majestic

I'll just kind of leave that one out of the spoiler tags. I think I've said that before - Cardcaptor Sakura is the clearest origin point of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. While CCS doesn't have a magical girl team and Sakura doesn't fight witches (or monsters, or evil energy beings, that one comes from Sailor Moon), the subversion of Sakura's life motto zettai daijoubu da yo! - which means something like "everything will definitely be all right!" - is, I think, the clearest goal for Madoka. Good to know you still like the show though.

Ah, pity, the Sourcerer is probably the single best hacking villain I've ever seen. Hammy beyond belief, utterly terrible actor and of course totally inaccurate. I did not say that. The drawing is pretty good. Sure looks better than Clear Card too! No, I don' think there'll be anything weird. Other than the film being a bit too like an anime film and not enough like Cardcaptor Sakura, but I've complained about that at length before. The villain of the movie is voiced by Rei from NGE, but I said that before. Insomnia sucks. Luckily, while I have major issues actually falling asleep (sometimes takes hours even though I'm dead tired), actual phases where I can't sleep at all are fairly rare. I barely ever sleep enough and often go for weeks with only 2 or 3 hours of sleep a day, but it's always at least a bit. Hope that'll clear up for you soon(ish). Seems to be a general trend with our forumites too, judging by the other thread about daily experiences. Talking about otakus is not that easy. I don't remember much about the quality of the documentary, to be honest, only that the people interviewed were stranger than I was at the time, which was pretty impressive. Nowadays I know that Japanese society as a whole is stuck in a place between insanely complex social norms, tradition and fast paced modern life, so counter-/subcultures have to be even more extreme (than ours), and kind of naturally end up being complete outliers in terms of human behaviour. In general though, yes, football ultras are the dregs of society once they turn from being utterly devoted to harmful, which invariably seems to happen. As for being devoted to things that don't really matter, who am I to judge? Live and let live, as long as they're not harming anyone else it's all good, as far as I'm concerned.

It is on Netflix for me, but that means preciously little with the sorry state video licensing is in. Although it did say Netflix Original, but Netflix slaps that on anything they have distribution rights for, even if they have nothing else to do with the project. Always been a pretty weird move. By the way, speaking of things I have on Netflix but you probably don't, there's a new age ReBoot reboot on Netflix called The Guardian Code, which is part real TV show, part animation, and full out terrible. It's so bad I wonder if it will ever show up on Best of the Worst as an exception, with a TV show instead of a movie. They already made exceptions for Half in the Bag, so why not... Bestest villain hacker ever too. Tangent over.

Love Live! has so far turned out to be much less of a disaster than I thought. Still need to finish that one too, but I'm not really in the mood for the sort of metaphor filled thematic exploration that's crammed into it right now. At least I think that's what's going on. It could also really only just be an anime about fighting sword duels over a woman in a duelling ring underneath an upside down castle, sitting atop an unsupported, almost endless spiral stairway, that sometimes features surfing elephants, exploding curry, boxing kangaroos and bowling balls. You forgot Devilman Crybaby on your list, why? edit: My head's been pretty abuzz with all sorts of crap these days, so I'm perhaps finding Love Live! relaxing in its simplistic silliness as an added bonus over the heavier stuff that I've been watching recently (as much as I loved watching Violet Evergarden, it's not a fun distraction), and Clear Card really failed me there. edit 2: While Kill la Kill is pretty funny too, it's so over the top and over... overflowing with insanity that it's really stressful to watch. Everyone's always yelling, has motor mouth syndrome that makes the subtitles zip by, the story's a convoluted mess and it's at times giving JoJo's a run for its money in pure nonsensical bizareness, and that takes some doing.

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card. Currently watching an episode, very quick update. It's episode 11 and the first real, laugh out loud moment: Look guys, you apparently still can do it, now make everything else like that too and I can forgive you for the animation. Not so much for the 10 prior episodes of middling quality. edit: This one and the prior episode directly reference the events of the second Cardcaptor Sakura film, where one of the central elements is directly contradicted by even earlier Clear Card episodes. This is definitely deliberate. Something's going on, and that had better be part of the storyline, or else I'm going to be really disappointed. More than I already am. That's probably right, but hard to judge. The drop in quality with Clear Card isn't this extreme, I think. For all intents and purposes, it is still Cardcaptor Sakura, the elements are all there, it's just the rather hard to quantify magical feeling that's gone. Ranma 1/2 seems to have turned into something completely different there. Clear Card is like falling out of love. I... uhm... that's a strange way to put it, but accurate, but words fail me when I try to describe what's wrong with it. Clear Card is the Majora's Mask to the older anime's Ocarina of Time. It's not a bad game, has decent ideas, but compared to its sequel it just lacks that special something. Although, in retrospect, Majora's Mask was a pretty good game, it just had to live up to something impossible. Clear Card isn't as good as Majora's Mask was, but it too fails to live up, and that too was probably impossible to achieve. Sometimes the stars just align right, don't they, and something is the perfect thing at the perfect time. Also: Stop watching unmitigated disasters (yes, I am fully aware of the hypocrisy of that statement) and watch something better, or else I'm going to post unmarked Cardcaptor Sakura spoilers until you do. Here's the first one: Sakura really likes Yukito.

I have a bit of an issue with throwing things away. It took me a long while to get rid of all the issues of a biweekly computer tech magazine that I've been subsribed to for like 23 years now. Sometimes I think about cancelling the sub, but I can't bring myself to do that. I should at least drop it down to digital only, or drop the e-paper version, either way would shave of a good deal of the costs, but meh. Between inertia and "it's always been like that" and my... other flaws, yep. Nope. Luckily being a data hoarder isn't among them. I almost never delete anything and always am at the limit of my disks because I don't even uninstall games I've completed and will probably never play again, but I don't hunt down every bit of something. Phew! That's a really good point, but I really just skip most of them. I do make it a point of watching them at least once whenever they're new. And yep, it's really only for a few episodes. The first time is after the christmas episode, and that was in episode 36, and 46 is the last one, because the Sakura Card arc has a new intro and a new outro. I wonder if the run was cut short because it really seems like a waste to make new intros and new outros for what's considered the "second" season of the first arc, and it then having only two handful of episodes. It's not just the song, there's something really great about Sakura looking out the window. There's a Nippon Animation anime called "Meme", but that would be written as Miimi or something like it on a cover (and it was original, not based on a manga), not Meme. Therefore, I don't know if that's something official, or just a manga Ranma made up, like the ones Rei has and Usagi keeps reading (unless it's Sailor V). That worked. Except for one shot of one of the girls pulling on her bikini a little nothing happened. In fact, most of the episode they spent in their pajamas and trying to address each other in less formal ways. I guess the character building pillow fight could be considered borderline fanservice, but it wasn't drawn that way. The main character development arc of the episode fell a little flat. I'm sure it makes sense for Japanese people to have difficulties to go from respectful speech to informal speech quickly (the oldest group member and president of the student council insists on not using honorifics and all the keigo, in an effort to build more team spirit), but it's not something I can relate to. We do have artifacts of that in our language too, formal ways (pronouns mostly) to address people you don't know well or superiors (and some for judges and priests), but I hate them so much that I carefully craft my sentences in a way that avoids most of them. Funny how many pronouns one can leave out, and our regional dialgect allows many of them to be simply subsumed in the preceeding verbs.

