majestic

Wels catfish with some garlic butter: Turned out pretty good.

I think you got the wrong idea here. The study was done to see how well antibodies in the blood of people whose vaccination was three and six months ago are able to neutralize Omicron under laboratory conditions. Omicron doesn't need to be around for three months to check that, you need people with vaccinations three and six months back, and there are plenty of those around. That doesn't say anything about the severity of infections, or how people really react when exposed to Omicron, but it does show that current vaccines are not expected to be very effective in preventing infection after a month or so. Which isn't entirely surprising. Still needs to be reviewed and all, but nothing unexpected at least, given Omicron's spike protein changes.

Surprised it's even on there at all. Speaking of the list, are you going to finish Samurai Hokkaido now? Any plans moving forward with Princess Tutu? Ruin a perfectly good series by trying Clear Card? After this movie I'm going to need a break from Nanoha, as much as I liked StrikerS, these films are, uhm, yeah. Finishing Dropkick on my Devil! is probably next. That one at least is pure fun, as long as it's not a Pekola focus episode, then that other really short anime with the terrible name just to get some more items off the list. Plus mental preparation for tomorrow's double whammy of Komi and Star Dreck. Yikes.

Oh, it's a very helpful PSA. There's one thing this film does at the very beginning, and that's being fodder for the shippers. Some helpful "sub"text here, huh. I have no reply, because indeed, almost all of it is just really... off-putting.

She sure deserved more than that terrible looking sendoff in SuperS. It was masked as a way to untangle the Nanoha timeline that's a tad confusing, what with several movies, series, spin-offs, continuations and in-between chapters. That was when I was done with the first season which is always the recommended starting point (except for someone who would want to start with the first movie for... reasons) and looked for a way how to continue. I went with chronological by release date after the video. Here, look at the video, I've time coded the most important part that he so helpfully left for the very end, the one that made me immediately disregard anything else he said. "And tell me that's not some tiddies you'd pay some good money for! *stupid grin* *wink*" I wish people would put these super self-defeating comments in the beginning. Like good old Unicorn of War did. I mean, I don't like what that guy is saying, but at least be begins with it so I can helpfully not listen to the rest. Not everyone feels like that, check out this super helpful five star rating on Amazon Prime: Granted, whoever that is, they're right about the sub-par animation, but I really have no idea what the sub-par writing could be. I mean, it could be that the subtitles were better written than the original dialogue, it wouldn't be the first time another translation pass creates superior dialogue, but that review doesn't look like it was written by a Japanese native, or someone able to judge the quality of dialogue in geneneral. Pacing problems? StrikerS is breakneck from start to finish, but never feels too slow or too fast. Probably talks about the centerpiece middle of the season two-parter that's almost entirely character interactions. The tail end of StrikerS feels a little tacked on and the level of care taken with the plot falls a bit, but that's like two episodes with a forgone conclusion anyway. So dunno. *shrug* Seeing StrikerS having a lower rating on IMDB than the first season is also a bit weird. Speaking of those laser beams of friendship, that's something that stopped me from trying Nanoha for the longest time. There's this image on the TV Tropes page: Female bonding at its awesomest. With that picture, and that caption, who wouldn't go *skip*: Turns out Fate and Nanoha become friends after being enemies for a while. That Nanoha summons the GDI Ion Cannon and blasts Fate out of the sky at one point is incidental to them becoming friends, not the root cause. Fandoms, the scourge of the world, really. Ugh. There are changes to how the second film opens to how the show opens, and I think it's mixing the ending episode of the first season with the opening of the second, but I'm not sure because I binged the two seasons too quickly to really separate them. In the series, Fate sending video messages to Nanoha's friends makes sense. The second film opens with showing that Nanoha's friends have Video messages from Fate, and that makes no sense at all. I'm just not sure if that happened in the first or in the second season before the action goes nuts. Lord knows why. The Book of Darkness opens for Hayate while she's reading on her bed in the original series, the movie begins with the Book of Darkness protecting Hayate from a truck driver who fell asleep and otherwise would have run her over, but mostly only because she stopped her wheelchair on the road and plays deer in headlights for 15 seconds - more than enough time to wheel out of the way otherwise, and all of the animation with the truck and some of the book is terrible CGI. Arf, Nanoha and Fate have their linker cores absorbed at the same time. That takes the series like half its run time to set up. I'm not going to finish the movie tonight, but I hope that means it takes a backburner on the action stuff and spens some more time with Hayate and her summoned family. Yeah, who am I kidding, right? Myself? The second movie also has half an hour more than the first, but the amount of real padding in the second season was a lot less than in the first too. That's... again, probably not enough. The series had double the runtime and felt barely okay, pacing wise. Geez. edit: Found this gem on Prime now: Yeah, I don't even. That's just super weird. I really don't want to know.

Finished Magical Girl Lyrical NANOHA The REBUILD MOVIE 1st Final episode's nice character wrapup has been replaced by a seizure inducing extended action scene of Fate and Nanoha fighting giant robots, Amy's decision to adopt Fate comes totally out of the blue, but at least it keeps the final talk between them, which is underscored by... well, soft piano music that had me burst out in laughter. Yeah, this film doesn't work vis-a-vis the series in the same way the Rebuild movies don't. The ending feels completely flat based on nothing but the film. Nanoha becomes friends with Fate instantly in a way that makes no sense because the episode establishing her easygoing and friendly manner were just dropped from the film in favor of dumb action stuff, and a lot of time spent telling us about Presea's past for a reason I can't figure out. It's really strange, they dropped establishing Nanoha in favor of expanding Presea, but they still kept both instances of Presea whipping Fate. Why? If you're pressed for runtime, that's the first thing to condense into one scene. Jesus. It's sort of nice to see that she didn't start out as power crazy maniac scientist-mage, but really, film, you have two hours of runtime, why is the villain of the film the one to get the most character development? Was that supposed to be a boon for watchers of the anime series? Things that made sense in the series make no sense in the film's finale that feels terribly rushed. Nobody is watching the captured Fate and they leave her alone with her techno-mage device because... yeah, no idea. Fate escapes and starts helping, and everoyne is fine with it for <reason that was established in the series but not in the film> and her and Nanoha fight a giant robot together, then are split up in the next scene. Why? No idea, something happened off-screen to facilitate Fate's fateful (lol) final meeting with her mother. I guess it's time for Magical Girl Lyrical NANOHA The MOVIE 2nd A's (yes, actual title), oh boy, am I looking forward to that. Ho ho ho. Oh, right, the credits at the end are rolling over artwork showing Fate and Nanoha, and there's a nude one, because of course. The hell?

Some preliminary data concering Omicron. Vaccination efficacy drops to 25% after three months with a booster shot and is a nice flat 0% after six without booster. Existing monoclonal antibodies are completely ineffective. Time to note that this doesn't say anything about severity, but it all but rules out stopping infections with the existing vaccines. Testing was done in vitro with live omicron strain viruses. In other words, Omicron necessitates an adapted vaccine. Sucks for the people who have been waiting for a spike protein or inactivated virus vaccine because they don't want no new-fangled gene therapy nonsense, because by the time Novavax et al are ready and available, Omicron might just emerge as the dominant variant.

