The thoughts, reviews and analysis of Comedy, Romance, Drama and Slice of Life Anime of a College Student
With only few weeks until the official end of summer, it’s time to take a brief look of what shows I plan on watching along with future plans. As always, the shows I choose to watch are subject to change, especially since the list is small.
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After one month of waiting, I finally got my start date last week and my official offer letter. With that, it’s time to make that important announcement about the future of this blog among other things.
In other words, no more NEET life for me!
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It seems like yesterday since I turned 24 years old. Like last year, it has been a calm year thus far except for the couple big snowstorms. Not to mention, I have been focusing primarily on learning new vocabulary and Kanji from playing video games and memorizing them through flash cards. I am still planning to tackle grammar needed for JPLT (will focus on N3 next year) with the references I have since there are apparently not many good advanced level textbooks unless you want to learn from one that is only in Japanese.
As I turn 25 years old, I have a feeling that 1/4th of my life has already passed by me although I look younger than my actual age. During those years, I have been focusing mostly on education. After the fall semester, I will finally complete my master’s degree and find my first job. I have high hopes that I will get a good paying job, but it won’t be easy. Once I get a one, I don’t expect things to be drastically different depending on the workload. In fact, I will be able to cover more types of content and be able to attend Anime conventions. Not sure which one I will go to, but Otakon is a good possibility since it’s only about a 3-hour drive from where I live. I’ll figure it out once I get there.
With that, feel free to say Happy Birthday in the comments below. I will be streaming games today and tomorrow, so feel free to watch on Hitbox, if you want.
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As 2013 comes to an end, I want to share what special things I have planned for December. (Image Source)
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Before I knew it, time flew by so quickly. During that time, I finally graduated college this year and experienced the worse power outrage last fall because of Hurricane Sandy. Even so, this year was a rather peaceful one as I focused more on writing about Anime, and diving into intermediate level Japanese language studies despite my up and downs. The question is, how I will manage my time as I head to grad school? I probably do more of the same, with a few adjustments.
For this birthday post, I will share behind the scenes on where I do my blogging. I do most of my blogging in a separate room, which has my desk with a LCD monitor and a screen. Since I’m busy all the time, my desk is unorganized and it’s pretty embarrassing. While I do most of my web surfing and browsing at this desk, I also do my blogging and web surfing at college and when I’m on vacation, in the hotel room. Since these places usually have Internet access, I no longer have the excuse to go on hiatus.
As for the computers I currently use, I have two Macbook Pro laptops. The one on the left (Takanashi Rikka) is my main one, which has a faster Intel i7 Quad Core CPU, 16GBs of RAM, 750 GB Hard Drive, Matte Display and nVidia Geforce GT 650m graphics. The right is a 2010 model, Takamachi Nanoha, which replaced my lemon laptop.
With that, feel free to say Happy Birthday in the comments below. As always, my parents are going to take me out later for a special meal. (Image Source)
Just recently, I have been feeling down because I haven’t received any comments lately for my coverage of Spring Anime compared to last year. I know I haven’t been commenting on other blogs since I have been busy lately and have been addressing that. Even with that, I still haven’t received any responses or any likes at all since Monday, which might be an indication that my writing needs improvement.
I know that other bloggers are in this slump and I’m not the only one. However, I want your feedback so there will be more interaction instead of complaining about it. I still want to blog as I still have a lot of ideas I want to write about, but I have lost motivation to write posts as I feel that nobody seems to care about what I’m writing. Because of that, I want to use this opportunity to see what I need to improve on content wise such as my writing quality in the comments below. Also, if you have any ideas on what ideas I should write for editorials or what improvements I need to make for episodic posts to make them interesting. (Image Source)
As 2012 is almost coming to a close, I would like to share what I will have in store in the coming weeks.(Image Source)
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今日は私の誕生日です。(Today is my birthday.)
Believe it or not, time flies when you are working hard. A lot has happened since then as I took on the task of self studying Japanese, experiencing some Anime Blog Tourney drama, moving to another server and of course, overhauling my blog’s theme. Although I have experienced some hardship with my mother having cancer that she has fully recovered from, I think the future ahead will be blight one. I don’t intend to give up blogging any time soon since I enjoy doing it and there is a lot to write about.
