majestic

No, not in here, but apparently it was popular enough to spawn several seasons and movies. Baffling, really, because it has a bit of the anime X problem (the manga was apparently popular enough). Except being less over the place in terms of writing quality, style and storytelling. I mean, that sounds as "except everything" and that's not wrong, but at its core Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha feels like one of these shows that only I really like. Except it isn't. Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Episode 4 Was really good too. It's interesting how much better the show is when it's not all action, but it ends with a fight starting, so I'm guessing episode five is going to be all combat again, but they've cornered one of the Belkan Knights and their familiar in an isolation barrier, so maybe that'll be over quickly. Fate and Nanoha get their upgraded devices, Nanoha is back to full magical power, which begs the question why the bad guys don't simply keep a magical girl around to drain mana from, or don't just keep draining themselves, that would complete the book and nobody would notice their activities. Alas, never let a plot hole stop you, I mean, it's not like Sailor Moon wasn't stupid in the bad guys always attacking Tokyo instead of literally anyplace else without a Guardian or ten. The music contines to feel as if it was taken directly from an older Final Fantasy's combat score. Upgraded devices also means upgraded, longer transformation scenes that feel way too extended now that Fate was added to the protagonists, as she has a full transformation sequence too. They also continue the "tradition" of being a bit overboard with the way they change their clothes. Fate's is really borderline, because I don't see a reason why Bardiche summons her boots on her before the one piece unitard she wears in combat except for one: Extending the time she's nude, and OMG NUDE FATE WITH ONLY BOOTS ON. But... what use is there complaining. Honestly, as long as it's just that, it's... fine. This is fine. It's kind of hilarious, we complained about the length of a full team transformation sequence in Sailor Moon, and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha's take the same time, just with two.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, Episode 3: A very welcome break after the nonstop action of episode two, in this one things quiet down. Everyone's licking their wounds, Nanoha's and Fate's weapons get repaired and there are a whole lot of nice interactions. It was a rather well made but still serious episode, but like it was clear from the very start, this isn't ever going to be a funny or comedic show, and that's fine (for me, anyway). There's some exposition about the tech the enemies in this season are using, and both Raising Heart and Bardiche decide that they want to get mana power packs too. Fate, Lindy and Chrono come to a very personal decision, and they relocate their base next to Nanoha's house, for plot convenience and to save up on having to animate space ships and the Space Cop bureau all the time. I mean, because their ship is moored for maintenance. The Linker Core McGuffin turned out to be a mage's power supply, removing Nanoha's has given her temporary negative levels, but she'll regain her magical ability soon enough. Could have called it a mana drain ability of the Book of Darkness and it would have been a good bit better, I mean, seriously, why call it a Linker Core and present it as a silly McGuffin when you already established mana-levels as a measurement of mage power, just make the book absorb mana. There was also a nice scene with the antagonists and everyone caring for Hayate. Even managed to sneak in a semi-fanservice scene that wasn't totally offensive because it was pretty short, not very explicit and Hayate really would have a hard time getting into a bathtub herself. Actually it wasn't even that fanservice-y. It was mostly like Chibi-Usa and Usagi taking a bath in Sailor Moon and talking to each other. It wasn't necessary to set it like that, strictly speaking, but I already steeled myself for a nother round of nightmarish loli-content when they suddenly told Hayata that it's time for her bath, and while that still could happen, I was pleasantly surprised to find it a really understated scene. Phew. Very strong first hint that the bad guys aren't as bad as they seem. If this keeps up being as honest as it looks, they're probably just looking into a way to heal Hayate, or are otherwise making a deal with some unsavory group to buy healing for Hayate. edit: Let me know if anyone ever plans on watching the anime, then I'll start to spoiler-tag things in my posts.

Forcing myself implies an act of will I don't want to ascribe to my particular brand of needing to finish watching TV shows/movies or finish reading books, but yes, indeed. It's so much easier. It limits exposure and since it can't go any faster, doesn't cause other issues. Would have been smarter not to watch, but hey... I'm not really the best deciderer (or choicerer... heh, randomly hat to think of Will Ferrell as Bush) when it comes to what I watch, right?

