Bartimaeus

As always, I'm a characters kind of guy first and foremost, and those characters fell really flat for me and it was difficult to care about anything else as a result. Characters first, themes and plot second, thank you very much. Great soundtrack, though.

The Ghost in the Shell anime was really mediocre. Sorry, not sorry: I'm still out there looking for my perfect android-related media, GitS ain't it. @KP the meanie zucchini Fair enough, .

I think I talked about this before when ratings last came up in here, but I really think ratings only make sense when you have the context of a person's entire list of ratings to compare again. Me saying Cardcaptor Sakura is a 9.5/10 doesn't mean a danged thing unless you can look at my other ratings and see hey, he's only given literally one other thing out of literal hundreds of other things he's rated a 9.5 or greater before, so that must really mean something. Meanwhile, other people give out 10/10s constantly just because they thought something was good and they're used to giving perfect scores for literally anything that they think is just good. Not me - like I said, my average score is 61%, and out of the hundreds of movies I've watched, I've only given an 8/10 (what I consider to be "great") or higher a total of 26 times, so that rating really means something within my rating system. But you can't see all of my ratings since they're on a private site, hence why I was trying to give some quick context with the list I made, . As for what an 8/10 means...like I said, it means "great" - how it gets there is irrelevant. Some might just be consistently great but never go beyond that for whatever reason, others might be utterly perfect in some aspects (e.g. Steven Universe's main cast are my idea of "perfection") but fall short in other ways (e.g. average to poor filler episodes that feel kind of irrelevant and inexplicably drag down later seasons). Earlier, I said I rate stuff roughly 75% subjectively (how much everything appeals to me specifically in terms of characters, themes, plot, setting, world-building, style et al.) and 25% objectively (how well-constructed all the elements are, attention to detail, competent writing, acting, and so on). For movies, I don't usually give out anything more than a 7.5/10 if a work has what I would consider to be some kind of large bugbear or hangup that markedly took away from its enjoyment unless it really truly was consistently great except for that - I'm a little kinder towards longer TV shows like Sailor Moon purely because of their length and the quantity of good times given outside of that, so I don't usually penalize e.g. something like SuperS quite as much as if the equivalent were to happen in a movie. That's usually not an issue for me either, especially considering a lot of my favorite stuff (including anime) is often quite aged, so clearly I have some kind of appreciation and fascination for older stuff. It's just that...I'm a really tough person to appeal to, and I usually have excellent (but by no means perfect) intuition for what will appeal to me based on how a film/show is communicating to me right off the bat. How themes are being communicated, the types of characters used (and even the way characters just look, talk, or express themselves), art or filming style, setting - everything like that has a sort of unconscious language to it. My intuition for anime is still admittedly a work-in-progress, since it's not a medium I've had extensive experience with and so I'm still forming heuristics for it, but it feels like it's getting better, and when I take just even a super quick look at Akira, it seems like a very masculine (in the worst sense) main character that I'm probably going to hate, an edgy almost cyberpunk-ish setting that I'm probably not going to care for, looks way too action-oriented for my tastes... It just doesn't look like it's going to appeal to me. I'm very particular about what I like, and these are already setting off red flags for me - I'm still going to give it a chance eventually, but that's my perspective going into it. lmao - while I'm usually a bit of a proponent for darker stuff (up to a limit, of course, and given the right kind of kid who can handle it) being suitable for younger audiences because of how meaningful and formative such works can be at that age, I think that's a bit much...

I noticed you didn't include Sailor Moon Crystal in your list of ratings. Care to revise your statement that nothing could really be worse than a 5/10 here? Don't expect to like Akira either, though I'll eventually try it just to try it because of how apparently important and great it is. Doesn't really seem like it'll appeal to me in any way. All your other ratings make sense to me. I didn't think to include movies, but that list would be a whole 'nother thing, especially if I were to include Ghibli movies. I wouldn't mind having a similar rating/time-keeping mechanism for both music and video games, but it's a lot of work to get started and keep up with...especially for music, where I have a ton of music and tastes are more subject to change over time than most other stuff. She's not really the type to suck the blood of randos, especially because her bloodsucking effectively ends her victims' lives by permanently placing them into a kind of catatonic zombified state, which she uses somewhat liberally to mercy-kill those whom she deems too hurt or damaged by the demons she hunts. Not a hundred percent sure why it works like that, but it's been the case in both the OVA and show.

