majestic

Yeah, you haven't seen anything yet.

Not entirely on topic, but I feel like stating that I had exactly one multiple choice test in my entire life, and that was the entry exam for my high shool of choice. I can kind of see what the point is, especially for the ease of mass testing. There was no other way they could efficiently sieve through a couple of thousand of applications for the ~200 free spots (ended up being ~220, in the end) in the time they had for the examinations. They did take grades and averages into account as bonus points though, so if you did well enough at school before - and we never have multiple choice test there, a least, you had a pretty big starting bonus. Although that required you to have teachers that cared. Luckily mine did, at the time. Something that went a good deal worse later on though, but that's neither here nor there. I mean, I was assigned to a remedial course once after getting 100% on three consecutive tests because the teacher hated me thought I needed, ah, help with learning, so... let's better not talk about my experience with teachers, lest it depresses Hurlshot or something.

I don't have much too say on account of Neon Genesis Evangelion and The End of Evangelion, having just watched it recently and written what feels like a dozen essays on it, especially in light of making that terrible decision to follow suit and be a good anime thread lemming by watching Rebuild, so don't take me not writing half an essay in response here as a lack of interest. I pretty much agree, except for changing my outlook on characters in a different way than you over the course of the show's run. Mostly because I really started out disliking Asuka for her attitude, didn't find Shinji too annoying and loved Misato. Misato is a type of character that triggers a deeply set affection, in the same way Makoto does - and Rommie from Andromeda. There's also a readily observable pattern, all characters that are determined and strong / have a determined and strong facade while also being emotionally vulnerable. They're also all female, but that's only because who creates male characters like that (honest question, I can't come up with a decent answer)? So if anyone would want to make a character for me in any show, hey, that's the easiest - not the only - way to do it. Add a little mystery and we're all set, I'll boost your ratings for as many seasons as you'd like. The only thing that did not work for me was my own expectations regarding the ending of the original show. I don't know what I expected, but I thought I would find something that makes no sense. Instead it was an narrative unending and a well written thematic closure that people to this day mistakenly (in my opinion) praise for its avant-garde art sequences. That wasn't planned, they were just simply unfinished because the time ran out and Anno made the best of it - just like the entire ending. It still worked, which is the really impressive part. Having that said, it feels really weird to retroactively reduce a rating, right? Not that I really do ratings all too often, but that happened with Love Live!. No, that would never have gotten a good rating, really, but what little there was enjoyable in this show ended up being a copy from K-On!, which just means that watching K-On! made Love Live! worse. Strange how that works.

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A's. The intro has tansformation sequences in spades, all with the accompanying magical girl nudity. The episode begins with a girl in a wheelchair, soft piano music (which made me think of @Bartimaeus and had me randomly burst out in laughter, and hearing a voice at the back of my head: Roy from IT Crowd going "I'm disabled!") and an ominous book in chains that's sitting on the girl's shelf. She begins reading something else, and at midnight the unthinkable happens, the ominous, chained book suddenly starts to move, breaks it's seal and starts talking German. We're off to a really good start here, I think. Judging purely by the book's voice modulation, it's probably a magical thingmabob like Raising Heart and Bardiche. More as the episode progresses... Anyway, half the episode was character driven, then it got a really long action scene that is slated to just continue in the second one. Yeah, this doesn't waste much time at establishing the new threat and jumping right into serious mode. Ominous talking book is called the BOOK OF DARKNESS, by the way. Just in case it wasn't clear enough that the book is, like, ominous and sort of evil from speaking the universal language of ominous, evil things and being all ominous and chained up.

Lady Asuka, Episode 11: Well... Duke Someface just shot a three year old in the open street. The preview of the next episode has Asuka going for the obvious shounen solution to the issue: Challenge the Duke to a pistol duel. I think I'm finally seeing how this appeals to a fan of Cardcaptor Sakura. Astounding. Lady Asuka, Episode 12: Lady Asuka deflects the Duke's bullet with her pistol and shoots his out of his hand. Oh boy... this just keeps getting better all the time. 28 episdes to go. Yay...

I guess I asked for it, huh?

Changed it to your liking!