First, for me that was the other way around. While the first episode had a redeeming scene that I thought worked perfectly, this just had nothing that really worked for me. Unlike the first episode, which waffled between me disliking it and findig a scene brilliant, this one just did nothing, except cringe at the Bokukko dialogue. Second, the weekly format is a godsend here. When I overload my capacity to decide on entertainment, I more or less get into not watching anything at all. I'm way past that point, and I deliberately moved myself there by starting too much at once. Mostly to avoid watching Lady Asuka. Ugh. Having my watch schedule decided on me means I don't have to worry about getting Komi Can't Communicate done. Now... well, maybe the next episode(s) will be more interesting.

So it's gonna get balls really quickly now.

I don’t remember the episode number but have you seen JoJo’s balls yet?;)

Heh, yeah, I can see how that would be annoying, but totally doesn't matter when you're 12. I guess I'll have to replay it at some point. Sakura talk:

Thanks, I'll try that next time. Switching back and forth did not fix the issue for me. Never thought you could use the bug reporting feature to save mid-combat, that sounds like a hilarious way to cheese some more.

Yeah, dunno, it's been a while since I could check. It got leaky... and, uhm, it's almost 40 years old now, so it's probably time to thank it for its service and find a replacement. One of the two heating coils died a while ago already, so it's been running on half power anyway, so unless it's just something minor like a porous seal I got a good deal of mileage out of it anyway, espeically since I got it for free. *shrug* It's only a "minor" inconvenience since I can just hop over to my neighbors (well, parents) for all my warm water needs, but it's annoying nonetheless.

I like how turn based mode breaks down randomly with the new patch, and switching to real time with pause in the middle of the fight, which is the suggested workaround, kind of messes up your battlefield control when you were in the middle of a fight. Hilarious. Also, eh, that just doesn't break TB mode, but apparently also the active abilities of the Bad HoMM minigame. Or maybe these two issues aren't related, but anyway, one makes a bad mini-game worse, and the other just killed my party in the middle of a fight. Meh. Granted, doing the fight over in RTwP right from the start isn't the worst thing you can do and it works, but just imagine that messing up one of the more idioticly balanced fights out there instead of a random encounter with sneak attacking hidden demons that suddenly act all at once.

They've been releasing older games on the Switch. NES, SNES, now N64 and Sega Genesis. The only downside is it's gated behind their online service, and the catalogues aren't that extensive. The N64 one is fairly new and I did not yet get the chance to try it out, so no idea how the emulation is. NES and SNES go as expected. Also always some things missing due to licencing issues, but I'm really looking forward to play Lylat Wars / Starfox 64 again. Once I get my Switch back. My warm water supply just died, probably for good this time, so new hardware gets put on a back burner for the time being.

Disappointed they didn't go for Umbrella, but they're probably leaving that one to Google Alphabet.

