Bartimaeus

Future Boy Conan is next, likely to be started this week or maybe early next, depending. The new English dub version is out, although no decision has been concretely made on what to go with yet. By the way, does anyone know why the hell buying the series to stream on Amazon is more expensive than buying the actual BDs? 52 freaking dollars to stream it, $35 to buy the 4-disc BluRay set. HUH?! To be honest, I'm not...super into the idea of getting into a classic adventure story like this right now after having seen Nadia not all that long ago, but... Well, hopefully I'll enjoy it more consistently than Nadia. I will continue finishing Samurai Hairdo on the side. After that's finished, I have...I have a lot of different choices, to be honest, but the ones at the top right now are: Princess Tutu Kidou Tenshi Angelic Layer Kimagure Orange Road Kazemakase Tsukikage Ran Maison Ikkoku Mahou no Star Magical Emi More Devil Lady Serial Experiments Lain Yes, I know a few of these are questionable - they're the ones I'll probably try first simply to get them out of my hair ASAP, . ...Of course, I've tried that strategy a few times before and then found myself juggling three or four different shows at once before because I found that I liked them more than I expected, so not always necessarily the wisest idea.

Yeah, just for that image, Nanoha is going to the very back of my...actually literally ~60 item-long anime "check out" list. Mind you, that means it only had to go back a couple of places, but still.

Objectively, this should be hilarious, but subjectively, I don't even get a chuckle out of it. Why don't I like JoJo the show?

LMAO. I love that he put his crap-eating face on right after that, absolutely zero shame. Yes indeed, so glad that he put that at the end of the video instead of the beginning, . Oh, you literally said just about exactly what I said under the video - I hadn't looked below and read what you said yet. Oh no, the reviews I saw specifically mentioned it was more for the non-stop epic action stuff. Isn't that what you liked about the series in the first place? The promotional materials for this show make me want to stay as far as I humanly can as it is...

#JusticeforNaru why do you keep watching rando video reviews by actual real life troglodytes??? no Yeah, the general writing quality of that show is like the only appealing part of that show to me, from what you've said about it. But you're right, still don't want to watch it, . Tough to see it being better than the first, .

I think being part of the Sakura package absolutely makes it better, because I already love and am used to the dynamics of the characters plus the general style and flow of the show. Imagine me trying to get used to how Xiaolang acts in the second arc with no proper introduction. I know myself - it would not go over well. Having 56 episodes before any of that is a great boon to it. Most likely, the best it could've done by itself is a 7/10. I initially included at least another handful more, but when I tried to write about them, it was basically "oh, this is just another great episode, but that's not particularly noteworthy in of itself, so...", . I'm unsure of what I wrote about it, if I wrote much about it at all - if the latter happened, that does not necessarily have any bearing on whether I loved it in all cases, because sometimes something is fantastic but not much needs to be said about it. If I recall correctly, I did not speak anything specifically of that episode, but rather simply said the way the show had actually truly integrated her family into the show in good and meaningful ways was excellent. Feel free to correct me if you can find a post where I actually talked directly about it, though, . Yeah, all that sounds no longer simply unappealing, but actually terrible, . It's not that I don't really care, it's that I don't care at all. There's a huge difference! Shorter is not always simpler, though...in fact, compromising between the two is often a reality of life in many different and unexpected ways, but especially language. If you want to be able to speak like a native speaker of probably any language but at least English, you're going to have to know tons of little things that would shorten how you would say or write something where simply writing super formally (and also awkwardly/stiffly/poorly...) would suffice, but which would instantly sound unnatural to native speakers. All the knowledge governing that stuff is difficult to learn unless you speak the language on a daily basis for a prolonged period of time, though (...having good pattern-recognition skills that let you quickly adopt others' writing/speaking conventions surely would help as well). The rest of what you wrote was nonsense, and I refuse to believe it could have meaning for anyone, . Grounded and mundane is what I tend to enjoy the most when I love the characters. If the Sailor Guardians want to just go out and do some shopping while having their style of silly, cute, and/or oft-times heartfelt dialogue with nothing else much really going on in terms of real events but still staying genuine to their characters without flanderization, I would almost certainly watch and love that, and I would think you would as well. Getting away from the mundane is usually what makes me less interested in something unless the writers have actually taken the time to really set it all up well, because it tends to get us away from what is most important, which is our characters simply being our characters. Prolonged action sequences, important narrative set pieces, "epic" character moments that require our characters to not be their normal selves but instead the "serious" and "cool" versions of themselves that don't make mistakes or really show off who they are as characters in any meaningful way...bleh to all of it. Obviously, there are different grades to this and good writers will figure out ways of getting everything to work in unison so you can let your characters be themselves while also having them respond to actual events that are occurring, but I think you get the idea.

