Mon's TEN fanfic sites

1. Hakuouki is one of the anime that accidentally turned me into one of it's fans after 12 episodes.  Before I decided to watch, I had in mind it'll be like some ninja or mythical story but as it turns out: there is myth but no ninja, instead, all samurai.  It's a story based on an actual group "Shinsengumi" and events happened during late "Tokugawa Bakufu" period in Japan, but of course, most characters are probably fiction based except some names such as the group leader and main character Hijikata Toshizō.  Shinsengumi was a special police force formed for the mission to act as the protectors of Tokugawa Iemochi, the 14th shogun, who was preparing to embark on a trip to Kyoto.  However, this group later became a resistance towards the new government.  It was quite confusing in the beginning when I have no idea about that part of history and hard to stimulate my mind to keep watching.  So it bored me on the first two episodes until the story tension appeared.  My main motivation was the "picture perfect" images.  From characters to scenery, I cannot stop myself noticing the talented drawing skills.  However, the storyline got better and better towards the end although it was also getting more ridiculous at the same time also.  I think there's a possibility it's becoming more of a vampire love story than Samurai story.  Anyhow, I am still looking forward  to season two where the revolution has made and Shinsengumi continued to resist the new govt hoping to revive the old Edo period.  In this fanfic "Crossing Swords" although it's in one chapter (a very short one) quite a creative writing, I like the action in it.  Interesting and able to imagine the sword fight.  Longer would be good.

2. How can anyone not be a fan of HEROES? Imagine yourself with a special power and what would you do with it? Be like Peter, trying to save the world and turns out making it worse? Or like Syler, doing what is best for him only?  I wish I have the power of time travelling, like Hiro.  So I can go back time and see whether if history happened the same as it was written.  There are so many "what ifs..." in Heroes.  Nothing can ever be certain, although this drama is getting way too long for me to follow.  Still think the first three seasons were probably the best so far.  In this fanfic site, I really think it's quite well written, almost like the real thing.

3. Grey's Anatomy is following a group of interns' work and private life in and out of hospital.  It wasn't one of my favourite topic in TV drama that I'd choose to watch, however, that was what I thought before Dr. McDreamy came along.  It's always a bonus to find romance, comedy, and bit of adrenaline rush when "amazing things could happen" in hospital.  Some are funny, some can just be too surreal.  Sometimes I get bored watching Meredith so it's really great to see someone like Christina Yang to spice things up.  However, Derek seems to be still the centre of the attention in this fanfic site.  Quite a touching one based on the subject "if tomorrow never comes.", an insight of Derek's thoughts.  Very moving and almost draw my tears.  Wish there's a continued story for me to carry on reading, perhaps even better, making this into one of the episodes of "Grey's Anatomy".  Would be quite a big surprise to see Meredith pregnant.

4. Sex and the City is the best girl show I've ever seen.  Four strangers met in New York city and later became each others best friends for life.  It's wonderful to have friendship like Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda to have anything you can talk about with.  In this fanfic it's about the coming back of Samantha's breast cancer and she dies from it and written in Carrie's point of view after Samantha dies.  Although it's well written but somehow I think there's a little bit lack of word emotion expressed in the writing.  Perhaps not enough to feel touching yet, though it's very very VERY sad to see Samantha gone.  "Sex and the City" will never be "Sex and the City" anymore without either any one of the four.  But most of the times I think Samantha is the rep for "SEX" and Carrie is the "City" for the show's title.

5. Hotaru no Hikari  This is a drama which I think most of the girls now days can possibly reflect themselves with.  It feels great after a hard days work and comes home, change into something comfortable to wear with and go to the fridge and open up a cold can of BEER!  This type of woman in Japan is called "Himono Ona", a dried up woman aka a woman that no man will be attracted to.  The main character is focused on this Office Lady (OL) name Amemia Hotaru.  She's beautiful and hard working in the office who is also single (for a very long time already).  Her daily life would be: go to work and come home fully relaxed and be herself.  Until one day her boss from work got divorced and decided to come back to his father's home which was also rented to Hotaru.  They bump into each other at home without knowing they both living there at the same time until next day in the morning Hotaru's boss, Seiichi Takano, saw the mess in the house and found her sleeping on the floor covered with news paper as her blanket.  This is a romantic comedy which literally made me laughed in every episode.  The second TV show that made me want to watch again and again just like how I felt for "Friends".  I am also excited to see the second season which started just two weeks ago after three years of unexpected continual.  This fanfic couldn't say to be my favourite one because it's written tragically but a great one to review on.  Would be better if the fanfic story has input some humor to attract me on wanting to read more like how the TV show was.  Although it's pretty refreshing to see the creative imagination into Takano's mind which kinda reminds me of a movie "Being John Malkovich".

