Bartimaeus

"Not nearly as bad as Utena" is what I'm hearing, which sounds like a resounding recommendation even if it does sound a little tempered by some disappointment, . Yeah, I actually wasn't sure whether I should interpret the events of those two episodes as being racist (on the part of the show's creators) or not, because it's starting to kind of feel that way with the way it's all tying into Nadia's core beliefs and upbringing while insistently making her look as stupid and mean as possible. I don't know what they were thinking. I guess it'll depend on where we go from here. Good thing I played Warcraft III for many years so I can still remember that exact line in my head perfectly, . Couldn't be me, I would never do that, especially not about literally everything, . Are kidding me? How could you put the Power Puff Girls in even the same category as Phineas and Ferb? Powerpuff Girls is a totally classic cartoon aesthetic. Phineas and Ferb looks like it was by professional baby-killing assassins who never learned to draw good but decided to make a children's cartoon instead of continuing to kill babies anyways. How are they even remotely on the same level?! I have like literally about 20 different magical/shoujo shows from the ~90s bookmarked because I once sent out a feeler with a Cardcaptor Sakura community about other older shows like it from around the same time period (late 80s to early 2000s) and got swamped with a number of at least promising-looking suggestions...but I'm not gonna get to them anytime soon with everything else I have to get to first. Undoubtedly, none of them will match up to Sakura (and almost definitely not even Sailor Moon), but hey, at least there's a possibility!

Actually already watched the next two episodes already, it was...uh, a minor disaster. Praying that the show doesn't keep doing this, because ye' gods that was literally all those first two episodes were driven by and it was not enjoyable. Also, as for the other characters...if so, they're not the same types of characters as from Evangelion. They may be manifestations of other parts of Anno that weren't covered by Evangelion, though. Character spoilers:

Not really to the level of Evangelion, but...some random wacky spoilers ahead: Biggest problem with this series is funnily the exact same one I had with Evangelion: the main character. Let's just say that Anno seems to have specific traits in mind that I do not find particularly enjoyable for his protagonists, .

"Final" episode of Nadia (23/39, 23rd was the original intended ending): ...Or, if you prefer: ...And a quick, "slight" tweak I just made for no reason: Hm, yeah,. I alllmost stopped watching the first couple of minutes, and then again during one particular scene towards the beginning, but I didn't. Your mileage may vary, .

Forum ate my post again...but I had a copy. Very cool, forums...very cool. Me checking out this movie right now: ...Not because it looks bad, but because my eyes feel like they're melting due to the brightness and vibrancy. Holy cow is that intense. So...I'm just thinking out-loud here, but you probably shouldn't be a social media "influencer" if the sight of your own face terrifies you. Just a thought, . Anyways, perfectly decent film. It was fine, . Even liked the art style well enough (...though the action scene near the beginning was a little...over the top style-wise and feels a little out of place with the rest of the film, but whatever, it's fine).

Those are just about all the "correct" picks (besides the NFC West, who are surely the most difficult to predict with an absolute murder show between the Rams, Seahawks, Cardinals, and 49ers all being fairly easy to see winning that division without it being surprising)...but there are always surprises. Some teams will not do nearly as well as they seemingly should, at least a couple of teams will come out of nowhere, a few teams will get the injury bug bad...so I'd guess probably 4-5 of those will be correct. Which ones is a lot more difficult to say...and what ones will instead replace the ones that don't make it is just about impossible, .

I knew you actually loved Nanami, .

That's why I'm watching and trying to through (or at least a better handle on whether I'd like) all this weird or random stuff I've bookmarked instead of watching Sakura. My OCD for cleaning stuff goes crazy when I have too much, and I have too much by far right now...have to get through some of it. So yeah, don't feel compelled to add even more to your plate by any means, especially given that something like Black Magic M-66 was just fun random trash at best, . I've only seen one episode of Princess Tutu and though I've read everything you've written about it, that was not enough in order for literally anything you say about the show to stick or make sense in my brain. What you wrote here might as well be total gibberish for me, .

Maybe the real End of the World was the friends we made along the way... Black Magic M-66 (1987). I was going to watch the second Devilman, but it wouldn't play, so I made do with some random garbage. Reporter McToughlady protagonist woman gets wind of a military operation that goes terribly wrong involving some malfunctioning androids that are going after the wrong target, gets caught in the middle of it and basically has to Die Hard it up (or maybe Sarah Connor would be a better comparison). Like Assemble Insert, it's random 80s trash, but it's fairly fun trash that's just good enough so it doesn't feel quite like trash. Reporter McToughlady protagonist woman, just in case it wasn't clear, . Hey, beats the crap out of Utena, that's for sure. It's a little weird the years on some of the things I've seen. Venus Wars feels more like it came out in the early 80s, but actually came out in 1989, two years later than Black Magic M-66, and that seems very off and wrong to me...the original Miyu was 1988, but really seems more like it should be a handful of years later in the early 90s to me...and of course, Eriko is still the biggest outlier of anything I've seen, because it came out in 89-90, but from everything about it you'd swear it must've been 20 or even 30 years older than it actually is. Blows my mind that Sailor Moon would come out a couple of years later - in no universe does that make any kind of sense, Eriko is about as old-fashioned as you can get. Weird stuff.