Indeed, nothing specifically about the episode, we did talk about the family integration being better than in Sailor Moon. Which is pretty much true, on the other hand, Sakura's family is an integral part of the story. Sailor Moon's biggest issue is that Ms. Takeuchi just threw everything but the kitchen sink into the first few issues and then kept piling ideas on top of it. There's no consistency, characters are introduced and discarded within a few issues. She probably felt like giving Sailor Moon a regular best friend would be a good idea from a narrative point of view. She was right, but nothing was made of it, like ever. It's okay since I already know all the characters, but otherwise, oh boy, there's this weird guy who made a Nanoha video I watched who recommended starting the series by watching THE MOVIE 1st and THE MOVIE 2nd (real titles, lol) because they look better, were shot in 16:9 and are faster paced. I already knew from there what I was getting into, I guess, but it's really, ah, just worse than I imagined. That's not going to stop me from posting about it every now and then. That's generally an issue, but probably worse for Japanese than for many other languages, I'd venture. Just need to watch an interview with someone to realize that, compared to the formality of what's taught in the course for the time being - which probably won't change, because language courses always teach the proper way to speak and write, not the way the actual people do. As a result, you're overly formal and formulaic, something that actually comes up in Clear Card because the new mystery transfer student (tm) talks like that all the time, and the girls comment on it. It's also noticable because voice acting doesn't sound like regular speech, and it isn't. There's a reason why people laugh at the weebs who taught themselves Japanese through anime, because they talk like weird anime characters. I also have no ambitions to ever talk or write like a native. I'm doing this out of an intellectual curiosity, one that was sparked funnily enough by watching a video on grammar. If I end up being able to read untranslated mangas or watch anime without subtitles, that's fine, but not an actual goal. There's no goal for me to pursue, other than... yeah, well, because I can. When I really feel like it, learning something new is essentially my personal reason to climb a mountain: Because it's there! As Captain Kirk once said, most likely because that's a quote usually and wrongfully attributed to Edmund Hillary. Even with English there are some things that you can't pick up unless you're physically present at some places or run into the words in some way or another and look them up - there are so many colloquialisms based on location. First time someone asking you to hand them a kleenex? What's that supposed to be? Right, a brand name for tissues that doesn't exist over here, or didn't, we do have Kleenex tissues too, now, but we call that a Tempo, which is (was?) our largest brand. Same goes for ordering drinks at a bar. There's no way anyone non-native knows what the hell (never mind why, which is something most natives alive no longer know) people are ordering an "Obi" when they want apple juice. Post WW2, Obi was the only apple juice brand available. It doesn't even exist any more, but apple juice being Obi never changed. For extra fun, go to Switzerland or Germany and try ordering an Obi. That's a riot. Yeah, that ends up being fun in some ways, but it makes me terrible at explaining things. One of my colleagues at work has this super annoying tendency to mix up grammatical cases that I keep correcting. In particularily complex cases he sometimes asks me why, and all I can say is "beats me but it is wrong". Being able to read that mess of lines you called nonsense (heh) is part of that. Beats me, really. I mean I once learned the ins and outs of this German grammar stuff at school, but not using something for some 25 odd years makes even me forget things. Just recently had a discussion about someone mixing up gebe and gäbe, both of which are subjunctive forms of geben, the German verb for to give and to exist. One does use the first form in reported speech (if you think reported speech is difficult in English, try German reported speech ), and the other one to express a possibility. These days they're even pronounced mostly in the same way. I kept correcting the text to read gäbe, and he kept changing it back. Barely anyone uses the second subjunctive mood to express possibility in language any more. Its usually formed by using the second subjunctive form of werden, which is würde - English "would" actually, so people would (ha ha) say "I'd do this and that" instead of using the proper form. Erm, what I wanted to say is that I know that now beacuse I looked it up. I did not really know at the time of correcting, I just knew that gebe is wrong and gäbe is correct. *shrug* That's what I liked about StrikerS. Characters having their "badass" moments felt earned or normal, not just there for effect. I mean, that's not going to make you like the season, given its other problems, but there's something rather satisfying to see Tia being able to outsmart and defeat her opponents when cornered in her moment of glory, relying on almost a full season's worth of training and character growth from silly shounen action first, thinking later to proper team member.

Oh, and by the way, if you ever try Clear Card, then for the love of all that is holy, see that as a separate thing, otherwise it'll dump your rating to 5/10. Minor update on the Nanoha film: I'm still not finished with it. I think that should perfectly encapsulate how much I'm not enjoying it after binge watching the first season. It's a two hour movie that I started watching on and off 15 hours ago. Everything I liked about the series is gone in favor of movie-budget grade action scenes, character moments and exposition happen in glossed over flashbacks or compressed montages. The only good things so far are getting rid of the loli-moments (although that kills one of the few episodes that were almost only character bits), dropping the silly mana energy level and making Alph/Arf a magical creation by Fate. Presea gets an expanded background flashback that would be great if it happened organically at some point instead of a piano-music driven way to excuse her whipping Fate and to set up Fate being a clone because HEY GUYS WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME HERE, HAYAKU! Fate is even more fanservice than she was in the series with her outfit. Her mother of course tortures her, but with the pacing of the film this only worked because Fate had some time to be established by the series. For someone watching this as their introduction to the Nanoha universe that's just going to be a "huh?" at best. Arf switches between being dressed like a normal person and her usual fanservice outfit of an ill fitting crop top with unbuttoned hot pants. Why? No idea. No matter how this film ends: If anyone wants to try Nanoha, do it properly. The first season is only 13 episodes. Just skip the loli-parts of episode 5. Or just skip straight to the good stuff in StrikerS. Minor update on the Japanese thing (not that any of you really care ) Spoilered for brevity.

