Bartimaeus

Fixed.

First warning sign is that I don't like the name. I don't even know what that name is supposed to be, that's not a real name. You look at other names from decent shows...Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, Legendary Idol Eriko, Vampire Princess Miyu, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water...all those are very distinctive and evocative of at least something, even if you may not have a clear idea exactly what at first. What the heck is "K-On!" supposed to be? Sounds like it's some music or idol-based crap... Okay, it was actually music-based, but not idol? Hmm. Well...at a quick glance, it looks like it shares some similarities to Live Laugh Love, but seemingly a less embarrassing, less inexplicable, more grounded and possibly more character-focused (i.e. less idol-y nonsense and action) version of it. Like, the version of this thing that I might watch if I were truly desperate for something lighthearted and silly with music. If it was made twenty years earlier, I might even have genuine interest in it. ...That's what the heuristic say after a few minutes of looking at it, anyways! Good, because I'm going to be tortured with this show sooner or later, . @Nadia: 17. Guess I'll be watching out for that switch and seeing what effect it has... @Evangelion: It's been funny looking at some of the minority "didn't like it" comments re: Rebuild. I've even seen a couple of other people compare it to the Star Wars prequels. Ouch!

Suddenly, I like Asuka a lot more. Eriko's not that dark! ...At least, it doesn't feel that dark, even if a lot of the ideas in concept are. You'll see what I mean if you ever watch it, . One of those movies like Poltergeist where there's some neat ideas and it seems like it should be good in concept, but the execution was so wonky on multiple levels that it ended up being barely passable for me, . If only X had had the forethought to actually be Sailor Moon so I would have the patience for this... Either that, or he was just desperate to make literally anything so that it could be done and over with and he could stop getting bothered about it. He made a giant pile of crap and unfortunately majority of fans loved it. Will they continue to bother him for even more in the future?!

Devilman Crybaby, episode 1: Has a sweet EBM* intro song, at least. Less sure about what I saw in the intro, but at least the song is dope. *...Is EBM still even a thing, or has it been shuffled into some other kind of genre by now? Defaulted to playing the Japanese audio with no subtitles. Bold choice, Netflix. Look at that, I can tell that the English voice direction inexplicably sucks and sounds completely unnatural just like about every other post-2000s anime within about 10 seconds of listening to this. It's a danged good thing Viz didn't screw up their English dub for Sailor Moon or I never woulda watched Sailor Moon and this thread would've never been resurrected. Never trust a man with two first names, even if one of them is a girl's. Asuka and Akira... "The chirping birds were getting on my nerves." ...And then suddenly he turns into the sewer dragon from Dark Souls. ...Yeah, this might be difficult for you all to believe, but this just doesn't really seem like my type of show for some reason. I don't know if it's the two teenage male main characters, the explicit sexuality, the graphic violence, the art style, the setting, the modernity of everything, the premise feeling like completely ungrounded nonsense (especially in regards to what possible kind of reasons Asuka could ever have for causing this situation to happen), the fact that not even a single element of this should should really appeal to me on any level...but I kinda just felt like it was all slightly out of my comfort zone. I don't know, maybe another episode will prove me wrong! Devilman Crybaby, episode 2: Intro song's still good, at least. If these wannabe gangsters don't eat it, I'm gonna be so mad. ...Aw man, that was so unsatisfying in how they handled that, . Just a cut-away and then they're instantly done. Yeah, I don't know, not really working for me. At least it's not making me irrationally angry like Violet Evergarden (or Rebuild of Evangelion) did, just kind of...doing way too much I don't particularly like or can be appealed to with, really.

I do believe I warned you, . My heuristic process for selecting what I will or will not give a chance never fails me! Except for the rare occasion that it does...but that's rare! Stand by Me vibes in a large way, but with a very angry and dysfunctional anime club instead of...uh, whatever Stand by Me had that this didn't to make this comparison work, .

There are the few times Usagi uses her transformation pen... How about a Sailor Moon show where they're not actually Sailor Guardians but just undercover secret agents working against supervillains? Usagi would make the perfect secret agent...very discrete, very intimidating, very coordinated, . Nope, that ain't happening, . Yeah, from the screenshots I quickly glanced at, I think it's going to earn that "ecchi" tag pretty easily... It could also just do the Miyu thing and leave a major plot and character point forever unresolved. Would that be better?

That was dope. Makes me want a Sailor Moon set in a more ancient Japan, . ...The lady in the preview image for some reason looks like she has a giant head to me, though - can't tell if I'm crazy, if it's just weird perspective, or...maybe she actually just has a giant head. Even zoomed out here, her head looks giant! @KP the meanie zucchini Does Devilman Crybaby have any relation to the Devilman TV show from the 70s or the two Devilman OVAs from the 80s? Greatly welcome indeed.

So basically, you don't recommend the show at all to majestic, . Now that I think about it more, I think you're right...or you are/were right? Because I think now, later into the series, it's usually "kid" for Xiaolang and "missy" for Meiling. But it was definitely "brat" for Meiling for a while, while I'm struggling to remember if "brat" was ever actually used for Xiaolang...if it was, it was probably early and before Meiling arrived. @X: I kinda get the feeling that this show wouldn't really work for me from everything you've described it. Too many characters, complete flat-line of a male main character, totally boring end of the world plot that there's too much of a focus on, mediocre or worse music, only tenuously shoujo to begin with... Eh, .

