Bartimaeus

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.

Yep, all that seems legit to me! I'm sure I would've been able to come up with that if I had just thought about it for a few more minutes, .

I couldn't make much sense of the movie. It seemed like a re-telling of the same story that randomly added and retconned a bunch of stuff. Also much more direct in trying to get what it wanted to say across, yet felt even more incompetent. I completely gave up about halfway through, .

Thanks for the write-up, all of that makes sense and seems like a good way to interpret what was intended. In regards to Ohtori, I think it doesn't really matter what it is, to be honest - kind of besides the point, I think, .

I don't know about anyone else, but yesterday's weather was bordering on apocalyptic yesterday here. Skies went green: insane lightning storm that lasted from like 8 PM to maybe 2 AM with literally 70mph winds that were knocking down or outright breaking trees in half left and right, plenty of hail, some flooding, and the power was out most of the night. Saw a neighbor nearly get squashed by a big chunk of their oak tree snapping off and missing them (as in their actual person, because they decided being outside during the worst of all of this was a good idea) by literal inches. Stay indoors during insane weather if you can, folks.

I used to hate the emote reactions, but then I learned that they're actually good for either acknowledging someone's post without having to directly respond (especially where a response wouldn't really be necessary outside of the acknowledgement itself) OR for when you forget to actually quote what someone said and you want to make sure they're given some kind of alert. Because of that, I got more into the habit of using them, .

Yeah, I'm not sure what the mental block with CCS is - when I muster up the energy and motivation, it always continues to be the most amazing show that I utterly adore, but for some reason, it's so difficult to get past that. I think I'll have more in me next week to get a few episodes done. The plot has been relatively dark and certainly much more serious than I expected, but it doesn't feel as dark as you might necessarily expect based on how I described it. In addition to the show just feeling more old-fashioned than you might expect (in terms of tone and style, it really feels more like something closer to...say, Heidi than like...Sailor Moon, if that makes any sense), I think the biggest thing that prevents it from feeling more dark is that the uncle is like moustache-twirlingly evil while also being an utter baboon, and I would bet my life on him biting it in some way sooner or later here because this just cannot stand. Oh, and here's the intro if you want to watch it (note: watch in video player, not browser, because my video recorder decided to encode in x265 instead of x264 and apparently neither Firefox nor Chrome know how to play x265 or at least neither of mine do): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/tft08mgc1oe0l8c/OSwMO1UqEr.mp4 I certainly didn't expect all this terrible stuff to happen right away with a silly, gentle intro like that, . (e): On top of x265 not playing in browsers, it appears to be a little choppy - I see some funky chugging and frame skipping in that recording. Grr!

Feel free to do some research after you've finished everything and then write up a short essay for me once you've figured it out, because the movie sucked all will to care out of me, . In other news, my other party wanted to watch Nadia: Secret of Blue Water next, and I was like HELL NO, I need something silly and lighthearted in between that and Utena first. So now I'm five episodes into Legendary Idol Eriko, and it's...more old-fashioned than I would've expected? In terms of dialogue, writing, pacing - it feels 10 years Ranma 1/2's senior, more like something I'd expect to watch that came out in the late 70s/early 80s in that it's very direct, relatively simple, characters are certain expected archetypes, etc. But I'm still enjoying it, it's not an endless nightmare like the second half of Utena, so there is that. Although it's been less lighthearted than I expected...some relatively broad spoilers for the first five episodes:

I was more thinking I'd want an actual reaction emote, like you can do in the bottom right of other people's posts, for posts that are so inexplicably terrible that they warrant no response, just that look of disgust or outright death, . Some say you can still find traces of them in the darkest depths of these forums...

Yes, on second thought, the lack of "negative" emoticons is pretty wise: ignoring is much more effective.

There should really be a puking or skull or something emote reaction for occasions such as these.