Bartimaeus

Did @majestic say anything about Mari? I was looking for it...I thought it was only me who despised her with every fiber of my being. Interpretation on Mari that I found, : Non-edit: majestic just posted as I was about to post this and mentioned how much he despised Mari. (Also, SPOILER ALERT: She doesn't appear to matter even one microscopic bit...but I do still have the second half of this last movie to go. I'll read the rest of your post soon.) I didn't even notice that about her, but probably because I was closing my eyes and plugging my ears about every time she appeared on screen, the annoying and seemingly pointless fabrication that she is. If Hideaki Anno can re-make Evangelion, so can I, and Mari ain't gonna be in it, let me tell you! ...At least in my mind, . 4.0 stuff: Sometimes I wonder how much it cost to make The End of Evangelion vs. one of these movies. With how ungoshly long credits in big CGI movies are, you'd almost think it'd be more expensive at some point to make the CGI...

Ah, screw it, guess I'm gonna watch the rest of this. Was kinda hoping majestic was going to power through both 3 and 4 today to beat me (if you ain't first, you're last...and therefore the inverse if you ain't last, you're first, and lord knows I don't want to be first with this), but I just wanna get this over with. My other party that I watch shows with has never watched Evangelion, and they have tentatively opined that they want to watch NGE after we finish Nadia, so I should have an opportunity to re-watch Evangelion (and at a much more sane and digestible pace) in the coming months. ...That or Princess Tutu. I'm not sure which I'd prefer - two utterly dastardly shows sure to break the mind of any mortal, .

Don't think Asuka needs her butt to help her express contempt, but... Sometimes...actually, most of the time, less is more, methinks. I'll remember this particular shot for quite possibly the rest of my life - I most likely won't remember anything from Rebuild in a week or two, . The artistry is simply not there for me with Rebuild. (P.S. I was trying to avoid mentioning the character for majestic's sake, but KP mentioned her directly in the above post - it's not my fault!)

Ironically, that particular scene in End of Evangelion was framed way more tastefully and actually had some kind of purpose, as messed up as it was (and actually, it literally showed how screwed up both Shinji and the entire idea of violating an unwilling or unaware person in that manner were). Again, I repeat: framing matters. It's not always about what you show but rather how you show it - if you show a scene in such a way that it is incredibly jarring and takes me right out of the scene...like cutting down to just Kyoko's crotch in the middle of her having an emotional moment or cutting down to just Mami's chest in the middle of her explaining something important (Madoka), it's going to feel incredibly jarring and like it was put in there purely for the sake of fan service - not to mention, it completely deflates whatever is currently being said or whatever is occurring. Maybe I'm just not normalized to this crap...but at this point, I'm probably not ever going to be, especially since I always have such a viscerally negative reaction whenever I see it, . https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/6yjtzx6c5bd05f0/WA8qVy5AFy.mp4 So what do we have here? In short succession, we have a cut-down to her "fists" (but actually dead-centered and with a focus on her crotch), then another crotch shot because she inexplicably got up on the glass wall and the camera went to her lower half, then a butt shot as the shot reverses, then a ridiculous reverse power pose where she's towering Shinji, and then her crotch again from a creepy underside shot. I don't know...just, uh, all of that just doesn't really feel like it's justified by the scene in question and the conversation going on in between our two characters. Feels slightly out of place to me, to say the least. There are better ways to do this, especially for "serious", "prestige" anime and animation like this is supposed to be. (e): I'll be finishing this up today, I guess...

Here, I'm going to spoil you about something I put in my spoiler for 3.33, because I'm a dirty rotten person, but not really. Suffice to say, it doesn't get better. Framing of scenes matters, guys - most of the time, I gave the original a show a pass because at least there were usually plausible framing explanations (particularly because characters didn't then go and immediately explain the entire scene verbally immediately after in an a shockingly embarrassing display like you pointed out)...but zero forgiveness exists now in my heart after seeing [character] done dirty in the middle of her having a moment like that. See, even Mr. Rodgers is mad now. That's probably a good explanation as to why they were seemingly trying to melt my brain while I was trying to figure out why all of this felt so weird and wrong. This crap stinks, yo. The biggest enjoyment I've been getting out of this has been hearing Rei's and Asuka's VAs in their roles again.

It was a lot less sanity-draining than what usually goes on in this thread.

Uh. Er. Hm. Ah. Well. Ergh. That is... I guess, really, as I've said a number of times now, everything usually comes down to characters for me, and so long as the characters and how they're acting sit well with me, I'm usually A-OK. Everything else is usually just bonus. Assuming...assuming that they matter at all and don't feel like a complete cliff-note to everything else that's going on, that is. With Evangelion, I may not understand a danged bit of what's going on plot, theme, or action-wise all of the time, but at least the characters (in the ORIGINAL series that, is) made sense and sat well with me, and that's the lens through which I try to interpret events, and yeah, though it was frustrating, it at least mostly worked. There's a reason I gave NGE as a whole a 7.0 while Utena got a 5.5, so there's your answer. Now this Rebuild crap is an entirely different matter... (e): I was going to watch the final one, but it's 2 hours and a half. ...Yeeeaaah, I'm going to wait until tomorrow.

