either eliminating the CPU entirely or allowing the use of a smaller, cheaper, and more efficient CPU. The ultimate purpose of this is to reduce overall cost and power consumption while increasing overall performance for a given task.

If this doesn't sound revolutionary, it's because it's not. Modular electronics have been around for as long as electronics in total. If you want a real-world example of something built this way, you can look at just about anything at all. Computers consist of many components (e.g. motherboard, video card), each composed of many further components (GPU, southbridge, northbridge, etc.), usually microchips.

The problem then is that it's hard to manufacture these chips. It's expensive, requires skill in engineering, and is largely done manually. Skilled electrical engineers must manually design a circuit, then a huge fabrication plant uses big and very expensive machines to manufacture the circuit, which is then available for use in various devices. Because of the expense and manufacturing requirements, most companies are not able to produce custom chips in this way.

As a result, very common specialized circuits are produced and sold off-the-shelf in large quantities, while less general circuits instead use code running on a general-purpose CPU. After chip design and fabrication, another electric engineer must then analyze everything a particular device must do, determine where it would be beneficial to use specialized off-the-shelf components (which may either be used directly or require some manner of mapping to make the data fit the exact component), then determine which CPU to use for everything else, and have the programmers write the code for it.

Done correctly, the resulting device is faster, cheaper to manufacture, and more efficient than simply using a fast CPU to do everything. One of the papers he cited examined different algorithms implemented on a general-purpose CPU, a general-purpose GPU, and a custom FPGA (chips that can be programmed without massive fabrication plants, but are less efficient than standard fabricated chips). For one algorithm (seemingly a highly parallel one), the GPU performed 93x as well as the CPU, and the FPGA 11x. While the GPU was 8x as fast as the FPGA in absolute terms (though presumably you could increase the size of the FPGA 8 times, to match the GPU's total performance), when you compare performance:power consumption, the GPU was 60x that of the CPU, and the FPGA was about 220x: about 3.5x the performance of the GPU (and I'd wager the FPGA cost less than either of them). In other algorithms, the difference was tens of thousands of times.

But it's still a whole lot of work. Consequently, this tends to be done for mass-produced electronic devices, while more specialized things are simply executed on a common computer, as it's cheaper to code a program than engineer an electrical device.

This guy (the one who gave the lecture) is working to develop analysis and automation tools to reduce the cost and difficulty of custom hardware development, to significantly increase the range of things that are viable to produce this way. Ideally, you'd be able to write a specification or algorithm (e.g. a C++ program that describes an entire device's function), then automation would analyze the system, performing these steps (essentially the same ones I summarized above):

1. Break it down into major functional units
2. Determine which units can use off-the-shelf components and what the optimal component is
3. Locate algorithms that would substantially benefit from the production of new components and then design those components for manufacturing, either using FPGAs, circuit boards, or as actual fabricated chips
   
4. Choose the optimal CPU and algorithm for the tasks remaining (that aren't worth implementing in hardware) and write the code. Remember that different tasks run better or worse on different CPU architectures, so this step must find the best CPU for the given algorithm or rewrite the algorithm in a way that runs better on a more preferable (e.g. cheaper) CPU. For example, CPUs that lack branch prediction are cheaper and more energy-efficient, but perform poorly on algorithms that use a great deal of branching; however, depending on the task to be performed, an alternate algorithm might be able to perform the task with less branching.
   
5. Design an optimal bus architecture for all the different electronic to communicate

Of course, it's very likely that this ideal is fundamentally impossible - at least until artificial intelligence is able to perform as well as a skilled electrical engineer. However, he hopes to create tools that drastically reduce the amount of human time and cost needed for this process, and the talk was about recent research toward that goal. A few of the automation problems under research by different groups:

• Identification of identical algorithm matches to existing circuits as well as partial matches that can work with some amount of data conversion
• Profiling of different matching circuits to determine which performs optimally on a given problem
• Determination of which algorithms would perform substantially better if implemented in custom hardware
• Conversion of procedures (e.g. C++ programs) to electronic schematics for manufacturing
• Profiling of different CPU architectures (e.g. x86 and ARM), models (e.g. i5 and i7), and variants (e.g. cache size, with or without optional subunits, etc.), to determine which is optimal for a given device, based on performance and cost
• Profiling of different bus architectures (e.g. mesh and crossbar) and configurations (e.g. number and size of channels) to determine what is optimal for a device
• Modularization for energy efficiency, to allow entire circuits to be shut off when they aren't in use (but others are)
  

I don't remember too much more detail than what I've already said. One last point is that this guy seemed to be a big fan of the multiband radio-frequency interconnect (RF-I) bus for the purpose of inter-component communication. This works essentially the same as the radio or broadcast TV, where bandwidth is split into separate channels, each with a different range of modulation frequencies. As this allows bandwidth to be arbitrarily allocated between many bus channels (and may even be configured in real time), this is very amenable to communication and power optimization.

