October 5th, I was in the audience

Dear October,

I went to anime club today for the first time. The club has been trying to get through the first episode of every new anime so that everyone gets a preview of each series, and then they can decide which ones they won't be following in the club, and which ones we'll continue watching as new episodes come out. Today we watched 4 first episodes, and we're currently in only the K's. 2 of the 4 were surprisingly good, so we kept those, although the latter of the two was just ridiculous, but the ridiculousness was great because it was hilarious and surprising in a way that makes you laugh and drop your jaw at how it just keeps going, and the animation is just extremely over the top. I never realized how enjoyable it was to watch anime with a group of strangers, but it seems fun no matter the quality of what we're watching.

At one point in the first anime we watched (Kyoukai no Kanata), there's this guy who is apparently "half-phantasm" and he's talking to this girl who's pretty clumsy (I know, stereotypical, but the way it's done is just perfect) and at some point runs into a mop closet or something and gets hit in the head by four mops in a row, which I don't think anyone's ever seen before in such an adorable manner. Anyway she seems so nervous and shy and we all think she's just following the guy because she likes him, but then the guy says something like, "Do you know how many times you've stabbed me this week?" and everyone who missed the beginning goes, whaaat?? Then we find out the girl is actually a phantasm hunter but doesn't have much experience, so since the guy is only half-phantasm, she's just been stabbing him after school for practice. LOL. And the guy is immortal so that's why she can just keep stabbing him. Later a real phantasm thing appears and it's giant, furry, and slobbery, with long swinging arms. It appears by flying, quickly growing larger through the window behind the talking male protagonist, and making impact while the guy's still mid-sentence. It's so unexpected that when it hits we all say WHOA WHAT and as the thing crashes into the room and we're all just realizing that the thing is a phantasm, a girl in the audience says of the guy, "Wait, so he's half of that??" And a second later while the thing's rampaging the room, someone squeaks, "I thought that was a squirrel!" because it did kind of look like a really big squirrel at first flying towards the window at high speed. The anime has beautiful art by the way, and looks really interesting. The other good one we watched that was ridiculous was called Kill La Kill and it involves an authoritarian school with different ranked uniforms that kind of give you superpowers. I didn't think I'd like it at first at all, but it's funny and won me over with its craziness. Everyone applauded after that one because it was so much fun guffawing at the visual effects and characters.

Afterwards I went to a casual open mic event, where people put their names in a bucket and are then picked randomly to go up on stage and perform whatever they like. So people sang, read poetry, did some stand-up comedy, told funny stories and bad jokes, read excerpts of bad books, and some weirder things. A lot of people played guitar while singing, and one guy brought his accordion and another brought a hand drum (my favorite was when this one RA sang Skinny Love by Bon Iver and then You and I by Ingrid Michaelson with her ukelele). It was early night, and we were all sitting and standing around a concrete "stage" that has a few folding chairs and microphones on it. Behind are some trees extending from the floor below, and some strung up christmas lights, lovingly colorful and mismatched. I was on the floor above, which conveniently has a sort of corner-balcony so you can easily see the stage from there. Anyway it was nice, and really wonderful when the trees above (there were really just trees everywhere, extending from dirt areas around the concrete tiles) let go of some of their leaves, because the lights that were above lit them up in the night so that they flashed and glistened a bit when they twirled into a patch of light, and then disappeared as they fell out of it. The leaves were small and yellow, and I think it's really cool that you have the trees change color here. It's so amazing seeing trees full of yellow leaves here, or even trees with only the tops of their bushes of leaves yellow. I keep trying to figure out the logic in how it's decided which leaves turn yellow, because there's clearly a pattern, but it doesn't seem to fit the explanation of "where the sunlight hits the tree most" or "where the leaves are furthest from the roots".

I also like that according to the forecast you'll be warm for at least another week!

See you then and tomorrow,
Indigo

song of the day: You and I by Ingrid Michaelson (Couldn't resist. Note: learn to play this on the ukelele and sing it cause it's such a great group song.)