majestic

I'm keeping these things as vague as possible anyway. I have to admit, I don't really know where this is going, but so far the first season (the first 13 episodes) was a good deal better. This one took a page out of Sailor Moon to come up with something five episodes before the end of the season (and show, in Tutu's case). It's not entirely out of the blue, there were hints and bits and pieces that Fakir is... Good job, scriptwriters. If the only function a new character serves it a late-season plot point reveal, then maybe you need to put some revisions in. The setup was there, but the way the reveal went was pretty unsatisfying. Who knows, maybe there's some secret energy being behind the Raven. Like CHAOS or PHARAO 90! Just as long as it isn't DEATH PHANTOM. But... but... I like fun random trash. Heh.

Okay, so Princess Tutu just introduced Jawas: They're not really interested in capturing R2-D2, salvage or junk trading, but seem to be some sort of clandestine organisation doing something that's been vexing Fakir for a while. Not sure how I feel about introducing a new plot element in episode 21 of 26, even if some of what happened throughout the second season can be traced back to them. Seems to be related to Drosselmeyer's part in the story. Not sure how that ties into the prince and raven story, if at all. Not going to lie, not really thrilled about this devlopment. The episode is also seemingly - so far, at least - a break in a streak of stronger ones. It's weird, random, weird and overall not as good as the ones before. edit: The character in the picture is most likely a one-off, and his only function is to explain something to Fakir, who then proceeds to set out on the path of his "destiny" or whatever it is. Good grief, that took a page out of the Sailor Moon manga book, Ms. Itō, that wasn't the best of ideas, really. Looks like it could be fun, but I'm already pressed for time and drowning in stuff to watch. Yikes...

Well, you might end up wanting DIO to go back to his room eventually. I liked the Black Rose duels more than the upcoming car rides, but your mileage may vary. Ho ho ho, car pun. I'm so funney. You're almost through, by the way. Next episode is Nanami focused insanity, then there's a very helpful flashback episode that takes great pains explaining all the visual cues you've most likely missed and the resolution of the arc, which gives you a first hint at what's going on. Or maybe not. Anyway, I'll give you a nice heads up since you seem to lose more and more, uhm, motivation to continue. Press me if you want to see the Rose Bride's true form (beware of spoilers, pain and seizures):

When I say something is important in Utena or not really skippable that just means if you want to find out what's going on, by yourself. You could just watch the whole thing and ask me afterwards, that's fine too, but in the spirit of the show, skipping the path means you won't reach your destination.

@Keyrock are you going to put an image of Neil Breen's ball sack in your signature at some point?

Yui imagines her future work life when the girls talk about carreer choices in the wake of submitting their vocational orientation form. She's like "I could work at an office, and come too late!" then imagines herself barging into an office, apologizing profusely for being tardy, when someone gets up and tells her: "You work at the office next door!" That's it, K-On!! officially won, even if this devolves into pure fanservice from this point forward, that was just absolutely hilarious. Right, forgot to reply. It is filler, but filler of the unskippable variety, mostly because...

I forgot an emoji in between, the cut them some slack was more of a joke, even if it ends up being right, Akio sure doesn't deserve any slack. Anthy, perhaps...

I had a feeling like that when he rejected the original Star Warts and wanted to watch Clone Wars instead. Clone Wars is probably the best of all the new Star Wars stuff (not sure about Rebellion, and The Mandalorian was ok in the second season, but I liberally complained about the first), but it's still new Star Wars. Yeah, that makes sense, of course. I initially tried drinking wine during a school trip, because ours didn't turn out to be fun, but a week of hell in a run down dorm on Malta. I figured out quickly that it doesn't help with either falling asleep or ingesting the mixture of protein and carbs they told us was food. I still don't know what it was, but it was on the level of the prison sludge with ****roaches in it you see in movies (the ****roaches were in our rooms too, though, so yay!). MJ was the go-to recreational drug for our class in high school, more so than alcohol. Our legal drinking age is 16, by the way, just in case highschool and alcohol raises an eyebrow or two. When I think back to the fourth and fifth grade, we had like two out of like 22 students (one was me) who didn't regularily consume recreational drugs, and by that I mean at the very least twice a week, but usually more often. Post lunch break most people in class weren't sober. In the end, it's fine that neither works for me. Being competitive in video games did, ultimately, which was a nice distraction that proved to be more addictive for me than "normal" drugs. How did either work out for you? I mean, Utena and Bubbles, not JoJo's, we know that already. Akio comforts his sister, you know, so cut them some slack. Actually, that'll make sense eventually. The comforting part, at least, not the... the actual part. Yeah.

The Keion club is organizing a tea party for the Mio Akiyama fan club, and it includes a Q&A session with Mio. She's being really nervous when she has to make a speech, then bites her tongue, which goes over really well with her fanclub, because they just love how all these curious and embarrassing things keep happening to her. The fan club can't possibly know these things happen for the benefit of the viewers, so that makes sense... This is how she looks during the Q&A session: Heh. Poor Mio, I feel for you! See, that's charcter growth in action, last season if anything like that would have happened she'd look like this:

My wife is taking diazepam for the times when she can't fall asleep, and she's out cold for hours afterwards, but... that's her last ditch anxiety medication in case nothing else works, and is kind of super addictive and all that. Plus it's prescription only (well, duh), so that's not very helpful information, I'm afraid.

Well, yes, it is better than most trash made for children these days, but he's not really watching for the girly stuff though. His half-sister has her own horse and he's been tagging along her riding lessons ever since he was 4 or so. He's eight now, and likes the riding "action" scenes, and he has refused everything else I've tried to watch with him just so he stops watching these people on YouTube that kind of make me question my usually pacifistic disposition. Still don't like it, it looks awful and the German dub is shrill and kills my ears, and I'm probably biased too, so there's that. Netflix suggested the anime something fierce, I've ignored it so far. Still not sure if I want to try, even with the recommendation. That plot blurb on Netflix was kind of weird. That does sound like it would be better not to try. In my experience, buying marijuana is a waste of money. Just like with alcohol, I need to consume an exorbitant amount to feel something, and even then it's not nearly as much fun as everyone else seems to be having with it. It has the added advantage of not giving me alcohol poisoning in the attempt, so there's that, at least. Not that I particularily want to be drunk, I mean, I know how, uhm, awkward being around drunk people is. Energy drinks also don't really seem to have the intended effects. I haven't tried anything else, and I don't really want to, nor would I know where to get any of it. I just might be an utterly joyless person, except when watching the silly girly stuff, that always makes me laugh, or happy, or sad.

Well he's watching YouTube Kids, but eh, I can try.

That's the sad part, the first movie doesn't get referenced like, ever. It was really meant to not alienate anyone who didn't get the chance to watch it. Oh, that reminds me, now that you've seen Mystery Transfer Student #2, you can go and watch the Tomoyo video diary as soon as he starts befriending Sakura. Which won't take that long, Sakura likes everyone. Heh. Yeah, didn't think that was the case, but it sure reminded me of Utena when it happened the first time. There's still some hope, maybe I can corrupt my nephew when he's of the proper age. So far he likes watching DreamWorks' Spirit: Riding Free, and while I absolutely hate that CGI monstrosity with horses, it might a good sign.

Cardcaptor Sakura talk: If you end up trying, just let me know. I promise I won't tell anyeveryone! Besides, it's still anime made in 2009 and 2010. Essentially... I guess the best it can aim for is getting the Your Name mark of approval: It was fine. Although I do know what you mean. The school trip episode has a pillow fight started by Tsumugi, much to the dismay of Mio who is put out by the otherwise well behaved and proper Mugi initiating such a childish activity. My immediate social circle's reaction to Sailor Moon was a relatively negative "Maybe if I was still 14 that would be interesting." (yeah, they all suck, I know), to Cardcaptor Sakura they just said "You're so weird sometimes..." and I really don't want to know what they'd say to K-On!'s pillow fight.

K-On!! had an episode with the four senior girls on a school trip, and the next episode showed what Ui, Azusa and the other juniors were doing. Yui also deposited a wish at a temple: She always wants to have enough food. Ritsu wants to play a large venue, and Mio and Tsumugi just want to get into a nice university/college. Does that sound familiar to anyone else? Some scenes actually included Sawako, and were all without any wild insanity like guessing who the girls are by their bust size, forcing them to wear playboy outfits or any of the other nonsense. The "worst" thing she did was pull on Ritsu's cheek as punishment. K-On! officially went from a less embarrassing Love Live! to - so far, at least - a really nice and fun slice of life comedy anime. With only some music. Well, and a really terrible intro song. But hey, can't have everything, I guess. The characters are all the same too, they behave the same way, just a good deal toned down. The school trip episode made Mio a bit more relaxed too. She's usually super annoyed when Yui and Ritsu don't behave like regular Japanese school girls. Which is pretty much all the time. It's even the same writing team. Not sure what happened, either they got more creative control or really made the second season without having to reference the manga. Doesn't really matter. Time to sleep, tomorrow will feature a birthday party for my great uncle, which will be fun, but stressful. I guess having a small video on K-On! as suggestion from YouTube made watching Love Live! and posting about it worth it. I mean, Love Live! was occassionally funny and sometimes quite nice, but not with any consistency and never without being embarrassing to watch. Yay!

Well, you wanted something for the trahsbin, right? K-On!! keeps being better overall than K-On!. I'm fairly happy with the way it is going. Guess K-On!! is free of the shackles of its source material now.

This is so bad I have to spoiler it: If you're in the mood for some more super brainless action you can put into the trash bin immediately: MD Geist II: Death Force What could possibly go wrong with a VHS tape cover like that?

I don't mind brainless action stuff and find it somewhat entertaining when done badly enough (or wenn done really well), but that art style is seriously putting me off, and what, guy with a TV for a head, uhm, I think I'll pass. Pretty Cure episode 1! Well that was something... They get a massive upgrade in the movie to boot! Mid Black Rose arc is the show at it's most uneventful, I think. The duels make no sense, the Mikage seminar makes no sense, everything repeats with a steady rythm and barely any comic relief or any change on the horizon. The Akio Ohtori arc also has some repetition focused around the duels - that are essentially retreaded combation duels of the Student Council and Black Rose arcs (you'll see once you get there), except with a lot of half-naked Akio to look at. Well, the duels are thematic character building of a sort. The side characaters all relate to the main characters they steal the pure heart crystal heart sword of in some way. It's not working too well. I thought that was in the first Black Rose arc episode, creepy professor wants to replace Anthy with Boy!Anthy to save his life from some wasting disease he has. There is an explanation of a sort at the end of this arc, that for me at least, retroactively saved the somewhat repetitive and boring preceeding episodes. It never really specifies what the professor thought was going to happen when Boy!Anthy becomes the rose bride, though, or if replacing Himemiya is even possible at all. However, I'm willing to accept that I'll be the only one in this thread with this opinion.

K-On!!, Epsiode 1. Yeah, so, like Sailor Moon, K-On! doesn't have season numbering. It's K-On! for the first one, and K-On!! for the second. The episode continued with the very towned down crazy from the end of K-On!. The new intro song is worse by a factor of infinity. While I actually sort of liked the first one, this one's simply horrible. Didn't like last season's outro song, don't like this one either, so that's less of an issue. Well, what do we have chapter markers for. This is the second opening: You don't need to check your settings, this is intentionaly chipmunkified. It's playing on normal speed, really. I sure checked my video player's settings. So far, so good. With twice as many episodes, I still expect four instead of only two beach episodes, so there's every chance they'll mess up again. The opening of the first season was pretty good and kind of understated (compared to the rest of the season) too. Anyway, I doubt I'll do an episode by epsiode blurb unless it suddenly turns into ecchi nonsense or turns out to be Sailor Moon Crystal awful all of a sudden.

