majestic

You can do a martial sorcerer. Toss in a Monk level for scaling, Dragon Disciple (4) as soon as possible, rest goes into Eldritch Knight and you even end up with one free level you can do any class you'd like with, not sure how well Loremaster works for feat progression breaking after all the patches. Who needs armor anyway, Archmage Armour scales on its own. Buff up and go to town with a decent 2-hander. For fun, unless that's been changed, you can buff yourself with Geniekind* and procc Elemental Barrage on melee hits, instantly Quicken Rod dimension door yourself into melee action and if you want to be even more ridiculous just go Lich and merge spellbooks because when you party, just do it right, right? *Actually, I think that even works with a Brown-Fur Transmuter companion and their own Elemental Barrage mythic ability, even when they buff someone else. If you don't mind having a mercenary around, that's a nice buff. Extended Geniekind lasts for a while and it proccs the Brown-Fur Transmuter's Elemental Barrage on your other character's hits. Admittedly that's borderline exploitative, but eh, it's not like the game plays fair.

Yeah, and the writing was fine if that was the intention. He's overhearing how his "colleagues" from the DARK ZONE think of him as ridiculous and weak because he keeps messing up against the two girls and he goes off to mess everything up because he underestimates two young girls he already had beaten in an attempt to show strength. I mean... I found that part stupid, but it does make sense from a certain point of view. Then there's something else: Nanoha had the fanservice stuff right from the start with the the transformations and was offensive enough in a certain early episode, but you're not wrong - the brain peeling terribleness in terms of writing quality, animation (that's something I have no doubt will continually get worse with each season) and sexual assault crept into the franchise later. At least for PreCure I'm almost sure sexual assault isn't going to be a main entry and the fanservice elements are so far limited to girls in skirts, which barely counts considering Japanese school uniforms really ARE like that. Whether or not the other series will hold up, that's something I'll just have to see. If they don't, I figure it's not going to be the worst problem. Most Pretty Cure teams don't get more than a season. I can stop whenever I want to, considering that each season is a new storyline with new characters (I mean, so far it worked for Love Live!'s spin-offs that I have no desire to watch at all). Yeah, no, I don't like that intro song no matter how often I try it, but that's fine. On the other hand, how can you not be brainwashed by Junko Iwao, she does know what she's doing. Also that English dub on Netflix, while certainly better than the original one, isn't the best either... so yeah.

Our diesel prices are at an almost all time high with 1.4€/l right now. The only time it was worse was back in 2008, and we all know how that crashed turned out.

Everyone's fine on my end, but my wife has tested positive today, so she's going back into isolation. This is getting really annoying, but hey, she dealt with Alpha pretty well, so I guess Omicron (if that's what it is) won't be an issue either. Hopefully.

*mutters something about not being German* Calculations are fine. Energy prices are pretty steep here, but that's nothing new. Fun fact, compared to the rest of Europe they're pretty mild too, like our gasoline price is a bit more than half of what it apparently is in Sweden. We do have natural gas central heating here, that's still cheaper than electric heating. There's alternatives too, of course, but a whole lot of appartment buildings have central gas heating. The cheapest alternative is district heating, and that might become available sometime soon. My parents have a ****le stove that's working pretty well, and they do have a cheap source of firewood, so all in all it's not that bad. Thermostat is generally set to 24°C with a nightly cooldown period from 2200 to 0600. It's been a pretty mild winter so far, all in all it could be worse.

