majestic

I liked Blade Runner 2049 better than Arrival. Technically I enjoyed Arrival more until it became so stupid it turned from a really good film into something not even Alex Kurtzman and Jar Jar Abrams could dream up while collaborating to create the stupidest movie premises of all time (and oh boy did they try, huh?). By the by...

One confirmed and some suspected cases in Israel, that genie has left the bottle. Time to book another golfing vacation in South Africa. Last year retarded hotel owners from Tyrol brought the original SA strain back home, but Delta drowned it out before it could become an issue. This one could be more fun, so git going!

Looks like it's a bit too late for that. Huh.

I actually really liked them going shopping. Komi and Tadano having one of their "talks" is almost always a nice moment. It's just everything else that's... doubleplusungood.

Star Dreck, Venal Disease, Season 4, Episode 2. Current Burnham crying counter is at 1 from last episode's almost cry face at the very end. Should that devolve into actual crying at the start of the second episode, I shan't increase the counter. Opening flashback features Ni'Var (formerly Vulcan) and Gray being seen by Dr. Culber, so we're probably going to advance these two stupid plotlines in this episode. Well, here goes nothing. Burnham cry counter is now one to three. That's one for real, and three time she had an inward sad. One minor positive thing, this one was less offensive than the last one, but it cranked up the stupid writing and terrible science to eleven, evening it out. Terrible performances by all the actors, except for Abe Sapien, who continues to give it his best even through all the makeup and prosthetics.

This episode of Komi can’t communicate is fantastic. I have no idea what’s going on because I’m paying attention to all the text on screen and frequently pause to look up words. @Sarexwas right when he said all the text improves the show a lot but I doubt that is what he meant. :P 古見さん’s panicky face keeps being the best thing about the actual show… Although this episode made her insane friends look slightly less deranged.

Dropkick on my Devil: Continues to be amazingly silly in its fourth wall breaking. Jashin drinks a level up potion that she got from Satan and grows actual legs. She moves back and forth a little and Yurine is always standing just so you don't see her nude body, and says: Jashin, you're making this hard for the animator. Put some clothes on.

Side post/addendum to my post:

Pretty much that, sometimes we add potatoes, i.e. pre-boil, cut into small pieces, fry a bit earlier, then add the blood sausage, or use the pan fried potatoes as side. Usually we also serve some sauerkraut with it. If you're not feeling like expending the effort, you can just nuke it in the microwave. That won't add onions, of course, but if you use a microwaveable container it won't make a mess of the oven and it comes out pretty good. The other option is slowly heating it up in water, but that depends on the packaging, and is only worth it when you have some sausage "stock" to not mess up the taste: Just sacrifice one sausage to the gods of sausages by cutting it up and boiling it in water for a while, then use that water to slowly heat the remaining ones. That turns them back into being really creamy and soft. If you have a whole sausage, if all you have is pre-cut pieces then that's not really an option. You can keep the water in the freezer if you feel like it, that cuts down on the sausage sacrifices.

Yeah, well, our McDonald's stuff isn't as vile as yours, actually. It's quite okay, as far as fast food goes, and unlike other burger chains it's really ubiquitous, so forgive me for using it as an example. Well, yes, indeed. In that case I would have to rate StrikerS really highly, but where would that leave me? See, I'm in a bind like a professional critic who wants to rate the stupid action film he just enjoyed a 8/10 but simply can't because there's a certain expectation that comes with being a professional critic, right? Unless you're like Roger Ebert was and already well above such lowly concerns. How can something be 8/10 if I can't make an essay out of it (long ass description posts don't count, do they)? There's a certain expectation to be met here, after all. No, but seriously, purely based on how much I enjoyed watching StrikerS, and that it made me go an extra mile each day just to be able to watch at least one episode a day in terms of time commitment (what with work being what it is), I'd have to rate it at least 8/10. Funny how different perceptions can be, because I would argue that Violet Evergarden asks and does no such thing. Episode one Violet is Violet as she is, in terms of mood, behavior and any other number of elements. Yes, she begins her journey in a hospital trying to write a report and failing due to her circumstances, and there might be any number of people who immediately feel sad for her (I did not), but she never is sad about it herself. She isn't even likeable, or relatable (unless one's a bit like me, but I hope nobody else is ). It's not until the very end of episode seven that the anime actually asks the viewer to care about what happens to her, and the narrative perspective switches to her for a while. I can see your reasoning there, to be honest, it just wasn't my experience at all - and there we're circling back to me being me again because yes, I have watched a couple of reaction videos on YouTube, and they overwhelmingly do just that - think they're supposed to feel sad for Violet and then do that. Most of it feels fake though, but what do I know. That said I didn't particularily like the first two episodes, and would have preferred if the anime started the way the the light novel does, with Violet writing the letters for the princess (episode five), however I guess having even more flashbacks to explain what came before would have been a narrative issue. The flashbacks keep repeating as if I wasn't capable of retaining what happened in them without repetion, in an anime that's 13 episodes long. *shrug* I'm picking this out in particular to keep the post a bit more concise, but I did indeed mean the conceptual tragedy of everything in Miyu, and that includes her right off the bat (get it, right off the bat, because she's a vampire... would be funnier if she wasn't a Japanese vampire). For me, due to... well, everything, I guess, conceptual tragedy and the resulting melancholic mood is so pervasive in Miyu that it just suffuses everything to a point of drowning it out, even when there are more lighthearted moments. Don't get me wrong, that is a huge part of Miyu's appeal for me (I loved Outer Limits, after all), but it's also where my wish comes from that the show just picked up on it and spent more time doing something with Miyu instead of having an almost as neurotic victim of the week setup as Sailor Moon did. That might sound a bit silly now, but that was a pretty helpful explanation. Not a spoiler: Like I said, not at the expense of getting to the second Sakura movie, or K-On!, or even Princess Tutu, and certainly not just for my personal curiosity. If you're ever really bored though... Also need to point out that you decided to try Steins;Gate over my objections, I wash my hands of that! So am I, I'm already sacrificing sleep to write this post. I'm pretty tired and it's 2 am. On a "brighter" note, with us being back in lockdown, I'll just do the good old working from home thing again. I don't have a long commute, but it makes it easier regardless. I thought so too, but with Hiragana being a syllabary it's actually pretty easy. I had two reasons for starting, actually. First is that I've been watching an entertaining series of YouTube videos on Japanese grammar (I like grammar, as an avid reader of this thread might have noticed , so yes, that is entertainment for me), and pretty much everything has some manner of syllable changes so it's really helpful to understand how Japanese syllables work, and secondly simply to see how long it would take. I set the app to schedule 30 minutes a day (doesn't go higher), and that gives me a weekly goal of attaining 420 stars (so one "star" per 2 minutes that the lessons are supposed to take). I'm currently at 470 stars out of 420 for the week that started Saturday evening, and not all of that time was spent on learning Hiragana. The answer apparently is less than four hours, unless the tracking is wrong. It's not like it's already second nature, but reading words works pretty well by now. So, yeah, why bother? Because I can. People climb on mountains because they're there too, after all. *shrug* (forum ate my post, ctrl+c to the rescue)

Sometimes this thread be like:

