Bartimaeus

It would've also been less distracting if her character wasn't 100% "I am the big emo" after they actually got to Rivendell. Constantly lounging around looking depressed and talking with that dumb breathy voice of hers is not my idea of a good time. That's what really makes it worse, when you see a literal child struggling going through this while you, as an adult, still haven't figured it out... If you make me care about someone or something, and then you also successfully (<- key word here) stab me in the heart with them, then you have undoubtedly created lasting scars on me that I'm not soon to forget. It's precisely why I stuck with NGE even though I had a number of issues with it in on my first run through it - their personal struggles, pains, and tragedies were (are!) everything in that show. Maybe having spent a few too many years suffering from somewhere between mild and severe depression that that kind of emotional turmoil and consequent catharsis is the most wonderful feeling in the world...

Whisper of the Heart is depressing in an unexpected way - at least it was for me. It's a film driven by the protagonist's desperation to find out who she is in the world, and what exactly she should be doing to give her life meaning while the rest of her peers still have that child's mindset of simply living in the moment and just skirting by...and the film does it in such a perfect way that it makes you really feel like you are literally her - but as an adult version that still hasn't figured it out, and probably never will. What a sickening feeling it is when she's able to work her butt off and find some - not all of, but some - of her own personal meaning and some concrete goals to go fulfill, while you the viewer are still listlessly wandering around in the metaphorical dark sometimes questioning why you're even alive to begin with. ...At least, that was my experience with Whisper of the Heart. But unlike you, I've seen it twice, and I loved it even more than the first time I watched it, . Perfect Blue is at the top of my list for films that I loved but don't really want to watch again, at least not for a very long while...especially because you can't ever really re-create the circumstances in which I watched it to begin with.

If his post had had a question mark, we could've known for sure ?

Yeah, I would've preferred that Arwyn got cut out entirely rather than let her have Glorfindel's part. Not that I particularly like Glorfindel or anything, but Arwyn is the worst character in the entire movie series.

You're playing an Amazon, right? Although the Arcane Sanctuary stays the same size, most other areas get so absurdly over-sized in nightmare and hell, I can't even imagine walking through the entire game on those difficulties as a non-sorceress without teleport - I'm not sure if I've ever done it, to be honest.

Konomi Can't Speak, episode 1. ...What can I say? I guess I just want to get shows I know I'll hate out of the way as quickly as possible before I have you rubes telling me I should watch it because it's so great. Hitting me with the DRAMA MODE SOFT PIANO MUSIC within literally the first 30 seconds. This is one of the very few shows where I might actually like the exaggerated emotions style (which I usually despise) more than the regular style: Maybe because it almost looks 80s anime-ish, like Ranma kind of. If all the characters looked like this all the time, I would almost be tempted to keep watching for the novelty. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I got about 5 and a half minutes in and that was all she wrote. Bye! Now I will read majestic's post. The first 30 seconds seemed to imply something between her and cats, that maybe she likes or identifies with them; it's probably there for a reason but not spelled out quite yet. Beyond that, I ain't got much to say, it clearly wasn't going to work for me, the direction on every level was...you know, very not me, .

Is there any fandom that's not eminently hateable? Honestly, the only fandoms I don't already hate are the ones I'm not aware of.

Sorry for getting you confused with Lexx! ...However, I got through somewhere between 30 and 60 seconds in each of those songs, and I think I liked most of what I've heard in Samurai Champloo more than literally anything you just linked there, so maybe I'm not that sorry after all, . ...The final Bleach song was real close, except for the fact that they used a vocalist that set off my misophonia - her voice is nails on chalkboard, . All the anime music I like is, as always, pre-2000s - I'm just an old soul in regards to all things Japanese, I guess. Heck, I've even come across some albums from some old shows/movies that I've never watched and never will (either because they look really bad or simply don't appeal to me and/or both in some cases) but I like the music, . NAZI CENSORSHIP!

The consensus I read seemed to imply that the Braves were the only even semi-likeable team left after the Brewers got eliminated...but I don't know anything about baseball, so don't @ me.

Completely unrelated to the anime thread: Why does Chrome have such gosh-awful image-scaling? The image: Downscaled on Firefox: Downscaled on Chrome: What the hell, Chrome?

