majestic

Canadian DVD source: Amazon Video: I'm not entirely certain why the Canadian DVD source has such a noticably reduced resolution*, but it is much brighter. There's some noticable jagginess around the edges of the props in the Amazon source, which is really weird. So yeah, the Prime Video image looks like it has the proper resolution and is otherwise not as washed out, but something's gone wrong in the encoding. The text for the credits also has noticable encoding artifacts. Good job, Amazon. Geez. I even tried looking for my PAL DVD boxed set, however I think that one's in the basement with my other DVDs. Stupid limited physical space. *

That'll be done in 4 minutes from now (guessing the host is speed limited). I'll check after lunch. But unless it's made from the Canadian source the DVD set is based on, it should be a good deal better regardless.

That might be related to the new cookies the forum sets. Because that really has only started to come up in the past few days. I only noticed because my phone's browser is set to private mode, and if I don't accept all the cookies the embedded content is just a blank square (sometimes it reads "you must accept our cookies to view the content"), but I'm not sure if that isn't just coded to work for us Euro-Peons. But that's not what I meant, I'm region locked out of the video. YT tells me that I'm not allowed to see it based on my area, and I really can't be arsed to fake my location for some trailer on YouTube. Cookies maybe. You need to accept the social media tracking cookies to have the embedded content appear. if uBlock throws them out by default than that might be the cause. That's also something that is relatively new, or at least I think so, because I haven't seen that at all on my phone until a couple of days ago.

26 episodes seems like a good deal more time to get things across or maybe explore characters a bit more. I'm expecting something good here. The '95 Outer Limits, while mostly sci-fi and less fantasy or horror, has a certain melancholic and sometimes downright dark tone. There are so many episodes that explore human nature (even positive ones), and it often ends in tragedy. What feels like a long time ago, when the TV Tropes Wiki was still a place that was more fun than serious and tropes still had meme-ish names, which, incidentially, was what brought me to read much of it, the current "Cruel Twist Ending" page was still called "Outer Limits Twist" (and Creator's Pet was called "The Wesley"). First season has an episode called Quality of Mercy which not only is a bottle episode featuring only two actors and a guy in a costume, but one of the finest moments of the show (if not actually the best episode it has). It's, uh, also relatively indicative of the budget the show had, which apparently was a couple of shoestrings and some chewing gum, and most of it probably went to the actors. So don't expect great production values, but it did feature a lot of fun "guest" stars and young actors one recognizes today. I mean, as much as an anthology show with always changing cast can have guest stars. There's an episode with Mark Hamill, and one with Leonard Nimoy, and a bunch of others. Just a tangent. It has nothing to do with Miyu, just the general feel of the OVA. Some of the episodes are misses, but that's to be expected, it did run for seven seasons. Some are remakes from older Outer Limits or Twilight Zone episodes, but usually with a darker twist to them. The only problem is availibility. There's nothing better than a DVD set scanned from a censored Canadian TV source (not much of value was lost, anyway, to be honest, unless you're really into Alyssa Milano's breats... *shrug*), but the image quality isn't great. Actually... yeah, isn't great is perhaps the wrong way to put it. It's not VHS-transfer level bad, but it really does show that it was made from a Never The Same Colours TV source. At least for now. We did have a season one boxed DVD set region 2 release that was pretty good in quality, but the sales were so poor that they never followed up with the other seasons. However, I just checked, and the remaining seasons will actually be released starting October 1st, 2021. Nice. Maybe. Because that is a completely new release, not a follow up to the first boxed set from 2008. Not sure if that means that the quality is going to be better, but I'm pretty sure I'll buy that just to have it. Still only DVD, but I doubt that there'll be anything better than a DVD release, and ideally the new DVDs were made from a decent source - or at least the PAL version of the original source, where we could end up with an Italian Sailor Moon style quality difference to the current Canadian boxed set. Whee, what a long assed post. The nature of the show makes it of course possible to just check out Quality of Mercy. There's no storyline, except for some end-of-season arc welding clip show episodes that I found highly entertaining.

Done with the Vampire Princess Miyu OVA. That was pretty good. The third part was a little disjointed again, the fourth mostly a flashback into Miyu's tragic backstory. Himiko would probably have been happier if she had not chased Miyu around. I'm expecting good things of the TV show now. edit: In terms of tone and feelings evoked this made me want to rewatch Outer Limits, the 1995 version. As an anthology show, it does have its ups and downs of course, but man, some of these episodes were pure gold.

You missed the part where he talks to his **** as a 14 year old because his **** wants to watch Sailor Moon and he doesn't, but **** of course wins out. That's when I turned that off. Yep I turned something off without finishing it.

I don't know, but according to the comments, she liberally complains about everything. I turned it off once she said that she's offended that a dumb blonde stereotype is supposed to be a role model for girls. So yes, it only gets worse. Much worse. I don't know, to be honest, I hate Channel "Awesome" with a passion and whoever that Nostalgia Critic dude really is, he can go die in a fire. I never watched anything Nostalgia Chick related, at least not without knowing about it. Might be I caught a scene here or there. I mean look at this sh... stuff, I was going to say stuff. Or better, don't. Because, ugh. I get it, partially, your original dub really sucked (or was funny beause of that), but eh. Ugh.

It's probably best that she doesn't. I mean, I don't think I would care if she tore Utena a new one, but somehow I doubt I could live with her talking about Sailor Moon Super S. Because that's just a recipe for disaster. Speaking of disasters, here's this video that someone else made who way way back when auditioned for the same Nostalgia Chick spot that Lindsay Ellis got: Yeah. 0/10 go to hell, and all that.

I guess that's as good an analogy as any without knowing too much about Japanese shinma mythology. Assuming the idea of banishing them has any basis in myth, of course. Miyu doesn't get what she wants, and Himiko directly comments on it, but Kei and... creepy unnamed Japanese doll demon (Ranka was it?) probably did. Kind of. Who knows. Brings me back to the point of giving this a couple of extra minutes. If you want to roll your eyes at something, try this:

Have you tried Puella Magi Madoka Magica? That's pretty dark stuff while still a maho shoujo anime. Might be a little style problem or two for you in there, though, but perhaps you can jive wit hit?

Vampire Princess Miyu OVA, Part 2: The Boy Who Wants To Be A Real Puppet. This felt a lot less disjointed than the first one, but the pacing is still sort of insane. There's barely any time for the storyline to breathe or the characters' motivations to be properly explored. It gets the point across but there's too much going on for the 25 minutes it has, I'd say.

Absolutely not.

Finally managed to get to the barber shop. Feels a lot better, but I'm kind of missing being able to stroke my beard like some ancient Chinese kung-fu master in an Eastern. You win some, you lose some, I guess.

KP did, and thought it was pretty good.

That box art is actually turning me off, kinda. Talk about bad ideas.

Finished Girls' Last Tour. It did indeed have robots, GIANT robots and of course GIANT MECHS, but no battles. Except for one series of flashbacks, but that's fine. Probably could have done without Yuu's extended skinny dipping in the aquarium scene. Chibi style and fanservice, nah, that's a combination that is... nah. Just no. Some of the scenes clearly suggest that the girls are a good deal older than they sound like or behave (fan speculation puts them at around 20, which seems a tad old). Good thing the anime stopped and didn't adapt all of the manga: Anyway, I mentioned it before, but this is a really baffling mixture of lighthearted and goofy nonsense, deeply philosophical discourse on the nature of life and the exploration of the dreary post apocalyptic wasteland of a dying world. Much of the time nothing at all happens and it's glorious to see (or boring, depending on your preferences and tastes, I guess). Beer is great, right Yuu? Anyway, there are two things that bothered me throughout watching it. The character models, of course, and uncanny valley CGI camera pans. My initial impression was pretty wrong, I figured after the first episode that the concept would get stale really quickly, but it didn't. There's something endearing about watching the two trek through a dead city trying to salvage enough food and fuel to continue. Both characters benefit greatly from the absolutely incredible performance by their voice actors, at least in the Japanese original. All the songs that come up, the intro, outro and the raindrop song, are sung by the VAs, not very surprising there at least when it comes to Yuu, who had a role in Love Live! after all (and those were picked from established j-pop singers). The raindrop song I already linked, here's the intro: They even manage to sing in their slightly slow, child-like limited speech pattern way in which they voice their characters.

Is that someone that comes up in Stardust Crusaders already? Not sure what to think of Iggy yet, though. Somehow this just keeps getting weirder and weirder, and whenever you think it can't possibly get even weirder, it just does.

it is from the same studio, so that makes sense. Probably a similar creative team. I can recommend Kill la Kill for the times when you need some sensory overload. It's still a pretty funny parody, anyway, and it does work for the 24+1 episodes it has, so that's fine enough. It just really kills your brain when trying to take everything in. Nui might have been one of the most batsh*t craziest weirdo antagonists I've ever come across. Sort of spoilers, I guess. In that case I doubt I'll catch up, there aren't that many episodes of Miyu anyway. That's fine though. I'll just quote myself, from some time back in May when I watched this episode. Current talk:

Well, maybe it won't devolve into giant mech battles, but the two girls sure as hell found one and are currently destroying half the city in Yuu's attempt to figure out how to use it. Yeah, uhm, close enough.

That explains why I can't see the video at all. Good job making sure my eyes are safe YouTube!

I'm not sure if I'd call episode 8 and 9 "happier" but whatever helps you cope. They did end on a really hopeful note. After getting really, really, really dark for a bit. 10 was quite a gut punch, huh? It was so obvious but you can't help it. It's just sad.

I'll see soon enough. I really have no explanation for this. As I said, I might be underrating Clear Card, but the drop in quality is so steep its impossible to be objective. There are no coincidences. Only inevitability. What in the what now? How did you end up trying that? Heh.

It's not that bad. No, that is a lie. It used to be not that bad, but nowadays even long established franchises that used to be great to to hell and I'm sitting here, watching them, and suddenly I'm sitting through 39 episodes and two movies of Sailor Moon Crystal. I wonder if I should count Clear Card amongst those. I mean I knew going in that Discovery and Picard were most likely going to be bad, so I expected nothing else. Same for Sailor Moon Crystal. But Clear Card? No, in some ways, while it's probably, objectively (as objective as one can be), the best of the shows I've hate watched in the past two or three years, it was inarguably the worst experience for me. Because Crystal, Picard and Discovery at least made for fun forum posts. Clear Card... no, that's just sad. In terms of expectations and outcome, Clear Card was even worse than The Phantom Menace. There, I said it. I feel a bit lighter now. I'm already done with the first part of the OVA, but now it's time to sleep. I can say the first part was pretty good, but highly confusing. Seems like half of it went missing in editing (or more likely was never drawn in the first place). The music was pretty painfully 80ies at some points, but it does look a good deal better than Girls' Last Tour, as much as I like it in spite of its animation (except that one fanservicy part in the last episode).

Out of all the reasons why nobody should be like me, that's probably... Speaking of Vampire Princess Miyu, I've decided to shelf Tsu... a hell, Shaoran Gaiden Show for the time being, or at least get an episode in every now and then, and instead begin with that.

Girls' Last Tour Episode 9. GIANT ROBOT! And a smaller one!