majestic

There is a chance that I'll get to play Skyward Sword eventually, there'll be a Switch remake, or maybe there is already, I haven't really paid much attention. I've been mostly watching TV when I wasn't working recently. Mami's name is probably a reference to her, uhm, mammaries. Although that would imply fanservice where there barely is any. The film version has even less than the BR version (Homura's transformation sequence is different, and Madoka and Homura don't float around in space wearing only sparkles). Because otherwise she was the older sister / mentor archetype for the others, but not really the mother of the group. Hm. But when in doubt, blame English. How's your average Japanese person to know that Mami and mommy will sound almost the same in English. Those are different letters, for crying out loud.

Maybe, I don't know. It's hard to find anything online other than "That's Sakura's catchphrase, except when she's flustered, then it becomes hanyan!", and hanyan is apparently Chinese for being flustered (well, or blush with shame), so that makes even less sense, unless that's something Japanese girls did in the late nineties. Speaking of Zelda... did you know that Mami Tomoe from Madoka was voiced by Navi the annoying fairy from Ocarina of Time? Possibly, Shaoran is also the only one who occassionally says "Meirin" with a very soft r sound, while everyone else, most notably Sakura, says that name with an audible "l" in the middle. At least, I think. I only recently upgraded my understanding of spoken Japanese from everything being one weird wall of grunts to being able to recognize voice actors and actual words used. Recently meaning while rewatching Sailor Moon. Welcome to the wonderful world of very literal fan-subs and localized professsional subs, which is another angle of the subs vs. dubs debate that you don't really ever want to get into. Because even though rabid fans of anime will run you through for even thinking about watching dubbed anime, they can't agree among themselves how subtitles should be handled. The most moronic thing about the literal vs. localized translation discussion is when it comes to common phrases. Nobody who writes fan subs would translate "ohayo" literally, right? Becase that's just good morning. It doesn't literally mean good morning. It means "it is early!" but it is used in the same way we say good morning, much like kon'nichiwa and konbanwa, which means "this day" and "this evening" respectively. Yet the literal subs people object to having words and names dropped, and certain things properly localized. I don't get it. Except for puns, perhaps. There's no good way to deal with puns most of the time. The writers for Minako did an amazing job with the Viz dub though. But yes, the Netflix subtitles for Cardcaptor Sakura also feature long bouts of words that don't appear on the screen, and lots of names that aren't reflected. It's not necessary, in the end. Japanese is so different from our indo-germanic grammar structure that it makes no sense to translate and use every word.

Oh, Sakura-chan, kawaii! Hooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Today I learned that Xiaolang is apparently really the official Chinese name for Shaoran, and the reason why some material spells him Syaoran is because that's the appropriate Romaji in a different system, while most of Japanese is romanized with the Hepburn system. It would be Shaoran in Hepburn. Not that any of that matters. If Xiaolang is written in Pinyin, and that's what we have to assume, everyone on the show, including his Chinese-native cousin can't pronounce the name right. Makes sense for the Japanese girls obviously, but not really for Wei or Meilin/Meiling/Meirin... but hey... in Sailor Moon, Mamoru's gentleman friend from England introduced himself by saying HERRO too, so that's... par for the course. As if the show wasn't confusing enough already with its two separate English dubs, changed names and an additional, mangled US release. I also tried to find out what Sakura's trademark "Hoe!" is supposed to mean, but came up short. It's some sort of Japanese something, probably like "Oy!", for which you wouldn't find a proper translation either. edit: Made any progress?

Might be interesting to see if it was like that in the manga too. Tomoyo also still has an old camcorder, but from what I read you can still buy Tomoyo merchandise in Japan, and that includes modern camcorders in old school designs. So that at least... has a meta explanation. Why must you look so bad? WHY? The old animation conveyed a warm feeling and beauty that fit the show perfectly, while this is clear, clean and sterile in a way that is distracting from what made the show great.

Cardcaptor Sakura, Clear Card, Episode "0": Prologue Yeah, so... that looks soooo terrible compared to the original. Kero still plays on the same console, but delivery people are running around with tablet computers. Why the partial tech up? Sheesh. The prologue is an extended version of the last couple of minutes from the last episode of the original anime, except the continuity is all wrong. Yay. Well... not sure at all. Did I mention how terrible this looks?

Shipping a pedophile horse with a nine year old isn't, so that's not even something people should be doing in their private thoughts. Coyly writing (human) Helios doesn't cut it. The biggest problem with shippers is that they kind of get an idea in their head and usually won't budge, no matter how hard they're proven wrong, and that includes Carcaptor Sakura. There are "fans" out there who accused the writers of pushing a heteronormative agenda because Sakura doesn't have a crush on Tomoyo. Just because they are hardcore Tomoyo x Sakura shippers. A heteronormative agenda. In Cardcaptor Sakura. Really, here, have a very emphatic F*CK YOU you morons, and sorry but not sorry for the expletive. Final thoughts? Maybe. I don't know what for, though. This isn't the type of anime that requires a post-watch writeup. In fact, it barely demanded mid-watch writeups either. It does have a few truly fantastic episodes, and long streaks of great ones. The few that aren't as good look worse than they actually are, because they're just next to really... great episodes. For the most part, it's perfectly honest, grounded and as real as you can make a Maho Shojo anime about a 10 year old girl (that is 12 by the end of the run, or close enough to 12). It was a beautiful ride, and well worth checking out if - and that's a big if, I guess - you're... what? If you're what? Like me, I guess. Which is a horrible way to recommend something. It's adorable. It's more shojo than maho, I'd say, and it has a lot less action than Sailor Moon, and it is for a slightly younger audience. It still is an absolute marvel.

