majestic

Cardcaptor Sakura, episode 43. ...

Sakura is supposedly a lot like Nadeshiko. Spoiler for episode 16: Personally I don't see it based on the picture of her, but eh, it's okay. That's true. A lot of the show feels like it was carefully put together. The Twin Bells shop showing up when it makes sense is one of these details. The girls don't go to the mall to buy toys or such items or use any other throwaway shop. The go to Twin Bells, and Sakura and Tomoyo talk to the shop owner every now and then, and when they ask something that seemingly makes no sense to the shopowner she helps them anyway. In some other show they'd probably barge into the mall and ask something and the shopowner answers anyway, or is randomly helpful for no real reason. edit: It does have some ups and downs, and some questionable choices when it comes to the age of certain characters, but the level of care that went into making this sure shows. Apparently they even got the old team together for Clear Card, so while that might look bad, there's still a chance it might actually be good in spite of the looks. It's creeping into dubs, Usagi and Chibi-Usa yell Mamo-chan in the Sailor Moon Eternal trailer, and I think the German dub of Madoka has honorifics in it too (which makes it even weirder because we have our own honorifics, even if they're more limited than Japanese ones). Now if there's any non-Japanese animated show with Japanese characters written by non-Japanese writers who tack on honorifics because it's set there without any real idea how to use them... probably. I don't know any off-hand. Slight spoilers: I already forgot that thing with the lockbox... Slightly spoilerish thing:

Episode preview for CCS 43 spoiler: Talk about 42:

CCS #41

My best guess yes, that's because he's Chinese. Xiaolong looks like it could be Pinyin (without the accents) for the sounds that Shaoran (or Syaoran) are supposed to represent in Japanese Romaji. The fun part here is, it's wrong. Because in both Pinyin and the much less ridiculous but Western (and therefore not used) Wade-Giles romanization sha would be the correct romanization. So either way, it's about as wrong as you can get, and if that's official it's even worse. Compare the way Shaoran is pronounced in the anime with the samples from the Chinese Pronunciation wiki: https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/pronunciation/Sha https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/pronunciation/Xia Never mind long: https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/pronunciation/Long Or lang, because hey, it's Shaoran after all... https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/pronunciation/Lang Both don't swallow the g, even if it's less noticable. Never mind that Sakura just calls him Li-kun anyway. Watching Sailor Moon broke me. Depending on who wrote the episode, the charactes would change the honorifics used to address regular characters, especially in Sailor Stars, and it became so bad something snapped and I stopped being bothered by everyone calling Taiki Taiki-san in one episode and Taiki-kun in the next. I'm pretty sure I complained about that while watching Sailor Stars. I stopped being bothered by them... the only real thing of importance is noticing when characters are not using honorifics. Like, hey, Toya when he's talking to Yukito. I wonder why that might be. It would probably be more interesting if that Osakan dialect Kero is talking with wouldn't be completely lost on me, or if it had some details or background that is related to the show but would otherwise have no place in it. But it's mostly looking at outfits, or items that came up in the show anyway. It's the pplace where the target audience of Cardcaptor Sakura shows the most. Somehow I doubt it will. BFFs for life.

There are two Cardcaptor Sakura movies, and the first one is according to what I've read supposed to be watched between episodes 35 and 36. So I missed that already. CCS episode #40

Hating on D1ck the birthday boy, what has this world come to?

I have a broken blood vessel in my right eye, so I'm currently doing my best Kyubey impression. Do you think I should go and ask 8th grade girls to make contracts with me?

Warner Brothers is producing a new movie, in which Superman is black. Black Superman will be referred to as the Man of Steal.

There's some early weirdness going on (including some conflicting information about when and where exactly Sakura's mother and father met). I think the flower rain in this episode stays even after the card is captured, but in later episodes anything summoned by cards disappears, which sometimes isn't much better in terms of how confusing that must be for the residents of Tomoeda, without ever being mentioned of course. Well, that's one hell of a difference. Maybe in another life - or when I finally upgrade my gear - I'll have enough disk space. Until then, streaming it is for space reasons. Same reason I stopped getting actual blu rays, or real books. I've used Netflix with several different smart devices, ranging from BR players to tablets to TVs, and some of them can't fully fill up the progress bars, even if you fast forward through all the credits. Certain Amazon Video clients on TVs have the same issue, or even worse, while they can continue from an episode or film you've left off, doing so doesn't complete the progress bar of the episode, making it impossible to resume on some other device without manually switching the episodes (after making sure that progress bar is completed, of course!). It's frustrating. They also dropped the Leave it to Kero-Chan! segment now. Could have done that earlier. It was never really interesting but my brain forced me to watch it anyway.

