Jigoku Shoujo

Here's the entry I promised you!

So, I watched the two first episodes of Jigoku Shoujo and I feel I have a lot to comment on. Of course, it's only the two first episodes so the anime is very likely to change in the next ones, but, in short, my first impression wasn't too positive. However, it's still enough for me to keep watching. I'm not dropping it (yet).

Spoiler warning: watch what you read if you're planning to watch it :)

In the whole, the anime is about Jigoku Shoujo, which translates as Hell Girl. Desperate people contact her and she agrees to take revenge for them, taking their tormentors straightly to hell. However, people who make such a contract with her also agree that, when they die, their soul will also be sent to hell. So, the anime has got to answer this question for me: Hell means eternal suffering. This is confirmed in the anime. I mean, I don't care what hardships you're facing in this life, but who would be stupid enough to knowingly earn temporary relief in exchange for eternal suffering?

So let's go to the first episode. It starts with a class of (I think) 14-year-olds in a girls-only school, who were collecting money for some reason - charity perhaps, I don't remember very well, and it doesn't matter either. They managed to collect 100 000 yen, which is given to the class rep for keeping - in front of the whole class. The class rep, in turn, puts the money in her bag.
This means two things:
First, the teacher is acting without thinking. Who would trust 100 000 yen to a 14-year-old?
Second, the girl herself is also acting without thinking. You wouldn't put that money in your bag and leave the bag unattended. I'd go for an inner pocket instead - or, at least, I wouldn't leave the bag unattended.

As expected, the money is stolen. Then you see a second girl who lends the money to the class rep, but starts threatening and abusing her until she can return it. Knowing that not many 14-year-olds manage to collect 100 000 yen of pocket money that they can easily lend to a classmate, and that equally few fathers would lend this money to their daughter's classmate, it seems kind of obvious that this second girl stole the money. So it's yet another one of those cases where you know the end and you end up thinking "come on, reveal it already!"

Which makes me think about the stupidness of the class rep, once again. Her first mistake is that she couldn't think that the other girl must have taken the money. Her second mistake is that she was too shy to inform her parents or her teachers - if she didn't think about it, someone would probably have done it. But no, she had to be "proud" - really, what is the limit where pride ends and cowardice starts?

Then again, this might be the answer to my first question: what kind of person would ask for temporary relief in exchange for eternal suffering. The answer, judging from the first episode, is: a coward who acts without thinking. Still, the episode could have been presented a lot better, without having you think about how stupid everyone acts.

The second episode, though, is far better - this stupidness factor has certainly decreased and the person involved is indeed in a desperate condition. I'll surely keep watching, probably after I come back from holidays though, because the anime looks promising, and I've been told that the scenario becomes a lot more original after the 5th episode or so.

Until then, take care! (@)

Lost in the query

It's great of people who run a store to try to attract foreign tourists, even if they don't speak English. It's acceptable to use a translation engine. However, proofchecking is necessary:(source: AdFreak: Then we'll grab a bite at 404 Not Found )

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Not to mention proofchecking the ingredients label of your own product:

(source: thedailywtf.com )

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which, in turn, reminded me of a good webcomic strip:


(source: xkcd )

New search engines

And so, the cat is back, after several months of nothing really special to write about. Don't you worry though; "no news, good news"!

I keep reading about new search engines that appear lately and some of them do sound interesting. I think it's time to close this connection in your mind where "Internet search" equals "Google", as I have two interesting ones:

The first one is Powerset : http://www.powerset.com . It accepts questions in natural language, such as "What is the population of Tokyo?" or "Where is Sapporo?". For now, it only searches Wikipedia articles. I tried feeding it a few more difficult questions, such as "Which voice actor plays the X role in the Y anime?" or "What is the effect of chocolate on blood pressure?" and it answered perfectly. I've already asked it more than a dozen of times and it's never disappointed me. Maybe the correct answer is second or third, but it's always there. One little drawback is that it cannot deal very well with synonyms - yet? Or am I asking for too much?
EDIT: Actually, Powerset can deal with synonyms as well, maybe it was just me picking a tough one. However, it's constantly progressing. Also, the Powerset staff is cool and they care about their product: I even had the honor of having them post comments on this very article!

The second one is Cuil - http://www.cuil.com . It uses context-relevant search rather than ranking pages according to number of visits - which means, if there are 100 pages relevant to your search, it will rank them according to how relevant it judges them to be rather than how many people visit them. This one is very promising, but its results are a bit disappointing for now - I certainly hope that they will improve their algorithm with time. For example, I was looking for the download page of a certain software, so I just typed "software_name download" and it didn't return the download page. However, I did like the way results are presented: tiled up in a grid, like magazine articles, rather than a list.

Last but not least, a small flash of my news: I've planned a holiday which is really about to start (countdown launched), but I hope to get back to you before I leave - this time with comments on Jigoku Shoujo, an anime I just started seeing. And, by the end of August, I might come up with a dissertation describing the relationship between the number of people staying in the same house and the entropy inside the house. However, that's going to be a difficult task, as it actually depends on each person involved!