Cardcaptor Sakura, The End of Sakura, aka Leave It To Kero: The Movie! Yeah, alright. O.K., with that out of the way, let's talk overall rating. Linking previous thread because the first post didn't:

It was basically the same experience as the second shot for me, which was like having the flu for one day, and the next day pretty much all better. And @Hurlshot was right about my nieces - no reaction at all to the second shot, they were perfectly fine.

At least it wasn't as bad as Miranda from Mass Effect? I don't remember them doing it during any important character moments, at least, but I guess I could've just not noticed. ...And at least it's not literally Miranda from Mass Effect, whose design is shockingly revolting for a character that is supposed to be genetically perfect in-universe? How BioWare managed to get a locomotive to run over the face of the poor model they used for that character directly before doing their hatchet modeling job, I really don't know. Yeah, I wasn't ever quite sure what to make of the art style, but I certainly like it many times better than...say, Nanoha, . A soft and more restrained, almost kind of children's cartoon-y aesthetic instead of a super sharp and ultra-anime early 2000s-looking aesthetic...yes, I will gladly take it over many alternatives, .

Should've tried Ojami Doremi by him for me instead...though it's a bit longer, nary an ecchi tag in sight. The worst thing about ecchi isn't even what it necessarily shows - it's how utterly disruptive to the entire tone and style of a show it almost always ends up being (and never mind its poor characters, who are the worst victims of it). There are ways of including mild to moderate sexual content that don't just ruin your show, but ecchi goes the complete opposite route in being as in-your-face, pointless, and mind-breakingly stupid and insulting as possible. So maddening. I'm sure there must be some examples of it not doing so out there (possibly in the 80s before it really became a big thing?), but I certainly won't be looking for them. Utena: You are correct.

I thought the intro song for Utena was hot yarbage, and it's one of the few shows where I actually regularly skipped it, even early on into the show (and definitely more consistently later on). The outro song was where it was at. But uh, I guess that tracks with what I said, .

For me, I played the game pretty much exactly how I played Dark Souls (which was "keep rollin' rollin' rollin' and never block or parry except against knights because their attacks are so clearly and consistently telegraphed"). Don't think I ever parried in Bloodborne even once...actually, I don't think I ever even figured out the mechanics of parrying in that game at all. I hate fighting scrappy in Souls games (i.e. taking damage and healing), so the thing I always focus on first is figuring out enemies' movesets and where and when they can be attacked. I'm not sure how far you are into the game, but one thing I know that can greatly affect difficulty is what weapon you start out and stick with. The Hunter Axe is basically easy mode and it is a great weapon that can be used the entire game, the Saw Cleaver would be medium mode and is at least competent, and the Threaded Cane is hard mode because it's trash. I started out with axe (simply luck, I did not know there was such an imbalance between the different starting weapons), while a friend started out with the Threaded Cane, and our experiences of like the first third of the game could not have been more different. Classic FromSoftware design.

I believe Tim the Enchanter put it for me best: Outro song's not half bad, though I generally prefer catchier and higher energy outro music. Projectile nose-bleeding is an instant cancellation for any show or movie in my books.

