Bartimaeus

Perhaps the association of ghosts with the dead and her mother? @KP the meanie zucchini Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan, episode 2: Well, like I said, I'm not complaining - kind of accidentally creating a really tense moment and almost sinister moment was strange but still cool, . Kind of makes me want to find out if the people primarily responsible for this made anything else that would interest me... That would be super annoying. ...I mean what you said in the spoiler, but really, everything that you said about the subtitles changing too. Speaking of, I've stuck with the original subtitles I had, which are probably different still from the English ones you have? The fan-subs were okay, but the writing "voice" feels different from the first set and it just didn't click as well. More evidence that the whole subs vs. dubs debate is asinine and it totally and simply depends on what works better for the individual and the quality of what you have for the specific show/movie, .

DEADBOLT. If you like Katana Zero or Hotline Miami, you may very well enjoy this, lot of similarities while offering some different things. Good game, not too long. NOITA. Looked neat, gave it a try, only ended up playing an hour, controls felt too weird and the wand system too annoying for me to bother further, plus I didn't really want to get into a roguelike of any kind if I wasn't a hundred percent sold on the gameplay. Wait! Life Is Beautiful! Played this one a while back, but don't think I ever wrote about it. It's a suicide simulator. Just kidding...kind of - just a little indie story/dialogue-based game where you can either try to prevent people from jumping off a bridge or goad them on. Interesting little game that you have to be in the mood for.

Okay, episode 16, Sakura goes on vacation way out in the countryside. I'm about five minutes in here, and I guess my question is...is Tomoyo going to stalk Sakura so hard that she somehow manages to follow her all the way out to the countryside, or is this going to be the first episode where Tomoyo doesn't appear? Because if it's the latter, I'm not going to watch even one more episode of this hot garbage, . (e): Next episode, the beach day/cave exploration episode, was awesome too. And it totally makes sense that Tomoyo is the calm and rational one about such things, given how she handles her feelings all of the time to begin with. There are so many nice little touches in these episodes that make them so good and satisfying. (e): Why was this so unsettling and tense? You'd think a bomb was about to go off or something from the music and visuals: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/7bf8lxi4rffcdd2/aAoPVzCXDO.mp4 Not that I'm complaining, since it made me go to the edge of my seat, but it felt a little out of left-field. And then just a minute or two later, I finally got Meilin's grand introduction. Hoo boy. Well, hopefully I don't find her intolerable.

time for a tournament, boys girls Reiterating once again that I'm simply not the type for grand story stuff like prophecies, magical heroes, fated destiny, etc.; it takes some reaaally careful planning and good ideas for the grand story stuff to really work for me. But even the basic premise of this and how Sakura became a MAGICAL GIRL is that hey, this deck of magical cards (and mind you it's not the only deck of magical cards in this universe, there are other families out there that have their own) was lost, its guardian is in a weakened state as a result of them being lost, Sakura just happens to have some latent magical ability and seems like a good sort, and so let's see if we can fix it while also trying to live her normal grade-school girl life. That's it: that's the show. I love that sort of simple reasonable happenstance, it only really lends to the show feeling a lot more grounded than you'd ever expect it to be. The show is so good that it has finally gotten me to genuinely like some Japanese voice-acting - that's the most shocking thing of all. Kero, Tomoyo, and now I'm even starting to like Sakura's voice... I am not joking when I say what a feat that is given my long-running dislike for Japanese VA-ing. Will that transfer over to other shows? Well...probably not, especially because the VA-ing in this is fairly naturalistic and low-key sounding by anime standards, I'd say...but still, impressive. Also, while a lot of modern anime may be lacking in that regard for my purposes, a lot of older stuff (i.e. the stuff I'm interested in) isn't, so maybe it will for certain cases.

Uh, wow. That's...a new low. I'm only surprised that they didn't instead code it to be explicitly Republicans only, but that probably would've been illegal someway...

I should note that I am reading your spoilers at a very low level (and not to mention very quickly) to avoid remembering spoilers, which makes it hard to respond to anything you might say in them, because responding to them would necessitate that I go to a higher level of awareness which would increase the likelihood of remembering spoilers. Surprisingly, I am way more concerned about spoilers for this show than I was for Sailor Moon - I'm much more into the overall story and individual episode plots here than I was for Sailor Moon. Sailor Moon has its great main cast and their interactions with each other and the ability to be laugh-out-loud funny and facepalmingly embarrassing (in a good way!), but Sakura has added additional elements of story and episode setups that while simple are genuinely well done in of themselves while still having very good character stuff. Cardcaptor Sakura, episode 14: This show is melting my brain.