My knowledge of Siege of Dragonspear is unfortunately borderline nil - Beamdog's fanfic being tacked onto BG1/BG2 is bad enough, but an entire game of it...is not really my cup of tea. However, I would agree with your explanation: most likely, Siege of Dragonspear (or Enhanced Edition Trilogy if that's what you're using, @rjshae) took the specific creatures that were in your original BG1 campaign and simply "teleported" them over for them to join your party without doing any experience/level evaluation...and since these are all characters that were not originally in your party and thus are whatever they were when you initially met them in BG1, yeah, they're all very low-leveled. It's not how I would've done it (I would've checked that they're currently IN your party at the end of BG1...), but I don't really see any other explanation as to why you would get such inexplicably low-leveled party members. I would simply open up the console and use... ...where "x" equals whatever your main character's XP is while selecting all of them.

The implication here is that it was her dad's most cared for person, and that Sakura and Toya just got caught in the crossfire? I think? Lmao...but no, it's not really even either of those - I just took the name of an actual Evangelion book and inserted "Sakura Suzahara" more or less randomly. "Evangelion Shin Gekijouban Jozen Kiroku Zenshuu Visual Story-ban Settei Shiryou-ban"...this is apparently a real book title. My version actually took a few of those out, but hey, maybe the extra ones actually make it make sense. Also, I thought "shin" meant "new", not "heart", but what do I know: just about nothing, really. Kero always calls Meiling (RIP) "Missy" and Xiaolang "brat", but that seems fine to me. Yukitoad...not as sure about, . Yeah...and it helps that it earned it by this point, . @Anno: Man, he really is pretty much George Lucas at this point.

Madoka kinda weirds and grosses me out even more now that I can see how clearly it owes its lineage to Sakura...

Oops. Uh...that part of the post was only meant for majestic, .

Luckily, that's speciesist, not racist. Phew, close one there, . Rather than experiment with something I know I won't like as much, it's time to finish this Sakura arc, .

Hell no. ...But let's look at the genres real quick to confirm: "adventure, comedy, drama, ecchi, scifi, shounen, action" Hell no. Only one I've tried out of the ones you listed - big surprise, it wasn't for me, .

PMed. Yeah, I did drop it, just wasn't really working at all. I've tried a couple of other things by CLAMP myself in the past couple of months, and I had to abort within an episode or two in both cases: CLAMP School Detectives and Kidou Tenshi Angelic Layer. I knew right away they were all wrong for me, but I tried to give them at least a tiny chance, and yeah, I don't think so. Rayearth, RG Veda, and Clover were the other ones I had a passing interest in (but none too confident). I must have gone right over X because it looks a hundred percent like edgy, angsty teen shonen. How would you say it compares to Miyu, speaking of?

I tried watching the movie for a bit, but I think literally the entire first half hour of its 1:30:00 or so run time is just a giant exposition dump, got me like: Not how I would structure a movie, personally, .

I can't believe you didn't keep up with this entire topic to see Sarex post this some hours ago. It's like you're not even religiously following this thread or something. Speaking of Yoko Kanno, I was literally just watching... Memories (1995). Netflix advertised Memories to me not all that long ago (maybe a couple of months ago?), but it seems like it's no longer on there - what a pity. Starting with Magnetic Rose. It's a fitting name. Oddball, really good sci-fi...way greater appreciation for it this time compared to the first watch, same as Millennium Actress (watching all of Perfect Blue, Memories, Millennium Actress, and Paprika in a short amount of time may not have been my wisest decision). Good art and story, great animation (well except for one particular element that looks like Sailor Moon R: The Movie's one bit of CGI), and maybe even better music (by Yoko Kanno!). Stinkbomb. Speaking of Covid-19...the setup is super obvious and you'll get it within literally just a couple of minutes... Even though it's obvious and complete nonsense, it's good and a lot of insane fun just for the extremes it goes to with its premise, plus the animation might be even better in this one than the last, and the last was already great. ...And then we have the ugly stepchild of the three to finish it off, Cannon Fodder. ...But it's actually still pretty decent, all things considered. Didn't remember anything at all from this one from the first time I watched it, went much better than I expected this time around. If this trend of Satoshi Kon stuff being even better on a second viewing keeps up, I should just about think Tokyo Godfathers and Perfect Blue are the best films of all time (since those two were my favorites of his until I re-watched Millennium Actress and had to place it right up there as well)...assuming I ever find the constitution to re-watch the latter at all. As for Memories as a whole, it's good stuff, well-recommended.

Pontiff Sulyvahn was probably the most annoying boss I played on my SL1 run of DS3...though admittedly, I didn't do all of the DLC bosses because I kinda was running out of patience by the end of it because that game is too gosh-danged long, .