I will almost definitely never go to a theater in my lifetime ever again - not being able to pause, having to deal with other people both in and out of the actual movie-watching experience, the seating situation, the whole food scam - everything, really. The only exception I can think of is if it were limited re-showing of something old or less popular that I love at a smaller theatre that I genuinely wanted to have a theatre experience for. 12 Monkeys, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Perfect Blue, The Thing...I could see myself going for those and some of my other favorite movies. Something I haven't already seen before? Nope.

...In all fairness, I hadn't gone to the theatres for anything for years even before the pandemic, and I'm certainly not going to now. And I'm probably not even going to watch Dune, not unless it really gets rave reviews anyways. I've only read a few Dune books, so I'm not exactly a superfan of it.

...Was my 5.5/10 for the show perhaps too generous?

Lmao, I had literally just come back to edit in "besides brain-rotted LotR fans, that is". Not that there's anything wrong with the original trilogy by any means, but it is danged long and you'd be completely mad to sit through all of it in one sitting. Also, the theatrical versions of The Two Towers and The Return of the King are better than the extended editions anyways.

"'Let’s watch the four-to-five-hour movie like a TV show,' Momoa said." ...If you actually release it as a TV show, then sure. Who wants to sit down and watch a movie for 6 hours straight, though?

Unrelated: Yeah, sorry, but I think your nephew should be considered a total loss at this point. Ah well. You've done more than me. The only thing I've ever had is an accidental sip of wine a handful of years back, which I sadly ingested a small amount of before I realized what it was. I've had a pretty hard-line anti-drug* stance since...forever, I guess, owing back to my lovely family history, . *On a personal level - others are of course free to do as they please (and I'm pro-marijuana legalization, of course)...though I cannot/will not tolerate the ghastly smell of alcohol. Yeah. Thanks, though - I'm probably just gonna get dementia in my 40s, no biggie.

Huh, forum ate my post that I (thought I) posted like half an hour ago...luckily, it saved a draft copy. Medical yes, recreational no. But it probably doesn't matter, because I don't historically do well with anything even slightly psychoactive (...really, even taking like just a melatonin makes me a bit out of my mind...and also very much unable to sleep), and my family has a history of paranoid schizophrenic episodes from marijuana, so it's probably sadly not a good idea. Well, actually, we have a history of schizophrenia in general, but marijuana induces symptoms in even the people that don't normally exhibit them, . Spirit isn't that bad... Of course, I've only seen (a lot of) it from watching it with my nieces and it's surely very superior to most other children's trash, . Definitely a very girly show, though... Them colors and backgrounds. Looks effective...at least at a glance.

Devilman: The Birth. Everyone looking ever so slightly little different from how I remember them: Lot of similarities to Devilman Crybaby...but a whole lot of differences too, including story and even these main characters. It's still pretty nuts, but a bit slower and more digestible (...and a more stripped-down, just-the-essentials story)...but it is also a lot more my speed. Here are the first few minutes of the film in HD if you want to watch it, : https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/kjqvcaa942xfa5p/u1I9kKxqt1.mp4 Little bit different-looking...little bit.

I was kinda hoping the second one TBH for extra weirdness, but I guess not. ...I'm not a hundred percent sure that's it, but sure, let's go with that! No, that's the scary bit: the series of clips you sent I thought were pretty funny (even if also facepalmingly cringey), so if I actually got to know and like the characters, I could really be in trouble. That would be unacceptable, for many reasons, . The only necessary response to them:

It's a shame that if I ever try K-On, I won't ever be able to tell anyone. There are some things that no-one else simply should ever know about, RIP. (e): Also tried somewhere between 2 and 10 minutes of Steam Boy (2004), Summer Wars (2009), Brothers Grimm: The Golden Bird (1987), The Boy and the Beast (2015), Sword of the Stranger (2007), Colorful (2010) each, but all of them were more or less instant rejects for various reasons. I don't know what y'all can do with this information particularly given how finicky I am, so I guess I'm just throwing it out there, . Basically just trying to clear out some random garbage I glanced at for like two seconds...once in a while I get a solid or even good one (Crusher Joe, Vampire Hunter D, Your Name I guess, ...), but most of the time I sadly seem to get something either mediocre, simply unappealing, or worse, . P.S. I have not been able to sleep for more than four hours on any given night in over two weeks, my brain feels like a scrambled egg, please send help.

Besides watching only two minutes of it before going "ight imma head out"? Nothing, I guess, .

Genius Party (2007). A collection of six different shorts: it mostly sucked and so I mostly skipped through all of it. The very first one was the only one semi-worth watching. It seems to officially be garbage day. Anything else terrible I should get out of the way now, guys?

Dead Leaves (2004). A guy with a TV for a head and a lady named Pandy wake up one day with no clothes and no recollection of whom they are, and decide to immediately go rob a place for money and guns and go on a wild police chase. They are then caught and sent to a prison facility called "Dead Leaves" on the moon. That's all I can say because that's as far as I got before I asked myself "is this going to become any less dumb?" and read the plot summary for the movie and immediately concluded "no, no it's not" and turned it off. Sort of neat animation style though, I guess: ...But brainless action stuff is just never for me. Into the trash it goes.