Courtesy of it being a fan translation, I guess - on the other hand, Squeenix' go-to translator Ted Woolsey is a bit (in)famous for his... uhm, work, too. I was a bit surprised when I talked about older JRPG titles with Americans for the first time. Never realized how different the translations were in certain parts. Secret of Mana was affected too, especially regarding the sprite and its gender (and ultimate fate in the game). I mean to replay the Sould Blazer series at some point, although I'm uncertain how well Illusion of Gaia will hold up to my nostalgic memories. Because I really doubt I would enjoy wasting my time leaving and entering a screen fifty times until one of the red gem spawn finally proccs. That was one big "What the hell, game?" moment even back then, because I had to look into the guide that came with the game to find the last one, only to realize I missed it almost right at the start, and that there's no way back. There's obscure secrets, and then there's total nonsense, and really, anyone who tells me they found that one without a guide is lying (or hacked the game files, which really is the same thing, only more sophisticated ). That's like SWTOR's Imperial/Republican Fleet Station datacron. When nobody found it, Bioware just released a video guide. *shrug* Secret of Mana is... I tried to replay it on the SNES Mini. I remember playing the game for a long, long time when it first came out and absolutely enjoying it, then we swapped some games at school, school sort of ended, everyone lost track of each other and with it I lost track of my copy of Secret of Mana. Instead I have a Breath of Fire II cartridge here. It certainly didn't hold up to my nostalgia, especially all the spell and weapon grinding. The story wasn't as interesting as I thought it was, but hey, when you're 12 the game was really great. Funny, if you had asked me back then if I got a better deal out of the trade I would have said no, but nowadays I'm not so sure any more. I recently played Bravely Default 2 on the Switch, and it also had random encounters that you could see on the map and simply walk around, with a level range. If you were way overlevelled they'd actively run away. I like that designed, and it was one of the things that bothered be about World of Warcraft when I first tried it. In EQ2, when you were overlevelled, grey mobs just avoided you, and in order to aggro them you'd really have to attack first or get so close it counts as attack anyway. In WoW on the other hand, everything keeps attack you as long as it is an aggressive mob. Even if you're a hundred levels higher. Baffling, and highly annoying. Bravely Default also has a semi-interesting turn based combat concept where you can front-load your turns by using up your future turns, most of the time that's enough to clear trash in one go, and it makes for fun boss battles. Or it would have, if by the end of the game it wouldn't revolve around getting your turn, abusing the Phantom class to spend magic points to set procc chances to 100% and throw a stun grenade at the enemies. That makes them unable to act for serveral turns, and everything stun immune you just burst down before it becomes problematic (Swordmaster/Freelancer can burst down anything in one go, really... except the very final boss and two or three endgame encounters). I mean, the game was probably designed with adjusting your skillset, classes and gear based on the enemies you fight, and that probably works too, but why bother? Chrono Trigger is fairly unique because you can't grind at all, unless I'm thinking of another game here. There's simply fixed amount of encounters on the map, and nothing random at all. Why? I mean, even 12 year old me saw that coming from ten miles away, but other than that... Yeah, they are. There's no sugarcoating this, the way Nintendo goes after anything they think violates their copyright is insane. Still, they're the only worthwhile first party developer for me. I know a lot of people that say that Nintendo just releases the same games over and over, but it's fairly clear they don't actually play them. There more difference in gameplay between Mario series than there is between 99% of the shovelware shooters on the market, for instance. Eh, on topic, uhmm... ahh... I watched the third episode of Dropkick on my Devil!, which was still pretty good, but less funny than the others. There's some examination of Medsa's and Jashin's friendship...love...thing. Not sure. Jashin calls Medusa her personal ATM, and Medusa is constantly giving Jashin money.