Life choices, then, or was that an accident?

They often do have interesting entries - just never when they win. I get why Ruslana won, of course: Who doesn't like carefully crafted songs that appeal to every voting block equally, combined with Xena in a fur coat? (That would be me! ) Now, at the risk of offending people: There's 2016's political pity win... Yeah, thanks, but no thanks. I get the message, I get why it won, but hey, isn't there a rule about this having to be completely apolitical? Ukraine always gets a pass (Lasha is bad, mmkay!). As much as I liked Verka Serduchka's performance, if that's "Lasha Tumbai" in the lyrics then I'm a purple ****atoo. Still, this year's entry was pretty good: Surprised it came in 2nd in the popular vote. Certainly not undeserved.

There was a four months hiatus between CCS episode 35 and 36. Sakura is now in 5th grade, and we have a new intro I don't like that much and a new outro that's... mesmerizing. Not so sure about the song, but there's something about the combination that just makes me not fast forward through it. Speaking of fast forwarding:

What else would it be called? It is a dub. It's not like animated characters can speak on their own. Entire episodes missing is quite an understatement, I just had a look at the episode list, the US version dropped 31 out of the 70 episodes entirely and rearranged the broadcast order something fierce. It begins with Shaoran showing up. Uhm... yeah, so they attempted to make this show about Shaoran and removed all the hinted at homosexuality. I'm curious if Shaoran and Meilin having an arranged marriage while being cousins was left in. Probably aired in Alabama? It's not really necessary either, many of the episodes simply don't have anything that warrants extensive posting, which isn't a verdict on their quality at all. There are exceptions, the fourth episode was one like that for me, because nothing happened, it's just a tree that grows, and a large part of the episode is spent on Sakura cleaning the house, but it was still great to watch. I'm not sure, apart from mentioning how adorable the show is or how different the action is from Sailor Moon. The first extensive post was the episode where she doesn't capture any cards. It's weird for me, in some ways. I like mystery and prophecy stuff, but I more often than not hate how it is resolved. The road to disappointments is paved with fun setups, after all. While I hope that CCS doesn't pull any silly resolutions to the storyline, it's not really as if that would matter all too much for me. Heh. Not an actual quote from the show, obviously. Unless Kero says something like that in the later episodes. Pictures spoilered to make the post more concise. I really like the way the show looks, even if that is low key for the most part. It fits with the stakes of most cards too.

Hahahaha. Yeah, but for a space ship built with no real clue the Sailor Moon anime turned out pretty fly...ing. Nope, that joke is bad. Like the animation of the Clear Card arc? Maybe, or maybe not, I just watched 5 episodes in one go. CCS episode #31 to #35, random observerations: I find myself actually interested in how this is going to end, funny considering that 10 episodes ago this arc didn't even have any hit of a storyline beyond "cards are missing, capture them". That they are. It's great, regardless. I'm having an absolute blast watching this, even if I still can't figure out why exactly, other than finding everything and everyone adorable - that's true, but not much of a reason, and I'm not sure if that's enough of a reason for 35 episodes now. I mean the mystery setup and ominous prophecy stuff is something that immediately gets me interested in whatever I watch (in Agents of Shield, that was a simple namedrop in an early episode, a character called "The Clairvoyant" - instantly sold, thanks, shut up and take my money Marvel!), but it wasn't there for the longest of times.

