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I found Utena to be frustrating specifically because of the story and its awful presentation. The sillier episodes were good fun (who among us doesn't love Nanami drowning kittens, or Nanami transforming into a cow, or Nanami trying to lay literal eggs like a bird/reptile, or Nanami going on an African safari to find some super special curry only to get trampled by elephants and for it to be revealed they had some on hand in the school all along?), but the story episodes were awkward, boring, repetitive, yucky, completely disconnected from any sense of reality, and just generally hot garbage. I also don't really remember most of them, whereas I do remember Nanami! She was a good one. Well, no, she was pretty horrible for like 3/4ths of the show, but she did work pretty hard to make it fun, which is what counts in my books. From what I remember, you've yet to watch the movie, no? I think @majestic at least implied you might find how much more ridiculous it gets to be more fun than the show, which is also just way too long for its story and much more concisely told via the movie. I think: I hated the movie, so I've purged most of it from my brain...but that doesn't mean you will. Also, it looks like Bartimeus was already destroyed about ten years ago, so I think we're okay. There is somebody around here who I tried to @ one time that actually does for real have a doppelganger, with just like one different letter and who even went so far as to use the same avatar as the real member, but I can't remember who it is. It's possible they've been since removed, since I think I saw them like a year or two ago.

I mean in retrospect I have to say that Utena does hit great.....though the black rose stuff is still not the best. Kinda feel like rewatching it now. I think all of us itt should enter a pact where we will all work to destroy any doublegangers of said pact members.

The US should join Canada so I can get some of that sweet sweet UHC.

I am not outraged by the price. Diminishing returns law must apply and it makes sense that GPUs get more and more costly to make and sell. I am sure price gauging takes place, but I am also not surprised if they can’t reach a new level for performance without investing unreasonable amounts of money. What I do find unreasonable is the ongoing push for new expensive GPUs and better graphics while benefits stopped being visible to me quite a few years ago. Does God of War2 look better than God of War1? Eh, I suppose but I still think GoW1 looks better than I even need a game to look. We do however see more and more dominant games that aren’t on the cutting edge of graphics, so I wonder how much value there is in pursuing best GPUs. If I can’t run Great Circle well, that’s doesn’t make me happy but I also don’t think like I would be missing on something groundbreaking.

The US has a long history of states talking about seceding from the nation. I think talk of Canada joining the US is no different. It's just talk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession_in_the_United_States#20th_century_efforts_and_beyond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_separatist_movements_in_North_America#United_States

You might want to familiarize yourself though. There are some parts of IT Crowd that haven't aged too well, but it's still incredibly funny.

If you don't give the Xaurip Skuldr meat but just kill him, you can loot his spear: you'll have +1 spear. If you give the Skuldr meat to the Xaurip he will give you his spear: you'll have +1 spear. If you give the Skuldr meat to the Xaurip he will give you his spear. If you then kill him you can loot his spear: you'll have +2 spears.

They just need to call it "enhanced interrogation", and it'll be fine.

Mind you, I'm not overly impacted, as I'm not playing all that many AAA games. I'm still far more outraged over GPU prices these days. Just ten years ago the thought of ever spending 300 Euro on but a GPU never crossed my mind. Nowadays, that's the entry level price of admission. *Fun fact: Even the 60 bucks HD 6670 could play you some Skyrim (in reduced / medium details) and Dishonored. On the plus side: As there hasn't been a decent sub 200€ card in years, the used market even works for completely outdated GPUs almost a decade old -- and generally, GPUs don't like half their worth in just a year or two. E.g. you still get some money back eventually.

The beaded captains chair is a nice touch.

Ricky Henderson. I feel like he barely retired a couple years ago. He was a legend and I hope they build a statue of him whwen the A's finally come back to Oakland.