Taiwan wins badminton gold medal for the first time over Mainland Taiwan in championship game, .

More Miyu. Last episode opened with Miyu's best friend Chisato asking Miyu if she could stay over night at Miyu's place, and Miyu not being able to accept because she's homeless and usually waits out her nights under the moon at the top of an unspecified shrine. Cut to nighttime and her doing exactly that while discussing with her pet demon their choice of locale...cue some woman screaming far off into the distance, Miyu tensing up and trying to spot the cause...and then seeing some guy killing himself by jumping off from a balcony many floors up in an apartment complex. Miyu looks slightly disappointed, then smiles - all is right in the world, . That's the kind of show this is, . ...Also, probably my two favorite episodes so far were the last two - moving on up towards a 7.5 if it keeps it up, .

In the event that it may help you, this is how I would rate a number of anime/cartoon shows I've seen thus far, movies included where applicable (...and using notes from the site where I rate stuff): Legendary Idol Eriko is currently teetering between a 7 and a 7.5, I think; the OVA Miyu was a 6.5, this anti-magical girl TV show Miyu is sitting at about a 7 as well six episodes in. A 6/10 is "fair", 7/10 "good", an 8/10 "great", and a 9/10 "fantastic"; I've never given out a 10/10. On my movie site, it says I have rated 324 movies with an average rating of 61%, so being a 7/10 is actually legitimately supposed to be "good". Anyways, hopefully this provides some greater context for how I feel about the shows I'm seeing/have seen, . *NOTE: My ratings are...I'd estimate roughly 75% subjective, 25% objective; I'm not about to give a show or film that was objectively well-made but very unappealing to me a 1/10 just because of that, and the inverse is true as well; so just because I place Cardcaptor Sakura higher does not necessarily mean it is my all-time favorite show over Steven Universe...just that its objective qualities are so good on top of being subjectively fantastic. Meant to reply to this at some point, but forgot. Well, first of all...it was the opposite for me, everything felt even dumber and more fraudulent because of both of those, but whatever, more importantly...

More Miyu: this show so far is functionally basically a not-as-good (in either senses of the word) horror version of Cardcaptor Sakura...but a horror version of Sakura is still pretty interesting.

If it makes you feel any better, I used to pretty regularly call you Skarpen_One before I used my adblocker to strip your existence from these forums via some custom filters, but...wait, why am I in here again? Oh, right, because I disabled my adblock a couple of days ago and forgot to re-enable it.

Vaguely reminds me of a post-nuclear war webcomic I read a decade+ ago about two guys wandering through wastelands and war zones while pondering what they're doing and why and whom they're fighting in the first place, .

lmao I just saw the two(?) main characters, and they're so bad, they're almost good - it's like the designers just said screw it and gave up entirely. ...Almost good, but not quite - some tweaking to make them look a little more tooney, and I think they could've gotten there, . Maybe head shapes that didn't look like watermelons would've been a good place to start...

More Eriko, bad things continue to be bad get worse, actually: Different voice actors means I'm out already, . Feel free to spoil everything! (...Unless it spoils something in the real Sakura, that is!)

Can't entirely blame you, it was a bit all over the place...

Larva, her slave demon that's behind her in the poster I included in my previous post about the OVA? There's also been a couple of other demons who have had masks associated with them, including one that was Majora's Mask-esque and whose entire being was infused into its mask. It's weird and different, but not bad at all. The OVA was an especially strange watch with some digestibility and pacing oddities, but kept our interest long enough to finish its short run. The show in comparison has been a little more normal and definitely more focused and direct, but that's not entirely unwelcome after the quirkier OVA. Both the show and the OVA would probably have looked awesome in HD, but sadly, DVD only.

