Bartimaeus

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984). The titular character feels better integrated with her world and community within the first fifteen minutes of this film than Ashitaka ever does throughout the entirety of Princess Mononoke, giving her (and us) a reason to actually care about the ensuing events, and really, that's all that needs to be said...but I'll say more, both positive and negative. While she and Ashitaka may both be Mary Sues that basically never have incorrect impulses or decisions, she at least doesn't always perfectly succeed at what she intends to do, and nor are there ego-stroking sequences where she clearly goes beyond what is reasonable or possible (think Ashitaka disarming and knocking out both Lady Eboshi and San in the middle of their battle in the most "I am the shonen protagonist" way possible, followed by him getting shot in the chest and continuing to carry San to safety with barely a stumble, then with him lifting up a million pound gate with one hand even while losing gallons of blood, concluding with him finally collapsing only after he and San are safe so that she can take care of him...it's all so incredibly eye-rollingly male, it just about makes me want to puke). Nausicaa also doesn't say stuff or express herself in a way that makes me think she's an alien like Ashitaka frequently did...not to mention actually having somewhat of a personality, which he critically lacked (probably deliberately in order to make him a better viewer stand-in, but even if that's the case, I still did not like it). Nausicaa is rougher around the edges: the animation is a little more inconsistent (and to me, not as appealing for the most part even if it's still great), the sound design is more crude by far, the silly tiger-lemur thing shouldn't have been in the film because it adds very little to it or Nausicaa herself (actually, it probably takes away from Nausicaa because she's already shown to have a knack for communicating with animals by that point, so adding on even more by having her instantly tame the little bugger was a bit too much, particularly when it kind of just stuck around pointlessly), the film feels just a little lackadaisical and/or off-kilter at times (it's made in the 80s...), and really, Princess Mononoke seems like the tighter and more focused film in general...but Nausicaa and how the movie directs itself around her isn't the rotten apple that spoils the entire thing, so let me once again make it very clear that I value characters above literally everything else by saying that Nausicaa handily wins the comparison against Princess Mononoke almost entirely because of that, . Now if for some reason that doesn't matter to you (or if you can accept and/or identify with Ashitaka for what he is, which presumably a large percentage of people are able to do considering that he was clearly designed to be a viewer stand-in even as unfortunately male-coded as he and the movie are...on top of lacking any kind of personal perspective to give him some kind of cause or motivation for anything), then I can understand liking Princess Mononoke more. It's a shame too, because I like the setting, a lot of the themes, and the ideas of characters in Princess Mononoke, but...I've watched Princess Mononoke three times now, and it just doesn't come together for me; Nausicaa may start off slow, but it does.

I watched it again, and I think I liked it even more. It's a really...cathartic movie, at least for me. Beneath the veil of silliness is a simple but powerful message that hurts so bad but also just fundamentally feels good, in a way that a lot of other movies try but almost universally utterly fail to achieve. Without the themes and characters shining so brightly for me, I probably wouldn't go for the silly action or mad-hat style of narrative, but since they do, it's okay.

Tales from Earthsea, part 2:

Tales from Earthsea (2006). Hey, maybe it's not as bad as I thought it was when I watched it, time to go into it with a clean slate once again. ...Or maybe I just wanted to watch Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind last out of these lot, so I could end on a high note, . "I sense the Light dimming, Your Majesty." "The Light?" "The Light of the Balance that sustains the world." Four and a half minutes in, and I already know this isn't going to go well because of these lines. It's not just because of how dumb it sounds, but the context of it as well: this is the wise king talking to his loyal archmage, and "The Light" and "The Balance" sure sound like important concepts in this world...that apparently the king has never even heard of. There are ways to introduce these concepts (even as boilerplate as they are) to the viewer, and using the king and his archmage just ain't it. Once again, at least I'm watching in Japanese so I don't have to actually hear this stuff out loud. The Byzantine-ish fashion of the royalty looks nice, though...not that they stick around for long, what with Prince Patricide running the show.

I once tried to watch The Last Unicorn, think I only got about halfway through. I remember hating the titular unicorn, but I don't remember for sure why. Similarly, it's been two years since I watched Tales from Earthsea, and mostly what I remember is a cast of characters that called into question the wisdom of the current legal status of abortion in the U.S. (particularly with regards to the protagonist), a world that felt like it was only a couple of Baldur's Gate 1 wilderness areas large, a pathetically generic and one-notey soundtrack, wondering what the heck the movie was trying to accomplish throughout its run time given that it's clearly supposed to be a crappy shonen adventure film, and it having an ending so bad that I wanted to turn off the universe. Perhaps I should revisit it so I can possibly upgrade my 2/10 into a 3/10, because that seems like a good use of my time, .

I don't know if it was like this everywhere else, but in 2020 aka Year of the Covid, for literally about two months after July 4th people were lighting up fireworks late at night...every night without fail. Death to fireworks and those who light them.