Yeah, I think I saw that episode of SpongeBob a few years back too. Pretty wild stuff. ...My curiosity piqued me:

The way you post about JoJo's sometimes, I almost feel like it's not even a real show. Cardcaptor Sakura, episode You're Wonderful, Sakura-Chan! Tomoyo's Cardcaptor Sakura's Action Video Diary 2! Yes, that's really the name. Some interesting perspective here... Sakura looks a bit like an axe-murderer with this hairstyle. Why did Kero just make a turkey gobbling sound? I guess he is a turkey. Also, I guess this is where the baking end credits of season 3 come from. Cardcaptor Sakura, episode You're Wonderful, Sakura-Chan! Tomoyo's Cardcaptor Sakura's Action Video Diary Special! "Everyone, did you know?" "Are you lying again?" "I didn't say anything yet." The first two of these were good, the third one...felt more like what this show would be like if the show had been approached with a more typical "this cartoon is for kids" outlook. Tone, style, and characters were kind of all unnecessarily wacky instead of normal Sakura-grounded feeling. No biggie, it was like a 5 minute short and still decent enough.

I would think so, but the balance here is weird as well, because all of the second movie's action is basically clumped together right in the last third or so, whereas it's more spread throughout the entire thing in the first, IIRC. The second movie's structure almost feels exactly like a normal episode, except lengthened out to 3-4x the runtime, while the first movie is more like a traditional television movie (though it THANKFULLY does not make the mistake of doing the stupid "end of the world"-type thing, which I said as much when I watched it - nope, just a silly lovers' quarrel that Sakura actually could've walked away from at any time except after Madoushi had captured her friends and family because...well, if she hadn't investigated, Madoushi couldn't really have done anything). Yeah, I loved it when I watched it. I imagine it would've felt pretty different watching it at the end of the show instead of in the middle. This might help:

Yeah, antagonist is more correct. I think also knowing that it's a card doesn't help it - Madoushi is sort of like Spinel in SU in that she's a total unknown and you have no idea what her motivations are or exactly what she's trying to accomplish with what she's doing. That's...more intriguing than a card whose true nature you already know, and whose nature requires that...well, that Sakura capture it. How she was going to deal with Madoushi, an actual distinct person that seemed to want to maim and kill her (which never happened in the show before!), was an entirely different matter. The smart bet, of course, was on Steven-ing it up, but I could've seen her being forced to just seal her away or something like that too. End result was that I was more interested in and entertained by the "main action"-y parts of the first movie than I was of the second...but on the other hand, the non-action bits of the second movie were I learned my lesson from Evangelion, thanks, . Not that Sakura is nearly so difficult to comprehend as Evangelion, but still, slow and steady wins the race...

Yeah, I think for the people who are already on the "it's too different and they already really messed it up" boat, no amount of "it's actually good just keep watching bro" propaganda is going to help. If I didn't identify so much with many of the ideas and themes, I am certain I would like it a great deal less than I do. There's always unrealized potential in everything if you think long and hard enough, . The Joe/drug dealer idea would've been pretty great as well as possibly hilarious.

I didn't, I'm saving it for later, . I'm torn on which one I liked more. I guess, if I think about it, this was a great and fitting ending for the show, which is more difficult to pull off than a mid-show "let's go have a random adventure somewhere else" movie like the first one was. I'm still not a hundred percent clear on why the first movie was so disappointing for you, but I'm glad at least the second and more important one was great, . Yeah, I didn't think I would dislike that, and...I didn't, per se, what I actually didn't love was the card herself. I liked Madoushi as a villain *way* more than Ashes. Ashes was...pretty simple and flat, and didn't feel much like a character at all. Still, not too big of an issue.

Cowboys seem awfully like a good-ish team that will get pretty easily dropped out of the playoffs in either the first or second round, depending on whom they get to play in the first round. If they get to play the 7th seed, they probably make it to the second round, but I wouldn't feel comfortable making any optimistic predictions for them beyond that.

Realizing that some things are simply not for you and not making an instant "THIS IS BAD AND I AM SUPERIOR" judgement call is a pretty important step for civil conversation about media. But that part can be pretty difficult for a lot of people, including even myself at times. The whole feel-good action adventure genre, including your Star Wars and your Indiana Jones, your Goonies, and...whatever else, is probably a genre that's never going to quite fully appeal to me for various reasons, but I still recognize plenty of good things about them and understand why they're so often so many people's favorite movies even when I still don't enjoy them nearly as much as others. I might dunk a lot on some of the...lesser or outright bad entries of those series, but that's because it's just so incredibly easy as they're actually just not very good and there is so much ammo to go around - you won't see me talking much smack about the original Star Wars or Indiana Jones trilogies anytime soon. I also won't ever be making any comments on wrestling, soap operas, comedies, or...plenty of other stuff. Enjoy what you want to enjoy, and I'll try to do the same, excluding a rare inspired foray outside of my comfort zone here and then, which unfortunately sometimes leads to disaster where I am thrown down into the well again, . P.S. Terminator > Terminator 2.