More Vampire Princess Miyu...(1997) this time - a 26 episode show was made ten years after the original OVA, although it doesn't really look or feel like it, since art style, designs, sound effects are remarkably faithful to the original 1988 OVA (they even brought back Miyu's unique action sound effects, which is nice - very much feels like it was made with the original OVA strongly in mind). Three episodes into this one, feels like it has a lot more room to breathe without trying to cover some major story arc in such a short amount of time like the original OVA had to. It's also focused way more on Miyu herself and she is consistently the protagonist, which is nice. Oddly, it seems like this show takes place before the OVA - she seems younger and kinder in personality/perspective, and she's even still attending school (and has a few human friends!). So...kind of different from the OVA, but lots of similarities...enjoying it so far.

Saint Maud (2019). Religious horror/thriller: kind of disappointing? Nurse is convinced she must save her very sinful patient from the clutches of hell. Film leaned too heavily on quick cuts and CGI to drive home certain critical scenes and IDK, just felt kind of goofy and weird to me. Seems like it wanted to be a The Witch but didn't quite get the memo on less being more and staying as grounded as you possibly can given the subject material. Just didn't quite come together for me.

Yeah, that's literally my one complaint with them, feels oddly a little uncomfortable coming from my Beyerdynamic DT 770s. Otherwise, besides that, they've been awesome.

Purchased some bluetooth noise-cancelling headphones a few days back on an impulse when I saw them go for a hundred dollars off. Been playing around with them yesterday and today, and I'm thinking I should've done this a long time ago. 30+ hour battery life with like a 45 minute to full charge isn't all that inconvenient, either.

Needed something a little lighthearted to watch to take a break from my lighthearted anime, so I watched Vampire Princess Miyu (1988). Turns out, something that looked like this wasn't very lighthearted either. Who could've guessed?

Five more episodes of Eriko. Stuff and things happened, and now... P.S. 80s/early 90s anime in real HD is always *chef's kiss*. Such a shame Sailor Moon's original materials were lost, .

He's already practicing, although he apparently just hurt his shoulder, so I would expect so. So...the Rodgers drama comes to a truce for the time being. Based on what both the Packers' front office and what Rodgers has said, I would think this is about 99% the last year Rodgers plays in Green Bay. Rodgers had like an hour long press conference yesterday where he really allowed answers to fly in a calm but honest fashion, and boy did he sound a sort of understated sad when he talked about the issues that lead to all of this (refusing to allow even the slightest amount of input or discussion about decisions that directly affect him and his play personally, insulting long-time veterans on their way out the door, never ever communicating what they were doing or trying to do to anybody outside of their FO circle in advance, and generally just treating all their players like completely disposable employees instead of, you know, a team), and he seemed pretty resigned about the whole thing and very skeptical about his future in Green Bay. I almost always fall on labor's side, and this is no different - looking forward to following whatever team Rodgers ends up on next year...hopefully it's not the Patriots - my expectation right now is either the Broncos, Panthers, maaaybe Steelers? I don't know, but I'm pretty confident it's not going to be the Packers.

If Mike and Rich were still watching it to torture themselves purely for my entertainment, I'd be celebrating right now, but sadly they gave up and so now I'm mad they'd greenlight such a large amount of flaming crap all at once, .

Summer of Soul (2021). The official snippet: "During the same summer as Woodstock, over 300,000 people attended the Harlem Cultural Festival, celebrating African American music and culture, and promoting Black pride and unity. The footage from the festival sat in a basement, unseen for over 50 years, keeping this incredible event in America’s history lost—until now." A little bit of a frustrating...documentary? I thought it was going to be only or at least mostly music, but instead the music is constantly interrupted and talked over with contemporary commentary both from still living performers who were originally there, attendees who felt it was the world to them and how great it is that everyone else can finally know that it actually happened (optimistic take, folks!), and just...I guess modern celebrities who know about it. I get that it was an important moment and so it's helpful to provide context, but I wasn't really in the mood to watch something like The Sixties - it billed itself on more just being the lost footage of an incredible event, and so I more just wanted to watch the performance itself, . What I saw and heard of the performers and the crazy crowd themselves were fun and neat, though - hope they archive all of that footage and someday present a more...concert film-like presentation of it without all the fluff.