That looks pretty good. I... almost always skip opening credits unless they're unique for each episode. The only instance where I've always sat through all opening and closing credits when I had the chance to skip them (i.e. not while watching Sailor Moon on TV in the 90ies) so far has been Violet Evergarden. Cardcaptor Sakura's second outro I watched every time too, but only that. That was just great, a pity it lasted only a short while - 10 episodes or so, I think. Woops. Spoilers, I guess. Sumimasen! The outro/closing credits of Violet Evergarden were a great way to wind down, listen to the song that I actually really like and to... let the episode settle in, I guess. I think I posted that before. Of course sometimes it cheats and plays the closing credits over the final footage of the episode, and you can't possibly skip it. On the other hand it only does that rarely and to great effect. The Sailor Stars into I watched every time too. For the new song, and because it felt like the right thing to do with the rewatch coming to an end. So, no, watching intros or outros isn't really a mark of quality for me. In terms of closing credits it's a mark of impact, I guess. Except for Cardcaptor Sakura... that was just magic. All of it, really. I definitely posted this one before! Episode 9 of Love Live! was genuinely great. It did have one instance of Nozomi threatening to rub Hitori's, uhm, you know the drill by now, but otherwise that was just really good. Still never really going to like the animation. Nothing of it, really, from the character designs, to the shot composition and the direction, there's really nothing that stands out (except for the fanservice when it does happen and is paid undue attention to), but there are times when I find myself wondering if Honoka was meant to be a deliberate copy of Usagi, just without magic and more butt-wiggling. Onwards to the beach thing, now. Wish me luck...

I think you just sold that to me regardless of how the second season turns out. Which might prove to be an issue if the other episodes are terrible, but I don't know when I will get around to watching it. It sure looks I was wrong to dismiss it out of hand based on the discourse on it. Live and learn, I guess. A pity, really. The third Madoka movie has an instance of literal foreshadowing! Sometimes, you know, I think about asking a resident poster who is a history teacher and triathlon buff to watch Sailor Moon, or at least try to get his daughter to watch it. She's the perfect age for that and should be able to appreciate the cousins, but then I get afraid that we'd be getting posts defending SuperS as "silly fun" that's still "all right" to watch. Like his posts about about the new Star Wars films. Not that I think he'd watch Sailor Moon, anyway. I'm two episodes away from the Love Live! beach outing, I'll try to get to that today. Well, today will work for sure (just past midnight here), but I mean, now. I'm kind of dreading the horrors of what creepy grandpa Nozomi is going to do. Ideally not join them at the beach, but with her, uhm, weighty arguments there's no way in hell the animators are passing up that opportunity to draw them in swimwear.

I'm just easily entertained, and a little enjoyment is usually enough to drown out a lot of bad - but overall, you're probably right. Guess there's a reason why I have a thousand hours of time played on Master of Orion 3. It's the other way around for me, the good sticks around much longer, for some reason. Plus there's always the chance that later seasons of Love Live! don't up the ante on the silly fanservice and keep it less... ah, who am I kidding. This will only get worse the more episodes they do, won't it? That concept can't last longer than a season... Guess I'll see it when I see it. There's one exception. When something was really good, and then becomes less so, that is a much worse situation for me. Hence why I keep watching two episodes of Love Live! for each Clear Card episode. Objectively, Clear Card is better than Love Live!, even with all its problems. It's just... it could be so much more. edit: You should have stuck with Madoka, the third movie is really good!

Sure, but I'm not talking about having to watch everything. That I'd do regardless. It would be a lot easier if I just hated all of Love Live!, but I don't. Love Live! has moments in the show where it's actually pretty fun to watch, and for the past few episodes, except for 5 and 7, the moments even began to outweigh the silliness. It's weird writing this, because that's not what I was expecting from what I thought was going to be a stupid musical show that looked something I could watch every now and then and make fun of to get some cheap laughs in this thread, with the occasional like or two, and to satisfy my curiousity about how you could milk several seasons worth of content ouf of a school idol group concept. Instead it's slowly becoming mildly frustrating to see something that could be much more consistently entertaining if it had not been written and animated by teenage boys*. To answer my question from earlier: I don't, really, like the entire show as a whole. I just find Honoka to be somewhat endearing, and I am occassionally entertained by her shenanigans, and her interactions with Umi and Kotori - and that's kind of enough to make the more egregious stuff somewhat annoying while being perfectly fine with the less problematic stuff because it's neither good nor bad enough. If that makes any sense. It's pretty late and I'm posting again instead of sleeping. Off to bed now! *Hyperbole, obviously.

Love Live! School Idol Project, episode 7. "This is big!" "What is?" "They're going to hold Love Live!" "Great! [beat] Uhm. What's that?" Honoka really is Usagi, and Love Live! is of course an upcoming contest. Which the girls are only allowed to enter if they don't have any failing grades, which immediately puts Honoka out a bit. She's, uhm, not so great at math. Rin is failing at English, and Nico is holdin a book upside down, so... yeah. This isn't going to go well. Episode was fun, coming along nicely, until Nozomi, one of the two girls from the student council shows up and grabs Nico's boobs. Yes, that's the same character that already fondled Maki for no reason. She threatens Nico to keep rubbing her boobs until they're sore if she doesn't study harder. Why? Why is that there. Is that something like nipple twisting amongst boys? I really... doubt that. Nope. That's probably really just there to... ah, hell. *sigh* edit: Of course, this happens in front of the six other girls, and nobody mentions it or says anything. Not once. Nothing. edit 2: Nozomi is like the creepy grandpa that grabs young women's shoulders and breathes down their necks, and she just rubbed Nico's boobs. Again. What the hell, show, you had a couple of episodes without that, now it's back and making up for lost time? edit 3: I shouldn't post while watching. She's just done it to Rin, Honoka and again to Nico. Yep. Okay, this episode is officially as bad as I thought the entire show would be. Now the beach episode needs to be terrible and I'll be satisfied. edit 4: Episode ends with all three getting passing grades in their weak subjects, but it made no difference, the school has already decided to refuse all applications for new students, so it doesn't matter anyway. *sigh* Why can't all of this be awful, then this would be a lot easier. Like with Crystal. edit 5: Yeah guys, so, you don't mind me not spoiler tagging the spoilers, right? You're not REALLY going to watch this, right?

From what I gathered from KP, that version even cuts out most of the weirdness. Heh.

That sounds awesome, maybe I'll really check it out after Love Live!

That seems reasonable and has some basis in reality, so I'm going with aliens.

Love Live! School Idol Project, episode 6. The student council is doing interviews to promote club activities, including the idol group. During the interview they kind of notice that Umi writes the lyrics, and Kotori comes up with the choreography, Maki writes the music... and Honoka, for some reason, in spite of contributing nothing of note to the group, is considered their leader. They're then having a vote, with everyone more or less in favor of Umi, who doesn't want the job. The second choice, Kotori doesn't want it either. So they end up playing Karaoke to find a winner, with no clear result, then dance dance revolution on "apocalypse mode EXTRA" (okay, I'll admit, I laughed), then hand out flyers... yeah, with no real, clear winner either. Nico, the newest member, would like the job, but nobody wants to give it to her. Honoka comes up with the idea to share the spotlight for the upcoming song, with everyone doing an equal part, and they end up doing that. Cue new music video. One that wouldn't be so bad if... they wouldn't have cat and bunny costumes and all that stuff, so, uhm. Yeah. Honoka sleeps in class, eats more than she should, likes sweets, is lazy, hates getting up early and is bad at school. She's maybe not the leader they would vote for, but they one they need. Hey. Why does this remind me of a much better anime for some reason? So, actually, this was a fun, decent episode, with nary any overt fanservice. It's still there in the way the girls sometimes stand around (I'm sure they'll all get serious backpains eventually if they keep standing around like that), the close ups and the dancing, but no creepy boob grabbing and no more butt wiggling for the time being.

