majestic

For now. I hear there's an Orcish horde under the command of Vladolf Putler just waiting to change that.

Yeah, dunno, I suppose since he actually likes IPAs and has a bunch of allergies, drinking actual beer might cause the similar issues or it might not be to his 'taste'. I'll second the recommendation for the Hirter Morchl. I have no idea how easy it is to get in the US, but it is a quality (Bohemian style) dark lager from a smaller, privately owned brewery that is noticably different from the otherwise often overly sweet darker, malty beers.

We (the general we in the thread, that is, not us two) talked about that briefly before, when it comes to Sailor Moon Crystal. It is, by far and large, faithful to the manga, and the series is just terrible. I would not call the manga good (far from it, it's by far and large bad, a mess and really iffy at times and I do not understand anyone who prefers it over the first anime adaptation), but even then it is still a lot better than Crystal. Just reading and looking at drawings is a whole lot less offensive than being assaulted by animation and sound too. So yeah, it is entirely possible for the manga to be better than the anime. Also, uhm, stay way from Sailor Moon Crystal. MOON TIARA ACTION! or something. Maybe @Bartimaeus still has the image where Usagi looks like a praying mantis alien.

Catching up on stuff: Stranger Things IV. I've pretty much binged the episodes. If there's one largely negative thing I can say regardless of anything that happens is that the episodes are definitely too long. Please structure your episodes better next time. There's also no need to make the final episode of the season into a 2:20 movie with actual acts. With that said, there's a part of me that is hypercritical about Everything Everywhere All at Once (well that pun went better in my head than it came out here), however, if there's something I love, and it continues and just spins its wheel, or it becomes terrible, it takes a long, long time for me to change opinions. Like back when the third season of Andromeda aired, I watched the episodes and read the complaints online, and I disagreed. 15 years later on a rewatch, I joined in. Season three is bad, and the series never recovered from that. Now, Stranger Things IV is probably not bad, because if nothing else, the episodes are impeccably shot, the CGI could be a tad better, but it's all right for a streaming series, and the actors are still great - even the new additions. That said, it was definitely running too long. Large parts of El's storyline could have been shortened, and it never contained characters I really like, outside of El herself perhaps. I have no idea why Will was even on the show, doing nothing but looking awkward, the same with Jonathan. The entire Russian storyline is ludicrous and useless, just like in season three. Everything else though was not entirely what I expected from the trailer, but it was entertaining enough for me to not really care that all of this feels tacked onto the world building (basically what you get when you a have a self-contained first season with an order of YOU'RE MAKING US OODLES OF MONEY, CONTINUE! afterwards). If they had cut the Russian plot a little and reduced El's self-discovery to a tighter, more streamlined part of the season the time could have been spent on, dunno, resolving some issues that are just dangling open because even with all the time they had for the season, it's kind of a mess where so much is left unfinished. That just goes way beyond having sequel hooks. It also up and abandons a lot that happens in the first two episodes. What gives? Typing up all this just to state that I'm not blind to the faults. I still loved watching every episode. It wasn't what I expected from the trailer, which looked much more goofy than it actually turned out to be. So this isn't the Stephen King / Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors crossover that I wanted it to be. Maybe 15 years down the line, I'll rewatch and eventually even stop at the second season. That's still a ways off. A long, long ways off. So for now... yeah. Still enjoyed this a whole lot and don't regret spending the time on it. Anyways, guess continuing the Boys is up next. Still on early season two.

Komi can't interest majestic, episode 24, which means end of the season. Well, that is over for the time being. This apparently has a 7.8/10 on IMDB, which once gain makes me question the sanity of the world's population at large, or mine. It's entirely possible that I am the miscreant here. Anyway, the series has consistently been best when it has done away with the more egregious side characters, and I'm sad to say that unlike @KP wants Blue Velvet, I also incude Najimi in this. Najimi started out as a somewhat okay character, but they've been driving me nuts with the voice acting. But Najimi is still a long way better than Insane Stalker Girl, or Dog Girl, or Dragon Power Girl. Maybe I should really watch this with the sound turned off. The new additions this season were okayish. Anyway, the last couple of episodes were okay, which is somewaht high praise when looking at how bad the series can be. The one thing that consistently bothers me is how Komi regresses every time she manages to open up a little, I suppose for the sake of the story, because there's preciously little reason for Komi to not regularily talk to Tadano or even call him at this point in time. She already talked to him, and the barrier is broken. I also think the 'Tadano and Komi 好き each other storyline' has very much run its course. Please, stop that, do something with the setup in case you continue this into the inevitable third set of episodes, considering how popular the show is and how little it has to cost to make (just look at it). Netflix isn't really in any position to be picky at the moment, anything that keeps subs will be thrown at customers. Kinda feel like I want to chime in on the ongoing movie discussion, but it's late, and I'm kind of tired, and there's another post to make. Ideally, I'll be able to spend some time on a film tomorrow, or maybe continue with Texhnolyze.

You might want to check if you can find a Hirter Morchl somewhere.

IPAs aren't good at all - for anyone. /SCNR Anyway, the answer is Gin and Tonic. Not only is it classy, it's also a baffling drink combining two otherwise disgusting ingredients into a an explosion of taste. Plus it shimmers blue under blacklight. Can't beat that.

Have you tried whacking them with your sword or shooting them with your bow for some extra experience and gold?

Anyway, to reiterate this point that I hastily made on my phone, The Vision of Escaflowne contains these elements: Isekai, a shounen dolt male lead, the western equivalent of a shounen dolt as supporting character (i.e. a chivalrous knight) and a cat girl. The cat girl got a tail and real cat ears and all, not a girl in a cat costume. In spite of all that and some pacing and storytelling issues, I'd put it into my top 10 anime list, if I had one. Not that this wasn't clear from all the posts I made about it, but anyway. Just in case any one of you is looking for a new anime to watch. Coz, yeah. dunno, I got that impression for some reason.

I am unsure but I think I watched and absolutely loved an Isekai anime recently. What was it called? Hum. Right, The Vision of Escaflowne. Just saying. You know. Like, just… saying.

Chuck Norris stands faster than you run. That took me a bit to get.

To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women. Metaphorically speaking.

Oh, right, look what I did not watch last week and didn't miss at all (how confusing). Guess I'll get a double whammy of Strange New Worlds tomorrow, or maybe over the weekend.

Because she's a 'bit' of a non-character, I'd guess. The Last Unicorn and Valhalla (a film that for some reason features Christopher Lee as Thor in the German dub, but not in the English one) were animated movies I had on VHS a long, long time ago. It's entirely possible that they're not nearly as good as nostalgia makes them out to be. I rewatched The Last Unicorn at some point and still enjoyed it, I think it was on Netflix for a while. Both films are examples of what I mean when I say I sometimes enjoy films based entirely on their atmosphere. My biggest problem is quite frankly the plot and how what should be major points aren't, and what becomes a major point at the end is quite... stupid. Well, and the character development of Arren is unfocused, waffles around and eventually ends with him becoming a generic fantasy hero. There, I just fixed the film. It would still have pacing issues and be a bit on the generic fantasy side, but it could lose half an hour of runtime that way and keep everything much more focused. Eh. Hayao Miyazaki was right, this is a matter of experience, although... he himself doesn't come up with the best endings either, but they're not as... well, dumb as this one. So, what's next?

ゲド戦記 I already used this in a prior post, although translated at the time. The original feels strangely appropriate here. I'm honestly uncertain what to think of the film. As a preface, it stands to necessity that I shall proclaim to be unfamiliar with its source material, and any value - or lack thereof, as seems to be the case here - as an adaptation, as such, shall remain undiscussed herein. I could of course simply take a quote or two from the author of the original, who was unhappy with the adaptation, but that would be disingenuous. I have no emotional or any other connection to the books this film is based on. Famously, the making of this film lead to a bit of a spat between Hayao and Goro Miyazaki, when his father felt that he lacked the experience to direct such a film. Indeed, prior to this, Goro Miyazaki (wisely, probably) kept his distance from animation. What else could he do, as son of Hayao Miyazaki, no matter how good you eventually might end up being, you'll never be able to step out of your father's shadow. But, well, what is done is done. I usually don't do this, but I've browsed through a couple of critiques on the internet (I also am fairly I certain I posted this exact sentence before while talking about other movies and series, so perhaps I am more liable to browse critiques of something prior to posting than I think), there seems to be about an even split between favorable and critical reviews, with a slight tilt towards the critical, perhaps. The film has negatively been called everything I've called Memoria in a recent post in the film thread, which I find rather strange, because the slow and meandering parts of the film were clearly the best, and indeed, for the first almost an hour of watching it, I've wondered why the critical reviews came from, outside of the really strange looking two action scenes taking place in said first hour. Then the plot unfolds, and it becomes a little clearer. The film is a mess, but just not for reasons critics call it so. It promises more than it can keep, it is curiously black and white in its good vs. evil epic fantasy story it tries to tell, and it tells it in a rather unsatisfying manner. These are all things that were the main reason for me liking anime more than Western (and American in particular) cartoons as a kid. From what I read, the source material eschews this approach, which makes it doubly strange, but perhaps this is what Hayao Miyazaki meant when he talked about his son's lack of experience and how he '[was] not an adult yet' after a screening of the film, which seems a little strange to say about an almost fourty year old man at the time. With translations from Japanese one never really knows, they sometimes are really not good. There's the opening which then has nothing to do with the film for the next 90 minutes, for instance, for both the mythical creatures that show up and a major event that separates the main character from his family, something that looks an awful lot like it should become a major focus at some point in the film, but it never does. The biggest crime the film is guilty of is that it promises to be a fantasy epic with a slowly unfolding plot about light and dark, the dual nature of life and death and how one cannot exist without the other, and it ultimately doesn't deliver this on the scale necessary to have any impact. Thematically it is still there, but it's mired in rote fantasy storytelling and a hackneyed, way too quick resolution for a film that otherwise meanders about. This, too, is something that comes from a lack of experience, I think. It reminds me a little of the stories I wrote when we had writing assignments in German at school and we'd have an hour to come up with a certain amount of words or pages written, and I would always begin to spin a slowly unfolding epic that eventually just has the most cursory resolution because there was simply no time to resolve it properly before the assignment needed to be turned in. In a way, this is exactly what happens here. There's this really wonderful film that's slow but appealing when it really is just the main characters wandering through the world and later plowing their field, with a promise of a resolution to the mysteries to come, only for the filmmakers to realize that they're out of time and something needs to happen - and what happens is, as already stated, rote and hackneyed and curiously lacking in nuance for a Studio Ghibli. In terms of tone and atmosphere, the final sequence of the film reminded me a little of The Last Unicorn, a 1982 film animated by essentially the team that later went on to make Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and formed Studio Ghibli. A film that has, however, an unbelievably good voice cast and is elevated simply by that alone. Yeah, I guess, what I'm saying is, go watch The Last Unicorn instead if you haven't. I remain, however, torn. On the one hand, there are flaws in this, on the other hand, I found myself enjoying this film more than I expected to. This is a strange quandary, and one of the instances where I probably would have liked the film a lot less if I went in with different expectations. Would that I could turn back time and check that. So, ultimately, I don't regret spending the time watching it, but I also wouldn't want to watch it again.

Ah, I see, yes, that would indeed be the case. Makes the tweet even more hilarious.

I'm not entirely sure I follow. If I vote for a clown, I can neither expect nor want government to be conducted seriously and properly, let alone competently, and that's not even my bias against conservatives speaking because that seems to make no difference in the UK's case as they're blessed with suck either way. Bush Junior's suppository was from Labour, after all.

Well, at least the part that did not elect Trump's appendix. Not so sure about the other ones...

But that's clearly Whisper of the Heart.

I... watched the trailer. Yeah, thanks, but that looks like it wanted to be tentacle porn but didn't dare to.

Everspace 2, an early access game that is so wonderfully optimized that sometimes starts having slow downs even on an i5-12600 with a RTX 3060 (in FullHD resolution, so nothing fancy). I backed this on Kickstarter after really enjoying Everspace, and my old computer just couldn't handle it. The game has numerous issues other than its optimization which will certainly get a pass or two later in its development. The biggest issue is that the gameplay remains largely unchanged from Everspace, which was a roguelite arcade space shooter meant to be played in small one to two hour spurts. There the core gameplay loop works well enough, and you progress and feel more and more powerful. Everspace 2 does away with the roguelite elements and leaves the gameplay for a sort-of freeform space exploration with highly annoying level-scaling. In other words you're flying around, doing the same thing over and over again, and while it does get easier in time, it's kind of... not fun for the extended time, and I'm only in the second of the 8 or so planned systems. It basically has the same problem as the loot system of The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. Ideally they'll trim all the fat out of the game prior to launch. I don't see people wanting to keep on playing for long unless they just follow the main quest and maybe do the odd sidejob or two. Then there's the issue of having zero enemy variety. It's the same buch of enemies over and over again, with the same tactics and the same ways you can defeat them. Like I said, nothing of that matters for a quick playthrough of the first game, because it is over before it becomes apparent, but it really, really doesn't lend itself to a sustained gameplay experience that is fun.

風の谷のナウシカ Well, that was a good deal better than もののけ姫, but that is not much of a surprise. Princess Mononoke's animation was more sophisticated, although it's hard to find a lot of faults with the animation in this film. I watched it on Netflix where there's most likely some quality loss of a blu ray version, particularily sometimes the colors of our little protagonist's pants are severely off. They change from white to a pink tinge to sometimes looking a whole lot like the color of Nausicaä's face, which is a little weird. Nausicaä is a figure of Greek myth, which I guess inspired parts of the film. There's one particular part that meta knowledge ruined the impact of: Anyway, much like Princess Mononoke, I feel as if this film could easily lose 15 or even 20 minutes and make for a tighter watching experience, there are a few sequences that are basically the animated equivalent of special effects for the sake of having special effects. I can't fault the artists for that, but I really wish they'd cut that out. Grave of the Fireflies and Whisper of the Heart don't have any scenes that seem to be as, well, let's call them filled with artistic self-indulgence, and are all the better for it. However, that is also probably because neither of the films lend themselves to having sequences that are just there to show off impressive animation. Anyway, the film was good. As usual, post apocalyptic settings, even if they're as interesting as this one, isn't what I usually look for in films, and Nausicaä herself is quite likeable and a better character than Ashitaka, but at times she has the same issues. What she does, though, is have a much, much better personal motivation and reason for being like that, and that integrates her a lot better into the world. Solid. Also, not really related but still hilarious, when you might end up regretting a tattoo: Dude, next time pick someone you can trust. I generally don't have a problem with that, or protagonists or antagonists that are just metaphors instead of real characters, the problem for me with Princess Mononoke in particular is that the film is not overly interesting to begin with and, unlike with Nausicaä, none of the factions or characters really appealed to me. Hence that falls completely on its face, and it kind of ruins the setup which I thought was not a terrible idea, just badly executed - at least while rewatching the film. Now after having watched Nausicaä, it feels almost entirely redundant. Nausicaä is similar and better in every way. Except maybe the usage of colors, but that's subjective. Then there's probably half an hour of runtime that could be cut without changing the impact of meaning of the film, some of these scenes drag on and on with no clear purpose. Meandering isn't a particularily desirable trait to have for a movie with a 130 minute runtime. Aside from that, no, I have not played Half-Life 2 and I'm not very likely to ever do that. For a number of reasons, the strongest of which is a dislike for Valve, and the fact that it apparently ends on a stupid cliffhanger that's never going to be resolved. Screw that.

The Isekai ones at least are, yes. That will most certainly be an interesting character drama with some humor in it, right? Right? Normally, this would be a decent case for the "WAT?" meme, however, I do know that in real life, there are actually forums where - mostly men, for obvious reasons I guess - discuss the merits and abilities of prostitutes. A pseudo-humorous anime about such talk doesn't surprise me in the least. I guess at least it doesn't demean actual people providing a service that is almost always in demand but usually vilified, leading to all sorts of problems, but on the other hand it might normalize the idea. Sheesh. Working hard for that five star rating gets a whole different meaning, huh?