majestic

Sure it could be done. You'd probably need to lower the bar of expected quality a little, because Cardcaptor Sakura level of everything seemingly forming a perfect fit with only a few outliers that aren't great but still good is something that is hard enough to strive for without going for a troll-level subversion. You can do that naturally if your audience grows up with the material, i.e. like in Harry Potter that arguably went from children's to young adult entertainment over its runtime (to blatant cash grabs, but that's neither here nor there). The actual problem, indeed, like you said - who would sign off on that premise if you came up with a, say two or three season setup (48 to 72 episodes, give or take), that starts out as a cute and fluffy story but becomes increasingly dark and terrifying - not necessarily violent - with an incredible twist at the end. Not that there aren't shows like that in a certain way. Dog of Flanders starts out as a show about a nice boy who rescues a dog from a violent owner and his grandfather, and it becomes increasingly bleak, but that's not dark fantasy. It's just life as a penniless peasant, and more of a children's show, even with the bleakness (it was adapted from a children's book, after all). Rest spoilered for Gorth's sake. Yeah, even Cardcaptor Sakura has a couple of moments where you're thinking: "Wouldn't it be great if the characters were just a little older so we could add some more... mature drama moments to everything?", or at least I was. As always, that's complaining on a very, very high level here. Still, there's always something, yeah. Sailor Moon could do with better story episodes, Steven Universe could have been even better without studio interference, K-On! with more focus in the second season and less source material adaptation in the first. X was only a rewrite (well, perhaps more than one rewrite, but still) away from being legitimately good, not just a show with no target audience that I like because sometimes flaws end up being endearing for me. To be honest I'm kind of surprised that the general idea never came up. Not Miyu-specific, but assuming for a moment vampires or any other mythical creature would be real, the world as it is now would be increasingly problematic to stay hidden in. Sure there have been things like Blade or Underworld, but they don't exactly deal with that - nor are they character focused shojo anime. Instead of handwaving it away, wouldn't it be nice to have a show like that? Miyu would just have been a great vehicle for that because the setup was already there. All it would have taken was less of a focus on episodic demon action and more character interactions. Well, and maybe less demonic chickens at the end. Oh, right, Blood-C, Episode 12. There's a Nine Inch Nails song title that's the appropriate for the last two episodes: It is even on the very appropriately titled "things falling apart" remix album. Everything just implodes, in a way I've only seen in Devilman Crybaby so far. 11 is a major exposition dump and 12 just... I'm really hoping the movie brings this to some sort of satisfying close, because that was, yeah, lackluster.

It felt really out of place, in Love Live! you expected nothing else, but here it's just really random. Everyone's been pretty creepy to Saya all the time, but not quite like that. Yeah, however, as far as these go, it's only the the extent of the twist that's ludicrous, the rest is fairly nicely set up in a way that's subtle at first but increasingly noticable. It just flies completely off the handle at the end, something Gorth mentioned, I think. It's one of the better actiony anime I've watched, which doesn't count for much. I don't really have watched many of those. It is also a fairly nice showcase in how you need to do a bit more with your characters to make a twist like that worthwhile, and Perfect Blue showed that you can do that in a feature length film. Not that I don't like Saya, but everyone else could have done with a bit more... well, everything. Anyway, after Blood-C it's probably Blood-C movie time and then more wrap up. I really need to clear up a few things before picking up something else. Oh no, wrapping up things includes Magic User's Club. Maybe if I stuff Pretty Cure into my brain, that will fall out? What do you think? 800 episodes of something I'm not very likely to enjoy?

Blood-C, Episode 11: Called the first and the last two points after episodes 3 and 4, I think, the other one just before the reveal - a bit too lazy to check now. After that fiasco of the real identity of the agent in Steins;Gate, I got to say that was a very welcome win for me. I guess it's time for everyone to... Assuming this anime tries to make any point at all at the end, it'll maybe be: The random boob grab from the trailer is in episode 11. What's up with that? I'm almost beginning to think I've complained too much about Nozomi's random boob attacks in Love Live!, but given the ridiculous prevalence of this in other series, is that actually like a thing in Japan? edit: In terms of plot structure and pacing, episode 11 was an utter failure. For me, it was still fun to see, but that's me...

Blood-C, E10: Anyway, some of the monster designs are really neat.

More Blood-C: Thankfully at least, Saya starts thinking about how things don't add up. To be entirely truthful, that's how it looked in my mind. In the show you "only" see her slashing the character stuck inside a web inside the shadow creature thing, an explosion of blood and a lot of chunked human afterwards, but the association came up immediately. Just finished episode nine.

There's no such thing as good food in the Nordics... the further North you get in Europe, the worse the food becomes.

It's not and it's not. It is quite good in what it is and does, assuming everything that happens has a proper reason that will come out at some point, i.e. the Elder Bairns always toying with Saya until she just murders them (not that they don't deserve it, they almost always make sure to always kill some humans to justify ending their existence), instead of going in for the kill right from the start. That's my biggest worry right now, that's it's just the... katana vs. Cthulhu swordfight version of villain's exposition. I am currently giving it the benefit of the doubt simply because Nanase Ohkawa has co-written the series, and if nothing else, she really knows how to set things up and reap a payoff later. The one thing that sets it apart from usual shounen animes in the same vein is that Saya is a nice character whose agency in the whole situation is somewhat limited, if it exists at all, and she has no interest in growing more powerful beyond trying harder because she wants* to save as many people as possible. The story so far is apparently about: Things and people regularily die in best splatter manner. *That want might be brainwashing. If I had to guess right now: In a way the setup makes it unique, a bit like X, which has different themes, but a similar action-driven setup populated by more likeable characters than usual in that type of anime. X has more attempts at character drama though (and twice as many episodes, so yeah), that just feels incidental in Blood-C. They could have done much more with the setup, people keep disappearing in a very small town, after all. Attempts are there, but it's never entirely... the focus. So it waffles around a bit between character driven moments and over the top action with copious amounts of gore. Neither here nor there, which it does share with X. Also had a pretty Pegasus/Artemis moment: Maybe not animation, but live action TV shows pretty much always had "Next week on <Series Name>" previews. They're often also on the DVDs and Blu Rays. edit: One more thing about Blood-C:

More Blood-C: Saykura defeats General Grievous. If this were live action - and eh, I think there actually are live action adaptations - Jay would be permanently amused by the splatter stuff going on. Right, one thing I forgot:

Uhm:

Blood-C has one big advantage: It's interesting enough to keep me occupied and therefore not needing to go back to Steins;Gate and Lady Asuka. It does have a disadvantage: It's not going to last very long. The episodes are showing signs of... let's say, degradation (Saykura's interactions become somewhat repetivite, and there's more AAAAAAAACSHUN than before), plus there's a whole bunch of things that all move along the expected paths. Still beats Steins;Gate since it doesn't make me cringe and except for Saykura sitting on Emo McEdgelordface for a moment after falling off a tree nothing too fanservicey or ha-ha "funny" (i.e. jokes that don't work) happend yet, outside of the intro sequence. Handily beats Lady Asuka because Saykura's shonen mode isn't permanent, and she's thankfully really silent while it is on. Which brings me to the other part that's weird, the monsters are all utterly stupid even if they appear to be highly intelligent and capable of speech, or there is some reason for them always toying with Saykura to the point where she goes full evil enraged shonen mode and just straight up murder death kills them. Because they always, ALWAYS just don't kill her in spite of having plenty of opportunities to do so. Also... The intro song is pretty good too. The English parts make me think that the singer is French. Obviously can't really tell if the Japanese has a noticable accent or not. His French is certainly better than his English, at least.

Saturday evening maintenance duty. Made the best of it and just worked the entire day, funny how much you can get done without constant interruption.

Well, Madoka contains some uncanny valley elements, right in the intro - something that was cut from the theatrical realease. Otherwise it's fine insofar as it looks like most modern anime does (i.e. very obviously digitally coloured). Hey look, you made Sakura angry! Heh. Three films, and one of them is porn... not bad.

Colloquially it's just calories, of course, but it's always actually kilocalories. We have both on our packages... and rice crackers hit harder than you might think, being all carbs and all. Include some fat and the suppesedly "healthy" snack clocks in at what, 1600kJ per 100g. Couple of crackers have enough energy in them to bike 12 miles or some such. Great. Might as well eat real food then.

Well, since you were pedantic, let me up that: It's probably kilocalories and kilojoules, right? I mean otherwise you could eat a literal ton of that stuff per day and still lose weight.

Would I use a Microsoft OS at work where I deal with a Microsoft ERP system... let's see... why yes, I do, actually. The Apple ID is purely for my phone. Our work mobiles are all iPhones.

Did you go and peek at what's going on or was the trailer that concinving? edit: Kind of mini-watch guide: There are three films and a TV show, the show exist in a TV broadcast version (which is what you get on streaming services) and a Blu Ray version. The BR version has updated animation, but also minor changes here and there (and some soundtrack shenanigans). The first two films, Beginnings and Eternal cover the events of the TV anime. They're better animated (although how much one likes the CGI-ridden modern looking anime style is an entirely different question) and much better paced than the show (over an hour of mostly redundant runtime was cut), but suffer from a weaker soundtrack and the disjointed feeling you get when watching what's essentially a made for TV anime stitched together into feature film length. The third film Rebellion is a direct continuation of the anime. Whatever way you pick to start is up to you, it's hard to recommend fully either way, but the broadcast version is the easiest to access, what with being on Netflix, presumably even in Australia, although who knows, distribution licencing is supremely weird. BR and movie versions look better, broadcast version sounds better (and with a Yuki Kajiura soundtrack, that matters). Movie version is better paced. Pick your poison, unless you want to experience the full artistic progression, in which case you can go broadcast, followed by a BR rewatch and the films, but that seems awfully redundant, even with the short runtime.

Sort of, if you count Alfred Bester being a telepath in Babylon 5 as commentary. It's a clear reference, at least. My appreciation for Babylon 5 has degraded in recent times - it's a show that suffers from rewatching it. The little things you gloss over the first time become more prominent, and you'll start to notice that it's a bit messy and that the actor's performances weren't really that good (with some exceptions, but Bruce Boxleitner and Patricia Tallman can't act even if their life depended on it). Having a serialized story is nothing special in this day and age either, but it was a huge draw at the time. Contains a dig at Deep Space Nine, because the concept was apparently presented to Paramount but not picked up, and they then came out with a space station based TV show that eventually also contained serialized storytelling (although not nearly as much as Babylon 5 did). Relies heavily on keeping you entertained through a slow unravelling of a mysterious conflict, and a completely rushed conclusion to a secondary plot line (in all fairness, that is due to the troubled commitment of the studio to the show) about the rise of a fascist regime. I'm a sucker for the mystery part, but that's also a big reason why rewatches aren't nearly as interesting. Once you know what's going on (and what is going on is a tad silly), the show loses a part of its appeal. Traded more newtonian space physics for straight up more space action somewhere in season three. Is very well worth a watch for fans of sci-fi, but I prefer Deep Space Nine. Cue random rabid Babylon 5 fan berating me in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

Blood-C, Episode 4: Age kind of matters, guys. Sakura is endearing in her inability to understand the feelings of others towards her - and that's because she's 12. Saya on the other hand is denser than Sakura ever was, and not even her sheltered upbringing can fully explain that. Okay, yeah, Fighting Evil By The Moonlight (tm) probably does a number on your brain, particularily in such a scenario, but come on... Also can't shake the feeling that literally everyone she interacts with (possibly except for the twins, her other friend and the class rep) has some hidden agenda. Fumito rings every creepy Pegasus warning bell. Conclusion: I'm 11:29 in on the fourth episode at the point of writing this.

Apple decided to lock my ID for no particular reason, so I had to jump through some hoops to reactivate it. *sigh*

Oh, by the way, as you're already here @Gorth , how about watching Puella Magi Madoka Magica? Look at this bubbly trailer: But really, like, watch Sailor Moon first. The 90ies one, not Crystal.

It was something I came up with a while ago. Maybe one of the others still has the relevant PMs, if you really want to know, just don't blame me afterwards. I wash my hands of the entire sordid ordeal.

The actual Bruno would watch JoJo's for the hot muscle dudes.

For the love of all that is holy, that is one mean nightmare. I guess, you know, time for some expectation spoilers for the next two episodes - don't blame me if you cick and have expectations then! I'm pretty sure Bruno would watch Kill La Kill and like it for all the fanservice, and tell us all about his Ryuko x Mako fantasies. Although, I don't know, Satsuki's fascist regime should be right up his alley. Great, now I'll be stuck with that thought for a while.

Looks like I should watch entire episodes before posting about them. edit:

I'm always trying to pre-guess twists when I'm aware of them, which is a bit more problematic than simply not knowing and figuring it out passively. Sometimes I semi-jokingly manage, like with Vampire Princess Miyu. Still can't believe the anime pulled that off. Heh. Most twists aren't very surprising though. Why are you watching Elfen Lied by the way, the price of admission for this thread is watching Sailor Moon.