majestic

Carried by the Wind: Tsukikage Ran, episode three. Probably not the best episode to watch when you're feeling blue already. Somehow this is a whole lot more violent than I thought it would be. Not that I mind, I just won't be watching an episode of this series expecting it to cheer me up again. Myao keeps being great. She's an awful lot like Usagi. I mean, not really, but then... somehow, yeah. Follow up to yesterday's language nerding:

Fake news made to make Trump supporters look bad, but what else would you expect from Fake News Network.

I doubt everyone was good at it, but it really explains why learning the correct stroke order can be helpful. That way you can make an educated guess what a kanji was supposed to be if it's not written properly - unless it's the wrong on, of course. If anyone ever wondered why being a scribe was a full time job in the days of yore, look no further. A Japanese (or Chinese, for that matter) scholar can probably spend their entire lifetime doing nothing else and still not know all of the characters. *totally drunk* You look like my acquaintance! No idea why they're all in the past tense. Guess because the show plays in the past, must be the late Edo period. The caste system was abolished during the Meiji restoration, so for Ran to be a ronin/roshi it must still be the Edo period, but if people are aware of electricty it can only be sometime in the 19th century. Yes, back to overthinking a silly samurai show that's mostly about poking fun at the genre. The dialogue indicates as much too, people are using kisama to address Ran, which stopped being polite a very long time ago, and is an insult nowadays (and pretty much only used on TV). All in all probably not the best show to watch and try to decipher the modern language with. That said, it's entirely possible that the titles of the episodes are also written in antiquated Japanese with slightly different grammar. I have no idea. Stuff like that is probably intelligible for Japanese natives in the same way that reading Göthe in the original 18th/19th century German is for me. It's not exactly the, uhm, smoothest experience, but it's fine (lots of antiquated words, spellings are similar in pronunciation but different, and printed in Fraktur). The typeset is usually the biggest hurdle. Taking a quick look at it should tell you why.

That's what you get for not proofreading lectures.

I'll not put the following into spoilers because that makes posting this harder than it already is. There's a plot point spoiler for the episode, but really, it doesn't matter one iota. Yeah, it's not the prettiest writing for sure. It works, after a fashion, but it's a good showcase of why people insist that learners should also learn how to properly write Japanese by hand in order to be able to read less than perfect writing later on. Well, that's a bridge I'll certainly never will cross, but that's neither here nor there. Even though I have no real idea what I'm doing half of the time and cobbling everything together with my one month old limited understanding of a "somewhat" (warning, "minor" understatement) complex language, I think that we can dismiss the English episode title, given the content of the episode being primarily about watered down sake. As for whether the episode title card has a mistake or Wikipedia's list is wrong, that's something much harder to determine, also because there's a case to be made for either of the titles. That is, however, assuming that the Japanese "shimiru" is working in the same way the English verb "to soak" is, and that's something I honestly do not know, and I really have no feeling for the language yet so I can't even make a guess. I don't know if you would need the passive form, so what's on the Wikipedia page may also just as well mean "there were tears in the sake"*, which we could probably throw out entirely, huh? After watching the episode I'm leaning towards the title card being correct and the episode title being "The sake was (soaked) in tears" primarily because the -te ita form of a verb is used for the past progressive (not only, but it's the most common use, the other is to indicate an action in the past that is still relevant in the present, but the situation has been resolved, so that no longer applies, and I'm horribly overthinking this, am I not?) and an object soaking in something is doing something passively and over a longer time by definition, if not by form. What I do know, however, is that the episode was funny and Meow Myao made me laugh once or twice. *Figuratively, not literally, but if the tears are the subject, they're actively soaking the sake, hence there were tears in the sake. Which isn't... wrong, either.

Carried by the Wind: Tsukikage Ran, episode 2. Something's wrong with my copy, the subtitles turn themselves off after the introduction and I have to switch them back on. Ah, well. I've actually looked at the Japanese Wikipedia page for a spell because I can't for the life of me read those title cards. I mean, parts of them, but yikes. There are no spoilers in this spoiler tag, just an image to make the post better organized. I've spent more than the runtime of the episode trying to figure this out. I'm actually pretty close to joining that Discord for the Japanese grammar channel just to ask. I'll post some more when I've actually watched the episode. Maybe the context of what's happening on the screen will help. Heh.

Just paid the annual road tax. At least I no longer have to attach an ugly sticker to my windshield. Progress, right?

I originally had some Dino Merlin lined up (something like Deset mlađa), or thought about Enes Begović (say, Samo jednom se zivi perhaps) but I wanted something more obviously similar to the first enka ballad I originally used and that was pretty much the only thing I found on short notice. Then I switched the Japanese song out, and yeah, it ended up being a mess. Never mind. The thing is, anyway, you can take any of the more popular Enka hits on YouTube and if you don't speak either Japanese or Serbo-Croatian you're not really going to notice much of a difference our could tell which is which, as long as you can't pick out the more traditional instruments.

Time for something... else. 風まかせ月影蘭, episode 1. Speaking of the intro, Japanese enka music has an eery amount of similarities with modernized "traditional" Central European and Balkan music. I guess some things are really universal. Compare... To, say... Yeah. Excuse me while I go find something to stop the bleeding of my eardrums.

Oh boy. Based purely on grammatical rules, the extra commas in the first part (the ones marked orange) are not stricly necessary, but help illustrate the point of the sentence by putting an added focus on the reason you're trying to present, i.e. your lack of orthographic and grammatical preciseness isn't related to a lack of knowledge or inability, but an intrinsic disdain for the medium it is presented in, making it not worth the effort in your mind. Contractions always contain an apostrophe where letters are left out, it is don't, not dont. In English orthography there never is a space in front of any punctuation marks. That's pretty much the case for any European language except for French, which for some godforsaken reason puts a space before an exclamation or question mark. Probably because it's from France. The French like to claim it is more pleasant to read which is, to borrow a term from their hereditary enemy, bollocks. The English name of 孔夫子, Confucius (taken from Latin), doesn't have that superflous 's' in there. If you must use slashes to separate independent items in a list, then at least use regular ones. Periods are used to end sentences, an emoji is most certainly not a sufficient substitute.

You funny Gorthfuscious ! Surly you not suggesting their is a difference between there, their and they're ?

I'll let you know tomorrow, I'm not going back to that fount of madness before I had a good night's sleep. So far the film's been seizure inducing in different ways than Rebuild, but the scenes were shorter. Might be that this one takes the cake, but there's only one Hayate and three enemy vehicles, so the chance that it'll be a bad as the opening of Rebuild: The Dark Zone is very small indeed. On the other hand the movie also already had a Nanoha and Fate transformation sequence, and Rebuild, for all its fanservicy flaws, never stooped that low. Fate might wield a bardiche in combat, but she really got the short end of the stick when it comes to the fanservice.

Okay, I think I'm done for today. Forgive me the double post, but Hayate has just been intercepted. I mean, luckily intercepted because she was on her way to a bath house where Fate and Nanoha were waiting for her, but now a large truck and a construction vehicle crashed in front of the car she was riding in, then there was an explosion and... and... and... and... Yeah, now the construction vehicles are reforming into semi-CGI transformer style combat vehicles with gatling guns. I feel like the unnamed seeker of the mirror in Manilla Road's Cage of Mirrors: On the crest of eternity, a bell for every day That I've lived in silent search of the mirrored cage [...] The cage appears before my eyes, I feel I'm in a dream To the other side of Hell I cast my spell and scream I summon Lucifer and his warriors I... I found the cage of mirrors [...] Take me back the way I came, I don't want to see The evil that awaits my name, I live in agony I would send back Lucifer and his warriors But I'm trapped in a cage of mirrors I feel more and more like Corypheus had a point here. "To correct this blighted world" indeed.

I'm just going to leave this here: "This must be that Woodstock place Mom and Dad always talk about." I'd give you guys a warning to put on sunglasses and put this in spoiler tags, but that would ruin the experience.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Reflection The intro for this film is eight minutes long. It shows a family of four on a dying world, with the parents trying to save the planet. It then flash fowards ten years, the project has failed and the father of the two girls is dying of an unspecified disease that is at the core of whatever the planet itself is also dying from. Cue soft piano music (tm) and the younger sister resolves to do something about it and is seen using a dimensional transporter with another character called Iris who probably shouldn't even be there to go... somewhere (it ends up being Earth). I'm pretty sure the two are going to look for something ancient and dangerous, making this the fourth out of four times someone's been looking for dangerous old artifacts or has some dangerous old artifact that will cause interdimensional devastation when left alone. I don't think I'll be able to finish this film in one sitting, and while the animation is looking better than ViVid's or ViVid Strike!'s, it's still not great. edit: The thingmabob is called the ETERNAL CRYSTAL, Iris is some sort of magical device Kyrie has, and they already know that they'll eventually run afoul of the DEFENDERS OF THE URF and that Princess Serenity isn't going to give out the MAGICAL SILVER CRYSTAL without a fight... wait a moment, I'm mixing things up here. So, anyway, ETERNAL CRYSTAL. Yay... edit 2: Oh no, this isn't a sequel to StrikerS, this is playing between A's and StrikerS. Hayate, Fate and Nanoha are currently in fifth grade of elementary school. I kind of got used to the naked girls being at least 14 or 15 years old, and now we're moving from creepy to excessively creepy. Sure, movie might yet surprise me by having no underage nudity, but seriously, that wold be a first, huh?

Weeb comment of the week(tm): That also kinda explains why it's more fun to read than to listen for me.

Out of all things Nanoha I've watched at this point, and I'll leave out the two films for now because I really don't think they're going to be better, the only part of the franchise that's worth watching is StrikerS, and I have no idea how well that works without watching the prior two seasons. While Nanoha, Fate and the Belkan Knights are more or less side characters with a decent amount of focus in StrikerS, what they go through and do is still most likely better when having gotten to know them earlier. Therein lies an issue that as a whole make me unable to recommend the entire franchise. While I would disagree with the assessment that the Nanoha franchise was made solely as a magical girl alternative for perverted 30 year olds, it certainly contains elements that spin the idea of fanservice way too far, particularily in its first season (and episode 5 was made for perverted 30 year olds), and in the first ViVid season. StrikerS on the other hand does have some nudity even outside of the transformation sequences, but it's only there when it makes sense (medical checkups, by far and large), even if it all still could probably have been done differently. I'm fairly sure that my assessment of StrikerS as a whole is correct, given the fact that fans of the first two seasons and anime fans in general complain(ed) very vocally about the pacing and how there's not enough action in the series, and that it got 26 episodes where 13 would have sufficed. Yes, 13 episode would have been enough to transport the main story, but not everything the showrunners wanted it to transport, and were actually pretty sucessful at transporting. StrikerS has like 10 protagonists, or at least the four main characters and a often focused on larger supporting cast, and Fate and Nanoha are arguably main characters too, and after the 26 episodes I ended up more or less liking each one of them (in spite of starting out not liking Erio, Teana or Subaru for somewhat obvious reasons). Instead of rushing the character development, they rushed the story conclusion by the end, cramming too much into the final six episodes, even resorting to phoney feeling exposition once. But it remains, quite frankly, quite a feat to give the large cast of protagonists their time to shine, their time to develop, some time to breathe and eventually a satisfying conclusion. Except perhaps for Nanoha and Vivio, where the final fight vectors off into silly Sailor Moon story episode territory. It also comes the cost of having the least interesting villain, but Presea Testerossa from the first season wasn't special either. Hayate and the Belkan Knights are what made A's more interesting than it would otherwise have been. Overall, it's not a total loss, and StrikerS was pretty great, if you look past it's downsides and the franchise it is attached to. Which is somewhat hard to do, and definitely not for everyone. Or probably anyone. Heh. Yeah. No point in hiding the thread for me, I know it's there, even if I don't see it. There's not much left, only two movies, and they'll have characters I like, at least, so unless they're completely incompetently made the worst is behind me. Yeah, famous last words and all that. Heh. Re: muting sound, yes, that could be a workable option, but that would kill the only thing I'm sort of enjoying about watching Komi, and that's Tadano reading what Komi wrote out aloud, which is more helpful than you'd think with the learning the language thing. I'm not sure that tradeoff will be a net positive, but I can try.

It's taking me a barely describable amount of control not not post in the political thread at the moment. Sigh.

There's still two Nanoha movies left >.<, and one of them contains the scene that lead to this: No, but I could potentially stop inducing second-hand suicidal thoughts by never talking about it, although that would erase a signification portion of the enjoyment I get being as part of the meta-experience of participating in this thread. Normally, yes, and so this is precisely where my caveat for the final conclusion comes from. At this particular time, between the other series and films I've watched recently, this is exactly the right sort of boring at the right sort of time. Call it meditational if you will. ViVid Strike! never made me want to kill myself, unlike Discovery or Komi Can't Communicate, even though it well and truly has nothing going on that could make me recommend this to anyone, regardless of their tastes. Even die-hard martial arts or tournament arc fans will find nothing for them there. Here's another helpful and potentially shocking secret: As bad as Discovery is, Komi Can't Communicate is worse. What I'm posting about this anime doesn't even remotely transport the desire to blind myself and pierce my eardrums whenever one of the side characters is on screen, and unlike for @KP on top of ZA WARUDO, that does include Najimi and their (Najimi is a person of undefined gender - dresses like a girl but referes to himself as, well, himself) constant yelling. The descriptions of the Nanoha shows, Discovery and Komi are fairly accurate. I'm not going to say I never embellish for effect, because I often do that if it makes for a better joke, but these don't really need it. Especially not Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, that good for nothing compilation movie for the first Nanoha season or Nanoha's first season sexualized underage nudity scene. Discovery's terribleness speaks for itself, all I need to do is paraphrase what's going on and for Komi, well, that's just the thing. There's a nice show hiding in Komi, if they'd just do it right, which makes it all the worse, in the same way that Mari is worse in NGE than she'd be in any random other show or movie because she's in NGE and sticks out like a sore thumb even if she's just contrasted by mere shadows of the characters of the original show. Answer to the original sentence, which I don't find that offensive: It's for the same reason I can sit through ten thousand hours of grinding in MMOs. I'm just dead enough inside for it to take a special amount of awful to make me want to bang my head against a wall until it stops wanting to continue.

The entirety of episode eleven is spent on Fuu and Rinne beginning to brawl, instead of having a martial arts fight, as things move beyond silly things like getting stronger so nobody ever looks down on me again or I HATE MYSELF. Rinne helpfully begins to see images of the past flashing her by, she works past her issues and for the first time in forever actually smiles, which Fuu rewards with a knockout blow, having achieved her goal of beating sense back into Rinne. Meanwhile her coach realizes that she's been torturing Rinne and pushing her beyond her mental limits for nothing else than her own ambition after a permanent injury forced her to quit shortly before a title match. Rinne sees her dead (adopted) grandfather and he says おめでとう (congratulations) to her. Okay, no, the last part was a joke. It's a metaphor for Rinne letting go of her anger and finding her way back to the light side of the force, or whatever you want to call it. I can't help but acknowledge that there's been a decent amount of setup for this particular payoff, it is just mired in an otherwise boring series. Two former friends beating the friendship back into each other isn't something very creative or original in itself either, but there's nothing wrong with the last two episodes once you forgive the anime for making Fuu capable of standing up to Rinne in the first place, which realistically shouldn't be possible. It's fine though really, and it's still a magical girl martial arts show. I just hope the final episode of the series (or the third OVA afterwards) doesn't contain a ludicrous bathing scene. I'm also a bit surprised that the show took a turn like this, in the beginning it really looked like this wouldn't be a street fight but simply the finals of the tournament. Nothing is out of place or heaven forbid original, but hidden somewhere deep inside of all of it are themes similar to the ones in StrikerS, except everything is executed in a less well crafted way. Which sadly means that no matter how the final episode or the OVA goes, there's really no point in watching this unles you have a whole lot of time to kill and want to watch a girl waffle between hyper-focused shounen dolt, Shinji and something in between for a bit. Caveat: This comment was made in contraxt and in a context with Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, so I am perhaps overrating it simply because the former was nothing but offensive and poorly written, animated and directed. Now all that's left is to see if Einhart will give Rinne a title match regardless of not meeting her conditions. No, because the OVA is spending two or three minutes detailing what went on. Rinne became champion after Einhart moved to the under 19 category undefeated (which I suppose implies that she won her Winter Cup final match against Fuu that is never shown on screen). Now Rinne and her coach invite everyone to... their gym's medical and R&R place. It's summer and there's a beach ressort. Ah well, guess it had to happen eventually, eh? Time to see how bad it really gets. Well, it's a beach episode, but even compared with the shower scenes already in ViVid Strike! this was by far and large harmless. How odd. Also, you'd think an episode dedicated to doing nothing much would be fun, but then they went and had a beach volleyball competition that was just plain boring. Eh, sure, I'll take anything over the sexual assault madness from ViVid. That's one done and dusted. Final verdict: There's no reason to watch it, unless you're seriously bored and want to... experience more boredom for a minor payoff at the end.

Who says you can't? Born to live forever, or die trying. edit: Happy New Year to all too, of course.

ViVid Strike! is mostly just boring. 21 Jump Dreck is offensive and terrible, not to mention a whole lot longer. There's not a lot of thought that went into setting this ViVid Strike! storyline up, but it proceeds apace, doesn't do excessively stupid things beyond the initial setup and the most questionable part of the show at the moment where I'm at is how and why Fuu, who has only four months of martial arts training and a couple of years as a street fighter behind her can go toe to toe with Rinne, who by all accounts isn't just a once a century prodigy but also went through Pai Mei's demanding training. The fight is, more or less, just a standin for what they're talking about, being estranged childhood friends who each had horrible life experiences and very different martial arts masters shape them into what they are. It's not the worst stuff, but it's not interesting enough and the characters are too flat to make it truly matter. Three episodes left, but I'll leave those for tomorrow. Well, today, as it already is past midnight, but hey... splitting hairs and all. Endure. In enduring, grow strong. Althoug that's not entirely right, but it looks like I'm pretty much immune to intelligence drain by now.

Not at all, apparently, because Vivio stands up and gives Rinne a well deserved lesson in humility. Uhm, writers... I mean I know I complained about how this looks like a dime a dozen martial arts tournament show, but what now? The bad guy is supposed to lose in the final fight after a dramatic match where the contender is almost down and then does what Vivio did here, not earlier. edit: Episode nine sees Rinne switch from being a testosterone driven shounen character to Shinji mode, moping around in her room. I don't know, I feel like these scenes would be more effective if Rinne was even a bit likable (beyond breaking bully faces, but even there she overdoes it, *melon squish*). Vivio drops out of the tournament because she suffered an injury in the fight against Rinne, making the final match Einhart against Fuuka. edit 2: Einhart promies Rinne a title match if she fights against Fuu and wins. Rinne is back to OVER NINE THOUSAND in an instance after moping and wanting to quit. edit 3: Oh no, the girls are going to go on a training camp to Lutecia's exile planet where the fight will also be held (apparently asatte, i.e. the day after tomorrow). Not entirely sure, the subtitles were a little too quick now. And yeah, that planet is the one with the hot springs. Please. No. Please. Don't do this. Not now. They agree on some sort of street fighter rules, i.e. no rules, and fighting until someone's down. That seems like a good idea given Rinne's inability to stop herself from smashing her contenders to bits. edit 4: The fight begins, and thankfully no hot springs visit yet, but that can always come later. End of episode. edit 5: Fuu and Rinne have a nice talk, actually, if they wouldn't be taunting and beating each other in the process that might even be a nice scene. Fuu tells Rinne that she learned a lot, from many people, but that Rinne is just shutting herself off from the world, and whacks her so hard she breaks Rinne's bones, who still keeps going. Sure. Why not. Rinne is doing an excessively long I HATE MYSELF inner monologue.

ViVid Strike! Episode 7 6. Episode count was wishful thinking on my part, I guess. That was 6... sigh. The tournament begins, Rinne fights Miura and ends up breaking her ribs. That about sums up the episode. Rinne is the bog standard martial arts final boss of a movie or TV show at this point, and it's about time Charlie Sheen hits her with some deadly sweets. edit: Almost all of the actual episode seven is spent on Rinne fighting Vivio, and it's not over yet. Two episode fights, how awesome. This fight so far reminds me a little of the fight of the Exile againt Darth Scion insofar as Vivio is sapping Rinne's power by talking to her. Other than that it's a whole lot of testosterone pumping from Rinne, and the only thought on my mind is that Nanoha would have probably won by now. She'd Chinese Martial Arts master her ass and then just look sad. edit 2: Episode 8, Rinne expectedly downs Vivio, because how else is she going to fight either Einhart or Fuuka in the final.

Oi, she took an arrow to her knee?