Oh. Well, in that case, yes, 100%, . Yeah, the voice cast in general is not fantastic by any means, but Usagi as a grandma is the one that really stands out. My favorites from that cast would probably be S3-S4 Chibi-Usa (...yes, it's a different VA from S2 Chibi-Usa), who legitimately sounds like she could actually be a goofy little girl (...which sort of makes the SuperS stuff even worse, by the way), and probably Makoto. In contrast, S3-S4 Usagi, Mamoru, and maybe Ami are probably the weakest VAs - the former two as the two most central characters really shouldn't sound the way they do.

have you not been watching the dozens of OG dub clips I've been linking over the past year (Real answer is Luna always sounded like that in that dub for whatever reason, while Usagi's voice changed after the first couple of seasons because the season 1 and 2 VA got pregnant and decided she didn't want to do it anymore or something, IDK - somehow, they were unable to find someone better...somehow, I don't know how.) Ah, that must be why I immediately disliked him so much, . P.S. Not gonna watch the Tomoyo song, seems like it'd be too special to spoil pre-emptively! P.P.S. Some good YouTube comments on that video:

Even in the DiC dub, Minako is the best.

As if Mamo and Usako weren't bad enough...but at least they sound like proper nicknames.

Okay, Tomoyo is like borderline...not psychotic exactly, but something like it for Sakura's sake.

So now Tomoyo *and* her mom are both obsessed with Sakura...seems like the problem is genetic. The sight of her daughter grabbing Sakura's hand and leading her away was enough to drive the mom to literal tears. It's kind of messed up that the mom is only making time to see or interact with Tomoyo just because she wants to see Sakura...but I guess it's better than nothing! I love the attention to little details in this show in individual episodes, even if it sometimes makes setups a little predictable. For example, at the bus stop when Sakura gets off the bus, there's a very fancy gated wall to a property you can see right away and continue to notice as Sakura and Kero wander down the street, and I one hundred percent knew that that was going to be Tomoyo's property immediately upon seeing it long before it became clear to our characters. Or Tomoyo keeping Kero's love of cake in mind and taking a piece with her away from the table (without the show making any kind of active note of it but simply showing her demurely walking away with it) to bring to Kero in the next scene. They're little things that can be obvious to adult viewers and telegraph small bits of what will happen, but they help provide a sort of groundedness and sense to a medium that is often lacking enough of it. I wonder: are there animes in non-Japanese that try to tack on the honorifics in a horribly clumsy fashion? I hope so, but the seemingly unequal nature of their relationship would realistically make me fear that exactly what happened with both of their moms could very easily happen again to them and leave Tomoyo broken-hearted...but hopefully that's outside the timeframe of this show, .

Meanwhile, my subtitles call him "Xiaolong", because he's Chinese? I'm not a hundred percent certain. I found some other fansubs that have some additional stylization that looks nice and calls him Shaoran instead, but on the other hand, every single time somebody's name mentioned adds the annoying honorifics like "-chan" to the end, and I rather intensely dislike Japanese honorifics (bad enough I have to hear it, I don't also want to read it!), so I'm still debating...the writing is also somewhat different, and I'm not sure that I like it - maybe I'll make my own hybrid of them, but that's a lot of work. What a shame, . I liked the one where she was talking a mile a minute and had to cut herself off in the middle of her own sentence because she ran out of time to talk, but besides that, yeah, not usually the most interesting. and that better not change otherwise it'll be ME on that first flight back to Hong Kong smh

Remember when I said I hate achievements and pointless, annoying stat-tracking? Netflix keeping track of crap like the exact second you stopped watching every single movie and episode you've ever turned on for even a single second is another example of that. Luckily for me, my main method of watching stuff is NOT Netflix and so I view Netflix more of a trash-tier "let's watch either something for children or maybe just try something out that caught my eye", so I really don't care what it does or doesn't track - if it's something I actually love, it'll eventually be on my hard drives, so who cares? Speaking of Netflix, compare the raw bluray vs Netflix quality: Better crop, better colors, better quality...better transfer. Think I'll take the bluray, thanks, . The song's way better, too...and doesn't sound like literal pointless gibberish like the last one. Big improvement all around. (e):

I was talking Cardcaptor Sakura to someone else regarding the English dub, and we started looking up more online about it - apparently, the dub Netflix uses was an uncensored version that was made for Hong Kong, NOT the notoriously terrible made-for-America one. That explains why, while it's certainly not exactly good, it's also not horrifically terrible as reputed or has had piles of scenes (and entire episodes) cut. Not that it matters - I've settled on the Japanese dub (...or whatever you want to call the original audio track - I think I once had someone yell at me for calling an original VAing "the original dub" for lack of a better shorthand term to describe it, so don't @ me about it, I can't figure out a better way to describe what I mean and get it across even if it's inaccurate). Watched two more episodes, and I think the verdict's officially in - I really like Cardcaptor Sakura, . ...But I'm probably not gonna start writing long posts for each episode...maybe just something notable here and there - it takes a lot of time and effort and slows down actually watching it. Also, it's a good thing the show looks less like its promotional materials... ...and more like this: I'm the complete opposite: if I never hear another single word about any kind of stupid prophecy in anything fictional ever again, I would be all too happy, . I'm usually quite content with being low-key and silly story where appropriate, and it feels appropriate here. Speaking of Sharoan, think I just saw him at the end of episode 7. Not sure I like the sight of him...we'll see!

