Bartimaeus

The Primevals (2023). Filmed in 1994, but only released last year, was mentioned on RedLetterMedia, and my interest was piqued. Our characters and the story are...unfortunately dross, it's pretty much my least favorite kind of guy protagonist dude story, where our main character has an unhealthy obsession with something - yeti, for this particular movie - and is angry at a world that doesn't share his singular interest or irrational beliefs around them because he's a big dumb dip**** that can't let it go, and he ends up getting rewarded for it because surprise, it turns out that yeti are real, and that the garbage thesis he wrote in university (which was so bad that it actually caused him to fail and get kicked out of his program) about how yetis are totally real despite no evidence combined with his continued obsession on them makes him uniquely qualified to go investigate just how real they are! I genuinely loathe this kind of basis for characters being involved with a story, so the movie and I got off on the wrong foot immediately, and it didn't really get any better from there. Let's just say that while the stop-motion visual effects for the yeti are neat, the rest of the movie is kind of a dumb pile of crap, though I might be biased.

I never played the DLC in Bloodborne, didn't have a PS4 by the time the DLC came out. Looking forward to that...uh, kind of - playing those bosses for the first time on a no-level-up run should prove...interesting. On release, Shadow of Chernobyl had bizarre difficulty settings where choosing the lower difficulty settings made everything much harder because the majority of attacks by both the player and enemies would be "nulled" (i.e. not actually do any damage), while playing on the hardest difficulty would make them count. This sounds fair in theory (albeit making for arguably bad gameplay where people are just blasting each other in the face from point blank range and yet nothing would happen), but I think most who experienced it would say that it ended up favoring the AI because the player only has one gun that they can fire at any time while you can be fighting many AI characters/creatures, which means that if you're in a big fight with multiple enemies that you're trying to take down before you get outflanked and riddled with bullets from multiple angles, shooting one guy in the head ten times and having none of them count while everyone else continues to close in on and shoot you is disproportionately disadvantageous to the player. Hopefully they didn't do that again.

I haven't had much time to play, but I've been committing to an SL4 (lowest level you can be via choosing Waste of Skin as your class) run, and as far as second bosses go, I gotta say that Father Gascoigne is no Taurus Demon, he was legitimately pretty difficult. Out of DS1, DS3, and DeS (all of which I've beaten without levelling up, though I didn't do the DLC bosses in DS3 whereas I did for DS1), I think Bloodborne could turn out to be the toughest - though in fairness, I'd say that DeS was really not that difficult at level 1, Dark Souls 1 was mostly pretty difficult outside of a few particularly challenging spots and bosses, and DS3 was generally very to super difficult, so it really only has DS3 to compare against. No love for DS2, that game is straight poopy and I'll never play it again.

Told a friend that if the game wasn't crashing every 30 seconds, HoC's launch is still better than SHoC's. They told me they couldn't even get past pre-compiling shaders, the game kept crashing, so okay, maybe it is worse than SHoC's.

The old animated series from the 1970s, presumably, which I just remembered I've actually seen a few episodes of.

what the hell did we re-elect trump for if he isn't IMMEDIATELY DEPORTING these ILLEGAL GUESTS they're eating the posts and edits!

I obviously adore Cardcaptor Sakura, that hasn't changed with re-watching it...but I did try to take a little more of a critical eye this time around, and it was interesting to compare against my viewing of Sailor Moon, which was, after all, my very first anime show. For both of them being magical girl shows with nominally many of the same qualities, they have very different strengths...and very different weaknesses. It'll be interesting to re-visit Sailor Moon once the outstanding issues I have with the current offerings resolve themselves, which could unfortunately still be years away at this point. I think Cardcaptor Sakura will always be the more complete experience (probably further aided by the fact that it's a tigther 70 episodes and 2 movies instead of 250 episodes and 3 movies), but that doesn't necessarily mean you'll enjoy it more. And on the subject of Madhouse animated shows, I truly hope that Madhouse's Azuki-chan will someday get English subtitles for the complete series. That's one that will seriously continue to perturb me until it happens, as I'm 99.9 percent confident that I will at least really like it, and there is very precious little of anything across any medium of entertainment that I feel 99.9% confident about really liking.

Yeah, I thought Little Nemo was pretty good...a little weaker with narrative and characters than you'd probably prefer for such a big and well-animated title, but it's basically an attempt to be a Disney movie, and if someone watched it as a child, I could definitely see it being a very lovely (albeit maybe confusing) trip down nostalgia lane. Didn't know all the surrounding story about it though - thanks for that. I do remember Miyazaki famously saying it was the worst experience he ever had making a film, but in all fairness, it sounded a bit like developmental hell along with there being way too many cooks in the kitchen while trying to collaborate across the ocean and through a language barrier - none of which would be trivial now, much less then. I thought I'd actually written about watching Little Nemo last summer, but it appears I did not. Whoops, wouldn't be the first time.

