Bartimaeus

In terms of at least character design/stylization, it's like halfway through that very late 90s, early 2000s mass re-stylization that was happening around that time that I generally think makes everything from around that period look like garbage, but it's like...just before the critical point where it would actually bother me, which makes sense because it's 1998 instead of...you know, 2002 or something. Probably helps a lot that it's in some pretty quality HD. Anyways, through one episode so far, and I'm pretty sure I can jive with it. Another one of those cases where I'm glad the show doesn't look quite like the posters, because I think the posters look stylistically much worse than the actual show does (a la Sakura). Not, uh, not the kind of poster I'd ideally want to provide the first look at a show, personally, . No kidding. Keep it simple, stupids. That must be why she pains me so right off the bat, . It'll never be as obnoxious and hateable as a more modern shonen show, of course, just because the entire style of the show may as well occur in a completely different medium compared to something modern, but still. To me, it basically felt like the equivalent of...Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0, where it's super fast-paced and lacks the stuff that made the original show enjoyable in any way, it's SORT OF re-telling the same story but also adding some new things that mostly don't work and are just kind of annoying, and really, it just felt like an insult to my intelligence after having suffered through the original show. I would have preferred to not have seen it and that is about as bad of a way to cap off a series as you can get, .

I remember there being an episode(s) where she loses her empath powers for a bit and her just coming across as being the most painfully unlikable and un-self-aware person possible. I think that was when I consciously realized that she never seemed to serve any purpose or made good use of her abilities anyhow while constantly coming across as a totally clueless yet patronizing counselor, and so I don't think my opinion of her ever really recovered from that point on. Probably the main character I least like in TNG, .

Serial Experiments Lain (1998). This mixed look of mild confusion, skepticism, discomfort, and maybe exhaustion was basically me the whole time... ...because I'm not sure I get it and I don't really understand what's going on yet. However... ...I'm trusting what this other lady said, because the show does seem...interesting? I'm not a hundred percent sure. It's only 13 episodes long. First episode was very slow and understated but also surreal and off-putting (intentionally). The art and animation is neat...and weird. A show trying to have scenes like the ones in this show (blending "normal reality" and surrealism) would look cheap and awful in anything but animation. Meanwhile, I'm the opposite - without the movie, the show would be sitting at more like a 6, but the movie was like...a 4/10 at best and dragged the overall rating down to a 5.5 for me, . Alright, Rose of Versailles time. Man, this dad is already making me think a little too much of Eriko's uncle... Low-key a little terrifying. Yeah, this intro with its visuals and the mention roses and stuff is giving me some flashbacks to Utena. "All were blissfully unaware that in 20 years, the French Revolution would take place." Whoa, spoiler alert, narrator lady! Man, one thing I really wish anime would never, ever do again is half-draw lips. Full lips? Fine by me. Just a line? Also cool. This half-there crap? Always looks just terrible to me. If you think any character's face (male, female, animal, monster, it does not matter) looks better like this... ...vs just a simple and solid line (and there are more options than this but this is as simple and quick as you can get)... ...then you're completely out of your danged mind as far as I'm concerned, . Okay, back to Lady Asuka. Oh, her father just threw her down a flight of stairs for expressing her own opinion - Eriko's uncle clone confirmed. Except that unlike Eriko, the framing of this show so far doesn't seem to suggest her father is really supposed to be a villain...but maybe that's because her father won't be around long enough for it to matter? And we're already having dumb pride fights in the first episode between Lady Asuka and the other guy. Fighting for pride has to be one of my least favorite conventions in any character - can't help but instantly read the character in question as a dimwit. Slappo. Uh, wait, why is Lady Asuka being charged with treason? Are duels really treason-worthy, especially if they don't even end up with anyone getting killed or even crippled? Whatever. "If you say not to wear it, rebellious Asuka will surely do the opposite?!" Yeah, I don't know, I probably woulda thought you were dumb enough to fall for that...LMAO, he absolutely decked her right in the face...AND AGAIN! ...And again. I guess that's what she needed to work out her problems. Uh, yeah, I don't know, this isn't terrible by any means, but it's probably not for me, .

