majestic

To be perfectly honest it's continuing Magic User's Club that I'm really looking forward to, once this K-On! stuff is over. Can't wait to get back to the good stuff, Love Live! is too tame with its complete lack of underwear shots. edit: I really should do something about that issue. I could try watching the first episode of Pretty Cure and then just stopping. Wouldn't that be fun? Just imagine if that fails. Yikes.

Speaking of K-On!!, that school festival episode was simply amazing. The music was... fine, it was fine, the show was hilarious, and it feels like the culmination of an anime's worth of character development. The season isn't over yet, but it feels like it could end here without missing anything. I also really don't want to continue watching the episode right now. It has like two minutes left, and that is probably going to include them realizing that it was the last school festival before graduation. Well, there's some stuff left and the school year isn't over, but, uhm... you know, sometimes these episodes go exactly the way they have to go because characters are the way they are. Ah, hell. Well played, show. Well played.

Considering what Kyoto Animation made out of the seinen K-On!, well... I would, uhm, sort of... normally I'd agree, but it's worth giving it the benefit of the doubt. Although that character design. Uhm, yeah. Dunno. Not that long ago I would have agreed out of hand. Look what watching K-On! did to me.

By the way, just like apparently only Nixon could go to China, uhm, only K-On! can pull off a song like this one: I wish someone would have the actual scene from the episode, because it was hilarious, but hey, of course we can't have anything nice in YouTube. Like Sailor Moon clips.

That must have been some die roll for the bluff skill check.

The biggest problem is that even the episodes that would otherwise be good have elements that bring it down hard. The episode where Diana shows up is funny until it assaults a nun. The "who is Chibi-Usa's secret boyfriend" episode would be hilarious if it wasn't a winged unicorn with a taste for little girls, and yeah, Minako double timing Tiger's-Eye and Hawk's-Eye is probably the best of the Amazon Trio episodes. Until, well, the assault*. Gee, that leaves the dentist episode, Ami's and Rei's power up (Makoto and Minako get the short end of the stick, yay). Everything else requires to be generous to be on there. Kind of. Yes, SuperS really sucked. Wow. edit: Lol, we posted the same thing at the same time. Not bad. edit 2: *Just realized that's wrong. Until Chibi-Usa talks to Pegasus about having two boyfriends at once. Dear god, that horse...

CCS talk:

Hum... I just looked at the first of these, and this is what wikipedia tells me: Okay. I get it. If you like watching 12 year olds crossdress for middle school theater plays, you might also like... whatever this is. I don't even want to imagine what else there as if this is the curated list minus all the junk. With only two episodes it's a bit too early, but it sure looks like it's part action, and part (out)dated shojo material. However, with the creative team change, maybe something more interesting will emerge. Name the five best SuperS episodes. Good luck. Although, you're probably right when looking through the lens of a first time viewer, running into the Haruka and Michiru episode is more of a change and potential bore than some of the SuperS episodes. I wonder if a random assault scene without the context of the first episodes and the dialogue of the three creeps would be less of an issue. It's the framing of the first two assaults and the way they talk abou their victims that does that, not so much the act of looking at dreams. You'd probably have to take a Hawk's-Eye episode, and ideally not the one with the old lady. Hmmmm, mushrooms. Anyway, the two theater play K-On!! episodes were a riot. It also shows that episodes focusing on Yui or Mio or Ritsu, or any combination of the three, simply work best. Spoilered question, not a spoiler:

Lady Asuka, episode 2. Normally, in such a case, I'd not bother with what's potentially going to be a long winded post with a tinge of woe is me, which if you find it in the coming words, is kind of intentional. Two episodes out of forty is also not really enough to form a firm opinion, or predict everything, especially when the series director was changed after episode 18, however, I kind of feel the need to type up words for the benefit of probably absolutely no one except me, and maybe @Bartimaeus. There are some spoilers in this post, but I'll not mark them, because they're either obvious, don't matter or are historical facts. If you're bothered, don't read on. First of all, Lady Oscar's actual name is Oscar François de Jarjayes, which is such a handful that I'll from now on be calling her Asuka. In the second episode, Marie Antoinette arrives at Versailles, and is immediately unhappy with the looks and demeanor of Louis Auguste de Bourbon, her future husband. The plot of the episode revolves around a ridiculous kidnapping attempt where a boy with a wig pretends to be Marie Antoinette, and Asuka is the only one who notices that it's just a really pretty boy in women's clothing. Probably because she's a girl in men's clothing, right? She follows the actual Marie Antoinette who takes her swap with what she thinks is a future handmaiden or servant as a fun gag and cue to run off to a dripstone cave that randomly happens to be close by. The kidnappers obviously knew that she's going to check out the cave because they come out of hiding to grab her. Well, aren't they lucky that Marie Antoinette decided to check out the random cave in the woods right next to where the swap happened to take place. Which was supposed to be a secret meeting point at a neutral location between Austria and France (this is going to be interesting for later). There's no way anyone could have predicted that she would not only take off but run to the cave. The laws of probability haven't been violated enough yet, because of course Asuka als recognizes the archduchess in her servant's dress even though she's never before seen her. Asuka handily defeats the five grown men in the employ of the Duke of Orléans. She either severely wounds or outright kills four of the five and captures one for interrogation, but the duke interferes from the shadows and kills him with a well thrown knife, because Asuka took the princess and fled in a random direction that just happened to be where the duke was waiting in just the right distance to be able to kill his underling before the interrogation. Sigh. Meanwhile, in the time it takes Asuka to fight off the archduchess' would be kidnappers, the fake Marie Antoinette uses what will later become known as Littlefinger's Teleportation device to arrive at Versailles. I'm not really going to comment on the ridiculousness of nobody noticing that the girl they have is a boy in a horsecarriage ride that takes a while. A long while. A really, really long while without Littlefinger's handy teleporter. Asuka and the actual Marie Antoinette chase after them, and arrive just in the nick of time. The Duke of Orléans kills the pretender boy and is chewed out by Asuka for it, but manages to talk himself out of it. Can't have the king insulted like that, can we? Okay. So, now that this is over with, the episode itself wasn't nearly as bad as the kidnapping plot is stupid, but we cannot possibly pretend this episode was well written. This kidnapping attempt only works because it was written to work, much like the defense of Winterfell in Game of Thrones. There's also the problem of predictability: At the end of the episode, we're introduced to Marie Antoinette's future affair, Hans Axel von Fersen. Asuka and André are childhood friends, so Asuka is going to fall in love with someone else who will reject her only to realize that she loved André anyway. This is just the way these stories go. The shojo part, aside from somewhat more complex character interactions that in shonen anime of the same time, will probably be romance and pretty dresses for the nobles. I hope not, but it's certainy looking like it. Being members of the French court during the upcoming French Revolution will most likely mean that they'll all, uhm, die or face some other suitable tragidy. Except for Hans Axel von Fersen. That guy lived until the early 19th century. Historically, the manga for this was amongst the first, if not actually the first shojo historical drama manga, and found a larger demographic appeal in the setting and some of the action as well as intricacies of the plot and characters. Insofar it'll be a worthwhile watch, just like Attack No 1., if only to see the history of shojo animes, and I'm hoping that the adaptation is going to reflect that. If not in the first 18 episodes, then hopefully in the next 22 after the directorial change. And now for the one thing that I wanted to complain about: Apparently, when I watch or read or listen to any given entertainment, what I'm looking for and enjoy is apparently something that nobody else wants, with the sole exception of perhaps @Bartimaeus, but even that is sufficiently different (I liked X, I doubt he would, for instance, or as evidenced by our difference of opinion on how Haruka and Michiru's background reveal episode in Sailor Moon S compares to SuperS, a season we all sufficiently loathed). What I cannot understand, however, is the idea of suggesting this anime when asked for 80ies or 90ies shojo anime in the context of a Cardcaptor Sakura community. Granted, I do not know the actual wording of these suggestions, nor the actual wording of the question, nor do I want to judge the community. This isn't me judging others for their opinions, it's me whining about feeling like an utter alien here because I can't for the life of me see any similarities. I'm not even disliking Lady Asuka so far, even if that episode was the epitome of stupid plots, at the end of the day, who really cares. It's the somewhat rough start of a historical drama and intrigue, cabals and plotting are part of any court. If I'm right, and this is primarily going to be romance drama and later character drama relating to the revolution, then... then where, how... how... was I supposed to watch Cardcaptor Sakura for the battle costumes and the romance? Because that was certainly a part of it, but only a small one. *headscratch* Guess the next time I have so many things to choose from, I'll just start with the mecha anime, or the 800 episode show with the weird art style. I'm going to watch some more K-On!! right now. Edit: See, K-On!! takes something out of Cardcaptor Sakura's playbook and has a Romeo and Juliet play, and the class decides that Mio and Ritsu are going to play Romeo and Juliet, with Tsumugi writing the script, who already teased heavy rewrites now that she has two unexpected lead characters with a special dynamic. This is a close to a gender swap as you can come in an all girls class. Like the Sleeping Beauty play in CCS. Edit 2: Yui is a tree...

No, but I think you need to keep in mind that unlike you, I haven't skipped over any bits and pieces of SuperS, so the wear and tear of that season is much worse for me. The thought of most SuperS episodes makes me squirm, while any given non-SuperS serious mode episode is "meh" at worst and potentially "okay" and sometimes even "good", depending on the season it appears in. Ultimately it does really come down to this: The flaws of SuperS, for me, far outweigh the fun there actually is every now and then. I mean, there are episodes early in SuperS that are pretty funny. Rei walking in on Mamoru or Usagi stalking around in her Ninja costume, yes, that was funny. It's also super ridiculous after Sailor Moon S to the point where I'd rather watch everyone die a thousand times over at the end of the first season than that again... hell, I'd rather look at the alien faces of the third Crystal season for that matter. And those things were scary. But... yes, that was a painful scene to watch, but it was in service of a really good episode where they even managed to give Mamoru something nice and useful to do (although to be honest, I could have done with less of a focus on her butt for a bit, but hey... honestly, after Rebuild, Sailor Moon's tiny bit of fanservice here and there doesn't look that bad any more). It also had Ami acting like Ami, not suddenly yelling at Mamoru because she randomly believes women that Mamoru talks to are hookers whose services he just, uhm, bought. Or even being generous here, she just thought Mamoru would go off and cheat on Usagi. I think that's pretty much it, actually. For me, SuperS was significantly worse than any given serious mode episode in the other seasons. If SuperS was just a series of annoying assault allegories that are never talked about and Usagi and Chibi-Usa fighting a bit too much, then that would be different. As it stands, it commits a far worse crime than that: It has so many out of character moments that not even Mamoru understood what he was still doing in the anime, and he was barely in it! I also still think that the mid season storyline where the Amazon Trio is saved was written as meta commentary on the state of Sailor Moon through Mamoru. It's not that hard to answer what is so lovable about Usagi, at any given point in the show that isn't SuperS. Then there's the thing about comedy that much of it quickly starts to annoy me instead of being funny. That's my personal problem, like with the Ami-falls-over thing, for instance, and SuperS failed way too often. It's not, and I can understand it to a certain point. The Haruka and Michiru episode was tonally so different from the episodes it appeared in between that it sticks out like a sore thumb, in addition to not being the best episode. If you take any given really funny and great Sailor Moon episode and transplant it into NGE, it would be really wrong there too. Imagine literally everyone showing up at Misato's home, and an Angel would show up too and be defeated because there's no space to fight left and Shinji just kicks it over. Yeah, doesn't work. Hmmm.

As if swallowing Rs at the end (or even in the middle) of words is purely a German thing. It's even worse for words that end in -er, because that really often morphs into an "a" sound, at least for Upper German dialects. That would be something. Let me know if it does. Yes and less, but I'm probably too biased and it would depend a bit too much on which particular episode of SuperS you would pick. The second half of the season isn't as terrible as the first half and even has a couple of okay to good episodes. However, yes, I'd rather have Sailor Moon S grade serious mode boring episodes like Haruka and Michiru's coming out metaphor for an entire season than the out of charcter insanity with sexual assault "sub"text that the first half of SuperS is. Spoilers because dear god, I almost managed to seal all of this away in my mind and now it's back. Aaaaaaaaaah! BACK! Seriously... that Haruka and Michiru episodes wasn't that great, sure, but it's nothing compared to the hell that is SuperS. Also, I need to go and lie down now. Ugh. Okay, I apologize verily and muchly for bringing up SuperS.

Thanks for the offer, but it might be a really long while until I take you up on it. I'm not sure where it comes from, but there's a very hard to penetrate mental block that formed against doing anything with my setup at home. Literally anything. Recently I tried playing Siverfall through a friend's Steam library that we "family" shared. I installed it, it didn't run out of the box, I uninstalled it and that was that. It's probably solvable in some way or another, but I'm not going to spend any energy on it. It's so bad that trying to break through it - or having to break through it - causes actual discomfort, not just a mild itch, but really, a horrible combination of seething rage and a feeling of revulsion similar to what happens when you try to eat rotten food. Ugh. It's really bad when my family is asking for support. I'm not always successful in hiding it, especially when it's something that I know they should know already, from working with computers for the last 30 years - both at home and at their (former) jobs. Like calling me because they can't find a file they've just saved. It does, it does... The last four or so episodes were made with Anno back at the helm, from what I've gathered. Don't expect anything until then, and that should temper the disappointment. Ideally... also, even within Sailor Moon, that episode isn't so bad when compared to SuperS. SuperS was really great, huh? I think that's more on Japanese and their vowels than on the German singer here.

Well... Amazon has that and Vision of Escaflowne, and I went for the historical drama rather than what's also flagged as mech anime. *nods* if I ever find my joy in fiddling with hard- and software setups again, I'll probably get a proper media streaming server for my home. The way it is now there's inertia and... revulsion to overcome. Back when the GTX 970 came out, I figured it would be a decent upgrade and decent value for my setup (a 980 would have been absolute overkill), so I bought one. It took me three months to actually install it, and that was just replacing one card with the other. Anyway, here's a screenshot of what Amazon's streaming: Luckily I ran on a German TV station and am of at least PAL resolution, unlike my friend X over here who looked terrible throughout. I also watched three more episodes of K-On!! and decided to go in release order. The middle of the second season is kind of not entirely there. I don't want to call it boring because the episodes aren't, but they're not as funny as they were in the past, and the more serious character interactions aren't an entirely adequate substitute, at least when it comes to certain characters. In this case it was Azusa in the second of the three episodes. Whenever there's character focus, it works best when it's Mio, Yui or Ritsu. That's partially a problem of the setup, becaues the three have more, well, flaws to work with. Yui is a complete airhead, Mio has her anxiety issues and Ritsu is a mostly unfocused flake. Azusa and Mugi don't have as much to work with, and it shows when the anime tries to focus on them. It was also contrasted by the episode after that, which was pretty good, where the girls can't use their club room at school because the plumbing is being repaired. Spoiler marked because, eh, actual spoilers, I guess. As always, that's complaining about minor things, I guess. Not everything can be Sailor Moon S where everything just worked, except perhaps for the one episode they spent focusing on the history of Neptune and Uranus, which wasn't a bad episode, just not a really interesting one. Like focusing on Mugi or Azusa. I guess... that's really a decent comparison. Heh. Lady ASUKA! *quietly pushes Nadia further down the watchlist*

I kind of did that already, by the way. It's on Amazon Prime Video, at least... here. Quality work as usual when it comes to anime and Amazon, having only the German dub licensed. At least there's no TV station signation at the end. It'll be on my cardio playlist for the next three or four weeks, with its 40 episodes. The video quality is okay. I'm pretty sure the blu ray tansfer would be better, but that would require some licensing effort and perhaps some money from Amazon that they're quite interested in funneling into Prime Video originals that I have no interest in, but always put up ads for. Good job. A few random observations: - I immediately recognized the intro song: - Japanese writers and animators are apparently really obsessed with rose themes when it comes to aristocracy and knights. - 70ies manga, very late 70ies/early 80ies anime adaptation that looks the part (easily noticable with the faces and eyes). - No idea how the Japanese original is, but the German dub is, as usual for the time, pretty good. - Oscar is slapped twice by her father, fights two sword duels and gets into a protracted fist fight with her childhood friend, in the span of only 25 minutes. The grandmother of her childhood friend gets wasted when she hears how Oscar defied the king. Set in 1770 at the time of the arrival of Maria Antonia (Marie Antoinette), archduchess of Austria, at the French court, Lady Oscar, who was raised as a boy by her father, an officer of some reknown in the French army, finds herself nominated to fight a duel for the post of the captain of the guard for Marie Antoinette by her father, which Louis XV accepts. Oscar, of course, isn't happy about that and doesn't even want the job. She intercepts her opponent and fights the duel to see if she can win (and tells the boy that she does so to spare him the humiliation of losing to a girl in front of the entire court), earning the ire of both her father and the king, who isn't all too happy about his subjects defying his orders, but decides to give her the post anyway. Faced with his obstinate daughter still wanting to refuse the post instead of being happy to not be arrested and executed for treason, her father asks her trusted friend and childhood companion André to talk some sense into her, which she overhears... The first episode was really rough around the edges. It serves mostly as a character introduction and gives Oscar some traits that you would expect in the lead character of a shōnen anime. She's confident in her abilities to the point of being arrogant, defies her father and her king, and - as noted above - gets into fist fights. The fist fight leads to a nice bonding moment between her and André though, so it's not a total loss. I'm curious how that'll continue once they arrive at the court for real. I mean, obviously she accepts the post, how else would you have another 39 episodes. Anyway, the first episode was okayish. The opening narration made it clear that this'll span the time to at least the beginning of the French revolution. So far, while the story itself is fictional, the historical frame of reference was accurate.

Well played sir, I expected a Mari picture. That's one of the things that was easier back in the day of less information on the internet and regular TV. A TV show was over whenever the station decided it was. Nowdays, I look up a name and see something like 10 spinoffs and such, and yeah, that's really an annoying issue. I lived happily for years without trying Sailor Moon Crystal simply because I didn't know about it, after all. Would I watch Sailor Moon now? Good question. If it came with a glowing recommendation, I guess so. 10 regular episodes, two specials, one OVA and a movie. I'm still debating with myself if I should go in broadcast/release order or chronological. The first special is after episode 21, the movie after 22, the second special after the movie and the OVA goes right where I am now. In this case it probably won't matter. It's not like there are spoilers to be had. There are also a bunch of three minute DVD/BR specials, but I don't have those at the moment. I think I'll just go with release order.

Yeah, it does drag a little in the middle. Don't miss out on the movie though, or you won't see...

Yesterday I hit the first episode in K-On!! that I would consider... weak? Weaker than the rest, at the very least. The writers decided to have a Tsumugi focus episode, and it kind of fell flat. She's the sheltered from real life rich girl character. Mild mannered, polite, well behaved. The polar opposite of Ritsu and Yui, of course, and a fun contrast. Ritsu takes her to an arcade and a thrift candy store, things she'd never go to otherwise, and she's running around with that childlike expression of interest and fun, as if you'd drop a nine year old into a theme park for the first time in their life. Then she asks Ritsu to whack her, because Mio is always doing that to Ritsu when Ritsu says or does something silly and she wants that too. Actually it's been like that the entire time, even in the first season, some episodes ago they went to a hardware and home store and she spent a minute in complete reverie staring at cleaning supplies. She then bought something to polish metal and ran around polishing the faucets at school. Sure Mugi, you do that. That's fine... for like Cardcaptor Sakura, maybe, but not even that. It's slightly ridiculous for a high school senior. There are the little things in between, like her starting the pillow fight on the school trip. Done with an immensely funny, mischievous expression on her face (and Mio is uttely baffled it wasn't Ritsu or Yui). They work, because everyone else is there to make it work. In one episode she was immensely happy to have been told to stand in the hallway by Sawako as punishment for disturbing the class. For a focus episode with only two cast members for the first half of it, no. Although she did manage to get slapped silly by Ritsu at the end when she told her that Ritsu would be really popular if she were a boy (the implication here that them going out would have been a fun date if it hat been one). The ending of the episode was great, and Mugi in general with her attempts to be like a regular girl even though she clearly isn't, is really nice. The writers don't really know what to do with her at times it seems. She's either doing something mature like taking up a low wage part time job in order to connect with the peasants (not her words), or she's falling back into the age category that she looks like, what with the sort-of-chibi look of the show. Eh, rant over. The episode wasn't even bad, and had a few laughs. That's the case for many pre-Sailor Moon magical girl series, or those that came out at roughly the same time. The idea that maho shojo animes (or mangas) could have a more general audience than five to nine year old girls wasn't really there before that, and even for Sailor Moon that ended up being a happy accident. Probably to a good degree because Ikuhara pushed hard to not have it devolve into the Mamoru/Usagi focused lovey dovey romance fest that the manga is, at times. Ah, actually, I've looked at a bunch of these before, roughly at the time when I decided to watch Princess Tutu. Ojamajo Doremi, for instance, I didn't like the art style (well, how surprising, right?) and the idea of going into 250 episodes or so of that wasn't very appealing without knowing if it's actually good. Rayearth is on my list of CLAMP related stuff to try anyway, but that's been slightly re-prioritized by Clear Card. Vision of Escaflowne, eh, I wasn't really sure about that, but it's on Amazon Prime Video. As is Wedding Peach, which really looks like a cheap Sailor Moon knock-off that not even the fans of the Sailor Moon story episodes like. Rose of Versailles was on TV here, as Lady Oscar. I caught an episode or two, but not enough to form an opinion (or to remember much, aside from it being set in France around the time of the French revolution), and it suddenly stopped over licensing issues. I might actually really try that next. I mean, "next" in the sense of sometimes after the backlog's mostly done. Well, let's see. Probably won't get to it anytime soon either. I also still have a couple of Love Live! movies left to, uhm, enjoy. Maybe. I don't know much about TPPG, just that I stumbled across an episode or two while zapping and it wasn't very appealing to me in terms of looks. The German dub's also pretty terrible from what I remember, so turned off it got.

Yes on the first few accounts, kind of on the last one. Memory is a fickle thing in the academy. People disappear without anyone noticing or remembering, after all. They do remember some of their lives before coming there, though. Utena came because of her memory of the prince. Touga knows he's adopted, along with Nanami, and just refuses to tell her. Miki and Kozue have their family life they remember. Nanami remembers drowning a kitten. All very specific events, though, nothing much about the rest of their lives. Curious. Touga will drop a pretty big hint soon, if he hasn't already. Jury's Akio Ohtori arc duel is probably one of the highlights of the entire show, and a pretty important episode as well, in hindisight...

The more accurate statement would be Princess Tutu is actually good, unlike Revolutionary Girl Utena. The disappointment, in a way, stems from my expectations based on the people involved, and that it is, in the end, a fusion of the Ugly Duckling and Swan Lake, with a gender flip (in Swan Lake it's of course the princess that needs to be saved, not the prince, even though - minor spoiler - at the end there's a princess that is saved too). Unlike Utena, it doesn't drown in thematic exploration. It's there, but in the end, it is a fairy tale. I've said that before after the Sailor Moon SuperS movie, while I like fairly tales, I've seen enough adaptations, read enough and listened to enough recordings as a child. Enough to not need Japanese reinterpretations of them. That's not something that says anything about the quality of the anime. It has a streak of mildly boring filler episodes in the second season that I don't know why they're in there, unless the studio asked for another thirteen episodes. They're not moving the plot along, they're not making any statements, and they're not really used for character development. Or, better put, perhaps not used enough for character development. Ahiru is pretty funny at times, and she's often put in embarrassing situations that are funny, but like I said, it's not really comedic outside of that. That's okay, there's nothing funny about Swan Lake, after all. What it isn't, just in case that hasn't become entirely clear from my previous posts, is a powerhouse of character interactions. What's there is pretty good, all things considered, but it certainly wasn't a focus in developing it. Ahiru and to a certain part Rue (Rue is exactly the sort of tragic figure that I really like, so hey... take that with a grain of salt and some bias) pretty much carry it on their own. I also rarely ever came across a voice actress that was better cast than Nanae Katō. She's perfect as Ahiru. There are voice actors I like more, of course, but she fits the character like a glove. If gloves had voices, and all. Nowhere, if the guy on YouTube is correct, until the ending. But we'll see. I mean, you will. On the other hand, he also thought Rebuild was pretty good, so what does he know, really. I apologize profusely for being offensive. Gomenasai! You're right that PPP looks a good deal better and had much more effort applied to it than Phineas and Ferb. Still not... not my thing, you know. I'll try to appreciate effort more in the future, really. That approach looks better than following the creative team behind Sailor Moon. Well, and Cardcaptor Sakura. That clearly didn't work out. Was Eriko on the list? What is on the list, actually? An adaptation of a yuri shonen manga published in Dengeki Daioh. Yeah, pass. I got interested for a moment, I don't mind the overdramatic dramatic drama after all, and the writer also worked on K-On!. By the way, I think that also explains why Love Live! feels like a carbon copy fanservice'd up version of K-On!. Jukki Hanada worked on K-On! and Love Live!... well, and on Bloom Into You. I almost watched Death Note once, but then I noticed it would be gone from Netflix before I could finish it, and didn't start. I watched the intro on YouTube and it looks like an era typical Madhouse show (and look at that, it really is animated by Madhouse). Really not sure based on what exactly you're getting these recommendations, that doesn't read at all like something that would be interesting to you. Mystery, supernatural thriller, shonen. Yeah... uhm...

My expectations for a new Matrix movie are tempered by the abject failures that Reloaded and Revolutions were, and how wonderful Jupiter Ascending turned out to be. At this point, the Wachowskis' track record puts them in the same league as David S. Goyer, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.

The Paramount+ channel for some reason really doesn't want me to watch their trailers. I really don't want to watch their new Star Trek either, so that's fair, but it's still odd. Why region block trailers, or did I find my way onto some black list by complaining too much on the Obsidian forum?

That kind of... sucks. Apparently, it'll also get really racist soon. Or has, already, I don't know when those episodes happen. I just know that from a Rebuild review I watched. Watched two more episodes of K-On!! that I now wish I hadn't seen. Not because they were bad. They girls have summer holidays, visit a music festival, go to a public pool and a summer festival and generally have fun. Which is really depressing to see. Where can I sign up to have two or three months of summer vacation again? Instead I'm looking forward to *best Warcraft peon voice* work, work. Which tomorrow will once again bring me joy in form of this fun little project that feels like banging my head against a wall. Never thought I'd be the one to say that, but TGIF, really. K-On!! continues to be pretty strong. It's not as well written as Cardcaptor Sakura is, mostly because this season really is only having a faint overall storyline (more of a hint and half a theme, actually) insofar as the junior member is worrying about how life will go on without the seniors once they've graduated, but otherwise it's going from one episode to the next, which leaves a lot of room for fun stuff to happen, but sort of puts a damper on an overall development of something. For all its other flaws, that wasn't one in the first season. They always had their school festival to work towards, and obstalcles to overcome along the way. Unlike in Sailor Moon, where most of the filler only had a cursory relation to the mostly useless overall story arc of the season (although there really are people who watched Sailor Moon for the story bits, I have no idea why people would do this, but there are those who did, and they make videos and podcasts on it, what a world we're living in...) and it still worked simply because the characters, including some of the villains - especially in Sailor Moon S, or Nephrite in the first season - were strong enough, K-On!(!)'s girls are, while fun, not quite there. There sure are times when a red line connecting the episodes would help move the characters along a bit. That's me doing what we call jammern auf hohem Niveau (lit. "whinging on a high level"), being unreasonably picky and complaining because something that's really good could be a bit better yet. I mean, maybe there's a magical anime* out there that combines the strength of Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura into something unimaginably perfect with none of either's flaws - of which the one's of Cardcaptor Sakura are more academic and thematic for me than actual flaws, mind - but that's probably only a theoretical possibility. Like being able to quantum tunnel through a wall. It's not impossible, just near enough to make no difference on any given timeframe that is not infinite. *I'd also take a TV show or western animation, as long as it doesn't look like the Power Puff Girls or Phineas and Ferb.

You're sick and should look for help.

Finished Princess Tutu now. Most of the planned tragedy of the ending was averted, however... The final handful of episodes were much like reading a fairy tale, a lot of narration by both Fakir and Drosselmeyer, which wasn't bad because it fit the setting and intent. A little useless tension added at the end with no explanation for one of the Jawas, but thankfully they otherwise more or less stopped being in the series until the very end. Some unsettling scenes were there too. Took a book out of Disney's page, huh? Wait, no, that's the other way around... All in all, it was okay. More than that, I guess, there were parts of this, especially both season endings, that were absolutely wonderful. Still... even though there are lighthearted moments and Ahiru is a riot every now and then, it's not really a fun adventure or a silly romp. Much better paced than Utena, even if the second season occasionally feels like running on a treadmill in the middle. Pretty good music, overall, provided one likes classical music. As expected, it has a whole lot of classical compositions, from ballet music to waltzes. Pretty much recommended if one likes fairy tales with a twang of tragedy. The anime called its ending happy, but it's not entirely.

That says a lot about the studio if that list is "nothing too crazy" compared to other stuff. Sounds interesting, let's see how big of a nosedive the show really takes, but 39 episodes aren't that long. Sure sounds better than Utena. So the main character is Anno himself, again? Is that true for all the other characters too?