As for what I got for my birthday, I received a Playstation Vita. I still haven’t got any games for it besides my downloaded games from Playstation Network since I don’t know what game I should get. I plan on fixing that soon. Aside from that, “Idolmaster SP Missing Moon” plays great on it.
With that, feel free to share your birthday wishes to me, whether it’s on Twitter or in the comments below. Also, I want to thank all my readers and followers who have supported me during these years. Hopefully, I can defy Anime Blog death by passing the four-year mark!
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いらっしゃませ！(Welcome to my blog!)
During the first Aniblog Tourney, I experienced a close loss in the first round. Since then, I have learned from my mistakes by improving my content and interacted with more people. Now, the second Aniblog Tourney is about to begin and we are up against Draggle’s Anime Blog.
As most say, quality is always better than quantity. With that, I have been working hard on writing more posts outside the realm of episodic posts. So, check out my opinion pieces that I have handpicked (you can see more in the Editorials category) and feel free to comment on them if you have any thoughts before you vote… (unhide the spoiler to see the recommended posts)
This is pretty much it. Feel free to browse around for my other content (episodic and review posts) and most importantly, don’t forget to vote for the deserving candidate in the Aniblog Tourney! Polls will open today until Wednesday at 4 PM Eastern Daylight Time (20:00 GMT)! May the best blog win!
(Update 1:also, ignore the nonsense that Draggle is spreading about me… he is just having some fun. :p)
(Update 2: Cheating is bad, so please vote for integrity and content quality, not the libel he wrote about me.)
(Update 3: We playing around, so don’t take any of our mischief seriously)
(Note: This post will remain stickied until the poll’s closure.)
メリークリスマス！ (Merry Christmas!)
It’s that time of year again and thus marks a starting of another Anime Blogger tradition, the 12 Days of Anime Project. In this group effort, Anime Bloggers like myself share twelve Anime related moments on our blogs. It’s an activity that got started by a former blogger named CCY (also known as Canon-chan) 4 years ago whose blog pretty went into a vegetative state recently. Of course, there are many who want to keep it alive. So, I feel that I should share some of the holiday cheer.
Unlike last year where I have stopped half way because I got overwhelmed with too much finals that it drained my motivation to complete the last six, I’m doing things differently this year. Instead of 12 individual posts, I will squeeze it down into two separate posts. Each post will spotlight 6 notable events either from Anime or the Aniblogosphere. Hopefully this time around, I will actually finish it this time! So, check it out this Saturday when I plan to come up and spotlight the first six.
Since I decided to redesign the theme ahead of time, so I spent 6 hours making a new child theme. And you might be asking, why are you changing the design if the old one is okay?
From April of last year, I created my first major theme based off the Thematic Framework. It took many hours since I don’t have a sufficient knowledge of CSS. Because of this, I had to play trial and error. Eventually, I liked the design and made several minor changes over the months. While the design looked fine, it had some quirks with the layout and such. Because I’m redesigning the theme and color scheme when my blog turns three years old next February, I may as well overhaul the backend of the theme.
When I was deciding on the theme framework to use, I didn’t want to use a free theme since these designs tend to get overused, especially the Twenty Ten and Twenty Eleven themes (especially with the sidebar removal being a pain in the butt). I made a decision to spend some money to get a premium theme that will last into the future. After looking around, I have chosen to use StudioPress’s Genesis as I can create a child theme like I did with Thematic and it’s not too outrageously expensive compared to Thesis. This new theme still uses the same color scheme since I haven’t come up with one with some noticeable changes, which makes it look cleaner. Of course, the theme itself reduced the need to use a few plugins like WP-PageNavi, which will hopefully take the load off the site. Also, I’ll be adapting this theme to Shiori’s Diary when this design gets finished.
If you have any suggestions on what I should add or change in the new theme, make a comment below and I will take a look at it. Besides from that, enjoy the somewhat new design!
With my 21st birthday quickly passing by us, I turn 22 years old today. Since my last birthday, lots have happened with my blogging of more Anime series, most namely Ore no Imouto, Madoka Magica, Wandering Son, Gosick, Hanasaku Iroha and Ikoku Meiro no Croisèe while facing a mild case of an overactive thyroid. In the first few months, I found it considerably difficult to blog while dealing with the autoimmune disease, but I eventually overcome it.