Helps when your characters have earned their keep over time. You know, as opposed to immediately drilling into my forehead and attempting to perform a lobotomy on me in the very first episode, . Hey, speaking of both lobotomies and characters earning their keep, where the hell is Meiling? Yeah, I really don't know. Maybe there was some early video game I played with a jump scare piano or something, . One of the earliest games I played was Ocarina of Time and the thing that scared me the most in that game were the...not the wallmasters, but simply the shadow appearing and sound that played as the wallmasters were spawning to fall down from the ceiling. Gave me intense anxiety as a kid - once they were down, no big deal, but the lead-up to it was killer. How long did it take you to make that graph? Anyways, that bleed-through area totally exists, even if we haven't yet found an example of it - that's more a function of me not trying out enough things you didn't care for or things in general than anything else. Heck, you could probably just about put Utena under there already, right? @Sarex It would probably help if there was even a small possibility of me liking the characters...alas, .

Cardcaptor Sakura stuff: Can't tell if joking... Does the show's tone and style change greatly from the original's?

Keep in mind that there's a sequel series that's just as long as the original, and it's literally called "Clannad: After Story"...not to mention a movie! Don't do it! You have so much to live for! How much do you think I'd like Lady Asuka (the show, not the character)? City Hunter (1987). I don't really know why I'm trying this, this doesn't really seem to be for me either, but at least it looks nice, especially in HD. Gotta keep trying stuff to figure out what you do and don't like even when it's outside of your interests, after all - there's a reason I just gave Clannad the smallest of chances, after all. There was a very sweet lady that was just introduced like two minutes into the first episode that was waiting for her friend to arrive while out on the street, and a guy rolled up in his car asking for directions and she immediately responded and graciously started giving him detailed directions...and he shot her in the middle of it before driving off. Her friend arrives and she collapses right then...and that's all she wrote: dead. Absolutely brutal, especially for someone I immediately had a positive impression of. Feels bad, man.

Don't know if anyone else caught it, but as a huge hater of MNF and ESPN in general...Peyton Manning and Eli Manning doing the Raiders-Ravens game was actually a lot of fun and a totally different atmosphere from standard commentary. Seeing them getting frustrated with some of the boneheaded decision-making towards the end of the game was especially entertaining. Aaron Rodgers appearing on the Pat McAfee show tomorrow should be entertaining.

Doesn't constantly telling all your voters that the elections are fraudulent just make them that less likely to bother voting in the first place? Didn't that literally play into why we currently have two Democratic senators from Georgia right now?

Okay, but only for the sake of once and for all fully cementing that there is zero point in me trying to ever adhere by what is "popular" or "important" to the general anime-watching crowd because we will never value the same things, . Unlike K-On, I am 99.9% certain that I will despise this on almost every possible level*, but who knows, maybe we'll get a case like Kill la Kill where I don't but instead it's just not for me - even that would surprise me, though. (e): Here we go, episode 1 of Clannad:

That's almost quite literally all I do, . It's low on the list of user-submitted votes for tags, but it's there! Indeed. I bet you're looking forward to having to return to Love Live! after K-On is over, right?

>Clannad >harem >looks like this

Troi is actually whom I was primarily thinking of, because I don't ever remember her being around for a situation where she'd actually be useful and she's unfortunately around in plenty where she's the exact opposite. (e): Though I should note I haven't seen the entire show - I'm sure there are at least a couple of examples of her being useful. Probably...

how come there are so many episodes in TNG where the exact person that would be most useful in expediently resolving a situation is always mysteriously absent from those precise situations

lmao, just came back and realized I wrote "Minako is cheating on Artemis", but I meant the opposite, . The problem with picking "best" SuperS episodes is that there are some that are actually pretty solid, like the Minako episode or the Ami beach episode...right up until they're not. And I was trying to think and figure out "ok, what episodes does that problem NOT apply to", and I realized virtually none. It's either ruined by the Amazon trio or by a combination of Pegasus and Chibi-Usa. Pretty much leaves just the dentist episode.

