majestic

It's two seasons, but one story arc. I can only imagine it was two seasons only from a production viewpoint (with the break in between for the first movie), because that never made any sense. Netflix splitting them up into a Clow Card arc and a Sakura Card arc makes a good deal more sense, and it's odd to have one 35 and one 11 episode season. Great finals are really rare indeed. This topic came up before and some posters often cite shows I haven't watched as shows with great endings. Nothing readily comes to mind for me though. TNG had a great episode as a final, but it was just a two parter. If we count the second Sakura movie as series ending then that's great, but was written and animated as a capstone movie. Mini-series are easier because they're usually "just" longer movies and properly plotted out all the way through, but when they are successful they get a second season and it's just going down the drain, usually. That never felt like an issue with Cardcaptor Sakura, but it's really just that the story idea of the second arc wasn't as strong as the first one, by any objective and subjective measure. I still have a hard time ignoring the ups and declare the Clow Card arc the better arc, and some of the episodes simply could not have happened without the prior buildup. Clow Card had a higher average quality, I think. Sakura Card had single episodes that were stand out moments for me. Not easy to decide. The new Westworld for instance would have had a great ending if it just ended when it was supposed to. But nah... studios keep ordering more oodles of cash. Makes sense from a business point of view, of course. Nope, that's not acceptable. When next you feel like watching Samurai Hairdo, just click on Cardcaptor Sakura: The Sealed Card instead.

Basti ciao! Basti ciao, ciao, ciao! Bye bye. Don't let the door hit you on your way out. Best day in a while. Looks like a veritable bomb is going to go off, because there were a good deal of rumors about new evidence, and that must be really bad if that parade of corrupt <bad word>s actually cut off the head of la famiglia. Here's to hoping that this party goes the way of the dodo, or the way of the Democrazia Cristiana. *dance*

The movie is better than the last two episodes. I mean, I really liked everything of the final episodes that wasn't the storyline, but yeah, that conclusion wasn't the best. At least, not compared to the finale of the first arc, which was not just great for the feelings but also legitimately... better written. I'm not going to say riveting or interesting because it is what it is when you watch it as an adult, but it was still really good, and this finale was... simply not as good. It does have the added bonus of being the final episode in a longer running show. A journey's end always feels different, unless you make a movie with ten separate endings. *sideglance at Return of the King* Explanation for Clow Reed's looks: That card that Sakura created there at the end... ah, well... The movie, like I said, features a slight asspull for the storyline and if there's one bad thing about it, then it is that it kind of repeats certain parts of the anime, but it does it so well it doesn't matter. Almost doesn't matter, I guess.

I wonder if watching Neil Breen's ballsack cures Covid-19. That should be tried, and has a better chance at working than bleach.

How self-contained is Stone Ocean? Does it reference the prior stories in a meaningful way?

Midnight Mass

Could also be a metal band.

Had a talk with my GP today, she said I can come in any time to get my booster shot. Now all that's left is to, uhm... My experience with my two Moderna shots were somewhat unpleasant. After the first one I could barely leave work because I couldn't get my access badge out of my car window and to the reader because my arm didn't respond to my attempts to move it, and it felt like someone had stabbed me with a red hot knitting needle, and after the second shot I ran a relatively high fever and was more or less out for two days with high body temperature and the symptoms of a really bad hangover. Getting a third dose that, so far, everyone else I've talked to had an actual reaction to (as opposed to nothing or mild discomfort after the first two), I can't say I'm looking forward to the experience. Sigh. I wouldn't be surprised if our recent explosion of cases was linked to Omicron in some fashion. That wasn't just a regular uptick due to the seasonal change, it really went bonkers from one week to the next and there are also an awful lot of breakthrough infections. There have been rumors that laboratories identified a more infectious variant a far as a few weeks back, but those were just that - rumors. Or maybe they weren't. There's also been a surge in Denmark in spite of having high vaccination rates. If that really is Omicron then that's good news though, because hospitalizations are still by far and large limited to vaccinated high risk groups without a booster shot and the unvaccinated, of which we have a lot (at least compared to the rest of the Western world). On the other hand, that would necessitate that the bumbling buffoons that are our current leaders are actually capable of keeping information like that under wraps, and I honestly... really, like... don't think they are. Our current ministers are busy sending each other schlong picks on their work phones and talk about their embezzlements on WhatsApp chats that they thought were gone forever after they deleted them in the app. Lastly, regarding the name, well, it not being Xi because it would offend Pooh isn't much worse than it not being Ny/Nu by virtue of the WHO assuming that Americans would be too dumb to distinguish Nu from "new" and would think of an entirely new virus (the actual wording isn't that drastic, but it really boils down to that). *shrug*

I honestly did not remember @InsaneCommander posting that he watched the original series, and it wasn't that long ago even. See what watching these films does to a mind? Dear God.

You're not supposed to make jokes like that without having watched the series, or the travesties that came out after that. Well, you're not supposed to make jokes like that, period. Ever. *sigh*

Midnight Mass, episodes 4 and 5

Of those caught on screen, not sure, but there are 52 cards in the anime (less in the manga) and I don't really know if all of them had a use.

Midnight Mass talk, beware of spoilers.

This is Naoko, whom you're calling a nightmare: Meanie doesn't mean it, I promise!

Some dude named Touya, as if you haven't been reading our CCS praising posts and know full well who that is and just want to bother me? Man, today my colleague who I badgered into watching Sailor Moon a while back resumed watching Sailor Stars during lunchbreak. It was the first episode after the filler arc, and while he used headphones I kind of watched along and laughed like an idiot all the time. The season is such a riot at times. Usagi not knowing what the ring is supposed to mean, Ami being hyper-embarrassed about fangirling harder than the others, Minako doing whacky things because she's Minako... ... Sigh. Someone invent brain bleach already, I want to re-first-watch this.

