majestic

In the spirit of the thread: Sugooooooooooooiiiiiiiii. I had no idea that was coming out next month. I always thought I was the only one here who liked Castlevania. The third season I found to be a bit weaker than the second (and a lot weirder).

No, I can't, because brain, but I appreciate the information. Didn't you say you wouldn't watch the films though? As for what's next, how about some 80ies bad movie action schlock. You could try MD Geist. (well that's mostly a joke). @BartimaeusShould you choose to watch Madoka Magica after Sailor Moon (or in between), it's probably better to take the movie trilogy. It looks a good deal better than the TV anime, and the audio quality is better too.

I watched the first five minutes of the first Puella Magi Magica Madoka film. Assuming it stays like that, it's a prettier version of the TV anime insofar as exactly the same things seem to be happening. Except the movie having movie level animation quality and dropping the opening dream sequence of Madoka. Movie: TV: Seems like there's barely any reason to watch both, but I'm guessing there are some more differences. The third film in the trilogy is entirely new material. Needless to say both versions look gorgeous, but the level of detail in the film sure beats the made for TV anime. The runtime of the anime and the first two films is also really similar (~4 hours, very worth the watch, I'd say).

Heavy ending spoilers for Puella Magi Madoka Magica ahead: How did you like the soundtrack by the way?

Minako is technically... two different characters in the manga. In the first arc she's this dead serious leader type that's been fighting evil for a long time. She takes charge and helps everyone remember their past lives and get their act together and even gets to pull out the Master Sword LEGENDARY SACRED SWORD from its resting place on the moon (you'd think it would take Makoto to pull a sword from a stone, huh, but no, we're doing the Excalibur thing). And once Metalia is out of the way she increasingly becomes a goofball because her Sailor V persona starts bleeding into Sailor Moon. It's the sort of thing that happens when you're under a lot of pressure to deliver and are working on both your regular normal series and the sequel at the same time. You can see that in the anime as well. In the first season when she has her backstory episode and asks Usagi to help her possessed friend that stole her love from her Usagi even wonders about how much more mature Minako already is, compared to them. Look at this... Just take care not to watch it until the end because that goes all the way to Sailor Stars. It's pretty obvious where the first season ends and the second one starts. The Sailor Stars episode you haven't seen yet starts at 15:29. Makoto falls under Dark!Endymion's spell and tells him all about the secret underground control bunker in the arcade's basement, a couple of issues after falling for Dark!Motoki's lovespiel to drain her energy.

SU spoilers. The first three episodes of SuperS weren't so bad, except for having two of the top three horrible assault scenes. It just went downhill fast from there. Usagi yelling at her mother and storming off after Chibi-Usa ate all her lemon pie was a first warning sign, I guess, but... strange. Were we talking about something? Seems like I don't remember the topic. Isn't it strange tha they only made 161 Sailor Moon episodes? I could have done with a few more. I'm not entirely unhappy to have watched Crystal, in part for the same reason that I'm reading the manga now. It's better than Crystal because less adaptational weirdness and some more character stuff, but it's not really... good, and it's only going to be come worse in the next arc. It puts certain things of the anime in a new context. Also kind of looking forward to seeing more Tuxedo Mullet action in Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon. I've read that Minako and Rei will be fighting with each other in that one. That seems to fit a good deal more than whatever the anime tried by making her have a conflict with Makoto (twice even). There's one thing I haven't complained about in the manga chapter I read recently. It's that Makoto is the only one who falls for Dark!Endymion's mind control. Why? Is there some unwritten Sailor Moon rule that Makoto needs to be used as punching bag at least once per arc? Is that because it's easy to do?

They're starting to grow on me, and the band really doesn't even shy away from making sappy romance songs. It's hilarious and fun. BABY BABY TELL ME MORE OF YOUR LIES. SAY YOU WANT ME FOR A LIFETIME!

Steven Universe Future Episodes 1 + 2

You want some cheese good sir?

I'm pretty sure everyone under Luna-P's hypnotic spell forgot about Chibi-Usa when it wore off. There's an episode in R that sets this up. The girls and Mamoru aren't affected because they never were under the spell in the first place. Why? Because the plot demands it, and there was no time to think it through when it came up - and no time for Naoko Takeuchi to spend an issue or two on dealing with the aftermath of Chibi-Usa going back home. Or maybe everyone just treats Chibi-Usa like Deanna Troi's older sister, and if you haven't seen that episode and wonder what now, yes, that's exactly the point.