That's easy. There's the episode where Chibi-Usa has a mustache...the episode where Ami becomes a mechanic...the episode where Pegasus says he's no longer interested in Chibi-Usa because she's an adult now...the episode where the Amazon Trio are redeemed...and finally, the episode where Makoto yells and screams at that one kid. ...Wait, no, those were all terrible episodes. Uh, let's see here... The dentist episode, of course. The "Minako is cheating on Artemis" episode? ...I also want to say "the Minako is cheating on both of the Amazon trio goons" episode too, but I'm pretty sure that's the episode where...yeah, no. Um, the episode where...uh...they're trying to figure out who...Chibi-Usa's...secret boyfriend is? Wow, SuperS really sucks.

I AM A DREAMER, HISOMU PAWAA! ...is the best sounding part of a bad Cardcaptor Sakura intro song, and also coincidentally the very first line of the song. It's all downhill from there.

If the Packers could just play @Cowboys for the next sixteen weeks, I'm fairly confident we would end at no worse than 12-5. Alas...

You remember that list of shows I said "these were also suggested but they clearly weren't for me even at a glance"? What I didn't say was that there was actually a third list made by people who clearly did not listen to a gosh danged word that I said and just suggested random crap that they liked. Here, I'll compile them for you real quick: Kuragehime (2011, josei and not shoujo?), Sukitte Ii na yo (2012, not shoujo?), Kobato (2009, seinen), Mawaru-Penguindrum (2011, IKUHARU, not shoujo?), Kimi ni Todoke (2009), City Hunter (???), Ranma 1/2 (???), Beyond the Boundary (???), Bloom Into You (???), After the Rain (???), Madoka Magica (!?!?!!!?!??!!!)... My specific asks were "pre-2000s or just about", "shoujo", and "I love the original Sailor Moon and the original Cardcaptor Sakura", and somehow people recommended those. I kindly thanked everyone individually for their suggestions, because at least they put some time and thought into replying and coming up with some suggestions, but really, there was a lot of junk to parse through in the replies, . Essentially, I just bookmarked everything that looked interesting that I might want to check out even if they weren't quite the fit I was looking for. Suffice to say, there are dummies in every community, . Historical drama is something I really have to be in a specific mood for...and boy, does that sound veery historical drama-y. Looks like I won't be trying Rose anytime soon, . Keep in mind that my entire logic is predicated upon "which would seem less weird and bad for someone who hasn't already seen either" which I think would be the SuperS episode...but for someone who's already been subjected to SuperS, it's almost definitely the Michiru + Haruka episode. Yes, even myself: I'm pretty sure I'd rather seen the Michiru + Haruka episode now than just about any except maybe the 3-5 best SuperS episodes...but that's because I've already seen (the majority of) the terror that is SuperS, while I was never subjected to 40 variations of that particular S episode, . If I had been subjected to 40 straight variations of that S episode, I...probably would've just straight up started skipping through entire episodes until I got through it because I would've been completely bored out of my mind to the point of not wanting to watch the show anymore otherwise.

Packers:

There's a little something that I like to call a pro gamer move where you skip everything except for the dentist episode, . But no, really, I think SuperS is so horrid precisely because it is ~40 episodes. Being punched in the mouth with the same terrible and gross gimmick over and over and over until you're broken and begging for the sweet release of death and you can't even get that because Pegasus will suck your soul into his nightmare dream realm like the vortex of a black hole and haunt you forevermore. But if the question is just a single average SuperS episode (say, one where just any old rando gets targeted) vs. that episode, I'm not sure the single SuperS episode would seem *that* egregious all by itself. Now if it was a...specific episode, like the one where Chibi-Usa enters Pegasus' (or her own?) dreams and flies around with him for like half of the episode, I'm taking the Michiru + Haruka episode a thousand times out of a thousand, of course...but just an average episode? I'm not as sure. This is probably a good reminder that I find the "serious mode" story episodes of Sailor Moon significantly weaker than even you do (...because they almost invariably strip all of the critical components that make Sailor Moon work as a show without doing anything interesting or otherwise engaging on basically any level that I could discern in return for being "serious"...outside of Sailor Stars, which does actually have a number of good "serious mode" episodes IMO, particularly the short filler arc at the beginning of the season). Perhaps I'm barking mad and playing devil's advocate a little too much here, but I just feel like if you just took that "average" episode and inserted it somewhere in S, you would initially think it's a perfectly normal episode, eventually come to the conclusion that something feels a bit off with it and that the writing is definitely a bit worse than the rest...but that it still mostly feels like Sailor Moon and not think that much of it after it's ended. It's when you've been subjected to it five times...ten times, twenty times, thirty times, fourty times in a freaking row where you really become broken. And speaking of S, let's not forget that it already had this particular sequence... ...so it's not as though terrible stuff hadn't already been present in the show up until SuperS, . Feel free to Dr. Phil seizure me if you really think my line of thinking is that crazy, .

I mean, they could try enunciating the 'R' a little. It's not like *I'm* pronouncing Oscar and Asuka the same way like the singer here is, . Ah, that must be where the crazy crap that somehow connects all of it to Evangelion happens, . Hmm...is it a fair comparison? Take an average episode from SuperS and insert it into S and does it work less than that single Haruka + Michiru episode? Would 40 episodes of variations on that episode be more or less miserable than 40 episodes of SuperS?

That's...a while just to install a GPU. My greatest impediment in getting stuff like that done is usually just pain and exhaustion, . But if you ever do, be sure to let me know because I may have a resource that proves helpful to you once you have the space. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but that looks quite awful indeed compared to the BD, . I was just thinking "eh, that one was kind of bad..." but then I immediately thought about Nadia's latest episodes and went wait, no, there's a big difference between boring and outright bad. Be thankful K-On doesn't have THAT... I'll be sure to keep you updated on whether it's able to redeem itself. It really does sound like "Lady Asuka" to me...

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2001). Early 2000s "cool" in the sense that during action scenes, someone will shoot literally about a thousand arrows in approximately two seconds (eyeroll), all of them will be pointed straight up into the sky as opposed to any actual targets (another eyeroll), they'll magically hit (yet another eyeroll), and some them will even be shown to visibly bend in mid-air (not even because of magic, a normal human shot them!) in clearly impossible ways for no apparent reason towards their target (and now we have arrived at The End of Eyerolls). At least JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has the decency to treat itself like the silly nonsense it is. ...But while the action's dumb, the story is actually probably better in this one than the original, and didn't really go where I expected given that this would initially appear to be just a big dumb action anime movie. Indeed, I actually started skipping through the movie because the first fifteen minutes of the movie were so dumb that I gave up (just a pile of really bad action stuff), but I got like 30-40 minutes in and was like "wait, what's happening? wait, this is actually kind of interesting and looks much better" and ended up going back to where I had initially given up and then watched the rest of it. So you know, given how dumb it initially appeared and the fact that it came out 16 years after the first, much better than expected! The aesthetic of this movie's closest comparison is Ghost in the Shell. It's not by any means just like it, particularly because the setting is so different, but here, look at this lady:

Yeah, the historical drama isn't the one I would've gone for first, personally, . At least it's a little more interesting time period. Random bluray screenshots you can compare to: P.S. That German song made me realize how close "Asuka" and "Oscar" sounds, . (e): Nadia has seemingly fallen off the same "world's largest cliff" that Ranma 1/2 did. This crap is so dumb. In episode 26, it was just more of the same as the previous two episodes in the first half followed by the second half of the episode just being a filler dream sequence that had no bearing on the current situation that just kept going and going until the end of the episode. Holy crap, please give me back Hideaki Anno, I'll try to never say anything bad about Rebuild of Evangelion ever again... (e): Lmao, oops, I already broke my promise to not say anything bad about Rebuild, .