Bartimaeus

lmao wtf, that Evergarden stuff sounds like a hilariously terrible trainwreck, everything about that sounds wrong. Character, plot, theme, scene framing stuff matters, guys! You can't just ignore that stuff! I mean, I've only seen the first episode, but dang.

Um, oops, I accidentally and mindlessly read the first couple sentences in your Evergarden spoiler here, and since I've actually watched the first episode, I know whom that is... Her and her psychotic doll, too, . CCS stuff:

Miyu is over. Feel a little drained, as is always the case when something important and unique to you ever so suddenly reaches its termination. Dark shoujo doesn't exactly seem to exist in spades, and especially not before the 2000s. The restraint of the show would no doubt make it ludicrously boring for modern audiences, not to mention our "hero" Miyu herself being so withdrawn, soft-spoken, and gentle in such a weird, sad, and almost kind of contradictory yet fitting way (after all, she herself is a creature of intense internal conflict). Never mind animation styles so drastically changing and making this kind of dark, surreal, but grounded aesthetic all but impossible, never mind character types used for shows like these changing, never mind voice acting styles changing, never mind...all of that. Like I said before, the show feels like such an odd, ultra-specific cross-section of genres and ideas made at a specific time that probably nothing else quite like it exists or is likely to ever exist again. If it's not for you, that's perfectly understandable...but it was for me, it was inherently appealing on just about every level in a way that other shows simply almost never can be for me. Thanks for coming to my TEDx Talk, and I'm sure @majesticand I will be talking more about it at length in the coming days as he watches more of it, so buckle up for getting spammed about it in this thread. Also, triple-posting is bad form, but these posts should really stay separate for sanity reasons.

Yeah. One thing I did notice from reading the first chapter of the manga is that...actually, wait, no, what I'd say wouldn't make sense to you yet, I guess I should wait until you're further in. Sakura, Kero, and the Mysterious Teacher. There have been a number times where I have gotten full-body chills while watching this show. Isn't that so incredibly bizarre how a show like this could do that, while stuff that is deliberately trying to elicit that reaction could never even dream of doing the same to me? Yet another measure of how much I'm into the show. Anyways, that happened again during the pre-intro for this, when Sakura was having her premonition again for the umpteenth time...but for some reason, it felt different than all the other times, and then boom, suddenly a third person(?) appeared. Somehow, the show clued me in to expect something different this time and then delivered. TOYA: "There is no such thing as coincidence." MIZUKI: "There is only the inevitable." Um... Yeah, if you two could like, not creepily say stuff like that right before the end of the arc, that'd be great.

I totally meant to type "she"... ...Uh, wow, what the hell was that? The line between 90s jpop and 2000s jpop has never felt so harsh as it does right here. Jeeze, and I thought the second one was a big step down. Guess I'll wait and see if Sakura can somehow make me like *that* too...good luck!

If we all start speaking only in Star Trekisms, perhaps he'll become a permanent resident.

Me too, will be going straight into the trash just like the Sailor Moon manga if I'm not pleased with it. In other news, I'll be finishing Miyu tonight. I'm a little...concerned about how this is shaping up to end.

I always feel bad someone puts time and thought into trying to recommend me something and I inevitably don't care for it at best, so I almost prefer that people don't ever try to recommend anything to me unless I have specific criteria that I can give (...and to be honest, I'm not really sure what I would even be looking for out of a manga to begin with*). It's especially almost impossible for someone who doesn't already have a good pulse on my specific likes/dislikes - out of anyone on the Obsidian forums, majestic has had some luck with anime but that's probably mainly because he just happens to love the same specific kind of silly girly stuff that I do...but even then, that's not by any means a guarantee. Whether it's movies, books, music, shows, games, it doesn't matter - I am simply the biggest and most persnickety bastard about what I enjoy across all mediums, . *I was specifically investigating Miyu because not only do I already really like Miyu the character, but I also really like its dark yet understated contemporary setting, its horror being largely character or concept-driven than any attempt at being "scary", art and dialogue being in styles I like, etc. The only thing I think I know him her from is scoring Satoshi Kon's Magnetic Rose, and though I liked the film (and I plan to re-watch it at some point), I've listened to the soundtrack a dozen-plus times, so I can't disagree with your analysis, . @KP the meanie zucchini Maybe...more likely it was just because I like Miyu and wanted to give it a chance to get better by the end. I'm not sure if I will try the second book or not.

1. Wouldn't that kind of hinge on actually really enjoying it? 2. I read most of the Dragon Ball (not Z) manga years ago, which I also only sort of enjoyed. 3. Now Codename Sailor V, if I ever get around to trying that, that will be the true test.

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.