Bartimaeus

Robot Carnival (1987). This is the description: Nine different shorts ranging from 5 minutes to 20 minutes long created by (apparently) acclaimed animators about the interfacing of humans and robots/androids in a variety of ways. I slightly question the "8 of Japan's leading animators" bit of that description, because so much of the animation was kind of awkward and jittery in a way that it really shouldn't have been for a late 80s production, but I guess if I think about it, it might've just been the result of the film trying to do more fluid motion than most other affairs of that time and it looking pretty weird because of it. As for the shorts themselves, while I don't usually have issues with like 30-40 minute-long shorts because they have enough run time to breathe a little, I do usually dislike 15 minute and less shorts because...well, they're usually dead-set on getting exactly one idea across at the cost of everything else. Luckily, that wasn't much of an issue here because about half of the directors decided to make very serious action shorts that I nearly fell asleep through while watching, and one of the others was instead a silly action short (...which was at least better, I guess). Really, only exactly one was very interesting - the one where a guy made an android woman that he intended to be motherly owing to his own lack of a mom growing up, but who inexplicably came out...somewhat adolescent and promiscuous instead, causing him to want nothing to do with her. And even that one, it wasn't particularly interesting or good, more just "huh, that was kind of odd and different". All in all, Memories this is very much not, but I suppose it wasn't terrible either.

Isn't that what she originally wrote and then also re-iterated?

That's the maddening bit of it, and probably why I've watched the entirety of the last two seasons: the show has a lot of good moments that I enjoy. It all just gets so bogged down in the same Eleven + monster mash re-hash combined with the faux character drama stuff, and I just get exhausted from it. I want to like it without reservation, I really do, but I just can't seem to turn my brain off. Someone, please turn off my brain. Please, anybody, just turn my brain off - just for a day or two, flip that switch.

Stranger Things, episode 3. I am straight up not having a good time. Why? The first episode was ironically my favorite so far, but that might just be a function of the season seemingly still having a lot of promise that has completely evaporated since watching the succeeding two episodes, wherein the show has revealed that it will...seemingly be doing the exact same thing the last two seasons have done. There are still a lot of episodes left, so maybe it could change, but I feel really feel like I should just...flat-out stop watching, unless somebody can assure me that the rest of the season will be better. It's so maddening too, because there are stretches of the show where I feel like it's going pretty swell because it's just focusing on smaller and less important character stuff (which is exactly the only bits of season 2 and 3 that I liked), and then we go through other stretches where we get back to what's actually supposed to be important, and I just want the show to be turned off. I don't want to be sitting here watching the same stupid stuff that I already saw in season 2 and 3. The worst part is, I can't even blame Lexx for it, because I knew this is what it was going to be, and that's why I told myself I wouldn't watch it - the parts that I enjoy are very much outweighed by what I don't. No, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to shave, sterilize, and destroy myself instead.

O.K., I've now experienced the pain majestic was talking about - that presentation in episode 1 was torture. Well, actually, everything related to Eleven/Jane in that episode was torture. I woulda skipped it if I could. Otherwise...a pretty decent first episode with some fun moments. Hopefully it won't just become complete monster mash silliness like last season did. Shaving, sterilization, and destruction of @Lexx deferred for the time being. ...I've now watched the second episode, and it's starting to feel like monster mash silliness already. Shaving, sterilization, and destruction of @Lexx...well, let's just say it's not entirely off the table, but we'll see. (e): I had this thread up for a while and didn't see your post until just now. I guess we agree big time on that at least, .

@majestic lmao that was actually pretty close to the same kind of feeling @Sarex I'm just glad I'm not the only one being a complete bastard about it...this time.

you're calling this masterpiece of animation and music lifeless? smh my head At least it's not as bad as RWBY, which I think is literally, for real, actually the worst anime-related thing I've ever seen in my life. That trailer wasn't hilarious because of the animation, but it did help contribute to the whole thing feeling like it was supposed be funny and not serious.

was that a joke comedy trailer, or was that for real (e): I just watched it again, and it's even funnier the second time, but I feel like it's unintentional

If you're lying to me, I will have you shaved, sterilized, and destroyed. Particularly because you said season 2 and season 3 were pretty meh, which they were and why I thought I was done with this show. I am somewhat questioning myself on the wisdom of taking somebody's whose tastes don't align at all with mine so much to heart, but sometimes you just have to believe.

