majestic

This is Miyu-talk for @Bartimaeus, because... eh, I can only quote the old man and his post.

I managed to fix the issue by logging out of my account and linking it again. Which means that now I am done with Evangelion: 1.11 – You Are (Not) Alone. I'll probably be last to finish them just as @Bartimaeus speculated, mostly because I'll just watch them while doing cardio, unless the second movie vastly improves my opinion of this. Looks like it's finally time for me to be the meanie zucchini for once, because what the hell is that supposed to have been? If the goal was to make an abridged version of NGE with barely any breathing time for ADHS patients and director annotations for the hard of thinking in the form of exposition dump mono- and dialogue, then CONGRATULATIONS, you've both succeeded and failed at the same time*. The most hilarious part about is that the expositional dialogue which was probably intended to make it more accessible was specifically inserted for people who watched the show, because much of it makes absolutely no sense without the context of the original series. "Shinji is like you, Misato!" no really? Will Ritsuko also comment on how funny it is that Asuka, Shinji and Misato are all different versions of the same problems living under one roof later? Is Gendo going to continue his Bond villain moustache twirling? "You're such a manipulative bastard boss, I love you!" What the hell. Good job of treating me like a moron, movie, while failing to be any more understandable for a new watcher. How much can you fail at once? And lastly... what is with Misato having access to Lilith and showing Shinji. Is Ryoji even going to be in this then? Is this one giant troll attempt by Anno? How can you guys watch that without pulling your hair out? Is that because I've only watched the series like a couple of months back? I think it's time to watch Nozomi fondle some boobs to clear my mind a little: Sigh. *No offense meant to people actually suffering from ADHS or people who are hard of thinking, I'm using these terms in a derogatory way, but I... oh, shiny!

The one in the room with the erogmeter is just a mid range LG. It's functional enough and the image quality is all right, but the Prime app seems to have a couple of issues. It still beats watching Rebuild on my computer, because I chose the screen I'm sitting in front right now purely based on response times for gaming, not for color fidelity. Well can't help it, back to watching. I got to the point where Shinji moved in with Grannyragi, but then I had to terminate the English dub experiment.

This be it. It's working fine in the web interface. German is German, English is English and just in case you can tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese in kanji you're good. For fun I tried a couple of dubs, the Chinese one so far has all the other beat in pure hilarity. Amazon isn't cheap with the licensing, I retract that statement. They're cheap with their app QA.

It’s not like there aren’t options, just not while trying to watch on the 4K TV. Guess I’ll look into alternatives once done with the cardio. Meh

That is what the info box tells me as well, I just checked. However... the audio selection box has only one item in it. Maybe it’s just a bug. Either way gg Amazon

Misato sure sounds like Granny Katsuragi in the English dub. And I want to strangle Shinji already. Impressive how much of a difference voice acting can make. Megumi Ogata was never this annoying...

Amazon Prime Video continues to be outstanding. Not only are the Attack No. 1 episodes simple, unedited copies of the original TV material (at least that makes them have a PAL source), no... Rebuild only comes with the German dub, no original Japanese. However... the German spoken in the dub sounds really strange. Why is everyone talking English? Seriously Amazon, it is cheap enough to only license the local dub an no original but mixing the dubs up is really unprofessional.

Can I do, I make it baby! Woops, wrong anime. Sumimasen! edit: Speaking of voice actors, did you know that when Yūko Miyamura was trying to record Asuka being choked and had problems with getting the sounds out right, Megumi Ogata helpfully just started choking her while recording, and squeezed a little too hard, hurting her in the process? edit 2: That laugh reaction was just for the joke, the info bit was edited in later! Really!

Miyu talk:

Math is hard, I guess. 78% vaccinated, but those account for 50% (or slightly more) of all new cases - new cases, mind, not hospitalizations. That still means you're ~3.5 times* more likely to contract delta without vaccination, and the data for hospitalization and intensive care looks even better in favor of the vaccine. Not sure where the problem is, to be honest - and that's with being innoculated against the much less infectuous original variant. A booster shot might or might not be needed for certain groups to keep hospitalization and IC rates low, but I don't really see the issue (aside from having one available). I'm living in a major high risk TBE area and have been getting booster shots every now and then for as long as I can remember, and the initial immunization comes with three shots, two a month apart and one after 5 to 12 months. Woo, scary, vaccinations with booster shots. *Leaving out the children under 12, for now, which means it's probably a little lower than that, but eh, good enough for demonstration purposes.

