majestic

Sure sounded like it, at least. Indeed. The comments you found were pretty much spot on. There's just absolutely no reason for anyone to watch this other than some compulsion to finish it. It really is just a waste of time, and nothing highlights it more than one main character asking the other what the point of it all is, and the other character replying: "I'll worry about that afterwards." Yeah. That just about sums it up. It's less offensive than Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, but that's not hard to do. Guess that makes ViVid Strike! the Joe Biden of anime. Nothing special, but at least not as offensive as Trump... what a mark of quality.

ViVid Strike!, epsiode five. Spoilered more for brevity and organization than anything else. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Huh, can you create a wolf pet and just slap the horse model on it? that sounds like an easier fix than fiddling with stats.

Horses are like bad, better use a wolf or a dog or maybe a boar, depending on what you can get with your class and want your pet to do.

Time for the weekly Discovery post. This episode is, for some reason, 15 minutes shorter than the others. Halleluja, thanks for an early Christmas gift there, CBS. Helfpul reminder: Burnham crying counter is currently 1:4. I'm thinking about dropping it, because where's the fun in keeping track of a meme that no longer happens. Burnham crying counter unchanged.

Komi can’t comm… no, Komi can’t anime. This gets stranger every time, and not in the good „the hell is this“ way like JoJo‘s. More like in the „these people all need to be sent to the loony bin“ way. 凄くなかったです。

I guess the all survived being squished to bits too, because I don't see Rinne becoming the #1 contender for the world championship after that if the three girls are about as dead as they would appear to be after having their heads broken, smashed into a locker or having their nose pushed into their brains by way of knee. Like... uhm. Yeah. I guess I'll see soonish, assuming the anime comments on it at all. Would be hilarious if Rinne's rich adopted parents would just buy their way out of this. Then we'd suddenly do social commentary too.

Preface: It's good to be back on the Claw. Toiling in the fields and working the forge sure was back-breaking. Speaking of Cowboy Bepop... that will be an interesting reaction. Except for the early CGI work here and there it looks absolutely fantastic, the shot compositions and the framing are brilliant, the voice acting is great (at least in the original), but a list like that isn't complete without a but, huh? But! Not sure how that'll work for you from a character point of view. Spike's (main lead) going to be a really though sell, me thinks. Cyber Coil looks... uhm. Yeah, maybe once I'm through the backlog of terrible. The sound effects were something else too. It was surreal. You have this magical girl show, it's the fifth season, and it moves from non-visceral and at times downright silly action scenes to something that would not be out of place in a van Damme martial arts vehicle (say, Kickboxer), complete with splattering blood and crunching bone sound effects in an instant. Prior to the kicks Rinne casually breaks the arm of another girl. Look at YouTube actually having the scene, albeit in ungood quality (not that it matters for this show). "We do martial arts for fun and competitions" to "Alex kills a woman with her giant **** sculpture" in A Clockwork Orange in a matter of seconds. StrikerS could have used some of that down to earth visceral feel of that scene in its action and it would have been appropriate there. In ViVid Strike!? Nope, totally out of the blue and feels completely disconnected. Then there are the other things that make no sense, from Rinne recovering that easily from being beaten unconscious the day prior, or actually being beaten senseless if she just can... never mind. That's not worth analyzing in detail, and it would just annoy me. edit: That ending of the scene where she steps on one of the girls lying on the floor made me burst out in laugther, what with the stock sounds and all. That's terrible, but really, that stock sound...

Yeah, he just said he'll text you soon. The ol' guy has a lot on his plate, you know...

Not 100% sure, but I can't remember watching any 2021 film. Huh. if 2020 films with a theatrical release in 2021 count then it's... Violet Evergarden. If not, then I got nothing. As I say this I realize that I was wrong, and that there really is a 2021 movie that I watched: Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time and that was a seizure inducing piece of trash that made me write a gigantic rant on just how terrible it is, so that certainly doesn't count as answer to the question even if it's the only one and takes "best" and "worst" film of 2021 I've seen by default.