lmao wth was that

Girls' Last Tour, episode 2: I'm watching this part where blond girl is shooting the hot pipe, and the show is playing like...this slow "hopeful" string music as her bullets bounce off the pipe and ricochet. This scene genuinely feels better when I mute it - why telegraph what's going to happen in the scene so hard with this kind of music? Totally unnecessary, especially because you could've had a little tension what with these bullets richocheting around (not that the characters seem to care...or even notice - literally no reaction at all, much less even an attempt at a suggestion that this might not be the wisest method to do this; don't show the bullets ricochet if you don't want me to notice the complete lack of reaction to said ricochets, ) as they desperately try to get some heat and water. It's not the first offense where the music has made scenes feel weirdly artificial so far, but it has been the worst one so far. Music being used to telegraph how an entire scene will go is one of my pet peeves of modern film-making though, because of how extreme a lot of shows and movies will go with it - makes me thankful for when there's silence instead, particularly if the alternative is strings or pianos. Ironically, I like both pianos and strings as instruments...just not how they're overwhelmingly used in media like this. Lmao, I'm not kidding, I just unpaused the show after I wrote all that and after the pipe did indeed burst, and then the show immediately hits me with the stupid "muted joy" piano music. I just...it makes me want to grind my teeth how horribly predictable it is. Find some other stinking instruments besides pianos and strings to use, you hack freaking frauds - I'm sick of these tired attempts at emotional manipulation through this lousy style of music! Let me decide how I want to feel about what's happening in a scene without you trying to press your thumb on my ears. ...I'm gonna set this episode down for the moment, since the show hasn't been bad enough to warrant me being mad at it for its incredibly stale use of music.

If it was real camera shake, it'd probably be fine. Maybe unnecessary, but not worthy of the comment. But it's so obviously looks like the worst After Effects or equivalent artificial shake that they could use - I feel like I've seen the same exact camera shake profile used by a number of amateur VFX for creating "realistic" composite shots, except here it's not even used for the purpose of trying to make a composite shot look more natural...it was just added because camera go shake = more tense scene, apparently. It's such a...tiny little thing to be bothered by, and yet I can't help but understand the point of view of being "welp I'm out" because of it, .

It's a better way to live anyways.

https://twitter.com/JayBauman1/status/1530239905032437762 Somehow, it's worse than I expected. It's like...so clearly artificial camera shake. Just a technical flaw that some people probably won't even notice, but it feels appropriate considering the legacy of the prequels and the cheap/lazy way George Lucas filmed them.

The few screenshots I saw of this...surprisingly really make me want to watch this, but it's a 2022 show and I feel like I'm being fooled by someone that just happened to make really appealing-looking screenshots. . . . I just watched what has got to be the strangest single-episode magical girl OVAs I've ever seen or heard of: Harbor Light Story - Pile of Shame Tonally and stylistically speaking, it feels more or less like almost any other magical girl show from this era...until you start thinking about what's happening. This part of the story isn't quite complete - the terrorist boy (who lives in a literal giant pirate ship, by the way) that is blowing buildings and people up, who is arguably the secondary protagonist of the story, is feuding with his father because it is strongly implied that the father is raping the terrorist boy's sister...aka, that guy's daughter, and the father is only hosting the dance contest to identify more girls to take advantage of. The main character's family seems to hate her (to the point of openly mocking and destroying her creations purely out of spite...and also doing the whole Cinderella "let's leave her locked in her room while we go have fun at the party!"), the terrorist boy implies that he's going to kill her unless she (a literal elementary-age girl) leaves town, people get shot and blown up...but don't worry, everything is fixed because some magical fairy dinosaurs make her older and able to dance real well within the last couple of minutes. Then she wakes up and the entire show was apparently all a dream: the end. Um...so all that messed up crap was just manifestations of her subconscious? What in the hell is going on in her real life that that happened? We don't know, because the show ends literally about 15 seconds after she finally wakes up.

ight imma head out

Google has excellent search operators that I can't seem to find elsewhere that make it the only option for highly precise/specialized searches - searches that only yield a total of 1-100 results. That is my primary use for Google searches and why I have to stick with it for the time being. Stuff like "history of the Roman Empire" or "best ways to fry and season chicken thighs" can be looked up on any search engine, but particular program/OS errors written in a very specific way, exact checksums, media catalogue numbers et al. that you're trying to look up online all get the most relevant results on Google, whereas for the life of me I can't seem to make DDG behave when I try to make similar searches there. Man, I was hoping that was going to result in DDG doing the search and serving the results - I created a Google search that only had 6 total results, and then did the same search on DDG and got garbage, then prefixed it with "!g" and it literally just sent me to Google, .