Vampire Princess Miyu, episode 22... edit: Reiha talked to Miyu's friends. I'm guessing that'll be really problematic soon. Oh dear. edit 2: Heh, they actually noticed that Miyu never wears anything other than her school uniform. Ah, girls, run before this takes a turn for the worse. Just run. edit 3: edit 4: edit 5: edit 6: Yeah, found it. Actually, I called that one, and then said I hope it won't go there because it would be stupid. @Bartimaeus hmm. Apparently you never know when having watched The Outer Limits helps with the potential trauma of a massive plot twist that is about as well telegraphed as Erica's emotions. Also, god damn, poor Miyu. *Not really sure, will check later, that was part of one 2:30 am post or some such (footnote for edit 5 spoiler). edits for final episode: edit: final edit, sort of:

I don't know if that is only the case for animation, or if that also affects live action films and TV. I guess I could watch more Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon to find out, but that is based on a manga/anime too, no idea how original content works. Guess it's not that strange when you're used to it. What it does make is spotting people who learned Japanese by watching anime pretty easy. I suspect it's one of the cases where the development of the spoken language outpaces the written one, and when you use written Japanese as your basis for film and TV, then there being a certain insonstistency is to be expected. I also have a feeling that it's not as easy to reform written Japanese or adapt it to more modern parlance. For us that's no big deal, just issue a correction and yep, suddenly a common misspelling is accepted and correct. For kanji, yeah, probably not so much. Yare yare. Heh. Fun Cardcaptor Sakura fact: Shaoran never really calls Sakura by name and just says "you", in the form of omae*, which when used to address someone you're not friends with can be and is seen as confrontational or impolite due to its informality, which pretty much reflects his initially somewhat hostile and rocky relationship with her. Then there are a whole bunch of ways to say you that nobody uses in real life, like kisama or temee, both of which are often translated as "bastard" or worse, but actually just mean "you" - only, well, a very impolite, aggresive you. Not really necessary but knowing how these things work can give you a better understanding when watching subbed anime, similar things exist for saying "I" like ore which is a somewhat base way for men to refer to themselves, a word you'd not use in polite conversation, or in the presence of women. In Miyu it was used by the Chinese dock workers amongst themselves, or the criminal who got stabbed by his girlfriend, i.e. immediately expressing that he's part of the lower class when he actually uses it in front of her. It's also kind of interesting to note how things are different from our perspective. There's a polite form of you, sochira (sometimes used with honorific, i.e. sochira-sama) which literally means something like "in front of the speaker", and while not adressing someone in direct conversation by refering to that person as "over there" or something could be easily seen as impolite, it isn't in Japanese, because there the idea was that someone of lower standing had no right to directly address their betters. Temee used to be polite and means something similar, but is rude nowadays. Once you get the hang of it you can also hear, in words, not just tone, how excessively polite Tomoyo is all the time (saying arigatou gozaimashi-**ta or addressing her mother as okasama). *omae is also the male version of anata when it comes to affectionately addressing your lover. Yes, it's... confusing, really. **just imagine that hyphen not being there. The word is too polite for the filter. edit: No, not in films or TV yet, but Bioware sure fooled me with Yoshimo. He was such an obvious case that it really surprised me when he turned out to really be a traitor. One forced to be, but a traitor regardless. I first thought he was too obvious to really be played straight, then totally forgot about it and then woah... what? Heh.