Actually, it looks like the slides from the lecture are available online for you to look at, beyond what I've already written about it.

& MPQDraft and StarCraft 2

In the course of randomly wasting time today, I decided to go look at how MPQDraft is doing in terms of popularity, these days. I do that every so often, but it had been a few months since I last looked.

To my surprise, I noted a substantial spike in downloads: 50% more binary downloads and 100% more source downloads, beginning in February. It took me a second to realize the likely cause: SC2 going into beta mid-February. It's not clear to me whether people expect MPQDraft to work with SC2, or whether SC2 has inspired a more general revival in modding.

In any case - MPQDraft does not work with the SC2 beta. There are two reasons for this.

Part of why MPQDraft is so elegant is that it works in a game- and version-independent manner. This is possible because MPQDraft intercepts function calls between the games and the Storm DLL, the latter which contains the functions to access MPQs. This only works if Storm is dynamically linked to the game, in its own DLL. The SC2 beta statically links to Storm; the MPQ functions, as well as others, are incorporated directly into the game executable.

This means the current simple, elegant MPQDraft method will not work, period. The only way to deal with this problem, and to make MPQDraft work when the game statically links to Storm, is to directly locate the function addresses in the game, and include those addresses themselves in the MPQDraft DLL.

The problem with this is that it's game- and version-dependent. Every time a new patch comes out you'll have to wait until I or somebody else updates the function addresses before you can use MPQDraft on the new version. And this obviously requires somebody taking the time to manually locate the functions in every new version, from scratch.

So, that's in the "pain in the ass" class of problems. It also remains to be seen whether Blizzard intends to ship SC2 linked in this way, or if it will dynamically link to Storm in the release version.

The bigger problem is the fact that SC2 is online most of the time, including when you're playing single player (unless you specifically tell it to run in offline mode). Depending on how aggressively Blizzard performs its anti-cheating scans (which they've been doing since SC1), it's plausible that MPQDraft could be detected as a cheat, in which case you'd probably get your account banned.

That's the current state of MPQDraft and SC2.

& Twitter

On a tangentially-related note, I've also joined Twitter. This one I have a very specific purpose for: link spam (the stuff I formerly sent to friends on IM services and pasted into chat room). A place where I can simply link to interesting, funny, or otherwise linkable stuff I find online, without giving any commentary, and I can post stuff too insignificant or off-topic to clutter this blog with (although I may occasionally post short random thoughts, as well).

Those of you who think this blog has had entirely too little computer/programming stuff on it lately should check out my Twitter feed. While these days most of the stuff I think long and hard about (and blog about) is linguistics, the majority of the stuff I read online remains about computers, video games, and programming. So, expect the majority of my tweets to be on those topics, like this blog was, back before I became interested in linguistics.

There are several ways you can access my tweets. If you're on Twitter, you can simply follow me. If you're not, you can either see the mini-Twitter feed now on the blog sidebar, read the Twitter tab of my FaceBook page, or subscribe to the RSS version of my Twitter feed.

& Facebook

So, I joined Facebook.

Not much to say about it. It was purely for practical reasons (because an organization I'm with apparently now uses Facebook to communicate with their members with regard to things like meeting dates), so I'm not planning on doing too much with it. I'll take a look at the features and we'll see. If I can find a use for some part of it (that I actually care to use) I might use it for that; if not I'll just use it as a friend hub and one more way to find me on the internet.

& Spring Anime Thoughts

Sooooo, exactly how much of that last post was real, and how much was April Fools? About half of it. RaptorIIC did indeed talk to me about the idea of making an anime blog, and the idea has come up again (and more seriously) with Random Curiosity closing. It's not true that we've actually (yet) decided to go for it, and the ecchi/hentai theme is definitely not true, either. And, ironically, the day after I wrote that post, RC announced that it might not be closing after all.

