Bartimaeus

I've been setting up a network logger/filter on my home network, and I just forced the Roku to go through it (although it took some some router hackery because of course it did). It has sent over 16k "call home" user activity logging attempts in less than 24 hours, which is absolutely dwarfing all other devices combined. What the hell? Though I don't have an Alexa/Google Home or any other such device like that - all of these kinds of "smart" devices presumably do stuff like that.

gifs unrelated, I just felt like posting empress nanami

Something about the dialogue of the characters that are not Ahiru feels...artificial, almost like everyone except for her is just a weird set-piece caricature. It's probably because nobody except for her speaks naturally or acts like an actual character (i.e. somebody with thoughts, feelings, goals, agency...). I know I'm still only four episodes in, but her two friends are basically exaggerated Tomoyos that do not exist except as an extension of Ahiru (as far as I can tell, they could be figments of her imagination and nobody would notice except for her if they suddenly vanished into thin air), Mytho is a zombie (albeit a slowly recovering one), Fakir is pure "possessive sibling" without anything else going on, new characters are introduced for an episode before being dumped unceremoniously in typical magical girl fashion...Rue is probably the closest thing to feeling like another character, and even her, when she talks to like Fakir, it's like they're both mysteriously trying to avoid talking about something obvious that the audience should know, but which the show has declared is off-limits for the time being...which would be fine, except that it's making their conversations sound really strange. It all creates a weird feeling where every time I think I'm starting to get into the show, the general weirdness of how it's doing everything quickly jolts me back out of it. "Okay, we need to have the two sisters, who have only ever had each other to rely upon their entire lives, have a sad conversation about how no-one else will ever love the either of them because of what they are, while also intercutting with flashbacks to when their parents were horrifically murdered when they were small children. We don't have enough time to animate all it from scratch, so let's just cleverly and not jarringly at all re-use some of the animation we made of them from the incestuous ecchi scene they were going to have back when this was a shonen and before we decided they were going to be actual characters. Sound good to everyone? Great!" What's funny is that I still think there are certain things about it that should annoy or dissatisfy me, that definitely would with other shows...but for some reason, they don't here. When you're a special exception, you just are, even if the reasons aren't perfectly understood, . Though I can definitely see the show not being for everyone, and I think that's okay - focusing too much on characters and their thoughts and feelings instead of the "epic" world-building and plot and action and really just all the stuff that I normally don't care that much about unless I already like the characters... Honestly, it makes perfect sense that if we really like it, a lot of other people wouldn't - isn't that usually the case? I'll also forgive a few things not being set up quite as well as they should've been - poor Allen and his family kind of got the short end of the stick all throughout the show in that regard, but ultimately, it was in favor of Hitomi, Van, and Folken, all of who were simply more important, so I can't really fault them too badly given that they lost 13 episodes' worth of runtime. It is funny that the show being tediously slow seems to be a common complaint - if your main point of interest is the plot, I can see that being an issue, because the plot generally does move pretty slowly outside of a few occasions, but it is certainly not what I care most about. The reason why something like this or Evangelion works at all for me is because there was such a heavy and meaningful focus on the characters that makes the plot and world worth caring about - without the former, I won't stick around for the latter. It seems like a lot of other people are wired to be the other way around, . I can only assume that this comment I read about it was written by HoonDing. I'm gonna have to try an episode of this Twelve Kingdoms just so I can predictably hate it.

If I put every single poster in here besides myself on the forums on my super ignore list, I can make myself have like 20 posts in a row...although they'll still be inexplicably separated by pages. I actually remember that part even without re-watching it, but this singing part never happened according to my brain, . You better be watching this crap at max speed. (e); butt on the other hand, its uh shoujo classick of classix

Oh, you've seen double posts, maybe even triple posts...but a quadruple post? We're in uncharted territory here...what the hell, KP? I was working on something great here. Now I have to start all over! Episodes 25 and 26: Was kind of the opposite for me - the longer the story went on, the more disinterested I was in it. By the end of it, I was actively yelling at Utena to drop Anthy off the ledge and was disappointed when she didn't, . Blue Velvet: I recognize a lot of these characters, but I have literally zero memory of this scene even after re-watching it just now. I don't know what to say.

