majestic

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?

I, too, am done rewatching the film. It's been twenty or so years now, and a couple of things have changed since then. I do have a slightly larger knowledge of some cultural aspects, for one. There's also the fun aspect in reading the subtitles and smiling at the creative liberties taken in translating, some which are pretty good, some where aren't, although it still feels like a broader understanding of anything, really, is still far out of reach. I don't know what it is exactly about films or anime in general that is set sometime around the 15th century, but it's just not very interesting to me most of the time, and もののけ姫 is no real exception. Fun fact, the word hime - 姫 - which means young lady of noble birth, is most often translated as princess, but a king's daughter, specifically, is 王女 (oujo). Statistically, hime has a much higher usage in anime, visual novels and novels than live action drama (there's a fun database that tracks word usage across various media sources). The nice thing about German is that it makes for a much better medieval sounding language if done well, to a point where I actually like the translated Lord of the Rings better than the original, and it takes a bit of Tolkien's, say, somewhat, uhm, unengaging writing style out of it. Ah, right. Still, regardless of language specifics, my reaction to the film is about the same as I remember it being. It, next to Akira, is kind of the reason why I didn't watch too many anime movies. It's not a bad film, and it certainly is visually pleasing, and I appreciate the attempt at making characters with different motivations that act not based on where the story needs to go but what their desires are, however, it ended up being just an attempt. That pretty much everyone is an idiot doesn't help. The film also tries to not paint the ongoing conflict in black and white terms, something that would work much better if Ashitaka's position wouldn't be the only sensible one and so clearly right that it is almost painful at times. The effort to be multi-facetted just evaporates in the light of there being clearly one best way to handle the situations, and no one else seeing them. Alas, such is the fate of the one destined to see with both eyes open, unclouded by hate. edit: Addendum: Clearly, given the success of the film, I find myself thinking that I am not the intended target audience. I suppose I shall have to live with it - unless my preferences were cooked with a candle, or something.

I think that's Russian disinformation. Oby changed his name is and is now making German TV ads:

Guys, in like two days My Isekai Life: I Gained a Second Character Class and Became the Strongest Sage in the World will be released, and not much later Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World. Are you as excited as I am? Anyway, what to do to tide me over, perhaps watch Date A Bullet: Dead or Bullet? Questions, questions...

Sorry, one France is enough in the EU, we sure don't need the Wannabe-French of Quebec.

I am fairly certain that the manga is a whole lot less offensive than the anime is. I base this on my experiences with Sailor Moon vis a vis Crystal. Animation, music and sound add many different layers to the assault on my senses. In the case of Komi, it's most voice actors who just add their crazy in an overbearing manner. Holy hell Najimi is annoying. They're* one of the nicer characters around, but their voice acting is so atrocious I just can't stand it. At all. Ugh. *Gender might be intentionally left open, but that she sleeps with the girls at the school trip but doesn't go into the girl's bath is pretty telling. That should have been handled better, I guess.

Yeah, but they don't. They put the top end teams* of each nations against each other, and they're all inside a money feedback loop. More international exposure leads to more income through competitions and better sponsorship deals leads to better players, more money and more sponsorship, and perhaps a Russian oligarch or two or some Sheikh with more money than sense dropping hundreds of millions on any given team. It's a mess. *Teams are not limited to their own nationality. Most superteams simply consist of the world's best players, regardless of country of origin. Not talking about World or European championships here, but regular national and internatonal leagues, like your MLS.

The differences are really only noticable in benchmarks, at least when you're looking at most PCIE 4.0 SSDs. Chasing numbers is pretty pointless beyond specialized use cases. Particularily that sustained write over 5 minutes figure, who needs that in any home use scenario? It is only anecdotal, but a friend of mine is a field technician for a large Japanese IT vendor and he's servicing mainframe and datacenter solutions, and in his experience Samsung SSDs are the most reliable SSDs out there under heavy loads. Although, of course, what works in data centers is an entirely different ballpark. There they also need decent sustained read and write performance, obviously, and you can always just have bad luck and find one that doesn't work well. Well, okay, that's... not really worth it then. That's about four times the difference we have, and that is taking the conversion rate into account. That's either a really cheap 970 EVO Plus or a terribly expensive 980 PRO.

If you look outside of Samsung there are decent SSDs to be found too. An HP FX900 or an Adata Legend 840 for instance should be about the price of a 970 EVO Plus (well, your milage price may vary, given the current inflation by a good deal too) and offer great performance for the price, even if they don't reach full PCIE 4.0 throughput rates, they're still faster than their 3.0 counterparts. If money is no objection then there's also the Acer Predator GM7000 or the Patriot Viper VP4300, although, yeah, dunno, we're talking an 80% markup on the price for not much of a gain in any realistic (home) usage scenario, and if money was no objection there'd be no reason to stick with DDR4 memory I guess. What makes Samsung attractive is their reliability. The price is fine and the performance is great and the difference to the Acer and Patriot SSDs is really just noticable in benchmarks, not in actual use.

Ho, you'd have a lot of fun watching our football leagues. Not one of the larger, more competitive ones that don't have an issue of a couple of super teams dominating the leagues. Interntional competitions end up being a battle of superteams with nary an upset in sight - usually, at least - and the insane amount of money thrown around by billionaire team owners and the payout from the international competitions make sure everything spirals even more towards a small group of teams dominating everything. Fun fact: One of our teams as twice the budget of every other team... combined. Guess how often they don't win the local championship?

Well, I don't know about Canadian prices, but a Samsung 980 PRO 1 TB PCIE 4.0 SSDs isn't much more expensive than a 970 EVO Plus. Might want to go with a 980 PRO and enjoy the extra speed, unless the 970 Evo Plus comes from your current setup, but you said you'd move the drives, not the SSD. Either was is a massive speed upgrade, but there really is a noticable difference between my 980 Pro and my father's 970 EVO.

K-On! is one of the rather few cases where having to tough it out through the first season turned out to be a boon. I mean, the first season is... what it is. Although I really enjoyed the last two episodes, and some of the middle parts. I got lucky that it went on to be a good deal goodlier in the second season. Considering it has Sawako and that dreadful Christmas episode, a 5/10 is quite the endorsment there. K-On! also has Sailor Saturn and Sailor Mars in the English dub lineup. Kind of funny how one can waste all that voice talent. Oh come on. That's... oh dear god, imagine this will run for as long as Pretty Cure. Oh noes...

Poor K-On!, don't cry, he wasn't intentionally mean to you, it's just that you have a really rough beginning and the better parts are a bit later and are actually called K-On!!. *pets* This week's Komi has insane stalker girl bring Komi chocolates on Valentine's day. They all look like stalker girl's face, and when she gives them to Komi she tells her to "lick me, eat me, suck on me until I become a part of you!" which... wow, is another low that I think matches the kneeling and sausage part, but your mileage may vary.

Last week's Komi remained untalked about, apparently. It was the second part of the school trip and it was actually quite fine. It even had a decent payoff at the end. This will never really become good due to a number of bad decisions, but it really stopped being horrible a while back. Not sure if that has to do with the insane stalker girl and dog girl being curiously absent. Except for a brief stint in the bath where dog girl's breasts were called giant meatballs (or something like that, anyway) and stalker girl tried to touch Komi's. Or rather, asked if she was allowed to. A couple more of those and I'll actually start believing that's what Japanese girls do when in the bath. Sheesh.

It is a command line call that adds a registry key to disable the new context menu in Windows 11. Requires a reboot. You can also use regedit of course but that is slower than just copy/pasting this.

Why do you hate freedom? Okay, 20 year old reference is old, but maybe it'll work.

When you (eventually) switch to Windows 11, remember to execute this command: reg add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f /ve Otherwise you'll end up going crazy. Well, maybe that's me projecting, but the new context menu sure drove me crazy before I figured out how to turn it off.

It is, and it never gets better, although there is one moment in the film that caused me to laugh out loud. Not sure when that was, but I think it was after twenty minutes. Jessica is looking for Hernan and stumbles across a jazz jam session. Bass, piano, guitar and drums. The camera just holds on Jessica and some other people initially rapturously (then somewhat uncomfortably) watching the performance for one and a half minutes, and then the scene switches to their point of view and one can observe the band. Clearly art. What could spell out ART any better than some jazz in this piece of art?

That'll fix any pressure issues. Well, any pressure at all, even!

Tilda Swinton's Non-Interactive Walking Simulator (2021) Well, the actual title of the 'film' is Memoria, but why not call it by what it is. It roped me into being watched by having a favorable review in a newspaper I read and Tilda Swinton in the lead, and when isn't Tilda Swinton delightful in what she shows up in? In cases of filmmakers who create walking simulators but forget to make them a video game. The basic premise of the film is rather simple, Jessica, played by Tilda Swinton, is one fine night woken by a strange sound she will later describe as a rumble deep in the earth caused by a small concrete ball hitting a metallic surface. That sets off a chain of events that's best described as Tilda Swinton walking through various scenes that are with two exceptions filmed in flat angles with perfectly static framing. No, this isn't one of my exaggerations, outside of one scene where she walks down a road with the camera following her and one scene where the camera is mounted inside her car (which promptly stops to make it static again), there is zero camera movement in the film. The shots are either wide when there's no dialogue to be had, or close when there is. That is the entire extent of the film's camera usage, which was described, by the review, as delightful experience for all senses. At best this applies to the sound engineering of the film. Saying that the pacing of this fabrication of scenes is glacial would be doing an injustice to the speed at which glaciers are currently disappearing. Continental plate drift is pretty quick in comparison, but even that comparison falls flat, because in order to have a pace, one needs a plot that proceeds at it. Which this film doesn't have. For the most part, it really is just a loose collection of incredibly boring, static shots of Tilda Swinton walking through Columbia - which is admittedly a pretty country, all in all. Every now and then she interacts with another character. One called Juan, and one called Hernan, because apparently the director and script writer could not come up with any other Spanish sounding names. There's a doctor who gives Jessica a Jesus loves you brochure to help her with the insomnia she's struggling with. Ironically, if you're looking for a cure for insomnia, this might be it. I don't have any issues with films that don't readily make sense, or that are slow paced, but in such cases they need to be visually interesting - they're films, after all, and this is a masterful showcase of how to not achieve that. For those of you that played Furi, imagine watching roughly two hours and fifteen minutes of the game's 'storyline' unfold between the fights, just with a lot less talking. Eh, and no strange worlds, just Columbia, with people walking about. Or, if you want, imagine a film that is basically a point and click adventure let's play. Just without puzzles, or jokes, or anything that makes point and click adventures interesting. One of the reviews really stand out: Emphasis added by me. That may very well be the case, but at the end of the day, it is a film, not an audio drama or a collection of meditative audio tracks you put on to relax. Actually, if you removed the film part, and just let everything play without visuals on the screen, the experience would probably be worthwhile. Alas, once more, I don't understand the raving reviews. Looking at an experimental film that says nothing and tries to be contemplative is all nice if it works, but it just doesn't. I don't even know how I should rate this. Tilda Swinton gives a good performance that simply doesn't work and does not evoke the slightest reaction. Guess I'm not one for meditative experiences. Who would have thunk? If I had not watched Sailor Moon Crystal I'd rate this travesty as the worst piece of dreck I've ever had the misfortune to sit through, and I'm not sure Sailor Moon Crystal, in a vaccuum, is worse - it is just really bad next to the older version. Hell, I'd rather watch The Last Jedi again, and that is a film that made me appreciate Attack of the Clones. Now, if you feel the need to call me an uneducated gonk with no appreciation for art, go ahead, but at least try to explain to me how a film consisting of next to zero visually interesting shots is supposed to be a masterpiece of filmmaking and cinematography. Edit: I want to take this opportunity to apologize to @David Lynch who most likely isn't reading this forum anway that I called Mulholland Drive pretentious cow droppings. I profusely apologize and repent, I have seen the light. Yep.

Spawn's devil wants to remind you that he exist too.

Nah, guess you'll have to wait until I try (and inevitably not like) Samurai Champloo.

in the video for like half a second, starting at 53 seconds. It's from Stone Ocean, which I only recognize because of the pictures posted here, and then it cuts to you favorite anime character ever: Homura.

Having actually watched: The End of Evangelion Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Rebellion Recognize: Bleach Spy x Family Some JoJo's season Something from some Dragonball Some stuff from the Fate franchise Going to assume that the volleyball anime showing up every now and then is Haikyuu!!. Also, terrible song, but the video was clearly a lot of work, blending the Michael Bay cuts together like that. Mostly not my thing. In every way.