Bartimaeus

I tried reading it right-to-left for the first couple of pages but then I figured out it must've been mirrored because it really literally made no sense right-to-left at all, and the dialogue bubbles just didn't flow that way anyways. Um...I like both the OVA and the TV show a lot better, Miyu is a bit more silly and immature as well as kind of...clingy(?) in the manga (they seemed to have aged her up a couple of years in both the OVA/show at least personality-wise), and the artwork was...inconsistent. There were some pages where I was like "hey, this actually looks pretty good", and then others where I was like "...what am I even looking at here? whatever, read the dialogue and go to the next one because I ain'ts got the patience to spend more than a few seconds to decipher these scribbley drawings". I really like the aesthetic of the OVA, but the fidelity/transfer quality is poor, which is sad. If only that was in HD...the fidelity of the later show is much better, but while I'm FINE with the art style, I definitely don't like it as much as the original OVA's. Oh.

Yeah, silver would've made a lot more sense. I'll try another episode either today or tomorrow...or never, . In other news, I read the first manga (book, chapter?) of Miyu, my AMA (ask me anything) starts now...and it thus concludes, because I don't think I could answer any questions about it anyways because that was just about impossible to make sense of* - I think the TV show and even the OVA do a better job of communicating than the manga does (particularly because many of the action scenes are just haphazard scribbles that I can't really follow). Thank you all for coming, have a wonderful day! *It's also distinctly possible that I am just the bad at reading manga.

Alright, fine, here we go, I'm going to watch the first ten minutes of the first episode (or maybe more if I feel like it). First observations: 1. These CGI pans are terrible and distracting. 2. "Why did you pick the puppy?" "The Major's old brother called me Gilbert's dog." Whoops. 3. The character animation isn't as bad as I expected...most of the time. Though unfortunately, depth of field always has the opposite of its effect intended on me - instead of focusing on the non-blurred object, all I can see is the fact that everything else is a disgusting smeared mess...and this show has already been making liberal use of it in just this first episode. 4. Adamantine arms? ...I feel like it would've been better not to specify that, given how out of place fantasyland "adamantine" sounds. I finished the episode, and it was okay, it didn't really make me want to kill myself, but I have some...inherent stylistic issues with the dialogue and premise that also don't make me too terribly enamored with it either, .

Ah, small bit of confusion on my part, didn't realize there was a second movie. I see the Russian one now...looks fine video quality wise, but if the audio is as bad as you say, I'd rather just wait for the real release...if it were me. I/we haven't decided yet on watching that yet, .

I see the 34 minute OVA opera singer special, the regular show, and the 90 minute "Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll" movie on Netflix.

That's the beauty of Cardcaptor Sakura - I think I said it before, but the way the show balances between being cute, funny, dramatic, heartfelt, and simply beautiful without ever sticking too hard one way for too long is like...perfect? Yeah, perfect. If every single episode was like that episode, it'd start feeling too hammy and melodramatic...but it doesn't. It went harder into dramatic and heartfelt and it worked perfectly because it was driven by an important character moment that was extremely deserved. That's the ideal, and it's rather alarming how often Sakura manages to do that. Great episode, just like the one before it, but for completely different reasons. I wouldn't even know where to start with top ten episodes...but once we've finished the show, we really ought to make such lists and compare, .

No, but I literally just finished watching the next episode. Yeah, so if Meiling isn't back sometime soon, Sakura is going to be cancelled. But she did promise that she'll be back, so you know, I'm gonna trust her on this. Because otherwise Sakura is going to be cancelled, and that'd be really dumb.

And speaking of Cardcaptor Sakura...

I do think it gets way less dumb and way more enjoyable. Uh, hopefully you'll agree, . If it had been just me watching it, I probably wouldn't have gotten past the first couple of episodes because the teen drama (and it is the very worst kind IMO) and the sort of dumb, irreverent tone the show was enough to send me packing...but I wasn't watching it alone, so I picked out the few characters who were initially likeable (Omni-Man, the Mauler Twins, Atom Eve kind of...well, the most out of all the teen characters in my opinion anyways) and grew to like it a lot more from there. Yeah, she's pretty weird/cool. While the writing of either the OVA or the show isn't like awesome by any means (it's certainly not Sakura), it's her character combined with being in this sort of understated contemporary horror setting that manages to stay relatively grounded which makes me like it a lot more than I perhaps should. It's one of those cases where it's like, yep, this is simply inherently appealing to me on multiple levels.

That's a whole lot of recognized voice actors, . By the way, did you ever check out the English dub of either this or especially the original OVA? The TV show is bad, but the original OVA is terrible. I could make a clip for you if you didn't have the opportunity. While the first episode was like that, subsequent ones are not and don't really lean on Miyu being like a "secret protagonist" or anything like that.