So, moving back into the real world, in this post I'll discuss some of the new series I might actually watch, this season. Of course this is all very tentative, as not even one episode of most of these have aired yet. What's more, many of them really fall into a "I'll take a look at it and see how it is" category, which isn't particularly informative. Again, the series summaries and pictures are coming from RC and THAT (although in this post they'll be quoted, so you can differentiate the summary from my own comments).

Kaichou wa Maid-sama! | 会長はメイド様！
Information Links: ANN Encyclopedia, AnimeNfo, AniDB, MyAnimeList, syoboi

After only reading a glimpse of the premise and taking a look at the art style, I was already convinced that “The Student Council President is a Maid!” was my kind of show. Reading a bit of the shoujo manga only reaffirmed that thought, as it has everything I’d want in a romantic comedy. The story focuses on a girl who’s enrolled in an all-boys school that has recently turned co-ed, and worked her ass off to become the student council president so that she can change the bad habits in the still predominantly male school. She develops a tough exterior as a result and doesn’t particularly like men because of how her father walked out on her and her family, but works a part-time job at a maid cafe to make ends meet. The most popular guy in school stumbles onto her secret one day and she thinks she’s set up for a huge embarrassment, but he chooses to keep it a secret because he’s unknowingly infatuated with her.

I'm not so sure about that picture, but the description sounds like it could be entertaining, and slice-of-life comedies (optionally with romance) are my bread and butter in anime, after all. The first episode aired last night (covered by both RC and THAT), and one of the (very) fast but good subbing groups already had it out, so I got a chance to see it. So far it looks pretty good, although you can't always count on the first episode of something being representative of a series, as the first episode usually forms the background of the main story.

The premise of the series is very much like the "so moe I am gonna die" [what it actually got tagged on AniDB at one point] Nogizaka Haruka's Secret. So far this one doesn't seem as horrific as that series; perhaps this is due to this being a girls' series and that one being an ecchi guys' series, though shoujo series can (potentially) be horrific in their own way. This hasn't been the case in the first episode, but the first episode is pre-romance, which is where things could go downhill.

So, I'll definitely watch some more and see how it goes.

Angel Beats! | エンジェルビーツ!
Information Links: ANN Encyclopedia, AnimeNfo, AniDB, MyAnimeList, syoboi

One of the series I’m really looking forward to and can safely recommend to all audiences is Angel Beats. For some, it might be enough if I just say, “Key and P.A. Works.” For everyone else, this means the visual novel company that brought us AIR, CLANNAD, and Kanon, and the studio that produced true tears and CANAAN. Maeda Jun from Key is writing the script and screenplay, depicting an afterworld where one girl forms a war front, the Shinda Sekai Sensen (SSS), in defiance to god for giving her an unreasonable and short life. In this supernatural afterlife setting, we follow male protagonist Otonashi, who has no memories of when he was alive and gets dragged into the SSS’s struggles. Guns and superpowers are involved, but so is a seemingly normal school life at the same time.

Key is a very well known maker of "dating sim" games. As mentioned in the summary, to date three of their games have been adapted into anime, and I've seen them all. The supernatural and fighting aspects are certainly different than any of previous ones, though it sounds as though it still has the school slice-of-life parts they're known for, as well. The three series so far have been at least enjoyable, so I'll probably end up watching this, also. It will be interesting to see how they do something less traditional dating sim.

RC has covered episode 1. It's also been subbed by a group, though I haven't seen it, yet.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms | 最強武将伝・三国演義
Information Links: ANN Encyclopedia, AnimeNfo, AniDB, MyAnimeList, syoboi

And here it is, the fourth series this season with some basis on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, except this one’s meant to be the real deal, or at least Chinese studio Beijing Glorious Animation’s interpretation of it. It’s actually a joint production with Japan’s Takara Tomy and Future Planet (the first of its kind) in regards to both planning and animation production. So if you don’t care for the pretty girls seen in Ikkitousen and Koihime Musou nor Gundams and wanted a faithful version with old men, then here’s the perfect alternative. This 52-episode series was aired in China by CCTV and completed its run back in 2008, meaning this is a rebroadcasting for the Japanese market. It took four years to complete and cost 650 million yen (~7m USD).