4th of July has become my least favorite holiday over the last few years because of both this phenomenon and because so many of the people who most fervently celebrate it seeming to be less than my ideal kind of people. To all of those who are decent and sane still trying to hold the fort down, I salute you...but it might be a lost cause at this point.

Ah, now everything starts to fall into place...

Oh no, don't worry, I have the soundtracks and the movie for Whisper of the Heart, . (e): Ninja-ed by majestic. A friend of mine actually described watching Princess Mononoke as being like playing a video game - with the viewer being Ashitaka, the protagonist. It's a weird comparison, but it somehow makes sense and is kind of along the same lines as how I felt. Angel's Egg:

I mentioned that I might re-watch this one because while I saw artistic merit, it felt like I just didn't get it which made it difficult to actually enjoy...but I didn't expect to watch it again so soon when I wrote that (I was thinking more like a year or two from now), and I surely didn't expect that my impression of it would change so much. Well, perhaps that's why I was motivated to re-watch it this quickly, because it stuck with me longer than I expected. Angel's Egg was cute, a little haunting, moody and atmospheric, oh so pretty...and I actually really liked and enjoyed it. It's still incredibly slow, super understated, and laden with symbology, but I was okay with that - heck, I got chills down my spine a few times and even teared up at one part. Still don't think I could recommend this to @majestic based on what I know of his tastes, but I'm glad I gave it another chance - I usually...eventually try to do so in these sorts of "I don't get it, but I don't dislike it either" situations. Also very much what @kirottu said in that you kind of have to find your own meaning/value in it, I think. This is the film I most wanted to re-watch right after Princess Mononoke because I felt as though these two had a number of similarities...but I didn't want to force @majestic into watching it before he was ready, so what a happy coincidence that he decided to watch it all on his lonesome. I'll get back to your post after I've re-watched it in Japanese as well. The music is undoubtedly the best part of Princess Mononoke - I may not keep the film around, but I sure will keep the soundtracks.

Downfall (2004). That one German film where the funny Hitler meme videos come from. It's been about fifteen years since I last watched it, and it doesn't hold up quite as well as I thought it would; there's way too many very pointed "how could we have known this would happen"-type inserts that feel clumsy and out of place throughout the film. When the film is just proceeding along without the overbearing moralizations is when it's good, but there are too many such detours that awkwardly feel somewhere between either self-apologist or revisionist.

Dark, the end. If you didn't like season 2, I don't recommend coming back for season 3 because it's just more of the same. It's a neat and unique narrative, but the amount of times where our main characters are basically told "[person] was wrong/lying, now listen to me and you'll finally get out of this mess..." just for them to do the same exact thing with the next person they see was pretty ridiculous - it was like they would always do whatever the last person they talked to told them to do, no matter how insane it was. I think I tend to like the first seasons of dark serialized dramas more than the ensuing ones because the first ones are simpler and have more time for the character stuff, while later seasons are all about moving the increasingly complex narrative forward. It's more admirable than wheel-spinning (see: Stranger Things), but it's still not exactly my cup of tea when it goes on for too long, and this one did feel like it was for a bit too long. I guess I should be thankful there wasn't also a fourth or fifth season as well... @Lexx Definitely thought it should've been the other way around as well re: Max and Eddie. Whatever, .

I'm glad to have had the good fortune to watch some that I did like before being subjected to a bunch that I thought were somewhere between lacking and embarrassing. Most of the older "greatest anime movies of all time" fall in the former (lacking) category, while most of the newer ones fall in the latter (embarrassing). I didn't think about that, but maybe that's why I hate him. Too strong, too right, and too little personality...and he also makes everyone else come across as patently stupid because he thinks and does what everyone else seems unable or unwilling to, which only draws more attention to how dumb and shortsighted they all are (while also coming across as being kind of unreasonable himself - more on this later!). I guess it's not as bad as your slapstick or ecchi shonen protagonist, but those kinds of crap-tier protagonists aren't found in films of Princess Mononoke's calibre in the first place. I don't know if you've played Half-Life 2 (I think you have?), but it comes to mind as a comparison because of Alyx Vance. Everyone who's ever played that game always loves her, but I've always disliked her because she feels like she was designed specifically to stroke the player's ego for doing everything and anything throughout the course of all three HL2 games, and it's always felt kind of weird and gross to me. Although accomplished in a different manner, that's more or less what Ashitaka seems like as well: he's clearly supposed to be a stand-in for the viewer, and he says and does everything that the viewer would ideally do if they were as strong as him while in his position with the same lack of personal perspective that he displays (after all, the only reason he doesn't belong to any side and can thus be "the reasonable one" constantly shouting "why can't we all get along?" to everybody is because he doesn't have any strong ties to any of the different groups, same as the viewer - if it were his own people/family at stake, he would immediately choose the relevant side and become unreasonable the same as everyone else). It's like the movie is constantly telling us "yes, you the viewer are right for thinking the way you do!", and I kind of hate it. I don't want protagonists that would be like the ideal version of myself if I were dropped into this story with no personal stakes in order to solve it - that would be awful. My favorite protagonists tend to be well-meaning but totally divergent characters that do things in a completely different fashion than I would (sometimes more effectively, sometimes less!)...while actually having some kind of personality combined with their own motivations that makes them different and interesting. I think you could pretty easily consider San to be literally mentally disabled to a degree as a result of her wolf upbringing, but I still would've much rather seen her be the protagonist than Ashitaka. Plus, then we would've seen her grow independently without being totally dependent upon Ashitaka as the shonen protagonist crutch that solves and makes everything better - see what I mean in that he makes everyone around him look stupid while not being interesting or fun himself?

Yeah, I watched it, it was pretty whatever, I didn't pay attention to anything that wasn't the main group (i.e. Steve, Nancy, Dustin et al.). Stranger Things started out as such a good blend of tension, intrigue, characters with actual development and arcs, fun and smooth dialogue/action, and some heartfelt resolutions...and what is the show now? It has lost all of that except for the "fun and smooth dialogue/action" because the show clearly had zero idea on what to do with its characters and became much more pre-occupied with the TV equivalent of wheel-spinning (i.e. staying in the same place doing the same thing over and over again). I guess it's what most people expect and want, but it all feels kind of rather hollow and pathetic to me. Lot of different paths they could've gone down with this show, but they chose this one.

You're barking up the wrong tree regarding cheeses - with the exception of when used for Mexican food, I don't like or eat cheese, .

Hey, it could be worse: you could also have some atrocious-looking manga to read as well, .

My current system is an M2 500 GB Hynix P31 Gold (system drive) and an M2 2 TB Mushkin Pilot-E...it's nice having them right on the motherboard instead of having to fiddle with SATA stuff. Plus, well, the case I have only allows for two HDDs anyways (which are occupied by two 14 TBs). Meanwhile, my GPU (a GTX 1060) is quite literally the cheapest component of my system because I don't play games...

My primary concerns with SSDs are reliability/longevity and random reads/writes. The difference between 2000 MB/s and 3000 MB/s sustained reads/writes is pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things when random reads and writes are much greater determiners of real world performance (unless you genuinely have some specialized use case). My personal experiences with SSDs thus far have been: three Samsung, four HP, one Hynix, two Sabrent, three PNY, and one Mushkin. So far, the only bad experiences were with the PNY drives, all of which had immediate problems right off the bat and of which two catastrophically failed within twelve months. Otherwise, everything else has been fine. All the others are still in use and work somewhere between well and superbly. Really, for most purposes, any SSD is more than adequate, so I don't usually stress out about the numbers as much as I do knowing that it's a decent brand (or a decent rebrand).

International leagues without competitive balance at least make a kind of sense, since they're pitting the top-end players of each nation against each other, but intranational leagues that don't have it feel like a joke to me. I would agree for the most part - don't hate the player, hate the game. But there are particular players like Durant that are pretty much impossible not to hate because of how far they take it. If he goes to Pheonix or something, it's going to be difficult to be happy about it.

No, I think the "championships above all else" mentality is pretty silly*. I want some competitive balance to make the sport interesting (see: me hating college football), and taken to its logical extreme, championship-chasing undermines that (on top of devaluing championships period). Both the NBA and NFL thankfully have a salary cap that makes it so things don't usually get too extreme, but I'd actually like to see them become even more stringent than they are. I'm pretty happy when guys like Jokic take a trillion dollars and stay with the team that made them instead of going to whatever's the current hot destination. Somewhat conversely to me wanting more stringent salary caps, I'd also like to see stronger benefits in the NBA and especially the NFL for teams that draft players to be able to then retain their own players - for the NFL, something like a 10% cap discount if you drafted them would be pretty cool for encouraging homegrown talent to stay where they are, since the cap savings can then be passed on to pay those players more than competing outside offers. I like teams having consistent faces and identities over a long period of time, it makes them unique and memorable...as a opposed to the circus clown crap that happens too much in the NBA, where teams are made and then implode in the span of a couple of years. *I mean really, even right after the Bucks won the championship two years ago, I said the journey was more fun than the destination, didn't I? Sticking to my guns here...

If the cost of blowing up what seems to be a failed superteam is actually making another (and presumably more successful) superteam elsewhere, it'd be bittersweet at best, wouldn't it? Situation could easily be worse and not better once he's traded - we'll see where he goes. On a side-note, considering the Brooklyn Nets' historical lack of success and the fact that this "superteam" obviously didn't work out, I guess my ire is more reserved at the offending players in question and less the team in this particular instance.

The 970 EVO is considered to be the superior drive, AFAIK. Has actual DRAM instead of using HMB. HMB is fine for budgety stuff, but pay the extra $10 for the DRAM if you can - it was the key distinguishing feature that I waited for so long when I finally got my 2 TB SSD like a year and a half ago.

He might actually win games on another team, so not particularly, .

Tutu predates BGT; BGT allows you to play both within the same game and provides a bridge of sorts between the two. EET is the equivalent on the Enhanced Editions (but also requires Siege of Dragonspear).