majestic

I've been busy nursing a man-flu, so I can relate... kind of. Couldn't watch anything, suffering way too much from a common cold. Man-flu winging: Dash my hopes, will you. Although experience tells me you're right. For every K-On!, there's a large number of Love Live!s around... Sometimes my YouTube suggestions are pretty fun. I knew that there was a Sailor Moon fighting game, just now how apparently popular it is as a tournament game. Not bad. Jupiter looks pretty badass in the video with her high kicks there.

No Mari in that spoiler, what's wrong with you?

For that weird tangent:

See, that wasn't even among the options I have considered. I could also continue to read the manga or watch Tuxedo Mullet run about in that super cheap live action Sailor Moon. I'm probably too hard on K-On!, it tried much more in its second season that I thought it would, and some of it worked - and some didn't. I'll have to admit that Yui made me smile more often than not, and that's a job really well done, considering it was by far and large comedy. Getting me to appreciate that is no small feat. As such I don't mind pure drama shows, otherwise I wouldn't have liked Violet Evergarden. Also, yeah, I agree, and perhaps looking for something that combines Steven Universe's or Sailor Moon's character strength and themes with the quality of writing (although... for SU that was studio interference and for SM mostly not so great source material) and understatedness of the original Cardcaptor Sakura is a quest doomed to fail. I shall venture on, though. Who knows, maybe I'll find a unicorn. Hopefully not with wings. I'm also feeling a little sick today, so no cardio, meaning no Lady Asuka or emi... emouk... whatever the title of that weirdo seinen stuff that I began to watch on Prime video is. Probably not tomorrow either, but who knows, maybe I'll wake up feeling all rainbows and sunshine. Ikuhara was right that when it's around, it is often too much of a focus. Age and maturity differences aside, Mamoru and Usagi were okay in terms of volume. The Madoka movie you didn't watch plays out mostly in Homura's mind. Kyosuke and Hitomi are a couple, and it's not going really well because he's focusing too much on his carreer. Something like that would have been interesting for K-On!. Not turning it into a silly rom-com, but having a counterweight for one of them. Yui having to study for a makeup test was something like that in season one. It's not entirely out there for a group of 17 year olds, after all. I loved Lapis from the get go, but I like these sort of broken characters. Lars just moved from I HATE YOU /Anakin-scream to likeable before he got douchewaffled by Cartoon Network. Not sure what's worse. edit: Speaking of Cardcaptor Sakura, you're really close to one of the all-time greats in this arc (54), so... like, uhm... *whistle*

Well, of course. One could argue that it was pretty good, considering the source material. But is that really a merit, to be not as bad as it could have been? Look at Sailor Moon Crystal and tell me honestly that it isn't. The more I see or read of the original Sailor Moon storyline, the more I like the adaptation. I mentioned Minako for a reason, but what I mean is, when I look at the 200 episodes of Sailor Moon as a whole, much of the character stuff that I really liked and want to see again with different characters or in a different context (i.e. a different show) was the culmination of two full seasons worth of groundwork. Not that there weren't any great moments in the Sailor Moon or R, quite on the contrary. Ami, Rei and Makoto and Usagi still beat the K-On! girls in the same amount of epsiodes. In terms of characters and interactions, that is, not in terms of being funny. K-On! was really effective as comedy, most of the time, and that's high praise coming from Mr. Comedy Hater here... I'm not necessarily talking about the endgame episodes here. There are always episodes in the middle that were more story focused but pushed the characters forward in some ways. Like Nephrite dying while protecting Naru, the Specter Sisters redemption episodes or - even if the episode as a whole wasn't that great - Usagi and Haruka being chained together and learning to appreciate each other a bit more. It's the small things, and every now and then K-On! did that too, just not... enough. Yeah, why am I so picky about this? I liked K-On!. There's something else. K-On! has an almost boy-less setup. It's an all girls school, apparently, and outside of Ritsu's brother and a few grown ups, the girls never interact with boys. There's no same sex romance either, outside of some really minute hints that Mugi might be interested in girls. I don't really need romance in my anime (thanks for staying away so much Mamo-chan!), but Makoto wouldn't have been nearly as effective - and funny - without her bad luck in love. Actually, none of her growth in R and S would have come about if not for the throwaway line about her getting dumped by her senpai in the manga. Heh. A whole character growing out of a failed romantic interest, compared to a setting where no such thing was even attempted. Pearl is simply the best, so that's just natural. I tend to agree, but the comparison within itself is a little unfair, I guess. Pearl got all the attention she needed, while others (and I can't believe I'm saying this) like Lars or the much better Lapis were shafted by Cartoon Network, just like the rushed conclusion of the main storyline. I guess I'll just rewatch Sailor Moon. Or a personalized best of, perhaps. 200 episodes is a bit much of any sort of regular rewatching. Well, wrong, there are only 161 episodes of Sailor Moon. Too bad all the copies and tapes of the rumored fourth season were lost, now we'll never know...