Well, that was that. Time for the second movie soon, and... Clear Card, I guess. If only it didn't look so... terribad. The ending was... okay. Fine. I... hm. No, really, it was fine. Mr. Wei is the best Alfred since Alfred, obviously. Damn.

Ey... Would it surprise you if I said that I don't like the Super Moonies' vocalist? She's pretty bad. Really, like bad. Capital B Bad. However, not liking Eurodance trash... I just got over you not liking Madoka, you know. Just kidding. It's one of these things that I grew up with and like even though it's 99% objectively bad - as objectively bad as music can get. It's my musical guilty pleasure. Have some Aqua! Okay, enough of that before I get a warning to not turn this into the music thread. I think the Sweet card episode is the worst in the entire run. If you would allow me the "spoiler" your presumptions are pretty much spot on. Sailor Mizuki will still be around as Sakura's teacher for a bit of course, but she'll limit the mysterious act to a bit of dialogue here and there. And by a bit of dialogue I mean a cryptic one liner and a bit of prodding every now and then. I was hoping for more Makoto action than I got, so you'll probably be good. The episodes also improve again after 30. 30 tries something different and it doesn't quite work. Some points for effort are in order, I guess. You'll see soon enough. Unlike Sailor Moon SuperS, these episodes can be traced to a single writer: Tomoko Ogawa. Even though she wrote the otherwise fine episode #25 with the Mirror Sakura, she has written 28, 29 and 33, and they're all like really high up on the worst episode of the show list. Probably to nobody's surprise, the only other episode not written by Nanase Ohkawa besides the upcoming #33 is #38, which, you guessed it, is also not entirely up to par. That doesn't mean that the other writers on the show all made episodes that were of lesser quality. Jirō Kaneko write some of my favorites (including the Wood card one), and Ms. Ohkawa has a few ones that aren't as good too, but that's not entirely surprising when she wrote like 50 of the 70 episodes. Ms. Ogawa has the worst good to not so good ratio though, sitting at one really good episode out of four. Although that's relative, the episodes are by no means bad, they're just not... as good as everything else is. In any other series, the baking episode would probably not be near the bottom (or at the bottom) of episodes. Now for the kicker. I'm going to say that Meiling worked for me in the way the writers probably intended her to. Completely, even. She begins her arc as an obnoxious, loud and supremely annoying counterpart to Tomoyo who simply self-inserts herself into the group even though nobody wants her there (not even Shaoran), then the show makes her the Butt Monkey so hard that you're beginning to find her sympathetic and then... she turns into a major Woobie while befriending Sakura and Tomoyo. Cryptic Sailor Mizuki-level vague spoiler: Something else, I just looked into the first few minutes of Clear Card. Tomoyo and Sakura sound the same, the writing is the same, the first joke is the same (guess who is almost late for school?), but... holy hell that looks so bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Why? Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?

That's probably some licencing stuff. I think that song had the same melody as the Japanese version in SuperS. You know what just happened? I went to YouTube to look the videos up to confirm if they have the same melody, found the Japanese one, scrolled down a bit and found these: There are the anti-vaxxer nutjobs that think vaccines are used for poplation control by Bill Gates. The more I read comments under Sailor Moon videos on YouTube, the more I wonder if that wouldn't be a good idea. Mr. Gates, please save us from Pedosus/Chibi-Usa shippers and people who think that Crystal's animation is beautiful, and make sure people who think that season 1 and 2 looked better than 3 spend eternity in that special place in hell reserved just for them. I'm pretty sure there's some space in between the poeople from the KKK, all the popes, Bruno and Stjepan. Don't you hate on my German Sailor Moon stuff! Well, actually... the Super Moonies are really, really, really bad. Okay, that's good. How do you like Sailor Mizuki so far? I mean... all I heard was Makoto talking, but I guess you don't really have that problem. edit: Right, so the big question, did you too think that episodes 28 through 30 were a little less interesting/great than the... oh boy, like 20 before them? Or was that just me?