Not as much as Tomoyo loved her father in the next one. Not that she sounded like Tomoyo, more like Mima, but disturbing nonetheless. Oh, okay. Heh. Sorry I thought it was a joke based on me saying that I so far refused to acknowledge the films as real so I don't have to watch them. I'm pretty sure that interpretation is correct. It still feels like making something up for the sake of making sense. It's an instance where some exposition would be warranted, and how much it bothers someone depends on how much they enjoy what they're watching (but that is also true reading). Or let's say, if that happened in Madoka, you would not be thinking about it and coming up with a possible scenario, but rather complain about it, in the same way where the the question of "Where does Luna keep the transformation pens?" doesn't matter at all in the original Sailor Moon, while "Why did she put them into the arcade game?" is a perfectly valid complaint for the manga and Crystal. Yeah, not exactly a perfect example, but it's good enough, I think. But... I'm not through with all episodes yet anyway. Yes, that episode wasn't the best either, but at least it was coherent. And, yikes, dolls. I wonder if that episode is somehow related to something that happens in the manga, because the OVA had a creepy doll episode too, but there the shinma was turning people into dolls, not creeping into dolls. One other thing that I've noticed in Vampire Princess Miyu is using anata as affectionate word for any random woman or girl's beloved/boyfriend/husband. Japanese has what feels like two million separate pronouns that all have one thing in common: They're used as little as possible, and most of them like never at all in real life. That's partially because Japanese has no grammatical requirement for using pronouns as long as its clear who or what is talked about, and partially because most of them go back to times where formal address was handled through pronouns, rather than keigo (= polite Japanese, like ohayo gozaimasu for a polite "good morning" where as "ohayo" means good morning all the same, but is casual like "mornin'", not something you'd throw at your superior at work). With that out of the way, spoken Japanese leaves most speakers addressing each other by names, and using "you" for instance (ie. anata) only for those situations where you don't know the name of the person you're talking to and for some reason need a pronoun. In entertainment, they're all often used because constantly repeating names would make for awkward reading, and that then translates into animation too. Where was I? Right, uhm, I wonder how common using anata as affectionate word like "darling" really is - if at all.

Yelp, the next Miyu episode is about dolls. And a woman who loves one of her dolls. Really, really loves him. Like. Yikes. edit: And of course nobody talks about being chased by a 500 ft. Gozilla-like Buddha statue. Figures, but still a little disappointing. You'd think that would leave more of an impression on three young girls.

She wanted to spare the prostitute who used her job to feed off human energy. I thought about that reason too, but it makes no sense letting her go (well, Reiha finished them off anyway) and not the other. Both had human contact. Sure, the other woman lived with the writer, but he knew what he was getting into. Unlike the other one's customers. That leaves only the dead wife, and that seems like a super weak reason though. It really isn't, but that's fine. There's enough to go on to accept the human contact theory having an arbitrary limit of human contact. Miyu also mentioned a destiny, so maybe she is aware when shinma become problematic later on. It's just a minor wrinkle anyway. She talked to him once, which was apparently enough to figure out his wife was the shinma, and all of that off-screen. It was more than troubled enough, yes, but that little bit wouldn't have made it any more chaotic, just a little less cruel. He's also a clearly disturbed, already aged man who would make a much better victim than children who lost someone and don't know it any better. Eh. Eh, why what how, what did I ever do to you? I'm a bit torn about the ending of the arc. On the one hand, the resolution and dangers it offers are really perfectly fitting in the realm of Cardcaptor Sakura, but on the other hand it's... a bit strangely perhaps too understated after all that buildup. I'm really curious what your opinion will be, especially when it comes to pretty Yue. Honestly, Yue might be the most ridiculous pretty character archetype in an anime to ever have been drawn. Oh, right, sorry, expectation spoilers. Also, funny voice acting spoiler:

No, it's okay every once in a while, of course. Just like going to your favorite fast food chain is and getting a burger with fries. The occassional intake of such things isn't a problem, it's consuming it regularily. However, since the question was, "is this a healthy meal?" then the answer is quite frankly no. Keyrock is right calling it a "healthy" Trucker diet. Baked beans can be a healthy protein source but you really need to make them yourself. They're otherwise often drowned in salt and sugar, and that Truck stop more likely than not doesn't have a healthy baked beans recipe, assuming they cook the baked beans themselves and aren't just using convenience products.

All of it, unless that cole slaw was made with a simple vinegar and oil dressing (and even then some people just drown everything in oil, ugh), rather than the sweetened mayonnaise fat bomb that Americans usually treat their cabbage to. It's kind of hard to see in the picture.

When Miyu was in the parallel reality thing, it was not a model scale city with an oversized Buddha statue, but a regular sized warped looking city with a giant massive Godzilla style Buddha statue. The writers really dropped the ball on this one, or perhaps they struggled with meeting the deadlines, because there's also a lot of freeze frames with sound effects (and one that even repeats). Either way, the result was the first ungood episode, to use some newspeak. Here's to hoping it will stay the only one. The past two episodes also had somewhat uncharacteristic decisions by Miyu. The Shinma that accompanied the writer didn't really do anything, and that his wife died was an accident, and Miyu has often enough by now decided that she can let demons go as long as they're not harmful. Then there's the old guy from the weird episode, he's like the prime candidate for her "Eternal Happiness" kiss of death, instead he's now homeless and still implied to be working on his model city for no reason. Indeed, it's been going a little faster. The past few episodes felt a little less draining. By no means less tragic, but people inexplicably started surviving their ordeals much more often. I'm just imagining how this airs on TV and some random family catches the first two episodes with their kids and then gets treated to war, death, tragedy and destruction. Maybe you should counter that by watching more Cardcaptor Sakura. It gets occassionally sad, but everything will always definitely be all right, just like Sakura told herself in Dream's reality/foreshadowing. Clearly I can't. I can't decide what's worse, the horrible auto-tuned singing, the production quality problems of the song, the lyrics* (provided the translation is accurate) or the fact that this group won the first Love Live! because µ's didn't participate. That can't have been the only entry, right? *The content of the Japanese ones, not how funny the English parts are. The other song on the show by A-RISE has "non-stop my dancing" as English lyrics, which is somehow even worse (but I linked that as example of fanservice a while back). Then there's the fact that some people enjoy this enough to make color-coded music videos showing who's singing. Don't get me wrong, I have seen worse animes than Love Live! and every now and then it was really enjoyable, but... nothing of it is outstandingly good, and it's also not a case of where the sum is greater than its individual parts. I have successfully pretended these films don't exist so far. I feel the cracks in this belief forming already. Sigh.

Currently watching a Vampire Princess Miyu episode that feels about as disjointed as the OVA. Things happen that seem completely unconnected, there's no clear distinction between ongoing plotlines, scenes randomly freeze with zero animation, time passes, sometimes characters talk to each other and everything looks warped and weird, and in the middle of it the girls go shopping for shoes. And now the older guy that the episode's been following doing some job that barely makes sense (sculpting a 500 foot statute in the middle of a construction site that seems to have nothing to do with the ongoing plot but isn't really "real" either because it looks like its in a parallel world). His wife might be the shinma, and he's just imagining things. Maybe. But now he randomly attacked a priest that recognized him and is running through a subway or railway station (or the mall attached, this is really, really, REALLY unclear) and music is playing that sounds like Bonnie Tyler's Holding Out For A Hero*. If it wouldn't look like the regular series and had the characters that weren't in the OVA I'd assume this was cobbled together from unused 80ies OVA footage. How utterly bizarre. Doesn't help that it is the, uhm, probably worst episode so far. Well if the guy's really holding out for a hero he's not really in luck. Miyu won't take the job anytime soon. *That was probably some sort of Miyu opening theme reprise or remix. Not really sure. edit:

Well that does sound kind of interesting, I'll keep it in mind for later, I guess. Already got enough to finish without adding a game to the list. Heh. I actually spent some time looking for the cell phone statistics. I knew it was close to 100% in 2000, just not how close. Although not having any service would have taken some doing too. We had a 99.8% coverage back then, and that included vast stretches of alpine mountains. Always been some kind of test market for mobiles for some reason. At the time all the companies were practically throwing free phones at you just to enter their shops. Stopped a while back after the regulatory agency keeping an eye on the communication services deemed it would not lead to a problematic oligopoly when the fourth largest mobile services provider buys the third largest one, but what do you know, all of a sudden there were three huge ones and a whole bunch of smaller ones, and prices started rising. More wonderful proof of how the invisible hand of the free market manages to make everything better. But yes, smartphones are much worse for storytelling purposes. Another reason why it was a pretty bad idea to move Cardcaptor Sakura to a contemporary setting. Sure Kero gets to do video calls with (uuuh, spoiler, sort of) every now and then, and Sakura regularily chats with Meiling and all that, but... nah, just nah. The only fun thing that came out of that was Tomoyo's insane stalker drone, and maybe Kero's ridiculous suction cup attached GoPro camera. However, nobody manages to even capture a quick picture of Sakura? Yeah, no. For Love Live! that's mostly the feeling that Honoka, Umi and Kotori are really similar to early Sailor Moon Usagi, Rei and Ami. Kind of, it's not a perfect match, but it feels similar. Honoka is a real dummy too, she's not stupid, just really, well, Usagi. It even has an episode where Kotori almost leaves Japan to study abroad but Honoka gets her back. Honoka actually goes to pick her up, and doesn't just send her the new gear (well they don't transform, anyway), but... you know. Honoka pointing to a ceiling fan and calling it "the thing you often see in rich people's homes" could really come straight from Usagi. It's everything else that's in the way of properly enjoying it, and that includes the music, most of the time. Seriously, what... Somehow that song is worse than the animation of the show. Ugh.