In the grand scheme of things these were smaller posts, really.

There's a lot to unpack, and that feels a bit like the joke about a physics professor asking their students whether hell is endo- or exothermic in nature. Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: Directly after episode 5 this would have been a resounding no. Much much longer answer: It wasn't all bad, actually. Take out the really terrible parts of episode 5, and you're left with one embarrassing episode and a few transformations that are a little too sketchy, and some fan service that should not have been in there, but isn't too overboard. Ultimately, most of the show's runtime is just as you predicted it would be. The biggest issue is the schizophrenic attempt at welding a Cardcaptor Sakura age group magical girl cast with an attempt at mature storytelling and an adult target demographic. This was made specifically to attempt to appeal to the demographic that watched Sailor Moon as adolescent boys, I guess. It's familiar enough to "feel" right, it just really messed up with the erotic/suggestive content in episode five and the age of Nanoha, because much of the runtime you simply don't buy that she's a nine year old. When Nanoha gears up and walks headlong into a battle that may very well kill her and ends it with Usagi's typical "We fought, don't you think it's time to try and be friends now?", all you really get is the incredibly Japanese thing to do: Make characters far too young for their own good. It also adds to the JRPG feel, because that is a very prevalent thing in JRPGs too, when young boys or girls are inadvertantly thrust into a situation beyond their ken, but resolve to do something about it anyway. Usagi spends an entire season not wanting to accept her responsibilities, and only truly does so after she's lost everything. All Nanoha needed as a nine year old was finding a magical ferret and a talking red marble with an AI turning her into a techno-mage, and two episodes to properly learn how to control it. Still, and that says more about what I've watched recently than it does about Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, it's been enjoyable enough. Unlike with Lady Asuka, Love Live! and Magic User's Club, I was actually looking forward to finding the time to watch an episode or two. That only stopped dead in its tracks after the loli incident. The most damning thing is, there's no real reason to watch this, in the same way that there's no real reason to play random JRGP #2321. Visually and in terms of music it's not impressive, but at least not offensive. The storyline is fine, but not great, and the writing is... fine too. It's a bit messy and sometimes confused, tries to add too much in too short a span of time (space ships, technobabble and the space cops are all things that could easily have been dropped without making any difference) near the end. It really is much like an anime version of random JRGP #2321, but it's nowhere near as bad as X is. What I liked about it, for the most part, is one thing that carries an undue weight for my enjoyment of entertainment - atmosphere. I loved the feeling the anime gave off when it wasn't trying to be disgusting. It's the same feeling I get when thinking back to playing Final Fantasy Adventure on the Game Boy or the journey of your character in Illusion of Gaia or Terranigma. It's much less about how good the sum of its parts are, how good the parts are, or how well they go together. That is, however, preciously little to go by as far as recommendations go, and I doubt you would find anything in it that would lastingly appeal to you. You might tentatively not hate the first few episodes, but the serious mode and the storyline, yeah, no. That's not character driven enough, and episode five would make you delete all anime you still wanted to try. edit: Oh, and welcome to the secod thread I ever made on the Obsidian forum! Figures, the first one was to provide the BISIMGs to download, the second one was foisted upon me, but I like this approach with splitting off the end of the old thread more than the lock and repost. That was a good idea, @Gorth.