Now that seems entirely reasonable. I grew up on RPGs like that... feels like a lifetime ago. Things like the Gold Box games and Bard's Tale, and Eye of the Beholder. Couldn't go anywhere for any reasonable stretch of time in these without being attacked. Quest 64 is from a time where combat was no longer all that RPGs could really do, so I don't know what their excuse was. Heh. On the other hand I survived Mystic Quest on the SNES, so how bad can Quest 64 really be. All of my consoles are still in working order*, but the only one I play with is my Switch. No, that's a lie, I had a Switch, but in a hilarious and completely unexpected twist, now that my nephew doesn't hog it all the time any more, my mother started playing Pikmin 3, for like hours a day. I guess I should just give up and get myself a new one. She sure needs the practice for her fingers and fine motor skills more than I need the money it would cost to buy a new one. If you could find any in this day and age. 'S ridiculous, really. I won't immediately launch into it anyway. I already know I can't stand the music, and the setting isn't my idea of fun either. At least, not any more. Seems like a show I would have immediately tried 25 years ago though. Tomoyo and Sakura are both fairly static. That is and isn't a good thing at the same time. Sakura will get some kind of development soonish, but that's... I don't want to say minor, but really, up until that point, she was largely herself as she was in the first episode. It isn't a good thing because we as adults sit here and have our favorites perhaps replaced by other characters, although that didn't really happen for me, but Meiling came really close to managing (dunno, Sakura just won me over with that episode where she trashes her father's laptop, and that never really went away - really funny too because in real life I usually don't like the always happy motor mouth type... way too draining to interact with). On the other hand, anchoring Sakura (and by extension, Tomoyo, I guess) and allowing every other character to progress around them was, I think, a deliberate way and a part of the sort of "static" Cardcaptor Sakura formula, largely for the benefit of the actual target demographic to find something familiar in each episode but still retain the ability for change and changes around them without running the risk of losing them. I hope that sentence makes sense, it took an extreme amount of brainage to make it go (to borrow from one of Raithe's jokes that he posted). I'm so tired lately. Sigh. I'd recommend looking into the past, to be honest, more than into the present. SNES era had some of the best games I had the pleasure of playing, but I'm not sure how well they work going back to them, instead of having nostalgia help to sand the rough edges down a little. Even in long standing JRPG series, although that's one to make myself unpopular whever I mention it, but the best Final Fantasy is clearlyVI. Terranigma is more of an action adventure / RPG hybrid, and was never released in North America, but it's really good. Then there's Secret of Mana which was pretty good too, but as @Bartimaeus might be able to corroborate, isn't really as good as its, uhm, reputation. Depends on how much jank and old schoolness you can really take. A Link To The Past would be the best Legend of Zelda entry if it weren't for Ocarina of Time too. *Doesn't equal ready to use, because that would require spending some effort that far exceeds simply emulating them, which I don't feel bad at all about precisely because I still have all the original parts and games. The only reason I played with my SNES Mini for as long as I did was precisely the ease of use. Plug in, works. No need for mods, adaptors, cables, whatnot. Thanks, but no thanks.

I know, it's... one of these things I'm sure will end up being a disappointment. Like Young Merlin on the SNES. When I first read about the game it was titled a new Zelda, it came from Westwood which was back then a studio you could just buy games from without waiting for reviews and then... I never got a cartridge, just, like, never showed up in stores here. I tried the game much later on my SNES Mini and boy oh boy, was that ever NOT a new Zelda. Or an old one, nowadays. In fact, it was nothing. Except boring. I'm perfectly certain Quest 64 will end up being the same. I also plan on going back to Lost Kingdoms on the GameCube and finish that at some point, although all I can remember from the game is that it was a drag, and something with cards. 2002 wasn't really a good time for me, I was doing my stint in the army. Ugh. Sounds more and more like something I should watch... Now you've made Tomoyo sad, and she turned into her caricature from Clear Card. Tsk. Aren't you ashamed good sir? Well? You know, my first reaction when Meiling showed up in the episode was: "Oh no, this isn't going to end well..." and hey, guess that one was coming for a long time. Hum. No need to reflect further, this is definite top 3 material all right, if not the best episode in the series. Higher highs and lower lows, right?

I always wanted to play Quest 64, but never found a cartridge. There are also a bunch of GameCube games I'd like to replay or even finish. Sakura talk: It was even told in such a non-chalant manner. She just came back to Jashin's place wearing that. I'm finding the show supremely entertaining at the moment, but I do wonder if that's enough to make 12 episodes work (never mind a spinoff). Seems a bit tenuous.

Dropkick on my Devil! Episode 2: One fourth wall and one meta joke in two minutes, then a switch to complete lunatic psychopathy. Yeah, I... not sure what that says about me as a person, but this is great.

Indeed, how odd. Truly inexplicable. Must have slipped my mind there. Please, by all means, don't feel left out! Here, I'll link you the opening for good measure: There was one kind of clever joke in the first episode (I mean, a clever joke, not some inexplicable hijinks that's hilarious through sheer absurdity): Having something like that in there made me laugh and appreciate the thought that went into creating it, but that's not a whole lot to go by, huh? I also watched the second episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's. 25 minutes of action with no breaks. The bad guys are calling themselves Wolkenritter (Cloud Knights) and pretty handily beat up the team of heroes, and stole something from Nanoha called a Linker Core which powered up the Book of Darkness and seems to be a hitherto unmentioned McGuffin. I have no idea yet what a Linker Core is, but it's probably something important for mages and hasn't been mentioned before because nobody thought of it until they needed to make a second season. English speaking devices also showed some grammer problems, but the German ones are astounding. There must not be a single German native speaker working in the anime industry as a writer.