Well, that isn't the most informative summary in the world. For more information, see the Wikipedia entry on the original Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Basically, it's a pretty famous Chinese story (at least in that part of the world). For that reason I might check it out, although I must say that 52 episodes is a really large number for a series that may or may not be any good. One thing that could be interesting is that, as the series was produced by a Chinese company and originally aired in China, the series might be in Chinese, with Japanese subtitles.

WORKING!! | ワーキング!!
Information Links: ANN Encyclopedia, AnimeNfo, AniDB, MyAnimeList, syoboi

If you’re looking for a cute slice-of-life comedy with an all-star cast, then look no further than WORKING. It’s an easy-going series that centers on high school student Takanashi Souta, who gets recruited by his short and absolutely adorable senior, Taneshima Popura, to work at a Hokkaido family restaurant named Wagnaria (hence the official site URL). As a normal and diligent 16 year old, Souta soon learns that all his coworkers are a bit unusual. This includes a manager who doesn’t care to work properly, a floor chief who carries a katana with her, and a server with androphobia. However, as a self-proclaimed lover of all things small and helpless (i.e. “minicon”), Souta sticks with it and there doesn’t ever seem to be a boring day at his job. The first episode of this had a special early broadcast last month, and I found it a perfect fit to fill that quirky yet clean humor slot for the season.

That's about as slice-of-life comedy as you can get. This one actually had an early airing of the first episode a few weeks ago, and it wasn't bad. So, I'm planning on watching it. Oddly, neither RC nor THAT did a summary of the first episode to link you to, despite it being out for a couple weeks.

Arakawa Under the Bridge | 荒川アンダー ザ ブリッジ
Information Links: ANN Encyclopedia, AnimeNfo, AniDB, MyAnimeList, syoboi

This is an adaptation of Nakamura Hikaru’s gag/romantic comedy manga about a young man named Ichinomiya Kou who sits on top of the business world, and whose family motto is to never be in debt to anyone for anything. He has that so ingrained in his mind since birth that the mere thought of having debts gives him an asthmatic panic attack. One day by Arakawa Bridge, he’s saved by a homeless girl named Nino living below, leaving him with the biggest debt ever. He’s completely unable to cope with the thought of that and tries to repay Nino by buying her a house, but she’s a bit odd and asks him to love her instead. Thus begins Kou’s life under the bridge with her, where he meets a bunch of very strange individuals, including the resident Kappa village chief. From the manga, I found the character interactions reminiscent of Bakemonogatari, mainly because Kou doesn’t know how to deal with the calm, composed, and most of all weird Nino.

Another one for the "definitely maybe" pile. On the one hand the art and premise just screams "chick flick" (it is a girls' series, after all), though the premise also seems a bit intriguing. Bakemonogatari was pretty good, so if it's like Bakemonogatari, it could be good; we'll have to see how similar they really are.

RAINBOW Nisha Rokubou no Shichinin | RAINBOW 二舎六房の七人
Information Links: ANN Encyclopedia, AnimeNfo, AniDB, MyAnimeList, syoboi

If you’re looking for a show that’s very different from the usual stuff, then consider this adaptation of Abe George (Jouji) and Kakizaki Masumi’s award-winning manga. Taking place in 1955 after the end of World War II, it depicts the hardships that six juvenile delinquents go through after getting thrown into a corrections facility/prison, often graphically so. From everything to getting sexually abused by the male doctor and having to deal with the tyranny of the wardens, it’s meant to be a realistic view on poverty-stricken Japan following the war. Upon arrival to the prison, the six boys are thrown into Block 2 Cell 6 where they meet “Anchan”, their senior inmate who shows them some tough love on how to survive. The story follows the lives of these seven, both in prison and afterward. Abe George described this as a “story about friendship and courage”, which I could get a sense of from the first few chapters of the manga. Each of the boys was sentenced for acts of assault and theft, but the circumstances they committed their crimes under don’t necessarily make them bad kids, and you can get a feel for that from the bonds they make.

Another maybe series. From that description, it sounds like it could be interesting, if it doesn't turn out to be too depressing. I tend to dislike series that are dark and depressing, so we'll see how it turns out.