That was a tentative attempt at seeing if someone recgonizes the character, and if not, maybe does a search for who he is. It's harder than I thought to not post an hour about each episode, although to be honest it's easier with Pretty Cure than the other series I've watched so far. It's nice enough, there's nothing bad to say about it except the voice acting of the animal characters (Mipple and Mepple) who are pretty shrill and constantly add "mipo" and "mepo" to the end of each sentence. The animation is pretty typical Toei cashgrab, but it doesn't look bad for something drawn in 2004, except the DUSK ZONE* (no, really, that's where the bad guys are from) and the EVIL KING* who looks a bit like the terrible CGI satan in the 90ies Spawn movie (in terms of quality, not in terms of, uhm, actual looks). Can you guess that I'm EVIL? Yes? No? It's about as neurotic as Sailor Moon so far in terms of sticking to the formula, which borrows a bit from SuperS, Nagisa and Honoka can only transform and fight together - but not just because their animations are linked, but because everything they do, from magic spells to transformations, they need to, uhm, do together. They transform by slotting magic cards through devices that look like mobile phones but aren't (they also have magic cards to feed their pets and make them sleep, etc.). Enemies are looking for PRISM STONES that'll help the EVIL KING to cover the entire universe in ETERNAL DARKNESS and become IMMORTAL. Yeah, that's about as interesting as it sounds. The setup isn't exactly creative, but so far it's occassionally fun, the character interactions are nice and the writing is... except for one situation where Pisardo already has the girls beaten and then just returns their transformation gear because he wants to prove he's strongerer the writing is okay (even that is maybe a comment on shounen stupidity, but who knows). It's not as funny and the characters are, so far, at least, not as good as in Sailor Moon, and the writing is not as strong as the writing in Cardcaptor Sakura, but you know what it isn't? F*cking offensive, and that's the primary reason I went ahead and tried it after that Nanoha disaster. There's some meta fun too like when they learn a new spell and just blurt out the incantation for no reasons they'll look into the camera and go "Wait, I've said something weird again!". That does also sound pretty good. I think that belongs on the list. *adds* Unless it becomes fanservice hentai later. *Actual literal names when translated, I think the English dub officially made them DARK ZONE and DARK KING.

More like seven... but no, no relation to the part I quoted now that I think about it, that was a jump too far. I wanted to quote "all in all not a good day for anime". Pisardo is like the Jadeite of Pretty Cure. Doesn't last as long though. All I can say for now is I wonder if Toei has to pay royalties for the show to both CLAMP and Naoko Takeuchi because this liberally borrows elements from both. Not very unexpectedly, all in all. Episode seven was the first I'd call pretty good though, I just hope someone's going to ROAD ROLLER DA the two magical girl companion animals because dammit these things are annoying.

I'll.. I... actually... you know, I'd... dammit. I might have done something sufficiently stupid in terms of watching anime, but as I'm not supposed to talk about it, you can only guess what.

According to Wikipedia, in real units (how fitting that we were just talking about those), that's 105.6 MJ, or 29.3 kWh per therm. Hmm, time to look at my gas bill. Hold on a second. 3.32€ per "therm", convert to USD at current rate... we're at 3.74$ per therm, give or take a few cent. Yeah, tell you what, let's swap energy prices and I'll happily adopt your Imperial fantasy measurements where a yard is the length of a man's belt, any part of my thumb is an inch and my foot like a, uhm, foot long... and all cups are the same size so they can be used to measure cooking ingredients. edit: By the way, I know there are also a lot of practical reasons for keeping the regular measurements, but there have been attempts to change it and even swapping road signs lead to protests it really just comes across as "We 'Murica, so we do our own thing!" by now. Honestly though, I don't doubt you'd find a whole lot of people who would give a reason like that when asked why not to switch, next to claims that Imperial measurements are simply "natural" (maybe they once were or I have supremely long thumbs, but not one part of it is an inch... no way) or something. I think the last time a man's belt was a yard long was when the yard was devised. Mostly good natured polemic.

"OK" sounds like a massive improvement over the Devilman Crybaby anime which I thought was fine until it fell apart, how's the ending of the OVA? I think I read somewhere that the Devilman Crybaby ending is much close to the manga ending than the adaptations made before.

I think there are more, because a gallon of gas is a different amount of liquid than a gallon of water, then there's US, UK and Canadian gallons and I'm not entirely sure alcohol isn't measured in something else as well. Eh, okay. In that case, that's pretty much the same then. Maybe a bit less. That's a little joke based on a couple of colleagues and myself getting a Ford Focus as rental car to drive to a meeting once. That was throughly unpleasant, if a bit cheaper than a proper car. Would be fun to see if the average American's need to be different from everyone else outweighs their hatred of taxes or not. Heh.

Every time I see someone invoke the invisible sky fairy with the long beard and a several thousand year old, many times mistranslated book of fables from primitive savages who thought the wind was the breath of God my eyes almost roll back into my head. It's about time we change freedom of religion into being free of religion.

The what? I can't even remember when 89 octane gas was sold here. Certainly not in this millennium. edit: You can fit four people into a Ford Focus if you really need to, I have no witty retort for the towing ability, paranoia and penile extension. Yep. Sounds about right. But yeah, gas is pretty expensive in Sweden. Word. I think the UK should simply demand royalties or taxes for the US' use of the Imperial system, they'd adapt metric in no time.

Luckily I'm completely free of caring for the type of car I drive, so the only thing that matters is that the maintenance is cheap and it's fuel efficient. I get by with one 45l tank fill per month. I don't need a penile extension with four wheels. *scnr*

I'm somewhat liable to randomly blurt out carrots, handbags, cheese every now and then. Dunno what it is, but that silly bit of nonsense got really stuck in my head. I, uhm, randomly add disclaimers every now and then and stuff because well you can guess why I suppose... Was that ever an option? I thought I laid out that it's not a good watch in a very, uhm, "concise" manner by complaining about each and every episode.

I was kind of surprised you knew him or rather his work at all. Doesn’t seem like something you’d enjoy. Admittedly the only thing of his I really liked was „I’ve seen things“ but that’s me and liking totally absurd things.

It's strange to see Mr Weebl associated with any old YouTube meta in the first place, at the risk of sounding kind of old and... like, ancient, he predated the platform, much like Joel Veitch. Although that was a long, long time ago. Not that I disagree with your assessment, far from it. On average, the animation and production quality required is far higher these days, even for semi-older stuff like Charlie the Unicorn or the totally disturbing Salad Fingers series. I mean, yeah, compare... Pretty old. Newer! Although Salad Fingers also goes back like one and a half decades or so. Yikes. I AM getting old, aren't I?

Yeah, pretty much. Heh. Pisardo's mullet is more epic though. Not too sure about the name. How about the Love Live! KISS cosplay picture I posted a while back? Also, word of caution, don't ever do a google image search for Love Live! KISS. I mean, it does get you that picture, but a whole lot of other stuff you don't want to see. Yeah, I got nothing else, I guess. MD Geist perhaps... can't go wrong with the classic action hero look.

Well, you said style. Don't shift goal posts to posing here. How can you beat him? You can't! Awesome hairdo, 80ies shoulder pads, leather, well defined abs and a cape. Seriously. He's like an anime Gene Simmons.

I was asking because my initial thoughts on her voice were something like: "Oh boy, a nails on chalkboard main character for 26 episodes, what joy." By the end of the anime I thought Nanae Katō did an outstanding job. Actually, from what I've read, Ikuko Itō wanted her and no one else for the job, and I understand why. She absolutely nails the character in a way that one doesn't see - uhm, hear - all too often. The scratchiness remains, but hey... Ahiru is a duck, after all. Other than that, I have no idea what to make of the series as a whole, like you mentioned the ballet teacher is really weird. The moralizing antopomorphic animal stuff gets a bit of a cut down the line. At first I thought the series is going to have more of that, a concept to explore every episode, like in the case of Anteaterina accepting herself the way she is. I mean, in a way, there is a slight possibility that it references... (spoilers, sort of) edit: I also really liked the atmosphere and the looks of the anime. The pastel colors, the character designs, pretty much everything. It's just really... hard to explain what it was about or why I liked it. In that particular way it's one of the most baffling things I've seen. I mean sure, much of the things it is based on are stories I grew up with, and every time something foreign (not meant negatively) has a take on it it's really strange for me. The SuperS film also barely worked for me mostly because it's too much of a fairy tale. Princess Tutu was something else too, but yeah, maybe the actual point really was telling a story? Beats me. I don't regret watching it though.

Essentially my feelings on the entire anime. It sure is... something. What do you think of Ahiru's voice acting? Well, her voice actor's voice acting, but eh...

I always thought that Pegasus was an alternate reality amalgamation of Pink and Blue from Charlie the Unicorn. Like the Eldritch Horror entity they show themselves to be in the third episode. Alternatively he's Mr. Weebl's Amazing Horse.

Do I win?

No, no problem with my droid. I mean, with Blood+. Oh come on, what about when Mamoru and Usagi make their love rod? *scnr* Yeah, these my dad can beat up your dad discussions are pretty pointless, and they're not getting any more interesting when comparing magical girls, or starships, or... speaking of starships, there are videos on YouTube where people calculate the potential power output of Star Wars starships and compare them to Federation ones in order to find out if the Enterprise would win against the Executor in a fight. Why are we trying to contain climate change again? I, of course, immediately set out to find out what is what. I already knew that Nanoha was a side character in an H-game, but there are also two fighting games based on the series and a card game for mobile phones. That's the good news. The bad news is that there are a whole lot of what once were Flash games and now is something else, almost all in Japanese, with Nanoha content so terrible it singed my eyes and broke my brain. Do not google Nanoha games. Like, ever. Also, please, like NEVER EVER look at Nanoha merchandise. Why did I do that? What is WRONG WITH ME? Yes, that's a Nanoha sheet, and it's... uhm, listed as for girls, at least on the German Amazon page. Yeah, I'm sure that's... accurate. Oh so accurate.

I'm almost certain that comment kind of applies in-universe to a degree to the better entries in the franchise. Outside of these movies and the ViVids that focused on magically enhanced martial arts nonsense, the combat in 魔法少女リリカルなのは (the kanji for magic is barely readable at this font size, huh?) is relatively slow paced and has some free-action talking moments. I can see people who really enjoyed these two fusterclucks saying that about the more JRPG-esque turn based feel of the earlier Nanoha combat. Of course there's every chance he means other shounen nonsense that uses internal monologue for filler, I hear DBZ did that to ridiculous degrees at times. I kind of expect that there's no way to actually watch all Sazae-san episodes, so that's a problem which doesn't arise in the first place. I've watched the new Doctor Who series (the one that began back in 2005) without feeling the need to go all the way back to the 60ies and watch everything - but mostly because there are episode that are just gone, and what's the point when you can't complete it anyway? Especially since old Doctor Who often has four to six episodes in a story arc and then there's the last episode missing? I'm not that insane. Funnily enough the talking about the Blood franchise a couple of pages back is currently the biggest issue, because I want to check out that first Blood film, but assuming I even like that a bit I'll end up watching Blood+, and I really don't want to. Now, if you'd somehow manage to trick me into watching a Pretty Cure episode and, heaven forbid, it's at least decent, now then I really would have a problem. I agree on the final parts of the R storyline (although bonus points for actually being able to make the death of Saphir something I felt bad about) and everything in SuperS, but the more serious Hotaru and Professor parts of Sailor Moon S weren't that bad, although... they were much better in my memories than they actually ended up being on the rewatch. Except maybe the episode where Hotaru just floats out of the frame and transforms into Mistress 9. Not sure if that was intentional camp or not, but that was just awesome. Nostalgia goggles kind of made Hotaru better as a character than she actually was. Funny how perspectives shift, the intense dislike for Chibi-Usa is gone while Hotaru no longer really worked as a woobie. Hmmm. Sailor Stars' ending is a mess. Unlike KP, I thought it was a good attempt. Pacing is all over the place, that was six episodes with the content for three at best. Instead of giving the Inner Senshi something to do, they're done away with excessively quickly, then we have a lot of meandering in between and the final episode could have used some more time to breathe. Yet I thought it was fine and I probably give it more credit than it deserves. The storyline of the first season is the most coherent and has a concise ending, but it's also the least interesting of them all. I think the biggest reason why they feel like they don't belong to the same anime isn't that they're not the most interesting or convincing or even decently written storylines, even though all of that is true to a degree, it's how disconnected they are from the "filler" episodes, might as well be watching a completely different anime in a different genre. That's something that was part of the franchise, but like Mike and Jay sometimes say when they're watching a film that is especially strange, it feels like these two Nanoha films were made by aliens that watched the first three seasons and recreated something similar but without the knowledge or appreciation of what made the series different. The result is two fast paced, action packed spectacle films with no narrative coherence. It's true that Nanoha befriended Fate and the Belkan Knights after having to deal with them for a season, but that's part of what the seasons were about. There was enough time, not just "blast character to acquire friendship" like the comments say. That's ridiculous. Imagine Usagi would blast the Spectre Sisters with MOON CRYSTAL POWER without any prior interactions and they'd get up and everyone would hug each other and say YAY WE'RE FRIENDS NOW, because that's essentially what's in those two films and the fans love it because that's soooooo "Nanoha" and what? That franchise has a fandumb that rivals that of NGE, although that's not very surprising, I guess. Also, hilarious comments everywhere: Hey, wanna talk about who would be stronger? Sailor Moon and Sailor Saturn vs. Blue, Pink, Yellow and White? Saturn would just cast DEATH REBORN REVOLUTION and it's over, right? RIGHT? *blink* This one got it almost right: Yeah, that's a no on both accounts, Dave. And finally... So... there's this Madoka mobile phone game called Magia Record and there's a rare Nanoha character in it and suddenly it all makes sense. This is all Kyubey's fault. All of it.