majestic

I kind of got lucky, becase the second half of the episode was okay, except for Vivio's voice direction. It's also never going to change the transformation sequence, I guess, so the only hope is that they didn't use it that often. Last season's cyborg villain squad have taken up various jobs, and some are serving at the Heiliger Kaiser Church. Vivio visits a character that everyone is apparently familiar with but is new, someone called Ixy, who is either in a magical whatever sleep or in a coma. Thanks, Nanoha wiki. Yeah, I don't really want to listen to a Japanese audio drama. Not that I could. Not even sure I ever will, to be honest, but that's neither here nor there. The episode helpfully ends with a cliffhanger as Nove is ambushed by a mysterious figure. Well, next episode will finally have some action, I guess.

Oh boy. The actual transformation sequence is even worse. Back in StrikerS, Vivio transformed into a Black Lady (the character) version so Nanoha can have a final boss battle at the end. Yeah, that part of StrikerS is from the final two episodes where I mentioned the season kind of fell apart writing wise. Turns out her magical transformation in ViVid turns her into Adult!Vivio, and she seems to have gotten the same boobjob that the actual Black Lady (the character) got from DEATH PHANTOM in Crystal. To her credit, Fate reacts the same way to that nonsense. Hello writers, it doesn't make terrible ideas great if you lampshade them. That you feel the need to lampshade them should give you a hint, really. That's something that can work, but not like this. It's too late to pretend I didn't start watching this, isn't it? Hey look, half the episode is over and suicide feels like a decent way out. If that could have gone any worse I don't know how, not counting brining back the loli-moments. But hey, eleven and a half episodes left, there's still time for this to get worse. Yay? #notmynanoha

I was kidding, mostly, I actually wanted to catch that in the theater with a friend of mine because it looked like really entertaining trash, but then things just shut down forever and ever. Doesn't sound like it was entertaining trash, though. The Game (1997): Michael Douglas plays an **** investment banker, which is a role he's pretty good at. Read the blurb, if that sounds at all interesting stop, because it's a bit like The Usual Suspects and relies heavily on not knowing what's going on. Any spoilers would be really detrimental for a first experience. David Fincher knows how to make movies, even if Alien³ turned out to be a little on the weaker side. Came out after Se7en.

Boy do I ever. I hope that intro did not contain a part of Vivio's actual transformation sequence, because that was some really, really bad stuff. Bend over so the camera gets a nice view of your butt during the transformation level of bad, really. Ten seconds into the first episode Vivio wakes up, and starts to speak. Nails on chalkboard. Nails on... chalkboard. Yikes. I can't believe that's the same voice actress that voiced Yuuno. Eh, and Mami in Madoka. Hello, I'm Vivio, and if I continue to talk like this, I'm going to make @majestic's eardrums explode. There's also... kind of everything woefully wrong with the art. Man, guys, really, I wouldn't call the first three seasons beautiful, but they sure look good compared to this trash.

I have only one question: Why? Did you at least get a nice t-shirt out of it? Like this one: Just with, uhm, forced to watch Sonic the Hedgehog?

Being an anti-vaxxer is the only thing that makes Nazis, Johova's Witnesses and left-leaning esoteric progressives find common ground. These times make for strange bedfellows, huh?

I was going to post that your first line here has potential to replace your quote in @KP on top of ZA WARUDO's signature, and then go went and edited it with some helpful explanation. Ah, what a missed opportunity. Considering the spelling of the name: ミャオ, yes very much meow. Heh. It's not that bad with Nanoha. Yet. You're thinking of Pretty Cure, I guess. 1000 episodes and 40 movies, yeah, that's a lifetime project. Still, sometimes I wonder what makes a series go that long, and if that's like a daily soap or something. The Bold and The Magical Girls, maybe? Kinda wish I could look into an episode here and there, but man, what... nope. Nanoha is "just" 3 seasons, four movies and two spin off series with 12 episodes each, at least when not counting mangas and video games and other material, which I pretty much don't. Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid is up next, then ViVid Strike! which drops Nanoha from the title because the old cast is apparently no longer in it, or just with some brief cameos. Just reading up on it annoys me to no end because that character relationship chart had a helpful pink line (aka "romance" because what else would be pink, amirite?) between Vivio and a character named Einhard who is, oh what surprise, also a girl. Guess you really do catch the gay from having two moms, right? Shipping fanservice must go on, I guess. I'm willing to eat my comments if this ends up being tastefully done, but somehow I doubt that (in spite of it not really coming up as fanservice outside of that one picture I posted in StrikerS - and even that was ambivalent - it was really in full force in the movies, and those were more recent, so they take precedence). Also Vivio is like ten years old in ViVid, so that's about as stupid as that ship tease scene from the second Nanoha film. Not to mention that apparently Vivio is a clone of Einhard's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother (give or take a couple of generations), what with her being a descendant of the royal family from the days of yore. The one that built the Doomsday device Dr. Scaglietti found. I'm probably overanalyzing already.

Yeah, so, this is your version of StrikerS. Speaking of which. Magical Girl Lyrical NANOHA The MOVIE 2nd A's You might notice that there's no struck out REBUILD in the title. That's mostly because this film was, shipping fuel aside, a lot better than the first one. Not to make any mistake, it's still not nearly as - ahem - good (in contrast) as the second season was, but the extra half an hour of runtime and dropping the pointless Tuxedo Mask subplot made the film much better than it could have been. It's still full of really bad CGI, and changes that aren't necessary and add nothing, but it works as a film, and I can see it working as a standalone version of the second season. Provided one likes extended, CGI enhanced action scenes. The fun critcisms that I had of the combat in this series looking a lot like turn based JRPG battles is gone. The movie budget was clearly spent on making the battles flashier and much less static, which on one hand is actually a nice change over the series, but on the other hand makes Hayate's divine caster outfit and magic a lot more ridiculous, and I don't even want to talk about how stupid Fate's giant Cloud Strife style plasma sword is in the light of hyper fast moving action combat. I already thought the second season had too much combat going on, and the film just upped that, but it also took out the edge and the opressive feeling of lingering on Hayate's disability and Nanoha's Weltschmerz narration about not having the peaceful days with Fate that she imagined and having to fight for peace once more. As such that leaves me somewhat conflicted, on the one hand, it eases the melancholic atmosphere a little, on the other hand, it also removes a few of the character scenes that made the second season reasonably decent in my book. The film rushes through Hayate's condition and the way it deteriorates where the series has more time to breathe, has more time to show the slowly developing respect Fate and Signum have for each other, the way the "villains" don't want to fight but feel like they have to in order to protect the only good life they ever had. Anyway, with how the film went, I'll probably look into the next one instead of pausing for a bit. Still no reason to recommend this over the series. There's some more Fate fanservice in this and the girls get ridiculously long transformation sequences, but no anime tiddies worth their money, to be honest, even with the Tome of the Night Sky being all nude in one scene. Tiddies! 'S funny, as good as I thought the third season was, all in all, the second had the best antagonists. It ends with fate of the world boss fight, of course, but it's by far and large something that arises from a defect in Hayate's magical device, not like StrikerS' manic scientist plays 60ies Bond villain JRPG stuff. Ah, well, can't have everything, right?

I thought about nitpicking your comment earlier, but you also pretended other shows end after one episode or so, I figured it wasn't too interesting and you're not going to do more than three. edit: At one hour and ten minutes runtime left of the film, the Book of Darkness begins to absorb the Belkan Knights to complete itself. In the show, this is what summoned the final boss fight. This is going to be at least forty five minutes of supremely stupid action, isn't it? Looks like the movie drops Tuxedo Mask completely. Huh.

I really need to go to bed so this'll be a quick reply (no, I mean it this time) but I always wonder what and whom those manurestorms are for. It's certainly not for the people that are meant to be represented, or at least none that I know of and interact with. I know this is just anectodal, but, hey, does anyone know someone who feels as if their cause is being propery championed by the Twatteria when they unload on something or someone? Although, need to be careful here, lest I summone of those those storms myself. It's kind of sad, really. Now I'll sound like Bruce (oh dear, what this thread does to me, oh woe) but as white cis-male I'm not really supposed to have an opinion on this (even though I would argue that my personal history makes me uniquely suited to talk about marginalization - at the very least more than any of those buttholes on Twatter that complain endlessly when something's not PC enough, or someone makes a jest in bad taste), or at least shut up about it. I'd rather see myself represented as a regular character without virtue signalling or overly woke PC-ish focus, and I'm sure I'm not alone with that. Oh boy. Good night guys. This really was more fun than the Nanoha movie, I watched some 20 minutes and yikes, 5 minutes of those were transformation sequences and 15 minutes of boring action. Man... Haruka-papa (snicker) just doesn't like popular men! edit: In some ways, Sailor Moon is still a product of its time. It could be better in some ways, sure, but for a early 90ies offering, combined with the fact that today's offerings kind of are consistently much, much worse than that, it's easy to gloss over a mistake or two. Haruka's and Seiya's sort of shouneny conflict in Sailor Stars is one of these things, by far and large.