And now for something completely different. Like I said a while back, I watch Lady Asuka durning cardio, or I used to, until episode 10 killed my motivation to sweat and be bored at the same time and I moved on to watch Steins;Gate, which turned out to be less than ideal either, so I spent the last two weeks or so moving along my Deep Space Nine rewatch - until yesterday where it was two Lady Asuka episodes, and today where I watched another one. Thankfully that wasn't full of ludicrous behaviour by Asuka, and it wasn't too boring either. Asuka, after being grounded by the queen following her duel with the Duke de I'mnotgoingtorepeatthat, defies her majesty's wishes, takes André and rides off to her family's rural estate somewhere in Bumf*ck, France, where she gets a hefty reality check when the common rabble cannot afford doctors for their sick children, are basically extorted by both the tax collectors and the church and are exceedingly unhappy that the king and queen aren't doing anything at all to remedy the situation. The innkeeper of the tavern they eat at even tells them flat out that a handful of aristocrats live off the back of the hard working peasants. At this point I had enough, because I kept hearing Bruno talk about white priviledge, Skoop about boostraps and the currently active again second rate Stjepan giving out financial advice. Yeah, sure, but no thanks. Back to the queue you go, Lady Asuka, I'll finish you later. Then I decided on a radical new course and changed my approach. So far I've tried following the creative teams that made something I enjoyed around to various other efforts that were mostly middling, and sometimes even terrible. It needs to be said that Magic User's Club is from the animator and director of Sailor Moon and the Sailor Moon R filler arc. Following the director and parts of the writing team for the remaining seasons in turn ended with most of us watching Revolutionary Girl Utena. I also picked a random seinen show to watch on Prime Video, which turned out to be kemurikusa., something that... I also still have to finish, because ugh. So instead of doing research, or going completely random, I decided to... ...take some minutes to browse through Amazon Prime Video's "New Anime Series" list, which in Amazon-speak means series recently added to Amazon Prime, not new anime series. Instead of trying to gauge if I would like something based on the title, the blurb and some images from the show, or anything, really, I decided to go with the the animes on the list that looked absolutely terrible, then spun a mental Wheel of the Worst (tm) and landed on: Dropkick on my Devil! (no, really, that's the actual title of the show) Well, if you're looking for something that looks terrible, that does seem like a really good choice, right? A 2018 manga adaptation starring a group of girls of various origins in Greek, Christian and Japanese myth and their... yeah, god knows what exactly. Whacky adventures? Nonsense? I'm not even sure I should assume that the series is going to go anywhere with how that first episode went. The first episode more or less introduces the concept of the series in very direct exposition: When a sorcerer summons a demon from hell, it will stay bound to that sorcerer and can only go back to hell once it is sent back through sorcery, or the sorcerer dies. The episode then introduces the five main characters (there are seven on the poster, but hey, the two smaller ones in the background - upper left corner and directly underneath the sawblade - seem to be more prominent side characters coming later): Yurine, the girl with the eyepatch, who summoned the Lamia Jashin (the blonde half snake demon) to Earth, and her friends Medusa (purple haired girl), Minos (blue haired girl with the horns) and the angel Pekola who lost her halo and can't go back to heaven (the wingless blonde with the confused expression next to the angel who still has wings). It begins with all of them sitting at their table, making a hot pot. Jashin first melts beef tallow, then roasts their vegetables and Wagyu beef, then adds stock and lets everything simmer, and they begin eating. Then the first obvious joke comes up, they all agree the beef is great and that Minos should get more meat from her relatives. Minos doesn't think anything about eating beef, but just says that eating her relatives would be cannibalism. Jashin tries to make fun of Pekola asking if she's even allowed to eat a meal prepared by the denizens of hell. Yurine is a little miffed, it was Jashin who invited Pekola after all, and demands that Jashin just gives her food, which she does - just without any meat in it. Pekola wants some beef, but Jashin is adamant that she won't be getting seconds until she finished her bowl, that would be rude. Pekola eats all her vegetables, but Jashin doesn't want to give her meat, so Yurine just gives her some. Jashin reacts incredibly annoyed and wolfs down all of the remaining beef, even the beef of the other girls. Yarine wants to punish Jashin, and at this point the anime quite frankly... becomes absolutely amazing in a "what the hell am I watching here?" sort of way. Jashin attacks Yurine by leaping into the air, starting her "dropkick" attack (what a literal title drop) and breaks the fourth wall by saying that this isn't just going to be the opening episode of the show, but also the last one, and the rest will be specials because she's just going to kill Yurine and go home. Yurine just dodges her drop kick, breaks out a jagged sword and starts chopping up Jashin's snake bits. The then end up eating snake meat with their hot pot, which Pekola thinks is really tasty, while Jashin sulks and regenerates. That amounts to the first, like, less than half of the episode. I don't really want to spoil the rest, but it keeps up the fourth wall breaking when for instance Jashin tries to kill Yurine again, but she stops her. Jashin asks how she knew she would attack, and Yarine states that she talked about her attack out loud. Jashin turns around and starts complaining to the sound engineers that this was supposed to be an internal monologue, then demands a cut and a reshoot. Yurine then breaks Jashin's spine with a crowbar and dismembers her off-screen with a chainsaw. It's... baffling. It doesn't look half bad, or at least, modern anime looks don't stand out so much in a more cartoonish setting, and it's completely insane. The episode closes off by introducing what might become a running joke. If he hasn't seen it yet, going from simply how the first episode went, a definite recommendation for @KP the meanie zucchini. Plus it was actually funny. It's also only 12 episodes long. There's a spin off series licenced by Crunchyroll too.