Sakura's Sealed Hairdo, The Movie. @majestic's been long asking for this, so don't blame me for the length! I was only able to get the English version of this, so that's what I'm watching. I'm sure I'll like it just as much as if I were watching in the Japanese that I watched the entire rest of the show in. Also, screw the spoiler tag, because it's clear nobody else is going to watch this show at this point. Fire dragon, titanium oliphaunt, rockzilla...oh my gosh, lmao, I should've guessed, I really should've. Gosh dang it, Tomoyo: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/lysw9dtbhwuc6qa/0j1WoWIJdK.mp4 No, wait, I take it back, Tomoyo is my favorite character after all! "OH-HAH-YO-OOH!" I'm just waiting for the "kaiju"...and there it is, literally the next line. Now, does this look like the face of a monster? Yeah, yeah, it kind of does. Some fancy dutch angle scene panning when Sakura sensed something strange about the amusement park. ...Oh yeah, it's all coming together - and Meiling is staying the entire week, which should presumably cover the length of this movie. Lmao, she's just destroying Sakura with a million guilt trips...and the arranged dinner date. This is all Tomoyo's fault, of course. Oh look, it actually was, big frickin' surprise. Well, after Xiaolang spilled the sugar and Sakura started stuttering, I paused the show and said to myself "Kero is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT GUARANTEED going to pop out of thin air to yell about something to interrupt this", and literally two seconds after I unpaused it, he did exactly that and I burst out laughing. It's all so horribly (wonderfully) predictable. Heh, Xiaolang just looked at Kero with literally the same flat-eyed expression Touya has before...and gets completely bodied by Kero for it. The show really only had Kero transform when the story required it and never really more, so that's a bit of a moment. Although given that he only ever plays freaking video games all day every day, he basically shouldn't even be able to transform at this point...magical being benefits, I guess. Alright, here we go again. If someone else was going to suddenly butt in right now...where's Toya and her father? I think they're supposed to be home soon...and, yep, there it is. This is just going to keep happening, isn't it? Half-expecting Ruby to appear out of nowhere just for old time's sake at this point... Sakura should really keep her cards on her...that'd be like Usagi not keeping her transformation brooch on her. I guess a deck of cards is a little more unwieldy...actually, now that I think about it, there are many times throughout the show where she kinda just conjures cards outta nowhere. Hmm, maybe it's just a power she has - the cards have been shown to basically teleport before, after all. I must confess - for but a moment, I interpreted this very wrongly. For only a moment, though. In my defense, look at those eyes...and also, it seems like Meiling too had to question exactly what she meant by that. Meiling, of course, was still embarrassed by the answer, as anyone would rightfully be. And then there were even more guilt trips... The face of a monster that knows all too well what she's doing... Seriously, does Kero do anything but play video games and gorge himself at this point? And yet, he looks like this... Chiharu has some serious "Homer Simpson strangles Bart" issues to work out with Takashi, . Alright, who's it going to be this time? First it was Kero...then it was Toya...we're in the middle of the street right now, so I guess I can't think of anything obvious this time. Hm...maybe an actual THREAT? I guess I'll be surprised! Oh. Uh. A giant rabbit. No, I actually was not expecting Toya for a second time, but somehow, that seems predictable as well. That really *is* like old times...like, season one level of old times. ..."I'm sure it was nothing." *immediate cutaway to desolation and ruin* Yep, I'm sure it was nothing too, Sakura. "Could it be under construction?" Yes, Meiling, because when bridges are being repaired, you utterly demolish them beyond repair before you do the repair, . Oh hey, Kero actually had the same idea I had - Sakura should keep the cards on her at all times! Nice going, Kero. How come Sakura is running late to everything all of a sudden? Did she catch a case of Usagi brain over the summer? Or maybe it was Covid-19... Oh, now *she's* the one that's turning around instead of Xiaolang... This is just "Matchmaking: The Movie" at this point - literally half of the movie more or less completely dedicated to this...and hey, that's great, because it was