Man, nobody wants a free model, huh? Seriously, I'll even pay shipping.

Watched Seitokai no Ichizon (more or less in marathon fashion, though while putting paint on the deffkoptas for the most part.) I don't know that I'd call it "good", exactly. The basic plot of the series is that a particular high school has a student council consisting of four voting positions, all of which were filled by cute girls... and by the top scorer on the previous year's exams, whose long-term goal is "the harem end". (No, he actually says that.) Cue conflict between goofball guy, exasperated girls with a bushel of quirks, and lots of otaku in-jokes that occasionally bust the fourth wall but good.

Steven's metric of whether a male lead "works" in a situation like this is simple - "does he get it together?" And in a lot of ways, Ken is absolutely not that. He's not hopeless in the incompetent, floundering sense; he's ridiculous, like Don Quixote visiting Holland. But he's got one quality that completely saves the show; Ken's in on the joke. Because he doesn't have serious romantic expectations with any of the others, a lot of the wince-value is taken out of it when he's shot down, in flames, repeatedly. And the rest of the cast knows that under the comic-opera womanizer affectation, he's a pretty good guy.

In the end, it wasn't too bad - generally (with a couple of exceptions) avoided the trap of riding a joke too far before mixing it up a little. Can't complain about the fan service either, of course - lots of costume fun, for example.

Also downloaded the entire Yosuga no Sora series, though I have no recollection of when or why. The less said about that the better; we don't need YET ANOTHER incest show, especially one that's taking it seriously.

I'm running through Oblivion again. It's always nice to go back to a game that wasn't half bad back in the day, except this time you've downloaded all the graphics mods and turned every setting up to Ultra Super Deluxe High Quality.

The biggest problem the game had originally was the leveling system, where tougher enemies appear as you level up; the game's practically a billboard for why this is bad. You level up when you advance 10 times in a certain set of skills that correspond to your character class. If you're so inclined, you can focus on those skills exclusively and rocket up to high levels... but doing that means fairly low attribute boosts at each level, so you'll fall further and further behind the difficulty curve. Ironically, you see better results from taking a bunch of major skills that you don't use that often. You level up slower, but each level gets you a larger attribute boost, and you end up with an excellent cross-disciplinary foundation when you hit the tough stuff later on. (Your character starts off at least barely skilled in every category, so you're not really locked out of any skill based on your class. Your bard can become a world-class fencer, wear plate mail like a second skin, throw around lightning, whip up potions, and what have you... eventually!)

Just like Morrowind before it, you end up with a resume half a mile long - running half the guilds in the nation, arena champion, knight this, knight that, savior of the other, prophesied one, yadda yadda. It can be a little unfocused at times. "Oh, okay, demon invasion occurring, and the heir's life is in peril! I'll be back later. First I have to scour every waterway in the land for Nirnroot!" But you can also take or leave entire areas of the game that you don't enjoy. Stealth does nothing for you? Just don't bother. Tired of trying to figure out how to convince someone to turn over the widget? Just cut them down and take it. Don't appreciate the game trying to force you to sacrifice some poor schmuck to get in good with the evil cultists? Stab one of them in the eye, grab your staff and sword, and go Gandalf on the whole cult! (The last is something that I actually did, too.)

The game's a lot easier if you're familiar with its systems - you're a lot less likely to do things that are stupid in the long run, and there's a few things that just break the difficulty. (You mean you can custom-craft a magic staff with a powerful spell and a soul trap effect, trap the monster's soul in your Azura's Star, and fuel the staff with the soul? So I can make a rocket launcher with infinite ammo in a fantasy game? Oh yeah.)

The one thing I miss from Morrowind is flying. Oblivion came out on consoles and so keeps you pretty close to the ground, but in Morrowind, you could zip around like a raptor. The first item I'd enchant in that game was a flying spell (usually flying, quite literally, by the seat of my pants.) Whole areas of guards, pursuing baddies, inconvenient monsters were left impotent on the ground as I cruised blithely past...

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