ViVid Strike! Episode four. Well, that was fun. Almost entirely a flashback explaining why Rinne is all ME WILL CRUSH YOU, CRUSH YOU TO GOO. It ends with a ridiculous power fantasy scene. Yeah, not sure how I feel about that one. I'm kinda conflicted here.

I think Beyond still wins out over Into Darkness. It's even dumberer-er than Into Darkness, but at least it has a plot structure and makes sense for the most part, instead of being a random collection of cool scenes that were strung together with a tenous plot thread worked in as an afterthought. Or something. Still, could be worse. It could have Kurtzman, Orci and Goyer writing together. Now that would be a dream collaboration, huh?

Unicorn of War might be wrong about everything, but at least he's capable of arguing his point. It was my subversive commie friends. Also, eh, I doubt our counter terrorism unit would knock. That's not elite enough. edit: I also think these posts aren't going to age well, because I'm thiiiiiiiis close to switching everything back. Sigh.

ViVid Strike! Episode three. Well, today there's finally some time to get back to watching stuff. The episode opens with a helpful training sequence from Rinne showing us how utterly badass she's gotten, only to be followed by a shower scene. The animators working on this really, really like their shower scenes for some reason. There's one thing I haven't mentioned yet. In spite of this looking better than Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, it's not looking good, and the animations are incredibly barebones most of the time, unless they want to show some really cool and awesome martial arts stuff, the characters slide across the screen more than they walk. It's... not choppy, like the Love Live! movie was where it looked like the animators ran out of time and just strung key frames together in an attempt to finish the film in time, no, that's just deliberately low effort, or possibly just low budget. Yeah, understandable, who would want to bankroll this after that first ViVid disaster. On the other hand, it seems they really wasted all the effort on showing a random one-off character's transformation sequence, a girl just there to be beaten to a pulp by Rinne, as a semi-final to something or another where everyone is off to because Rinne invited them to watch. Good choice. Those fighting costumes are terrible too, and there's some more transformation sequence anime boob inflation. As nice as the second episode was, this is just not good, or interesting. It's not offensively bad or anything, but we're back to having absolutely no reason to watch this, let alone at regular playback speed. Episode ends with a major shounen-off between Rinne and Fuu after they meet each other and talk for a bit. It pulls out all the usual tropes for martial arts boys, really, doesn't matter that it's girls talking to each other. "I was weak, no more. I WILL CRUSH YOU ALL." Yeah, sure Rinne. If this goes like all martial arts shows or movies you won't. Some credit goes to Fuu who tries to reason with her first, but still goes all "Challenge accepted!" on Rinne. Yeah. Fine. Next episode will be back to 2x playback speed. Second episode was probably a fluke.

Nah, why... wait, someone's knocking. Gotta get the door.

Would you like to know more? Yikes, looks like the jig is up, folks.

Yeah, Madhouse used to make quite good-looking shows. Azuki-chan looks interesting, but yeah, there's really nothing in terms of subtitles, and no German dub either that I could try. Guess that's as goood a motivation as any to continue with the Japanese learning thing, but the way how it is going right now I'm more likely to be able to read the language at some point than listen and understand. Geez. In the interest of not making my brain explode I'll skip the 30 minute movie for the time being and just take your word for it.

Not since 1945...

The forum software inexplicably dropped the spoiler wrapping for your part of the quote, and I cannot for the life of me edit it back in. The WYSIWIG editor simply doesn't work. Maybe I got banned in the meantime, who knows?