I noticed this week's episode was directed by someone else, but that didn't improve the episode - or make it worse. Maybe I'll check who directed which episodes at a later date and see if there's some pattern. I've wondered on and off if there's some CGI going on in Stamets' face, or if he wears contact lenses for some shots. He often looks bug-eyed in addition to uncanny, but that seems to evaporate whenever there's an actual closeup. Something I haven't mentioned is that he's been developing a "friendship" with Book in the past two episodes that's gone from "hey we really don't like each other" to "I want to solve the mystery of this anomaly for Book!" in the span of an episode or two. Yeah, absolutely. Heh. I remember like not quite twenty years ago, I was sitting in the very same spot I'm sitting in right now and talking with the good people of the Interplay forum about Ensing Mayweather being the worst token black guy in the history of Star Trek because he got like one line to say, if anything at all, per episode on Star Trek: Enterprise. To think that got worse and worse instead of better. It's baffling. edit: Bears repeating maybe, pretty much my point in the post above about Sailor Moon. Plus it did female super hero better than Marvel, for all they tried. 's a bit ridiculous, really, 30 years and still shown up by a kid's cartoon from Japan, which was arguably worse in the 90ies than the US was with regards to representation and normalization of marginalized groups.

I think I'm really not Kyubey's type, but the idea isn't bad. Just realized that there was a paragraph I anted to add but forgot. Yes, indeed, I originally wanted that post to be even longer. This one is mostly for @Bartimaeus, but everyone if of course welcome to read, but it'll probably only make sense to a handful of people. *shrug* The worst thing is that one can see these elements handled so much better in kid's shows, and yes, I'm by far and large talking about Sailor Moon here, but also about Steven Universe - Steven Universe, while being a bit newer, has Steven's lovable patchwork family (and three moms) and the marriage scene that almost got the show cancelled (would be odd to not mention it, given how much Rebecca Sugar was influenced by Sailor Moon). Next year, Sailor Moon will be thirty years old (hard to stress that enough), and it has: An all female superhero cast without drawing stupid attention to that fact or putting them in situations where they're ridiculed by males (Hello Captain Marvel!), except once by Jadeite, and he gets an airplance in the face as a reply, so that's fair. A really wide range of lovable characters with actual strenghts and real weaknesses, and even one that tells you that one can be traditionally girly and still kick ass (huh, try to find a Makoto in today's shows, really). Openly lesbian characters, one of which is androgynous enough to be mistaken for a pretty boy. Gay characters in the villain squad that are more than just "sterotype" bad gays. No gender difference whatsoever in the type of jobs the side characters hold. Female scientists, male waiters, doesn't matter. A transgender boy band in its final season. Eh, and it has Profesor Tomoe as villain. It does all that without ever feeling like virtue signalling. It doesn't comment on it, it just shows everything as it should be. Normal. Can't wrap my head around the fact that this is really, really old by now, and does everything Star Trek: Discovery seems to set out to do so much better. Is there really nothing that anyone would be able to take away from an old show like that, which is continously talked about by women, homosexuals (of both genders) and others (like myself) - who grew up with it or caught a rerun sometime - as being supremely helpful and representative. Never mind being hilariously funny, heartwarming and wholesome. Yeah, well, the seasonal story arcs are probably not that much better than Discovery's, but that's neither here nor there. Sure, it was originally intended to be for girls, but hey, not everything ends up being like it was intended. Can't see Star Trek: Discovery being talked about like that in thirty years. Maybe that distance will let everyone view it as the trash it is, perhaps, but even if it doesn't, is there really going to be someone who's going to say "I went to a psychiatrist because Dr. Culber convinced me to?" Yeah, sure, nah. If anything, that show will convince you to stay the hell away. Ugh.

