majestic

The End of Nanoha: Detonation. I seriously hope this is the last time I'm subjected to Nanoha stuff. I managed to get through the opening two minutes which is a recap of what happened in the first film. It gives the king a name, Dearche, and it reminded me that I've forgotten to mention that AMON, the little blonde girl, is actually called Yuri. Yuri is mind controlled by Iris, which is weird, because that should be Yuri's job, right? No, comrade premier, it has only begun. Also, exactly my expression. Nanoha does her spiel of offering to help Iris with whatever her issue is, Iris rejects that and Yuri gets a transformation sequence that, while it isn't actually showing her fully nude, might just be the most offensive thing in the franchise, and that's saying something considering it had hypersexualized naked minors of the first season's bath house sequence. I'm not sure what happens exactly, but it looks like Yuri's clothes burn off, leaving only shadowy, somewhat irregularly shaped blackish strips that tightly wrap around her lady parts while she howls in pain. Images in the spoiler (think about looking at them before you click, don't blame me if you do): Yeah, no. Hey, writers, animators, please, I know I complained a whole lot, but can we go back to regular nudity in the transformation sequences and leave out the shadow extremities rape implications? You can find the opening for this piece of trash if you search for Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoah: Detonation Starting Scene on YouTube. I'll leave you with a screenshot of the top comments: This movie makes my hemorrhoids flare up. Does that mean I am a badass or do I have a bad ass? Time to watch the rest of this at 2.0x the speed. It's cutting it really close with the subtitles, but I don't think I can manage this without increased playback speed. Iris summons one of the giant mech kaiju things. There's an endless supply of those under the pacific ocean, apparently. Nanoha fights Yuri and uses her tried and true approach. ION CANNON READY. Yuri apparently knows the king and his entourage. Iris shoots Amite and then stabs Yuri through the chest. This film has gotten pretty violent, pretty quickly. Not a surprise after the ending of the last one, but still a stark contrast to the usual cartoony violence. I mean, Nanoha just unleashed GDI's Ion Cannon on Yuri and all she got from it were a few little scorch marks, and now... time to see if any of the "deaths" stick this time. Iris takes Yuri and leaves, so that pretty much means she isn't dead, and Amite is of course fine too. What's the point of these near deadly injuries when they're handwaved away in the next scene? Risking to sound like a broken record, experiences like these served a purpose in StrikerS... There's some exposition regarding Dearch and friends, everyone's befriending each other now that they have Iris to fight, and some backstory on the dying planet Kyrie was trying to save. It's been slowly wasting away from a pollution creep dubbed DEATH ECLIPSE. This reminds me a little of an old World of Warcraft fan content where a relatively well known German World of Warcraft player recorded his thoughts on classes in WoW. When talking about rogues he said: When creating a rogue you need to keep in mind that you're a) true and b) EVIL. Name your character by picking a combination of DEATH, VENOM, NIGHT, SHADOW, KILLER, MASTER, DEVIL, SILENT or ASSASSIN. Made one for every class except shaman because shaman was something he made a forum post for, not a voice recording. He referenced the rogue one in the hunter video when he says that there are two kinds of hunters in World of Warcraft, one of them being former Counter Striker players with names like Powersniper, Allikiller and Fastfragger who play with their rogue friend Shadowdeath and a shadow priest called Facemeltor in the guild Lords of Ownage. The writers of this travesty seem to have taken a page or two out of his naming scheme playbook. DEATH ECLPISE. This anime makes Sailor Moon bad guy names look creative in comparison. I'm sorry I doubted you DEATH PHANTOM and PHARAO 90. Levi of Lighting (lol) restores a page of the Tome of the Night Sky and it contains the background history of Iris and Yuri. Since Yuri refers to it as the Tome of the Night Sky, this plays before it was turned into the BOOK OF DARKNESS (tm). I mean, at least it should, one never knows with the hack frauds who wrote this. Iris immediately bonds with Yuri when Yuri can repair the damage caused by the DEATH ECLIPSE. Two scientists watching the scene play out on their CCTV system say "This is like watching a friendship drama" and I kind of agree. A bad friendship drama, at that. At least it's not stupid and pointless action, but I feel like the exposition here could have been handled better. The space cop finds Iris, and Iris creates copies of herself and starts killing Space Cops by the dozen. That's cool. She clearly has style. I love killing stuff! The entire gang rolls out to kill endless swarms of Iris copies. Thanks to only having a movie runtime, they go from trying to kill each other to being allies in the span of half a day. I'm a little worried as there's nominally an hour left to watch, and we're already attacking Iris, or parts of her. Sigh. ENDLESS WAVES OF MOOKS. Iris has... or is some rapidly replicating creation system originally designed to terraform Eltoria, or to save it from DEATH ECLIPSE, at least. At least that explains where the constant supply of weird underwater mechs comes from. Iris is building them from scratch every time. Hm, that means Iris is more like RepliCarter, right? Kind of explains how she can transform stuff into weapons, and the transformers. Yay. I am RepliCARTER. FEAR ME. Dearche, Levi of Lightning and Stern the DESTRUCTOR end up fighing Yuri in a seizure inducing cacophony of flashing lights and yelling. This is actually making me a little queasy. Ugh. Dearche touches Yuri and there's a sudden flashback to a reveal that's so weird I have to post a picture of it. From left to right, Stern, Dearche, Levi (guessing based on the color scheme). Because they once were Iris' and Yuri's cats. Take me back, the way I came. I don't want to see... *sings* Dearche talks to himself about how they were three shounen cats who wanted to repay their owner's kindness by becoming STRONG and PROTECTING them. Wow. I don't even. I'm honesty struggling to make something of this. Eltoria Restoration Committee Leader guy and creator/father of Iris shows up, apparently not being as dead as he should be, and attacks the cats and Yuri, who is now free of the Borg nanites Iris planted in her. In a twist that nobody saw coming - I swear, it wasn't totally obvious that nice girl Yuri didn't straight up murder an entire planet, really, I entertained that notion for a while! - it now seems as if something else went wrong at Eltoria. Creepy research guy stabs Levi and Stern (this is a stabathon, everyone gets a stab. Here a stab, there a stab, everywhere a-stab-stab!) then punches out Dearche and leaves with Yuri. Yuri can't catch a break, huh? Flashback time to what happened back on Eltoria. The restoration project was closed down and the project leader guy, Phill Maxwell (odd, no death, devil, silent or anything) just goes and activates a cleansing program, killing everyone. Yuri stops him, but apparently not thoroughly enough. It is revealed that Iris has a secondary function as self-replicating soldier, or else Maxwell wants to reconfigure her and work for the industrial military complex. Okay. This is after an hour of runtime, and two hours and 46 minutes into the movie duology. 50 minutes (with credits) left, and you had the idea to drop that sort of information without any prior setup? Yes, this clearly is the most awesomest Nanoha film to date. Maxwell enforces his control over Yuri and Iris and begins another seizure inducing, CGI filled battle madness with everyone. Levi and Stern decide to transmit the last of their power to Dearche, turning back into cats. Dearche the Meow Meow fusion goes off to fight Yuri. Pew pew pew pew pew, pew pew! Meow meow moew... Meow meow fusion ends up using all of his power, going back to Dearche!Cat and beating Yuri's mind control something out of her system, because that's how things work in this universe. You blast them with lightning until it solves all your problems. Nanoha and Fate double ION CANNON Maxwell who vanishes in an explosion rivalling the detonation of the Soviet Union's Tsar Bomba. That did something to Iris, probably shut down her mind control too, or something. Who knows. There's also no telling if Maxwell didn't just survive his nuclear facebreaker. Hayate finishes an incantation she started a while back, and a couple of skybeams clear out all remaining forces in an instant. Poof. Why not start with that? Who knows. Oh right, we needed 20 minutes of seizure inducing battle madness and a whole lot of back and forth with NO TIME FOR TALKING BECAUSE THAT'S AWESOME. Fate finally breaks my brain by putting what's left of Director Maxwell under arrest. She stands there, straight faced, looks down on Maxwell and calmly proclaims he's under arrest. He can't quite believe it himself. Neither can I. Prime candidate for StrikerS' brain in a jar thingy, I guess. How else would you put that under arrest? This is the best laugh in the movie, and I love it. Maxwell has transformed a satellite in orbit and now has an actual Ion Cannon waiting to obliterate parts of the city. He also built a space launch platform out of a theme park in a couple of minutes to launch a "present" for Iris into space. He wants to make a deal. Safe passage for him, Yuri and Iris in exchange for not obliterating Japan. Seems like a fair deal. Nanoha and Amita realize it's a bluff and that the rocket launched carries the satellite cannon uplink system as it can't transmit from the ground yet (the area is protected by a space cop barrier). Fate keeps talking to Maxwell while they shoot down the rocket and Amite is again hit by one final copy of Iris, or something. Nanoha continues on to the ION CANNON and punches Copy!Iris like a boss, shooting a laser blast from her fist powerful enough to obliterate everything. KO in round one. Clone!Iris grabs Nanoha and self-destructs. Hey, looks like the franchise ends here. On the other hand, YouTube comment guys say they are looking forward to more Nanoha films, so Nanoha can't very well actually be dead now. Raising Heart is damaged and Nanoha is hurt, and they're floating in space. Sure. The sun is shining in Nanoha's face, that's going to be one hell of a sunburn, assuming she survives decompression somehow. Nanoha talks to herself in a near death experience about feeling like a failure and not liking herself. That comes completely out of nowhere. It's not bad, it's just utterly baffling how this happens now, at the end of the film, for no established reason. Fate and Hayate come to pick her up. None of them have any sunburn. Ah well, it's magic, anyway. The cats are back to being people, but are like five years old now and still need to grow. Yeah, that's one very nice way to take a total dump on their sacrifice. Not that it had any emotional impact, but really, why do that? Amita, Kyrie, the cats and Yuri leave, and everyone becomes friends. There's friendship to be found in almost beating each other to death. Yeah, that worked in the first season and A's because that was the point of the character development, and the action a means to an end, not the other way around. *sigh* Yuri heals Kyrie and Amita's parents and they one again begin work to restore the planet that DEATH ECLIPSE almost killed off. Iris is still in custody but promises to make amends, and everyone forgives her. Nanoha and the gang are back at school. A last second flash forward shows a fully restored Eltoria and grown up versions of Kyrie and Amite bringing flowers to their father's grave. Roll credits. This film was tentatively better than Reflection, but that's like saying losing both legs is tentatively better than losing both legs and a testicle. It's still a pretty rough deal, and the beginning is just terrible. The writing quality is still in the dumps, and it has so many silly contrivances happening, craps over its own character development at leisure and has seizure inducing battles that are almost as bad as those in Rebuild, only marginally better because the scope is smaller and there's less visual noise on the screen. I think these two are the worst animated films I've seen to date. That doesn't say much because my actual anime (and animated, even) movie experience isn't that big, but still, ugh. To drive that point home, normally when I have to watch something with fan subs because there's no other way yet, once I'm done I move it the files to my external hard disk. These two films? They just got the SHIFT+DEL treatment. If I never see them again, it'll be too soon.

Not in anime, but it stupid action things, and Mike & Jay liberally complained about them being some sort of action and sci-fi/superhero film staple a while back while reviewing the Transformers movies, Avengers and some other stuff. It basically comes up every time they see a final battle in a spectacle film where some random laser beam shoots into the sky for some reason. Star Trek Picard had one too at the end. That's why I said all this stupd film lacks now is a skybeam for the final fight, and it delivered one right on cue.

Avoid the German occupied territory of Mallorca and you should be good. Just popped in to make that joke, perhaps @213374U can provide some more on-hands insight.

@InsaneCommander watched Goblin Slayer a while back. It is also the best indicator of the writing quality of the film. The King summons it from somewhere, says it will destroy everyone and in the end it does nothing at all because Shamal figures out how to deal with the summoned mech things. She analyzed that only to find out that if you destroy their power supply, they just turn off. No kidding, Shamal. Each of these things contains a glowing ball that both control unit and power supply, and destroying it turns the thing off. Who would have thought? By the time the movie cuts to Hayate's fight with the King, she just one-shots it. I don't know if they animated ten hours of supremely stupid action for this only to cut the film this badly or if that's really in the script like that, either way, it's objectively awful writing, cutting and just plain bad filmmaking, as is Fate suddenly developing healing powers for no other reason than to heal her adoptive mother. That last bit even ruins a potentially nice scene that was set up earlier where Lindy talked about how Fate doesn't call her mother yet because the adoption wasn't that long ago. It's meant to be a touching moment of bonding between the two, but the film is so bad it just falls totally flat. Even though this is a spin-off in a different continuity, there's a certain measure of lingering appreciation for Fate, Lindy and the others from the much better TV show - especially StrikerS - and not even me actually liking these characters helps this. Yeah, dunno, just saying in case someone else develops an interest in the Nanoha series for some reason. Someone who isn't a lowlife anime otaku mouth breather, at least. As much as I enjoyed StrikerS due to its unique mix of interesting character exploration, teamwork focus and meaningful (not necessarily suspenseful though) action I don't see anyone of the regulars here liking it. Doubly so when it takes watching the first season and A's to get to it. At least some part of the post made you laugh. I laughed at the skybeam. Hard. Unintentional comedy is the best, although I can't credit the film with any of that. If that's the case, then he wouldn't have shown the film as the reason to watch Nanoha over other magical girl shows because it's so different and awesome and whatnot. Then again, he recommends skipping the TV animes in favor of the movie series, so yeah, that's... sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't make a YouTube channel dedicated to showing people how stupid YouTubers are, but then I'd have one viewer or so, and editing videos is even more work than writing these posts. I guess I'm good. Heh.

It's the same expression I had when I saw that, because Discovery's artificial gravity fails and Burnham is immediately catapulted exactly halfway between the floor and the ceiling, then something arrests her momentun and she hovers there, until falling back down. Speaking of things that are terribly written, the Nanoha movie keeps giving me things I want to post about. His Lordship, King Whatshisface the not at all Evil Overlord(tm) summons his servant mechanical thingie, Ametista of the Black Shadows. "Ametista of the Black Shadows" sounds like something a twelve year old Twilight fan would come up with. I'm what the writers came up with when tasked with creating something cooler awesomererer than laservelociraptors! Nanoha has like a ten minute fight with one of the king's servant people called STERN THE DESTRUCTOR. I'm going to assume that's a silly mistake in the subtitles and she's really just called Stern the DESTROYER, but that doesn't make the naming any better. I miss the time when Nanoha was a Chinese martial arts master, tried to talk to people and when they didn't listen just ended it in one quick blast while looking sad. That lead to the same result, just a whole lot quicker. Again, all I can think of is how StrikerS knew that it couldn't create dramatic tension with its action sequences alone and spent time making me care about the characters in peril and what they're fighting for. It also had the good sense of knowning that the action is only a means to an end, not and end in and of itself. Therefore, the action in StrikerS mostly either served a narrative or character development purpose. It wasn't just TOTALLY RAD DID YOU SEE THE AVENGERS FIGHTING THANOS FOR FITFY CGI FILLED MINUTES ENDGAME WAS SO AWESOME. To give you an example from StrikerS: All THIS is missing now is a skybeam. Nanoha and Stern have a heavy shounen off to see whose magic and resolve is the stronger. Stern yells at her, saying that she wants to protect her king. That's fine, except it's the king, Stern and Levi attacking the others, not the other way around. Levi sums up the quality of this film's writing in one neat sentence when Fate asks her who the "king" is. Levi says: 王様は王様だよ！The king is the king! Yeah, what a way to answer that. Levi then says this gem: "The king gave me meals and snacks and treats me very nicely. We even slept together." Sure Levi, that's fine, but I don't reall want to know about that so much. Really. I'm going to assume the subtitles mean "share a bed" in the innocent way to protect my sanity. Take note though, evil overlords, be sure to feed your pets well and let them sleep on your bed every now and then, that'll make them more loyal in the long run. She beats Fate. And Fate gets turned into Fateservice once more. Who needs dignity. Lindy shows up and protects Fate from a mortal blow, and ends up wounded mortally herself. For a moment I thought they'd actually kill off Lindy because why not in a new continuity, but no. Fate suddenly has healing powers coming from nowhere - really, nowhere. In all of the other seasons, spinoffs and whatnot, she never once showed any affinity for healing magic. Well, they might be in the manga maybe, but he gives a sh*t about that. The movie makes a flashback to Fate's second season / second movie perfect childhood illusion and pretends it was real. Or maybe Fate tells herself it was real. Lindy has her upgraded Bardiche and ho boy, now it's payback time. Payback! Does this count as sky beam? No? Yes? Maybe? Meanwhile, Hayate one-shots Ametista of the Black Shadows without that thing doing something even once. This is the epitome of something useless that should have been cut. How did that not end up on the cutting floor? Mr. King-sama respons by casting SWELLING DARKNESS. Yeah, we're sort of back to being a JRPG here. Mr. King-sama unleashes MORE DAKKA on Hayate, and then we... finally... FINALLY... get this: BLUE SKY BEAM TIME! VERY COOL. VERY, VERY COOL! In the next scene the blue skybeam is actually reddish/purple and Iris actives her "Virus Code" to infect the ETERNAL CRYSTAL. BEAM BEAM BEAM BEAM! Okay, the film now officially goes off the rails. The space cops show up and Iris the AI, now powered by the ETERNAL CRYSTAL, becomes La Magra as the space cops bodies explode into blood and gore and she absorbs it to fashion a body from herself. Uhm, okay film, introduce some ultraviolence in the last couple of minutes. Why not. Uhm... Where's Blade when you need him? Iris tells Kyrie that inside the ETERNAL CRYSTAL rests a WINGED DEMON I'm going to call AMON because why not? As if this film isn't bullsh*t enough already. Oh, what a surprise, Iris tells Kyrie that the demon isn't able to help her family or her planet. What a surprising twist. Next up, the usual gang, Amita and Kyrie will team up to defeat GOD MODE SUPERPOWER AI and her WINGED DEMON THING. I'm just assuming that the King's gang will MAYBE ALSO work with them, because there's been some dialogue between them and Hayate, Nanoha and Fate to make sure we know that they're not totally bad, even if the king sleeps with his subjects in exchange for snacks. Who am I to judge other culture's way of rewarding badly written subtitles. Kyrie is supremely unhappy about getting a dose of her medicine. In a different universe where this film would have been written differently, I might have cared for her broken heart. Felt something, at least. In this film? Not so much, no. Oh, and Iris isn't an AI, but a real mind trapped in a tablet, and now she has a new body. Uhm, whatever, really. The king and the gang takes off after he feels the presence of AMON, the WINGED DEMON. Iris tells the king something stupid about the power in the chest of a girl. Which one? Well, AMON's, who really is a blonde girl who wakes up and begins to... kill space cops left and right by making them explode in similar ways to Iris' La Magra summoning spell. This is weird and confusing. Also, Iris and her virus code assimilated AMON the little blonde girl. YOUR BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVENESS WILL BE ADDED TO OUR OWN. Quote from Star Trek Armada, by the way, lest Shady or someone else shows up and tells me it's actually We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Kyrie shows up out of the blue and instead of pulling the trigger on Iris immediately starts talking to her. Girl, have you not been paying attention? Fate and Signum start bleeding life force too. How riveting this all is. Amita shows up and shoots at Iris. Fate suffers some more indignities. Because she has to. It is known. Oh right, that's Nanoha showing up with her newly upgraded Raising Heart. Nanoha fires her newly installed FORMULA CANNON or something. PEW PEW PEW PEW. An explosion saves Fate from her state as blood lanced fanservice object, Iris is surprised by the power of the blast, Nanoha resolves to SAVE EVERYONE and we CUT TO CREDITS. FINALLY. One down, one more to go. Final statement: This guy is a complete hack fraud. While the film does include a full transformation sequence by Hayate, Nanoha and Fate, that's nothing that wasn't in the shows or the other movies yet. WHERE THE TIDDIES AT YOU PROMISED, YO? Honestly, whatever you do, do not watch this film. It's trash, and not in the good way. I can't believe the next one is 110 minutes long. What could they possibly still do with that setup for ALMOST TWO F*CKTARDED HOURS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, we're essentially at the final battle already. Plus handwaving some way to save Kyrie's and Amita's parents and their planets. That can't take two hours.

I'm pretty sure that we got the episodes in the intended order on TV then, rather than the US broadcast order. Interesting, thanks. That would also perhaps explain why my DVDs, the remastered one and the Netflix episode list is different. Starfleet uniforms as a general rule stayed pretty pants. Except maybe those later DS9/First Contant ones. Discovery Season 4's uniforms are a highlight though:

Yeah, now that you mention it, you may be right. The aliens just altered Charlie so he could survive on his own, or something. edit: The other one had the galactic barrier affect two crewmen, I think. The order in which they are shown depends a bit on the release you have. There's some original DVDs that went by broadcast order, the remastered edition that went by remastering order and there's another edition that goes by the production order of the original show. So yeah, the one with the galactic barrier at least aired as new pilot. Confusing, all in all.

Yeah, he correctly picks up the idea of a friendly slap on the ass and applies it gender neutral to Yeoman Rand, and then is very confused about why it's okay for men to touch the butts of other men, but not the butts of women. However, Charlie isn't a human that develops reality warping powers but an alien that always had them. He just passed off as human. edit: I was half-joking.

I would also like to log a formal complaint that this thread is once again in @KP on top of ZA WARUDO's custody. It would have been @Bartimaeus' turn now. That aside, I'm once again calling it quits. A girl called Lightning Levi (or more literally Levi of Lightning), one of the servants of the totally not evil Overlord from the Book of Darkness showed up. Not only is she a Bokukko, but she also just goes ahead and summons a Mecha from the seafloor by striking everything with lightning. Because she's Lightning Levi, and of course there's a giant mech turtle waiting to be activated on the seafloor, because this is Japan and there's plenty of weird stuff in the sea there. This is the stuff people prefer over StrikerS, because people are stupid. I don't even... Godzilla just called, he's unhappy he wasn't invited to the party. 20 minutes, not bad. At this rate I'll be done on Sunday, and then it's one more film... just one more. Sigh. I really should have continued with Magic User's Club or The Shounen Adventures of Shaoran, or maybe even Lady Asuka. Anything, really.

I think those aired before or after the DiC dub episodes aired. A lot of that DiC stuff is absolutely epic in this special trash kind of way, no wonder some people prefer it to the more "serious" dub by Viz, and I'm finally beginning to understand why there are people who claim that the "original" Sailor Moon anime was gritty. I mean, yeah, sure, compared to the DiC stuff it sometimes really was, but in general, people really do act like granola bars when they claim it was. It's too bad the Sailor Says channel is gone. Sailor Dark Mercury disagrees with your asessment! Aku probably does too, but then you'd complain about me using your memes again. edit: Kyrie's inredibly inconspicuous AI friend "Iris" from a tablet she found as a kid just freed an Evil Overlord (TM) from the Book of Darkness and resurrected two of his servants. Evil Overlord speaks in a deep, distorted voice just to drive home the fact that this is a good idea and everthing will be zettai daijoubu da yo, to quote Sakura.

Are Russian merceneries ripping babies from incubators yet?

This Nanoha movie is so painful. Kyrie's enrage mode ends up beating everyone, she shoots herself through her guts to hurt her sister who crept up behind her and takes off with Hayate's Book of Darkness (tm). The fact that I can understand about half of the dialogue also pretty much implies that the actual dialog writing is pretty simple, to put it in nice terms. Kyrie yells 大嫌い (daikirai, lit. big dislike, i.e. I HATE YOU, in the same way Anakin hates Obi-Wan, you get he idea) at Amite before shooting herself and her sister. There's some post-battle cleanup, then this happens: Arisa is slapping Nanoha's ass because Nanoha looks a bit forlorn and is worried about not being able to help the girl that almost killed everyone. Both of these are typical Nanoha things, although in the past seasons Nanoha trying to understand her enemy's motivations was better written and made sense. The silly assault stuff is just absolutely hot pants. I mean, pants. Sorry. Got distracted by the image. There's a slight chance that this is a homage to Star Trek: TOS... Eh, but, I kinda doubt that. Five MINUTES. I made five minutes progress after I swore to myself not to post about this trashy film until I'm done watching, and look where we are... *sigh*

Ha, found it! Yeah, it's one of "those" YouTubers. Narration is terrible and all that. But... it has actual footage. Like. HOLY CRAP I forgot how awful that was. edit: Although, not the one I thought it was, to be honest. That was some other documentary I can't find any more, or a few things fused in my mind, that's entirely possible. Used to watch a whole lot of those during the rewatch. edit 2: Have fun with this fun thing too:

I'll let that slide this time because I actually really watched Sailor Moon on a German TV channel... I've seen some parts of the adaptation in a Sailor Moon YouTube documentary already, by the way, I can't find it any more though. It talked at length about how some episodes were available in Canada before the US and all that jazz, but... dunno where that review is. It seems gone. It singed my mind and I opted not to mention it.

In the manga/Crystal he is 16... the 18 bit was a change for the anime because no idea.

No, that was just me making it up. Mamoru is super annoyed when Usagi is jealous and believes he would want Chibi-Usa in inappropriate ways. Like, he rightly should be. She all but calls him a pedophile in name there.

Huh? I was pretty down on the more pants part of the R storyline until I watched Crystal. Mamoru's fake breakup ends up hurting Usagi and is based on this super stupid closed time loop, but it's... a damned sight better than Usagi showing up, spewing an almost hateful tirade at Mamoru for wanting Chibi-Usa* as a woman more than her, him being annoyed by being called Pegasus, and ending Usagi's hissy fit of jealousy by, well, showing her just how much he really wants her as a woman (oh dear god), turning his first volume/first crystal season creepiness (stalking her, watching her transform, etc.) up to eleven by (ab)using Usagi's exceptionally distrought emotional state, to, and I'm sorry to retort to this level of language but nothing else is appropriate, get his d1ck wet. To make things even worse, it caps all of that off by making Usagi being all right with Chibi-Usa being around the next day in the morning, because nothing turns off ridiculous female hysteria faster than getting laid properly. We've been over this though, and how the manga was made essentialy excuses a whole lot of these things in some manner, but not all of it. *Usagi is generally pretty crappy to Chibi-Usa in Crystal/manga. The anime handled this much better by using Usagi's relative immaturity to make their "rivalry" a little less stupid and more relatable. Yeah. You should really watch Crystal at some point. It's eye-opening.

Quick reply, clock just struck 0300, more later... but yeah, you had a run of particularily bad films and asked if anyone wanted to suggest something bad too, and I went for MD Geist II because that's actually even worse than the first one. I still love it, don't get me wrong, but it's... bad. Looks like I lied, it was two minutes.

Something about K-On!! (well, the second season, silly naming scheme) just struck a chord. Ha ha. Struck a chord. That wasn't even intentional. I think I'll go to sleep now. I think I'll watch Only Yesterday sometime soon. I looked at some pictures, but the adult parts don't really appeal to me, or at least, they don't look like other Ghibli films that I found had a more pleasing art style. Not sure without seeing it all in motion, of course. I hope this doesn't end up being as emotionally draining as Whisper of the Heart was. Fat chance of that considering the director, huh? Sailor Moon looked really, really good for how little time and money they had to do it. Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon R are probably my favorites in terms of looks. As contrived as the plotline was with Usagi's break up, that shot where she walks down the road only to sit down in a telephone booth is nothing short of fantastic. In fact that entire sequence, from her arriving at Mamoru's place to that is absolutely stunning. Walking down this reduced, minimalistic, impossibly empty, surreal street somewhere in Tokyo. Eh... Technically, on my end I can add Nanoha and Fate in StrikerS to the list, it's all but stated directly but waffles a bit too much with its commitment for my liking. Haven't watched Tokyo Godfathers though. Shinji is just way too confused about everything to really make sense of what his preferences are, but assuming for a moment he's bisexual, he still shows a strong preference for women. So, no, I don't think Shinji is gay at all. Cancel me internet, I don't really care. I don't think I've watched a whole lot of anime with the unrealistic sort of gay characters either, because all the girl-on-girl assaults were mostly committed by characters in shows that barely have any romance at all. Which is why I think they're just there purely for male entertainment and adding to the unrealistic expectations some men have regarding the topic. *sigh* Yeah, also... you have the good sense to stop when it gets bad and I don't... *nods sagely* *secret handshake* Ey, you already tried MD Geist II and very surprisingly dropped it after a minute. Gotta ask, which one? It's been a while and both shows fused into a weird amalgamation where I can't even tell the storylines apart from binging it. It's all really confusing.

Wrapping up things: Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Reflection I've left this off when Hayata starts battling the transformers, and luckily that's done now. The transformers kick her ass something fierce, but sister girl from the intro comes to save her, then picks up the now damaged transformer's gatling gun and transforms it into an even biggerer, awesomerer triple gatling gun and shoots everything. There's still an hour of runtime left. An hour. Holy hell, I don't think I can do that. Ugh. Time to listen to Cage of Mirrors again. Take me back the way I came, I don't want to see... Kyrie's sister for some reason knows Hayate's, Fate's and Nanoha's name. I have no idea how or why. The movie should dispense with the silly action stuff and get to the point: Says majestic, posting this picture a few seconds from the transformation sequence he was talking about actually happening in the film. I do have a nice sense of timing sometimes, don't I? There's some incredible irony here insofar as that transformation sequence is the least, and really, I mean that, the least explicit (substitute offensive if you will) transformation sequence in the entirety of the franchise so far. There's barely a shot of the breasts he was talking about and the girl in question doesn't even get the full undress treatment everyone else got so far (including the nine year olds from the first season ). Anyway, back to the actual film, the new arrivales analyzed the fighting style and strengths and weaknesses of their opponents and are doing pretty well against them. This idea isn't half bad, but it's still so much time spent on action that could be better spent on what StrikerS did. Giving the action meaning by properly introducing the characters first, hm? As per usual, there's absolutely no visceral feeling to the action sequences, and they drag on forever. Regardless of having "analyzed" their opponents, it's also a little ridiculous given how this plays after A's where Nanoha, Fate and Hayata obliterated a world ending all-powerful god mode entity, and now they're stopped cold by construction vehicle decepticons. Is there any particular reason Nanoha doesn't Starlight Breaker her enemy into submission? That thing worked each and every time so far and none of the others can defend against it (at best, Fate can fight her to a draw). Uhm, and where's the Belkan Cartridge system gone? Hey girls, add some mana batteries? Hello, is this still the same franchise? I get it, every enemy needs to be biggerer and badderer and bad-asserer than the ones before, but you know what was pretty nice about StrikerS? They weren't. When the attack happens, they fight them off pretty neatly in one on one situations but still lose because the enemy has superior coordination abilities and a phase walker girl that takes out the Space Cop's CIC. Signum and Vita show up, and they have new weapons too, but at least Signum has mana batteries. Right, now I think I remember that the Tiddies guys said the movies are spin-offs set in their own continuity. Great, now I care even less about this. After reinforcements arrive and Kyrie is apparently beaten, she does the usual sci-fi trash thing and starts her enrage mode, beating everyone handily. Well, everyone but her sister. The characters have on and off tried to talk Kyrie into just stopping her attacks and find some course of action to help her, but Kyrie doesn't really want to listen. Yeah, writers, we've done this before. Twice. When you made StrikerS, you had the good sense to not pull it off again. Time to call it quits again. I can only take this in small chunks apparently. I'm also stuck in a time dilation field, because every time I check the progress bar, there's still one hour left. That can't be right...

I sort of am, but if given the choice I'd still either take the rather neutral children's anime/world masterpiece theater style of the late 70ies/early 80ies (Heidi, Anne of Green Gables, Dog of Flanders, etc.) or late 80ies to late 90ies anime style over the alternatives. I have a soft spot for certain 60ies character designs from liking Attack No. 1, but that's as far as I would go. There are certain modern animes that grew on me after a fashion, like Violet Evergarden (outside of some of the CGI used) and especially K-On! which... honestly isn't something I would have thought I'd ever enjoy, aesthetic wise, but somehow ended up doing. For K-On! at least, I think it's something like form following function, I suppose. The art style works perfectly fine for what it is. I will, eventually. "Fun" fact, almost all the sexual assault I've seen in anime recently was girl on girl (I don't now if that is supposed to lessen its impact or increase it's appeal*, or both), but yes, that's pretty much what I was talking about, in addition to putting the characters in embarrassing and revealing situations for no real reason. I mean, there's no way Plastic Little wasn't made with the male gaze in mind, but it was noticably more mature about it than ecchi elements in general tend to be. I have, to this date, watched four shounen shows. Two at a time when they were on TV and I just watched anything that was on TV, and two that were an adaptation of the same manga, that last one based on the recommendation of friend a couple of years ago, in between the time from finishing Sailor Moon's original run and reviving my interest in anime - in one of life's little and strange coincidences by rewatching Sailor Moon. The first two are Bismark and Robin Hood, the latter of which lessend the impact of the shounen dolting there is (and that isn't entirely a whole lot, but that's filtered through nostalgic memories from a long while ago) by placing it into medieval Europe where some of it makes more sense, what with the feudal system at the time, but I've talked about Robin Hood at length. Bismark is fun 80ies sci-fi trash, atlhough it does feature an initially fairly stupid shonen dolt frenemyship between the lead character and an American called Bill that may only have been a part of the dub. Not sure, the series was apparently changed a good deal in dialogue. There's every chance I'd actually hate the original. Still looks pretty good though, but follows the anime sci-fi trash formula of having mech fights until the main characters just whoop out the main cannon and obliterate the enemy in one blast to the T. Ever since I was a kid I've wondered what stops these people from simply employing their enemy one-shot mechanism immediately - if all your dramatic mech combat momentum hinges on an unexplained contrivance, you're bound to lose me, and indeed, the mech fights are the least interesting parts of this. Really, that makes no sense at all. As did the change in the dub that the enemies they kill don't stay dead, but just get teleported back to their home dimension, leaving me to wonder how they'll ever be defeated. The other two are Fullmetal Alchemist and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and while I liked them well enough in spite of what they are, I'm generally "that guy" when it comes to preferences. I like the slow burn of the original adaptation more, but prefer Brotherhood's less metaphysical ending. Needless to say I watched it more for Al and Winny than caring about Ed... overall not a complete loss, but I certainly don't understand how this won every "most bestest favoritest anime of the year" awards during its original run. No, that's not it, because people who are young in body and old in heart generally are either fanatic Christian young earth flerfers or young poster boy conservatives that swallowed Ayn Rand's nonsense hook, line and sinker, and you don't strike me as either. You're just a person of taste, and entertainment's gone down the crapper in recent years. The first TV show I can't answer because it's one of those that were on TV, and I really don't remember what the first one was. There were always at least four or five animes running. As for movies, that's a tough nut, for all the anime I've watched, there weren't a whole lot of anime films on TV and unless we count OVAs like Legend of Lemnear or Plastic Little (which we should not, I think) then the answer to that is actually MD Geist. I was going to say it was the Sailor Moon R movie, but it wasn't. MD Geist and Akira were before that... Can fully recommend MD Geist for every fan of 80ies sci-fi trash, but keep in mind, it pretty much is trash. *This is what Miyazaki talked about, in part. People in the anime industry not observing the real world in any meaningful way, and ending up making scenes like that. There's a pervasive schism between the depiction (and acceptence, actually) of lesbians in entertainment (adult or otherwise) and the real world, and it's especially bad in anime and in, well, adult entertainment. In my experience, so that's just an anecdote, heterosexual men in particular seem to react with a certain amount of disappointment and disdain when real life lesbians don't turn out to be like the ones they like to watch in films. Which is like all the time. *sigh*

I blame digital coloring, and to a lesser degree scanning the animations, i.e. the outlines drawn on paper, scanned and animated digitally by stringing the frames together instead of using cels - at least for Japanese anime. Western cartoons didn't suffer as much from this, like, when you look at Infinity Train it looks fine, but it too was animated on paper and colored digitally. There are some physical properties you'll just never get from digitally coloring scanned outlines, no matter how hard you try. Like having an actual coat of paint with not always evenly distributed amounts of color (perhaps intentional, to boot), colors on top of each other and colors according to what we can observe in reality (where else would go get colors from). I don't want to say digital coloring feels so soulless, but it's pretty much like the difference between the original Star Wars and Attack of the Clones. Star Wars, for all its being sci-fi, looks like the real world because it was shot in the real world, Attack of the Clones wasn't. Everything is shiny, bright and just feels wrong*. That's why you have modern anime where the backgrounds look fantastic and the character models don't, because the backgrounds were painted and then scanned, not vice versa - but they're also by far and large static, so the extra work pays off by making them look better and not causing a whole lot more effort. I'm guessing you could apply some digital trickery to simulate color thickness and layering and whatnot, but looking at the screenshots, that's just not done, and even then... that's never going to be the same. This is a lot like this stock picture here: Now, this has someone with a ball, a broken window, and someone angry. I think this is supposed to mean that the guy believes the other guy damaged the window, but my reaction to that is, given the perspective on this, there's no way that ball could have made that small a hole. Whatever the ball is, it sure wasn't used to break the window. *edit: At the end of the day, a painting has a structure and an actual uneven surface that breaks light differently than the inherently flat surface of a digital plane of color. That's why painting and scanning the background beats digitally created backgrounds every time, even if a little bit is lost without cel transfers. At least, I think that's what is bothering me, but I might be wrong, I'm by no means an expert on the subject of animation.

Maybe, but I by far and large hated much of The Mandalorian and very vocally stated so here on the forums, so while I too haven't watched The Book of Boba Fett (yet, that is), I can still be rather vocal about absolutely hating the design and the idea of a cyberpunk biker gang riding colorful vespas in a gritty Star Wars setting on Tatooine.

Wrapping up Carried by the Wind: Episode 12: Myao self-inserts into a scene without knowing what is going on, and as honorable as her intentions were, as per usual, she and by extension Ran are now stuck in a silly adventure where all isn't exactly as it seems and Myao ends up smuggling stolen goods... also, damn Myao is retarded and lacks any ability to read the room. Well, or the wind, as the Japanese would say. And, as per usual, leave it to her to not learn anything from it either. Episode 13: Myao and Ran fight. Over what? Doesn't matter, and therefore isn't shown - Ran realizes that she can't get smashed without money. Money Myao supplies from somewhere. It's quite baffling. By the way, did you know that making Sake probably started out by shinto monks chewing rice and spitting it out? The enzymes in their saliva started fermentation, the result was a slightly alcoholic pulp. I find that disgusting, really. Sake is, by the way, the reading for two Kanji: 酒 and 鮭. One means alcohol, the other salmon, I'll leave you to figure out which is which, and the same readings are why sake sushi has nothing to do with alcohol. Since 酒 just means alcohol, if your context makes it hard to distinguish one from the other, it's probably better to use 日本酒 when it is about the ricewine from Japan, although adding the word beautification prefex o- is also often used: お酒 (o-sake). Syllable stress is supposed ot be different between the two words, stress on the sa means salmon, and on the ke... well, you get the idea, and guess what the reason is why salmon is by far and large called sāmon (サーモン ) in Japan nowadays? Back to the episode... Ran is trying to buy cheap sake while Myao suddenly shows up being somewhat rich after helping a jeweler, being carried by four identical slaves, or servants, or whatever, and suddenly Ran wants to make up. Strange how that goes. Myao even realizes that she's so retarded that it's going to work, and lo, it does. Ran also meets someone from her past, and it gets really confusing for a bit when the owner of a dojo buys out a geisha who is in love with Mr. Someone from Ran's past (mentor, fellow drunk and probably romantic interest) and... it ends up being Ran's finest moment, I think. Fantastic final episode, by the way. The anime is well worth the time investment of 13 episodes, there are a few ups and downs along the way, but overall this was pretty enjoyable. I, uhm, while I'm no longer have as negative an outlook on how modern animation looks as I had one year ago, this still looks pretty bad to me, in addition to being excessively cringeworthy by the nature of its, uhm, content.

Boba Fett's cybernetically enhanced space vespa gang.