Had a fun discussion with a friend today, regarding yesterday's Eurovision Song Contest finale. He never watches it, while I do. Every year, for as long as I can remember (except for last year, obviously). He doesn't get it, most of the acts are usually bad, it's by far and large ridiculous and a waste of time, with it taking up the entire Saturday night. He's not wrong. In addition to that, my own tastes in music are severely limited to a very specific set of music styles and genres, for various reasons, the most significant of which is actual physical discomfort caused by certain types of music, however that's mostly related to vocalists. Yet, it's a once in a year fun way to step out of my comfort zone, and every now and then something remarkable shows up. Like 2009's Urban Symphony (not using the offical ESC channel, I think that one's region locked to EBU member countries): I'm not sure where else I would be able to stumble upon some Estonian electropop/classic crossover folk music, even if Urban Symphony was short lived and Sandra Nurmsalu stopped performing after giving birth to a daugther in 2010. And of course every now and then there's something utterly ridiculous that's just fun. Sometimes the ridiculous act even wins... Sometimes it works against the artists to have to sing live, but the message wins regardless... like in 1998, when Israel sent Dana International in spite of protest by orthodox Jews: Yeah, that sounds much better on the single: You go girl. Hard to imagine that it's been 23 years. Yikes, time flies.

The guy in the picture you tried to link earlier. He's sometimes spelled Syaoran or even Shaolan in Romaji. There are wiki pages and entries for both Meiling Li and Meilin Li. I'm going by what my subtitles say, so... it's Shaoran and Meilin, not Syaoran and Meiling. One of the biggest misgivings - or let's say, one of the things I expected to be a lot different (not knowing anything about Cardcaptor Sakura I was half-afraid that it would end up her playing a magical collectible card game against others in tournaments) - about the setup was not having an idea what the hell they were going to do with the idea of her capturing cards, but it does work. That's about the only thing I can say. I never though it would, but it... works. The last three episodes I've seen were a bit less interesting, but so far many of them were strong enough, and I don't recall a really bad episode yet. The cards are also varied and fun, most of the time. At the moment I'm hoping that the "downturn" (to be taken with a grain of salt, the episodes where still decent to good, just nowhere near the prior ones) in quality isn't because the show's setup is beginning to wear thin. Episode 30 tried something interesting, but I wish this wouldn't have involved a new character after 30 epsides, that felt a little tacked on - the other episodes rarely feature one-off characters in any meaningful way - there are some, now and then, but it's nowhere near Sailor Moon level. The character interactions so far weren't as strong* as they were in Sailor Moon, but that's not entirely unexpected - they're also different. I mean, they're there, but I really doubt we'll be getting episodes about the meaning of life, self-actualization and how being a magical girl can mess up your hobbies or goals in life, or one of the cast obsessively trying to get herself targeted by a card. Maybe in the terrible looking Clear Card arc. *Maybe strong is the wrong word. When they're good, they're really good, they're just age appropriate.

CCS #28 - #30

In that way the 90ies truly are a lost decade. It's not just a lot of TV that got made, but also films. Shot on early digital in just the resolution needed to be shown in cinemas or on TV, they don't even have any proper film masters to base a HD - or better - transfer on. While actual film transfers require work due to damage and scratches, and sometimes can't be fully transferred to modern aspect ratios like the Star Trek: TNG masters, which were shot for 4:3 and all that extra space would be unused or full of film markers, gear or people involved in the production, they are at least possible. The Sailor Moon specials probably have intact film masters used for the HD version, while the original anime is probably just a collection of Japanese NTSC tapes. Although... with the Italian DVD source being noticably better, there must have been some better source at some point in time. Hope isn't completely lost though, there are some machine learning projects going on to improve upscaling that yield much better results than traditional upscaling. It's never really going to be as good as a proper transfer from a decent source, but it's better than nothing.

Rei and Ami look so incredibly off-putting. The others would too, probably, if they had their eyes open, althouh Rei is extra offensive with that hair color. The real Rei (sorry manga fanboys ) had small patches of purple highlights, not a completely purple head: I already forgot how blurry that German DVD source really is. Although, it does help with the bug eyed alien scenes that the interns made for the season. And that scene was made by the Sailor Stars team and would have looked even better in earlier seasons. Careful, you might yet end up liking Japanese voice acting yet.

That was in the original incarnation of this thread, I read that when Shady bumped it up to get us out of the TV thread. Yeah, a long while ago actually. No, but I'm guessing I will, eventually, now that Netflix has it.

Hope you feel better soon. So... what is Rising of Shield Hero about, in a spoiler free manner ideally?

Reads like hack fraud to me. It's also brought up in the parody I linked earlier in this thread when Madoka sits in class and says to herself: "I can't properly express emotions, maybe because my face is so wide" in a completely monotone voice, and when the scene with Mami, Madoka and Sayaka starts, the narrator says: "Looks like it is time for some exposition". That made me laugh for a while. Fixed that for you. I mean... it worked for me when I tried. Can't tell you why though, I actually had to cut out the URL, post it in my part of the post (i.e. below the quote block) and then drag & drop the picture back into the quote block, beause copy and paste did not work. One of my Robin Hood posts had a damaged layout and random letters in between that I didn't see in the preview. Working with profile pictures is also super wonky with Firefox. Not going to lie, I'm getting a distinct Sailor Moon Crystal season three vibe from that image. It's not as bad but... it's not much better either. It looks like an attempt to put a square peg in a round hole and get the pretty traditional animation look with computer rendering, but... that doesn't work if all you do is transfer handmade outlines and color them digitally*. From what I've just read the series is set a few years after the original one but has moved to 2016 or so in terms of technology and timeline, at worst resulting in as equally a monstrous techno-anachronism stew as in Sailor Moon Crystal, and wonky continuity at best. *Purely guesswork, I could not find any decent information about how SMC Season 3 or Clear Card was animated, at least not on a first glance and it's too late to try and dig up something (if there even is anything), nor do I know enough of modern animation techniques and how they're combined to know for sure. The colors to look significantly worse than the originals, at the very least, hence the guess. Some of that is really just actual Japanese. Things like "iie" which means a politely indicated no like shaking your head and saying "thank you" when asked if you want or need something in Western cultures (because actually saying no in Japanese is a big no no and considered rude), or these half-mumbled swallowed endings at the end of her sentences that put a girly emphasis on what Sakura says (mostly "ne" that seem to be randomly attached to what she says) and the various pitch changes to indicate a certain mood (sincerity, sarcasm, irony, etc.). I guess that's there to make her adorkable and cute, while Tomoyo serves as a more cultured contrast (what with her coming from an absurdly rich, high class background) that speaks a little clearer. She also says "gozaimasu" (indication of politeness, added to sorry, or thanks, or morning, like arigatou gozaimasu for a polite thank you) differently than Sakura and uses it more often, even when speaking to Sakura, while it's not necessary between friends that close. If I remember correctly Tomoyo even makes sure to actually pronounce the usually silent u* at the end of gozaimasu. That makes the entire word more subservient (or extra polite), I think. Not sure on this one, it might just be a dialect or accent thing, or classy... there are limits to what I remember from my silly attempts to get in with the Otaku crowd at school. Some context will not make it less weird or grating to hear, but perhaps a bit more understandable. *Most u (oo) sounds after an s are dropped, even in names. Also very often goes for "i" (e) sounds, like in the words used to indicate present (desu) and past (desh ita - just imagine that there's no blank in between, stupid censoring) tense. Sakura, when she picks up her phone, says "Sakura des", well, or use the probably most ridiculous sounding Japanese phrase in the history of ever, moshi moshi (which means as much as "I will speak" or something to that effect, and also only to be used between friends and family... definitely not at work). Last but not least: Kill la Kill is amazing. Unless it's meant to be serious, in which case that would be really... terrible. I'm going with this being a parody for now. Still, will put this on a back burner, too much other stuff to watch, including Stardust Crusaders.

Look at Italy win. Good job! edit: Was rooting for Ukraine, to be honest, but hey, Italy's offer was not bad either.

Netflix recommended Kill la Kill. Decided to check out the first episode while doing my daily "rounds" on the ergometer. Ended up watching the first two. I'm not sure if this is the best, the most ridiculous or the worst thing I've ever seen. Possibly all of the three at once. It was supremely weird even before Ryuko (the main character) and her trusty giant half of a scissor she uses as a sword, found a sentient battle armor (well, uniform) that drinks her blood and puts all the chainmail bikinis in the world to utter shame... So far she won a boxing and a tennis match. Yeah. Uhm... Pretty sure I remember KP and Sarex mentioning it before.