Triple post power, because why not. Sue me! Although nope, it took too long to type and there was a reply in between! I'm done with Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Due to episode five I can't really recommend that to anyone. The rest is... well, what else is there to say than what I said before: It is occasionally good, mostly nice, and a whole lot derivative. It is also a little more serious than other magical girl shows, and apart from having a changing room scene with a collection of hypersexualized minors of various age levels (from nine to seventeen) that's where the target demographic mostly shines through. It's really tough to deal with that scene. There's fanservice and then there's blatant sexualized nudity. I'm just going to reiterate that so it sticks - we're not talking about Magic User's Club level of just embarrassing or Sailor Moon occasionally doing an unecessary upskirt because the animators felt like sneaking one in. Sadly the rest of the anime isn't free of that either, but it just pales in comparison. I'd also have less of a problem with a scene like that if all the charcters involved would have been the adults on the show. Then it would just be unnecessary, but thankfully over quickly. There's a lot less silly than in Sailor Moon or Cardcaptor Sakura, and that's fine. It isn't entirely fine when what you're looking for is silly girly stuff. However, it's not all stupid serious mode action either. That happens in the second to last episode of the season, and the show does a very sensible thing in dedicating an entire episode to the epilogue. It's a wonderful episode full of character moments, beacuse the story's all wrapped up. Sailor Moon could have really benefitted from one of those after the end of Sailor Stars' storyline. I guess, if you're ever bored out of your mind and want some magical girl action you can try Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, just as long as you skip 95 (I counted that - 95 - NO LESS) seconds in the fifth episode the moment you see two women leaving the changing room. The rest of the episode is embarrassing then, but at least won't make you feel like clawing your eyes out - and in case it doesn't, then perhaps it's time for you to get yourself into therapy before something problematic happens. Also, don't expect a whole lot of funny situations. There are some laughs, but it's not the focus.

Speaking of Madhouse, I thought about trying to get a copy of Cyber City Oedo 808. That's short and looks visually impressive. Not sure about the content, but a three episode OVA with 45 minutes each wouldn't be too much of a time waster.

Yes, it's like watching the tail end of a Sailor Moon season. It's a bit less disjointed perhaps (actually a lot less, arguably some thought was put into setting everything up!), but really... serious. The show didn't have many comedic elements before, except every now and then, but it went full storry and much less character interactions now. I'm pretty much at the end though, two episodes left. I vote for Sakura, because of course I would.

More Nanoha talk: Link to previous thread:

Nanoha and Fate have a nice JRPG like duel until Nanoha decides she's had enough and just flat out tells EVA to turn into the Ion Cannon an obliterate her. Well, Fate got really lucky that the Nanoha Ion Cannon has a stun setting, because somehow she survives that blast. Well... Fate is also often the victim of her attire, having only that bikini unitard to wear makes it sort of easy to add in some quick fanservice here and there, although that's mostly harmless. The twist hinted at by the last episode I watched might possibly be something else, by the way. I'm not sure yet, but apparently... Here's to hoping that they kept the seizure inducing battle scenes to a minimum. I'd rather take those if it means there are no more super creepy nude scenes, but ideally, no to both!

Surprisingly, much more than to the sequels to Love Live!, the Magic User's Club TV anime, and more than finishing Lady Asuka or that Korararagemimamimi-Thing with the travelling cat ears that I randomly started watching on Amazon Prime Video. I'm not going to mention watching and - for the most part - even liking this to anyone that I know in real life, and that is really only because of episode five so far. When it's not showing lolicon content, it's quite nice. Not great, because it's a disjointed, schizophrenic mess that tries to waffle in tone between darker than Galaxia level Sailor Moon villainy and the bubbly sweetness of Cardcaptor Sakura, but I have watched much less interesting things with worse characters recently. Really, that lolicon moment is all that's standing in the way of a mild recommendation for a somewhat messy and in terms of genre conventions and premise wholly derivative magical girl series. If that turns out to be true it also did the Sailor Moon villain thing. Which would be hilarious. Right, there's one thing I forgot to mention, Fate's and Nanoha's magical techno devices narrate what they're doing in the best Command & Conquer computer voices. Nanoha gets EVA and Fate CABAL, and I have to laugh like an idiot every time she activates it, because it keeps saying RAISING HEART, SET UP. Fate's thingy is called Bardiche, and not very surprisingly looks like one. Now... if they just had not set me up that nude content bomb in the changing room. Really. SHOOTING MODE. Targetting Episode 5 changing room scene. DIVINE BUSTER! I haven't really mentioned the soundtrack yet, which sounds a bit like generic JRPG #3241. All that said, the one thing I'm really not looking forward to is how the newer series look. The original from 2004 is already not as well animated as it could be and looks slightly more modern than it could, but it's not entirely awful. Scenes from the other series do look a lot worse though. Eh...

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.