Oh, right, there's something: Feels like Stardust Crusaders had a little blunder there with D'Arby the Younger.

Marie Antoinette does "girly" things. She spends a fortune on dresses, is all lovey-dovey with Hans Axel von Fersen and doesn't seem to have a care for the world, and is really not into the whole governing France thing. Much to the dismay of her mother, who hears reports of her daugther's shenanigans withe the appropriate grief. The whole duel was the most shounen thing ever, the Duke de Guéméné (well that's a mouthhandful) insults Asuka in passing and she immediately responds in the most predictable way possible, and he challenges her to a duel, which she readily accepts, and she's absolutely stupid about it too. The show has been going out of its way to show that Asuka is an expert fencer, yet she choses pistols, because the Duke won some shooting competitions. She wants to beat him at his own game. I'm still holding out a little hope for the directorial switch in episode 18, but I doubt that will make the premise salvagable, or change Asuka all that much, but perhaps everything else will be a little less boring. No, it's going to be action and then some, by the looks of the first episode, but I don't mind the drama zone in the first place. It just... you know, the setup, girl in a wheelchair, piano music, and all I did was burst out into laughter. That seems like the wrong reaction, but that was a pretty funny meta-situation after Komi Can't Communicate. Heh. Although, admittedly, it was pretty unexpected to see Hayate being the antagonist. Or at least, the leader of the group attacking Nanoha. If that follows the template of the first season they'll kiss and make up eventually. Probably. TEoE would provide narrative closure, and the original ending expand on what happened during Instrumentality, although I bet, given the choice, most people would just go with The End of Evangelion, if you would cut that up into a four parter and replace the ending with it that would just be fine, except for a certain and sudden super-focus on Shinji being all weird and creepy. If you'd rewrite both a bit and combine then, you could probably come up with four or five episodes that would make a wholly satisfying conclusion to NGE, instead of dealing it out like that. Alas, if you'd let Anno do that in this day and age what you get is Rebuild, so... but one can dream. Novelty is something that is hard to factor into enjoyment in a meaningful way that leaves the rating to stand the test of time, but it's also not the only wildely subjective thing that can affect enjoyment. There's also the time when you're watching it. I mean, compared to the mess that Blood-C was, the cringeworty animation and stolen characterization of Love Live! and the utter failure the Love Live! movie ended up being, I feel like I'm giving Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha too much credit, for instance - if we leave out the ecchi fiasco, it was an okay attempt at something different - a serious magical girl anime. Funny, it was a novel idea while utterly derivative at the same time. You don't see that every day.

Yeah, you haven't seen anything yet.

Not entirely on topic, but I feel like stating that I had exactly one multiple choice test in my entire life, and that was the entry exam for my high shool of choice. I can kind of see what the point is, especially for the ease of mass testing. There was no other way they could efficiently sieve through a couple of thousand of applications for the ~200 free spots (ended up being ~220, in the end) in the time they had for the examinations. They did take grades and averages into account as bonus points though, so if you did well enough at school before - and we never have multiple choice test there, a least, you had a pretty big starting bonus. Although that required you to have teachers that cared. Luckily mine did, at the time. Something that went a good deal worse later on though, but that's neither here nor there. I mean, I was assigned to a remedial course once after getting 100% on three consecutive tests because the teacher hated me thought I needed, ah, help with learning, so... let's better not talk about my experience with teachers, lest it depresses Hurlshot or something.

I don't have much too say on account of Neon Genesis Evangelion and The End of Evangelion, having just watched it recently and written what feels like a dozen essays on it, especially in light of making that terrible decision to follow suit and be a good anime thread lemming by watching Rebuild, so don't take me not writing half an essay in response here as a lack of interest. I pretty much agree, except for changing my outlook on characters in a different way than you over the course of the show's run. Mostly because I really started out disliking Asuka for her attitude, didn't find Shinji too annoying and loved Misato. Misato is a type of character that triggers a deeply set affection, in the same way Makoto does - and Rommie from Andromeda. There's also a readily observable pattern, all characters that are determined and strong / have a determined and strong facade while also being emotionally vulnerable. They're also all female, but that's only because who creates male characters like that (honest question, I can't come up with a decent answer)? So if anyone would want to make a character for me in any show, hey, that's the easiest - not the only - way to do it. Add a little mystery and we're all set, I'll boost your ratings for as many seasons as you'd like. The only thing that did not work for me was my own expectations regarding the ending of the original show. I don't know what I expected, but I thought I would find something that makes no sense. Instead it was an narrative unending and a well written thematic closure that people to this day mistakenly (in my opinion) praise for its avant-garde art sequences. That wasn't planned, they were just simply unfinished because the time ran out and Anno made the best of it - just like the entire ending. It still worked, which is the really impressive part. Having that said, it feels really weird to retroactively reduce a rating, right? Not that I really do ratings all too often, but that happened with Love Live!. No, that would never have gotten a good rating, really, but what little there was enjoyable in this show ended up being a copy from K-On!, which just means that watching K-On! made Love Live! worse. Strange how that works.

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A's. The intro has tansformation sequences in spades, all with the accompanying magical girl nudity. The episode begins with a girl in a wheelchair, soft piano music (which made me think of @Bartimaeus and had me randomly burst out in laughter, and hearing a voice at the back of my head: Roy from IT Crowd going "I'm disabled!") and an ominous book in chains that's sitting on the girl's shelf. She begins reading something else, and at midnight the unthinkable happens, the ominous, chained book suddenly starts to move, breaks it's seal and starts talking German. We're off to a really good start here, I think. Judging purely by the book's voice modulation, it's probably a magical thingmabob like Raising Heart and Bardiche. More as the episode progresses... Anyway, half the episode was character driven, then it got a really long action scene that is slated to just continue in the second one. Yeah, this doesn't waste much time at establishing the new threat and jumping right into serious mode. Ominous talking book is called the BOOK OF DARKNESS, by the way. Just in case it wasn't clear enough that the book is, like, ominous and sort of evil from speaking the universal language of ominous, evil things and being all ominous and chained up.