Hey, what in the hell happened to Dilandau? Dude just disappeared off the face of the Earth (e: oops, Gaea, not Earth) when he was the primary immediate antagonist for most of the show. Last we saw him...well, we won't talk about that. Episode 22: Episode 23: Merle continues to be great. Kind of wish we'd gotten to see more of her recently. Episode 24: I'm farming that sweet, sweet majestic karma for these doubleposts. If the morons in the politics threads can do it willy-nilly, I should be able to do it over here too!

Episode 20: Episode 21:

The English subtitles translated it as "jerk", even though it is the word for idiot. I suppose "jerk" is sometimes more accurate than "idiot", just as sometimes "dummy" is more accurate as well, depending on tone and context. Very much looked like he became Major Slappo for it as well. Yeah, so rug ball does not look like a game I want to play. I have literally zero recollection of that scene, and I saw Blue Velvet only a few years ago. Then again, I didn't like it, so I suppose it got ejected from my brain as such things tend to do. Black Rose arc was pretty bad, but I didn't think any of the story arcs were really any good - way too much repetition and it was borderline impossible to care or be interested in what was happening in the story itself. A number of good individual episodes and moments, mind you, but the main story was decidedly not for me.

Episode 4 of Princess Tutu: On a side-note, I think I would recommend against Princess Tutu for KP, at least based on what I've seen so far. It's actually really difficult for me to envision him not being mostly bored with it. It's very slow and nothing much happens outside of characters just talking for 90% of the episodes, it has your traditional magical girl "ok time to wrap up the episode" mechanic, and the general type of "crazy" that it has is really more of the "events are weirdly inexplicable and hard to comprehend the meaning of" Utena variety than of the "events are genuinely difficult to predict" Lynch type that KP seems to prefer. This show is not hard to predict (all the episodes I've seen have pretty steadily followed a formula!), and to my knowledge, KP tends to hate predictable formulas. "Difficult to understand" is a very different matter from "difficult to predict": you don't need to understand why things are the way they are to know where they're going, after all.

Up to episode 16 of Escaflowne now. One: holy story dump, Batman! Two: gosh dang, it is so difficult to not watch the next episode. Three: man, is there really only ten episodes left? I'll get back to your post once I've seen 17; okay, now I've seen 17. I only have one question...

I just noticed this emote was a cat - I previously thought it was The Scream with horns. Thank you, Shouji Kawamori, for creating and then leaving the project, and thank you, Akane Kazuki, for shoujo-fying it - very cool. If there could be, like, other shonen series that do that, I would be a whole lot more receptive to the idea of shonen, that's for sure. One negative thing I've heard about the show is that it was originally intended to be like ten episodes longer, so it may get suddenly wrapped up or abruptly end. Still won't take away from it being very good show for most of its run, though. It's a little difficult to believe there isn't at least a little Evangelion influence, though... It did, and ultimately, it wasn't that important, just...felt weird next to all of the pretty grounded storytelling and world-building the series has done outside of that moment. It is pretty ridiculous. I think episode 2 is still the only episode where I didn't want to immediately watch the next one, which is...uh, how watching episodes 3-8 all at once happened, . Difficult not to be okay with the cheap option when it results in a better show, .