No, where would be the point in that, Miyu no longer has a father she can abduct and, uhm, have "fun" with. edit: It's so terribly depressing to be introduced to any new random one-off character in Miyu, because their survival chance is pretty much like zilch. Not quite fully zero, but it's not looking good. And it's worse if they're voiced by Sakura's father. Well, hopefully he just showed up in that one scene and will never come back. edit 2: I guess technically becoming an eternally happy baby beats dying, but not by much, does it?

Quick post for anyone who wondered why the "Western" Shinma and ally/servant of Miyu is called Larva*, because that's a really fun and somewhat obscure cross cultural reference - presuming for a moment that was actually intentional. He wears a traditional Nō theater kamen (mask, also known as nō-men). Larva is latin for specter or ghost (larvae and lemures are similar, spirits of the dead), but neither are demons, let alone Western demons so where does that come from? Well, this is a Central European Larve, German for both the larval stage of instects and, well, masks, derived from Latin larva: They are also called Perchta (pl. Perchten) and are part of many Pre-Christian traditions meant to banish the evil demons and spirits of winter - later also the Christian devil. Could also be a crazy random happenstance. Curious that Penny likes frozen yogurt and Billy has "accidentially" gotten two helpings instead of the "one" he ordered. Yeah, random happenstance. *I think it's fairly obvious that this isn't a reference to the larval stage of many insects. edit: Hey, DEATH PHANTOM voices a random Shinma hunting, old, somewhat corpulent martial / secret arts (?) master in Miyu. edit 2: Oh NOES, it turns out that the old man was already consumed by a demon. Well, that's what you get for sounding like DEATH PHANTOM. That guy was creepy too.

Jesus Christ can we leave Sam Witwicky out of this thread please? Or Indiana Jones' son, depending on which particular trainweck with him you prefer.

What's the actual gameplay like? I've looked at the Steam store page now, and the GOG store page, and I still have no idea. Not sure if I want to look up a gameplay video, so I'll just ask. The ubiquity of cellphones (although that has started very much pre-2000, but we're talking a good deal of differences between our part of Europe and the US in that regard, in 2000 we were already at a cell phone market penetration of almost 90% - currently sits at a comfortable 200%) certainly had an effect on storytelling for some genres, and horror is one particularily affected by it. I know that the recent resurgence of films and TV shows set in the 80ies is a understandable occurance of the 30 year cycle, but I wonder if that's not also because it's one of the easier ways to still have a somewhat contemporary setting and free yourself of the storytelling problems you get when quite frankly everyone and their dog can take pictures and videos on the fly with a small device in their pockets, or call someone when you get lost in the woods, or are being followed by something weird. I wonder if that would have more than a target audience of two people though. Or who knows, maybe there is something like that out there. Like the truth! I mean, not that it fits entirely, but the X-Files is also something that worked for me purely on the strength of its characters and the atmosphere. At least until they moved filming to LA, after wich everything started looking like it was filmed in LA, rather than in Stargate City. Sigh. Ah, never mind. Of course, I wouldn't have taken it in any other way. The irony here is that Love Live! has more parts of what made Sailor Moon so great for me than most suggestions when you go look for "shows like Sailor Moon" online, but it comes with ridiculous fanservice moments, bad animation and, well, a casting show storyline that has most Sailor Moon season arcs beat in being completely uninteresting. Because in which universe does Pricess Tutu fit that bill. I really enjoy Princess Tutu, don't get me wrong, but Ahiru's interactions are, except for a few episodes here and there, purely limited to the fairy tale being told. It's really good in what it does, but other than that she's transforming into a magical ballet dancer, this has nothing in common with Sailor Moon. It's like being told to watch Star Wars when asking for something similar to Star Trek*. Sure, technically both have space ships. The end. Cardcaptor Sakura is, well, incredibly great, superbly written and more than occassionally brilliant, and it keeps the magical girl stuff limited to an understated sort of happenstance for Sakura, but at the same time, there's a limit to what you can do with characters of that age, and the writers were very aware of that limitation and acted within it. It does make it all the more endearing, but it kicks it far out of the way of being an actual "Sailor Moon like" in terms of character interactions and themes. I mean, when not talking about Usagi and Chibi-Usa in SuperS. Because compared to those two, Sakura is a wellspring of maturity and reason. Sheesh. *Pre-2009, really. It's no wonder Star Trek 2009 landed Jar Jar Abrams the job to direct Star Wars.