K-ON!! | けいおん!!
Information Links: ANN Encyclopedia, AnimeNfo, AniDB, MyAnimeList, syoboi

It was only at the end of last year that K-ON season two was announced, but three months later we already have more of our favorite light music club. Now with one more exclamation mark in the title! The extra DVD/BD live house episode helped tide things over a bit, but it’s not quite the same as a full season where we’re bound to hear a bunch of new songs. For those unfamiliar with this series, it’s Kyoto Animation’s adaptation of a lighthearted 4-koma manga that follows a group of girls who revive their high school’s music club by forming a band called “After School Tea Time”. It’s published in a seinen manga magazine and features quirky humor and a very cute cast of female characters. In short, it’s moe overload. When the original season aired last spring, the cast of seiyuus were all relatively low-profile, but that all changed with this series. The opening and ending theme songs they sang debuted at #4 and #2 on the Oricon music charts respectively, and they’ve all been in numerous series now, especially lead actress Toyosaki Aki. There are 28 broadcast stations lined up to air this highly anticipated sequel, which absolutely dwarfs every other series by a long shot. There’s no doubt in my mind that I’ll be watching this and it’s a safe series to recommend to almost anyone. Go watch the first season now if you haven’t!

...and the infamous moe blob returns. To summarize it in a sentence, it's a slice-of-life school comedy about excessively moe girls doing excessively moe things, especially writing/performing excessively moe songs in their amateur band (the premise of the series). It's "the definition of moe" [what it got tagged on AniDB]: if you love moe, you'll probably love it; if you hate moe, you'll probably hate it.

I watched the first season of this, a couple seasons ago (I mentioned that it had a good ending song). It was fairly enjoyable, although it really had entirely too much moe; though obviously the guy who wrote the summary disagrees with that assessment. In either case, it's decently amusing, even if it can get on your nerves.

Saraiya Goyou | さらい屋 五葉
Information Links: ANN Encyclopedia, AnimeNfo, AniDB, MyAnimeList, syoboi

The noitaminA time slot has expanded from half an hour to a full hour this season, and taking the bottom slot is an adaptation of Ristorante Paradiso creator Ono Natsume’s “House of Five Leaves”. It takes place during the Edo period and revolves around a timid rounin named Akitsu Masanosuke. By chance, he runs into a charismatic individual that wants to hire him as his bodyguard but later finds out that he’s the leader of a gang known as the Five Leaves. Realizing what he’s up against, Masanosuke gets wrapped up in the gang and its very unique individuals and learns there’s more to them than it initially seems. Don’t be swayed by the character designs here if they seem a bit odd to you, as this is just Natsume’s unique style. Personally, I find they’re a refreshing change from the more generic ones you often see.

This one's a big question mark. It sounds like it could potentially be interesting, but that's a pretty big maybe. I watched the first couple episodes of Ristorante Paradiso and couldn't stand it, between the art and the writing. So, we'll find out in a week or two how this one is.

Yojou-han Shinwa Taikei | 四畳半神話大系
Information Links: ANN Encyclopedia, AnimeNfo, AniDB, MyAnimeList, syoboi

Taking the top slot in noitaminA’s newly expanded time slot is a novel adaptation about a nameless third-year Kyoto University student (only referred to as “I”) and his life with the “Tennis Circle Cupid” club that he joined in his first year. The story is broken up into four chapters and will be aired as an 11 episode series here. Not having read the novel, I’m not too sure what to expect, but the promo videos already showcase how strangely different everything is. The title on the other hand seems to translate to “Compendium of 4½ Tatami Mythology”.

Another big question mark, and this one is even less clear on what it's going to be like. Though I have to say the art kind of gives me a bad feeling. Either way, we'll again know more in a couple weeks.

Oh, and in case anyone happens to be interested, RC has covered B Gata H Kei 1 (mentioned yesterday).

On a final note, both the Currently Watching section and the Introduction to Anime/List (which includes a list of almost all free-to-watch anime series I've seen) link on the sidebar are still live, and being updated as new series come out.

& New Endeavors

A ways back, RaptorIIC, one of the modders back from the StarCraft era, came to me with an idea. He was considering starting an anime blogging site with some of his friends, and wondered if I'd be interested. The basic idea is that bloggers write summaries of episodes of certain series (the ones they're watching) each time a new episode comes out; readers then read the summaries and discuss each episode via the posts' comments. In the past I've mentioned two such sites that I follow: Random Curiosity (henceforth known as RC) and T.H.A.T. Anime Blog (although the latter is mainly for a second set of opinions on new season series, in addition to RC).

