Bartimaeus

Huh. Yeah. Figures. That does hint at more input from her, but who knows at this point. Truth still is, considering that the creative team took their hat and went to do something else after SuperS, is that the Toei messed it up. Hard. Oh by the way, something I haven't talked about. By the time the anime began airing they didn't even have the stock footage ready for it. The new transformations by Sailor Moon and Sailor Chibi-Moon and their new attack was... only partially on screen for the first two episodes. If that doesn't give any more credence to the troubled production theory, then what does? Probably more likely he was just being diplomatic: no producer for a show is going to be like "oh yeah we've had to do complete re-writes of the show for the past few seasons because the stuff in the manga was straight up unworkable trash", especially not for a liked author. I tried to go through some of the manga to see what it had to say about Helios, but this stuff is really difficult to even skim through: there's just so little that's fun or likable about it, everything is so danged serious almost all of the time outside of like the beginning of an arc, and it seems really repetitive. How did they ever make anything out of this?

Sorry, I can't watch AMVs: it's against my religion. And I gave it a try anyways and nearly spontaneously combusted instantly, so, you know, don't say I never did nothing for ya. Did she ever give her feelings on SuperS? You've mentioned her feelings on just about everything about the show EXCEPT that (I think!), so you know, I'm naturally curious... Sailor Moon S: The Movie! A few screenshots from near the beginning:

Oh, I've only taken some quick looks at some non-action scenes, so that makes sense.

Both you and Majestic have now mentioned SuperS as having the best animation, but I've taken peaks at it and it doesn't really look any different to me. What about it specifically looks better?

This seems like the same kind of specious reasoning that anti-vaxxers use to say vaccines cause autism. Yes, people who get vaccines also sometimes have autism...but unless the rates of autism between vaxxers and anti-vaxxers is significantly different (never mind the issue of reporting - I would imagine anti-vaxxers would be much less likely to bring in their kids to get tested for autism to begin with), then what are we talking about? Anti-vaxxers being worried about it is true to form - why are the experts?

Hope either/both are able to return. The NFL desperately needs a minor league to allow guys who are good athletes but bad at the football opportunities to grow, and while the CFL in of itself hasn't been exactly great for that, it's certainly a lot better than nothing. Drew Brees retired. Don't think we have any Saints fans here, but still kind of significant news. (e): Also, in Packers news, we just paid Aaron Jones a boatload of money...after having drafted a RB in the second round last year, who even looked quite impressive in the limited playtime he had behind two good backs. Ugh: I was so ready for him to walk and get overpaid by a different team. Paying RBs just...hasn't work out for basically anyone recently - I'd so much rather have the All-Pro center who was one of the critical component behind our collective RBs' success (as well as our QB's MVP season...), but I guess the Packers' brass feels differently. I guess Jones was only paid about 9 million a year with some additional incentives to earn an additional 3 million...and not a lot of it is guaranteed - compared to Elliot's 15 million a year with a big chunk of it guaranteed from a couple of years ago, I guess it's not the end of the world...but then again, Ezekiel Elliot has been an absolute workhorse every year but this past one, so eh.

hey pal, I'm sitting here minding my own business having SUCCESSFULLY FORGOTTEN that and you go ahead and remind me again, what's the big idea

Today is probably S: The Movie-watching day. If not today, then tomorrow morning: hope it's good.

I would've just kept it unplugged until at least ten minutes after the meeting started...juuuust to make sure.

@majestic @Lexx I took a glance at the show. Surprisingly great ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB - reviews mention that the show is both dark and gory as well as silly and comedic? Odd. I'm not one for straight superhero stuff, but if the main point isn't the superhero stuff, then it's not necessarily a dealbreaker. Animation style is kind of weird to me, but...not terrible, I guess - probably something you can get used to and learn to appreciate if you like the show otherwise.

@majestic @ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP I'm probably going to make pretty liberal use of my right arrow button when I watch SuperS...

@majestic Heh, I saw the original English dub of a scene from that episode a while ago, as well as some other random bits and pieces of SuperS and Sailor Stars. From just the clips I've seen, you'd almost think SuperS and Sailor Stars were just as good as the first three seasons...but I guess it's a bit of selection bias, .

Yeah, that episode is...well, it's just not that great - but yes, thankfully just 10 minutes-long. And now you're onto episode 16, which is significantly better, to say the least!

@majestic Missed your SU update: while I don't mind that episode one way or the other particularly*, I would say the very next one is probably my very least favorite episode of the season (and if not that one, then it's probably competing with only one or maybe two others for the spot). The good news is, there's a pretty good run of more interesting episodes (besides like maybe one) after that. *...Although only in retrospect: episodes like these are what the fandom somewhat derisively labeled "townie episodes" (episodes that didn't really have anything to do with the main characters outside of Steven and instead focus more on town characters), and I recall some of them being more a little more frustrating than others during my original watch of the show. In retrospect, most of them work a lot better and make more sense than you might think...but, you know, that's in retrospect - i.e. not to a new watcher.

this sounds like the very worst parts of the original sailor moon english dub

Al Franken? ...Crappy part is, Al Franken was one of the better senators around (in terms of actually doing their job).

so this is basically doki doki iliterature club but in tv format

All I'll say is that...............I'm glad that I can watch a few more episodes now that you've gotten a little farther in, . Though season 1 is more lowkey as I said, there are definitely details (both direct and subtext) to pay attention to.

Do you actually want me to answer those questions?

I wouldn't go that far - objectively speaking, most everything everyone does is a stupid waste of time, and I'm more inclined to believe the the main reason is sociological (after all, the idea of truly trying to achieve male-female equality becoming actually widespread throughout society is a relatively new one, and the effects of such inequality, same as in the case of e.g. institutional racism, are still heavily baked into and felt by our society, as they will be for decades and decades to come...and Chess, after all, has been a male-centric game for most of its existence). The first episode was my favorite episode - I thought it had a right mix of some funner (albeit small) character stuff while offsetting the more serious themes it was hinting at to come. But then again, I don't hate Chess (in fact I was little annoyed that they didn't spend a little more time showing the actual games at times, at least for the most important ones - there's only so many hours of looking at Anya Taylor-Joy's expressions that I can take!), and I have a positive predisposition towards some of the premise elements of the show. Ah well.

The article doesn't say and I can't seem to figure it out - what's the exact significance of it being abbreviated to "SAP"? All this whining and complaining from both the left and the right about DINOs and RINOs is kind of hilarious. Very often, these types of politicians are where they are because they are the only ones who can win given their locale. Joe Manchin is a conservative Democrat, and sure, that sucks right now for passing a progressive agenda...but he's the only kind of Democrat that can win in West Virginia at all. He might be literally the only Democrat who can win there at all given his long family history with the state. So if it wasn't him or someone just like him, the Senate would still be 51-49 Republican right now. Same with a few Republicans like Susan Collins of Maine. I bring this up because Trump is whining and screaming about RINOs in that linked article - whether you're Republican or Democrat, those compromise candidates are critical to being able to control the Senate - if you instead nominate a crappy full MAGA or full Bernie Sanders candidate in an area that isn't receptive towards them, congratulations on automatically losing any shot of winning that seat and instead handing it over to the opposite party. Though I bet it felt great for a while to be utterly deluded and nominate someone who was predictably and inevitably going to walloped, right?