I'm tempted to link a clip of of Pearl saying "I think your calculations may have been off" and Greg's reply "they can't be off if you don't do any" because that's basically the situation with Sailor Moon in terms of planning, . Nice, I was wondering that - always love it when one-off characters/locations actually aren't as one-off as you might think. And if this ever devolves into a card tournament, that would be a crime against humanity. May be the type of show that benefits from an occasional break, . And yes, that's true - the character interactions aren't bad by any means, just different and clearly meant for a younger audience.

Uhh...who's Shaoran again? Oh, whatever, I'll find out sooner or later, . So I've watched five episodes now, and one thing I think this show improves on from Sailor Moon is that the Clow Cards create unique situations that actually organically interact with the world/characters, often times over a significant stretch of the episode, and have to be dealt with in ways that befit them. The cast and character interactions may not be as strong as Sailor Moon (although I think I'm quickly beginning to love the ever strange and gentle yet lurking and obsessive Tomoyo), but that particular point is a welcome change to make the issue of the day not feel either so formulaic or tacked on like it so often is in Sailor Moon. ...Then again, I'm only a handful of episodes in, so.

I always thought her face looked as if it was like...stretched across her model, sort of like... Yes, I did just compare Miranda to a mold of Squidward whose face was just flattened by Patrick's big butt - deal with it, . I'd also feel quite bad for saying/thinking that if I hadn't already looked up a picture of Yvonne Strahovski and concluded that BioWare did a hilariously bad job at modeling her, especially in light of Miranda having supposed "perfect genetics". Yeah, okay, BioWare. Although, to be fair, a number of BioWare's attempts at real-person modeling for Mass Effect went horrifically wrong, and it certainly was not limited to just Miranda.

I didn't even notice Rei's hair color - is it really full dark purple in Crystal? ...My gosh, I forget just how incredibly abysmal Crystal looked to start out with: What the absolute hell were you guys thinking with this? It really is a shame the entire show wasn't originally made in HD. I can watch freaking Speed Racer in HD, but not Sailor Moon...

Had Netflix on the TV sitting unwatched for a bit just now, and it automatically started showing little poster previews for shows. This popped up: Thanks Netflix, but no thanks. I really hate that. It's so needlessly questionable - literally, because when it happens, questions automatically start popping up in my head that wonder why the setting and period is so weird, . Hey, it was a useful experiment: now I know for sure something like that is literally never going to work. That's good information! I forgot Hitomi even existed. Like, I had to look up who that was because I'd forgotten about her so badly. I mainly remember her for being giving Sayaka exactly one day to figure things out with her guy, which I guess is better than nothing, but shove off. I've gotten more used to Tomoyo's voice already, probably for reasons you mentioned regarding her diction and voice evenness, so it's really just Sakura herself that is less than ideal. I think I'll get more used to it, it's not like she's driving me mad or anything. (e): A couple of more thoughts on Cardcaptor:

You merely failed to appreciate my complete, empathetic, and eternal rejection of all things modern anime...and the actual reasoning behind it and how that would apply to Madoka, . Speaking of terrible modern anime... https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/h1ps4yjrqgiv5zc/firefox_DvsDGWK47y.png Doesn't look quite as good as the original series, but it never does, does it? Although at least it's nowhere near as horrific as Crystal... (e): why can't I get any pictures to embed in this post, that's really weird I probably won't ever feel that way, as that style of voice-acting with all of the different unpleasant mouth sounds and such is just too grating for me, but it currently beats listening to that terrible Kerberos English VA, .

Felt nice to win that OT game against the Heat after last season. Would feel even nicer to win the series.

Okay, I watched the first two episodes - now at least I know those four, .

Robin Hood is an absolute gangster at leaf music. P.S. I should really watch an episode or two of Cardcaptor Sakura so I can at least read your posts without my brain breaking trying to figure out who's who, .

Though we initially committed to watching all three parts of Madoka Magica, we have decided it's for the best that we do not. One additional issue with these movies is how indigestible the movies are at close to 2 hours apiece for new viewers. Things probably would have gone at least a little better (although probably not that much) if we were watching it in 20-40 minute chunks instead. >I feel like they're being entirely unfair to Madoka's father here. He only got a handful of lines and does nothing offensive other than picking tomatoes! I know a lot of people who hate tomatoes for some reason, but surely none of you are among those, are you? Only in salsa...and not even as the main ingredient - onions make a better salsa base, . >One point about the exposition dumps by Kyubey: Those exposition dumps were...not great. They took all the mystery and fun out of Kyubey and the entire setup - I really, really don't need to know every single detail of how Kyubey and his race or magical girls operate (or have everything that just happened over the past few minutes prior re-explained again). Mystery or vagueness is almost always better if you don't have a good explanation for something. I had noticed they were a problem in the first part and had grown wise to them by the time we started the second part and started calling them out any time I thought they were going to happen, and I think I called them out about 4 times...and I was not happy to be right about it. Some subtlety here...and everywhere else would've been nice.