majestic

Preface: It's good to be back on the Claw. Toiling in the fields and working the forge sure was back-breaking. Speaking of Cowboy Bepop... that will be an interesting reaction. Except for the early CGI work here and there it looks absolutely fantastic, the shot compositions and the framing are brilliant, the voice acting is great (at least in the original), but a list like that isn't complete without a but, huh? But! Not sure how that'll work for you from a character point of view. Spike's (main lead) going to be a really though sell, me thinks. Cyber Coil looks... uhm. Yeah, maybe once I'm through the backlog of terrible. The sound effects were something else too. It was surreal. You have this magical girl show, it's the fifth season, and it moves from non-visceral and at times downright silly action scenes to something that would not be out of place in a van Damme martial arts vehicle (say, Kickboxer), complete with splattering blood and crunching bone sound effects in an instant. Prior to the kicks Rinne casually breaks the arm of another girl. Look at YouTube actually having the scene, albeit in ungood quality (not that it matters for this show). "We do martial arts for fun and competitions" to "Alex kills a woman with her giant **** sculpture" in A Clockwork Orange in a matter of seconds. StrikerS could have used some of that down to earth visceral feel of that scene in its action and it would have been appropriate there. In ViVid Strike!? Nope, totally out of the blue and feels completely disconnected. Then there are the other things that make no sense, from Rinne recovering that easily from being beaten unconscious the day prior, or actually being beaten senseless if she just can... never mind. That's not worth analyzing in detail, and it would just annoy me. edit: That ending of the scene where she steps on one of the girls lying on the floor made me burst out in laugther, what with the stock sounds and all. That's terrible, but really, that stock sound...

Yeah, he just said he'll text you soon. The ol' guy has a lot on his plate, you know...

Not 100% sure, but I can't remember watching any 2021 film. Huh. if 2020 films with a theatrical release in 2021 count then it's... Violet Evergarden. If not, then I got nothing. As I say this I realize that I was wrong, and that there really is a 2021 movie that I watched: Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time and that was a seizure inducing piece of trash that made me write a gigantic rant on just how terrible it is, so that certainly doesn't count as answer to the question even if it's the only one and takes "best" and "worst" film of 2021 I've seen by default.

ViVid Strike! Episode four. Well, that was fun. Almost entirely a flashback explaining why Rinne is all ME WILL CRUSH YOU, CRUSH YOU TO GOO. It ends with a ridiculous power fantasy scene. Yeah, not sure how I feel about that one. I'm kinda conflicted here.

I think Beyond still wins out over Into Darkness. It's even dumberer-er than Into Darkness, but at least it has a plot structure and makes sense for the most part, instead of being a random collection of cool scenes that were strung together with a tenous plot thread worked in as an afterthought. Or something. Still, could be worse. It could have Kurtzman, Orci and Goyer writing together. Now that would be a dream collaboration, huh?

Unicorn of War might be wrong about everything, but at least he's capable of arguing his point. It was my subversive commie friends. Also, eh, I doubt our counter terrorism unit would knock. That's not elite enough. edit: I also think these posts aren't going to age well, because I'm thiiiiiiiis close to switching everything back. Sigh.

ViVid Strike! Episode three. Well, today there's finally some time to get back to watching stuff. The episode opens with a helpful training sequence from Rinne showing us how utterly badass she's gotten, only to be followed by a shower scene. The animators working on this really, really like their shower scenes for some reason. There's one thing I haven't mentioned yet. In spite of this looking better than Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, it's not looking good, and the animations are incredibly barebones most of the time, unless they want to show some really cool and awesome martial arts stuff, the characters slide across the screen more than they walk. It's... not choppy, like the Love Live! movie was where it looked like the animators ran out of time and just strung key frames together in an attempt to finish the film in time, no, that's just deliberately low effort, or possibly just low budget. Yeah, understandable, who would want to bankroll this after that first ViVid disaster. On the other hand, it seems they really wasted all the effort on showing a random one-off character's transformation sequence, a girl just there to be beaten to a pulp by Rinne, as a semi-final to something or another where everyone is off to because Rinne invited them to watch. Good choice. Those fighting costumes are terrible too, and there's some more transformation sequence anime boob inflation. As nice as the second episode was, this is just not good, or interesting. It's not offensively bad or anything, but we're back to having absolutely no reason to watch this, let alone at regular playback speed. Episode ends with a major shounen-off between Rinne and Fuu after they meet each other and talk for a bit. It pulls out all the usual tropes for martial arts boys, really, doesn't matter that it's girls talking to each other. "I was weak, no more. I WILL CRUSH YOU ALL." Yeah, sure Rinne. If this goes like all martial arts shows or movies you won't. Some credit goes to Fuu who tries to reason with her first, but still goes all "Challenge accepted!" on Rinne. Yeah. Fine. Next episode will be back to 2x playback speed. Second episode was probably a fluke.