I was wondering about that, because this episode is hella dark. Here's the Hulu version that I just grabbed to compare even more: ...Seems like the Hulu version is maaaybe the best one? Honestly, the more I look at it, the more it seems like the DVD has the most amount of detail even though it's the lowest resolution... Anyways, I watched it - for being a bottle episode, it was pretty decent. Though it's still not really my cup of tea and I'm not a live action sci-fi guy, and...wait, why did we get to the subject of this show again?

More Eriko. Eriko gets a gig as a radio host, and while her first day on the job goes fine...

I was completely resigned to Hillary winning...but in the context of being a Bernie guy, where it felt like a guy with at least some amount of moral fiber actually got a good amount of following for once. Instead, I was terrified when Trump won. For now, the very worst imaginable has been averted...but it sure felt like it got close. The seditionists, a number of which who had just been chanting "HANG MIKE PENCE" outside, were one solitary hallway away from getting to the Vice President in the name of the President who had egged them on and refused to call in the National Guard (or anyone else) to quell the insurrection. If not for some clever security guards who properly used their training to redirect them... So many people look at Trump losing as being "well, that's the end of that terrible era of the U.S."...but I'm sitting over here praying that it's not foreshadowing of things to come. These sorts of political movements ebb and flow, and extreme ones such as these especially come about for specific reasons that make them more persistent than you could ever reasonably believe possible. KP may be right that what tries to replace Trump may be just as terrible (or even worse!) than the man himself, but unless they have that magic demagogue instant appeal that has rapturously captured nearly 40% of our country (which is a quality, I think, rarer than one might expect), I will still be hoping he passes as quickly as humanly possible for at least some people to get over him and return to the realm of sanity.

uBlock Origin is erasing them and leaving a giant empty gap (so at least I know when people are posting them) on here all of a sudden the past few days as well, haven't yet tracked down the specific element causing it, though. But at least I can disable uBlock Origin and have them appear...

Trevor Moore, most notable for being one of the main guys of The Whitest Kids U' Know. Always thought that show was awful from a number of clips I had been sent over the years because they didn't know how to time or structure their jokes quite right, but the ideas of their jokes weren't bad and comedy is super subjective and as far as I know he wasn't a terrible person, so...RIP. Cause of death not specified beyond "accident".

A post on the subject of Trump and what it means for the U.S. going forward I just read and came by to post (although it's probably too long that most people won't bother...but I think they should if they're at all concerned with the growing fascist movement in the U.S.): If the wheels are not already currently in motion to nail Donald J. Trump, by whatever legals means possible, by whatever parties capable of doing so, then I don't even know what to say, except that I very much fear 2024. Trump is one of a very few people whose sudden death I would feel a palpable sense of relief for due to the risk he poses to all that is sacred in our little democracy, and never mind the rest of the world.

I've watched a handful of episodes of the 1963 The Outer Limits. Remember it being mostly kind of awkward and weird, . Anyways, glad you enjoyed Miyu, and I do think the TV show will probably feel a little better put together, .

It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure it was Hellsing Ultimate, which I believe is the later one. @majestic I skipped past all of the absolutely embarrassing intro stuff and landed in him talking about the intro...and then heard Usagi voicing Darth Vader at like the 4 minute mark. I thought that was funny. Him himself, not so much.

I made it 25 seconds in before I had to close it. Does it only get worse from there? Also, I'm not familiar at all with Lindsay Ellis' former Nostalgia Chick persona except that I know that she says it was terrible and bad and please don't go back and watch those videos - was it really like this?

I saw her avatar here and was like "with an avatar like that, she's a hundro percent a turbo-tumblr-er, I probably don't have to but let's make sure". Yup. And then she started animating her own little character graphics because I guess using words isn't her strong point... Suffice to say, think I'll stick to Lindsay Ellis. ...Now if only Lindsay Ellis did video essays on Sailor Moon and Utena, . @Sarex Thanks for the recommendations. I actually checked out Hellsing once upon a time ago, wasn't really to my taste for a variety of reasons, but I just took a quick look at Monster and that looks a bit more up my alley.

I guess technically I don't really understand what Miyu is doing to them when she "seals" them away - to my eyes, it doesn't really seem any different then e.g. killing an extraplanar in D&D, which "kills" their form here but really sends them back to their home plane in some fashion. So the implication to me was that she did, for all practical purposes, actually kill them, even if they aren't necessarily in a state of absolute death, .

Yeah, watched that yesterday, seems pretty neat. Probably something you want to wait until the second generation comes out so they can fix whatever major hardware issues arise, though...

P.S. If anyone knows any other dark/horror animes/cartoons like Miyu (i.e. doesn't have to be a masterpiece by any means, not super action-heavy but some is fine, more character-driven, preferably made between the 70s and 90s...or later if the style isn't totally terrible I guess, I'd at least look to see if I could jive with it), be sure to let me know. I did some searching but was really only able to come up with a couple of okay-ish possibilities. Miyu seems especially rare because it's actually still considered shoujo even though it's dark and horror, so it seems very unlikely I'd find something quite like it again, which would be a shame indeed because this cross-section of genres kind of feels like it could really be my jam if more of it existed.