Some talk about K-On! Now that I'm done with it, let's talk a bit about K-On!. As far as slice of life comedies with no other focus points go, this one was pretty good. It was fairly effective in being funny and had likeable characters with some good interactions. Out of the five, Ritsu, Yui and Mio were easily the best. Mugi and Azusa were more like support characters whose focus episodes tended to fall a little flat, or at least weren't nearly as funny. That's partially the writing, partially the comedic focus and partially by design. If I were to compare to Sailor Moon, which also had five girls plus supporting cast, and fighting bad guys instead of playing in a school club band, the characters in Sailor Moon were all better, at least outside of Sailor Moon SuperS. The question, of course... is that even a fair comparison? There are, counting OVAs and specials, 41 episodes of K-On! in total, plus a movie. Sailor Moon's original first season had 46 episodes. The question is, then, how do the characters compare to first season Sailor Moon? I think even then, with the exception of Minako who is late to the party and doesn't do much in the 13 episodes she's in, other than having a really somber focus episode about her past in England with unrequited love as a major theme, Sailor Moon... ends up being on a less inequal footing, but still very much ahead. I'n the middle of the second season of K-On!, I wondered if having a storyline to follow, a sort of connecting thread between episodes, wouldn't have been a good idea. The best episodes of K-On! aren't just funny, they're also have the girls deal with something else. Like the episode where Yui finds out just how much she takes for granted and comes up with lyrics for her sister. They're still sort of silly (Yui thanks the club room for always putting up with them), but not just that. There aren't enough of those. The episode where they're playing their final school festival show is a great episode, but it's also preceeded by a stage play episode where Ritsu and Mio are forced to work through some of their issues and the girls spending the night at school to get some last minute practice in because they've been slacking off the entire time. It's a culmination of some build up, and it works wonderfully. So where was I going with this? Some questions: Can you really compete with Sailor Moon based on 41 episodes compared to the ~140 to 150 of really good episodes in Sailor Moon? As much as we complained about the storyline of Sailor Moon as its weakest link outside the filler arcs, is having a red line to follow not a good thing or character growth? I'm sure it could be done without it, but it would be much harder without an external party involved in providing challenges for the girls to overcome. Can you ever get your characters to a level like in Sailor Moon if they never face any outside adversity together, or if that simply is never much of the focus? Should I even compare these two? Isn't that unfair to either of them? In conclusion: K-On! was great, but it could have been better with some regular character drama added. The movie adds a fake band fight over the creative direction that they've been taking that the girls are staging just to scare Azusa. It's funny. It also left me wondering if some conflict wouldn't have been a decent idea. Either internal or external. Maybe the difference is that Sailor Moon just happened to be a superhero team magical girl anime where there was a good deal of comedy, whereas K-On! was a slice of life comedy anime that happened to have some episodes with a different focus in between. Hell, I really don't know. What I do know is that K-On! was pretty good. Which is good enough, really.

Indeed. Working conditions and pay in animation are notoriously bad, with some exceptions (e.g. Kyoto Animation). I wonder if that is true for any entertainment industry. It certainly is for video games, and for movies, film crews probably have a similar issue, and where they don't, production gets outsourced someplace where they do. Just look at NZ and The Hobbit.

Well that's certainly... something. From left to right: Rina, Rin and Ritsu, Wakaba in the back... There are three girls with magenta hair. Rin, Ritsu and Rina, but Rina is in reality split into six separate but identically looking girls called Rinaji, Rinayo, Rinacchi, Rinamu, Rinazo and Rinako. There's a weird battle with black robots with glowing red designs on them, and Rinako dies, which bothers Ritsu and Rin, but not Rinaji, Rinayo, Rinacchi, Rinamu, because Rinazo died before the first episode. A boy called Wakaba shows up, who is voiced by Sailor Moon Crystal/Eternal's Mamoru. Rina can eat scrap metal and they're all consuming leaves from a nearby apparently at least semi-conscious plant called Midori that gives them superpowers to fight off the robot bugs. Ritu has cat ears for no real reason, but she can detach them and let them travel along Midori's roots to listen and talk to the other girls when they're out and about. Talk to the hand... erm, ears. They're all properly confused by Wakaba who they think is a robot bug too, but can't destroy with their usual plant power attacks. Rin develops a slight crush on Wakaba after he helps rescue one of the remaining Rinas. Which one? Beats me. Plot? Plot... yeah, dunno. They're on an island looking for water. They are or aren't human. They're certainly not human in the sense that Wakaba is. I have no idea what's going on, but I'm sure happy this is only twelve episodes long.

Okay, why not, so some random seinen anime it is then. Let's see... time to watch kemurikusa., episode 1! I really don't know what you could possibly mean. Lady Asuka episode eight: André is sentenced to death following Marie Antoinette's riding accident. Because he's the stable hand. Seems reasonable. Oscar barges in and demands a fair trial in front of everyone from the king. If you need to kill someone, kill me! Hans Axel von Fersen agrees and offers his life too, then Marie Antoinette comes in - being all recovered from having spent the time since the accident unconscious, and begs the king for mercy. Uhm. Sure, that's what the aristocracy does when the king unfairly picks on a serf. Right! Hans Axel von Fersen also learns that Oscar is actually a woman. Yeah, man, hard to tell with her, huh?

Sure, steal Mio's strawberry, will you. KOTOR 2 sound effects of course not present in the original. The second season is definitely a lot better than the first, but the first one has really funny moments too. Just some of those "What the hell?" things that seem to have originated in the manga. It fits the band. The song, I mean, it's... kind of perfect in that way. The best parts are the ones that are missing from the video... the banter in between the music. The actual music is fine, mostly. Didn't make me want to pierce my eardrums at least. Oh, and yeah, Love Live! looks pretty bad, and it has a lot more CGI too. CGI dancing, plus pop idol songs and fanservice = a taaaaad off-putting. Now that I'm done with K-On!, what should I continue with? Reservoir Chronicle, Magic User's Club or Love Live!? As a whole, the film didn't have as many funny moments per runtime as some of the regular episodes had, but it was a really nice film. It also wasn't meant to be watched in chronological order. While it begins some time after episode 22 or something the end runs parallel to episode 24.

Man, this movie. Girls randomly stumble into a sushi bar after their flight and the owner expects a Japanese band he hired for some promotion. Yui just says yes to everything the owner asks, and they end up playing. Reminds me a little of that time when Usagi compared general relativity to a pudding, and Mamoru's English speaking friends thought it was something profound.