They serve different purposes: the "first" outro that's used in the show is just the generic outro at the end of all 38 episodes of the show, whereas the "second" outro is specifically tailor-made for that 2002 OVA. The 2002 OVA is a short little prequel to the show that happens well before she ever receives magic powers (and in my opinion, the outro was by far the most interesting part of it - despite the fact that it has very little to do with what was actually shown in the episode). The first outro, although not particularly interesting or exciting, is really more appropriate for the show as a whole (which is largely upbeat, pleasant, and sincere), while the second outro...I still don't really fully understand exactly what it is they were trying to do. Especially now, because after my previous posts in this thread, I learned that I had previously overlooked that there's actually a 1986 movie (give me a break, this is a fairly obscure show and it can be difficult to find things...), which I just watched a couple of days ago. The context given in 1986 for 2002's creepy outro and end credits was this: Emi's looking back at and reminiscing of when she could turn into Magical Emi...and at the end of it all, her old broken magical mirror gives a little flash of power, the camera switches to her face, and she smiles. See? It's simple, but now I know everything turned out alright and that she didn't get murdered or kill herself or something, and heck, maybe she can even still do magic...if she wants to. Phew, thank goodness writers and directors back in 1986 knew how to properly convey ideas instead of just being creepy and off-putting for no particularly good reason. After all, it's a magical girl show aimed at, like, 6-10 year old girls, not a David Lynch movie/television series. Why they tried to re-create this 1986 scene in 2002 without any of the surrounding context (and when the original audience would be long gone), I'm not sure, but if nothing else, it helped get me to notice that there was a 1986 version and receive better resolution from it. Not that much better resolution, since this movie was also quite strange in of itself and with the exception of the "looking back" scene partially shown above was neither a prequel nor a sequel to the show but rather took place right square in the middle of it with no apparent purpose, but better. I still don't know whether she ever accomplished becoming a magician like she dreamed of, but even if not, I think it's okay. All of that is probably quite a bit more boring sounding than some anime director/writer randomly channelling their inner David Lynch for an early magical girl series, but hey, that's life. There can only be one...

Why 99.5% of players still don't care about full ray tracing. At least not for the 30-50fps cost. The RT-global illumination alone is decent and even that is a performance hit, but I could see it being a standard eventually. Can't compare with non-RT GI since there is none. Shadows/reflections etc aren't maxed and I'm sure it would all look "crisper" or something on a new $7k PC w/"supreme" settings, but you get the point. Pathtracing Off: Full pathtracing on: a little change in colortone of those wall plates and the pedestal is better backlit? No pathtracing: Full pathtracing: whiter/brighter building/foliage lighting, water is a tad less brown, the bamboo railing is more top-lit/whiter? Does it make a difference you can see? Yes. Is it worth the performance cost (and hardware cost/upkeep) or make some giant immersion difference? Me: Heck no.

Yes, I do suppose it was peculiarly Lynchian in its presentation, even down to the bizarre credits...luckily for me, I already watched the entire show preceding it, so I didn't get the big mad like I might've otherwise, . Who's Left Behind? AKA Kayako's Diary (1991). You know, I always had one big complaint about Grave of the Fireflies: I don't like it when movies start out miserable. End miserably? Sure, great! But starting out when things are already terrible, before you ever even have a chance to get to know and like your characters and see what their normal lives were like before everything goes completely sideways, always makes it a bit difficult for me to care about and engage with the movie in earnest. I've mentioned...upon occasion...that I usually only make it a maybe a couple of minutes whenever I try any of those lousy modern anime drama films where the movie immediately starts out with playing sappy piano music, it's raining, and some sad sack I don't and won't care about is immediately laying into me with some pathetically whiny monologue. Grrr, I really hate the bozos who make those movies...but, uh, anyways, all of that is to say, Grave of the Fireflies succeeded for me despite that major issue, but it would've been nice to see an alternative film where there was a preceding, oh, let's say...30-40 minutes of cute and fun daily life where some bad things are kind of, you know, just vaguely happening in the background but not directly affecting our characters, before things really start to deteriorate. Well...thanks to this film, which so desperately needs a blu-ray or even just a good DVD instead of an awful LaserDisc transfer, I really don't need that anymore. Despite the quality being just terrible, Who's Left Behind? immediately shoots up to one my very favorite anime films. Actually, I was initially - supposed to be - working while watching this, and I just wanted to check it out real quick on my third monitor to see if it would even be worth watching at all, and I kind of just let it keep running for maybe fifteen minutes before I realized I was either going to have to stop working or stop watching the movie, and I decided to stop working. I feel it was a wise decision.