Alive, just no real fandom related talk except for the re-reading of Hikaru no Go, which hurt, because my brain can only handle so much Chinese without the aid of my Chinese to English dictionary, and a little manga called Yakitate!! Japan. I have made a five volume skirmish into the series, which is beyond my normal experience. There's crack like PoT, there's mind!fuck like Death Note but very few manga is so completely over the bend as Yakitate!! Japan. The tempo to this series is really fast, and this is quite important considering this series is about bread making.

I'm also terribly smitten with most of the cast. The female cast isn't annoying (competent, manipulative, down right evil, but not annoying or stupid), Tsukino makes a really cool female lead; ambitious, competent and NOT in love with any of the male characters. It is ALL about the bread making! Furthermore, I am convinced that Kuroyanagi is into S&M, and had a long love affair with Shigeru, which probably ended horribly when Shigeru professed he finds mold much more sexy and is really his life long love. But that doesn't mean Shigeru can't still mess with Kuroyanagi's mind, he's an evil genius after all.

hissori_danko has a much better summary of the series up here.