The forum has been seriously wigging out for me like the last fifteen minutes - don't know how an earlier version of that post got re-posted like ten minutes after the first. I reported it for deletion. There's a 1995 movie, but it's not made by Madhouse and I don't think it has too much resemblance or relevance to the 1990 OVA, at least from what I can tell at a glance. And to my surprise, I apparently already tried the 3-episode 1996 OVA...which I rated even lower at 4.5/10. Whoops. I rather liked Vampire Hunter D - the original, that is. Bloodlust was...more hit and miss for me. Should probably re-watch the original to solidify my feelings about it at some point, though.

Hey, somebody else in here got it figured out. Sadly, my GPU is...uh, not up to Bloodborne's standards, so I'm playing through at, erm, 360p, but otherwise, it works pretty well. I'm waiting for them to fix a few outstanding issues before I really dig into it (like...lootable items in the world and items dropped by enemies are invisible last I checked, so you have to find everything unaided) before I dig into it, but I've managed to get to Father Gascoigne so far.

I wanted to like it more, especially as it's one of the very few titles I listed there that is both longer and presented in a nice high definition transfer (contrast that to the "Darkness of the Moon, Shadow of the Sea" OVA that I mentioned liking in the previous post, which was only available on a fairly miserable VHS transfer), but I just didn't really find it clicking for me. Characters weren't very interesting or likeable, and I found myself pretty checked out on the seemingly generic fantasy story from pretty much episode 1. But at least it's finally off my list now after years of being stuck there. Also was good to confirm that the Tenchi Muyou series certainly isn't for me either, so I can strike all of that as well.

Not directed at anything in particular, but... I've been on a bit of a watch spree in getting through a pile of random OVAs and movies from mostly the 80s and 90s over the last few weeks, and one thing that I am appreciating right now is when anime has editing that doesn't waste the viewer's time. I'd much rather see 20 minutes that don't keep the viewer for too long thanks to punchier pacing and not pointlessly lingering on shots or unnaturally slow dialogue compared to 25 minutes that feel like it they were edited specifically to hit a particular run time. There are times when being extra slow is cinematically appropriate, but a lot of older anime makes a bad habit of doing it when it is really just not. It's one of the things that I think Sailor Moon in particular usually got right outside of when the show was being more dramatic: when our characters are having just casual conversation between each other, the editing of conversation is appropriately quick and natural, like a live action conversation would be. It's one of the show's better qualities over even something like Cardcaptor Sakura, where dialogue is, a lot of the time, quite a bit slower than it probably should be. It seems like newer anime does not generally suffer from this problem quite as much, at least from the little that I've seen...though there are other problems that drive me even crazier aplenty, of course. Stuff I've watched over the last few weeks:

Baoh the Visitor (1989). I think this would have actually been pretty decent as far as stupid 80s action OVAs go if not for the atrocious writing. Frustrating to see fairly good direction and animation go to waste because the writer is total pants and insists upon inserting themselves constantly by writing out the dumbest things possible. Who wrote this, anyways? Oh, well, uh...true to form, I suppose?

I am sorry, but there's just nothing quite so beautiful in this world as that particular shade of red.

It was something my sister watched when I was younger (her as well as a few friends of mine's consistently terrible tastes in anime is what originally drove me to believe I absolutely despised anime wholesale for many years), and it happened to be this month's pick for animes to watch by/for a community I'm technically but not really a part of because I'm not on speaking terms with 99.9% of the people who watch anime these days. Though with that said, they've still picked some things that I do like...like Cardcaptor Sakura, where I saw several people complaining that the show didn't follow the manga closely enough, to which my response was "die, pond scum". From what I can see, there's no overlap between animation studios, directors, or the character designers, plus there's ten years in between when they were made, so it is a bit odd that there's so much similarity in the character designs, but maybe you could just chalk it up to Tsukikage Ran deliberately trying to look throwback-ish (there's nothing else released in 2000 or even from a few years before that looks like it, after all). The overall art direction of The Hakkenden is quite a bit darker and grimier overall compared to Tsukikage Ran, but that makes sense, given the totally different tones and one releasing in 1990 vs the other in 2000. Also, The Hakkenden was more experimental with its art style, and actually changed between different art styles for different kinds of scenes. And apparently, I didn't look closely enough, because the series actually has a Wikipedia article which also says that there's apparently a second season (i.e. seven more episodes) that I apparently did not notice. I'm not sure that my heart is really in for another seven episodes given that I think the second half of the show is likely to be more plot drama and action-y than the first half: literally all of the supporting characters that made the first half of the second interesting to me are dead now, which is why I wasn't too upset that the show just suddenly ended what seemed right smack in the middle of the overall plot (which it evidently was).