the most important thing left-over from the show, . Nevertheless, Meiling and Tomoyo should really give Whisper of the Heart a watch and realize that it's O.K. to take your time and not know what you're doing...y'all are still kids. But when you're a kid, you don't feel like a kid, I suppose... Also, I'm pretty sure Xiaolang is having a seizure while on this rollercoaster? That or he just passed out and broke his neck, because that boy don't look right. Oh...bringing out the big guns, are we? The ferris wheel...okay, if there were ever a time to be randomly attacked, this would be it, methinks. Hey...pretty close! Not quite exactly an attack, but pretty close. Just mugged of her cards by her own card, although uh...that card wasn't looking too good to my eyes, so I'm assuming something's up with her. A card that makes everything "return to nothing"? An Ashes to Ashes card - we gettin' Midnight Mass up in here? Uh...Kaho is still living with Eriol? That's...weird. Is she actually human or another one of his creations? That would probably make a lot more sense in all honesty if she was, . Bigly mood. Oh hey, it's Maki(?), the toy store lady. Didn't talk, but she's still around. And Dust to Dust just created a black hole in the middle of the school courtyard, neat. And so prince and princess become princess and prince... I knew there was no way that Takashi was a good fit for that in the first place, so that only made sense. And one last Meiling cackle for the road... Hey, Sonomi recorded Tomoyo's song! She doesn't hate her daughter confirmed! Her goons surrounding the place all have guns, of course...err, I mean cameras, . I love that her dad still readied his even after seeing that ludicrous display. Although I don't love that he left the bloody flash on during a performance...that troglodyte, . Sonomi must be pretty handy with cameras like her daughter, because her look of disgust could have started a war. Yikes, literally the entire town just got sucked into a black hole. Well, it was a good run as Cardcaptor, Sakura. Yikes at Tomoyo's veiled threat to Xiaolang that he would not come back if he didn't wear it. She sure is pushy! And she just turned to dust, so I guess she should've probably made one for herself too if that particular theory of hers had any truth to it - whoops! Okay, was it just me that burst out laughing seeing her ride the ferris wheel? Something about the way that looked, our big bad villain just casually chilling in a ferris wheel as it goes up, was absolutely hilarious to me. Also, I'm pretty sure Sakura would've been severely injured falling like she did - she completely ate it but was totally fine somehow. What a great cornball ending - and it was set up by what happened at the end of the show itself, so bonus points for that. I am, however, a little confused as to why there is an Evangelion(?) song at the end of this movie. Sakura's: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/yy70qrltbhyl3fh/Melody for Tomorrow.flac ...vs. the other: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/fa1ldtqyq7q37hy/This Kind of Love.flac It turns out it's because Shiro Sagisu, the composer of Evangelion, also composed this, and I guess created this alternative version of it. Well, alright, I suppose that does make sense. Great-sounding song, so I can't exactly complain about getting a pretty different version of it.

Egwene:

I'm in favor of everyone always being able to enjoy their favorite things, including the worst no good terrible very bad parts of it...so long as they aren't trying to convince the rest of us that it's any good, . I watched the first one for the first time a few years back and really liked it, hence why Aliens has been on my "yeah I should do that..................eventually" list. Being a bigger, dumber action movie does sound less interesting, but I suppose I really ought to get to get it done and over with someday soon. It's the only other one that's supposed to be any good, as far as I know. I have to be honest with you - although I've actually for real seen both Matrix 2: Redevilutionizer and Matrix 3: Resonancecascadization, I am having the darnest time trying to remember what happens in one versus the other. All I'm remembering are small details like...Neo being stuck in some kind of train station loop, some really awful meme-y looking martial artists, a white room with a billion cameras...I think that's the second one. The third one is just a billion Agent Smiths and the giant mech defense of whatever the hell the human sanctuary was called? Icon? Cyclon? ...Ah, screw it, it's not worth remembering anyways.