Fun fact, Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction ran on our TV stations under the title "X-Factor" - imagine my confusion when I found out that talking about X Factor on the internet made people think of casting shows instead of Commander Riker telling us whether silly coincidences that were believed to be magic actually happened or not. The show is also responsible for one of the hardest laughs I ever had watching TV, there's an episode where a couple talked to another one how lucky they got after their wedding - they were supposed to board the RMS Lusitania to go on their honeymoon, but their wedding bands got messed up over night and had to be repaired, so they missed boarding the ship. The other couple they talked to were all like: "Wow, you had such luck with that, OH MY GOD!" and then the camera pans out to reveal that they're all on the LZ 129 with the Statue of Liberty visible in the distant background. Sadly that was one of the "NOs", but you can't have everything. It was also probably not intended to be funny, but hey... almost felt Final Destination-ish. If that didn't come out before Final Destination. Which it probably did. Or not. It's not even that easy to find out because another fun fact, the show was so much more popular in Germany that new episodes premiered there. Season three in particular aired in '99 here, while way later in 2000 on FOX. More SUish spoilers mixed in:

Woha, I had already forgotten about repressed that. Minor otherwise really useless spoiler: You're really close now to a few episodes that... well, let's say they're going to be... you'll see!

More SU-ish spoilers: Strange feeling, huh? When even the more serious melodrama episodes suddenly are good.

That makes sense. SU spoilers:

I initially felt the same way you did. She gets better. She's still my least favorite of the four, but... it's a lot less clear cut than it was in the first season.

I also just looked at a few screencaps from the first 11 episodes on the Steven Universe wiki, wow I already forgot how rough the animation was at first. That gets so much better later.

BIG MADOKA SPOILER DON'T CLICK IF YOU'RE @Bartimaeus AND STILL WANT TO WATCH IT! (heh)

Welcome to Sailor Stars and have a nice day! It's all fun and games until...

In case you haven't gotten to the trigger warning point yet, consider skipping it when she gives the timecode. Mini-spoiler (also trigger warning, of a sort):

So let me get this straight, the problem you have with the episode is that it's body horror, not that he has to drown the nice kittens to get rid of them? You horrible speciest (specicist?) prick! #CancelKP No seriously, that was one freaky episode indeed. edit: Quoting myself here... that was very painful to watch. It's absolutely worth it, but it is painful. Plus, she's not kidding about the part with the trigger warning.

Yes, ever since I started to write, uhm, "longer" posts I'm just typing everything up and then putting spoiler tags around text because that way the forum software makes less of a mess of things, but then I noticed I had mixed Sailor Moon and Steven Universe spoilers and edited another spoiler section in. I also don't think you should worry about why everyone looks humanoid - or even human - in Sailor Moon, even though they're aliens. Technically Usagi is from the Moon, the girls each are from their respective Guardian planets even though that makes no real sense. Yes, their current incarnations had human parents, but their past selves didn't - yet they still look human. Are human, maybe, except for their lifespans. TNG had that explanation episode for the forehead aliens. It was super contrived, but carried a nice message regardless. I liked the MYSTARY hunt the first time, but it makes for a less exciting rewatch, like with everything where the mystery and the surprise are the main drive for suspense. Once the cat's out of the bag, it's less interesting. Like much of Babylon 5, for instance. The entire Vorlon vs. Shadows conflict was much more fun to watch unfold the first time around. SM spoilers: Well, regarding Steven Universe Future, I'll try to make some time for it. I still want to watch Lindsay Ellis' long assed video about getting cancelled and there's the "minor" matter of having to use my weekend to wrap up things at work. Eh. Yeah. The week was really annoying.

Not that I eat such things, but there's sweet popcorn, right? Maybe it was that. Spoilers!

@Bartimaeuswas right, I meant spoiler tagging Sailor Moon stuff everyone of us has seen already. It's not like anyone else is reading the posts anyway. I already think Battle Tendency is better than Phantom Blood. It's goofier, more fun, more interesting and much better paced, and yes, JoJo is less boring than JoJo. Hahahaha. But yes, indeed. It's still hard for me to properly place the first season, which comes back to me essentially starting the show with the second one, or almost at least. It was late first season for me, at a point where episodes happened that were still fun, but decidedly less goofy than the initial bunch. My memory of the olden times is a little hazy, but I do remember how... different the early episodes felt when I watched the first re-run (well technically the second re-run since the first season aired on a different channel earlier, but details schmetails). R will always be special as the season where I really fell in love with the anime. Regarding silly fun, Sailor Stars is often silly in a similar manner to the first season, only with a much older, different Usagi, and a different focus. The fights in Sailor Stars are often just there, granted, the sweat shooting football player was pretty weird, but there are no monster that turns Usagi into a giant tennis ball or anything that's close to S' level of monster goofiness, like that taiko drum daimon, and when they tried it turned out to be a bit derivative, like the cook offering Usagi cake and she falling for it saying she has a second stomach for chocolate cake. That was funny enough, but nothing new. On the other hand, after almost 200 episodes it does become a bit difficult to come up with new jokes and new things that still fit neatly into the established universe. Pushing the fights a bit into the background was a pretty good choice overall. Beating S - aside from you saying that you (might) prefer the first season for being the first season, essentially, which I understand - was something that probably couldn't have been done anyway. Rewatching S convinced me that not only was that the best Sailor Moon season, it's legitimately some of the best entertainment I've come across. Spoiler spoilers, so tell your brain to go into long term memory lock while should you choose to read: