majestic

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.

Is that your takeaway here, we can't expect Star Wars movies to be good because they're meant to be silly entertainment and we're not supposed to expect Star Trek to be intelligent because it's... wait, what? I'm sorry, I normally ignore you when you're pulling off a Hurlshot-defense of something, but:

I JUST WATCHED THAT GO READ MY POST MY BRAIN IS GONE GOODBYE DEAR THREAD... Sorry for the caps. Not. Here's a helpful link, please like and subscribe and hit that bell so I did not spend an hour typing that for nothing. Thanks! edit: So it's going to be Thursdays of Hell from here on out, huh? A new episode of Komi Can't Communicate and Star Trek: Discovery on the same day. Sigh.

Star Dreck: Venal Disease, Season 4, episode one. Opens with a very helpful reminder of how absolutely balls to the walls dumb the premise of last season was. 700 years in the future, the Federation was unable to find reliable alternatives to the warp drive that have been in use in various "25 years into the future" episodes throughout the entire run of the franchise, several alternatives to warp drives that were already pretty much reliable in the older shows, but hey, never mind. Been there, done that. IN AN INSTANT, THE BURN FLASHED ACROSS ALL KNOWN SPACE. Sure Michael. It's 700 years into the future. If you want the Federation to have fallen, then just do that. So many possibilities. Renewed tensions with the Klingons. A second war with the Dominion. A costly Borg invasion. Internal decay. Out of all the options in the galaxy to reach the point where they wanted to be, the writers sat in their writing room and came up with the dumbest excuse of a plot premise in the history of ever, and that includes Jar Jar Binks putting forth a motion that eventually changed the Republic into the Galactic Empire. Hell, Jar Jar is a better character than any of the people on this ship, and that's... ... Okay. *steps down from the soapbox* I'm 36 SECONDS into the episode at this point. 36 SECONDS. Hell. 50 seconds in: The reminder that THE BURN was caused by the scream of a uhm, whatshisface race name (I know it's Kelpien) child. I wonder if I'll get through the "Last season on Star Dreck: Worse than AAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIDSSSSSSSSS" without suffering a stroke. NUMB ARM. NUMB ARM NARM NARM NARMM NARM NARM NARM. Oh, right, that numb nut Booker is still around too. Great to see Cyborg Whatsherface and the other people of the bridge crew that didn't get names until a couple of episodes back because why bother with worldbuilding. Spoilers from here on out, don't tell me I didn't warn ya. Can someone put me out of my misery please?

Komi can’t communicate new episode thingy: Hououin Kyoma has a guest role, aside from that it was not nearly as terribad as the last one. Either my brain suffered severe damage last time or this was a better episode than the last three.

Yes, I did. Spoilered mostly for brevity's sake: I'll never know for sure, but I was also talking about the rewatch, more or less. Even knowing that it'll continue, the scenes weren't as hard hitting as the mini-montage of them waving happily at Usagi (or, well, the viewer) shortly afterwards. Indeed, technically speaking I still have Steven Universe: The Kaiju Stories open. Fun fact: Binging three seasons in almost as many days seems to have broken my OCD. I'm still pretty burned out with poor Steven - the problem is that's barely viable for other shows. Not only was Steven Universe more than good enough to be binged, it was also much easier with the 11 minutes episode setup, and he fact that we were stuck in a very strict lockdown at the time. I think Toei doesn't have the material any more. This isn't a case of George Lucas pretending to have artistic integrity when he says he does not want to create a HD version of the original cinematic Star Wars releases. They'd release proper Blu Rays if they could, I mean, they made Crystal for two bucks and a chewing gum paid to the artists to rake in cash. You might be more lenient than I was, wich all in all is pretty weird when you really think about it. I'm far more critical of certian episodes of CCS than you were (like that ice skating episode, or the strawberry adventure). Very minor Nanoha update:

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, Episode 17: Whee, Cargo gets to show off her summoning power that's been teased and hinted at in bits and pieces in the earlier episodes, Subaru and Erio get a neat reminder why there's no I in team, and the Doctor's cyborg squad pretty much fulfilled all its objectives (except taking Subaru as a prisoner). The Doctor cackles and laughs like a madman, saying he's a lover of life and philantropist at heart, which would ring hollow had his team not gone out of the way to keep civilian casualties to a minimum. He also makes a very helpful transmission offering his technology, for a price. I guess as far as sales pitches go, making the Space Cops and their rapid response team look like a bunch of incompetend amateurs ain't half bad. Potential partners and buyers don't need to know that the deck was stacked against them, right? At any way, the expected low point didn't come in the fight right at the middle, but roughly two thirds through the season, and it's a lot lower than expected. Sheesh. Also curious how they'll write themselves out of this mess without going for a major asspull. The combat cyborgs are being adapted and changed after every encounter, and this time it was rather evenly matched already. Next time... edit: The combat cyborgs all look a bit like they could come out of a Mega Man game. edit 2: Oi, I kept thinking I know the Doctor's voice from somewhere, it's the same voice actor that voice Fuma in the X movie. edit 3: Next episode has the cleanup, some nice moments between the characters (even the "bad" guys, who are currently hard at work setting up some heel/face turns for the endgame). The Arthra, the Space Cop battle cruiser that appeared in the first two seasons is repurposed as mobile headquarter for Riot Force 6, it was close to being decomissioned and has been mothballed for a while now.

That's still running and all that...

There's a helicopter in StrikerS they're often flying around with. It's the only thing on the show that is CGI, and I have no idea why*. It looks terrible and out of place, like late 90ies made for TV grade. It seems such a silly thing, but I wish this would look better. Not just the helicopter, but everything else. It's not bad, it's just not... nearly as good as it could be, and arguably perhaps even deserves in this season. Nanoha talks to the others about trying to find a family that will take Vivio in and where Vivio also would like to stay, and her team is basically: "Nah, not going to happen." She's already way too attached to Nanoha-mama and Fate-mama, but apparently Nanoha can't see the trees for the forest, or however that saying goes. The scenes with Vivio continue to be absolutely heartwarming. edit: Oh boy, that attack on the Space Cop HQ was pretty successful. Episode gets bonus points for making decent use of the character's magical enhanced cyborg abilities. Girl who can walk through solid matter drops through the ceiling and takes out the entire defense command with a few well placed grenades. Meanwhile all the defensive magic turns out ot be useless with the entire area blanketed in an anti-magic field. One of the enemies packs the same power fist as Subaru and the newbie gang gets cornered by a swarm of magic missiles that look suspiciously like Nanoha's abilities. Seems like the good Doctor had access to a whole lot of material to experiment with. Lt. General Whathisface meanwhile simply keeps the conference going in the middle of the attack. Gee. Nothing to see here, nothing at all. He's trying to gather support and more funding for his non-magical defense project. Such a coincidence. I wonder if that thing will save them next episode. *I suspect the animated rotor blades would have been out of scope for the budget or the time they had. Because every time the helicopter shows up grounded it's just drawn normally like everything else is.

It's not the episode that got me the most, to be honest, there are others (Meiling's send-off for instance). I also agree that the episode with Dream was fantastic. Emotional montages, I get that. SU's was pretty good, but I think I really need to go back and watch at least parts of season one again now that I've seen the whole series. I have a feeling a few of these episodes would work, perhaps not better, but differently, or would be enhanced by knowing (and loving) the characters already. Speaking of montages (Sailor Moon "spoiler", I guess): The episode simply wins by doing everything right while at the same time being emotionally powerful enough to cause a tear or two, besides it's bittersweet instead of just sad. One thing ends, the other clearly begins (in earnest this time). Oh, and by being really surprising. Never thought she'd go and do that (I know I'm repeating myself ). What I don't understand is how nothing else from Ms. Ohkawa came close to that. Although, caveat, I still have to try Magic Knight Rayearth. More Sakura talk:

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Episode 15. Lt. General Gaiz stands between three monitors talking to him in distorted voices about how they should proceed now that they're under investigation by the Main Office and their Navy-backed response unit. For a while now I haven't been able to shake the feeling of watching a Neon Genesis Magical Girl when it comes to the military setup and secret response force and fighting dangerous enemies prophesied to bring about the end of the world, but that just seals the deal, right? This isn't a coincidence, but really deliberate. That's part two of the comparison I mentioned that I could make that would raise undue expectations. At least now I can see that nagging feeling directly on screen.

Me neither.

Oh noes. It usually does, but apparently being logged in on both my phone and computer is a bit messy. I'll go read up now, I've been dying to post something about #66 ever since I watched it.