Besides that, my parents and sister are planning to take me out to celebrate my 22nd birthday. I have received a Nintendo 3DS as my birthday present in advance (a new iPhone has to wait) and planning to review it sometime this month. Besides this, feel free to share your birthday wishes in this post or on Twitter. I’ll post the birthday tweets on this post once the day is over.
In addition to my birthday, the domain I am using for this blog and everything else (chikorita157.com) finally turns 1 year old on August 11th. I felt that getting a domain name was a rite of passage to get more noticed and it was fairly affordable. Even so, I am planning to keep on maintaining the domain well into the future. (Image Source)
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Ever since the first day of January, I gradually felt sick of some unknown disease. First, I have experienced shaking that started back in October. Recently, lost weight even though I ate normally and my heart starting beating fast two Saturdays ago. This is when I saw a doctor and today I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism (Grave’s Disease). 1
The thyroid, located in the neck regulates the hormones, which controls one’s metabolism. Iodine is important for thyroid function unless to take too much in. If the thyroid takes too much in, it causes an autoimmune disease that tells the thyroid to create excess hormones. As a result, it resulted in the symptoms I described above.
Since I got the medications, I’m feeling a bit better and hopefully it will go away. I most likely need to change my diet since I have an unbalanced diet with a lack of vegetables and junk food. Since I am a picky eater, this might be difficult, but I will have to force it.
As a result of feeling strange, I have been posting less than I normally do on the blog. I felt a lack of motivation, but still covered the Winter Anime along with the creation of the podcast. Hopefully the medications will work, so I can feel better and feel motivated to write these blog posts and finish my backlog.
Lastly, check out the SCCSAV Podcast, which is a collection of recorded commentaries for a specific episode. Some of the stuff people mentioned could be interesting.
If you haven’t noticed already, the old URL will not work since I completed the move to the new host. This means that you may not be able to retrieve new updates from my blog until you subscribe to the new feed URL.
If you are using Google reader, check your subscription settings. If “Chikorita157’s Anime Blog” feed URL does not read http://chikorita157.com/feed/ or http://chikorita157.com/feed, you are subscribed to the old URL. Unsubscribe the old URL and subscribe to the new one. This way, you can continue to receive updates on this blog in the near future.
If you have me on the blogroll, make sure the URL points to http://chikorita157.com/.
If you don’t believe it, the whole summer flown by very quickly. During that the whole time, I have watched and written a lot about Anime. The sad thing is that summer break isn’t here forever and I have to go back to college for another semester for learning. As Summer ends, it’s another season of new anime.
Fall 2010 Season unlike Winter, Spring and Summer seasons is very lackluster. The lack of comedy/drama/slice of life Anime pretty much turned me off for the season. Then again, I may be wrong if I manage to pick something up this season as it goes on. Therefore, there is always the currently airing shows from Spring/Summer to finish and the backlog.
Fall 2010 Season
Compared to last fall season, I was able to pick up two Anime titles (Kobato and Seitokai no Ichizon) to cover and they turn out to be good. This season, its filled with hot blooded shouen anime that I have no interest in or rather make me yawn real loud. Anyway, if you really want to see a list of Fall 2010 anime, head over to The Cart Driver or on Melative (incomplete at the moment).
Now for some site and personal stuff:
This is pretty much what I have to say on the Fall 2010 season and plans… I wish everyone will do well in school or the Fall Semester (if you are still in college) and hopefully enjoy the fall season.
Last Updated October 6, 2010
Note: Fanart used in this post is made by 華々＠ツイッターに挑戦中。
Since, most of the 13 episode shows will end by the last week of June that includes Angel Beats! and Working!!, I decided to post my Summer 2010 plans. Kaichou wa Maid-sama and perhaps K-ON! by the looks of it will be 24+ episode shows that will air throughout the summer. Therefore, I am pretty much occupied without getting into the Summer 2010 Season. Before I go into detail in what I will be focusing on this summer, I want to give my overall thoughts about the Summer 2010 Anime lineup.
