In an attempt to comply with IBM’s BCGs (a TLA, three-letter acronym, that stands for ‘Business Conduct Guidelines’, which ironically when you think about it the company’s name too is a TLA), I have switched my wallpaper.

Igor still disagreed and felt that it was not “work safe” because of Shana’s miniskirt, but quite frankly, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Compared to some of the other ones in my repertoire, this really would qualify as being one of the more conservative ones. Since I’ve set my presentation scheme to automatically switch to using an Eclipse wallpaper when I hook up to a projector, I should be relieved of any embarrassing situations in the future.

I really do like this wallpaper and can see myself using it even after I’ve left IBM at the end of August.

After a year since its first season’s release, 「ゼロの使い魔」 has now returned to the TV screens with its second season, 「ゼロの使い魔～双月の騎士～」. I had enjoy its first season quite a bit due to its witty humour and good action scenes, so I decided that I’m definitely going to be watching this series for this season. I jumped onto the bandwagon to check out the first episode a couple of days ago but only recently got the time to spend some quality time to concoct a blog entry.

The introduction to this episode was very good and showed Louise’s tsundere qualities well. One of the things I like about 「ゼロの使い魔」 over 「灼眼のシャナ」 is that there’s actually an official pairing. One could maybe argue that Yuji’s actually paired up with Shana, but the fact of the matter is that they don’t get any intimate scenes with one another. At least, I certainly didn’t see anything big in the anime series or the manga, although the manga more than makes up for it with its humour. Anyway, going back to 「ゼロの使い魔」 here, 「双月の騎士」’s opening this season was a lot better than the first season’s and I can actually see myself leaving it on repeat for a bit. The ending sucks in both cases and I’m noting this to you all despite the fact that I’m a fan of 釘宮理恵.

Maybe the ladies in Tristain really dig black hair or something, but it’s hard to believe that even the princess seems to harbour feelings for Saito. I got a little bit of that vibe from watching this episode, although I could be wrong. Considering she just lost her lover in the first season, you surely can’t change your mind so quickly? Or maybe you can because anything’s possible in the world of anime. It won’t be the first time things have randomly manifested itself in the anime world.

As I skimmed over the episode a second time to get my screen captures, it seemed to me that the episode as a whole just wasn’t as good as most (or any?) of the episodes from the first season. This was kind of surprising to me as you would think that you’d need a strong episode to capture the viewer into watching more, but I don’t know, maybe it’s because it’s the second season so they’re taking things in a different direction slightly. I just wasn’t feeling the “this season’s going to kick even more ass” emotion that I got while watching Nanoha A’s when I was watching this first episode. This doesn’t mean that I’m not going to blog anymore episodes, I have no intentions of dropping it unless it starts sucking hard, but I have enough faith in it to believe that this won’t be the case. We’ve all had bad starts before, I can let this one slide.