Oh, you probably got the subtitles for their own English dub, where Shinji actually says the same thing - that he couldn't decide. Well, that's kind of funny...but also weird, because those subtitles didn't always match Amazon's own English dub anyways. There should really always be options for both "subtitles for original language" and "subtitles for dub"...

...In what way? I could understand saying that for the original ending of NGE especially with how strange and confusing it was, but The End of Evangelion? The entire process of Human Instrumentality was absolutely exclamation point insane, with a lot of character stuff between Shinji and the other characters (especially Rei). No, their (and Earth's) futures weren't completely spelled out and maybe you wanted to see/know that, but...I don't know, the more I think about it in retrospect, the more it feels right to me: this ain't a Disney movie where every last thing needs to have a neat little bow tied around it in its conclusion, . Focus and give the time to the big stuff, and that's pretty much what it did.

Wouldn't the actual issue be with Shinji coming up with that answer in the first place, then? To Asuka, it would probably indeed look like indecision (he did not attack her, did not try to go on the defensive, and he did not even try to run away...he just sat there like someone frozen in fright), so it would make sense she would accept that answer...but Shinji very clearly made the decision that he would not attack her, so why would he answer that he couldn't decide in the first place? It would make a lot more sense to answer "because I wouldn't destroy Unit 04 03" or "because I wouldn't do what had to be done" or something like that instead. I'm not sure, but yeah, that is a weird answer now that I think about it. Watching Asuka's fight with the Mass Production units in The End of Evangelion is *chef's kiss*. Everything looks and feels so right from in perspective, size, and weight... When Asuka uses one of the fake spears against one of the MP unit's own and they just clang and rebound off of each other, and then both Asuka and the MP unit are just floundering around and completely staggered from the force of it for literal entire seconds while they recover...or when Asuka "kills" one of them and one of the spears just goes flying off into the trees and tears through everything, or when one of them leaps at her from above while she's already engaged with another and she has to kind of awkwardly roll away while the earth upturns with her every movement... And then we get to Rebuild where it's just absolute weightless, meaningless video game garbage while the camera's panning around doing 360s and there's a trillion objects and particles on screen all moving around at once and making it so you can even barely comprehend what you're seeing, and...my gosh, how far the medium has fallen. It's truly, disturbingly, and depressingly sad. I thought I remembered reading about how they have some kind of technology that helps them generate frames in between the key-frames that they then tweak and clean up to help speed up the animation process, but I may be completely making that up. Oops, I've been calling it Unit 04 every single time.

RedLetterMedia has taught me to pay attention to score distributions. Some movies have a relatively average to good (but not great) score overall but then you look at the score distribution and instead of seeing a normal bell curve-ish distribution, you'll see an unusual amount of very high scores and very low scores. Even if the overall average score looks average at a glance, an unusual distribution like that means it was overall divisive movie where some viewers thought it was irredeemably terrible while others thought it was one of the best movies they've seen in a while. Which side you'll fall on will depend on how the movie appeals to specifically you and your own film sensibilities. However, ratings for already established properties/franchises are becoming borderline useless unless you already know all of the context because you get the fandom that will usually always rate it very highly regardless of its quality (unless they made some very significant missteps that turned the fandom against it) and an anti-fandom that will always negatively rate them regardless of its quality just because it's popular and they don't like it. Furthermore, how can you even tell if general (i.e. non-fandom, non-hater) audiences are even tuning in and how they feel about it in comparison to the people who are already knee-deep into it? General audiences didn't see these Evangelion Rebuild movies, but the hordes of Evangelion fans sure did. Doesn't really tell me anything except that the typical Evangelion fan generally liked them, which is...not very helpful, especially for someone that already had some major issues with NGE (i.e. me). Anyways, reading individual reviews themselves doesn't generally mean diddly squat unless you know whom the reviewer is and what their general tendencies in what they do and don't like are (and if there are specific subjects, themes, properties, character types...whatever, that specifically appeal or the opposite to them).

Not that hardly any "normal" critics have seen or watched these films to begin with, and that anyone who hasn't already watched Neon Genesis would find it horrifically inaccessible even if they did try, and that general non-anime viewers would probably try it out and be like "well, that was the last time I'm ever going to try anything anime-related ever again". But yes, critical success among Evangelion fans*! *Who we've already determined are by and large dummies, by the way, .

The original show from the 90s is Neon Genesis Evangelion, and it is good albeit it has its quirks. There is a four movie remake/continuation of it called Rebuild of Evangelion that we all watched recently that majestic and I despised, . I believe what happened is that she was used in promotional imagery and advertising for Evangelion as a whole long before 2.0 was ever released (Anno mentioned that he suspected she was mainly for commercialization...), which is what sparked the fandom asking to see her. Pretty sure she appears just the same in 2.0 as she does in 2.22 - IIRC, 2.22 is a few minor scene additions and modifications as well as some image/graphical updates.

A few more episodes of Nadia. The halfway mark suddenly changed in the last episode in a kind of subliminal way: normally the graphic plays... ...And then an angelic voice sings out "the secret blue water" (there's no "of" said, oddly) while a very short background piano sound effect plays. But there was no piano this time.