Episode 1 of Hellsing Ultimate. This might be my least favorite thing that I've ever seen in my whole life. I know I've said that about a few different things in this thread over the years, but I genuinely mean it every time. I think I'd rather watch ten more episodes of Dandandan than even one more of Hellsing Ultimate. The Hakkenden (1990) AKA The Legend of the Dog Warriors, I guess? Weird historical series about a cursed family trying to deliver a legendary sword to...uh, someone or another. I watched the whole thing through because it was actually halfway decent for me, but at the same time, I didn't really care that much about the plot proper, and then it ended six episodes in, which seemed to be only about half of the story. You know this is historical because everyone kills themselves for one reason or another. Your dog is accused of biting someone? Kill yourself. Your parents arrange a marriage for you when you already have a boyfriend? Kill yourself. Family gets magic curse from some lady dog-spirit thing? Kill yourself. Accidentally present the wrong sword to your lord? Kill yourself. Killing yourself really is the solution to all life's problems, you just can't go wrong with a little injection of suicide in your life. Now, accidentally murdering your own sister that you were separated from when you were young and whom you've been searching for your whole life right after you finally find her? Welcome to Shrugsville, that's not really that big of a deal, let's get on with the show. Anyways, it's an O.K. OVA but not really recommended, not that anyone here would watch it anyways - I mainly am posting about it because the amount of suicide started to become amusing after a while. I don't know how the Japanese ever survived when it seems like suicide was the first and last resort for every problem or offense, real or imagined. And on a side-note to @majestic, the leading lady pictured above looks suspiciously exactly like all the damsels-in-distress that kept popping up over and over in Carried by the Wind, to the point where I remember being confused if it was actually supposed to be the same girl or not even across multiple different towns and eventually realizing that it wasn't. Well, they always turned out just fine in that show, but this one got butchered, which was unfortunate, because I liked her.

As soon as Trump won, I committed to not reading the news until at least the midterms, and I've made good on of it so far outside of occasionally peaking in this thread. I just don't think it's going to be healthy for me to even glance at headlines, and the very little that's been posted in here sure is proving that. Coincidentally, I set my current avatar on the day that Biden dropped out, and it's proved very appropriate so far. Please pull the wool over my eyes...or put flowers in front of them...or something, I don't know.

@LadyCrimson 1. I was always kind of the opposite, in that I can't become attached or assign meaning to randomly/procedurally generated areas, so whenever I'm playing a game where that's the case, it's very difficult to make myself care and I pretty much immediately lose any interest when there's no static/human-designed option. But I also don't usually play games like 7 Days, much less play them to death, so... True to my word, I played like 15 hours of 7 Days with some friends years ago, and as soon as they lost interest, so did I. 2. I have a handful of games on my Steam wishlist that...*checks* I put on there back in 2018, and which never even got to the Early Access phase. I think they must be vaporware at this point. But yeah, most of the time, the "we're only going to in early access for a short time" is foolishly optimistic, if not a flat-out lie - and some games never get out of it, ever.

When a game doesn't have the options I like, I usually stick with whatever is the default so I don't have to make any choices. If none of my choices are good, then I might as well not make any. Meanwhile, Dark Souls:

I always play exactly what I am in real life, which is a paranoid schizophrenic goth girl that likes to sneak up behind people and either gnaw off their heads or repeatedly stab them in the back. Sometimes, you just have to stick with what you're best at.

Hey, I can't let a movie I didn't like ruin things I do, otherwise there would very quickly be nothing left to enjoy in this universe.

The Substance (2024). The perception and treatment of aging women (including by themselves and towards each other!) in the United States is something I've long talked about as being a sad indictment upon our society, and playing off of it with addiction, self-harm, self-loathing, and other neurotic and self-destructive behaviors does make for a natural pairing...but I really just don't like anything about this as a movie, and that became very apparent to me as soon as maybe two minutes in. It's one of those things where you can sit and nitpick all the little minor things that bothered you, but no matter what you could say, it still just wouldn't really touch upon the base issue, which is that you sat through a 2 hour-plus movie where it was perfectly obvious right off the bat that some combination of the direction, editing, tone, visuals, cast et al. was conspiring to make certain that the film wasn't ever going to click with you, so there was no reality where you'd ever enjoy it even if all the themes and ideas should in theory appeal to you. If the same film were made by a different director whose style and film sensibilities I actually like, I think I could've loved this movie...but as it was, I mostly just sat there irritated the whole way through, occasionally wishing I were watching something else a little less obnoxious. Like, I'm sitting here watching probably some of the grossest body horror you'll ever see in a film, and I'm just sighing at all of it, wishing that I was into the film enough for it to have some kind of effect beyond annoying me.

Until just now, I've never really appreciated how verbally powerful stopping exactly one word short of criticality can be, especially when you just let that stand as the final word on something. I'll have to remember to keep that one in my back pocket.

It's officially over, Pennsylvania has been called for Trump. We probably won't know who won the House for at least a few days or maybe more, depending on how close some of the races get.

To my surprise, it's still quite possible that Democrats will control the House, though most likely by a narrow margin (maybe as much as 5...but also they might still lose it by 5 as well). Not certain yet, but it doesn't look too terrible to at least prevent lasting legislation. Judiciary will still be completely hosed, of course, and many of the different agencies run through the executive are likely to be completely gutted (and in fact, I suspect the federal administration will be emboldened to withhold funding for anything it doesn't like even if it is actually mandated by legislation), but I guess it might be something. Though honestly, it might be more fun to see Republicans try to live with a, like, +1 margin in the House...but really, I'd rather not give this particular administration trifecta control.