majestic

Unicorn of War has a new YouTube video out called "The Black Moon Arc Is Weird" - my first reaction was "no sh*t sherlock" and almost clicked on it because there's also his real name in the channel description and I didn't see the Unicorn of War part immediately... oh boy am I glad I noticed in time. Screw the fanbase. Not entirely fair criticism in the spoiler: Good news, everyone! I mean, I'm really curious what you will think of it. I have to admit that with a second watching under the belt, Sayaka's character arc has become a favorite of mine across all anime - actually across everything. Apparently a lot of fans hated her... what the heck, how can you hate on Sayaka you idiots... edit: Speaking of the general fandom fandumb, boy there's some bickering about the show vs. the movies. One of the scenes in the first film has a changed soundtrack. It changes the scene in question in an interesting manner. The movie version is much more profound, has a lot more gravitas added to it - mostly necessary because the film is a bit shorter than the anime (first film has a 2h 10 minute runtime for 8 episodes of 25 minutes each, which adds up, even if a lot of what is lost was stock footage in the opening and closing credits). The interesting thing is that they both work perfectly within their respective frameworks, yet there's endless bickering about the change. edit 2: Never mind that the English dub is different (re-recorded, same voice actors - one of the characters is Rei from Sailor Moon ) for the films, the english subtitles for both are different too. It's almost like the creators wanted to troll the fanbase... oh, wait. Yep. I'm going with that. The actual teaser is much shorter than the upload would suggest. Probably because no actual footage is ready yet, it's a ~25 second collection of random scenes that will probably not even be in the actual film when it comes out. Actually that's... probably just footage they made to create the posters in the first place. Compare poster: To timeframe 00:17 to 00:21 in the teaser (or even just the teaser thumbnail on YT):

Well they talk an awful lot about cracking the world's shell and all that, at this point I'm not sure what to expect. Prior to this episode I would have said now, but surfing elephants is something that could just as well happen in JoJo's... Fun fact, voice actors sometimes really don't look like you would imagine from their voices: Touga is also way too much of a feminist, lol: edit: Madoka trailer!

With Madoka finally wrapped up, it's time to go back to Revolutionary Girl Utena, where one of the characters is voiced by DIO, which I did not know when I started watching a while ago, but now can't unhear at all whenever he talks. Not quite as buff as DIO, but can't all be gym gods, right? Currently watching an episode - and I think I can say this without it spoiling anything - where Anthy and Utena switch bodies after Indian curry turned out to be so spicy it literally exploded next to them. I heard Indian curry can be a little hot, but this is just ridiculous. There was also a boxing kangaroo earlier that broke loose and beat up a few students. Yeah, so, this is definitely a little weird every now and then. Tanz, Brüderchen! Meanwhile, back in India, trying to find some more of that spice to change them back: Yep. Surfing elephants. I don't even...

That's like getting a participation trophy. Public holiday today. Got four panicked e-mails about a "bug" in our system that we really need to fix. It's the sort of customer that refers to problems as challenges because problem has a negative connotation. The times, they are a-changing. Used to be that newspeak was something Orwell thought the authoritarians would force on people, not the people on themselves. Well this particular challenge isn't a bug... everything's working as intended. If I ever find a way to fix operational handling issues through software you guys won't see me again, because then I'll build a castle on the moon and retire forever with the oodles of cash I'll be making from it. Heh. Yeah. Not very likely, huh?

Well that was something. It's interesting how similar but completely different the series and Rebellion ends. The series (or the first two movies, they're almost but not quite equal) ends on a bittersweet high note that feels like a well deserved happy ending, while Rebellion actually has a happy ending that just feels hollow and sad, and there's an overall feeling of melancholy to this that lasts long after the credits have rolled. Dear readers, if you find that confusing, then you may just need to watch to understand.

Watching Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Rebellion right now. Not finished yet, so can't really comment on anything, but... uhm, I want some of what the creators took before making this film. That's some serious tripping. edit: Literal foreshadowing in the film:

While I'm probably a good chunk younger than you are, I'm not that young... but I only know Andy D!ck from that Voyager episode where he played the EMH Mk. II and just assumed he was a random actor, not a guest star, until Rich asked which famous comedian guest starred as EMH Mk. II on Voyager. It's a combination of not really liking most comedy and not being from the US. I've seen Zoolander but can't remember his part, but that's pretty much it.

When I was a lot younger I had naturally wavy hair with very long curls that was well over a foot beyond shoulder length (kind of like Jason Momoa, just with a scrawny, MUCH less buff frame ). Then came military service, and it never grew back the way it was, and the curls are almost completely gone. Such a waste. edit: Will be getting my first shot of Moderna next week.

That's a bit of a process. Once the other Guardians show up, you'll very often have a lot of transformations on screen just to pad runtime out - showing the full team transform even if only one of them actually does something, Sailor Moon R being the worst offender, I guess. Then the seasons progress and eventually you'll end up missing the full team transformations and kind of enjoy seeing whem when they come up in a special. It's like with the attack scenes. They're nice at first, but... endlessly repeated. Overall that's a minor issue and it never bothered me, but I can understand when people complain about it. The budget of the show was what it was, and stock footage is a decent way to stretch runtime. If you like the Tarot card stuff you can also eventually look at how much Astrology hokum there is in Sailor Moon. There are some things that these early episodes have that will eventually phase out. In a way, the show progresses in certain chunks. There's the first 13 episodes with a lot of little things that quietly get dropped, then everything up to episode 24, then everything leading up to the final Guardian showing up, then the final stretch of season one plus the filler arc of R, the rest of R, then there's S which is... widely considered to be the single best season of Sailor Moon, then there's the season none of us want to ever talk about again (but will, for your sake, if you stick with it that long) and finally Sailor Stars, which was mildly divisive*. Yeah. *On the board here. In the larger fandom that season sees a split between love and hate, with very little in between. edit: @Bartimaeus I don't get people who say crystal's reboot animation is so pretty. There's a pretty decent showcase in the Netflix trailer. @LittleArmadillo0 minor spoiler for a later Guardian... it's pretty safe to click and all, but still. edit 2 (actual spoilers):

I am indeed.

I had no idea who Andi D*ck is. Looking at his IMDB page, I still don't.

Yelling at my screen, like this: He's calmy asking if the receptionist is trying to make fun of him here (y'all won't understand the language, but that's not required). Background: Support ticket wasting an hour of my time because - and get that - when someone from accounting doesn't confirm a manual internal money transfer from one account to the other (in the form of "paying" a bill between branches), there's never any money transferred. Hey, don't look at me, I'm as surprised as you are. Must be some error with the pricing module. Right?

That's clearly Double Down! (Trigger warning: Video contains one certain Max Landis)

You need more Minako

Twister is arguably the best of these generic disaster movies that were all the rage in the mid 90ies. Every time it's on you can count your blessings that it isn't, say, Dante's Peak. Sounds about right, but Ice Age is a more entertaining film than Twister, unless you like disaster porn with mid 90ies special effects and flying cows. Because that's the highlight of the film. A cow caught in a tornado going MOOOOOOOO while it wafts by. Here it is. edit: I should mention that I kind of liked Ice Age, but that's really... really only because the German dub is a lot better than the English original.

I don't know exactly how to describe it. It's adorable. That's just about the only thing I can say about it, and the episodes have - at least the ones I've seen so far - a completely different approach to the "battles" that happen, the fights, so far, have been... I don't know. The enemies in this anime aren't even threatening, at their worst they're up to some hijinks that's commited without malice, like a card that wants to prove its strength and happens to come cross a zoo and tries to lift elephants. Sometimes it's a card that just wants to be left alone, and there's no action at all, just Sakura trying to figure out how to approach the card without being sent away. I also have no idea if there's going to be some sort of villain or where this is going at all. To be honest, I don't really care. I could watch Sakura and Tomoyo visit the Zoo without any card showing up and still would be happy with the episode. Or relive the day where she has a music exam and needs to play the flute in class. It's... really hard to describe. I don't even have a real reason for liking it. It's just... dunno. Adorable.

I have, by the way, finished the first arc of the Sailor Moon manga. While this is - for reasons we now know - by no means a masterpiece it's better than Crystal. Giraffes or no, there's something beautiful about the artstyle, minimalistic as it was out of necessity. We already talked at length about this, but there were a few things that the anime dropped that nobody missed. Maybe I'm subjected to the SuperS/Sailor Stars conundrum. Does it look better just because Crystal was so bad? Who knows. Can't say I'm looking forward to the Black Moon arc, but perhaps that will turn out better than Crystal's version too. I'm fairly confident that I'll manage to finish the manga by the time the Eternal movie pair hits Netflix though. I've also watched three more episodes of Cardcaptor Sakura. I might have mentioned this once or twice, but everything about this is adorable, and it looks like this was the antecedent for Puella Magi Madoka Magica. There's an episode with a school festival where Yukito and Toya (i.e. Sakura's crush and her brother) are playing in a theater rendition of Cinderella. Toya plays Cinderella, while Yukito is the can of mackerels that grants Cinderella her wish... yeah, this isn't entirely faithful, but hey, neither is Disney's version. In the original the evil stepmother mutilates the feet of the equally evil stepsisters so they fit into the glass slipper, and Grimm adapted it further to have birds hack out their eyes when they come to Cinderella's wedding ceremony. Karma's a bitch, bitches. Anyway, so random one off character Yoko, who plays the prince that marries Cinderella, has a crush on Toya, but there's this rumor that he's blown off every single last girl that asked him out, and they all wonder why Yukito and Toyo are both still single. I wonder why that is. There's a certain beauty in this bewilderment, of course, because that implies that nobody thinks it's totally gay for guys to play Cinderella. She tells him about her feelings, but he tells her that he's already in love with someone else (hint: It's Yukito girl, really!). She apologizes to him because she's going to cry now. Poor girl, work on your gaydar a bit, I've figured this out in the first episode simply because Yukito has the same voice actor as Shinji and Haruka. Yoko and Toya, prince and soon to be princess. In the play, at least. I'm pretty sure Yoko is supposed to be a deliberate Revolutionary Girl Utena reference. Can't be 100% sure as this isn't nearly as subtle as Sailor Moon was in establishing that Ami and Makoto are really in love with each other.

Kozue’s team wins a game but Mr. Hongo thinks the victory was not decisive enough, Kozue gets whacked with the ball some as punishment, then the girls find out that their former team member Yuri has been secretly informing the other teams about their strategy. Lots of slaps, tears and a heart rending secret later Yuri drops volleyball for good an resolves to become a track and field star. She even makes up with her stepmother. I’m beginning to see why I liked watching this. Still too much volleyball but more character drama too now. Should have kept a slap counter. So far Kozue slapped Midori and Yuri while Yuri’s stepmom slapped her and someone on the team slapped someone once for wanting to give up. The current episode has the girls make some mistakes because they are nervous before the next game. More hard training ensues. Two instances of the girls calling their chubbier team member a lardass round the dated feel out rather nicely.

There's something about this trailer, I don't know. The AMV stills made this look better than it actually does. Rei and the Amazoness Quartet are the worst offenders. The show never looked good of course, but I was honestly surprised how uneven and bad the movie trailer makes the animation look compared to the scenes I've seen before. Stop the trailer at 0:12 for a nice shot of Palla Palla where she looks like... I have no idea what. The bug aliens are back. Hotaru and Setsuna are the only ones that look okay-ish, I mean, as far as these uncanny valley abominations go. Haruka and Michiru still look like Reapers in disguise. Then there is the scene where Minako's civilian form looks like she had a boob job from Wiseman while Black Lady was busy with Mamo-chan (00:34), and the overall conclusion, if THIS is the trailer they could make from the movie(s), just... just... how bad is this really going to be*? These days trailers are almost universally better than the movies they're shown for, and this trailer is about as uninteresting as they come. Also not sure how I feel about them remaking attack sequences used in the old anime. But that happened in season three already because everyone watching complained about how bad the show looks. *It was always kind of clear that it's not going to be fun, but from the AMV it looked like they were taking a few more liberties with the source material to make a better adaptation. Well, who knows, maybe I'll be in for a surprise in June and this will be awesome. I'm sure that will be the case. Yes. Indeed. Must... have faith in horse romances.

I take that as a recommendation then? Because Netflix shilled that anime to me something fierce. It even tells me there's a 97% chance that I'll like this. Oh, by the way, Sailor Moon Eternal trailer:

Oi, and because I forgot to properly credit my source of inspiration for the above post, here's Joseph Anderson's literary analysis of T-Rex Runner. He made that as an April fools' joke. Pay close attention to the tab names.

I think I just woke the neighbors with my laughter. Fun fact, this isn't the first time someone posted a comment like that. In one of the few threads I made, almost 16 years ago now, where I copied a collection of Turkish stereotype jokes that I received by e-mail, someone posted as a response: Oh, right, the song. Not going to translate the lyrics (really, I tried once in the music thread, and the result was... not so great), but while in the English version the English show up and randomly burn down a Scottish castle becaus they can (what other reason do they need, anyway), the one I linked features a duel between the brothers where one kills the other and is then exiled for it, wandering the world, never to return again in his lifetime. If this was set in JoJo's universe someone would call in a Cyborg and start wrecking everything. Heh.

I'll spoiler most of this post for the benefit of @LittleArmadillo0 , the first time should be experienced mostly unguided. The varied subtleties of Sailor Moon's characters, or: Why it pays off to read between the lines An examination of sights unseen, and meanings unknown.