majestic

So this is the point in my life where I'm starting to think that Steins;Gate wasn't the bottom of the barrel for terrible ideas...

Tall bet. I wonder if however designed that product does, though.

Assuming you have a supported Windows version that still gets critical updates and you have no other reason to use it (if you can't think of any off-handedly, you don't have any*), just don't use anti-virus software, especially not if it comes from Norton or McAfee, but generally... just don't. Waste of money, waste of system resources and if you get unlucky, a gaping gateway into your system - or it just might kill the OS. Turn on Windows Defender, throw out the AV, buy yourself a nice steak for dinner with the money saved. *E.g. you need it to prevent USB attacks by users who don't know what they're doing when they just randomly plug in freebie USB devices, or worse, stuff they picked up from the floor. Arguably still can use intrusion detections systems without their AV parts, but they're often just part of the same suite anyway.

majestic can't Komminicate, episode... yeah, whatever. 16, it's 16. This one was okayish. The first episode since the first one that was, well, okayish, even though it didn't have any moments for Tadano and Komi to spend some time alone. One of the things this show does at the moment is keeping Komi at a standstill for everything to work. I don't know if that is specific to the manga, but Komi began talking at some point, at least to Tadano, and now we're no longer doing even that. She should at least be able to talk to Najimi now. Eh.

You guys really need to give episode titles when talking about Love, Death and Robots, that show has user-specific episode orders on Netflix based on your watching history and ratings. In my opinion*, no, but I'm also the only one here who actually enjoyed watching the film. It's basically a retelling of The Little Mermaid (the fairy tale, not the Disney film) in a post-apocalyptic hellscape where gravity no longer works the way it should, and kids do the obvious with that, weird parkour running. I guess that can stretch credulity a little, but it's just the backdrop. The film really hits you over the head with the fact that it is a retelling of The Little Mermaid, which I thought was distracting, but your mileage may vary. Gen Urobuchi seems to really like heavy handed exposition. That's two for two of the things he wrote that I've watched where an instance of exposition proved distracting, but not completely dealbreaking. Yeah, I gave the 3D animation parts in it a slight nod insofar as that it didn't feel completely uncanny all the time and thought it was a case where the otherwise highly distracing and uncanny attempts to generate depth with CGI kind of worked better than usual. *Disclaimer: We also watched a film in the anime thread where the protagonist turns into a car (literally) near the end and drives off into the sunset with the deuteragonist while a medieval castle is chasing them on the highway and though it made perfect sense. So, take that with a grain of salt.

Strange New Worlds, episode three. If I put this to the usual test I have for other nuTrek material, and that is asking myself "Is watching this better than driving rusty nails through my scrotum?", then this episode managed to get a yes as as an answer, a distinction so far only extended to the ludicrous and over the top mirror universe episodes of Discovery and perhaps Picard's second season opener, although my impression of the latter is marred by how that broke into a raging dumpster fire immediately afterward. That wasn't half bad, even if it feels like a rehash of a whole lot of elements we've seen before. Some of the dialogue was more in line with older Trek shows, some of it wasn't (please stop using the "Any suggestions? Run!" 'joke'), much like the crew behaviour - no way the doctor wouldn't tell someone else about his little transporter issue. Not all was good, the handwavium was strong in this one, a lot stronger than in others, and I am tired of evryone having a tragic backstory. I also hate this Nurse Chapel and the fact that they had the brilliant idea to put a (very) distant relative of Khan Noonien Singh on the ship who still carries his name, but what can you do. The acting got a little less wooden too, or maybe that was because I set the playback to double speed again. Not the worst way to waste twenty minutes a week, I guess. Many a lot better ones too, though. I await the turning point with bated breath. And a handful of rusty nails.

I have honestly no idea what to make of Spy x Family. That looks both adorable and horrifying.

Yeah. We have an ISO 27001 certification, which the upcoming audit is for, an ISO 9001 certification, for which there are of course separate audits, and our branch has a TAPA certification too. Can't even go to the crapper without your (personalized) access badge. Internet filter, highly restrictive firewall rules, can only run executables that are on the whitelist (although that's pretty good protection from silly users clicking on WATCH.BIG.TIDDIES.WMV.CRYTO.TROJAN.EXE). If I want to install something on my computer that isn't part of our approved list I need to request a time-limited local administrator password that expires faster than the setup usually is. Need a reboot for something? Yeah, back to requesting a new one. Not that I disapprove. A little headache for us power users beats having major headaches because the regular users kill everything twice a week, or the entire company, right, Maersk?

Well, we got an audit incoming, and received a guideline for our behaviour in case of questioning. Reads a little like "What to do when the Gestapo walks into your office and starts asking questions", particularily the part about no talking back to the auditors.

So, I had like half an hour today to watch something, and I spent it on continuing Texhnolyze watched a bit of Raō Den: Jun'ai no Shō, because of course I did. It's quite interesting - not the film, I mean - to see that while I enjoyed the occassional martial arts Eastern and martial arts trash films (think Kickboxer) in general, this is just, neither. Being animated makes the martial arts feats unimpressive, but to be fair, as does modern wire-fu shenanigans, and the film so far is by far and large just not very appealing to me in anything it does. On the bright side, there's only like thirty seconds of fanservice so far, not counting buff dudes with exposed chests. If those count, then it's nothing but fanservice from start to where I stopped, maybe even to finish, who knows. It's origin as an 80ies anime can't be denied either, some characters are rocking utterly awesome mullets. Imagine, for a bit, if Conan the Barbarian and Mad Max: Road Warrior had an animated lovechild that got adopted by an ancient Japanese martial arts master who didn't quite understand that the shlock these films had is part of the appeal*. The one thing it doesn't do is having that 80ies style, and it really could have used some of it. I don't know how the series is, and I never will, but this really is lacking a certain amount of fun. I wouldn't call it dour yet, but it's not far away. Other than it being about growing stronger, conquest, death, some more conquest and it beginning with one of the characters offering his eyesight in exchange for the life of a hopeful martial arts youth it's, so far, at least not totaly offensive, but between this and re-watching the Visions of Escaflowne movie, I'd rather do the latter. I wonder if I'll learn a lesson or two from this. Probably not. *In terms of visuals, you could also say it's a less colorful version of early JoJo's, and by less colorful I mean it's grey, with some shades of grey and a bit of grey, with the occasional brown tones added to the mix. In terms of entertainment value, it's aso like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, if JoJo's Bizarre Adventure was deadly serious. That is to say, it's... yeah. Almost dour. Yep.

Well, let them eat cake, and all that.

I'm lucky that this is from a gaiden movie series, so not a whole lot of time wasted in case it goes sideways. Touching the movie proper or the series? Yeah, hell no.

The Japanese version isn't used in the movies at all, but rather the same song in a fictional language, so that still could be either. Placement at the end suggests a bonus track of a sort. Yuki Kajiura does that sometimes. Madoka has a case like that too with Mami's theme song having two separate versions for their live performances, although Credens Justitiam and Mirai are more different than the sound track version of Where The Lights Are and the Japanese version - makes sense, they were written for different groups* from the same instrumental theme. Yeah, I had to pick a complete collection pack just for the Legend of the True Saviour series. Seems like overkill, but it's not like there's much choice out there. For something with hundreds of episodes and movies and what not, it's not that easy to watch. Is a little silly, but the scene with them sitting on a burnt out tank while the intro is playing just... dunno. Makes me want to watch it. So much for not walking into a minefield with eyes open, right? *FictionJunction and Kalafina are both Yuki Kajiura's projects (Kalafina was disbanded), and of the three vocalists of Kalafina, two are part of FictionJunction anyway. "Different" groups might not mean a whole lot in that case, but different enough.