No kidding, I just tried "I Wanna Be A Star!" and stopped after a minute or two. I don't even want to try anything else. At least our Sailor Moon songs were decent Eurodance trash (I mean "decent" in the way that I love the genre), aside from having lyrics that make no sense, like having a song about Sailor Saturn's conspiracy to... do something bad. No seriously, bad conspiracy. Huh, what? Right guys, maybe not write lyrics when you don't know what the show is a bout, huh? Moonlight Densetsu and its versions: I tend to agree, kind of. I wish the two were combinable, because I prefer the Dali version vocals over the Moon Lips vocals, but the audio engineering for the Moon Lips version is just better. It's not better performed, as much as I can tell, but it doesn't sound like it was recorded in a garage on a Sunday afternoon after Toei found out that they don't have an opening theme yet. It's really strange, because the other music in the show is top notch. Maybe that was intentional. My emotional attachment to that song is less than it could be, what with our German dub always having the same opening theme song for all seasons. The Sailor Star Song on the other hand, well... for some reason that just worked for me. I started out being weirded out by the change, and then loving it. I also appreciated Sailor Stars a lot more this time around than last time, but that's the changed perspective of adulthood, I guess, and it no longer bothered me that it had way too little Ami time, and what little was there wasn't as good as in other seasons. Heh. CCS, mild spoiler stuff: I also feel like apologizing to the people who made the Netflix subtitles. Yes, it did seem like they didn't realize that snowbunny wasn't supposed to be translated literally but is a nickname, but it probably was a stylistic choice, because Toya keeps calling Yukito "Yuki" after all, and it's never translated literally as snow, but if the quotes for the episodes on Wikiquote come from otherwise official subs (i.e. the ones on the BR), or one of the English dubs, then the Netflix ones are much better at expressing the emotional feeling that the situation carries. I don't know how accurate they are, but they certainly feel better than what the quotes read.

Hard to appreciate at times just how incredibly well done this is. I've been a bit hard on the second arc because some of the setup is a little forced and not as neatly integrated into the world as the first one was, but that first arc and the way it was set up was pure magic and probably hard to replicate. It's always Kero crying, not me. I'm totally not using the poor guy as a stand-in here. Nope! He really has a tough time dealing with the emotional stuff on the show when it happens. Non-descript spoiler (it still is a spoiler of a sort - so yeah, take care): Sakura also gets some character development. It's not that there never was development for her, but the writers made her deliberately more static than the supporting cast around her (at least, I think, maybe I'm reading too much into these never truly changing running gags, little kaiju ), as an anchor for the audience and a way to show how much far other characters have come.

Right, so that's enough for today. I'm going to sleep now. With four episodes left, the writers better had come up with a happy ending. Seriously. Guess I'll know tomorrow. @Bartimaeus why the confused look? Expected a real spoiler? I'll leave this here for posterity. You're probably done with the first arc by now anyway. edit: Or not, I've cut the Episode 60 spoiler. It's still in the preview, so unless Firefox crashes over night or the software eats it, I can still post it later... edit 2: Episode 66 had probably the best dialogue in the entire run at the end there.

Cardcaptor Sakura, episode 65. More sad incoming in #66 by the looks of it. Poor Kero is getting really worked over now.

IT BROKE NEW GROUND. Surprised nobody mentioned that yet.

Cardcaptor Sakura, episode 60. Anyway, the arc found its footing and has stronger episodes now. There's a certain amount of sequelitis going on and a bit of flanderization with Kero and Tomoyo, i.e. the show's beginning to overplay their love for sweets and Sakura, respectively, to the point where it sometimes becomes ridiculous. It's not entirely bad because they're still doing other things as well, but sometimes it's a tad too much. This episode... oi. Kero isn't just misty-eyed right now, why is he sobbing?

Good thing I complained a little about the first couple of episodes of the new arc. Episode 54 was an absolute highlight. The only thing is that Sakura looked a little strange. Not bad, just the animation was a little different than usual. Or maybe that was my imagination. I... hey well, look at Kero getting all misty eyed here. Man Kero, really. Heh.

A literary one, I'd say. His directing is less of an issue than his writing, in my opinion. Just look at From Dusk Til Dawn as proof. That film is so Tarantino that most people assume he directed, while that was Robert Rodriguez, someone who consistently made films that I enjoyed more* than any Tarantino offering. Except maybe Sin City, that can go rot in hell along with Pulp Fiction. I don't mind nonlinear narratives, but if you want to make three short films into one feature film offering, then... well, no, just don't do that. *By that I mean not wanting to pull my hair out while watching, at least. Machete was also pretty hilarious and entertaining, and that's pretty much all I require of films like that. Regarding Boyhood, keep in mind... Hahaha.

I'm pretty sure Meilin is Shaoran's karmic punishment for being mean to Sakura in the prior episodes.

You're also watching in Japanese and liking it. Welcome to Otaku City. It's also not ridiculous at all, but I'm guessing that was a rhetorical question. Don't worry, I'll stop posting spoilers, or keep things really vague from now on. Although, probably not even that. I wouldn't want to cause a heart attack. Have you continued past episode 19 by the way? Doesn't sound like it. I'm not sure why I quoted the post in such a disjointed mess. I guess I joined the Hysteron Proteron Club.

It was a joke. Sorry. But you'll get there soon enough. But yeah, good to know. No need to write mini-recaps then until you've caught up or finished. With the rate you're going that'll be pretty soon. edit: To explain fully, the first line above and inside the spoiler tag was a joke of a sort. I figured I'd tease something totally dramatic for comedic effect. That apparently worked a little too well, but you really need not be afraid of anything. There's a line directly below the first sub spoiler that reads "In case you were afraid to click, this was just a joke" but I guess you already bugged out before getting that far.