6. Toy Story 3 : A story that really touched my heart from the very most.  Who doesn't have toys when you were a kid?  There were favorite ones and not so favorite ones, but you still played every single one of them when you just got them as your new present on your birthdays.  Then, after few years time, you grow up and gradually leaving your toys in boxes instead of playing them.  Until one day you start to clean up your room for things to be thrown away because you're on your way to do your big OE or "grown up" plans.  You found those old toys that has been by your side through childhood which you almost forgot while growing up.  Now, they will be given away because you don't need them anymore.  Every time at the very thought of this, made me want to cry.  I can never throw any of my toys away when I cleaned up my room for spaces.  Thank goodness it has a happy ending.  I'm not quite sure why this fanfic was written in capital letters with italic font and also underlined in the first chapter, it's quite a long fanfic story (in 10 chapters, wonder how long it took to finish it) almost like a rewrite of the movie.  Although I've enjoyed reading the first chapter, but it was almost too much like the movie so kinda bored me out after the first.  Suppose I like a shorter fanfic where you'll have more space for imaginations.

 7. The Karate Kid 2010  In the old karate kid there were dialogs "wipe on, wipe off" with the new karate kid it is, "put the jacket on, take it off, hang it up and pick it up...".  That really cracked me up for sure after noticing the similarities with the old and new.  However, what really caught my attention and became a fan of this movie was when Mr. Han said to Dre, " There are no bad students, only bad teachers...".  Which is quite true because students learn from teachers, students' learnings are the result of teacher's teachings. I've been a Jacky Chen's movie fan since childhood, from a stunts man to an international movie star.  Watching his movies is almost like watching his life journey on big screen.  In Jacky's film, there's alwasy a message inside besides pure action.  Sometimes you'll have to look carefully to find it.  Think that's the big major factor that really attract me to watch his film on and on these years.  For this fanfic site I found, which almost all the fanfic for karate kid is focused on "romance" between Dre and Mei, I find it quite weird reading a romance story on those two characters when knowing they are only 12yrs old!  Would be pretty cool if I can find anyone who will write the next competition training though.

8. Memento is about a person who have lost his long-term memory and can only rely on his short-term memory which only lasts 15mins.  What was fascinating about this film where I can never forget was the way the film was portrayed.  It started off quite confusing because of the often black and color scene switch during the movie and it was also done backwards.  So basically you'll have a good memory to finish the film to understand what was going on.  "Keep it all in mind" fanfic story is very attractive to read on.  The author is quite talented I find, I was able to imagine myself being the character, a lot of fun to play around with your memory sometimes although it can also be quite scary.

 9. Natsume's Book of Friends
(Natsume Yūjin-Chō)  This is the type of fiction story that I love to watch.  It is about a boy inherited his grandmother's ability to see ancient "monsters" where these monsters usually are the creations from Japanese mythology.  But the boy, Natsume, does not have the skill to slay the monsters like his grandmother.  One day, Natsume's parents past away and he is then adopted by his Aunt and Uncle who later gave him his grandmother's book that seems worthless to them.  But this book, Natsume no yujin cho, contained names of the monsters that Natsume's grandma had fought and won and owned their names.  Whoever owns this book gets to control and decide the life and death of the monsters' names in the book.  However, I thought the fanfic sites will be mostly about monsters or even better write about Natsume's grandma on how she fought and gained the names of the monsters, but no, most fanfic are like this fanfic site I found: about a love story between Natsume and Natori ( who is a guy with the same ability a Natsume only stronger in terms of monster slaying skills).  I mean, I do enjoy romances such as "Brokback Mountain" kind, although I really find it hard to adapt to see Natsume and Natori together as a couple...I think Natsume and Neko sensei is a much better match (laugh).

10. Summer Wars Can you imagine our world day by day is closer to the world of cyberspace than our real life?  The film's main characters are based in Japan where the whole world's cities are all managed in cyberspace.  Everyone has an ID and cyber-characters, from train operators to firemen & policemen, from politicians to presidents, all have their own ID and individual authorities.  Then one day, a "hacker" showed up and gained access to break into the high level security in this cyber-city.  The hacker start to mess up systems which directly affect city runnings in real life.  Main character, Kenji, a Mathematics genius who is able to decode within a minute or two, he is also one of the cyber-city's security engineer and accidentally decoded the security code without knowing what it was for to the hacker. The film's storyline was so interesting that I felt I'm looking into the future of today.  This fanfic site is a bit way too long as well but I like the title "We live in Wonderland", which is very true, a wonderland we've created.