One of the great things in the season was the way they became friends with the Three Lights. Usagi bumping into Sailor Moon's Robbie Williams without her recognizing him was perfectly in character for Usagi and it makes sense for her to be interesting for Seiya. Taiki and Yaten are more exasperated by the girls than anything else, but slowly learn to appreciate them. The school shenanigans really took a backseat in R outside of the filler arc and S (studying for high school entrance exams aside), and disappeared from SuperS entirely. To be fair to SuperS, which is sort of hard, there was no school stuff in Eternal, and there probably is none in the manga either. It begins with the scene from early Sailor Stars where Usagi is happy that everyone made it to highschool, most surprisingly herself. Maybe the entire arc takes place in the holidays. It really did serve as a perfect counterbalance to the ridiculous scope of the threat in Sailor Stars. The earlier seasons were already bad, but Sailor Stars managed to up the ante even more. Came with a lot less focus on ridiculous monsters and the loss of other things, like more Outer Senshi or maybe a bit more of the cats. Guess that wouldn't have been possible with the format, but Sailor Stars could have benefitted from an extra five minutes of runtime per episode. One of the best things that happened during the adaptation of the manga, but really also a side effect of the show almost cutting him out entirely after the first season. A bit more balance might have been nice, looking back. The manga and Crystal with it had way too much focus on Usagi and Mamoru, the anime had, at times, too little. We have "fated to be together", then "fake breakup" and then... nothing, until the end. Nothing except SuperS. Ugh. Overall however, a pretty good decision. In Crystal I always got the feeling that Usagi and the others stand a bit apart. They're always doing things without her, and she's off with Mamoru. At the end of the first arc they're even fighting separately. The biggest problem with Lead Crow and Aluminum Siren was the amount of screentime they got in the episodes where they showed up, before being blasted apart by Galaxia or sucked into a black hole. Iron Mouse had more episodes, and Tin Nyanko got to do more (like stalking the girls in disguise), but AS and LC got exactly that run of episodes where the writers just went "ah, screw that" and gave them like 30 seconds per episode. I also liked the way they just all left whenever it became pointless to stick around, with the Sailor Guardians complaining about it. "I am Sailor Moon, and..." "Ok, baaai!" *TARDISES AWAY* but technically that's not entirely original either. Eudial/Eugeal did the same. How can you say that you forgot R's ending? Black Lady and DEATH PHANTOM were awesome. Even awesomer in Crystal. Eh, yeah. DEATH PHANTOM was certainly the least interesting of the Sailor Moon villains, and that includes a cosmic horror being with no dialogue from the next season. However, and I'll say that for R, Saphir's death and Petz' reaction to it certainly ranks amongst the more emotional moments of Sailor Moon. It really is better watched in between than at the end of the show, like I did. I didn't enjoy it as much as the anime proper or the second film, but coming back to the show from an extended break would be the ideal time to go for it, I guess. There's something endearing about an Usagi style character trying to form an idol group, but that's pretty much the only thing this has going for it. It's enough to keep me watching without hating it, which is a plus what with having to finish it now that I've started, but I doubt it would be for anyone else in this thread. Except maybe Hoonding. He'd probably make ten thousand memes out of it. Ah, and I was so looking forward to discussing it with you.

Okay, Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card is officially dead. Just had an episode without Tomoyo. I'd be willing to overlook such details if the rest of the arc was great, but it just isn't.

But why? It's just Usagi on a ferris whe... oh, wait, you're talking about the Love Live! opening credits. Love Live!, so far, has been... less ungood than I expected, but not enough so to really recommend it regardless of it's presentation. I'm not sure how this got so popular. The fanservice is there, but not good, frequent or well integrated enough to be the primary reason to watch it if one likes that sort of thing, the character interactions are sometimes fun, but not enough so, and probably most damning of all, with the band apparently eventually getting nine members, there are too many characters to handle. The episodes so far were at their best when it was just Honoka, Umi and Kotori trying to get their idol club started. However, to be completely fair, I don't hate watching it. Which is really unexpected. Honoka, Umi and Kotori also make a pretty okay Freudian trio (tm), which is probably why their interactions are better than the others. However, good news, I just read that episode 10 is the beach episode. This is going to be great, I'm certain of it. Beach episodes are always the best.

