Love so life: so sweet you’ll need a dentist

Good day dear readers!

Two weeks ago I was randomly introduced to the manga Love so Life, a manga which even lacks an English Wikipedia page (I have no idea why either, it came out in 2008…) I stumbled upon it after clicking a random button on a website, and said to myself ‘why the heck not?’ And that is how I lost my free time for 2 days.  It opens up with Shiharu Nakamura, a 16 year old girl who works part time at a day care. Shiharu is an orphan who dreams of one day owning her own day care as she loves to work with children. At the day care, Shiharu often watches 2 year old twins, Aoi and Akane, who have taken a liking to her. When there uncle, Matsunaga Seiji, a 25 year old news reporter and guardian of the twins, comes to pick them up, he asks Shiharu if she will babysit for him, offering to pay her triple what she makes at the day care. She accepts, and their journey begins.

 The plot itself is rather cliché and extremely slow moving, as one could predict, Shiharu and Matsunaga begin to fall in love, but Matsunaga feels the age difference is too much, and Shiharu has no experience with guys. So instead, most chapters focus on the adorable twins or the adventures of Shiharu and Matsunaga’s friends, meaning the plot rarely ever moves forward. This means that over time, it becomes a bit of a pain to wait for these things to happen. However, these small antics are quite heartwarming and funny, therefore it is not a boring wait. This does make it hard to really judge the plot, however, but each chapter is cute and offers a nice story. Overall it’s very heartwarming and calm to read.

The art and characters are truly what speaks for this manga. Each character is well crafted with fitting personalities and designs, each has their flaws, and each their own motives. The author has a way of keeping secrets and revealing their answers with perfect timing, so each builds a better picture of the characters.  This allows for a variety of interaction and a good many flashbacks (not repeated all the time…) creating vivid pasts and interesting relationships.

Best.Death.Threat.EVER!

The art style is very fitting and has its own uniqueness. Though it is not the most professional I have ever seen, it is in fact, beautiful, adorable, and comical. The artist has a special way with a more simple style crossing with the ever so cute Chibi to create a heartwarmingly funny cute fest. She really is amazing at drawing cute things, and coming up with brilliant character designs that truly bring life to her characters.

Pandas!!!1!

Overall, Love so Life is probably the cutest manga I’ve ever read and I find it nice to enjoy something so relaxing. What it lacks in good translation and plot it makes up for in characters and short stories.  Anyone who really just wants a cute little bunch of sweetness will love this manga, and those who don’t will probably still find it enjoyable. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys light hearted Shōjo manga or even just someone who wants something a little sweet.

Speaking of sweet, I could go for some Milka chocolate…

PandaEatingATaco

Minecraft: Lolita Princess Pack

Cheers dear Readers!

      In the past few weeks I have spent what little free time I have doing one thing, playing Minecraft. Some of you may have heard of the block based game of awesome and creation and I’m willing to bet some of you have even played it, maybe even own it. I personally really enjoy the game, but one thing had bugged me from day one, the textures. After a little while, they bugged me less, and I was able to put up with it, not even noticing that 1/3 of the textures were absolutely terrible to build with and literally just server to make you burn them in lava and replace them was something else, and then I discovered texture packs.

Just look at it! It’s so pretty!

This is not to say that I didn’t know about texture packs before, but simply that I believed them to be pointless garbage which to up more of my CPU and made Minecraft nearly unplayable (well, that’s what it did to my friends computer.) I later found out, texture packs are beautiful pieces of art that take up more of your computers CPU (less so if you use Optifine…) and that each one can add to the already wonderful minecraft. I personally have yet to use too many texture packs, but have already fallen in love with one in particular, one that seems to be unknown to most, but offers some of the most adorable textures I’ve seen yet.

The pack is called the Lolita Princess Pack, and it’s done by “Zoepapilla”. As you may have guessed, this texture pack is based on the Japanese street fashion “Lolita”, which makes it seem very ‘feminine’ or even ‘girly’. This is not the first pack which offers such a girly take to Minecraft, it’s not even the most high quality, or complete, something that makes this one special is the way it does things, first off, it’s not overwhelmingly pink.

My moon gets rainbows!

The rare forever alone Ghast in it’s natural habitat.

I have attempted to use a good amount of packs labeled ‘cute’ or ‘girly’ but each and every one just seems to fill the world with bright colors and 50 shades of pink, using one color to make it ‘girly’ vs. finding patterns that work with a variety of colors and don’t look too busy. This texture pack offers just that, with a more anime-like twist. The textures connect beautifully and the patterns work well together, which is a challenge every texture pack face, and why I believe many themed packs struggle.

The pack itself is reminds me of a Shōjo manga scene, with cute colors and the basic Lolita fashion concept, which does often occur in manga (though, it is not vice-versa, many ‘Lolitas’ are not big fans of the media.) It supports random mobs, which means that several of the mobs can have multiple different appearances, and many of the skins keep the ‘scary mob’ feel while still maintaining the overall feel of the pack (some referencing memes…).  The armor itself is Lolita fashion; well, as best as it can be in minecraft. Helmets are wigs with headpieces and leggings often have a skirt look to them. The overworld reflects the style of ‘sweet’ or ‘ama’ Lolita while the nether is based on ‘gothic’ Lolita (from what I can tell, the end is a mixture of the two).

I actually built these using a different texture pack, I’m amazed at how they turned out.

The pack is not fully done, paintings, the ender dragon, and custom water/lava animations have yet to be added. Though, this does not make it an incomplete pack, the rest of it is done, and looks perfect! I must say that for a one person team, they really outdid themselves for this pack. Minecraft feels like an almost new game with it, and I’d recommend it for any minecraft player who would like minecraft to have a more ‘cute’ feel to it.

Oh, and by the way, the Panda faced pumpkins are by far my

The inside of my panda sanctuary.

favorite!

PandaEatingATaco

P.s. For more pictures I suggest visiting the site, same for download