Fanart used in this post is made by 月蔵.
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Yes, I did pull a pretty hilarious April Fools joke… I wouldn’t go too far and try to make the website look like Danny Choo since it takes too much work and then I have to reverse everything which is more work… Anyways, if you can tell already by past posts on my side blog (Shiori’s Diary), on Twitter and Melative, I do not like Danny Choo at all, which is the truth thanks to Otaku Elimination Game that brought out the Danny Choo copycats that pollutes Anime Nano (a main reason I use a RSS reader now ;-;) Also, I would never give up Anime blogging just to post some random crap on my blog. This is not my intentions on myself writing this blog, but to share my thoughts on Anime and opinion editorials on some issues with Anime and stuff and yes, Danny Choo’s new anime PV is just bad… so just leave it at that…
Also, the upside down tag, which supposed to read “do you know what is today?” It was quite obvious… but oh well… I hope you got a laugh from it.
Anyways, since I got that out of the way, time for some future updates. As I told some of my fellow bloggers on XMPP, Yes, I will be going away on June 28, 2010 to go on vacation to Wisconsin… Yes, I know it is a very boring state, but at least its better than being stuck for almost two months in Colorado. I will be away for a good two weeks and being on the road for the first two days and the last two days, so I will try to be online for those two weeks sine I have a iPhone to tether for instant internet access. By then, Angel Beats and K-ON!! (Except the last episode) should have already been completed. If not, I will just try and obtain it when I get wireless internet and download it from my Mac mini running 24/7 at home. Also, that that time I’m planning to buy some DVDs and cover some older Anime series and blog them. If you want to see what I’m covering in terms of old anime, check out the “Upcoming Anime” page on the top of the page.
Ok, thats all I have to say now… For now, Sayanora…
Well, yesterday if you haven’t noticed, the blog went down suddenly and I was wondering what happened. Well, the host Notcliche is hosted on, midphase had decided to move the site to a more reliable server. Because of that, my comments that were made in the last two days were lost, but I was able to recover the posts and comments from the last three days. Hopefully, this won’t happen again, but it’s one lesson learn from this. Always make backups of your posts and that Murphy’s law is in full effect, which states that “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”
We know, sh*t happens, but it’s not end of the world. :p
Now excuse me, I have to restore the snapshots on my Sora no Woto Episode 7 post and blog about Kobato Ep 18.
Fanart used in this post is made by そら. (source)
But it’s Winter! Why the hell you be posting a Spring 2010 Preview?! Well, because everyone else is. I will be covering two new spring shows and perhaps another old one after the Spring Semester ends… The picks are:
Thoughts: It’s been a year since a Key anime have aired (the last being Clannad After Story) and they are really good at story telling, although some may not agree. The surprise that KyoAni isn’t doing this. PA Works, which have done some rather good adaptations of True Tears and CANAAN… Heck, why not? From the looks from the trailer, the show looks very promising.
However, compared to earlier works, the characters are already dead. 😮
Thoughts: More of this stuff? Well, suck it haters… I will do it anyways because I have enjoyed the first season. Sure there is a lot of moe compared to other series, but it’s something just to enjoy. Besides, I liked the first season since brainless entertainment makes me relieve stress from my college work and who doesn’t like girls eating cake all day and play music?
Although, Sora no Woto so far is alot better at story telling than K-ON!… But then again, the main advantage of K-ON! is MOE!
Not to mention, they had to take the naming conventions from Hayate no Gotoku Second Season… They just added another explanation point at the end of K-ON! Makes sense, but they could of be more creative.
I won’t start these series until May 2010 and by then, I will have the DVDs to start covering them.
Thoughts: I was looking at this anime for quite awhile… but when someone actually made a blog post on it, well… I’m convinced because Kampfer disappointed me and I felt like watching more trap animes… they are quite funny if you ask me, but I won’t start this until I obtain the DVDs for this series.
Compared to Bakatest’s Hideyoshi, it’s obvious that the main character obviously wasn’t forced into girls clothing…
Thoughts: I haven’t seen a mahou shoujo series for awhile since what have hit me. Somehow, this interested me since it had moe magical girls fighting whatever… Well, I find out when I actually start it in May/June.