Wikipedia told me that the Fist of the North Star: The Legends of the True Savior series does indeed have a Yuki Kajiura sound track, and therefore it has to be one of those. The 2006 offering seems to be the most likely one indeed, so thanks. 106 minutes is fairly long for an animated film I'm probably... not... like, not... I want to say not going to like, but it's far more likely that it'll be like pulling teeth. Except that is sort of moot anyway, considering that there's no way I can watch it right now anyway. In a way I could understand, I mean. Whatever am I going to do with a raw Japanese source? That's like several years away, at least. Sigh. Hm, decisions, decisions. Edel is the true hero of the story anyway and she comes back in season two. In... a manner of speaking. Bleh, too tired and strung out to write anything meaningful. Will reply later.

I cried butterfly tears! He's like a member of the Nerd Crew, except... unironically. He also had a cameo in the, uhm, final episode they didn't mention.

It's a mixture of hindsight and Princess Tutu being a story about a storyteller telling a story. Mytho is important to Ahiru because Drosselmeyer said so, and that's either fine/enough for someone watching the series or it isn't. In a detached way it's fine, in what I do prefer to watch, actually, it is not, but I don't need to tell you that, you feel the same way. Princess Tutu, unlike Revolutionary Girl Utena, doesn't really succeed with the meta aspects for me, so everything else also falls a bit by the wayside when lacking in character driven elements the way it does. On the other hand, Ahiru is a duck. What motivates a duck? Who knows, maybe looking into Mytho's sad eyes is enough for a duck? The differene between Princess Tutu and other animes where this argument applies is that Princess Tutu does nothing for me to really appreciate it. I didn't hate it, but I'd not go so far as to say I enjoyed it. Like I said before, it exists in a strange equillibrium where talking about the parts of the anime makes me feel like I should have liked it, but yet I didn't. This is really in stark contrast to Magic User's Club, which I hated, but the good parts of Magic User's Club were leaps and bounds ahead of the good parts of Princess Tutu. Not that Magic User's Club has a meta level or deep storytelling, I just mentioned it because it has the same director and character designer. Which makes this all the more baffling. I almost began this paragraph with "Anthy represents the deepest desires of the characters, a reflection of their weaknesses and what anchors them to the Academy (limbo), the very thing they need to let go, actually, in order to be free, much like Utena did when she finally realized she wanted to save Anthy for her own selfish reasons, and not because out of any desire to help her. Hence the show ending when Anthy was let go. This applies even and especially to her brother." Good thing I didn't, though, because I'd sound like I'd have my own head up my butt something fierce, huh? I'm generally okay with characters having only a metaphorical or allegorical role and acting as mirrors or reflections. I'd rather have something else, but it's not the same level of dealbreaker. That is, assuming for a moment, that something interesting is done with them. Utena qualified, particularily after the film. Princess Tutu's characters that serve this purpose, i.e. Rue, Mytho and the one-off side characters designed to make Ahiru learn something about herself? No, those didn't work so well. I like Rue because of season two, and I... am who I am, and that doesn't mean she was a great character. It eventually does for Fakir, but it's strange. In the second season, we learn that Fakir is a relative of Drosselmeyer, and what make the villagers kill him also applies to Fakir. The stories he writes come true, after a fashion, and he accidentially killed his parents that way. Ahiru helps him overcome his misgivings about using his powers again, but then the show goes way off the rails and introduces a secret society hell bent on stopping everything related to Drosselmeyer, and that includes Fakir, even with his noble intentions. Rue is torn between her desire for Mytho and her desire to please her father. Nothing of that is worked out well enough to make the second season worthwhile if someone already hated the first. At the core, though, is something I mentioned early on, I think: Princess Tutu is a fairy tale. How many fairy tales are there where the characters have any but the most basic motivations? Snow White is poisoned over envy. Rumplestiltskin wants the king's daughter because... well, no idea. Beause he wants payment for his work, I guess. Now, and here's the real thing, I guess, did Princess Tutu have to be a series with 26 episodes? No, not really. A 90 minutes movie would have been enough, and would have been a much improved and tighter experience, I think. Well, it doesn't just feel like it, it is so. What Drosselmeyer spins as a tale (in a more literal fashion that one might think) becomes reality, and he's very overt about that too in his little narrations, adding corrections whenever he feels like the story isn't progressing the way he thinks it should. Although I'm not sure when exactly that comes out, might be something in season two. The pacing and story structure of Princess Tutu isn't good, and the plot idea arguably doesn't make for a very convincing series, especially not when it looks like it is character driven but isn't. There's no real character development beyond the introductions of everyone in the first few chapters until the Dream arc (SuperS/Eternal) in the manga, and what is in dream feels like a bad copy of what Sailor Moon S did. The villains in the manga are more like the monsters of a regular Sailor Moon episode. Nary a point in giving those meaningful backstories. They're just there for Usagi to kill because she's awesome. Love, friendship and justice. AND MURDER DEATH KILL. Hey, maybe we'll get our Steven Sakura: Moon Stories eventually. It's just not going to be from Ikuko Ito or Junichi Sato. Anyway, not that I haven't wondered about that before, but how the hell did Sailor Moon work out so well, when nobody on the creative team except for the writers of Stars (who participated in other good projects, like The Vision of Escaflowne) made anything on a similar level, like before or afterwards? Not even Ms. Takeuchi, where pretty much everyone agrees that Sailor Moon was her best manga (oh god).

On a completely different note, this video makes me want to watch Fist of the North Star. Not going to do that, though, but eh... it's tempting, unless that's footage from some shorter OVA and not an anime series with 150 episodes. Will post something more on the ongoing debates when I don't feel like keeling over. Maybe later, or tomorrow.

I guess and then you just run into something that makes Princess Tutu look like high art and perfect storytelling, huh?

Fixed that for you.

Some of the jury votes were, but not all. The popular vote was pure politics though, with 439 out of a possible 468 points awarded to the Ukrainian entry. Prior to the event our TV hosts this year speculated that Ukraine would win this one even if they just sent nobody and we'd sit in three minutes of silence, and what do you know, three minutes of silence would have been preferable to this year's winning entry. On the bright side, it's marginally less terrible than 2016's political winning entry which was three minutes of howling. Sorry, I meant so say, a three minute touching ballad that rightly won an apolitical music competition! Sorry, mea culpa. Not that the competition isn't a joke by far and large anyway, and has been so for a long while. Some years it's just more of a joke than in others. edit: Technically the winning entry should be disqualified by the rules of the ESC due to, well, the artists yelling Slawa Ukrajini at the end, but hey, ain't nobody got the balls for that. Wonder how the UK feels, the first time after years of zero pointe entries that they got a potential winner and an actually decent song with a nice artist, and they're upstaged by a bunch of clowns that would not have won if it had been an entry by any other nation. edit 2: Not to mention that the UK will most likely be asked to host the next event, without winning it. So that's a double whammy. Losing to... that, and having to bear the burden of hosting the next competition. Sheesh.

It ain't over until Drosselmeyer says it is over. Feels a lot longer, was it really just a couple of months, not like a little over a year? With nobody else watching the series and you not continuing, there's no real need to hold back any spoilers, so I'll just not mark them. The reason why Ahiru and Fakir are the only two characters that feel like, well, actual characters in the story proper (Edel and Drosselmeyer exist outside of it, and Edel is an automaton designed to extend Drosselmeyer's reach within the story) is because they are and nobody else is, and that's fairly intentional, although the series doesn't actually tell you that until a decent ways into season two, which is unfair to anyone watching animes primarily for the characters. Mytho seems like a primary candiate for some character development, given his state of being utterly without desires of his own at the beginning of the series, and nothing ever happens until the very final episode of season two. Mytho is a story element that might as well be a locked door or a golden apple, or more traditionally a sleeping princess waiting to be kissed awake by the prince. The same goes for the Raven, who doesn't really show up in the first season anyway. The reason why Fakir is an actual character is because he's a distant relative of Drosselmeyer, he is part of the story, but a part of the story that can affect the story in ways outside of what the author wills. To be honest, that's one of the more clever things the anime does as a commentary on authorship, highlighting the way how sometimes characters can change the story written, because the writer(s) at some point might no longer feel that what they had planned fits their characters. Ahiru meanwhile is Drosselmeyer's chosen protagonist. He gives her free reign within a story constriction that is designed to hurt her, just because he enjoys tragic tales. The second season has a scene that exemplifies what happens when someone else arrives at the town, a group of people arrive, come through the door, and some of them are turned into animals, with the kids asking: "Mom, have you always been an <animal type>?" - that is to say, once someone arrives, they're turned into window dressing for the story. Drosselmeyer is already dead, because the villagers he lived with did not like his stories, and they punished him by chopping off his hands so he can no longer write. Turns out that didn't quite stop him. He simply went on to create a device that wrote the stories for him. Season two ends with that device being destroyed and the town being restored to a regular town, reconnecting it with the world at large. Rue is the Raven's daughter, or at least she believes such to be the case. She's just a human child abducted by the Raven and raised as his own, although Raven does become increasingly annoyed at her inability to finish the tasks he gives her. The more Rue fails to do the impossible (i.e. she is tasked with moving ahead the story by the antagonist, while having no agency over the story at all), the more the Raven tells her how much of a failure she is, and that she's only human. Which she is, after all. Rue ends up marrying Prince Mytho, by the way. Oh my, but why not? Hey, don't hate on Edel here. Poor Edel. She died in a fire to save a duck, and all she gets for it is what, disdain? Not that I disagree with Ahiru and Fakir's interactions being the only truly enjoyable parts of the series and the way the rest of it can make anyone turn off. Like I stated before, even if you get all the displayed reference and themes, and that's extremely hard, if not impossible without reading up on them, the show itself never achieves a state where that would be interesting enough to truly appreciate it. As such it's a constant waffling between having nice moments and having moments that should be interesting, and sometimes are on their own, but never really are as a whole. The sum total of the show is so much less than the promise of its individual parts. I already wrote a ten page post about that. Just one question, if Mytho was not a character but simply a door that Ahiru would need to retrieve keys for to unlock, would that change anything? Obviously a door would not talk or try to interact with the other characters, but that's besides the point of the question. Would you be as angry at the Ring of Power in Lord of the Rings when it's not a real character? What difference does it make that Mytho the story construct can talk? Not trying to be contrarian here, it's just something that I actually thought about while watching this, because Mytho is annoying more than he's interesting, or anything else, really. I wonder though, why do we actually feel less bothered by story constructs when they're inanimate? What's the difference beween a door, a ring, a crystal, some holy sword or whatever else, and Mytho? Is there any? Should there be any? Mytho is the implement that makes Ahuri and Fakir grow close, in a similar way as the Ring tries to divide Sam and Frodo (and affects Gollum, of course), but it's a ring, even with a fraction of Sauron's essence in it and some devious intelligence in its will and doing, so why is it easier to accept a thing serving in such a role than it is to have an animate character doing that? Ahiru's primary reason to be in the story is arguably simply to fail, not really to save Mytho. Drosselmeyer set her up to either follow through with her desires and return to being a duck, or being a human while being unable to find any true happiness in it. By the end of the series, she does not find a way out of this dilemma, by the way. Ahiru goes back to being a duck. Not because Drosselmeyer wanted it, but because she chose to. Yes, more or less, but in reality it resolves the larger storyline, both in and out of universe. Mytho is restored, defeats the Raven, marries Rue, Ahiru goes back to being a duck because for the former to happen she has to give up the pendant that turns her into a duck (it's part of Mytho, a twist I'm sure nobody saw coming, what with the red gem in it). Fakir comes to terms with loving a duck and being a relative of Drosselmeyer, and once the story is over the animals go back to being real people, or animals, depending on what they were before. The cat teacher is seen running around with his children - well, kittens, really - implying that he finally found someone to marry. Or maybe not, because cats don't really bond for life.

That's generally a problem with patches in many games in recent times, or at least for games I played a lot. Hey, I know it's a bother, but perhaps I don't want your gameplay changes to apply to my game? Well, for single player games, anyway. Obsidian could have really added an option to Pillars of Eternity: [ ] Make the bad combat in this game worse by adding "balance" from recent patches.

Same here.