What a terrible day for anime. Probably would've been better off being bored to death with Lady Asuka. Uh...kind of. Let me...oh, yes, I suppose you're right. I was having trouble remembering for a bit, probably because I watched most of the show between 2x and 3x speed and so I couldn't really afford to pay much attention to anything besides the dialogue. Yes, framing does indeed matter, as I have faithfully intoned many times in this very thread...and while the framing of Devilman Crybaby may have mostly justified itself, Nanoha sounds like it couldn't possibly ever do so in a million years, especially given you've already mentioned the transformation scenes as being...sketchy at best. I'm not ever going to enjoy an anime released after 2000, am I? ...Episode 1 of Samurai Champloo (2004): Episode 2:

Yeah, nah, I'm just gonna take your word for it. I think that's the strongest warning for something you've given, and I've already refused to click other things that didn't get that much, so it must be pretty freaking bad. And it appears my recommendation has been a FAILURE. Thanks for nothing, Nanoha.

...So the complete opposite of Cardcaptor Sakura, then. In that case, abort, abort - go back to stealing from CCS and SM!

@majestic Sakura was also a unique circumstance, because it's literally the show that made it so I could listen to Japanese voice-acting at all, . But yes, you are correct...mostly. Only mostly because I hadn't actually properly looked into it and was just going off of the few videos (including of the really bad English dub) and gifs/images you posted - when I was greeted with this on Netflix, I instantly changed my mind and knew I had to at least try it: It's weird how seeing a frame like this can be an instant "yep, I gotta try that", but that's the way I go, .

I think the other two aquatic levels are Rusty Bucket Bay and...Jolly Roger's Lagoon is the second game, so not that...oh, the beach one. Treasure Trove Cove, I had to look it up, though the name seems obvious in retrospect. I tried to go back and play it...two or three years ago now? I got through act 1 of the OC and I literally felt like I was going to stop existing if I kept playing. I thought maybe the second act, Port Saiid, would be better, but then it was just a bunch of wilderness areas that all looked the same and...I closed the game intending to continue at some point, but I could never muster up the willpower to do so. The story and general writing, characters, gameplay, aesthetic, controls, voice-acting...everything's pretty lacking, to say the least, at best. I had some fond but also some not so fond memories as well... I remember there being some succubus that's magically imprisoned that you can decide to kill or free in order to progress through an area, and if you decide to free her, she... Well, this isn't P:ST, she "betrays" you after freeing her in the most painfully obvious and stupid manner possible. I didn't get to that part in my attempt to replay the game, so I only have ancient memories of it, but even as a kid, I remember that being incredibly stupid writing, especially given that she dies in like two hits. That stupid freaking kobold. Stupid Aribeth. I didn't know this until the last few years (in fact, I think learning this is what inspired me to try to re-play the game), but you can apparently save Aribeth if you're one of the talky classes like a rogue or bard...and then she's executed by Lord Nasher right after anyways, lmao. Who the hell were the main villains of the OC? All I remember is...mage lizardmen? Why do I remember lizardmen? Is that even real? Endless tunnels and and combat going ever-deeper in some sort of pit that wouldn't ever end in Shadows of Undrentide. Saving and reloading over and over for randomized high-end gear in certain containers... Having to fight three dragons at once at some point, but dragons aren't as scary in NWN as they were in BG, like not even close? Probably other stuff I can't remember right now...I have a number of ancient memories of that game. Usually, if you've done everything else, the finales of stat-based games are pretty lame anyways, since they have to allow for a wide range of character power to be able to complete them. I wasn't able to get very far in SoZ, it felt too strange and kind of unfocused to me - like everyone else, I liked MotB a lot more.

Clanker's Cavern. IIRC, you can enter him through...oh, yeah, that's right, you have to swim down to the very bottom of the entire cavern and rotate the gigantic key in the padlock around a few times before he's able to rise to the top first, THEN you can enter through either his teeth or his blowhole...and maybe even his gills? Or maybe you can only exit through his gills? ...Do whales even have gills? They can't, they're mammals... I didn't play NWN until after Baldur's Gate, and boy, was THAT a rude awakening. Ye gods, even back then, that was a difficult transition to make - game controlled, looked, and sounded like garbage. Some fun fan-made online modules, though - I was friends with someone with DM privileges on some big, fairly populated LotR one, and I remember that being a heck of a lot of fun. I think my first NWN character in the OC (which I actually did finish as well as Shadows of Undrentide but not Hordes of the Underdark) was actually an extremely boring fighter that I prestige class-ed into an equally boring Weapon Master (...well, once Shadows of Undrentide came out anyways). Better than playing a freaking bard at least, I suppose...

I'm trying to think of what I've actually made a prediction about (something where I've actually said "from what I can tell, I think this is going to be (x) for me/you") and been wrong about. I don't always have predictions, because sometimes I don't have a strong enough of a feeling to say confidently right off the bat before even trying the show out (e.g. Steins;gate, Princess Tutu, Utena), but other times I do (e.g. Clannad, Magic User's Club, Violet Evergarden, K-On, etc.), and I'm not sure I've actually made a wrong prediction thus far. Maybe the closest was Blood-C...but even then, I wasn't exactly totally wrong with that, right? We saw the trailer and that looked gosh-awful, and I took a quick look at some screenshots and said "I don't think that trailer's really representative, though - I think it'll be less dramatic action-y and more silly character-y than that trailer would have you think"...which was true, at least early on. Didn't end that way, but you could see why I made that prediction, . So that's probably the closest that I can think of to being wrong with an actual prediction.

I like the first one, and I love the second one, but the third one I didn't realize how surprisingly mediocre it was until I re-visited and played all of them through probably 4-5 years ago now. Even the music is pretty bleh, which is a little shocking for Rare at that time. OH CRAP, speaking of Rare, I forgot about Banjo-freaking-Kazooie - that was also one of those very early games for me. Another one that also holds up pretty danged well, too, although early 3D controls do usually leave a little to be desired in comparison to late 2D controls like DKC. Do not speak of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named - you may well summon back that utterly vile and vacuous character by saying his name, .

I had Princess Tutu in mind, actually. I don't know when/if we'll ever get back to that, . Might actually become something I check out more on my lonesome at some point after I've finished Sakura instead... Hey, my prognostication said it looked alright outside of the cat/foxgirl, and it looks like I wasn't wrong, .

Now that I think about it, my aunt also had a laptop around that time and let me play Diablo 1 on it before we had it (at an extremely fundamentalist evangelical church that would have considered it literally satanic!*), so it's also possible that that could be it as well - I really don't remember for certain! *And now that I'm thinking even more about it, it's a good thing nobody else knew, because that church, which was my grandfather's, was seriously wacko and it could've been a whole major ordeal for the entire family if the rest of the congregation had found out that the pastor's daughter was having a literal ~5 year-old playing freaking Diablo in their church. ...I mean, maybe not as bad as if they'd known my mom was a turbo-D&D nerd and was running a D&D group and was even on some of those early D&D web forums at around same time back then, but still. They say that the sins of the [mother] don't pass on to the child, but I think my mom and I are living proof that that was a lie...

Unfortunate news for @majestic, this has been on the horizon for a long while now (maybe as long as a year now?) and was almost already started before Nadia was, but then I'd randomly come across news that it'd been licensed and was in the process of being re-dubbed, so it got shuffled back a bit. So that's likely to be the next major show for me, though whether we go with the English or Japanese will depend, of course, on what it actually sounds like. I tried watching the movie for this probably like 5-6 months ago, and I made it about ten minutes in before I was like "I guess you had to be there when it came out, or maybe watched the original show, or something, because this ain't working". That, and as not great as the Sakura song is (which makes it stand out as being worse than it is in a show of Sakura's pedigree), it's still better than that, . Hey, maybe it'll surprise you and K-On it on up. I'm the absolute worst post editor around here, there have been a number of times I've actually had to edit out some of my edits so that I can put it in the next post because I can't stop myself from revising and adding more on.

Based on Gorth being aware of the situation and having to explain what happened, I can only assume it was a bot or some other similar kind of situation that the staff took care of. Maybe their profile information had spam links, or they tried PMing someone something, or the original post put a link in the punctuation, or something like that - seen those happen before with otherwise innocuous posters. I don't remember exactly what my first game was, but it was something in between Age of Empires, Diablo, Super Mario 64, and Ocarina of Time. I remember in my town/school district/whatever, kindergarten was only every other day, so I'd home sitting on the PC all day trying to figure how in the hell to play Age of Empires and have fun with some of the early campaign scenarios (the simpler ones that don't have the full AI enabled). Those are my earliest memories of gaming, so maybe that's actually it, but I can't say for sure that it was actually was, especially since we also had a SNES and I have *very* vague memories of playing...MAYBE Donkey Kong Country 2 before that, but like I said, I can't say for sure.

...Yeah, nah, I actually do like the the CCS S3 intro more. Might be a minor case of Stockholme syndrome, though - while I still don't care for that song (especially the middle main chunk which is a complete drag), at least it ends well enough. What a disgusting display.

Tempted to upload the first episode somewhere and say "look, you found a copy!". ...I mean, it'd only be the first episode, but @majestic I'm a bad person to ask, since I'm always against pointless nudity. However, I maintain that I didn't detect anything super wrong off the bat with this show, so it's up to you to prove my process wrong. Yeah, no kidding, looks straight stolen out of Sakura. Is the song at least better than CCS S3's?

I've seen an episode of this and thought it was pretty decent-seeming and planned on eventually watching some more, guess I'll take that as a recommendation from you to continue it, .