Usagi on the ferris wheel. Sailor Stars might have tried to reach too far and failed a little, might have Shinji-ed Usagi at the end, had an ending run of episodes that felt both too rushed and too slow at the same time (that will always be an achievement), didn't do enough with Makoto and Ami (Ami even gets the distinction of being focused on in both episodes of this season that are arguably ungood hat aren't in the story finale) and had really weird designs (that can be blamed on Ms. Takeuchi, at least), stuck to the formula in a manner that made it obvious that the writers wanted to simply do away with it but weren't allowed to (how else do you explain the 30 second fights), had some really sketchy artwork and made it abundantly clear that Seiya would be a better fit for Usagi than Mamoru, and last - but certainly not least - it gave a huge idiot ball to Haruka, but... But... when it was good, and that it frequently was, then it was damned good. Sailor Moon is sure strange in some regards. Sailor Stars has none of the episodes of Sailor Moon I would put in an overall top 10 list, maybe not even in a top 20, its villains, apart from Iron Mouse perhaps, are all significantly less interesting, fun or developed than the regular ones from Sailor Moon S. Not counting the one-offs at the end there, and yes, that does include Kaorinite if only for the fun things she gets to do/say with/to Hotaru. But still, I'd rank it second overall, and that pretty close to S - but I said that numerous times now. I think all the girls together, as a group of friends, are really strong in Sailor Stars, maybe better than ever, even though Rei and Usagi clearly got the largest focus. That doesn't mean Rei does a lot on her own, but what she does is really great. Going to stop myself now, before this becomes too long. Again. Sure love talking about Sailor Moon. Hoooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Are you going to start with the first movie, since you're already past the point where it was supposed to be watched? Oh, and, episode 5 of Love Live! was not that good. It had less fanservice, but also not a very interesting storyline about an idol stalker girl the president of the Idol Research Club. She ends up joining the group, because everyone must. That's something a little weird, the opening credits has this music performance by µ's: Which totally is a spoiler because each and every one of them that aren't Umi, Honoka and Kotori, need episodes to be recruited. Sometimes multiple. And all... yeah, except Hanayo, who is called Kayo by her friend for some weird kanji-pronunciation reason, all don't want to join at first and need some convincing. Hanayo wants to join, but needs encouragement. Good job show. So, where was I? Oh, right. Episode 5 was a bit of a letdown. Not bad, but the good bits weren't as good as the ones before, and the bad bits... ey, weren't as bad as before. Sigh. Can we have a good episode with the amount of fanservice in this one now?

I want to add one positive side effect of moving the new Cardcaptor Sakura season to a more contemporary setting. Tomoyo has a drone which enhanced her stalking capabilities greatly.

It's a pretty good contrast to SuperS. At times, it makes SuperS look well thought out.

Episode 4 of Love Live! School Idol Project was a bit weird, because the fanservice just crept into the character stuff. At least I really see no other reason for that girl fight over the shy one who wants to join the group but is too, uhm, shy to do that. They're kind of fighting with each other over who of the two gets to drag the shy girl to the band to sign up. The composer of the song is called Maki, the shy girl is Hanayo and her childhood friend is called Rin. So Rin and Maki drag Hanayo to sign up and join as well. There's some weak justification for the fight over Hanayo, she talked to Maki earlier and Rin seems a bit jealous, but eh... that's... nope, that's just there for the viewers to see two girls squabble over a third one. Beats the other scene where Honoka's sister, wearing only a towel, was pleading with her breasts to grow a little. *headscratch* You know what's the worst part about all of this? So, @Bartimaeus, once you're done with the original CCS and maybe want to check out Clear Card regardless of me finding it to be disappointing, let it rest for a while. Like, long enough for nostalgia to kick in.

You really just need to ask one question. Stand users or no, does anyone yell JOESTAR-SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN? If no, then hard pass.

I'm fully expecting the spin-off called Sunshine!! to be only beach episodes or bikini/swimsuits competitions - ideally both! - with singing and dancing added. What else could it be with that name? Guess it'll be okay for the first season at least. Unless the boobery comes back in force.