majestic

The Engrish in JoJo's is really hilarious at times.

I found myself free of distractions by my computer over the weekend, and in the vicinity of a smart TV, so I... forced myself to binge-finish Kill la Kill. That sounds like I didn't like it, but that's not the case. Kill la Kill was great, but it's an unabating assault on one's senses. The show alone is enough to give you sensory overload, and couple that with having to read subtitles for characters that talk with what feels like a thousand words per minute (especially Mako when she gets going) it becomes quite tiring to watch. It's something similar that makes my going through JoJo's bizarre adventure quite slow. I enjoy watching it and laugh like an idiot at the shenanigans. However, more than one or two episodes a day is kind of hard to do. For JoJo's, that's not sensory overload, but the same thing that happened to me when I watched Way of the Househusband. There's something about the combination of overly dramatic Japanese, reading subtitles and the a mix of barely animated, almost still parts and over the top action pieces, that makes me weary while watching, regardless of of much I like the content. When you find yourself writing... anything, I guess, be it TV, film or animation scripts, music, lyrics or novels, you can do many things within the genre you've picked. Play the established tropes straight, like many do, subvert them, create a deconstruction, or you can do a parody. Sometimes works contain elements from more than one of these, and often, I've noticed, the fandumb and critics alike use the terminology wrong. Kill la Kill, interestingly enough, completes a final element within anime that I haven't seen yet - namely the latter. Although, in all fairness, when you look at anime that plays tropes straight, like Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura, that only has limited applicability when you are the very shows that establish the tropes, in the case of modern Maho Shojo (and Kill la Kill is, at the end of the day, a Maho Shojo anime, the main protagonist and antagonist and the secondary ones - they're all magical girls, some of which have transformation sequences, coupled with a fighting anime). The difference between subversions and deconstructions isn't an actually easy one. A deconstruction of mecha anime, for instance, would be Neon Genesis Evangelion insofar as it seeks to shine a light on what would happen if you applied this storytelling device or convention to real life. The mech piloting is still there. The mechs are there, even if they get a tinge of a subversion later by turning out to be grown from a giant alien entity, rather than constructed, but that's only a minor element. A deconstruction, by its nature, doesn't do anything to acknowledge prior works with the same tropes, it is a type of reading in the work itself. When you contrast this with Puella Magi Madoka Magica's Kyubey, this does nothing of the sort. It doesn't explore the question of what would happen if magical, wish granting and power giving animals were real, it takes the benevolent magical animal companion trope (like Luna, Artemis and Kero) and subverts the expectations (as loaded as that term nowadays is) of the viewers by not being what is expected of it. Kyubey is cute and fuzzy, but not nice. Not that Madoka doesn't have deconstructive elements too, it's just that the subversion is a much stronger element in it (Mami is the most clearly deconstructive element, I'd say - accepting the fact that nobody would care for an orphan, but that's an entirely different rabbit hole to go down). Kill la Kill, on the other hand, is a parody by way of turning tropes to OVER NINE THOUSAND so they become a ridiculous mockery of themselves, and that former Gainax members are part of it really shows, too. It all begins with Ryuko, a girl looking for the murderer of her father. The only clue she has is her only possession. Half a scissor she uses to fight. Through some shenanigans she ends up finding her late father's final piece of work, a school uniform with magical powers that consumed Ryuko's blood in exchange for power. Right from the start this shows how the parody through crassness works. Her transformation ends with her wearing a ridiculous stripper outfit that barely covers anything, which makes Mako, a girl in the family she stays with, call her an exhibitionist all the time, with Ryuko saying that she isn't. She ends up at the academy that Satsuki runs with an iron fist. A vertiable fascist paradise where the unwashed masses are ruled over by people who have had life fibers (special threads granting magical powers) worked into their school uniforms. Regular students have normal school uniforms, the others have ranked power levels. One star uniforms are worn by the unnamed and faceless masses of the party (sort of, they're just better students here) that lord over students with no stars. Two star uniforms are for the leaders of club activities and finally there are the three star uniforms worn by the student council. They effectively run the school - that itself is making a mockery of the absurdely powerful student council trope that many animes playing at school employ. In time, Ryuko realizes that there's more going on, and that her teacher who claims to be working for an organisation called Nudist Beach actually meant that, and isn't just a creep that undresses at every opportunity (though of course, he is that too). There's a resistance against the life fiber clothing - and it's of course people who go skinny dipping. What else? There are 25 episodes. Well, 24 plus an OVA, but Netflix lists that as the 25th episode. Pretty much worth a watch if you like parodies. One of the biggest laughs was when Ryuko and Satsuki talked to each other while fighting. There's this massive whirlwind of fighting chaos in the middle of the screen, with the faces of the two on each sides, just talking as if nothing else was going on: Time coded. Obvious spoiler warning. Hidden underneath all that are actually certain themes, talk about fashion, individuality vs. collectivism and a number of other things. Phew, that's enough for now.