If you do that you'll probably terminate the forum software for good. I'm struggling with her pretty much any time...she does or says anything, really. The other three I can kind of get behind in that they're sort of like sticking Usagi, Kero, and Tomoyo in a school club together, but she doesn't fit a mould of any character that I already like and in fact does just the opposite. Unfortunately, in addition to her character being...tough for me, the show is also insisting on placing undue negative attention on her in a number of other ways that aren't really her fault but are nevertheless unpleasant. But, anyway, you're further along now than I thought you'd get. Must be doing something right, at least. Who knows, if you actually get to season two, you might like the episode that focuses on Ritsu and Mugi spending time together, which I didn't really think worked out. *shrug* Something was off about that episode for me. Maybe it was the placement, or the fact that it once again did the "Hey, Toya and Yukito are here for no reason!" joke again. The episode was fine, really, it just felt... well, off. Kind of out of place for season two, and like a leftover script from season one.

Huh, so how did I miss this? Not sure. Interesting because that was one of my least favorite episodes in the entire first arc, next to the one with Shot and the ice skating one. Still says a lot about the overall quality of the arc when one of the episodes you liked the least ends up in a top episode list of someone else...

Yum yum...

So, like, what's with the spoiler tags, do you think anyone else is interested in K-On!? As far as beach episodes go the one in K-On! are mostly harmless fun. The short focus on Mio's cleavage is the most fanservice this'll get actually, not counting that Christmas episode where, uhm,... In case the first season squanders the last remaining goodwill, just abort it, watch the last two episodes and the OVA and continue with K-On!!. It's a constant up and down with season one and not worth souring yourself on the rest. The tail end of the first season and the second season are night and day compared to the rougher nonsense that happens every now and then in the earlier episodes. Also, not gonna lie, K-On! is totally going to have another beach episode.

Ah, a side effect I had not considered. That's true, but I didn't spend a whole lot of effort or time writing the post, to be honest. I could have put up helpful links to read through regarding the debates around what is and isn't fascism as the term moves more and more towards what you've mentioned, i.e. any sort of law and order type of police state or a nation more run by corporate interests than those of its people (often both, for somewhat obvious reasons). In the more expanded sense, we have a good deal more fascists on the board than just him, even though they've been curiously quiet in the past weeks. I could have looked up some of the many articles about Snowden or Assange, and linked those, put in more of a structure, anything really. What I should have done though is differentiate a little in the legal system part of the post before Gromnir swoops in and counter-rants. No, of course the US legal system is better than that of many nations, because by far and large it is functional. It does, however, have a number of downsides, and when you read that someone in Missouri has been wrongfully imprisoned for 42 years and isn't pardonned immediately after realizing that fact because "he's probably guilty of something" and "his pardon is not a priority" then that's just ludicrous and not worth emulating. An anecdote? Perhaps. What's not one is the horrible state the US prisons are in, including the systematic violence, or the fact that no other Western nation has more inmates per capita, which is really not something that is readily explained away by way of saying "the US is different than other places on the planet", which might hold true for gun related violence or th sheer, easily underestimated size of absolutely nothing in between the coasts (re: posts about a first world nation with third world infrastructure), but not for the fact that there are too many people imprisoned over crimes that should not carry any prison sentence in the first place and that the courts seem to get mired in dealing with little things that should be done with a slap on the wrist. I think that's something that could use some reform. It also has a couple of upsides. Class action lawsuits are something that I'd love to see here too. VW, having bought Germany's CDU, was more than just slapped on the wrist for their manipulated exhaust tests in the US, while in Germany and by extension the rest of the EU they got off way too easily - but yeah, that's Germany for you. Where one can get the idea that big oil and the military-industrial complex owns the United States government, the automobile companies certainly own Germany's. Of course, for any of the points, we could argue that somewhere else is worse. Of course, there almost always is a place where things are worse, but that can't be the standard we're holding everything to. "It's worse somewhere else" as the basis for not trying to improve seems like the perfect way for things to deteriorate until the barbarian hordes (not talking about the illegal immigrant issue here) are at the gate and it is too late.

You know, @Gorth, I keep reading your posts about these animes, and I keep finding myself slightly interested, but then I watch the trailers or look at the pictures you post and I'm like "Nah, thanks, I'm good."