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Bartimaeus

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Everything posted by Bartimaeus

  1. Bartimaeus
    Recommendation for Katana Zero - it's a 2D murder-simulator level-clearer a la Miami Hotline, albeit sidescrolling instead of top-down. Plus the music sounds like this: https://wicrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/katana-zero-original-soundtrack Recommendation for Shenmue III - it's just as gosh-awful as the first two, so if you love those, you should love this one too, .
  2. Bartimaeus
    That's not promising. I liked the first season because it was very character-driven, particularly (but not only) Ranma and Akane, who seemed like they were actually developing as characters in of themselves but also towards each other. Then I get into the second season and it's like nothing they went through or said to each other in the first season ever happened and they were right back to yelling and screaming at each other like it had been at the start of season 1...and worse, nothing more ever *would* happen, because the show inexplicably doesn't care about developing them (or anyone else) any more and was more concerned with repeatedly forcing them into wacky situations they had to get out of over and over. As far as I'm concerned, the show ended with the ice-skating three-parter where Ranma decided to learn how to skate with Akane and got assaulted by some chauvinistic boy-skater while in girl form. The two of them learned to trust and depend upon each other in order to selflessly and sweetly protect their better halves, and it seemed very clear that they would eventually work out as a couple given a little time to get older and become more mature. Bonus points that Ranma had been shown over the course of the first season to be slowly getting more comfortable with being half-girl (as opposed to hating and feeling embarrassed by it like he did early on)...the end.
  3. Bartimaeus
    IMO, it fell off a cliff immediately after the first 18 + 3 episodes...and I don't mean art-wise (although the art did get worse, it was still good enough for me). Why 18 + 3? Three episodes in the "revamped series" were made for the original series and though they were haphazardly placed in the middle of the "revamped series", they were immediately and noticeably way better than the rest of it. The real problem with the revamped series is that all the major characters immediately became pants - the character dynamics that the first season had been carefully building up were immediately and violently dashed in favor of everyone constantly screaming and yelling at each other over nothing, and side-characters that originally had meaningful dialogue and parts instead become pointless flanderizations of their past selves, while all the nice little character-driven stuff disappeared in favor of "wAcKY" premise-driven nonsense. It went from feeling like a shoujo-shonen hybrid that had comedy to pure comedic shonen stupidity - what a dirty stinking rotten deal that "reboot" was. I actually almost got majestic to watch a shonen (inconceivable for him!) because of how much I liked the first season...and then it was all swept right up into the garbage bin once I got to the second season. In fact, I'm still tempted to try to keep watching Ranma 1/2 purely on the strength of that first season, but then I remember how bad and stupid the second season was... (e): Speaking of Ranma, I actually recently started reading the original manga for it. The bits I've read so far have been much more like the first season, so I'm hopeful that it will continue with that instead of the second season. Wish I had an explanation for why I vastly prefer older stuff myself - I seem to generally dislike anything and everything new, which makes zero sense for how old I am. Most of my favorite non-animated movies are older than I am, and certainly almost all of my favorite animated stuff is (and the stuff that isn't is real close). I certainly didn't watch any of it as a kid to explain it - old in heart but not in body, I guess. @uuuhhii Blood almost certainly looks very different from Blood-C by function of being released 11 years earlier. I'm looking at screenshots now, and it is an interesting art style...I might actually try that at some point. Blood+ is hot shonen garbage which I already tried (and expected to dislike right off the bat, which I did), but this looks significantly more promising to my eyes.
  4. Bartimaeus
    I don't think you much have any? As far as I can recall, you have previously expressed that you don't really care that much about art style (except that the CGI IS BAD), even if you can in theory understand why it can make or break a series for some of us. If you have preferences, they are probably not so clearly defined as compared to the rest of us. Sarex probably has a preference for newer stuff but isn't necessarily against older stuff either so it's not really that strong of a preference, while my impression is that InsaneCommander seems to generally stay with 80s-90s stuff but that might just be a function of what he's mentioned in here and/or what I remember him mentioning in here. I've been meaning to watch Aggretsuko for ages. I'll eventually get around to it. @uuuhhii I am unable to find a movie that released before the show. The show started airing on 2011 July 8th, a film concluding the series released in 2012, and there are two live-action prequel thingies that released in 2017 and 2018. Both the movie and the show were animated by Production I.G.; there is also the Blood (2000) movie and Blood+ (2005) TV series that share the same universe as Blood-C, but both of those were still animated by the same studio, so I am unable to figure out what film you're speaking of.