I planned on finishing the second Nanoha movie tonight, but it looks like I'll make a second overly long post about Star Trek: Discovery instead. That should be slightly more fun, at least. Trigger warning, I might add the occasional swear word or two, because this really grinds my gears. I am very sorry if you got the idea that this isn't just a collection of the most egregious stuff that happened in this episode. The paragraphs from the beginning of the spoiler to that picture of Wham! is actually what happens before the opening credits. If I'd comment on the entire episode - and there'd be plenty more to comment on, really - then I'd probably still sit here and the episode would not be over. I left out most of the ridiculous phaser battle the cadets have with the Evolution aliens, for instance, and most of the diplomatic negotiations, and some moments between the president of Ni'Var and Saru, among other things. @Zoraptor has the right of it, though. These characters are so forgettable that I actually had to go and look up who killed Culber in the first season, because I completely forgot that Klingon spy in human form was actually a thing, and that he was involved with Burnham for a while. We're talking about a show where the bridge crew got full names in the second season because they had a character death planned and realized that it would not work so well if nobody had actual names. Can't for the life of me remember the name of the Cyborg navigator woman. It's baffling. I know I wrote about her in a post I made about the third season. I posted a picture of her, and wrote "They all got names last season, and hers is..." but after that my mind is a total blank. Ever since the first season, Star Trek: Discovery had certain elements added to the show that primarily have one goal: To insulate the show from mainstream and nerd mainstream (e.g. The Mary Sue, or Den of Geeks, i.e. the Kotakus of TV) criticism/critics. All these outlets and "progressives" - see, that's the thing, I do consider myself part of that group, but I want nothing to do with that very vocal part, really - just cannot talk about the many, many faults of the show because it's so god damned woke it oozes wokeness out of every orifice. The longer this show goes on, the more that feels like a deliberate troll by Kurtzman. It gets the internet talking about his terrible TV shows, creates clicks, controversies and probably also viewers. He might be a hack fraud writer, but at least he knows how to stir up a hornet's nest. I also hate myself for regurgitating alt-right criticism of the show, but it is what it is. These absolute morons on YouTube whose videos YouTube continues to suggest to me beause I write posts like this one all have one thing in common though, they say that these shows (i.e. Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Discovery) are bad because woke culture banned "males" from holding "positions of power" in the Star Trek universe. I don't even know where to start, no you f*cks, these shows are bad because they're all written by the same hack fraud that apparently knows enough about CBS to have their balls in a vice if they'd fire him, or whatever the hell else keeps Alex Kurtzman employed. Instead of enabling billionaires to go to space for fun or dumping cars in space, Elon Musk should give Kurtzman a one way trip to the 月 (moon, also used for month). Sorry to the other folks reading this, sort of an inside joke. Bad writing is bad. This has nothing to do with these shows being woke, Star Trek has always been like that. Did they miss the African-American woman on the bridge of a (semi-)military starship in the sixties, with a Japanese helmsman and a Russian navigator? This is actually the worst part about these new shows. Not that they're bad, but that they're set up in a way that gives traction to internet trash like The Critical Drinker. Where was I? Right. Objectively - and as objective as one can get - Star Trek: Discovery is terrible. That's just what it is. It's badly written, it's a disjointed mess more often than not, it doesn't neatly integrate into the Star Trek universe at the point in time it was chosen to play out, and that begins with the basic engine the ship has, and continues with introducing a formerly unknown adoptive sister of Spock's, it makes no sense at the best of times and as an added bonus, nothing about the distances they're talking about and nothing about the science makes sense. That seems like a strange complaint for a soft sci-fi show, but earlier Trek hired science advisors for a reason. The characters are flat non-entities. The storyline is boring, although that's subjective, and nothing that happens has any lasting consequences like in the good old days of non-serialized storytelling. Except this does have seralized storytelling because TV shows are expected to do that these days. Nothing of that, really, nothing of that is talked about if you look up some of the articles on the nerd internet magazines. I looked at the Den of Geek review of this episode, they basically wet themselves over how great and balanced it was. What? So Discovery has this cast that includes Michael Burnham, the woman with the male name, an adopted daughter of Sarek, whose acting talent and character keeps getting praised in spite of the height of her acting being able to cry at will, which she does so often it became a meme. There's a reason for my Burnham crying counter. There's the openly gay couple of Paul Stamets and Dr. Hugh Culber, who I... honestly don't have anything bad to say about, except for Culber being a complete non-character up until this season when he suddenly gets the role of ship's counsellor and everyone is coming to him for their weekly shrink session. Stamets has more of a character, but comes with the strings attached that he's necessary to operate the drive of the Discovery, a concept that's so utterly stupid that I don't want to talk about it, but it's up there with the worst