Well, there you have it… Like with the Fall 2009 Season, this list is subject to change since one day, something can interest me and I decide to watch it. Up to date info can be seen at “Upcoming Anime” on the top of the blog.
All the info are pulled from Melative and WP plugin, melative-link.
Today is December 24th, which means it’s Furukawa Nagisa’s birthday… Happy Birthday Nagisa!
If you don’t know who is Nagisa, she is the main heroine in Clannad
While we on the topic of Christmas, I feel like reviewing some Anime’s with a Christmas Episodes…
Well, Nogizaka Haruka had one, but filled with fanservice… Well, all Christmas Episodes always have fanservice… but this is over the top with Haruka dressed in a skimpy Santa outfit… which causes a moe nosebleed on Yuuto’s part and Gentou getting annoyed. Not to mention, they sang some Christmas karaoke.
Well, Clannad ~After Story~ had two christmas scenes… the one above and another one where…
and of course… there is K-ON with…
and also in preparation of the Christmas party, while Ui does all the cooking, Yui, the airhead starts making paper chains that wrapped around herself… wow…
Anyways… I hope you have a safe and happy Christmas where ever you are! I will resume blogging on December 26th… Have fun!
Attribution Information
Fanart used in this post is made by satou kuroon
MyAnimeList clients are at their infancy. Before the API came out, MAL Updater was your only choice and it only worked on Windows. The problem is that not everyone used Windows and used different OSes. MyAnimeList is a staple for most anime viewers and bloggers out there who use it to keep track what they are watching.
If you recall a few months ago, I have complained there was a lack of a MyAnimeList Client for Mac OS X. I haven’t checked hard enough and there was a program called iMAL that allows you to update MAL… The only problem is the program is very unstable and every time I tried to use it, it crashes on me… and I even recompile it and it’s even more unstable. Another alternative is AniChou, which is open sourced. The only problem there is the interface looks like crap (except in Liunx) and it was difficult to install since I have to install additional packages to make it work on Mac OS X. With that, MAL Updater has way too much features, the interface is cluttered and it’s closed sourced, which isn’t good. However, there was light at the end of the tunnel. Unofficial MAL API made this possible since the APIs are alot easier to use than the official API and they are planning to add Manga support right after they made some fixes to some search bugs…
After I complained about not being a really good MyAnimeList client for Mac OS X and discovering a easier API to use, I went to work and created this. I used RealBasic 2009 to create this client and wanted to make as close to a Mac experience as possible without having to learn Objective-C and Cocoa (and I don’t want to spend time trying to fix memory leaks). I was able to at least get the most basic features to work after three days of programming (you can check out some of the early screenshots I made of the program in early development). It took that long since RealBasic was a little different from Visual Basic .net and I haven’t worked on that stuff ever since I switched to a Mac in late 2006. Just within a week, I added status updating with 2.x and you could add new titles to the list, update them or even delete them for the list.
However, by the time I have used melative for my live micro-blogging when I go and watch some episodes of Anime… so guess what, I have decided to add melative support to MAL Client OS X since media is all about experience. MAL lacks the ability to express what you want to say about a episode you are watching. This reduces the need to update both melative and MAL separately, when you can do it the same time. If you have nothing to say when you go update, it will just sync the information you updated on MAL to your melative library.
The reason I didn’t add any additional features like auto-sorting of media files and skinning support since it’s unnecessary. Most people would use AnimeSuki, IRC, or even licensed retail discs anyways, so I don’t see the point of MAL Client OS X do the work since you have it done already. Skinning support is a niche feature, especially on Mac OS X and Linux. Rarely, you will see any skinned programs on those platforms and it’s too Windows-like and make things more complicated. MAL Client OS X is all about simplicity and not all about features. Having a lot of features in the world don’t make your program any better if the implementation sucks and not easy to use. This is the reason I created MAL Lite, a simple, lightweight, minimalist client for Windows and Linux as an alternative. Along with it, I made a GUI for MAL Updater OS X scripts so it will be a lot friendlier and people can scrobble their anime while they are watching it.
