majestic

So, there's an Artemis focused episode left, one that focuses on Ami and a catalyst episode that kicks off the final arc of R. Looking forward to reading what you think of the end of R. And that Ami episode, because I love that one. I mean, yeah, I love pretty much everything that deals with Ami, even the bad ones, so that's not saying much. I just adore her. I kind of "made up" with Chibi-Usa during the rewatch if that makes sense. The first time around I hated her so much for being an additional wedge between Mamoru and Usagi, making fun of Usagi because he broke up with her. Usagi sure can be annoying, she's silly, klutzy and can be really dense, but she sure never deserved any of that. Eh, that reminds me, what did you think about Usagi trying to slap Chibi-Usa when she almost got all the other Guardians killed? I remember we discussed that episode at school when it aired, mostly whether or not it was grossly out of character for her to try and slap her silly.

No, not really, but some of them have special abilities outside of their tranformations. Minako is sometimes shown to be really athletic*, Rei is psychic, Makoto is superhumanly strong even when not transformed into Sailor Jupiter and Ami is super smart. It's just Usagi that is completely useless, but she's kind of the team's Ma-Ti, right? The heart of the gang, and the only reason they're all friends. Well and for some reason only Sailor Moon's attacks can actually destroy enemies (with some exceptions), so there Ma-Ti, take that. Sailor Moon S gives the other girls really good spotlight episodes (Makoto's is best though, I think, such a sweet episode and it showcases just how much character growth is really hidden under the silly veneer of the show - that episode has Makoto talking to Usagi about her problems and Usagi not being a complete moron about it, just imagine that happen during season one), so there's something to look forward to for you then. Oh and yeah, Minako** and Usagi being sort of similar is one of the nice touches of Sailor Moon. While technically it's Mamoru that represents Earth (albeit not directly), it makes sense for Moon and Venus to be similar. Earth and Venus are called the twin planets or a reason. Oh and that episode with Minako trying to help her friends was a riot. There was something super hilarious about Minako and Chibi-Usa being the worst nurses in history. *Mini-Spoiler: It's volleyball, not basketball. The anime even references Attack No. 1 at some point and there's a chance that the name Sailor V is a reference to Sain wa V!, a volleyball manga that Naoko Takeuchi maybe read during her childhood. The timeframe would fit, the name of Sailor V, her poses, her being a volleyball player and the immense popularity of women's volleyball at the time. Not sure if that was ever officiall "confirmed" or not, but it seems reasonable enough. **I think the manga has Minako pretending to be Princess Serenity for a while, until Usagi gets her memories back. The inconsistencies can also be kind of explained because Sailor V was written before Sailor Moon and Naoko Takeuchi created Sailor Moon supposedly because a planned anime adptation for Sailor V was requested to have a larger cast. Not sure if that really went down like that, but Sailor V was integrated into Sailor Moon and V turned into Venus.

He convinced a hell lot of people that he is though. Being an Average Joe is also by no means a requirement to understand the plight of the working class. Our greatest chancellor way back in the 70ies was a wealthy person. Bespoke suits, shoes, living in a luxurious villa in the rich part of the capital. Didn't matter though. He understood the problems of the regular people and acted accordingly (good old times indeed, in this case). Unlike Trump, who simply applied the Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #211 to politics: Voters are the rungs on the ladder of success. Don't hesitate to step on them.

But Zora, surely you don't want to claim that Americans are hyprocrites ! We need to support the USA and Western culture unquestioningly. Their can be no argument here, right? It's best for us all! /Bruce lol

Had a fun conversation with a user today. User: "I cannot log in, it keeps telling me wrong user name or password, but we never changed the password!" Me: "Yeah, I bet you always read every EULA you agree to as well, right?" Honestly... if nobody changed the password of your branch account then it would still work. You're either too dumb to input a user name and a password correctly or someone in your branch changed it. Well technically there's a "non-zero" chance that someone hacked the system and the only thing they did was change the password of one single user. Sure, that's probably what happened.

Heart Moving shows up a lot as instrumental score during episodes though: I'm rather fond of the Star Locket version of the theme song: Not sure how well they stand on their own, but they work perfectly to underscore the scenes they're used in.

Ah, well, going through Sailor Moon S at a decent pace. I'll keep this as spoiler free as possible, anyway. The last somewhat rambly post spoiled a bit too much for Bartimaeus. I mean, even without not minding spoilers. It'll most likely still be my favorite season even after the rewatch. There are some less than stellar episodes strewn in every now and then but overall S is a decent improvement of existing strengths, there's some fun meta commentary that I may or may not imagine, i.e. Haruka / Sailor Uranus is sometimes used to lampshade just how ridiculous the Clark Kenting in this anime is. Plus she's got the best attack animation of all the Sailor Senshi, hands down: Speaking of attack animations, Sailor Moon's grow more and more ridiculous with every season. Heh. MOON SPIRAL HEART ATTACK has a thirty seconds attack animation. ❤️ Okay, I get it. Transformation and attack scenes can easily be reused and can pad out an episode when you come up a minute or two short. It looks like every now and then an episode or two were the animation equivalent of live television bottle episodes. These episodes usually show all transformation scenes in full (bonus points if all five Inner Senshi show up to transform but only one or two of them actually do something) and the animation outside of the transformation scenes looks like they were handed over to a different team. Might just have always been the same animation team, just under time constraints. Hard to tell with anime that is based on a manga still in writing. Doubly so when the mangaka involved was asked to come up with more after the first run became an unexpected smash hit. If I recall correctly Naoko Takeuchi never planned to do more than the first Sailor Moon arc. Still, even the lesser Sailor Moon episodes are generally ahead of other shows. Look at all that Naruto or Dragonball filler. Psh.

You should just join us in watching Sailor Moon. You know you want to.

Had something that might elicit a slight WTF reaction from the boardies here... kinda similar to the idea that you'd boil beef in stock to eat it, instead of boiling it in water to make stock (heh). Behold: Ribs with sauerkraut, mashed potatoes and mustard with onions and peppers. The ribs were cured and smoked at a lower temperature, and then instead of grilling them or throwing them in the oven you simply simmer them in water (or, ideally, in the leftover water from the last time you simmered cured and smoked meat) until they're soft. And yeah, it tastes much better than it sounds... or looks. Really.

Maybe the NSU was just the RAF in disguise, like ANTIFA pretended to be MAGA-guys when they stormed the Capitol?

As written in the holy text: Render unto peasants the things which are peasants'... Or, uhm, something like that, anyway. If it weren't bad for CDPR and therefore also really bad for GOG I wouldn't stop grinning at the irony of a single bad console port having all the peasants up in arms demanding refunds and pulling out the pitchforks.

Take a guess during which season they ran out of book content to adapt... Hint: It's the number between 4 and 6. Season 5 is also the season where every character chose the STUPID feat during level up in order to get them to the ending D&D planned with GRRM, and where GRRM removed himself from the show's production and writing because everyone was badgering him about finishing the damned books (me included, although... not to him, I just sit *here* and complain ). 's the problem with having an ending in mind and finding out that it makes no sense for the characters to get there. It took Martin the better part of six years to figure out how to get Dany away from Meereen in the books, let alone make her cross the sea, which hasn't even happened yet. That's how the entire Dorne subplot ended up being completely pointless in the show, for instance. It's not finished in the books and a good deal of characters that are involved were cut from the show. In the books Trystane's sister Arianne is involved in an attempt to kidnap Myrcella with the Sand Snakes to force her father into going to war with the Lannisters while his older brother Quentyn is sent to Meereen to make good on a secret marriage contract between the Martells and the Targaryens (Arianne was to be Viserys' wife). Since the show needed Myrcella to go to Dorne they had to put Dorne in (as a separate location instead of just the origin of Prince Oberyn of Mandalore), and what we got was bad. No, terrible. Actually... terribad. Oh boy.

Warum zum Schmiedl gehen, wenn man zum Schmied gehen kann? The SPD has the same issue that our counterpart has. Why bother voting for them if that in the end means voting for the conservative party of your country (CDU in Germany's case, ÖVP in our's). You might as well just vote for the CDU and be done with it, or look for alternatives that promise you a better life and have a very clear message about who is at fault for your situation. Like, say, the AfD. Lucky for Germany they still have Die Linke. Not so lucky for Germany that the SPD has a standing order to commit political suicide, first by promising to never form a colation with them, and recently by giving Mutti Merkel a fourth term because heaven forbid there could be a government without her, or heaven forbid, another election, even though they promised not to. By now I guess it's too late for a much needed Red/Red/Green government in Germany. Just like it is too late for us. Unless our glorious leader messes up somehow, just not sure how. He could grab a **** or shoot someone in the streets of New York and still be elected. Bah.

Yeah. I wouldn't know, my information is based on people who have gotten their pre-orders a day or two early for some reason, not on professional reviewers. The very best transfers in terms of entertainment value are proper 16:9 remasters of shows made for 4:3 TV (i.e. the ones where the source video is of good enough quality). With everyone crowding in the middle of the frame and the sides curiously empty. Assuming it's even possible to do a proper 16:9 version. Star Trek TNG's blu ray version would have had good enough masters for it, but all sorts of clutter in the frame. Heh.

This is even accurate in both canon Star Wars and legends (except that Darth Caedus was never as ridiculous as TFA Kylo Ren was).

The German Blu-Ray version that comes out tomorrow (well, today now, it's past midnight) is based off a complete remaster from Japan, so that might take the lead in terms of picture quality. It's still 16:9 pillarboxed obviously, there's no real way around that, but from what I've read from reviews so far it should blow the quality of any prior blu-rays and DVDs out of the water. The earlier ones seem to have two seperate video tracks on them per episode (one for the original language, one for the dub) and are therefore of lower quality due to higher compression/lower bitrate and some DVD versions are apparently simple VHS scans, if the Italian DVD version is based on a good quality source and they went with laying the Italian dub over the Japanese original video that might explain it. That the movies are best on blu ray seems logical enough. They came out as movies after all, not as a 4:3 NTSC (ugh) showing on Japanese TV. I'm guessing they had good masters already, and were much easier to transfer.

I thought so, hence the spoiler tags. I mean, I know you don't care that much, but still, common courtesy and all. Who knows, maybe someone else on the board will have their interest piqued and join in watching a magical girl anime show. Come on guys, it's as manly as wearing tights. 😄 Just had to post after seeing that scene with the cake talk. Little things like that I no longer remember. I'm not even sure that dialogue was in the dub in that way, seems easy to "fix" that in dubbing and put in something thematically and atmospherically more consistent with the rest of the episode. I'd check, but there's no real way, the German dub has been stuck in license hell of a sort. It's on regular TV every now and then, but not really on any streaming service. The remastered blu ray version is actually coming out tomorrow, it was originally supposed to come out way back in 2015, and someone thought they can cash in bigly. As much as I love the show, I'm not buying at almost 70€ per season.

Finished watching Sailor Moon R. Onwards to Sailor Moon S. Watching the Japanese original with subtitles is a riot. know it's shallow and stupid, but I lost it every time someone on the voice cast tried to say Sailor Pluto. They did fairly well calling Chibi-Usa "Small Lady" but Sailor Pluto just came out SERA PRUTO every time. I sit here grinning like an idiot just thinking of it. No wonder Chibi-Usa just calls her Puu.

It would be more fun if it were made by Bethesda directly. Indiana Scrolls maybe, or Elder Jones: Kingdom of even more Crystal Skulls. Oh, the possibilities...

Did three encounters solely by throwing grenades. One of them gave zero Engineering XP, one gave no more than what I would have gotten if I had sniped everyone through walls and one was okay in terms of XP gain. It's definitely acting weird and potentially related to using Breach Protocol and/or Cyberpsychosis, because I did use Cyberpsychosis to bunch up a group of melee enemies to take out with the grenades in the encounter that yielded no experience, or it might be related to being in combat or not, or a combination of both.

Wait, how do you mean, pro wrestling is not real? 😭

Huh, must try grenades again. Not entirely sure why, but I tried that and it didn't do sh*t. Or more likely, it didn't show up as progress on the screen. The game fails to display either the loot or the experience progress in a regular basis for me. A lot of times I'm already in the car and driving somewhere it and still shows me each and every piece of trash I picked up. Slowly. VERY slowly.

I've been shooting things through walls the entire game so far, and my Engineering skill is at level 8 or 9. Hacking and Breach Protocol are the only things that seem to level quite nicely. Well maybe Cold Blood or Stealh would too, I don't know.

I watched that video and I can finally understand why people are unhappy with this being The Witcher 3 with guns. Never saw any trailers myself, or read up on anything. No hype, no idea what was promised -> no disappointment. Game's fairly OK. So far, at least. I've been ignoring the main quest by far and large and run around shooting people. Which admittedly isn't that interesting after a while. Just trying to get my skills up. Which... doesn't seem like it's worth it. edit: Apparently that video is in a different thread. Ok, whatevs.