I did, since I don't like teases like that, and just in case anyone else has scruples googling, here's the wikipedia entry, or part of it anyway. Wikipedia also helpfully says the factuality of this article is in question. Hence the allegedly.

20 minutes into Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha THE MOVIE 1st it looks like this is exactly what I was afraid it would be. First season action bits with very trimmed down character stuff, and it's blazing through everything at an even faster pace than I thought it would. Fate shows up at the end of episode three in the first season, and we have an hour to get to know Nanoha and her family and her friends and interact with Yuuno. Eh, and there's movie budget transformation scene that just goes on and on and on. Well, here's to hoping that the loli bits from the fifth episode were also dropped. Ohterwise they'll show up in about 10 minutes or so.

Finsihed the Mahoutsukai Tai! OVA. Very much recommended for anyone who laughed their asses off watching American Pie and likes anime. Everyone else, just... stay clear. Give it a wide, wide berth. There's an interview and making-of featurette with Sato and Itō that is absolutely hilarious and a blast to watch. They also seem to have made this OVA somewhere in a hastily cobbled together office at a run down building that they just squatted in. Holy crap. There's one hell of a mess, the lighting is terrible, there are no windows in Sato's and Itō's "office" (they're sitting back to back)... I mean, I know anime is made under terrible working conditions, but I thought that was limited to the animators or in-betweeners, not directors and chief character designers. Ms. Itō also really likes naruto. Not the anime, but the fish cake. They're lying around everywhere. Really. Everywhere. Eh, without that low pony tail Mr. Sato would rock one hell of a mullet here. You can't see that here, but it goes down quite a way. He also has a magic wand as prop. Look at the animators having an actual window... I also have no idea if that is a joke made for the documentary, but the staff is trying to sit on horizontal bars and brooms to see how flying a broom would work in real life, whether it'll hurt your ass or not, if you'd sway from one buttock to the next or not, all that. It's... weird. Yeah, weird is the word I'm going with here. **** edit: Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: The MOVIE 1st (actual title) is a bit over two hours long. I started watching, but I'll do that tomorrow. I'm not feeling too well and it's pretty late already. Just from the first five minutes, it begins pretty similar to the TV show, and it really is just a retelling of a sort, but if you thought the original season looked not so hot, yikes. For a movie budget, this is... yeah well, anime in the 2010s. What else to expect?

You could also just learn how to translate English words into Katakana just for these thread titles. That's fun, and... yeah, erm, I guess my idea of fun is a little different. *whistles*

@KP Cross Split Attack or @Amentep: Please fix the thread title, that's ZA WARUDO. Or ザー・ワールド if you want to be weeby.

Well, so far nothing much happened, but it's only been four hours. Last time though, at four hours in, my arm felt like it would come off while it doesn't right now, so maybe that's a good sign. edit: Five minutes after posting I tried to pick up my bottle of sugar free lemonade. Tried, being the operative word here. Jinxed it.

Found a nice day to get my third shot. Public holiday on Wednesday, have some time off on Thursday and Friday, so I got my shot today. If it whacks me down I won't miss much, and I should be good until the holiday comes up.

Episode five: Was almost an episode in the sense that there were only a few instances of stupid, some nice moments that happen and decent setup for the final episode of the OVA. All that's left is to be disappointed by the resolution, but I'll do that tomorrow, I think. Then it's either the TV show version or the Nanoha movies. No, there aren't, but the show practically starts her off bowing over Shinji for no other reason than to stare at her ass for a bit before the mine goes off and blows over her car. It's not during any important character moments unless it is part of them (like Asuka dangling her assets in front of Shinji's face). Insofar that's pretty well done, most of the time. Nanoha has this sort of art style that's just... I don't know. I didn't hate it, but I also didn't like it, and for the action scenes at least, it wasn't a good fit. It needed a more visceral feel and more detail to make them really work, like NGE or maybe Cowboy Bepop (since people are talking about the live action adaptation currently). edit: Forgot to talk about Miranda, yeah, dunno, my idea of genetic perfection is pretty different, but hey, she's a female clone of Martin Sheen, so some problems are to be expected, right?