There is a reason I used RealBasic over Adobe AIR. For one, RealBasic can make native apps and uses less RAM as a result. Adobe Air, on the other hand is notorious for using a lot of RAM and is not native. Also, I can access the OS features with RealBasic and do a lot more than I could in AIR…
The future… Once manga support gets added, I will start working on adding it to the program. Hopefully, the program will hit the final stages with version 1.0, and by then, RealBasic 2010 will be out with Cocoa support…
Now with the song selection done, here is the songs that people who are participating needs to play in Audiosurf:
1. Honda Mariko & Saito Yuka & Togashi Misuzu & Horinaka Yuki – Treasure
2.fripSide – only my railgun
3. Maaya Sakamoto – Magic Number
Before playing, you must add the [AAS-Holiday09] at the end of the title.The title should look like this:
“Treasure [AAS-Holiday09]”
To edit the tag, make a copy of the file first and right click > Properties. Click on the Details page and double click on the song title. Then do the change I have reflected in this example. You have until December 30th at 11:59 PM EST to complete your runs and you may redo them as many times you want since I won’t be recording any scores until then.
For more details, click Read More
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Thanksgiving is tomorrow, so I won’t likely make any updates on this blog, but before I leave for a day, I will make the following updates reguarding the Karaoke Contest and also MAL Client OS X and MAL Lite:
I have made a change earlier that no effects or any alterations of the recording may be used. You may only use effects to reduce any grainy/background noise, but anything but that may not be used. I will be posting further details after I come back from Thanksgiving and hopefully start it on Monday.
I have made several changes to the MAL updating program for Mac OS X and also the lightweight, minimalist solution on Windows and Linux. MAL Client OS X 0.3.6 now features a new interface similar to the one on Finder. If used on Tiger and Panther, the interface will default to a sheet metal feel. Manga list lookup is added, but when you double click on a item, you can view the information about it on the browser. No manga updating is added yet since there isn’t enough API to implement it yet. Lastly, Melative updating can be done without updating your MAL status. You can make a update by going to the anime information window and clicking “Post Melative Update” on the toolbar.
I apologize that I can’t get the help updated and the Sparkle appcast updated since the FTP is down. Once it comes up, I will post the Sparkle update. For now, you need to download the disk image.
Download MAL Client OS X 0.3.6
For MAL Lite 1.1.2, I restored the full list featured on MAL Client OS X and added a tray icon. Download 1.1.2
I hope you a nice and joyful Thanksgiving… I will resume blogging on Friday after shopping on Black Friday and hopefully cover Kobato Episode 7 and Seitokai no Ichizon Episode 8.
MAL Client OS X 0.3.4 is now released with new features allowing you to search for information on AniDB and Tokyotosho and sharing of a title to a email with the URL to the MAL Page… just add a message and send. Minor changes made to melative updating to reflect the changes made to the APIs.
Major change is that MAL Updater OS X GUI is now included with the MAL Client OS X distribution. This is a simple frontend to TakakoShimizu’s MAL Updater OS X, which is a command line script programmed in Ruby that allows Mac users to scrobble their Anime from MPlayer, Quicktime and VLC. The drawback is that the setup script does not always work and you cannot turn it off unless you get rid of the launchd file which will disable the automatic scrobbling. There is a better way to this issue.
MAL Updater OS X GUI is just a frontend to this mess and allows you to save your login info securely which will be used for automatically generating the script needed for MAL Updater OS X when scrobbling is turned on. When you close or stop scrobbling, the script is deleted so people won’t easily find your MAL password. The GUI is a lightweight program and only uses around 10 MB of RAM. Note that you still need Growl installed to find out what is scrobbled or you have to resort to the log files to find out.
The only drawback is that MAL Updater OS X script is outdated by .1 (since 1.3 isn’t available for download), so I can only include 1.2 for the time being. Once 1.3 is posted again or if he decides to update it, I will add it to the package and also make some improvements to the GUI.
The source code for the MAL Updater OS X GUI is located in the malclientosx SVN at Google Code.
In addition, a Linux version of MAL Lite is now available for download here (1.7 MB). GTK+ 2 is required to run the program and will work with any Linux distro. To run it, unzip and double click on “MALLite”
Download MAL Client OS X 0.3.4 with MAL Updater OS X GUI (9 MB, Universal Binary)
