Bartimaeus

Terranigma is good, but the English translation leaves a bit to be desired. Still, I enjoyed it. Secret of Mana....the English translation is outright terrible I think like 99% of the time and the gameplay, setting, story, or characters really weren't able to grab me at all*, especially since I had just played all of the MOTHER/EarthBound games right before for the first time, and it didn't really even hold a candle to them in my opinion. I do like the music of SoM, though. *I am biased against most types of fantasy, though - any kind of fantasy where characters are wearing insane and ridiculous clothing and hair styles, I'm probably using the exit door immediately. Yeah, I'm the opposite: if it wasn't for the fact that I played it as a KEED, I would not have been able to tolerate it. Random encounters stink...at the very least like EarthBound makes it so they're not so random, so you can see them as you approach enemies, which is so much better...and MOTHER did enough other things right that I could forgive it (plus, it was on the NES where having moving enemy sprites would've been taxing on the hardware - probably!). Speaking of EarthBound/MOTHER, Amentep just mentioned it too...and I should eventually, one day, give Chrono Trigger another try. It'll happen someday... Sakura:

I've watched Ponyo twice, the first time by myself and the second with my nieces. Didn't care for it the first time, actually really disliked it on the second. Really strange characters that would just do things for no apparent rhyme or reason, and the incredibly bizarre mom that was total pants on/in the head was especially the object of my ire. She was constantly switching between like four very contrary different states: 1. very sweet, 2. unreasonably aggressive, 3. helicopter mom, 4. accepting everything that was happening without question, no matter how insane it was. So many times during it I asked myself "what the hell is wrong with this mom?". So combine that with the entire tone and style of the movie seeming decidedly more aimed at only children than his other works, I would consider it easily the worst Hayao Miyazaki film. ...But it's still not as bad as most of Yoneyabashi's and Goro's Ghibli stuff, so there is that. I have a friend that said Ponyo was so bad they never tried a single other Ghibli film released after it, which I thought was a pretty extreme reaction, especially considering this is the same person who had their life changed by Princess Mononoke. While there is a bit of a fall-off after Ponyo for Ghibli, they should've at least tried The Wind Rises and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. @majestic If you love literally endless random encounters that make it so you can take anywhere between pretty literally 1 and maybe 20 steps before running into another, you'll love Quest 64. Let's just say that the game is much improved by Cheat Engine's speedhack, which I used liberally when I replayed it. ...I still own it along with an actual working N64, mind you, but I never play on actual consoles if I can avoid it for a plethora of reasons. Samurai Champloo: It really does seem quite good, though obviously there will be an issue of personal appeal. Tomoyo: Yeah, I felt bad realizing that Meiling had replaced her at some point as my favorite character, but it is something that happened. Between her crazy expressions, emotions, body language, voice-acting...and her tragedy and actual character development (which is probably the biggest contrast to Tomoyo, who has stayed static except in perhaps some very small ways in contrast), she's just such a fun and good character. Tomoyo was awesome in a way that felt totally right for her in this episode too, which I was thankful for because she's been a little too...meta and meme-ish without enough to balance it out in this final arc, I think. Yeah...she sat there with that sad, knowing smile. She knows all too well, Meiling...

I know that power efficiency doesn't really matter that much on an individual PC level, but for some reason, I just can't treat something that has literally approaching to twice the power draw for a mere 5-10% better performance very seriously.

The thing I'm most curious to see is their power efficiency, given Intel's incredible struggles with it since AMD's Zen forced them to go higher and higher just to keep up performance-wise. The fact that they're going with a hybrid core architecture that's split between "power" and "efficient" cores does not exactly inspire confidence in me here.

I'm probably even worse - I played through Fallout 3 exactly once around the time it came out and thought it was okay, I guess - it was at least a novelty after having played Oblivion; then I got New Vegas a couple of years after it came out, played a handful of hours before realizing that I was pretty sure that I didn't ever want to play a Bethesda-style open world RPG ever again in my life. True to my word, I haven't. (e): It also occurs to me that I basically haven't played any Obsidian games - NWN2 is the only one. Put twenty hours into trying to force myself to play Pillars of Eternity and not enjoying a moment of it...and a handful of hours into New Vegas. I have not even tried any other Obsidian games...and I'm not too much of a gamer anymore, so that probably won't change.

That doesn't seem like a wise idea - wanting to play Quest 64, that is. I mean, I went back and played through it again some years back and enjoyed it enough, but I played it as a child and therefore I am extremely biased and my enjoyment was mainly as a result of some twisted sense of nostalgia. The N64 is not exactly known for its good JRPGs... Samurai Champloo, episodes 3 and 4 (not really spoiler-y): Suddenly, everyone goes their separate ways because the boys can't handle any more of Fuu's nagging, especially given that there's no reason for them to be bound to her anyways...but things don't exactly go according to plan, even with the complete lack thereof. I don't know, the more I watch this, the more it just seems like a good show on pretty much all fronts. Some humor, some tension, I think I like all the main characters (though they're all VERY different from each other, and one of them is kind of a piece of crap but in a way that feels like it works and isn't annoying), the writing is good, it's not overly action-y, framing and direction and style all seems good to me (even with some of the darker ideas on display here)...and I'm even starting to vibe with the music a little. It's all just kind of working together pretty well, really - unless the show goes really off the rails in a large and bad way at some point, there's no reason I can see that I wouldn't finish this. Sakura, episode 60, THE PRODIGAL MEILING RETURNS!!! It feels like I've been waiting my entire life for this - I don't know when exactly Meiling became my favorite character, but it is a thing that happened at some point before her disappearance. Between this, Samurai Champloo, and the short Adventure Time movie, it was a good day for television. It was nice after being in a funk the past couple weeks.

Adventure Time - Together Again (2021). I hadn't been terribly fond of the two other short movies they did before this (BMO and Obsidian), probably because they're very different from the original show and felt like they were trying to do too much in too short of a time in a different kind of style, but this one focused purely on Finn and Jake, and I actually really enjoyed it - reminded me of the best parts of the original show. It was a nice send-off to the series on the subject of death and brotherly love...except apparently they're going to make a fourth one that sounds totally dumb, but I'm going to pretend that this was the final one that came out, even if it's not.

Sakura, episode 59, The Swimming Monastery. That's not actually the title of the episode, but there's an end-game series of areas in an old not very good JRPG called Quest 64 that I played as a kid called that where the layout of doors is a nonsensical maze connecting in ways that don't make any sense (and can change), and that's basically this episode. That intro was cancer, but the idea of this did make me laugh.

I need to re-watch Castle in the Sky in Japanese at some point, because it's one of the weakest English dubs for Ghibli, and I remember it kind of impacting the film, particularly the main character. @majestic Can't help but notice that you didn't recommend it to me. How incredibly odd.

Ye gods, this show sounds like death. Why is this even labeled as a shoujo? At least you know the entire show is unlikely to be pure DRAMA ZONE, unlike so much other crap that starts out like that... Courtesy of me listening to Mr. "I'm Always Right"...what a dirty rotten stinking deal that was, . I got nothing. Yeah, I like it better as a companion to TEoE a lot more now, which I didn't really expect. They offer some similar ideas and elements, but also a lot different ones as well. I wonder if someone would take the NGE ending better if they watched TEoE first instead of the other way around. I try not to re-adjust my ratings too much over time, but it does happen - the "newness" of watching something can sometimes make you react more strongly to it (both positively OR negatively) than considering something you watched weeks or even months ago. I usually like to re-consider stuff like a month after I finish watching it in order to really complete and set in stone how I feel about it. Some stuff benefits from that (e.g. Miyu, which still occupies some of my brainspace even now), some stuff can suffer...sometimes severely. NGE really made me reflect upon Nadia and how frustrating that show was even without the horrid filler, and I realized that for a show that did not really have any themes, characters, or ideas that deeply appealed to me, it just had no business being as high as I initially thought of it. It's a show that I will remember...not entirely, but more for the bad times instead of the good, unfortunately.

Here it is, finally...Neon Genesis Evangelion, the original Human Instrumentality:

(Y/N) If you could go back to when you were considering the show, would you tell past you to watch Nanoha?

Yeah, I've got that bookmarked too. I did a whole search through Madhouse's catalogue a while back and picked out the ones I liked the look/sound of.

ACCA Jusan-ku Kansatsu-ka, episode 1: It's like a...seinen political drama, animated by Madhouse. After watching the first episode, I just read the plot of each episode (it's not a long series) and thought "...I guess that sounds alright and well-made enough, but I'm just like...super not into this". Good decision by me, I think. One series out of the way, anyways. I should watch either more Sakura or Champloo instead, methinks. Sure sounds like a whole lot of "serious mode" story stuff all of a sudden.

Galaxy Express 999. The basic premise is that it's set a couple of centuries in the future in an utterly dystopian world ruled by those that have transferred themselves into robot bodies so they can live forever, and the humans who are actually still human are basically the poors. The Galaxy Express 999 is the space train that is said to take its passengers to the promised land, essentially, where they can become robots. The story opens up with a boy and his mother going out in a snowstorm to see the space train depart, for it only visits Earth once a year, but they are caught on the way by android human-hunters that murder his mother for sport. Another very sketchy woman rescues the boy and tells him that she can get him onto the 999...but only if he lets her go with him. Them departing on the 999 is how the episode ends, with promises of wacky adventures on the way to their...but not before the boy grabs a gun and takes a minute to avenge his mother in a hail of gunfire. The first episode was alright, but I'm not entirely sold on this. If I had to guess, this will probably be a little too much...boy action adventure stuff for me, at least until the show finally gets to the intended destination. The 2005 one looks similar-ish, but the 2007 already looks quite bad, and then it gets so much worse from there.

How much are you looking forward to all of the sequel TV series and movies?

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.