My gosh, Mari is so freaking incredibly grating, makes Shinji look downright pleasant in comparison. Could they have designed a more despicable character to add to Evangelion? ...Yes, they could've, easily (her name isn't End of the World, after all), but even so. 3.33 stuff:

Miyu: There's no room for any of the scenes to breathe or develop, of course, since everything's at a breakneck pace...but for what's there, I thought Asuka actually seemed *nicer* than she did in the original show...then again, I am watching the weird Amazon English dub, . I remember there being an internal discussion while making the English dub for the original show about "Child" vs. "Children", and apparently one of the translators was absolutely insisting that it *had* to be Children instead...but they were overruled because no, that's just dumb and doesn't work in English, . Yeah at the weird and inexplicable scenes. Of course, seeing how 2.22 ends, I then kinda understood a bit why everything feels so absurdly rushed... (e): Guess I'm going to watch Evangelion 3 now...

At best, it would've just been switched: the people who currently love and praise him now would utterly abhor and revile him if he were an equally loud-and-proud Muslim instead. I'm not sure if there would've been enough of an up-swell of support from the other side to have supported his notoriety this long, but I guess I don't know for sure. By all accounts, he's a fine enough human being...but gosh, I could do without ever hearing him tiredly mentioned again, particularly from friends and family. What I said was specifically in the context of his NFL career, which, well yeah, has kind of sucked. Some exciting 4th quarter finishes, sure, but that's about it. I thought I remembered hearing talk years back of teams wanting to try him out as a receiver on account of his athleticism, but he only wanted to be the guy at the time. A little late to be making a conversion at age 34 after many years out of football. At least the Jaguars got an absolute boatload of jersey sales out of it?

It's mostly a media-fueled issue. He sucks. He's always sucked. At no point during his NFL career has he not sucked. No biggie, there are a lot of players who suck who never have a word of hate directed their way. Nevertheless, in the late 2000s (and even for some time afterwards), there was such an absolute cacophony of Tebow-related insanity thanks to absolute garbage media outlets like ESPN. The incredibly punchable face along with being such an obnoxiously loud-and-proud Christian that has had his cultists constantly flock to him and whine and scream that he was never given a fair shot and that actually he's good doesn't help any matters. He himself...is not so bad personally from everything I've ever heard, but it's everything that's ever been around him publicly that drives so much hatred his way - much the same way I despise "the Vikings", what I really actually hate are most Vikings fans, but the two get conflated with one another over time...a similar mechanism exists with Tebow and his media presence, I think.

If they aren't currently romancing young children, then Pegasus is probably fine. Probably. (e):

Arion (1986). Hey look, another kind of cool but also kind of off-putting anime poster from the 80s. Arion is a young boy that lives with his blind mother, Demeter, tending to their sheep and gathering food and supplies and such. His good uncle Hades pays Demeter a visit to tell her of current events transpiring, and on his way out, tricks Arion into entering the Underworld and promises the restoration of his mother's sight if Arion, a fledgling Titan, is able to slay Zeus, who is currently embroiled in a war with Poseidon. Demeter pleads with Zeus to save Arion, but her pleas fall on deaf ears. I actually thought it was decent even if, uh, a bit messy narrative-wise and could've been a lot better character-wise. If nothing else, I thought it was a lot better and more fun than Isao Takahata's Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968). ...And I like Ancient Greek stuff, sue me.

Outside of some edge cases where you're min-maxing to build a very low-level character to specifically minimize a particular couple of stats in favor of another for the purpose of PVP (the lower level your character, the better for PVP), Pyromancer is most likely the ideal class base to start from for most any type of character - in addition to the other advantages I mentioned earlier, Pyromancer has about perfectly average stats all around to start with with the notable exception of being weak in divine power (i.e. Faith). And so there is probably one exception to this: I would use a Cleric if I were going for a min-maxed divine spellcaster. Knights and Sorcerers have the worst stat disadvantages compared to a Pyromancer (-6 and -4 respectively - the next worst is -2 for a Thief, and the rest are -1 with the exception of the Wanderer who is actually 0 but who has no angle for making a build over a Pyromancer besides MAYBE if you were going for an absolute pure caster and needed literally zero strength to use weapons while wanting Wanderer's higher Dexterity for cast speed). Pyromancer is really just the best outside of those edge-cases - it's not good design for that to be the case, but it is what it is. And to start out with the Pyromancy Flame is a powerful boon for making some early bosses and enemies a lot easier.

The only really "correct" class in Dark Souls is Pyromancer. Not only do you get immediate access to pyromancies (which unlike the other types of magics do not require stat-scaling and thus can be used with any character so long as you have a pyromancy flame), Pyromancer also objectively starts with the best stats combined with being level 1 (i.e. the most room to grow). Pyromancy is objectively the best class in DS1 - just as Royal is objectively the best in Demon's Souls. DS2 and DS3 would not make the same mistake of having a class that is objectively the best, thankfully. Not that the classes *particularly* matter (you will only be marginally set behind at worst by picking something else), but...it's less than ideal design to have a "favored" class baked in like that. And if you play magic-only instead of melee on your first playthrough, you're a right real toss-pot, .

I was basically treating the first movie as a more competent Death (True)^2, because Death really super sucked and basically did not work even slightly as an abridged "catch up on the entire show so you can watch The End of Evangelion" movie. Also, my brain has been melting trying to remember all of the exact differences between the show and this especially what with me having watched the entire original show in one sitting - makes it hard to recall all of the specific details, guess I'm going to have to eventually watch the show again at some point. The show feels and looks a lot better anyways, so I might as well over this...but I guess since I'm halfway through this already, I might as well finish it too. Miyu:

Evangelion: 2.22 YOU CAN (NOT) ADVANCE [AMAZON EDITION] <ENGLISH DUB> %NO SIDE-BY-SIDE COMPARISONS THIS TIME% $MAJESTIC'S GOING TO BE THE LAST ONE TO FINISH EVANGELION UNLESS HE HURRIES IT UP$ #BETTER BE DR. PHIL SEIZURING IT UP BY THE END OF THIS OR IT'S NOT EVANGELION# &THIS IS GETTING UNREADABLE SO I GUESS I BETTER STOP& *I WAS RUNNING OUT OF SYMBOLS TO DELINEATE THESE STATEMENTS ANYWAYS* †THEN AGAIN, THAT'S WHAT WE HAVE UNICODE FOR† @majestic was right, Misato really does sound weird in this dub...and it really sounds like it's getting worse. It's very strange, she sounded like 99% herself from the original show in the initial version, but in the first Amazon movie, it was like...maybe 80% herself with a few particularly bad lapses, and now in this second one, it's more like 60% with frequent bad lapses where it's difficult to even tell that it's the original VA. I can only assume it's a combination of aging but also Amazon's more differenter voice direction, particularly because there are still scenes where she does sound like herself, they're just...less frequent than they should be (and also, even Shinji has, at times, sounded not quite himself - there have been a few lines where he's not directly on camera but talking and it took me a moment to realize "oh, that's Shinji" which should never happen). 2.22 stuff:

On the state of the Afghanistan army and the U.S. trying to build them up: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/68d75dfkdampyr0/interesting_insight_into_the_abysmal_state_of_the-zy22bendf0i71.mp4 Thought this was a comedy skit at first, but no... Personally, I'm very happy we're finally getting out: sunk costs should not dictate future costs. Sucks for everyone involved (that we wasted so many lives and so much money and time and effort, for those of them that wanted and depended on us being there, and so on), it really does, but that's life - the best time to have gotten out was right away, the second best is right now. Let's not try to do any more nation-building for a long time, thank you very much - we don't exactly have a good track record of it anyways.

Yeah, I went and checked to make sure - I really do actually have those options when I start it. Sucks to be you, .

Ha. Heh. Yes, especially when it...subverts your expectations, . For probably much the same reason that I can't watch the Japanese, I'm sure you can't tolerate the English! (e): Also, Misato does sound weird in the Amazon English dub - I thought so myself. She sounded more like herself in the original release/script of the movie.

lmao, I'm not sure whether to give you a laughing or crying emote icon...guess it's better to laugh than cry, . ...That's especially strange, though, because *I* have access to the German dub and...all of this for 1.11:

lmao, way to make me look like a psychopath. No, I didn't know that. While I haven't watched the original Japanese and thus I still am not particularly familiar with them...I have listened to and enjoyed each of their covers of Fly Me to the Moon, of which...I mean, there are a lot. I may or may not be an absolute soundtrack fiend. @HoonDing Do you...actually watch any anime at all? The only one I think I've seen you mention with even the hint of seriousness is MAYBE City Hunter, but even that I can't tell if you're joking...

(e): Okay, just to be clear...the second one is called "2.0 YOU CAN (NOT) ADVANCE", right?

Well, KP wasn't wrong: this does very much feel like Evangelion...for the most part. Not nearly as nice-looking as the original Evangelion, but not terrible either (it's probably, stylistically speaking, about as good as one could expect CGI to look, I suppose), and there are some actually good-looking effects/scenes too. Guess I gotta watch the second one...whatever that one's called. (e): Oh wow, they hit me with the old "next episode preview" music after the credits. Dope.

I tried that for a little, but it just sounds so wrong to me. Plus, I mean...I haven't even gotten to Asuka yet, and if Amanda Winn-Lee's Rei was "(non-romantic) love at first sight", Tiffany Grant's Asuka was "I didn't like you at first, but then I couldn't live without you (but yes, in a non-romantic way)". And anyways, like I said, the actual subtitles seem to match the Amazon script more if anything, even though the original script is more what I remember the show and characters being like. So...I guess I'm just going to gut it out with Amazon...