That's the problem. There are elements in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha that are trash(y), and that's mostly the fanservice elements and an "over"-reliance on action, although the latter is questionable in a sense when contrasted with more modern anime, tv shows or even films that almost exclusively rely on being absolute action spectacles to lull the viewers into not noticing how everything is readily falling apart at the seams. By the way, for the purpose of this discussion I'm going to pretend that I skipped episode five of the first season, or that my copy was damaged and the horrible parts in the bath don't exist. I kind of enjoyed the first two seasons, but even so there's the problem that they're nothing special. Putting them at a 6.5 out of 10 seems like a decent place. They're still decently written, they don't look terrible (very subjective, I know) even though they could really do with better animation, but if someone asked me why he should watch them, I'm coming up short, except for saying that I liked how the villains of the seasons weren't exactly villains, their goals were very low key and understandable, and any end of the world stuff was just ancillary. StrikerS on the other hand strikes a balance between action, character elements and general entertainment value in a way that I haven't experienced since the early seasons of Agents of SHIELD. The problem I have with StrikerS is that I can't just say "there are a few elements that did not work, and the fanservice - when it happens - is distracting" and then go and give it an 8/10 when Miyu would sit at a 7/10 because there's no way StrikerS is a better, or more meaningful anime, plus it's an insult to actual 8/10 animes like NGE. When I look at Miyu I see untapped potential, when I look at StrikerS what I see is a show that maxed out its potential. It cannot get any better, unless there's a radical shift in tone, writing style (not quality), genre or focus. It is as good as show like it can get. How do you rate the best hot dog you can get compared to haute cuisine with some deficiencies in its craftsmanship? It's a bit like @KP Cross Split Attack said, every now and then you just want a McDonald's burger, and StrikerS is pretty much that. Time to stop rambling. Sorry. I'm agreeing with what you said about the part I haven't quoted, as you noticed, I'm still hesistant to try Samurai Boogaloo for that reason. I'll also try to cut this short because the last few days have taken a lot out of me, but today we successfully launched a large project. I feel empty in a way I don't experience all too often. At least the 14 hour work days will cease now, I think. The fact that I still made time to watch StrikerS at such a pace should also count for something, I guess. Anyway, back to Miyu or at least anime drama, I think Gromnir had the right of it in the movie thread. Whether something is over-dramatic, melodramatic or maudlin is a matter of subjective enjoyment beyond a certain amount of an objective measure, i.e. Violet Evergarden is very clearly written as an appeal to emotion in certain episodes, and yes, if the show for any reason falls flat for a viewer or doesn't work on the level it tries to, then it becomes a subjectively bad experience (as you experienced yourself). Miyu works in spite of being way over that level. If I take a step back and look at it, the amount of episodes that do the tragic ending are legion, never mind the entire ending of the anime. I'm sure there are people out there who groan at that, and - rightfully, I would say - just dismiss it. *shrug* I don't even know where I was going with this. Which is why it didn't, just like Violet Evergarden or Dropkick on my Devil! (which nobody else picked up on, or at least didn't post about, *shrug*), come with a recommendation. Especially not for the first and second season. My exact words where there's a semi-chance you'll not hate the first three episodes. When I said that it would be interesting to see what you'll say about a handful of StrikerS episodes that was less about me thinking it has a chance of being well and truly liked. There are some moments that are really going in the right direction, but those just drown out in the parts of the show that I still liked, but you definitely would not (not only, but very much of the action). No, that would be interesting on an intellectual level, also because imposter syndrome is a thing and I talk about this being well written - which in my opinion it really is, but I'd still want cross-checked by someone trustworthy. Yep. That's like... yeah. Ahem. Well. Don't mind me, I'll show myself out. They're only nude in every other episode, really... erm... and in every opening sequence. Yeah. Who am I kidding. It probably only doesn't feel as bad in StrikerS as it is because the first season went way overboard and because it's at least not embarrassing all the time, like Love Live! or Magic User's Club, or that girl from the trailer Gorth linked. ** Now that that's over, Saturday I was sitting at the office hard at work and decided that I'll try something new for fun, and downloaded a small language learning app that plays very well into most of my weaknesses. It creates a schedule to stick to, has smaller lections, and a variety of things to choose from. There are progress bars and achievements too. It also had a training course for Hiragana, which is what I toyed around with over the weekend in an attempt to take my mind off work (kind of worked). Seems daunting at first what with it being 46 symbols (plus a whole lot of symbols formed with diacritics and sounds written in digraphs), but it's not that bad. I'm capable of slowly (very slowly) reading* Hiragana after a couple of hours (the idea of learning to read 2000 kanji still seems terrible though). I'm perfectly capable of writing them on my phone when switching to the Japanese keyboard, but that's because they're set up to follow a very simple pattern, and it's just transcribing syllables you hear into symbols you don't even have to be able to read because they can't be anywhere else on the keyboard. Took me a while to figure out how to write diacritics and how the rules for the diagraphs work (like how to get from shi to ja, which begins with the same symbol, needs a diacritic added and a second symbol to transform the i to an a) though. I'm guessing weeb street cred is good enough, after all. edit: Take the title from Gorth's anime: 見える子ちゃん - that's Mieruko-chan. Mi and ko are kanji, the other hiragana. The syllable after ko is a chi with the second being a small ya to indicate the change from chi to cha. 見|え|る|子|ちゃ|ん Mi e ru ko cha n. *Doesn't mean understanding, obviously. My Japanese vocabulary is... let's say, limited, at best.

I took these last year but then forgot about posting them. Was reminded this weekend after getting some more of it: Various game (wild boar, hare, deer). Blood sausage... This is goose liver, and I have no excuse for its ethical downsides, to be honest, but it's good.

That looked semi-interesting until it suddenly didn't any more, how much of that big boobie girl is in this and just how constant are these attempts to make me feel something for animated characters down south where they never once mattered to me? Don't get me wrong, I often end up caring for animated characters more than live action characters, but enjoying fanservice for what it's supposed to be? Uh... no, I just don't work that way. No one should.

Well, that's something we'll probably never know, because this forum software is as mysterious as Instrumentality. I wonder if this will turn into an essay now. Turns out it almost did, spoiler tagged for brevity. SOME Nanoha spoilers, so anyone else who might want to try it beware. Well was that a ramble, huh? TL;DR: If you ever feel like it and have the time (and nothing better to do), try StrikerS and give it more than the opening episode that's a little more actiony than the next 10 or so episodes, unless you immediately despise the setup. You're probably not going to finish watching it, but I'd still be curious what you'll make of it - if only to improve my ability to prognosticate. The anime's biggest problem is answering the question: Why should I watch this instead of something else? That's a question I can't answer beyond Nanoha is different than other magical girl heroines and... that's pretty much it. It never fully shakes the feeling that you're watching something that's nice to watch, occasionaly fun, sometimes great, but ultimately nothing truly outstanding. It feels a bit like listening to an album of a genre of music you liked when you were younger but feel you've grown out of, or a new album of a group you liked that feels like they're becoming a bit stale. You might still enjoy it, you can see (well, hear) all the elements that made you enjoy this in the past, it's really well crafted perhaps, but it's not... that special any more. Does that make sense? No, probably not. It also makes it sound worse than it is. StrikerS moves the show out of being completely derivative, but at the same time introduces some staler elements to the plot, and the Doctor sometimes feels like a less fun Professor Tomoe. Great, now I've confused myself. On a "out of 10" rating it feels like this is a 7/10 if a 7/10 represents the upper bounds of what something can achieve without being truly special or meaningful. Because if nothing else, a lot of care and planning went into setting up StrikerS, and that has to count for something. It's a well crafted little season, to borrow something Jay would say. One might not like the genre, and therefore it becomes something most likely - perhaps not uninteresting or loathesome, but not worth investing time in. It kind of feels unfair to rate this 7/10 even though I was surprised how well crafted and of high quality StrikerS felt, but in the light of truly great entertainment that transcends genre interest, what else could I put it at? In some ways, 7/10 isn't high enough for my personal enjoyment of StrikerS, on the other hand, at the same time it feels like it's too much because I entirely enjoyed this more than I probably should have. How do you rate guilty pleasures?

Binged the final six episodes. What else can I say that I haven't posted about. There's a certain amount of fanservice, the final episodes have some more of that really bad CGI as the Cradle of the Holy King is CGI whenever it is moving around. The story came to a close wihout any major asspulls which is fairly surprising, but it's not nearly as complicated as it at first seemed. A couple of things seemed rushed and could have usde an episode or two of setup. There was nothing indicating that Vivio would or could I kind of wish we could spoiler sentences without these huge spoiler tags, but hey, one needs to be happy that the forum software is working at all. Nanoha does blast Quattro with a yuuuuuuuuuge laz0r beam, but sadly that turned out to be non-lethal. That girl's not right in the head. That's what you get for being a cheap knockoff of a character that killed the great Eudial. Anyway, this season would mostly work without watching Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha or Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's first, but it does help understand where some of the characters' personality traits come from. StrikerS is, however, a huge step up in quality over the first two. It's less melancholic, aging up the girls finally gives a little sense to their otherwise overexaggerated maturity, the characters are better defined and the storyline is better written too. It does make a few mistakes here and there. It never fully commits to whatever relationship Fate and Nanoha have - or don't have. Other than them living together and sort of adopting Vivio - which is a lot to work with, though - there's never anything that would fully confirm that Nanoha isn't blushing around Yuuno out of interest. Yuuno certainly is interested, he said as much in a throwaway line about being happy to spend more time with Nanoha. That's a bit of a missed chance, all in all. The antagonists this season are different from the ones in the first season and A's by virtue of being closer to actual villains. Contrasted with the first season that has a mother trying to revive her lost daugther and a group of warrior mages trying to find a way to help their paralyzed mistress that's a step down. Still, I'd give this a recommendation. The 26 episodes of StrikerS are a good mix of action, character moments, slower parts and decent pacing throughout. Never a boring episode, not one that is a waste of time and just one that dumps a bit too much exposition on the viewer, and for something that's essetially a "serious" magical girl anime with a strong sci-fi bent there's plenty of times when reckless shounen nonsense isn't just commented on, but shown to be dangerous. I've stated it a hundred times, but one last shall it be: This doesn't have any comedic elements. There's a laugh here and there, but don't expect something fun. This is serious business. If you ever wondered how a Sailor Moon serious mode storyline would go when it's better written but less well animated, here's your chance. The final fight, when everyone starts using their "limit breaker" spells, it comes back to being a bit of a JRPG. It's a nice mechanic, in games, building up to a special move, really, but in an anime it's a bit silly to wait instead of just finishing your opponent in one blast, but even so, that's a bit of a throwback to 80ies action anime. Or Power Rangers - or any other show that features a similar way of combat. I'll say this once more, if you want to give all of it a run, take care with the fifth episode of the first season. Skip the part in the bath's changing room to protect your sanity, or the entire episode, it's bad and you won't miss much. It still does have a copious amount of nudity, most of which can be explained away by genre convetions.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Strikers, Episode 21: edit: Huh, when the Doctor activated the Mana Fortress, a countdown of three hours started until it reaches a point where it can deploy it's full force. At the end of episode 22, that's at one hour and 44 minutes, or 104 minutes. 4 episodes left with 25 minutes runtime each. Looks an awful lot like they actually planned that countdown out. I hope that doesn't mean the season just ends after wrapping the storyline up. The final episodes that consisted mostly of character moments were the highlights of the first two seasons. edit 2: Wanting Nanoha to simply MURDER DEATH KILL Quattro is a bit like wanting Anime!Usagi or Steven to simply destroy their enemies, but Quattro is really working hard on making me hope that Nanoha will just blast her out of existence, even though that's totally out of character for her. edit 3: edit 4: Tia finally lets go of her shounen overdrive mode and thinks her way out of the bind she's in. I approve.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Episode 20. First time this season stumbles a bit, not counting the bits and pieces of not really necessary fanservice (especially that boob rub). Looks like they ran out of time to explain parts of the storyline organically so there's a bit of an exposition dump by the Doctor when his cadre of cyborgs starts asking questions about what's going on, and the High Council - the disembodied voices: Before that they talk to each other telling each other things they would already know. It's not very long, and doesn't dump too much, but it's kind of odd to see. Anyway, the endgame is here, and everyone had their limiters deacitvated. Guess there's no point in holding back in the face of annihilation. The cyborgs asking questions kind of make sense, a few of them are still children, at least mentally. The other exposition is... yeah. Well, it is what it is. 19 episodes before the first slight trip was pretty good though. I'm honestly surprised at the consistently high quality of this season.

That's Geordi's and Data's impossible geometric shape they designed to kill all Borg before Picard decided it would be genocide. Ah, okay, then things really changed a bit for Sailor Moon, I wonder how the issues are going to be once they started to run concurrently.

Sailor V:

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Strikers, episode 19. This is going to be a shortish post, beacuse nothing much happened. Riot Force 6 moved to their new mobile base, everyone has recovered except former elite sniper Sgt. Vice and Zafira. Zafira is the Belkan Knight's version of Alph who... I just noticed is totally absent from the season. Not that I miss fanservice wolf girl with the always unbuttoned hot pants, but where did she go? *checks wiki* Ah, she's helping Yuuno. Okay, that works. Anyway, there's one thing this episode did that I kind of did not like too much, and that's fall back to a tried and true JRPG trope. As a plot thing this is fine, by far and large, it just feels like I've seen it a hundred times. It's what Carim's prophecy meant with the wings of the ancient king. Let's get back to the prophecy for a moment. In the land where ancient crystals and infinite greed gather and intertwine, The wings shall revive from the holy land beneath the dead king. The dead shall dance, and the tower of law in the central lands shall burn to the ground, And thence the ship of law that guards the many seas shall be torn apart. The first line is just the stage. The second line is what the Doctor used Vivio for. Third line I'm guessing is the good Doctor using what he just activated and the last one might not be total annihilation like the higher ups think but just that the Space Cop battlecruiser gets destroyed in the process. Good old Arthra certainly guarded a lot of seas in her time, figuratively speaking.

You know, we should, uh, try something once you're done with Samurai Shampoo. We could kill reality together. I'll try Samurai Conditioner and you'll have your alter ego check out K-On!. That also reminds me that I still have Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop open.

Yes, she was, but she was voiced by Sailor Aluminum Siren, so I'm kinda okay with that. One other thing, the names in this anime are all terrible, but I guess that's the same in the manga. Komi Shouko, Komi Shuuko, Komi Shousuke...

Fear my dragon power!

If that is true, why is there no season three discussion by them? Something doesn't add up here.