Yeah, not advocating for/against DDG* or the necessity of privacy for searches like that...just that people should be aware that there still isn't any from just using DDG. For browsing, pay for a reputable no-logging VPN or use Tor while also maintaining a separate sandbox with agent/fingerprint spoofing to probably reclaim some semblance of privacy. That should certainly be enough for non-illegal activities, since nobody's going to try to put together a complete picture of what happened where and when to be able to connect it to you if the activity wasn't Serious Business levels of illegal to begin with. And if it was...well, that's probably beyond my level to provide useful advice for (and I wouldn't want to anyways - for me, it's a strong "yes" to a reasonable degree of privacy, but an equally strong "no" to platforms that sell drugs, weapons, confidential information, and/or people). *Though if DDG's search operators and results weren't hot garbage, it sure would be easier to advocate for them. Their horrible, no good, very bad Bing-derived results are...well, just that.

duckduckgo doesn't prevent your ISP and government from seeing what you searched for - the search you made is literally included in the URL that you're accessing when you make the search. DDG is just promising they're not tracking and selling what they could figure out about you to third parties. Which is better from a "these corporations are trying to track and/or advertise to you" standpoint, but certainly not much privacy in the grand scheme of things.

Eh, we already saw enough of him and his family in the Holiday Special IMO.

Man, I think the Bucks would've had a pretty good chance of repeating if Khris Middleton hadn't slipped on a banana peel in the first round and/or the roleplayers hadn't decided they were going to be the absolute worst over a 7 game series. Stupid sports.

The post-Princess Tutu show pick: Dennou Coil, episodes 2 and 3. This show is...I don't know, kind of like the tone and cast of My Neighbor Totoro meets the setting of Ghost in the Shell, I guess is how I'd put it. That doesn't really sound like it should be a good combination, but the show has been putting the appropriate amount of time into having the characters (all five of the important ones who have been girls/women so far, although I think it's likely a younger boy will eventually join them) have nicer, calmer moments of silliness and fun while also having them run for their lives from the government(?) machines trying to hunt and clean up after them in their very strange tech city, so it's been really good so far. It's a shorter series at twenty-six episodes. I'm having to watch this one in English instead of Japanese because I'm not watching it alone, but the English dub is also good (although, in my opinion, not quite as good as the Japanese, but it's good enough that I don't mind). I still haven't decided which show to focus on next on my own. I would like to once again implore that Madhouse stop making shows that I have to watch all the way through - it's very bad news when I enjoy something from even 2007 that they made. It's also a lot more lighthearted and normal show compared to Texhnolyze, which I'm pretty happy about. Texhnolyze was good, but I need something a little more straightforward and fun. The summary of the premise I read about this show sure went somewhere: I'm guessing the orange girl pictured above is this Raphtalia?

It's not a perfect analogy, but keep in mind that the Patriots were arguably even worse than the Warriors were during the 60s-90s, and they were "the Patriots" as we know them by the end of the 2000s after having won 3 titles. Golden State went to five straight and won 3, so it's not particularly different to me - they came out of nowhere to dominate the 2010s, and now they look to want to establish a second leg of dominance just like the Patriots did. Yeah, I'm gonna be cheering against Golden State. Well...I would be, except I like Boston even less, while I still haven't made up my mind about how I feel about Miami in relation to the other two options. Which is precisely why basketball will feel dead to me after Dallas is eliminated here, .

Oh, so it's not ever going to change either. Well, that's just unfortunate, especially what with the team actually being good (and having a two-straight bonafide MVP player - I'm sure we'd all love to forget terrible injuries having derailed two Nuggets post-seasons, but that's a different matter entirely). And that's for a home market: the whole American sports TV model of making it very difficult or outright impossible to watch games for out-of-market teams is incredibly annoying if you're not in the home market for your specific team. Yeah, I think I'll save my money and tears for smaller companies and creators, not the huge sports leagues that are already ridiculously flush with cash.