I gave it some serious consideration, and mentioned it to a number of my friends online, though I don't think I ever mentioned it on this blog. However, nothing ever became of the idea, and for quite a while nobody thought about it again.

However, now that RC is closing its doors, the idea has come up again, and more seriously than before. To make a long story short, we decided to give it a shot, and just applied to AnimeBlogger (the host of RC, and I believe at one time the host of THAT). As is typical for AnimeBlogger (as mentioned in their FAQ), it's taking a few days to get the new blog all set up.

However, despite this being inspired by the closure of RC, our blog is a bit more of a niche market. That is, our blog will specialize in ecchi and hentai series.

Coming up with a name wasn't exactly trivial. We wanted something halfway tasteful, yet still had a halfway appropriate meaning. "Q & H" was immediately rejected for being too cheesy. Ultimately we decided on Zettai Ryouiki [from WWWJDIC: "絶対領域: exposed skin between top of knee-high socks and hemline of skirt (lit: absolute territory)"].

As you might know, this is right in time for the spring anime season, which begins next week. Obviously we won't know exactly what we're going to cover until we can actually see an episode or two of the new series, but here are a couple that look like good candidates for blogging (the information and pictures are ripped from RC's and THAT's season previews from a few weeks ago; note thus that any first-person statements are not mine):

B Gata H Kei | B型H系
http://www.bgata-hkei.com/
Information Links: ANN Encyclopedia, AnimeNfo, AniDB, MyAnimeList, syoboi

Adapted from a 4-koma manga serialized in Weekly Young Jump, B Gata H Kei (B-type H-style) targets an older audience with a story about a beautiful high school girl named Yamada, whose sex-ridden mind wants to sleep with 100 different guys. Despite her beauty, she’s actually a virgin because she’s too worried about being ridiculed by good-looking and experienced sex partners to lose it. One day, she mistakenly believes that a plain and homely guy named Kosuda Takashi intentionally saved her from falling over in a bookstore. Sensing that he’s a good yet sexually-inexperienced man like she’s been looking for, she decides to use him as her first and craziness ensues.

kiss x sis | キスシス
http://www.starchild.co.jp/special/kiss_sis/
Information Links: ANN Encyclopedia, AnimeNfo, AniDB, MyAnimeList, syoboi

Ecchi fans rejoice, as the seinen manga turned OVA is getting its own TV series. Studio Feel is producing this retelling as well, and it will be broadcast on AT-X (and only AT-X). I don’t think I’ll ever quite understand the Japanese fantasy/fetish over incest, but kiss x sis revolves around that idea with stepsiblings unrelated by blood. This is probably the most risqué/borderline hentai series in this season’s lineup, involving a middle school boy named Suminoe Keita, whose high school twin stepsisters, Ako and Riko, are passionately in love with him and will seduce and violate him every chance they get. Keita however doesn’t want any involvement with them in that way and tries to focus on getting into the same high school, even though their parents encourage a potential relationship. The girls completely drive the explicit fan-service here, with Ako being a closet pervert and Riko calm and assertive, but there is some plot involving their childhoods to tie things together in a meaningful way. This still doesn’t change the fact that sexual scenarios are foremost, so unsuspecting viewers beware.

Ikkitousen XTREME XECUTOR | 一騎当千 XTREME XECUTOR
http://www.ikkitousen.com/
Information Links: ANN Encyclopedia, AnimeNfo, AniDB, MyAnimeList, syoboi

I gather Ikkitousen doesn’t need too much introduction, seeing as XTREME XECUTOR marks the fourth season of the series, but the story here is loosely based on the classic Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. That’s what they advertise it as anyway, but anyone who’s actually watched the show will probably tell you it’s an overflowing fan-service affair with busty girls from rival schools fighting one another and getting their clothes torn off like there’s no tomorrow.

On the downside, being an anime blogger will require a lot less laziness from me, as I'll have to blog each episode as it comes out (once a week, for however many series). And everybody knows I hate obligations.

I'll let you know when the blog is online.

Oh, and entirely coincidentally, Anime News Network currently has an ad theme that seems very relevant to this announcement. The relevant slice of the theme: