majestic

Edited. Also (finally?) removed Pegasus from the thread title. Yeah, no. I know they mean our not at all fun, dour northern neighbors the actual Germans. They just happen to speak a similar language. Or, as we like to put it: Was Deutschland und Österreich trennt, ist die gemeinsame Sprache. Loosely translated: The difference between Germany and Austria is their common language (more literally: What separates Germany and Austria is their common language). So guys, are you ready for existence to end, should I give Samurai Champloo a try? You know, if I don't enjoy it then we'll have the same situation as in Dogma and we'll all just disappear in an instant.

Look at Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha answering the question why they don't siphon their own energy for the Book of Darkness. Hayate's little squadron of friends and fighters are actually magical constructs made by the book. The book has 666 pages, by the way. Guess talking German and being called the Book of Darkness is not enough to drive home what a terrible evil power that is. To her credit, Hayate wants nothing of its power. The book is also the reason why she's in a wheelchair, it constantly saps her energy. Nanoha got really lucky there. They're also holding back because Hayate ordered them not to fight, but they can't just let her die. Yeah, this will really end with the Specter Sisters opening a makeup shop. I hope. Or they all end up dying horrible deaths to fuel Hayate's healing, it's hard to tell with this one. I was going to say this episode is pretty good too, then suddenly two twin cat girls show up, grab Chrono and rub his face on their chest. Well, at least one of them does. Why? No idea, but what else would you do with twin cat girls with wagging tails. At least they don't go NYAAAAAAAAAAAN at the end of each sentence. In a way this is more frustrating than Love Live! and Steins;Gate, because Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha's shortcomings are more obvious in contrast with the rest of the show. The silly fanservice and the extended action sequences interrupt an otherwise usually quite good, of perhaps too serious at times, anime. Still feel like I'm liking it more than I should, but eh, I don't care. I might eat my words soon enough, especially since the next season expands the episode count to 26, so plenty more time for fanservice and ridiculous Final Fantasy combat.

Yeah... uhm... I liked Steins;Gate more than Love Live!, but that's not saying much (I'll take a bad sci-fi plot over a nine piece shool idol band and their struggles to impersonate KISS any time). Whenever Okarin and Kurisu were alone and they both behaved like human beings instead of morons the character interactions were really good. Didn't care much for the art or music, and the colors were really weird. Most of the time the characters spent in totally ridiculous overdrive anime mode, which was often the point and had commentary attached, but really, nah. That was just too much. I liked Mayuri the most, but even she went and forced Ruka into a super skimpy costume that he clearly didn't want to wear. *sigh* edit: The most frustrating part is that you can see decent things in both Love Live! and Steins;Gate, and it leaves the feeling that all it would have taken to reign it in was someone else at the helm. Wasted potential, really.

In terms of having an installation at home I had every consumer operating system and consumer Windows since, uhm, DOS 5.0, which came out in 1991. I removed Windows ME really quickly after trying it for a short time. Windows 95 I had installed, but barely ever used it, the amount of games that required it were pretty small at first, and then came the much better running Windows 98. That had nothing at all to do with the major hardware upgrade in between and everything with Windows 98 having much better performance. Even the things I needed for school ran purely on DOS, like various Borland C compiler versions and a DOS based COBOL compiler (yeah, don't ask), so why bother starting it. That was before DirectX was a thing, even. Post-consumer Windows I switched to XP when it came out, then went to 7 and later 10. At school, then later work and through giving out support I pretty much came in contact with everything else in terms of Windows except pre-4.0 NT. A few things outside of MS too, like System 7 (well that was awful), and Linux (early 2.0 kernel versions back in '96). There was a time when the biggest quality of live improvement for me was the increased floppy disk copy speed from having a VGA graphics card, because someone came up with the brilliant idea of using the super fast (comparatively, at the time) graphics memory as a buffer to store the entire floppy disk content, circumventing allocation size problems and having to swap source and target discs multiple times. I feel old talking about this, but I'm not that old. I just started really, really early. Heh.

I don't want to know how Okarin convinced Kurisu to do anything. Ugh. It wouldn't have been so bad if they didn't spend like 20 episodes making a point out of Okabe being the only one with that power, and giving it a ridiculous name like READING STEINER. A new character? Demo... nande...? *shakes head*

Well if we're being that specific, 95/98/ME are out for not being operating systems but fancy GUIs on a DOS platform. Don't really have anything negative to say about NT4 and 2000 though, never used NT 3.1 or 3.5. *shrug*

Depends on what you wanted to do. Playing games at the time, no. Everything else: Yes, probably.

It is a bit of a paradigm in software engineering to skip every other generation, because whenever you add something or change something from a stable version, there's a chance it goes wrong. That's why Windows Vista is remembered as a terrible version. The UAC was overboard, the performance was bad, drivers didn't work properly - and the last part isn't even entirely Microsoft's fault. The actual changes from Vista to 7 weren't even that large, when you look a the version numbers it becomes clear. Windows Vista was Windows 6.0, and Windows 7 was 6.1 - Microsoft just gave it a new name because the Vista brand was burned. Yeah, well, I agree with you here. Setting 10 to bad immediately breaks the pattern, because that would mean 8 was good. So, dear god, nope. Windows 10 arguably got a good deal of bad press (still gets that, actually) because updates seem to fail for people, but I never had any issues with it. Then again, I also never had any real issues with Windows 8 and 8.1 when I had to deal with it (my parents had it). I skipped it of course because I'm not going to deal with a completely different start menu unless I really have to, thanks. Granted, I never really had any major problems with my Windows installations, but I am also super picky about my hardware.

Sakura talk: I'm kind of envious, to be honest. I wish I could watch the upcoming episodes for the first time too.

Hm, there is a definite pattern of better skipping every other major Windows generation, but I don't think setting Windows 95 to "good" is right. Windows 95 (1995): Never had any problems with it, but a LOT of people did, but I did not like it and barely ever started it Windows 98 (1998): Pretty good overall, especially Win 98 SE Windows Me (2000): Terribad Windows XP (2001): Good Windows Vista (2007): Bad Windows 7 (2009): Good Windows 8 (2012): Bad Windows 10 (2015): Good (compared to 8 and 8.1, at least, not as good as 7) Windows 11 (2021): Should be bad, with the pattern.

Indeed, I think the "worst" (not that it ever is really bad) of the second arc is over by now, but that could also be just me being happy that the average episode quality improved a lot. There's going to be a few things going on now. Sakura spoilers (as if anyone else would watch, but hey):

Japanese has ten thousand different pronouns and a very simple rule regarding them: Use them as little as possible, ideally not at all. Hence the excessive usage of names, especially to address people. Every time there'd be a "you" or "they" or something similar in English (or any other Germanic language), you'll probably get a name if at all possible in Japanese. When you look at something simple like eating, that would be taberu. Simply saying taberu is a complete sentence in Japanese. That can mean, depending on context, I am/he is/you are/we are eating. It's also a familiar way of speaking, tabemasu is the polite form. If you thought the series was overboard on appeal to emotion drama, then the film is the cherry that tops everything off. I don't think there's a point in trying, but Erica is really only a small part in it. Plus it won't work nearly as well as it does when you're familiar with Violet and what happened to her, but the film was clearly written with the intention to provide enough context for a new watcher to understand what is going on. I'd still say Grave of the Fireflies has more joyful moments in it, and that's... probably saying a lot.

I managed to a get a few things finished over the weekend. First, I closed my rewatch of Violet Evergarden, the movie - with good sound. Honestly that improved the film to a point where I wished I would not have watched it with the original cinema experience. I'm not going to complain about the ending again, or the premise. Both things are what they are, and while I wish that the movie would not exist (at least not in this form), the film itself is nothing short of breathtakingly beautiful in many ways. It's also much, much more melancholic than even the series was. When looking at the film as a standalone project, perhaps that's why it got a schmalzy happy ending like that. Without that, ultimately, the film would have the dour and depressing mood that you will get from watching the end of Grave of the Fireflies and have it from start to finish. While the series has Violet dealing with her grief and repressed guilt in a manner mostly seen through third parties and their own struggles, the series is, while having some very dark moments, still hopeful, and ends on a fanastic high note. Kind of a recommendation for @Gorth, time and budget permitting (Netflix has a free one month trial, anyway). The film on the other hand, has nothing that is hopeful, at least not (spoilers from here on out): The other was I was able to finish Steins;Gate. Steins;Gate has something common with Love Live!, and that probably has something to do with the writer, Jukki Hanada. He is quite capable of writing wonderful and convincing character interactions (like that final episode in K-On!'s first season) - some of them in the latter half of Steins;Gate are really exceptional and simply work, but he's also capable of coming up with the worst sort of fanservice and terrible behaviour. Lampshading it by having other characters call Okarin and Kurisu tsundere doesn't really cut it. Most of the time Okarin is an idiot in a way that makes it completely unrealistic than anyone wants to be his friend, even his dysfunctional group of friends should just leave and never come back, yet they do, all the time. I'm not even going to talk about the storyline or the plot holes, because I don't know much much that comes from the source material. However, there are a lot of them - not very surprisingly, what with this being a time travel story. Often enough, something happens in the story because it has to, not because it makes sense. Still, the tail end of the show was interesting enough for it to not be a total loss after that horrible middle part all but killed my interest for a while. I'll take a long break before beginning Steins;Gate 0. If I never have to hear Feyris go NYAAAAAAAAAAAAN again it'll be too soon. Nyan, nyan.

Most shōnen stuff starts out too much and gets worse. It's really only a starter guide, and you need to be careful with some things. Also for the love of god avoid anything that has lolis in it. While Lolita fashion really means Victorian era doll-dresses (see Violet Evergarden's doll like appearance, for instance), lolis that appear in lolicon anime are... what happens when animators realize that there are no age restrictions in erotic animated content and they feel like making an animated version of Nabokov's Lolita, if you catch my drift. It's super easy to look for one thing and then suddenly have very different things, uhm, in your search history. Anyway, since you mentioned that you're usually preferring original with subtitles, there are a few things that are more important to get a hang of than general terminology, and that's the subtleties of Japanese politness and forms of address and honorifics. It's a minefield that will leave you go what? often enough, but it's also something that sadly most subtitles fail to transport. Especially English subtitles because English by far and large just stopped having the required words for it a while ago. You can perhaps gauge by just how bad that really is when you look at something that happened back in 2008 when the then prime minister of Japan answered a question by a journalist like this: Anata to chigaun desu (I am not like you, by far and large, in the context). This caused a major sh*tstorm in Japan. Why? Anata is a word you'll hear relatively often, and it means "you" - just a you used between peers or by someone in higher (social) standing to someone of lower standing. A politician is essentially the servant of the people, so they have no business thinking of their constituents as equals. You just don't address someone of higher standing with anata. Kind of hilarious when not even Japanese top officials get their words and addresses and honorifics done right. It's ridiculous.

Decent chance they got the idea from Crystal if that's a new thing. Scary thought, really.

No, like Gromnir already stated, that's just a lonesome slice of parsnip, the herb is a decorative piece of corn salad and the ketchup you get every time, even when you order the candy without ketchup. Because... yeah, what else would you expect from a guy who greets some of his customers by yelling: "You're fat enough already, I ain't cooking for you."

I was mostly joking, but I wouldn't consider Surströmming to be bad food out of hand. We're eating a lot of fermented stuff here too, just not fish, but when you're opening a new barrel or bag/can of sauerkraut, the smell isn't the most fantastic thing in the world either, but the food itself great. Speaking of Michelin stars, by the way, I'm more partial to the Gault-Millau hats, as that's just a mark of quality for the food, not anything else. Good service and a nice looking restaurant is, well, nice, but really, the best food I often got in totally run-down places, places with the most grumpy of servers (and/or owners) and fantastically tasteless furniture to round it off. The small places the locals go to eat, you know. One of those is in walking distance, guy just recently threw out his lava lamps (no, really). He's also all nice and friendly, really, last time I was there we combined going out to eat with walking our dog, and he come in and he's like: "Who's the idiot on the leash there?" and I was like "What?" and he predictably went: "I'm talking to the dog." Makes decent candy too.

A couple of days ago I thought my water heater got leaky because water dripped down from under it. Turned it and the water off, drained it, went looking for new ones to replace it, all that jazz. Turns out that might have been a bit premature. It's not the heater, considering the ceiling above it is now all wet and drippy. It probably was wet and drippy before, but it now reached a maginutude where it's visible. I'd rather have to buy a new heater and have it installed than having to deal with that again. Nothing like having construction work done at home in November with all the windows and the door open, and my upstairs neighbor is, uhm, difficult to deal with, and that's me being all nice, because she's half a lose marble away from belonging in an isolation ward. It's going to be miserably cold, dirty, dusty, wet and having to deal with insane people. Great, this could not get any better, nor come at a better time, really. Sigh.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, Episode 5. This one borrows a trick from a very old playbook. Nanoha and Fate are winning until a masked man shows up and helps the Belkan Knights escape. Not sure why Tuxedo Mask is fighting on the bad guy's side, but he told Chrono that he's doing to right thing. Sure, why not. Hayate isn't just paralyzed, she has some sort of degenerative neuroligical condition. Not sure why interdimensional mages with access to more developed planets would let that be treated on Earth, but hey, maybe Hayate was a normal girl until the Book of Darkness showed up. Hayate doesn't seem to be aware of her friends... occupation, at least, which is pretty odd when they all consider her their leader, master, or whatever. True to form, with much of the episode dedicated to action, it was much less interesting than the two before. Fixed that for you.

Dropkick on my Devil!, Episode 4. This keeps on being an wonderful mix of absurdist moments, fourth wall breaking jokes and absolutely fantastic, if totally dysfunctional, character moments between Medusa and Jashin. Medusa wearing a paper bag when outside also never fails to make me laugh. If there's one thing to complain about so far is that the show doesn't do too much with Pekola and Minos. Yet, maybe, but there are only eight episodes left and Medusa and Jashin have gotten the majority of interactions so far. For the record, this has three and a half stars on Prime Video, while Lady Asuka has a straight five star rating. Also managed to get another Steins;Gate episode in, and... Steins;Gate is also really getting on my nerves with character fates being fixed moments in time and the timelines correcting itself so they die when they're meant to.

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.