  5. Bartimaeus
    Ranma is 1989, probably the earliest thing I listed specifically (and from what I've seen, Ranma got uglier and simpler the longer it went on). I vastly prefer this over anything post-2000 that isn't Millennium Actress (which was traditionally animated despite being made in 2001, and it apparently has the distinction of being the last major anime film to be so). Rurouni Kenshin came out 7 years later after Ranma in 1996, and is very mid to late 90s-looking (and also looks to be a shonen if the few screenshots I saw were any indication...). I actually did watch an episode of Blood-C, which I thought was bad but not terrible-looking - doesn't hold a candle to what I like most, but it's also not eye-searing like most other series from the 2010s. No LaserDisc as far as I can see, but the DVD versions I looked at quickly looked at least a little less terrible than yours, e.g.: You mean sexual assault that bizarrely isn't treated like it because anime apparently doesn't believe sexual assault is real? Pretty sure that's what you mean, . Yes, something that distinguishes itself as being about adult characters for adult viewers without the strongly untoward elements endemic to ecchi is inherently less insulting and gross than...I don't know, having male characters "randomly" assault teenaged girls and young woman or just having them experience "wardrobe malfunctions" because it's supposed to be funny and/or gratifying someway somehow. Still, not exactly my cup of tea, especially with how extreme Plastic Little in particular was right off the bat.
  6. Bartimaeus
    Everyone has their own preferences. Amentep apparently loves the 70s and early 80s (e.g. Conan...which I like the backgrounds of, but am merely "okay" with the character designs - I certainly prefer it over 99.9% of modern stuff!), I personally prefer a number of styles between the late 80s and late 90s*, Lexx likes very modern stuff, majestic is probably all over the place at this point... I watched Airbender as a kid on live TV - great show, hard to believe it came out 16 years ago, hope majestic one day tries it out. Didn't care quite as much for the sequel series, but it has its fans. Its art style is obviously meant to be anime-esque, though...even if it isn't exactly quite like any anime in particular. *Although I'm finicky enough that there are still plenty of styles even within that time period that I do not care for - the original Sailor Moon, early Ranma 1/2, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Perfect Blue/Millennium Actress, various 70s-90s Ghibli movies are all some examples of my favorite anime styles...and I have my eye on a number of other things that I haven't yet watched like Gall Force, Cowboy Bebop, Gunsmith Cats, Bubblegum Crisis, Gunbuster, and number of other smaller series I can't recall off the top of my head on the basis of looking appealing to me.
  7. Bartimaeus
    All that definitely makes sense. And of course, I personally love film grain for animation (and don't really mind the subtle frame jitter that you see in traditionally-animated work...although there was one show, I'm forgetting which, where the last 10 or so frames of a scene went like an 15 entire degrees off of what it was supposed to be which was startling and clearly unintentional and yet somehow they didn't bother to fix it even though it was super obvious what had happened), which is another thing digitally made stuff just doesn't have. The art of animation is...I wanted to say dead, but "undead" is probably more accurate, . The Magnificent Myao and the Rambunctious Ran: Myao's "disguise" in episode 12 is quite possibly one of the worst things I've ever seen. When I originally watched that episode, I immediately created a screenshot and intended to post it for you...but then I remembered that you said you would probably watch the show, so I decided to withhold so you could experience it for yourself. Although it is one of the worst things I've ever seen, Myao was wearing it, and that broke my brain and put me in a laughing fit for most of the rest of the episode. Her being crucified with her yelling and screaming and crying and praying was also incredible. As for episode 13...Goddess Myao (or whatever the hell that was supposed to be, with what she was wearing and being carried around by slaves) is the best Myao. Yes, a great final episode for a semi-straight, semi-wacked out parody of a samurai show, .
  8. Bartimaeus
    It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure I had a similar situation happen and I ended up creating a new boot manager on the correct drive and didn't need to reformat. I don't remember the exact process for doing so, but I do think it is possible. However, looks like you already reformatted and found the Windows.old, so I guess that'll do. I should really mirror my entire Windows user profile (with AppData and all) just on the off-chance my C drive suddenly dies out of the blue. My first and second ever system SSD drives both died in under a year, and let me tell you, when SSDs die, there is no warning and they are just straight-up gone. At least with HDDs, you usually have a warning if you're vigilant enough...paying attention to odd sounds, occasionally checking SMART data, a rare 2-minute diagnostic scan...but the "it suddenly died and doesn't even appear in my BIOS" is my greatest fear and why I always have everything important to me mirrored these days. The first 1 TB I ever had did that to me and just would not come back no matter how much I unplugged and plugged it back... When I got the replacement drive like a week later, I decided to put both of them in and suddenly the "dead" one came back to life, and I transferred everything over freaking immediately. That was the first and last warning I ever needed on keeping important data mirrored...and the original drive ended up lasting about another twelve months before unstable sectors started terminating themselves and I subsequently ripped it apart to see what the inside of an HDD looked like.
  9. Bartimaeus
    It's amazing how differently people can feel about art styles. I've looked at My Dress-Up Darling a few different times now, because you've kept mentioning how much you like the visual style...and this is a modern type that actually evokes disgust out of me purely from the art style of its characters - it's not an issue of content or framing, or from seeing the animation in motion...but purely the art style while looking at screenshots. Messy lines everywhere that give an illusion of detail but really just seem like visually exhausting noise to me, faces that are somehow creepy and unclean (extreme over-expression, terrifying Cthulhu mouths, huge intense demon eyes, the lizard-skin shine spots that seem to be endemic to modern anime, the seemingly randomly and crudely applied blush gradients...), and of course, since it's a modern show, we get very modern hairstyles and clothing draped across modern skull and skeletal structures that are also noticeably unpleasant to behold...and never mind the use of shapes and colors (why is modern anime always so intensely unnatural looking - stuff from earlier eras of animation generally have much more softer and more natural color palettes, at the very least). I don't know what the intended impression of a character like this is, but the effect I get is that of a crazed and unpleasant demon, which is probably not what's intended for the viewers who enjoy this show. ...Meanwhile, you look at the older stuff that I personally like and are immediately like "nope, can't do it" for a variety of your own reasons, I'm sure. It's especially strange to me, because growing up in my teens, I was exposed only to mid-2000s to early 2010s anime styles, which I immediately hated so much that I wrote off anime entirely...and it was only later that I saw older 90s and 80s styles that I was like "okay, maybe I shouldn't write off the entire medium just because the current era we're in is despicably awful". Why this has happened, why certain styles appeal more and less to all of us, is probably impossible to say. Majestic: I'll respond more later.
  10. Bartimaeus
    I've taken a look at this one before, actually, but I was not listening to the English dub. I remember the terrible underwater spying scene, but I think that was about as far as I got before I didn't foresee it getting any better and called it quits and swore to myself to never speak of it. If I had seen that poster, I strongly doubt I would have even gotten that far - this was one of first handful of non-Ghibli anime films I tried. Speaking of being underwater, your copy of the film looks like it's underwater the entire time - I do not remember the film looking near this bad fidelity-wise...but most likely, I had a better source than you were able to find. Ah, yes, I now just read your spoiler, . However, unlike you, I did not like the particular aesthetic of this film. I am sure the animation quality, as you said, is good, but whomever the primary artist is, I remember looking him up and seeing a couple other examples of his work, and something about the way his characters look is...very strange and uncomfortable to me, and rather unlike most other 90s anime aesthetics I've seen, so I doubt I'll ever revisit anything he was a major part of. It's probably just as well given what you wrote in the spoiler...though admittedly, I now wish I had listened to the English dub for a moment just to hear English!Rei in a different role. @KP on top of ZA WARUDO Really hope the glasses work out, considering it's your livelihood and all, .
  11. Bartimaeus
    Starting back in like 2011, I went through a period of about five years where I had the flu every year. Unusual for me, since I hardly ever got sick before then - a couple of colds and I think two bouts of flu my entire childhood, which isn't too bad. Now over the last 5 years, I've only had like one fairly minor cold the entire time (extra surprising to believe the last two years, what with the constant exposure to my nieces, who have been sick with colds about three times, the flu once, and something flu-like recently that didn't test positive as covid but also mysteriously didn't test as positive for anything else either). Pretty happy to take that. Well, as we all know, none our actions affect anyone else, so he's well within his rights to do as he pleases.
  12. Bartimaeus
    ...Snow Gorilla, or Snow Guerrilla? I feel like the latter would make more sense...but then again, this is the 80s. First KP's eye, now yours, who's next?
  13. Bartimaeus
    "The dumb girls make the dumb laugh" was the start and end of my analysis of the show. Yeah, we're pretty much on the same level of depth of thought here, .
  14. Bartimaeus
    Yep: Speaking of samurai, I have been taking a short detour from anime in favor of finishing up the last two seasons of Samurai Jack. Though, my neck imploded this morning, so I'm probably not really much doing anything at all for the next couple of days until it heals at least a little.
  15. Bartimaeus
    That was actually already on my watch list - I saw the first episode a while back and surprisingly thought it was pretty decent and was going to watch more at some point. I don't have an anime folder - favorite shows go into the same "Television" folder that every other normal show goes into. So I guess I can't ever threaten to delete it in an off-hand fashion, .
  16. Bartimaeus
  17. Bartimaeus
    Hah, wow, I literally had Alien in mind when I was writing my previous post, because Alien is...exactly what I wrote there - dark/atmospheric/moody/oppressive sci-fi, aka my jam. Mind you, they're pretty different kinds of films by most measures, but they give a similar kind of feeling. I was pretty blown away by it the second time I watched it. I liked it on the first watch, but the second watch was way more powerful - that sometimes happens to me, and actually, that was true of Kon's Millennium Actress for me as well (which turned from a film that I 'liked' into easily one of my all-time favorites on a second viewing). I'll re-watch Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, and maybe Paprika someday as well - maybe they'll be better for me on a second watch as well.
  18. Bartimaeus
    Oh boy, no wonder you're a Cowboys fan then...and also, you definitely had it best early on - been rapidly switching between regular season incompetence and post-season gut-punches since then, . Can't say you ain't been loyal... As for myself, I think I'll be content with basketball for the time being - at least nobody on the Bucks gives me a headache whenever I think about them.
  19. Bartimaeus
    Eh...it's probably not very easy to search for just "memories" in the off-topic section, to be fair - easier for me when I can make it search for just my own posts because I knew I mentioned it a few times, . Actually, I pretty much refuse to ever search for anything unless I know whose post I'm searching for - the search results are way too chaotic if you don't enter a post author. Kon's Tokyo Godfathers, Perfect Blue, and Millennium Actress are even better than his Magnetic Rose, IMO...but I still love Magnetic Rose - dark and atmospheric/moody/oppressive sci-fi is really my ideal sci-fi.
  20. Bartimaeus
    Seeing as it's a Satoshi Kon film that I've more or less recommended a couple of different times in this thread series, why yes, I suppose I would rather like it! Yeah, it is really good, though it took me until the second watch to fully appreciate just how much - artwork, music, themes, animation, setting, atmosphere...it all came together ever so sweetly. I quite like the second part of Memories (Stink Bomb) as well - I imagine it'll be up your alley...maybe even more than Magnetic Rose?
  21. Bartimaeus
    I wasn't born into football - it's a relatively new thing for me (2013 season). Probably a lot easier for me to ignore it for a time than people that have been following it for decades. We'll see how I feel in September.
  22. Bartimaeus
    Too many painful playoff losses combined with too much stupid off the field crap has made me empathize even more with @ShadySands' point of view on the NFL, I think. More than anything, I'm just relieved that it's finished - don't have to worry about it any longer, it's done and over with. This season, I at least had the vestigial excitement from early on into the year to just barely keep me going, but I'm not going to have that next year, even if Rodgers were to return and keep playing at an MVP level - I just don't have it in me to be excited about this team anymore. I think I need a long, multi-year break from the NFL. Maybe by the time I want to come back, the Packers will be terrible and there'll be no point in caring at all anyways.
  23. Bartimaeus
    I'd prefer one out of the Bills/Bengals, but Rams are okay too...49ers are not great, and Chiefs and Buccaneers would suck. Talk about an egg-on-your-face ending, especially what with Aaron Rodgers having gone on another 30 minute crazy rant to ESPN a couple of days ago.
  24. Bartimaeus
    Lmao, end of an era in GB to go out like that, methinks.
  25. Bartimaeus
    Okay, maybe it's better for them to stay non-canon.
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