It's interesting because for me that was a reversed process. I always* knew what I wanted to do with my life, until I stood there and realized that it's simply not going to work out, having to struggle against my nature to achieve what I thought was my goal in life. That might sound like far fetched silly philosophy, but in losing that fight, I ultimately won, atlhough I realize that I got really lucky that coasting on the river of life without the will to steer against the stream ended up carrying me to a pretty good place. Eh, but I posted enough about that already, suffice it to say that figuring "it" out is all nice, but no guarantee for anything. That makes sense, when you look at NGE in its function of being representative of Anno's struggle against depression. It also very neatly explains why Rebuild falls flat, because that shifted everything to his struggle with the inane NGE fandom, which is decidedly less interesting, and has a much less relatable personal stake. I mean seriously, how many people on the planet really have to engange with that toxic a fanbase on a regular basis? Certainly not me**. Plus Mari and the seizure inducing action that the team likes to sell as the creative vision behind NGE rounds that out. Sure guys, you do that. I agree on the feeling of catharsis, for me that's... Violet and her struggles. It just worked. *It changed, once. When I was really young I thought I'd go into electical engineering. **I also don't really know what depression is, but I still related to the struggles of the characters. I thought I did, once, but that turned out to be a stupor induced by too high blood sugar levels. In spite of having gotten better in time, my basic emotional level is more or less still nothing for the most part, and the way I understand it that's not the case for depression - I'm not under any strain or stress in that state. The closest approximation is a state of grand, cosmic ennui, except without the feelings that accompany ennui. Which means it's not really an approximation. Does that make sense? Whisper of the Heart caused the longest change in that state in recent memory, while watching Violet go through something similar was very impactful. More so than Rei in NGE was, to be honest.

Lindsay Ellis isn't entirely wrong when she says Glorfindel isn't necessarily a good character to include in a film already laden with too many, because he really doesn't do anything after that, but replacing him with Arwyn to force her appearance in Fellowship was a little, well, forced. I don't know, perhaps it would have been less distracting if someone else had played her. I've never once believed that she's an elf. Yes. Very much so. I'm not sure it was meant to be depressing, but that's how it was. Speaks to the strength of the movie that my experience was similar, but stemming from a different root. For me that was mostly seeing her work up that drive and determination at an age where she really should just be a child. I realize that this is highly colored by personal experiences and very much a projection, but back when I posted about it after watching, I said that I wanted to yell at the screen, tell her to take more time. Just because Seiji is in the process of runining his childhood (or already has) doesn't mean she needs to follow suit. The metaphorical dark to wander in, well, I had that at the age of 20. It was over by 22, but it sure wasn't the best of times. On the other hand, which times were the best? Sometime between 0 and 6, I'm sure. Probably because I don't remember much of that time. That might be, but I really don't want to experience that feeling again*, and I doubt knowing what will happen will change the outcome. I'm much more likely to rewatch Perfect Blue to see and pick up on clues I might have missed the first time around. Although... after listening to Tomoyo some more since then, I think that's going to be even weirder. Well, Mima is a good deal less squeaky unless she gets excited, but still... Speaking of knowing what to do with your live, it's also a part of K-On!, when Yui and Ritsu really have no idea what they want to do after high school, while the others have figured it out already. Also had one of the best jokes in the series, with that scene when Yui comes too late to the office. The comedic timing in it is also really good at times. I mentioned it in my complain post about Komi Can't Communicate that there's a majorly delayed joke about Azusa's cat ears, I think that's even in the very last episode, one of the bonus OVAs... *Very hard to explain. Feels like all the walls closing in, except it's not having a problem with the current situation, but the expectation that this will never again change. There's just no way back, and at any such given times, that's all I want to do. Go back. Yeah, I'll just go lie down before I think so more and don't need to rewatch it to throw me back into a nostalgic mood leading to nothing but melancholy and restless sleep, and potentially one of the school nightmares I still get occasionally.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha just invented a power scale for technomages. Nanoha sits at a comfortable 1.23 million MANA, while Fate has 1.46 million MANA, and both can in the short term triple their power output in a crisis. That's apparently enough to be classified triple A magi by the Space-Time Police, whatever that means. Space Cop Mercury wants to handle the Jewel Seed situation from now on, and Nanoha finds out that her pet ferret is actually a boy her age, and just like with Artemis in Sailor Moon Eternal, nobody thinks its weird. Nanoha ends up joining the space cops, and in the first really surprising twist (not counting the 20 seconds of lolicon content as a surprise twist, that was more like a surprise cause for projectile vomit) actually tells her mother about it (except the part where Yuuno is a real boy that watched their entire family bathing nude at the hot springs, they thankfully leave that part out!), then leaves home. Hm, should I rewatch Space Cop now? Just in case someone doesn't know what Space Cop is... but why wouldn't you know:

After I have watched Grave of the Fireflies I called it the best movie I never want to see again. It's really good, and you really never want to see it again. Recently though both Violet Evergarden (the series, not the films or the OVA) and Whisper of the Heart proved to be much worse for me. That's by far and large personal, and in the case of Whisper of the Heart not entirely logical. There was just something about the protagonist that threw me into a nostalgic and melancholic reverie that was really hard to get out of.

I'm not sure if I'm reading this right, but Grave of the Fireflies is from Takahata. Have you not seen it yet?

You always funny Gromnir, but you agree all must watch this movie ? It is entertaining, and their are hot vampires, surly that's great

The way I see it you can do two things with Ember that justify her party slot. You give her Red Salamander, go full Spell Penetration and Improved Criticals: Ray line of feats, complete with Ascendant Element: Fire, throw her a Cross-Blooded Sorcerer level with Gold and Brass dragon bloodlines, one Loremaster level for an extra feat (use the Sorcerer level for the needed Skill Focus) and top it off with a Second Bloodline: Red mythic feat. Spell Focus: Enchantment and copy it to Evocation through Expanded Arsenal: Evocation. Or the other way around, whatever you fancy. That leaves you doing acceptable damage (all those bloodlines provide a nice fire damage bonus per die roll) and you can fill the metamagic gaps through rods, while still going what you'd take her into the party for - hexes and crowd control. Evil Eye is a nice debuff, Restless Slumber amounts to a spammable instakill against mook level enemies and Protective Luck and Fortune are also not the worst things to have, and with the setup you can get the occasional Feeblemind to stick against annoying casters. That leaves you with a few feats to play around, you could take Selective Spell for an easier early game (Web) and easier AoE crowd control. The other is dropping the occasional fire damage in favor of Spell Focus: Conjuration/Enchantment and focus on more crowd control and augmented summoning (Swap Gold and Brass for Fey and Undead, don't bother with the Loremaster level). Selective Spell also gives you a decent milage out of a lot of spells that would otherwise not just crowd control your enemies.

To be honest, I sometimes fall into that trap myself, although more often the inverse of it: My initial reaction to watching Fellowship was "Thanks, but I hate all the changes" and I said so directly to an audience of otherwise enraptured watchers. Taking a step back and realizing that some changes were necessary to make a good movie wasn't easy, and I still don't like Arwen's expanded role. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, except it smells of token romantic interest and token female protagonist, and the book already has one of the latter in the form of Eowyn, although arguably the idea of a token woman role in books and films didn't exist when Tolkien wrote it, so this is a modern interpretation of a more classic work. One might want to argue that Lord of the Rings is not old enough to be a true classic yet, but it's steadily creeping towards being a hundred years old now and it was written with that as the intent - to be the mythology Tolkien thought the UK was sorely lacking. Part of that might also just be bias against Liv Tyler, but I don't want to turn this thread into a debate about the Lord of the Rings movies. There's also something else, and it bears repeating: Comedy very, very rarely works for me. As such, finding the original Sailor Moon supremely funny or liking K-On! is an outlier for me. It's not that I prefer serious drama over comedy as a matter of course, because I really enjoy the rare comedy that I can heartily laugh to, it's just extremely easy to lose me, or never get me in the first place. I didn't get a single smile (never mind laughing) out of the first episode, to be perfecly honest - and they tried. It's like that Seinfeld clip that Bruno and Guard Dog talked about a couple of days back. I watched that after the two talked about how epicly funny the scene is, and my only reaction to it was: Please make it stop, this is so painfully unfunny. I despise Seinfeld. Well, that's unfair to the show, I more often than not despise sitcoms, and when I don't, it's usually for the episodes and seasons that everyone else hates. We'll see how the other episodes go. For the time being, it seems like an adaptation made primarily for fans of the manga, and that's fine, and I certainly don't begrudge you enjoying the episode. Hell, I like Dark Star and Masters of the Universe, who am I to judge people? Yeah, timing I guess matters too. When I started reading it, it didn't feel so fresh any more, and it just asked me to be entertained based on a whole lot of nothing. I'm still not done reading the series beause the second book managed to break my interest and need to fill out progress bars so hard I actually stopped for a long while, but I'm reading bits and pieces here and there - and that doesn't help much. I pretty much dropped out of my intensive reading phase with rewatching Sailor Moon. It'll be back at some point though.