Holy crap, no kidding. The moment I saw the skies, I was like "welp, this is hopeless"...and then they also had ground forces as well. Freid doesn't look like a very large kingdom...if this doesn't end either diplomatically (i.e. surrender) or a complete slaughter, it won't make any sense. That said...I'm going to now watch episode 13. Well, I see you also saw the obvious Evangelion/Shinji comparisons that I did, . I feel like we reached the happy medium for his character a handful of episodes ago, yet we may still be falling...

it was the worst three hours of not just my life, but also the person that I watched it with's life ok not really but it was pretty close Princess Tutu: I don't think I'll have nearly as positive feelings towards it as you did, considering my current state of soft ambivalence towards it, but I'm hoping I'll eventually be won over at least a little. It's currently a very weird state of near perfect neutrality, which isn't really something I experience basically ever. Escaflowne: The CD being at the market was definitely weird, but could be used for multiple thematic purposes, I guess. Have to wait and see, .

No further progress - I am a fickle god. I did watch another episode of Princess Tutu, though. I still don't have concrete feelings about it...hopefully I will by the end of the first 13 episodes. As for Dilandau, stuff I have at least tried that I might recognize her from: major Ranma 1/2 character (Nabiki Tendo), the protagonist of Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko, and the protagonist of Kiki's Delivery Service. She's also apparently Nataku and Kasumizuki from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, whomever they are. And yes, I am glad that the show doesn't do the whole DBZ or Naruto or Yu Yu Hakusho or other shonen thing with pointlessly wasting our time with silly non-essential and time-wasty fighting. @KP wants Blue Velvet Yeah, I am very particular about the kind of surrealism that I like. Well, I am very particular about the [everything] that I like, but yes. I have a pretty ridiculous list of shows that I am supposed to watch as it is, anyways, so I don't really need to use time on something that almost definitely did not seem to be for me. (e): Okay, I lied, I've watched up to 10 now.

I once watched the French film "Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles", which was nearly three and a half hours long and yet whose plot could be fully described in but a handful of sentences because it was 95% performing mundane tasks and routine (albeit beautifully shot!), while the other 5% could perhaps be considered to be part of some kind of narrative. It was an oddly enjoyable film, but I don't think it would fly for most audiences. Pandora's Box was a pretty normal film in comparison to that, but it was also enjoyable enough...though perhaps not without a little bit of cheating. I don't have as much appreciation for the "great works" as film aficionados do - culturally significant they may have been, if I can't really find them significant or at least enjoyable now myself, I'm not going to twist myself into knots trying to change that.

I got about twenty minutes into Sean Baker's Red Rocket (2021), who also made one of my favorite movies of all time, The Florida Project...but I started getting really skeeved out with it and didn't really want to watch it anymore. I had skipped RLM's video about it because I was looking forward to it, but I now just decided to watch RLM's video about it...and yeah, I guess I now understand why I was getting so uncomfortable with it, even though nothing much had materially happened yet. Looks like a brilliant movie, but it was probably a good decision for me not to finish it. Gross, stressful misery has its limits for me.

I still don't know what the big deal is. Although... Well, okay, that is pretty screwed up, but it's hardly reflected in anime, considering ridiculously-colored hair has been around in anime since...basically forever, . Heck, maybe that's exactly why insane hair colors are so common - artist expression defying cultural norms. Considering that I disliked both Eraserhead and Blue Velvet, I think that means no for me as well. That and you think I wouldn't like it anyways...and the fact that I already tried it and didn't care for it. I had a big "hoo boy" reaction to that guy when he appeared. Then his snake got brutally decapitated and he fell off a ledge and appeared to have died from hitting his head on a small rock. With that wacky character design, thought for sure he was gonna be around for a few episodes, not a few minutes, but okay, fine by me, .

The evidence speaks for itself, Prime Minister. At least you're doing your country proud!

I've heard some not so great things about bosses being pretty wack...between ridiculous attack wind-ups and combos that are even worse than DS3's, and some boss encounter design borderline requiring you to get help. Which I hate, because boss AI is very clearly never equipped to deal with changing aggro mid-fight. Only game I used summons was DS2, and only because I was hate-playing that cruddy game. Also, a friend sent me this a few days ago.

i know this was from a dream sequence, but it still sent me to the moon

I really felt like DeS and DS1 were the ideal length. Certainly long enough to be a grand adventure, but not so long that I get halfway through the game before I'm completely exhausted and desperately want it to be over like I did with DS3 and its DLC. Whenever/if I play Elden Ring, I can't see the size of the game feeling good to me.

