majestic

People who like Alien: Resurrection would ditch a cripple.

I once watched anime on behest of another, to serve the people of this thread in person. I found only chaos and insane stalker girls. Dead whispers. For twenty-four episodes I was confused. No more. I have gathered the will to watch under no name but my own. To champion the withered trhead and correct this blighted world. Beg that I succeed. For I have seen the future of anime, and it was empty! That said, inorder to stop myself from trying whatever kooky Isekai you guys want to watch, I instead watched: ストライクウィッチーズ (Strike Witches), episode 1 So, basically, this is an alternate reality magical girl show where instead of World War 2, an alien invasion happened in 1939, and the militaries of the world came together to create the 501st Joint Fighter Wing, colloquially known as Strike Witches, to fight the alien invaders. It is set apart from other sci-fi magical girl shows (read that as Nanoha, mostly, because there aren't that many of them, far as I know) by not having transformation sequences with nudity, instead the girls grow cat ears and a tail when using magic. That said, there's... very weird fanservice. Well, some is fairly regular, like girls in swimwear in the first episode (always a good sign, I guess), but uniforms of any sort apparently have neither skirts nor pants. The girls are basically wearing a shirt and some underwear, and as logically follows, there's a heavy focus on awkward crotch shots. Most of the time, I at least 'get' the fanservice. I don't particularily enjoy it, and it's often embarrassing, but at least I understand why it is there. This here? No idea how that's supposed to be appealing. So, for no reason what-so-ever, three quarters of the cast aren't wearing pants or skirts. I have no idea why. At least it doesn't have an super stupid slapstick to accompany it. Yet. Yeah, I basically have no excuse for this. There's any number of things I could have continued to watch but didn't. Not particularily in the mood or able to watch Texhnolyze at the moment. That's going way over my head right now, what with everything being a buzz. Currently alone at the office, my sleeping has been spotty and my weekend was filled with one giant social gathering, i.e. my wife and I invited friends and family to finally celebrate our wedding. That was, funnily enough, three years ago, but with the lockdowns it was more or less impossible until now. It's not all bad, because outside of the silly fanservice stuff this looks like it's the sort of goofy, mindless action shlock I can watch while being brain-afk.

The second one bothers me the most for some reason. It's just wrong. The others, uh, not so much. Where are the shiny spots on the faces?

The mining mini-game in ME2 brings out my inner child. I just keep wasting probes on Uranus and laugh at EDI's increasingly annoyed replies.

Unlike KP, I think self-harm is preferable to watching Alien Resurrection. I watched the film at the theater. They had what they called a 'quadruple feature' midnight premiere of the film, showing Alien, Aliens and Alien³ back to back before Alien: Resurrection at midnight. The evening was quite the experience. It's incredible how much your butt will start to hurt even in the most comfortable of seats after nine hours of sitting and staring at a screen. Of course I failed to learn from the experience and repeated the same mistake with Lord of the Rings later. That was one movie less, but even more runtime. Still remember that the cinema chain had a couples' special at the time, two large soft drinks and a bucket of popcorn. I went there with a friend, and he didn't want any popcorn, but the special was cheaper than two regular sized soft drinks and separate popcorn, so we went and bought the special. Priceless look from the clerk lady. Kinda looked like she was afraid of catching the gay. Yeah, maybe not everything was better in the 90ies. That's the sort of thing that would have been hurtful if we had been an actual couple. Anyway, evening came as close to a complete bust as possible. Watching the four films back to back just shows you how much the series became gradually worse for the wear. While I'd agree that Alien³ isn't as bad as it is made out to be, watching it almost directly after Alien is not ideal. I even dozed off in the middle of watching it, which is really odd when I normally can't even sleep with the TV on.

It is, except worse in every way, and Ripley is an alien/human hybrid for whatever reason. If you thought she overacted in Aliens, you're in for a treat in Resurrection.

Make sure to try the Imoen romance mod for BG2.

When we make jam, which is pretty much every year simply because we have a lot more fresh fruit and berries than we can eat, we just puree everything, then cook it with only a 1:2 ratio of fruit puree to sugar. The result is a very smooth jam that is easily spread on whatever you want it, with an incredible aroma and taste and a lot less cloying sweetness than the store-bought stuff. I just googled pictures of seedless raspberry jam, and that stuff looks like jelly good. Ugh. No thanks. It also most certainly doesn't get goopy, like, at all. There's just not enough added sugar in it. Well, maybe after a couple of years, but a little stirring will fix that. Needless to say, I also don't want chunks of fruit in my jam. That's just not my, uhm, jam. I know people who like that sort of stuff, but there's no accounting for taste, or something.

Getting back to politics, there's fun stuff going down in Italy. The cynic in me wants to call this the first of many dominoes falling the other way.

That looks so terrible, yikes. Eh, she also gave Komi another chocolate, one shaped like her naked body and yelled "LICK YOUR FAVORITE PART OF ME!" at Komi for everyone to hear. If anyone doesn't know by now, they're willfully obtuse. Jasper's on Neptune! Technically, Sailor Moon had a softball episode. Hey don't look at me, I don't know the difference. I'm sure there are some, but it both looks like someone's batting a thrown ball, a lot of people are just standing around and the games take ages and nothing much happens. Now for a more serious reply, the Steven Universe episode had more character development as it advanced and closed off a certain chapter in Garnet's, well, life, while the Sailor Moon one is mostly pure hilarity. Well, Usagi does catch a ball in the end, but that's nowhere near the same. My quality is pretty bad, but please, click me! Najimi is, like @KP wants Blue Velvet already said, pretty much there to serve as an impetus for Komi and Tadano to leave their comfort zone. The biggest problem is that the show never does anything worthwhile with that, as everything that feels like character and relationship development doesn't spring from their antics, but from Komi and Tadano being in der comfort zone and edging out of it. Just the two of them. Najimi is just there for the "plot" of Komi wanting to find one hundred friends. Tadano's sister, who is only in the show for like one and a half episodes, does more for that than Najimi, who is in pretty much everything. Aside from that, yeah, Najimi is a bit of a Minako style character. Except not really good. Like everything else in Komi can't communicate. Voice acting from hell rounds it off (particularily Najimi). Like nails on chalkboard style. Ugh.

Dimash Kudaibergen is a singularily gifted vocalist cursed with an excruciatingly annoying fandom fandumb.

Well, color me orange and call me Sunkist. Apparently there is a higher power.

Pretty sure he got banned for insulting Hurlshot.

Qistina was certainly more 'real' than ComradeMageSonicYellow117.

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.