Yeah, you know, I'm pretty sure Komi Can't Communicate works much better as a manga than the current anime adaptation works as an anime. It's the same with the Sailor Moon manga (although that one isn't really good in my opinion) and the old vs. the new anime adaptation. Crystal is far too literal and almost everything is taken straight from the panels instead of spending one iota of creative energy on planning something ahead or thinking it through. That's the real baffling thing about Crystal, they were sitting on a manga 20 years finished and adapted it as if going on the fly through the material. The original anime had outlines to go with and a manga issue here and there to serve as drafts, but that comes across as less disjointed and messy. The narration of the episode is a good thing to demonstrate this by, both this and Sailor Moon Crystal have scenes where you can see what is going on, while the narrator tells you the same. Of course you need narration without motion in comics whenever a frame might not be perfectly clear, but there's no real need for that when you can see what's going on. There's a scene in the third season of Crystal that perfectly exemplifies that when Sailor Neptune narrates a sequence where you can see a stormy and and stirred up ocean with "The sea is restless" - yeah no kidding there, Michiru. I would not have known without you telling me that, watching the waves and the wind and the, pardon, restless ebbing and flowing of the ocean. One could argue that the animation of Crystal is so terrible it needs explaining, but that's not the case. It looks bad, but it still shows what's going on accurately enough. It's not that I mind narration as a whole actually, you can look at the opening of Fellowship of the Ring where Galadriel tells you a whole lot of things, and the narration enhances what's on the screen, and vice versa. That opening scene is an adaptational necessity, and it works, just imagine if that entire sequence was made by way of Gandalf telling Frodo about the rings. Works in a book, doesn't work so much in a movie, right? Back when everyone complained about Roz the Exposition Whore in Game of Thrones, I just accepted that as necessity. Leaving her out of the show would have been a detriment to understanding what's going on. You can of course create your entire universe entirely without exposition and expect the reader or watcher to follow along without being able to put the elements together right from the start, like Steven Erikson did with Malazan Book of the Fallen, but that has a whole host of other issues (that not even the author was able to resolve without on the fly retconning), the biggest of which is asking your audience to become engaged in something based on a whole lot of things you don't - and can't - understand. That's a though sell, even for me, and Malazan Book of the Fallen asks a bit too much, and I am a quick reader with an uncanny ability to retain information. I don't even want to know how reading the books is for a regular person. That said I understand why an avid reader of the manga would like such an adaptation. I'm not, however, and with only the anime to judge things by, well, it was a nice try, it had one absolutely brilliant scene (that by no coincidence dropped the entire voice acting for a few minutes), but I'm not too hopeful for the other episodes. See, that scene alone makes me think this works much better as a manga, because by dropping everything but the sound of Komi and Tadano writing on the chalkboard, the anime went and not just adapted, but became its source material: A slightly more animated manga. It worked. It was great, really, but unlike the still movies of yore, why would I watch what could be more easily read? TL;DR: No matter how good the source material might or might not be, that was a bad episode in terms of being an anime. That's the fault of the direction, the disjointed nature is the fault of the writing team (assuming there was one, and this isn't 1:1 just the first issue) and the terrible voice acting delivery is the fault of the voice direction. *sigh* I already feel like I do whenever I get out of a theater with my friends. Except they get an essay like that in talking form. Which is probably even less interesting or endearing. It's a wonder they still drag me along all the time. I mean, when we're not in lockdown, that is.