Nah, why... wait, someone's knocking. Gotta get the door.

Would you like to know more? Yikes, looks like the jig is up, folks.

Yeah, Madhouse used to make quite good-looking shows. Azuki-chan looks interesting, but yeah, there's really nothing in terms of subtitles, and no German dub either that I could try. Guess that's as goood a motivation as any to continue with the Japanese learning thing, but the way how it is going right now I'm more likely to be able to read the language at some point than listen and understand. Geez. In the interest of not making my brain explode I'll skip the 30 minute movie for the time being and just take your word for it.

Not since 1945...

The forum software inexplicably dropped the spoiler wrapping for your part of the quote, and I cannot for the life of me edit it back in. The WYSIWIG editor simply doesn't work. Maybe I got banned in the meantime, who knows?

If you do that you'll probably terminate the forum software for good. I'm struggling with her pretty much any time...she does or says anything, really. The other three I can kind of get behind in that they're sort of like sticking Usagi, Kero, and Tomoyo in a school club together, but she doesn't fit a mould of any character that I already like and in fact does just the opposite. Unfortunately, in addition to her character being...tough for me, the show is also insisting on placing undue negative attention on her in a number of other ways that aren't really her fault but are nevertheless unpleasant. But, anyway, you're further along now than I thought you'd get. Must be doing something right, at least. Who knows, if you actually get to season two, you might like the episode that focuses on Ritsu and Mugi spending time together, which I didn't really think worked out. *shrug* Something was off about that episode for me. Maybe it was the placement, or the fact that it once again did the "Hey, Toya and Yukito are here for no reason!" joke again. The episode was fine, really, it just felt... well, off. Kind of out of place for season two, and like a leftover script from season one.

Huh, so how did I miss this? Not sure. Interesting because that was one of my least favorite episodes in the entire first arc, next to the one with Shot and the ice skating one. Still says a lot about the overall quality of the arc when one of the episodes you liked the least ends up in a top episode list of someone else...

Yum yum...

So, like, what's with the spoiler tags, do you think anyone else is interested in K-On!? As far as beach episodes go the one in K-On! are mostly harmless fun. The short focus on Mio's cleavage is the most fanservice this'll get actually, not counting that Christmas episode where, uhm,... In case the first season squanders the last remaining goodwill, just abort it, watch the last two episodes and the OVA and continue with K-On!!. It's a constant up and down with season one and not worth souring yourself on the rest. The tail end of the first season and the second season are night and day compared to the rougher nonsense that happens every now and then in the earlier episodes. Also, not gonna lie, K-On! is totally going to have another beach episode.

Ah, a side effect I had not considered. That's true, but I didn't spend a whole lot of effort or time writing the post, to be honest. I could have put up helpful links to read through regarding the debates around what is and isn't fascism as the term moves more and more towards what you've mentioned, i.e. any sort of law and order type of police state or a nation more run by corporate interests than those of its people (often both, for somewhat obvious reasons). In the more expanded sense, we have a good deal more fascists on the board than just him, even though they've been curiously quiet in the past weeks. I could have looked up some of the many articles about Snowden or Assange, and linked those, put in more of a structure, anything really. What I should have done though is differentiate a little in the legal system part of the post before Gromnir swoops in and counter-rants. No, of course the US legal system is better than that of many nations, because by far and large it is functional. It does, however, have a number of downsides, and when you read that someone in Missouri has been wrongfully imprisoned for 42 years and isn't pardonned immediately after realizing that fact because "he's probably guilty of something" and "his pardon is not a priority" then that's just ludicrous and not worth emulating. An anecdote? Perhaps. What's not one is the horrible state the US prisons are in, including the systematic violence, or the fact that no other Western nation has more inmates per capita, which is really not something that is readily explained away by way of saying "the US is different than other places on the planet", which might hold true for gun related violence or th sheer, easily underestimated size of absolutely nothing in between the coasts (re: posts about a first world nation with third world infrastructure), but not for the fact that there are too many people imprisoned over crimes that should not carry any prison sentence in the first place and that the courts seem to get mired in dealing with little things that should be done with a slap on the wrist. I think that's something that could use some reform. It also has a couple of upsides. Class action lawsuits are something that I'd love to see here too. VW, having bought Germany's CDU, was more than just slapped on the wrist for their manipulated exhaust tests in the US, while in Germany and by extension the rest of the EU they got off way too easily - but yeah, that's Germany for you. Where one can get the idea that big oil and the military-industrial complex owns the United States government, the automobile companies certainly own Germany's. Of course, for any of the points, we could argue that somewhere else is worse. Of course, there almost always is a place where things are worse, but that can't be the standard we're holding everything to. "It's worse somewhere else" as the basis for not trying to improve seems like the perfect way for things to deteriorate until the barbarian hordes (not talking about the illegal immigrant issue here) are at the gate and it is too late.

You know, @Gorth, I keep reading your posts about these animes, and I keep finding myself slightly interested, but then I watch the trailers or look at the pictures you post and I'm like "Nah, thanks, I'm good."

I originally just wanted to ignore this, but I can't sleep, so why not. See, at the core of fascism, and that is pretty much the only thing academia can agree on when it comes to defining the word in this day and age (and not even that, in some cases, I guess), you'll find what Adolf Hitler later called the Führerprinzip. The glorious leader and the leader's cult of personality. For you though, that doesn't mean following an actual person, just your glorified image of the United States government, of all things, as this glorious, infallible defender of freedom, virtue and justice in the world. The avatar and your own projections, essentially, that can do no wrong and very much rests above the law and justice it deigns to mete out in the world. The glorious leader that should never be criticised, because everywhere else is worse. That train of thought follows through many of your postings and points of view. Snowden is a traitor, Assange is a terrorist. If someone from Russia and China would leak documents detailing their global espionage programs or human rights violations, or actual war crimes, you'd be at the forefront, leading the vanguard in arguing against them and calling these people heroes. Rightly so, actually. In turn though, when your glorious leader commits war crimes, the one leaking the information is not a hero, but a criminal. So you argue against China violently stopping protests in Hong Kong because China is the enemy, not because you're convinced or believe that protests should not be stopped violently. As long as those protests are at the home front, and heaven forbid, threaten business interests, it suddenly becomes an acceptable train of thought to carpet bomb them with pepper spray, or to send in the police to violently beat miners back to work, because they're hurting the bottom line of stakeholders - and because they shouldn't complain about their lot, miners in China have it worse still. Russia isn't supposed to support Assad in Syria because Assad is a terrible person. True. But so is Mohammed bin Salman, but he's buying sweet, sweet hardware from your glorious leader, so therefore that cooperation can't be bad. Never mind that having enemies chopped up and dissolved in acid, or locking them up without trial, or beheading them is... well, is that actually any better at all than using chemical weaponry on your own population? Saudia Arabia is one of the biggest destablizing factors in the Middle East, a topic you love to comment on, except in your glorious leader given worldview, it's actually Iran who is the biggest threat to stability in the Middle East, not the nation that's bankrolling terrorist groups left and right. The Iranians are simply the enemy from a while back because eh, nobody liked Khomeini (and nobody should), especially not when he leads revolutions agains the puppets of the glorious leader. You look at proof of systemic racism in the United States, and defend it by saying that it's not that bad, after all, it was - maybe still is - way worse in South Africa. As if two wrongs make a right. You look at companies and other nations buying Huawei hardware and argue against it, and when presented with proof - undeniable, hard proof at that, which, remember, does not exist for the opposite claim (although it would be naive to think that there are no backdoors in Huawei hardware, mind) - you default back to "but they wouldn't do the bad things China is going to do with that data", more or less ignoring that Snowden detailed how intelligence agents kept emailing each other with intercepted nude pictures of college students to either make fun of them or whack off to, and tell me, in what way should people of such moral turpitude be trusted to take more care with intelligence they gather than anyone else on the planet? Hint: They shouldn't. Finally, let's go back to how Assange should trust the United States legal system. I do not know how bad the legal system in South Africa is, to be honest, but it must be pretty terrible if you look at the US and see a model legal system for everyone to emulate. I mean, you actually do believe that Assange is going to get a fair trial in the US. Something which not even a UK court was convinced of, and the UK is, these days, in a hilarious inversion of history, nothing but a colony of the United States. Hell, even their current prime minister is a ludicrous little copy of the former Tangerine in Chief of the United States. So, no, you're incredibly biased towards your glorious leader, incapable of seeing the flaws where they are, unable to entertain the idea that there are any. You criticise one course of action only to turn around and cheer exactly the same, just because the glorious leader does it. You try to feign neutrality, but in reality love any and all draconian and autocratic measures you can think of, just as long as they're democratically legitimized, because it would look bad if they weren't. Caesar can do no wrong, after all. When Big Brother decides that Eurasia is now an ally, and Eastasia the enemy, then it was always thus, never any different, because who are we to argue, right? There are five fingers, and we all love Big Brother. We could argue a technicality here and say that actual fascism requires an actual glorious leader as a person, not an idealized symbol of something that either never existed in the first place or is long gone. Perhaps that is the case. If so, then you're not a facist, just a cult member drinking the kool aid. I don't know if that is any better. Probably not. At any rate, that's just semantics. At the end of the day, you're exactly the sort of person who would read Brave New World and wonder why it's a dystopian vision of the future. *sigh* I already regret posting this before the fact. Alas, now that I've spent time on this, what am I to do but press Submit Reply. Perhaps the forum will eat the post. Oh, should I only be so lucky...

It's really too bad that Joseph Hannesschläger died.

How utterly unrealistic.

Did you fight the Demon of Hatred?

Uhm. I've seen the argument that the US is run by the Joos pretty often in neo-nazi circles, but that's certainly new. Am I reading this wrong is or Trump lamenting that a foreign nation no longer runs the US Congress? That seems... odd, to say the least.

She shows up every now and then and is basically only there to dutifully cover the club’s arse whenever Ritsu did a Minako and forgot to properly organize something for the club, and because… it would have been weird for Yui to not have a friend prior to meeting the other girls. She eventually is turned into a BFINO like Naru (BF in name only just in case it wasn’t obvious ;)). It does the next best thing though, but admittedly I ended up liking Mugi’s attempts to be more like regular girls charming. The only downside is that she doesn’t work on her own. There is an episode or two in season two that tries but it ends up being a try and nothing more. Ritsu imagining Yui studying in the same way she would was hilarious and she’ll get Mio-slapped an awful lot. Not gonna lie though, season one keeps being rough at times (especially after Sawako shows up to mentor the club) but thankfully it’s short. The Christmas episode is probably the worst and you could just skip it (in theory), even though it shows that Yui sees more in her sister than just a way to have everything done for her. Just saying this because it looks like you’re giving this more of a chance or trying harder than usual to not hate it. Your reaction to the first three episodes kind of mirrored my own. I don’t know, the voice acting was okayish, except when it wasn’t. If Yui is an Usagi type then Ritsu is a Minako. Sort of. There both is and isn’t a big difference between the two.

Oh dear, oh dear. The second season opens with that chipmunk hyper song and I now everything makes more sense including you finding the voice direction not irksome. Hahaha. I never liked the chipmunk song. It was the first intro I liked. And the rice one that you’re a good deal less likely to see as it was meant to. Ah, well… uhm… So much for the bright side. The bad side is if your reaction to season two was lukewarm then uh… uh… this will not end well, will it? Ok season two opens with the expectation that you know the characters already and all (and ideally like them) and that can’t have made a whole lot of sense. On the other hand you now know it’ll not stay a brain peeler…