Ah, well, that wasn't about carbon. Regardless of one's perception, hydrogen is made up of one electron and one proton no matter where we are in the universe (and regardless of which isotope of hydrogen we're talking about). This is about as basic and immutable as we can get. If it had but one proton more, it would be helium. All you need to do is agree on a common concept of representation. Now, that might be really difficult, but scientists already expended a lot of effort on defining all measuremeants we have based on natural constants and ratios thereof, and for good reason. Everything else is fun speculative fiction. There are several proposed solutions for non-carbon based life, and they all have the same problems. None of the proposed elements that could change (i.e. different solvents, or different base elements) work well enough. It's not impossible, but a good deal less likely than carbon based life - and that's just by any basic definition of life, i.e. microbes, not complex life forms. In terms of purely hard science fiction the most likely thing to be found are non-green plants, that's not exactly what we imagine, is it? If you apply the duck test to above statement, it comes out as time travel. The how, when, what and why is relatively besides the point, but makes this particular twist all the worse. Sure, there's the idea of block time, the concept which I think is what the film/short story is based on, and the idea that time isn't real but is an emergent property, making it "not real" in a physical definition sort of way, which means absolutely jack sh*t in terms of reality. Block time is a neat mathematical concept, but that's about it. Like tachyons. Tachyons are mathematical solutions that show up that would work - but have no basis in reality any more than if you use the Pythagorean theorem to calculate the hypotenuse of a triangle, then look at the math and go "hey, in theory there could be triangles with sides that have negative length!" because x² is always a positive value (unless it's i, but have you seen a triangle with a complex number as hypotenuse somewhere in reality? ). Wow, that went on a tangent. Alls I'm saying is that I can understand why people enjoyed Arrived for what it is. For me, the ending ruined the entire experience. If there was any way to have perceived that in some other manner, I would have never watched it. Major spoiler:

Quoting myself here, again, I guess... There was also some special effects failure with the water in episode three. I rewatched it several times to make sure that it wasn't an just a streaming issue, but unless it meant something else it looks like the water on the shore is a digital effect that didn't entirely cover the greenscreen for a frame or two there. No islands in Vancouver, after all.

I don't think you're supposed to think about this too hard.

It's the twist I had an issue with. I loved everything up to it. Just didn't work for me. Many things don't, but this one was actually one of the larger disappointments. Stargate had a pretty fun version of this at some point, with the elements of the periodic table serving as a universally understood basis. Basic element makeup is the same everywhere, after all - at least as far as we know, and it would be pretty weird if it weren't.

Midnight Mass, episode three. Couple of quick points, before I get too far into it. edit: Crockett Island also looks an awful loot like Canada with added water. Was that shot in Vancouver? edit 2: Also, absolutely fantastic sound track, loving the music in this.

Is like every name in JoJo's a music reference?

I didn't read the short story, so I don't know what you're talking about, but I found the film to be pretty interesting until it decided to do what happens at the end, which really crashed me hard out of immersion. That was incredibly jarring and not in the good way. I'm not against strange endings, to be honest, not that long ago I watched a film where the protagonist literally turned into a car that the other main character just drove away with and enjoyed it, but it was the sort of setting where this is not the strangest thing that happens. They do end up being chased hard by a medieval fairy tale castle for a while, after all. *shrug*

The things I wasted the most time on: Subtracting that from the 45 to 50 hours I needed for the first time to complete the game I'm at the mid 30 range - and that's with looking almost everywhere. 70 for a completionist run seems really high, unless that means grinding out every achievement, which I really needed the 90 hours for. It would probably have gone quicker with just playing a third NG+ game to reap the increased XP rewards from enemies, but I really did not want to... restart the game again. However that was just my experience, and everyone else I know who played the game except you did not complete it. But yeah, if the average main story + extras completion time is really 43 hours, then that's definitely too long for what the game offers. I get that the game would be super frustrating if attack variety matters for the player. Most bosses come down to parry, parry, parry, sidestep, slash, sprinkled with a combat art or two in between, or some firecrackers. There's not even any variety in how to defend against enemy attacks. There's the right way, and that's it. It never bothered me, but there are points in the game where style was clearly chosen over substance.

I just checked my playtime, I'm at 90 hours, that includes grinding an awful lot to reach 100% achievement completion, three complete runthroughs of the game and me repeating certain areas in the game ad nauseam to see if I can stealth kill every enemy. I don't think From Software designed the game with single 50 hour playthroughs in mind, but I'm pretty sure I also spent around that time for the first one. Thought the final chapter was a bit rushed and not at all properly set up, the combat arts were all mostly useless, the best one got knocked down because it trivialized (read: one-shot) the final boss - and that arguably fell under high risk, high reward, because a misstep and it doesn't look good for the player - and making the secret boss twice the size of your screen and the same color as the warning kanji that tell you what sort of dodge you need to perform was one hell of a terrible design decision. Being stuck in one way to play the game didn't bother me, or at least not that much compared to all the customization options that are by far and large useless (although those two issues are interconnected, I suppose) but... I am also not an avid fan of Dark Souls. I liked, but not loved, the first one, and never played any of the others. The raving reviews it got were certainly helped by an unhealthy From Software hero worship, but as far as games go, I liked it well enough and I played worse, for much longer.

That sounds worse than Magic User's Club. Pretty good voice cast though. Too bad.