It's not much of a spoiler to say that indeed, zettai daijoubu da yo. Scary stuff too. I wonder what that could possibly be, in terms of anime, I mean, and overall impression of the show. Finding something where the art bothers me isn't that hard. Music too. I mean, the music in K-On! isn't bad, but... it is what it is. Found a clip of the show proper Rice Is A Side Dish from the school show. Doesn't embed. It's probably the best song of the show. I also have to admit that the animation started to grow on me after a while, it's... still not exactly my cup of tea (ho ho ho, what a fun reference - the girls go mostly nothing but drink tea in the show), but it could be worse. Did you quote the wrong part, because that part just suggested that you badger your watch-partner into watching K-On!. The other one was a joke. It's not like Iris could convince Asterix to become a wild boar either. Eh... kind of drifting off topic here. Lady Asuka is funny considering the lyrics of the German opening song, they're about how she's a champion of justice and can fight like a man, but is still a lady. Except it really doesn't show at the moment. Who knows, maybe that'll change. She'll probably fall in love with someone that isn't André so there can be some drama and unrequited love. I often can't even tell where the line is. Dark Matter is an example like that. It's got the most hackneyed setup imaginable: Six people wake up on a space ship without their memories and try to find out what's going on. While first episode had a really nice twist, the characters are all walking stereotypes. Leader guy always doing the right thing, tough action lady, gruff mercenary with a hidden soft side, Japanese samurai who brings katanas to sci-fi gunfights (he even turns out to be a prince in exile), innocent nice stoaway girl and big silent black guy. It's mostly breakneck paced action from one episode to the next, has almost no room to breath, nothing about it should work but I'll be damned if it wasn't one of the best sci-fi series I've seen, and it ends on a stupid cliffhanger. Argh. Couldn't tell you why I enjoyed it that much. It just clicked. Speaking of things that work in their context that really should not, currently watching the K-On! movie. The girls want to go on a trip and can't decide between going to Dubai, Hawaii, London, a Hot Spring or Europe (the last one is obviously Yui's suggestion). They end up letting their pet turtle decide who swims into both London and Europe, which leads to the obvious joke of the set up, Yui learning that London is in Europe: This shouldn't be funny, but somehow it really is.

I'm still waiting for that Mari-With-DIO's-Head.

That works the other way around too. Look at what came from the Fate/Stay Night visual novel.

Yeah, really, what could you possibly do? I get that. X really is the type of entertainment without a clear target audience that only I can properly enjoy because I'm... me. Train of thought: Oh no, wings, like Sailor Moon, really? Fly and strike the teddy bear, yay... action*, I guess. This is fine. I'll just trust in the writing staff. The biggest issue is that by decoupling her ability to fly from her staff that now means she can fly and do magic at the same time, which is a prime recipe for disaster. Sailor Moon Crystal liberally did that by making the Guardians fight monsters on the ground while they could have just flown around all the time, neatly removing any tension from the action. Before the change, she could either fly or affect what's happening, not both at the same time. The first episodes, well, yeah. Some early installation weirdness is par for the course of most stuff. Even properly pre-planned shows can't escape it, when you look at the first few episodes of Babylon 5 for instance. For episodes 46 to 51, I kind of expected something different, but that's... dunno. If I had to name a really weaker stretch in CCS, that would be it. The early episodes get some leeway. Look me in the eyes, you want to drop Nadia and focus fully on Cardcaptor Sakura... I have read through that spoiler and have no idea what's going on. The bleedthrough was for "isn't hated by @Bartimaeus" and "anime that isn't terrible, but majestic doesn't like", which is probably confirmed by Lady Asuka already. If there is ever any actual bleedthrough between "Bartimaeus likes this" and "majestic doesn't like this" then we'd have a problem like in Dogma where all of existence would suddenly stop because you just can't contradict cosmic law like that without repercussions. All joking aside, I didn't hate the new Devilman Crybaby anime, just the ending, and that show doesn't sound half bad so far. Speaking of Lady Asuka, Episode... 7. Marie Antoinette meets Hans Axel von Fersen, and the two immediately fall in love with each other. How romantic, if it weren't for the conniving Countess du Barry who immediately moves in to gain political capital from her majesty's... so far somewhat innocent tryst. Lady Asuka once again proves that she's only one set of testicles away from a male shonen protagonist by threatening her directly... at this point it would have been more interesting to really make her a guy and give her a homosexual romance with André, instead of... a sort of hetero-bromance that's been going on there. It's really a good thing that the king will die from smallpox soon. That way the countess will finally be gone. Seesh. *Sometimes I think my posts come across as if I don't like action in TV or films, or any action in particular, or any shows or films that are light on character development and interactions. That's not really true, because I liked Dark Matter a lot and was really bummed out by it being cancelled. I also enjoy B-movie trash every now and then.

Psh, really, did you try K-On! already as well and didn't like it? I would have been really baffling if you enjoyed X enough to finish it (let alone like it), it's way too messy, and it has Kamui. I'm surprised you tried, actually, but seriously, don't hold back on my account. So what was worse, the early episodes Kamui McEdgelordface, Princes McExpositiontalk, or the pointless action scenes? Or just all of it? No, not at all. I was just surprised they'd stick wings on her like that. It... annoyed me a for half a minute, and then all was good again. Part of the problem of the early Sakura Card episodes was that everything seemed so exaggerated. Tomoyo is really overdone, and Kero cranks it up to eleven. If I were to watch it again, I'd probably no longer be bothered by it, because Clear Card was so much worse. Sure does. Oh, next episode will be different already, and it'll explain something that's been going on. Minor spoiler: I'm thinking about just rewatching Cardcaptor Sakura instead of going through Lady Asuka. Speaking of which, the age up didn't help at all. This just keeps cementing it's place in the bleed through area. It's not loathably bad, but it really isn't very interesting either. Asuka and Marie Antoinette are 17 now, and they're visiting Paris, and it's... mostly boring. No wonder they changed the director in the middle of the anime.

Yeah, really. Actually it's not that hard, this forum's copy and paste function is as neurotic as the posts are once you try to BB-Code your way through it. However, every now and then that really has an advantage, you just need to copy and paste Amenteps really helpful "last few post" things. So everything's fine, just as long as that is in there. I won't break up the post but rathre in one block though. Sort of. This software was a travesty before the upgrade, and that only made it worse. I don't know, I guess Mozilla makes Obsidian's forums. Yes, that's what I called Kamui the entire time. I guess my posts about X were as memorable as the anime is for a regular viewer. My posts about Crystal were more fun than that picture. Perhaps... except for the screenshots I posted because I couldn't believe what was going on. Yeah. I think... I posted Hotaru's plug crystal experience twice. I think you may have a point there. Captain of the guard: Indeed, it's about as silly as the idea that she can fight off five grown men. I've accepted that, and luckily, as of episode five the court fight is over. Marie Antoinette talked to the countess and is really unhappy about that. I wonder how much difference there is between being sold to the prince of France and selling yourself to the king for favors, I mean, she's really unhappy about having to talk to a (former) prostitute. K-On! - yes, job very well done, actually. I'm looking forward to the movie actually, I'm hoping they did something interesting with the movie budget. Maybe... in some parallel universe that might briefly overlap with this one you'll try it too. There's still the possibility that the first season will scare you off. CCS talk:

I'm sitting here and contemplating whether or not to watch the final K-On!! episode. It's not the last of the stuff there is to watch, just the last regular episode. Well, here goes nothing... edit: Well... that's the end, specials, OVAs and a movie left. Kind of glad right now that Sailor Moon didn't end with their High School graduation. Would have been a tad weird after the world ending destruction wrought there, but anyway, the mixture of nostalgia and good byes feels a bit like a punch in the face. Anyway, that was great. edit 2: Great, it's 02:45, and I've spent the last hour going over old files from my high school time that I still have lying around. Time to sleep. I wonder if I'll get one of these stupid dreams now. Stupid anime. Really. Why do you end like that.

Eh, indeed, good thing the actual show doesn't look like the poster. I'll keep it in mind, although I'm pretty swamped already. So maybe sometime next year? No, why. I already... forgot. I... you know what's the worst bit of it, apart from Eternal, Season three is the best looking of Sailor Moon Crystal. During the first few episode of season three I was almost happy to see THAT. Almost. Until everyone became face splitting alien shapeshifters after the first episode. Not even Setsuna could save that mess. Never thought I'd say that, the second season might be the weakest in terms of plot, more disjointed than the others, strange, wrong, terribly animated and downright disgusting at times, but Pluto was probably the best thing in all of Sailor Moon Crystal. Black Moon arc Pluto is the only thing in Crystal that's actually better than in the original 90ies anime. And that's really mostly because Chibi-Usa is much more likable at the expense of Usagi and Pluto is her surrogate mother. I liked her enough that even her silly "secretly loves Endymion" plot point didn't bother me. Episode four continues the epic struggle between the Countess du Barry and Marie Antoinette. The episode blurb and preview of the next one promises an end to that silly feud. Anyway, a serving wench ends up being poisoned by the countess in order to pin the crime on Marie Antoinette or her handmaiden, Lady Asuka's mother. Asuka shows up and threatens bloody murder in case the countess attempts to involve her or her family in her petty struggles again. Sword drawn and pointed. My, my. Not sure, but Emo McEdgelordface was a better protagonist. Episode six will be set after a three year time lapse. Maybe that'll help. If not, then there's only the change of directors that'll happen in episode 18 to look forward to. The anime isn't bad by any means, it's just... not very enticing either. Yes, sort of, but not quite a retelling. In a way the repetitive nature of the show and the film are meditative, and the episodes - as well as the film, I guess - are a bit like koans. I can't say that I'm into Eastern philosophy any more than I like Western one. For me, the question "What is the sound of one hand clapping?*" is essentially the same nonsense as "If a tree falls over in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" and completely irrelevant. Insofar it also really doesn't matter what, say, Tokiko really is in terms of the setting. She comes and goes as she likes, and ages, unlike anyone else at the academy. There probably isn't a logical solution, she was just there to make you abandon your preconeived notions, and to find an answer in a spiritual way, as a sudden enlightenment, spontaneous and aside from logic and reason. *Probably the most well known koan. There are "better" ones, but hey... *shrug*

In the past two months, I've spent a lot of hours coming up with a concept and variations of it for a project at work. Countless meetings and time spent writing documentation, messaging back and forth with the entire team. Hours upon hours of work. Yesterday we presented the options and costs to the management. For a while it was really touch and go, and then... we went all out, argued with all we had and then... management cancelled it.

His Burt Reynolds sure was funny, on the other hand, Celebrity Jeaopardy is about the only thing I also found Will Ferrell to be exceedingly funny in, so take that with a grain of salt.

TNG sure is amazing insofar that it's one of the most beloved sci-fi series of all time, exploded the popularity of Star Trek and still holds up in rewatches with the exceptions of some of the episodes in the first season (*cough* Code of Honor *cough*), but at the same time it's inherently flawed in a way that you can't help but wonder how those really great episodes in there even came to be. Creativity in the face of adversity, perhaps. Most of the cast is either useless or not really likeable (and some I downright hated, like a certain Dr. Pulaski or the snotty kid that somehow has grown to be more "accepted" in the role over time, for reasons I can't possibly begin to fathom) or just plain boring, and it's mostly held together by Brent Spiner and Patrick Stewart. I liked Gates McFadden's Beverly Crusher, but arguing that she's a good actress would go a little far. Guess when something works, it just works. Definitely a show where the sum of its parts far exceeds the individual components.