majestic

I'm not trying to tempt you, I'm trying to convince myself that it's okay to like this.

Wedged in one more episode of The Vision of Escaflowne. Van gets rescued and Merle is overjoyed, jumps on him and starts licking his face, because she's a cat girl. Once again, instead of being annoyed, I kinda smiled seeing that. I don't know what it is about this particular anime, but I guess it helps that Merle isn't just a cat-eared excuse for fanservice, and she doesn't add -nyan to every setence. After going into tihs pretty much blind, looking at the writing team, I noticed some familiar names. Shōji Kawamori, Akihiko Inari and Ryota Yamaguchi. Shōji Kawamori is, assuming anyone doesn't know, the person behind Macross and the Diaclone toy line design, works which were adapted into Robotech and Hasbro's Transformers (the first Optimus Prime design is from Shōji Kawamori, it's fairly safe to say that without him, there'd be no transforming mechs as we know them - for better or worse, I mean... we'd also not have those terrible Michael Bay films). Akihiko Inari went on to be on the writing team for the universally acclaimed and beloved by @KP wants Blue Velvet's Cowboy Bebop and eh, Ryota Yamaguchi is one of the writers of Sailor Stars, specifically the one who wrote the episode where Usagi and Seiya end up alone at her family's house and all sorts of hijinks begins, and the person who wrote most of the super silly Nanami episodes of Revolutionary Girl Utena, including the cow transformation one. I guess that can serve as an excuse why I like it.

Every single promotional poster of this anime has a suggestively drawn woman with either see-through clothing or in silhouetted nudity enter or leave a giant, fur-covered, creepily grinning mascot costume through a zip-up vagina on its back. Honestly, the question isn't whether or not you'll get second-hand embarressment from it or if it it makes you feel like a pervert watching it. The quesiton is how much of both you get.

All I see is an otter with a whale tail, what does that make me then? No-brained?

No they're not, I just checked, it's even the same guy (same actor). Holy cow that makes everything just dumberer...

Oh, I thought the guy on the bus that was just a throwaway stupid reference, given the time difference, or is that something that's coming up? Not finished with the episode yet, just felt like venting. Also wanted to hit Jurati with something for telling Picard that he's a regular Dixon Hill. edit: Picard doesn't tell Guinan his name so it doesn't mess up the timeline that's messed up, but if it is fixed, she'd know Picard, Data and a bunch of others in 1893 from Time's Arrow. Yes, time travel makes for silly contrivances and paradoxes, but this... this is actually dumber than season one's mechanical space Cthulhu.

In the middle of the new episode of Picard, and I had to stop and post about it. I know I should expect dumb things from this dumb show, but this is yeah, well, dumb: Hey Alex Kurtzman, please go and copulate with your knee. Thank you. edit: Guinan ends up having a nervous breakdown and starts crying over unequal wealth distribution, climate change and wars. Okay. Thanks, I hate it.

Once had a teacher who managed to find out that we got a hold of a copy of the upcoming exam and had a couple of days to prepare for it - she came in the with the graded exams, looked at the class and said in a somewhat disappointed tone: "I was told that you had the questions three days in advance and to be honest, I found the quality of your answers wanting even before I realized you had ample time to prepare. Tell me, please, how not a single one of you managed to get an A? Therefore, I have decided to accept what you turned in. Rest assured that I will take better care in the future, you will not be able to copy the questions prior to the exam a second time. Now, the grades are as follows..." Just need to do badly enough even with cheating, might amuse the teachers.

To paraphrase Garak: "Are you sure that's the point, teacher?" Maybe she just needs to get better at cheating.

Went over it in my head before releasing it.

Currently compiling a system update. I even tested it this time, it was... the least I could do, right?

So, a while back @KP wants Blue Velvet mentioned the "unaired" episode of the first season of Dropkick on my Devil, and I watched that to be done with it. Even amongst the otherwise weird episodes of this anime, this was... really, really weird. Also had a hearty laugh at Jashin's insane opening dropkick and how it ended. It was better than some of the regular episodes of season one, that had a bit of a stale spell in the middle. Relevant reference of the show award goes to:

Yeah, so I looked at the other pieces they auctioned, and found this one: https://comics.ha.com/itm/animation-art/sailor-moon-sailor-moon-and-leshy-production-cel-setup-with-key-master-background-toei-animation-c-1992-97-/a/7254-18132.s?ic4=OtherResults-SampleItem-071515&tab=ArchiveSearchResults-012417 Fun button. Make the owner an offer, at least 19,800$. Yeah. Uhm...

Yeah, well, if they ever auction off a Sailor Moon Crystal cel... Wonder how high that'll go, I'm almost tempted to bid on it, but I have no real place to store a cel properly, and that's just not worth it. I mean, that probably doesn't make me any different than Toei because I can't for my life figure out why there's not one single decent HD transfer of Sailor Moon, but that doesn't mean I should try to acquire something that'll just eventually fall apart in a box, or worse. Generally I'm not overly fond of isekai no matter its origins, but there are some exceptions. Stephen King's Dark Tower series, for instance. Escaflowne was apparently relatively popular everywhere except Japan. I honestly don't know if I'll enjoy it for the entire run and I'm certainly not sure why I even actually enjoy it. I shouldn't, but somehow, I do. It's weird.

Fresh out of the oven:

I guess there are a few things in this game I'm not really going to try out. Being terrible to Ember or Aru are the top entries I guess, but romancing the cat-girl spider thing is a serious top contender too. I read a reddit thread about this romance, and someone called it "extremely well written", and once again, I think it's time to let the world burn. That romance reads like it was written by E. L. James. Fifty Shades of Wenduag, and you're playing her Christian Grey. Including the creepy stalking. Not sure about the horse sized male organ, but the money aspect works out all right as well.

Our journey towards enlightenment may take us to many unexpected places. And then did Tyolus say to the people of the low plains: 'Seek not the wickedness amongst your neighbors, lest it find purchase in your own house'. So basically that's just us in the thread then? Minus the rabble who still refuses to watch Sailor Moon, of course.

The heads show up when you have him in the group anyway, that was just... some silly fun. Wenduag is really a romance option and you call her silly little cat... that's... that's... okay, I give up.

Make yourself one with the Path, and the journey will lead you to eternity.

I was sitting here, reading this wrong for a while... but yeah, the chopped heads crop up regardless, of course.

That's fine, just go Winter, add Winter Witch levels and use Polar Ray for the big ones, spammable Hellfire Rays should be good enough even without that, assuming that fix doesn't come from a tweaks mod, although without loading dice rolls it's not going to have as much oomph... pity, that takes the entire fun out of it. Could of course use Arcane Trickster instead, but where's the fun in that, endgame feels like everything and the kitchen sink is immune to sneak damage. Sure it works, it's just not really worth playing a Devil MC for. edit: Leyline Witch with Winter Witch should get some really crazy high caster levels for Polar Ray with the overcharge ability active. That should one-shot everything in the game that's not scripted to survive a fight. Don't necessarily need to play the moonlight romance with Aru, could always just love Cammy the crazy pants, or perhaps Daeron, he'll probably gift you a chopped off head or two.

I'm semi-partial to trying the Viz dub, all in all. Not so sure about the original English, but maybe afterwards. As much as I like how over the top whacky Minako is, I don't know about the name changes and the cousins thing. Calling Usagi Serena was better than our dub's "Bunny" at least. Also, on becoming one with the fandumb. Remember, they usually like the manga and Crystal season 3. Heh. @Amentep's post about the anime make me facepalm and laugh almost every time, I'm almost tempted to watch it myself. Seems like some typical 80ies goof show. For the English dub, probably, for the original I guess not so much. パアル (Paaru) is what that would end up being, I guess... Japanese Engrish is a lot less fun once you understand how and why it happens.

Successfully romanced the resident ワイフ, so that worked out well enough and one more achievement down, and I told Camellia to go stuff herself in a box, although I don't think she'd going to do that. Greybor's quest bugged out and it finished without the prelude to the final part, which was pretty strange. Yeah, no, I don't think any Hellfire Ray spamming Witch wants to go with Aeon.

The Sailor Says channel mit be gone, but there's still some old dub stuff to be found. Granola bar!