Yeah, I don't know. That doesn't look very appealing, and I really mean the art. I might eventually try it out of pure desperation. Part of the issue with it in Magic User's Club is that there is a lot, and I mean a lot of it, and it's almost always trying to be funny, and I already have problems finding any slapstick fun, much less slapstick that's about Akane practicing broom riding and flying boobs-forward into Takeo's face (making him spurt more blood) or Sae accidentially driving her broom up his behind. Sure there are, just as long as there's a reason for it to be there beyond it being fanservice. I've said that time and again, I don't have any problem with sexual content per se, just as long as it's tastefully done and has a point. There are some scenes with Misato in NGE for instance, but not so much all the closeups of her behind, they're 100% pointless and only there because Anno likes to stare at animated butts (and giant animated boobs, if that instrumentality scene from End of Evangelion is any indication).

Classic blunder, like land war in Asia? The absolute worst thing about this OVA is that every now and then - and it's really just every now and then - it stops being stupid and becomes absolutely wonderful in a way that makes everything just worse. I tried it because it was directed and written by Junichi Sato. Halfway through the beach episode it stops being terrible ecchi and all of a sudden comes up with nice character moments that remind me of a certain other show of Mr. Sato's. I kind of wish this was all bad, really. As it is, I hate this so much. God dammit. Outro was also her, I think.

Yeah, yeah. I know what you said, and I ignored it. The song does for me what it is supposed to, I guess - it's a lullaby, there are subtitles in the anime for it. I really like it. Masami Okui also sang the intro song for Utena. Hm. It was pretty funny in Kill la Kill, but there it was a parody...

Wrapping up stuff I started: Mahoutsukai Tai! OVA, episode three. The preview of the next epsiode of the OVA told me the fourth episode is going to be a beach episode. This one featured Akane in nothing but a towel for the second half while she's abudcted by a cable-tentacle wielding alien android. It can't get any worse at the beach, can it? Worst thing is, without the stupid and embarrassing parts, this would be a fun, if a bit silly, little anime. The outro music is really nice though. edit: Of course it can get worse, and of course it did. I don't know what else I expected. Projectile nosebleed from seeing Akane in a bikini is definitely worse. Sigh. Wow, this episode goes stick in the butt all out. I mean, balls to the wall? What. Sae rides her broom deep into Takeo's behind: Help me, please. Please, I beg you.

I'll go hit the shower now, and when I'm back I expect you to have edited in a Neil Breen picture, I mean, come on. Just... come on.

Move forward into the attack before pressing the dodge button. If your character isn't dashing forward directly into the attack, you're dodging wrong, if you do and still get hit it's your timing. You can counter sweep attacks with some combat arts, but From Software nerfed that pretty hard, it's barely worth the effort now (well, in my opinion, at least). Still looks good, but just jumping over and on the enemy is easier, does almost as much posture damage and doesn't lock you into an extended animation.

What... what... what? What. ? 何?!

Can't argue with that. Madoushi is more interesting than Nothing. I'd say nothing about Nothing is really interesting, not even the concept of an anti-card to balance things out, that's just an asspull to get the film going. Am I wrong in thinking that the amount of action in the second movie is less than in the first? Because the first film felt like it was half action, and I didn't find it to be that engaging. Particularily not the part after Sakura's friends and family were whisked away by her. The non-action parts of the first movie also weren't as strong as the ones in the second film, but that might really also be the timing. Seing Shaoran and Meiling like that after Meiling was written out of the show just fell flat, but that's not the film's fault, but mine. I just binged over the winter break. Colleague keeps watching Sailor Stars, I'm so close to caving and simply watching along, or rewatching Sailor Moon as a whole. This isn't helping.