I noticed his mentor thanking Hitomi for saving him without her having ever said anything to him, which would imply Van talked her up in private at least, . On a side-note, I'm refusing to consider this to be isekai until completely proven otherwise. Just because the Gaea is an inexplicably existing planet in the shadow of the moon or whatever (all of which is horribly out of scale in the same way it is in Outer Wilds) doesn't mean this is an isekai anime, okay? Yeah, animals learning weird behaviors from not having their parents around or other unfortunate circumstances can be an experience - having had two rescue dogs, a rescue cat, and finally a cat that was taken away from her mother within like the first few days of her life (this is the last one still around, and no, that was certainly not my decision!) has been proof enough of that.

The poster actually appears in the movie itself: Pandora's Box (1929). German silent films are sort of like delving into an alien culture that inexplicably decided to take up film-making. I mean, that might be all silent films, but I've only seen two, and they were both German, so obviously I can only generalize about the German ones. Anyways, from what I could tell, the gist of the movie is that women, especially those of a certain variety, are the root of all evil in the world. What particular variety of women would that be? Well...I'll let you, the viewer that did not watch the film, guess.

"Merle" is indeed pronounced "Earl" with an M in both of the English dubs, which I had to hear. I've otherwise been listening to the Japanese dub. Also, did this general dude really just say...that even if the dragon were to rip off the prince's [redacted], he wouldn't run away? Didn't think I'd ever hear something like that in a shoujo(?), that's for sure, . Although, I guess by the time I saw about the third or fourth guy bleed out of his eyes when the demons attacked, I probably should've realized that it would be difficult to qualify this show as simply being a "shoujo". Poor dude was crowned king and literally minutes later, his entire city was destroyed - rough first day of his reign, I'd say. Catgirl was okay in the first episode, which is good enough for now...there's room to grow, certainly. Indeed, the second episode as a whole wasn't as much fun as the first, but it was still solid enough, and that's fine. Guess I'm watching Escaflowne. The thing about action is that...you need something more than just itself to entice me with it. Whether it's our characters learning to work together, one of the characters involved being emotionally motivated to fight for a good reason, or the fight being actually plot-important to some degree beyond just rote "fight happens here because the script says it does"...you know, it just has to be something. I will even accept action if just the way it looks is cool, because yeah, looking cool is a form of mental engagement...of course, what kind of action looks cool to me is evidently very different from what looks cool to other people, particularly because I especially value the weight of action, which is very difficult to capture. Anyways, if you can hit at least one or preferably multiple areas of properly framing and motivating action, action will usually sit pretty good in my eyes - something like Asuka's fight with the Mass Production Evas hits pretty much every single box I can even vaguely imagine, which is probably why that sequence literally brings tears to my eyes. I'll try not to make comparisons to Evangelion over the course of the show, . My old lady cat is probably in the final stages of her life, and up until recently, she's always been kind of the opposite of that. Standoffish, flighty from any kind of movement or contact, and very solitary. Now in her old age, she's suddenly become super clingy, she constantly wants to lay on and be pet by people, and she whines a ton for no particular reason when used to not ever. Yes, I've been feeling the "HEY I'M HERE TOO" factor of the cat owner life lately, .

Nanami is probably the most disturbed character in Revolutionary Girl (and that's saying something, because there are a whole lot of very disturbed people in that show), with a whole "I will literally drown kittens to monopolize my brother's love" complex (no really, that happened)...and even she eventually took a step back before she went over the precipice and adjusted her behavior before it truly went critical. Thing is, the framing of the show makes it pretty clear she's a messed up fruit basket of a person from the very beginning, which is why the show remains watchable even with that going on. If, on the other hand, a show were to have such elements and not make it clear that it's super weird/gross/wrong, well...that'd be a much more difficult sell, that's for sure.