Can’t do a longer reply at the moment because typing on the phone is horrible but that’s a great question. One that the creative team also could not answer I guess, because that’s exactly what is missing from Clear Card. There is a certain magic to some entertainment that sometimes strikes gold for me an CCS sits very high on that list. Very, very high. It’s episodes also do that with much higher consistency than Sailor Moon or X-Files did, although both ran more than twice as long, so there was of course more potential for misses, but CCS still has 70 episodes, and most of them are really really REALLY good. Funny how, for me, Meiling went from “can you please write her out of the show” to someone whose mere presence made Clear Card better, and her voice actor is really a big part of this too. There is an upcoming episode where Sakura’s class is doing a Sleeping Beauty play and Meiling is the evil witch who curses the princess. It’s like her VA was born for that role.

Yare yare... one of the easier ways to spot someone who tried to learn conversational Japanese from anime. It is not commonly used in conversation. Mostly in writing and anime. For JoJo’s it is a meme all on its own. There are even t-shirts you can buy.

Seems like a good idea, that should lessen the impact. If you have to try Clear Card, that's the way to go, I guess. edit: One of the biggest issues in this season is the decision to make Shaoran know what's going on, so his involvement in the episodes is sort of limited. Tomoyo got flanderized for the first half of the season being almost exclusively the obsessive stalker type, and that leaves Sakura interacting with MTS #3, who on her own is not all that interesting. Her other friends are also not around much. I don't think it's much of coincidence that bringing Meiling back and toning Tomoyo down to normal lead to the much better episodes in the second half of the season so far - at least when they're not focused on useless action pieces, MTS #3 or Shaoran suddenly having the ability to stop time for which he so far always needed the Time card.

Clear Card has maybe switched the set up. It's been another almost entire episode of decent interactions (Tomoyo shows MTS #3 her recording of the second movie, much to the embarrassment of Sakura), then introduces something magical in the last second, which will then be dealt with in the next episode. That's not really any better, but at least provides the occasional decent episode. Eh, and the epsiode took care to re-animate parts of the second movie for Tomoyo's recording, but the writing is still from the movie, of course. It doesn't look as good, but it's better than the regular Clear Card episodes. Which means this really is more of a writing problem, then something caused by not so great animation. That certainly doesn't help, but the issues are somewhere else. Eh. In hindsight, this will have something positive to show for. I've been kind of hard on the Sakura Card arc in the past. It was still good, but the setup for made it less appealing than the first arc (well, in my opionion) - except for a couple of highlight episodes (54, 60 and 66 stand out there - I'm suspecting 60 will be more... uhm, highlighty for @Bartimaeus than 66 ). While Sakura card has strong contenders for the best episode of the entire anime, the average quality dropped a little. Or so I thought. Next to Clear Card, that was still really, really, really good. If nothing else, at least, this will make me appreciate Sakura Card more than I already do. Yay!

More like a strange outlier, yes. A happy accident is when a tree looks good even if it accidentially grows over half your painting.

I meant Love Live! which isn't weird in the JoJo weird way, but weird because it's an apparently popular anime that has no clear target audience. Heh. edit: I see your confusion and raise an edit. There's not enough fanservice, nor is any of it good enough for people who enjoy Seinen and/or Ecchi anime for that. There's some singing and dancing, but not enough for people who would like to watch a musical anime, and the slice of life parts are fun at times, but there's not enough to outwheigh the problems the other two parts cause. So, no idea who this is for.

I guess that's like playing Radiant bosses in the Hall of Gods in Hollow Knight. Nightmare King Grimm, which was the hardest boss in the game (well, arguably) until Absolute Radiance and Pure Vessel were patched in, ends up being one of the "easier" Radiant kills, the early game bosses and meme fights aside. He's 100% fair, telegraphs well and when you die, it was your own fault. Unlike Grey Prince Zote, who can just randomly start his flailing attack while simply walking forward with no indication that he's going to move, and at any point during his flailing he can fall over and cause shockwave. He also... sometimes jumps around, and when you dodge too far out of the way, the game just moves him laterally over your head and drops him on you. Whenever he jumps, he can land on the floor or fall through it. Landing on the floor causes a shockwave you need to jump over, falling through causes him to fall on your head. Good luck if you committed to a jump and your i-frames are on cooldown then. There are ways to deal with all that, of course, but... bad design is bad. It's probably at least partly what happened. Pretty sure someone like Satoshi Kon would push for less exposition, especially when there's animation that shows what's going on anyway. I really wish I could, but so far there's little redeeming about this. What there is I can't talk about because spoilers* for the Sakura Card arc. So far though, everything is just not good. It's not bad, but it is nowhere near the quality of the first anime, and it took 13 episodes and Meiling to come back to make Sakura have a decent conversation with someone. Tomoyo has been flanderized. She already got some of that in the Sakura Card arc, but it's waaaaaaaaaay over the top now, and Kero was like that for the first 10 or so episodes, at least he's getting to do something else. Then there's the issue that the new Clear Cards are all just variations of Clow/Sakura Cards. That one is intentional because the only other thing Tomoyo does besides starry-eyed Sakura stalking is pointing out that the cards to similar things. The absolute worst part is that everyone who isn't Sakura (and spoiler character and Kero) hides something from each other, and from her. Mysterious Transfer Student 2 from Sakura Card and Shaoran (the original Mysterious Transfer Student) know what's going on but won't tell Sakura. Toya on the other hand keeps secrets from Yukito. That's probably related in some way, well, I'll know soon, not that many episodes left. Unless this ends on a massive cliffhanger. Right, and Toya, her father and Yukito are barely in the show. Hoe? There's also way, waaaaaaaaaaay too much time spent on Sakura and Card shenanigans, and way too much time on Mysterious Transfer Student 3. Unlike in the original, where dealing with the cards feels like its naturally a part of the world (except for some parts of the Sakura Card arc, but that one isn't about CATCHING cards), it's almost always tacked on. Sometimes there isn't even a setup and ceratinly no payoff. For instance, Tomoyo and Sakura visit Akiho's house, and find Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak the "Lucid" Card. They're in Akiho's library, and she's off to get some tea, and they come across a part of a shelf where a section is seemingly missing. Sakura touches it, feels that there's something there, makes a card, done. What? Setup? Payoff? Guys? You can do that, you did that for a lot of the earlier episodes. Whee, that turned into a rant. Sumimasen! *You're pretty close to an episode that should allow you to, uhm, guess some of the more major character developments coming up. That's episode 40.

Yeah, I'm not just watching weird stuff or hate watching Clear Card. Although I have admittedly spent a huge chunk of time on Hollow Knight recently. At least I'm getting somewhere there.

Anyway, turns out the last Clear Card episode was the first part of a two parter, and the second part was... the typical Clear Card episode. The episode also, once again, directly contradicts prior episodes, and in this one it's such a bad idea, because it just messed with one of the best episode of the original (or at least, one of the most emotionally impactful). I sure hope you're going somewhere with this, show. Otherwise you're even worse than you already are. Le sigh.

Clear Card has a new intro in episode 13. This is the first time a Clear Card episode makes me want to watch the next one immediately.

DS TALK: No, only the 10 minute Kero special, but that comes with the second movie and should only be watched after the anime. I guess I'll try to get them at some point. Yes. Character regularily stop dead in their tracks to either announce what they're going to do or talk about what they just did, in fights, and the accompanying Japanese is hilariously dramatic and over the top in this uniquely JoJoish way. It's a huge part of the charm of the anime, it's also usually when the anime looks like barely animated manga panels on purpose. Never having read any of the mangas, I assume that's how they were written (why else would the OVA be like that too). I kow I massively complained about the same thing happening in Crystal, but here it's funny and charming. Well, Crystal also had the bad sense to fully animate everything and still have the character narrate stuff because everyone involved were hack frauds. Except the voice actors, not their fault. Probably.

He was always going about how great he was at Hollow Knight too. Ugh. Yes, really. I also mean the death count. My save has roughly 10000 deaths (main contributer here was one of the C sides at 3000 deaths, huh), although many of them did come from trying to play Celeste with the Joy Cons before switching to the Pro controller. It also repeatedly crashed on me. It might have gotten a patch or two, but it definitely had a rough start. I tried to google a bit now, but it seems there's no more mention of it. The game apparently also runs at 60 fps on the Switch. That leaves controller problems, dock problems or perhaps my Switch has an issue with overheating, maybe? It seems more and more likely that it's a hardware issue, because Hollow Knight's port supposedly also performs great, and it doesn't for me. I also don't think I got much better at the game while not playing it at all in the past two years before buying it on GOG. Well, maybe if that new Switch turns out to be a decent upgrade, maybe... That's kind of the thing, I read around a bit, and the game was supposed to have this amazing story told in an amazing way. What I got was a "You're the CHOSEN ONE, but kek, twist, you undead bro!" story and some obscure lore hidden in item descriptions and architecture. Sure, guys, really, what? One thing the game did was once again prove that I always have issues on enemies or bosses that everyone else seems to think are easy. Guess which boss I spent the MOST tries on. I'll give you a slight spoiler to help, I beat Ornstein & Smough on my first attempt, and Gwyn on my second. I even made the game harder on myself by starting with one build, then being too stupid to realize how that actually works and switchting to something that turned out not working out properly at all in the middle of the run. Initially, expecting the game to be super hard, I started with a caster character because they were supposedly the easy mode. I guess they are, if you figure out that buying multiples of the same spell allows you to equip more of them. Which I didn't. Then I went for the faster casting soft cap for Pyromancy, which was supposedly also super powerful, and ended up not having enough casts to do anything with it. Again, because I never re-bought spells. Why would I. I already have them! Yeah, not my finest hour. So my 45 DEX really low health character with more INT than he needs and the health of a paper towel began wading into melee with Priscilla's Dagger from the DLC, hoping to fix the issues with the bleeding effect - turns out that works like arse most of the time, or at least when it was supposed to matter. Finished the game with an Iaito +15. Less bleed amount, but much more oomph. I guess the dagger is maybe better in PVP, but I played offline. Kalameet was a bit of a pain in the butt. Fun fight though. No desire to do Level 1 NG7 runs. I played an hour or two of Undertale, but I never really go into it. It's one of the games I still want to revisit later.

If you like Metroidvanias, then Hollow Knight is pretty much the best value on the market. It's dirt cheap and has loads of content. It's a bit on the bigger side, if you really search everything and try everything you'll easily be spending the 30 to 40 hours on it that @Bartimaeus mentioned. That's before venturing into the Godhome DLC. Not going to lie, it also has some exceedingly difficult boss fights, but all of them are optional. It's also pretty and has great music. The... aforementioned NPC sound and voice effects do take some getting used to. If you're in the mood for long ass game videos, take a peek at this one:

That's... not getting any better, and all the of the bosses you haven't seen do that too. Worse even, for some of them, their sounds are the only proper tells you get for what they're about to do, so you can't even play with sound off. Luckily the game has a compass you can get after a bit of playing and various quick travel options, so the game world becomes managable. Spoilered the post. Kinda the wrong forum and thread for this.

I'm in the middle of it, but the setup of the entire show is such that spoilers barely matter. The anime adaptation has 46 episodes. I guess the OVA left out the Playboy reading ape that oggles a young woman taking a shower on a ship that's a figment of his imagination (well, his stand, actually)?

I also just managed to beat Absolute Radiance - currently only in the Hall of Gods, not as part of the pantheon - for the first time. It's 00:45, and that was, while great, pretty bad. I'm perfectly sure I'm not going to get much sleep now. Stupid adrenaline rush.

Grandpa Joe already survived being shot into space on a giant rock by causing a massive volcano eruption and the subsequent re-entry and crash into the ocean while he was young*, so... that's not as much of a surprise as you might think it is. He was bit younger back then tho. *He did all that while fighting Kars, the super being who managed to overcome the weakness of vampires by becoming immune to sunlight, a creature capable of transforming into a bird, launching razor sharp feathers at JoJo which then later turn into piranhas that almost eat him. So yeah, uhm. It's called Bizarre for a reason. xD

Ah, well, then I still have like 95 tries left. Not that it would do me any good. I've already forgotten most things, to be honest, e.g. I can no longer read or write notes for instance. I also never could, and probably never will, hear key changes, or even keys, or guess tones like other people do, not even in relation to each other. I'm as tone deaf as they come, I just know when somethings nice to listen to, and when not, and that's pretty subjective. I dislike most Jazz, for instance, and that includes Slow Love, Slow. There's only so much of any melodic pattern subversion that I can take before it breaks my brain, and Jazz makes a point of seemingly doing either only that or having three or four separate tracks playing over each other, i.e. a piano, bass, drums and an optional vocalist all performing their own songs at the same time that are vaguely similar to each other, but not enough to form a coherent whole. That really does a number on me (brain trying to find patterns that deliberately aren't there, yay!). I know, I'm painting a huge and varied genre with very broad strokes here. It also doesn't help that Jazz has some of the worst fandumb imaginable: A bunch of entitled elitists, most of which probably hate the music anyway but pretend they love it to apepar sophisticated and upper class. Glad to be of service. Who knows, maybe it will come in handy at some point. Not only that, but it also kinda misses what I like so much about You'll Never Get to Heaven: it's just this...perfectly consistent mildly low-toned half-whispering kind of singing. Lunascape...doesn't do it for me on multiple levels, . BREAKING NEWS: Bartimaeus continues to be the pickiest bastard about anything and just about literally everything, more at 11! Mmh. 'twas a shot in the dark, anyway. That sure was... something. I think that's about the only thing I can say about it. Not going to repeatedly listen to that. I can't avoid it. Watching the news and reading papers is enough for me. Adele I know from the occasional bout of listening to radio when I'm subjected to it. Can't stop being me, so it's all absorbed and sticks for a while. A long while, in most cases.

Yeah, it's Worf, his son, Data and Deanna, not Beverly in a Wild West setting, and the computer is turning everyone into Datas. Marina Sirtis very noticably enjoyed playing the part.

It usually is for me, too. There are very few exceptions, but they exist. I usually dislike all harsh vocals (growls, or mostly untrained grunting, rasping, etc.), it takes exceptional groups to make me like that, like Sirenia, even though they mostly dropped them. Sirenia's Meridian is one of my most favorite pieces, actually, even though it's full of black metal elements, but that's neither here nor there, and you really don't need to check that one out. However, she does sing the non-growling parts in a much more contemporary, slightly raspy rock voice, as opposed to what she usually does, even in Nightwish. That makes sense, I think, because the lyrics are about internet trolls. I think, at least. I can't answer that, but I would never assume you'd actually like Nightwish based on the things you've shared you like. That's most likely driven by a desire that you at least enjoy something they do. Or maybe they just wanted to win the "I found someone you like to listen to" @Bartimaeus special trophy. Coveted indeed, but probably never truly given out. Do I win if I recommend Talking Heads? You'd imagine wrong. I don't know about the music, but I like the singing just fine - however, you can't possibly know that or even assume anything like that from what I've been talking about. I do have a soft spot for vocals like these. It does remind me a little of, say, something like Lunascape, however, Lunascape might just be a tad too breathy. Because that's really audible, like: So Lunascape is so far removed from my usual preferences that I have no idea how to explain why I like them. I can explain how I know of them, beause they were used as soundtrack for an IMAX film I watched. Like, back when IMAX theatres had actual documentaries and interesting originals, instead of bad films or special effects porn. Like Matrix Revolutions and Avatar. I'll also address the "secret" revealed later in the post. For effect. Yay! I've seen Lord of the Rings half a dozen times, but I never would have known it was her singing that song if Google had not told me earlier looking for Jungle Drum. Guess I suck, huh? I thought Jungle Drum was okay, but I did not understand its popularity. On the other hand, I barely ever do when it comes to pop songs, and it becomes worse every year (Adele for instance makes me want to stab my eardrums). But yes, singles do usually come in the form of whatever song the recod labels think best for mass appeal. Good if you enjoy that sort of thing, but horrible otherwise. Jungle Drum exploded over here because it was used in a casting show. For, uhm, fashion models. With Heidi Klum. I, ugh. That woman has a voice that can cut steel. She also makes Baby Jesus cry! Sharon is the one breathing audibly, the other one is called Anneke van Giersbergen. Which is a mouthful. Who coincidentally is actually not at all related to Dianne van Giersbergen who is also a vocalist, and was singing for Xandria, which I also kind of like, but they go through vocalists like some people go through underpants, and it's apparently - from what I've gathered from various social media and forum posts - related to the band leader being a complete asshat. I have no idea what Anneke van Giersbergen did or does otherwise. Ah, a pity. Heh. That was Princess Naoko, and you know it, but... honestly, Usagi would make a good figurehead queen. Just not a good actual ruler, but that's what Mamoru is there for, hm? At least, for the sake of the planet Tokyo, I sure hope so. On the other hand, going by what I've seen in Crystal, she does call the shots too. Guess you can only hope that she learns something quickly, huh? The episode had a brilliant moment at the end where everyone spontaneously decides to sing the first ending song at Honoka. Which is really fun because she made that one up on the spot and it never comes up again in the entire anime, so all the other girls can't know about it (well they could, off-screen, maybe). Details, shmetails, it was a really nice moment. It's still super dumb that she was made head of the student council, but eh, what else can I do than live! with it. Finally: Mhm. So you really don't like vibrato, at least of the slow variety, because that's the frequency change you can hear when Annette holds a note. Floor does that too, it's something that is depending on the genre, used prominently or ideally not at all. For opera performances, Floor's is pretty much the gold standard. It's consistent in frequency, has a high rate (i.e., it's fast, sometimes to the point of being barely noticable) and varies a little in rate between the beginning and the ending of a note. It's also a sort of side effect of classical voice training - most untrained voices have barely any, often even no, vibrato. You can actually hear this when Sharon sings, or mostly from Bozo Vreco. He still does long drawn out notes, but the frequency is perfectly stable. It's meant to feel more lively than a perfectly stable note, and changes in frequency like was another way to carry voices over orchestras. Not entirely sure why Floor's vibrato bothers you less. It's much faster, but still really audible in the operatic performance. It becomes so fast that it's barely noticable in her regular performances, however, I do suspect that you not liking her voice might still be linked to that. All the examples of vocalists you like are pretty vibrato-free. Might be a starting point in figuring it out. However, that also means pretty much every vocalist I know is out (I already figured that out, anyway). Because, like... uhm. They're almost all classically trained and use that training. ... We have also definitely reached the very limit of what I know of all that.

Something on topic for a change: I started the second season of Love Live!, and it begins with Ericchi, otherwise known as Eli or Eri - the blonde girl, who is blonde because she's partly Russian (wow, they really put some thought into why she's blonde, but everyone else has anime hair too and no explanation is given, uhm... so that's not for the blonde hair, but for her severe disposition I guess, yay...) - stepping down as Studen Council president. That title is given to Honoka. I'm barely two minutes into the season and it is already dumber than the entirety of the first one. Who thought it would be a good idea to make this universe's Usagi head of the student council? edit: Umi and Kotori are on the council as well, and the following scene reinforces that they're probably really intentionally modelled after Usagi, Rei and Ami in early first season Sailor Moon. Just without Kotori being a super genius. Umi just Rei'd Honoka hard, and Kotori was trying to be supportive but was shot down by Umi saying "You're too soft on Usagi Honoka!" Well it was fun to watch, but it's still stupid. Eri apparently was the one who recommended Honoka. Sure, after sniffing too much glue, or under boob rubbing duress, perhaps. Doesn't bode too well, does it?

It probably is like any other sports anime. It starts out somewhat grounded, if unrealistic, and eventually becomes a martial arts tournament show with basketballs. Tiger Flip Dunk or Falling Leaves Three Point are probably thing that come up. Or they face a team coordinated by some computer program. Or... something.