Yes, that's pretty much what happened to me too. I liked Juri/Jury (the subs aren't sure themselves, I've noticed) well enough, but even that was tenuous. That's by design though, and the biggest problem is that the anime isn't upfront with necessary information. You'll see that with the last episode in the Black Rose arc, that's a major "ah, ok, I get it now" situation, or at least I thought it was. Especially beacuse it suddenly turned to full on visual exposition of a rather hilarous kind. Not really a spoiler, but kind of revealing, so I'll spoiler it anyway: Yeah, good luck with that*. Touga will stop sulking in his room eventually. Now, now, really, what do you think is going on between Anthy and her brother? The repetitive nature of these sequences has a point, and it's one of the things that'll never make sense until you've figured everything out. Back when @Bartimaeus and I watched Utena, I've often talked about how the pacing of the show isn't great, and how it is a bad idea to have all these elements going on and the information necessary to decode it only trickling in near the end of the arcs. The Akio Ohtori arc is sadly enough even worse in that regard. Black Rose sort of still plays relatively fair, what with the elevator rides and their implications. Was the episode with Wakaba's schoolfriend yet? That'll be a change. I've speculated that the anime must have bled a good deal of viewership at that point. I can't really corroborate that, of course, but it seems like a forgone conclusion that at least some people would tune out given the repetitive yet mindscrewing nature of all the "what the hell is going on?" moments. Poor Jury. She just can't let go of her crush. I'm not sure if that is something that worked better in the manga, or comes from padding the anime a little too much for runtime, perhaps, but none of the characters are particularily likeable. Like I said in the opening paragraph, that's by design, but it doesn't make for too interesting episodes in between the revealing ones if there's nothing you can look forward to. Except the shadowplay aliens. They're always great. *We can come back to that later. Mhm.

Yuki Kajiura also makes amazing soundtracks.

The OVA is focused on them playing their first non-school live show, on New Year's Eve. Episode spends less than two minutes on them playing. For something nominally about a group of girls forming a school club band there's not much music in it. Works for me, even though the music isn't so bad, actually. It's just okay-ish rock-ish/ska-ish stuff, like, hmmm... like Love Live!'s first piece of music. Gee, I wonder where they got that idea from. Well that was great. Season one was a bit uneven overall, but ended on a really strong note. Hopefully they can keep that up. I guess Mio will be back to whacking people and Sawako will be creepy every now and then, but eh, if there's the occasional episode like the last two in between, then: Was worth it.

I should probably stop reading the spoilers, I kind of want to watch Steins;Gate, even if the plot sounds really convoluted and has time travel. K-On! Bonus episode: Feels like I'm watching an entirely different anime, for some reason. That clearly was the best episode yet. I wonder if that keeps up for season two. Well, time for the OVA I guess.

Well, where else would you start a rewatch. Going back to season one after finishing the series sure feels strange, at least it did for me, the first time around. The recent rewatch not so much, but it's been like 23 years so I guess time makes up for a lot of things. Or deletes many things from memory, because I'm back to thinking I started with R, by the way. I keep waffling around, and while it doesn't really matter, it bothers me that my memory is really hazy. It was either with the initial episodes of R and them getting their memories back or somewhere around the time Usagi was on vacation with her family. It's incredible to see how far they all have come by the end of it. You really just need to ignore SuperS and pretend it never happened. That's for the best, really. Eh, well... he's made one web series that's available online (well, where else), for free: Empires of Evil. It's interesting to see the composition and direction of the shots being so similar to his early work. Heh. Worked on a lot of things, actually, but mostly on local film productions that aren't readily available, and... hm, yeah, they also generally don't have English subtitles available. Which is a pity for Trautmann, the only cop serial (besides Columbo) I actually liked watching, but that's neither here nor there. Heh, good. Still, the things I found on that backup I downloaded with my trusty old dial up modem. Here's one thing where the good old times weren't so great, but I essentially hit the jackpot when our cable TV provider made our area the pilot testing ground for their new internet service. Still, wouldn't want to miss it for the world. Except for when your mother picks up the phone and kills the download you've been waiting for over an hour to finish, some ten seconds before it would have been done. Good idea, I'm looking forward to see if repeated exposure to that bleh intro song will mellow your opinion on it (it didn't, for me), what you think of the Sakura card arc, especially of the first handful of episodes, and the couple of killer episodes that happen in there.