ideas in sci-fi ever. Second only to the Starchild in Mass Effect 3. There's Ensing, later Lieutenant, Tilly who is a body positivity token hire, which is really sad because if given decent material, the actress can make things work that really shouldn't. Instead she's running half-marathons on the Discovery and wins. To send a message, I suppose, but who knows. Her work in the mirror universe was actually fantastic. I know I was happy that she got written out in this episode, but her performance was unwatchable recently, and she clearly was uncomfortable on the set (and they put her in that horrible catsuit from last week, I... yeah, I don't even know what to say to that). Every step of the way there are these characters and elements that were put in there for no other reason than to make the show immune to criticism, and to do some serious virtue signalling. Last season they added Blu del Bario to the roster, playing Adira, a non-binary (like her actor) human girl of 16 who is Discovery's version of Wesely Crusher in that she's a super-genius instantly capable of outsmarting Starfleet's best and brightest. Everyone calls her a "she" on the show until she says she wants to be called they. That would have been fine, but it didn't end there. Culber and Stamets have an extended dialogue in front of a sleeping Adira where they make sure to use "they" to address them for what feels like 20 times in half as many lines, and they put an incredibly stupid sounding emphasis on the pronouns that made me think they were making fun of the dialogue they were forced to say. I can't even begin to think what Will Cruz thinks of the show. Not of his role, perhaps, but of the show. Oh, by the way, Stamets is played by Anthony Rapp, otherwise probably best known for being the 14-year-old molested by Kevin Spacy. Eh, and his role in Rent. That... piece of sh*t musical thing. Through some shenanigans Adira sees her dead, and now imaginary former boyfriend, who is played by non-binary transgender actor Ian Alexander. So, let this serve as the background for the actual answer to the question you posed. Both Adira Tal and Gray Tal (for the record, they're neither married, nor related, Gray Tal is a Trill, and Adira is now carrying his symbiont, even though it was stated by Star Trek canon that Trills symbionts cannot permanently link with humans, but screw canon) are complete non-characters. They're boring. They're badly written. They have the most terrible dialogue, and everything, really everything they say on the show is a thinly veiled metaphor for being non-binary or transitioning. That's what I mean with not helping. It's so painfully obvious that these actors were just hired to slap some more wokeness onto Discovery to make sure it's keept out of the crossfire of criticism, or at least to give the showrunners the option to push non-favorable critics into the transphobic corner if need be. Well, and to create even more alt-right pushback. This show virtue signals so bad while at the same time being so terrible that it makes the other side's usually dreafully stupid criticism appear valid. The fourth season now seems to have taken up championing mental health care as the new token pet project, with Culber offering therapy to everyone, and the show trying really, really hard to tell us under how much strain the crew is, while they're doing nothing much, most of the time. Tilly was the worst part up until now, freaking out over two non-characters that died that she didn't even know, after the firs three seasons were raining death and destruction upon the Federation (including a time-travelling version of Skynet, and no, I WISH I WAS KIDDING). In this new episode, she spends more time with the shuttle pilot than the warrior nun that died last episode, but she doesn't even give half a sh*t any more. Probably because she knew she could go looking for a better gig. Or spend some more time with her newborn kid. Or get better, I mean, there's a chance that she wasn't just uncomfortable on the set but that she's really sick. Which is what I hate it the most for. It just keeps adding these elements that should be treated with more care, and by someone who is not Alex Kurtzman. By anyone else. I don't care. Let Sargon of Akkad write a Discovery episode, it can't be any worse. It really, really, really can't. It's... GAH. Really, just... GAH. F*ck if I know. It certianly isn't me. Perhaps its this girl: Although that's pretty much me whenver I watch an episode of this absolute fustercluck of a show. The worst part about this is that Will Cruz's been a consistently decent actor on the show. He just doesn't get anything worthwhile to do. His therapy sessions aren't badly acted either, they're just terribly written, and in this latest episode he mixed in some Spanish in his usual dialogue. Why? Who knows. Maybe the writers realized they had an actual gay actor with Afro-Puerto Rican descent and went: "Hey, you have untapped virtue signalling potential there, mix in some Spanish! ¿Está bien ahora?"

I'm done with my post about the Star Trek that I would also like to pretend does not exist. Go and like it. Leave a comment, subscribe...

Star Dreck: The adventures of Therapy Posts on the Obsidian Forum, part 4. Burnham crying counter: 1:3. As I sit here and prepare, my breathing is deep and relaxed. There is no emotion, there is peace. Wait, wrong franchise. Let me try that again. In accepting the inevitable, one finds peace. Burnham crying counter unchanged. I think they're doing this on purpose. I feel like that last scene is one where pre-season-four Michael would have cried. Copiously.

I didn't forget about Joseph punching Straizo out of existence, but the connection to him killing is adoptive grandfather that way was somewhere lost along the way. I recounted who Joseph killed in Battle Tendency and then came up short for a grandparent. Dunno, I have no excuse. Heh.

Kimagure Orange Road sounds like something as fun as driving a spork up my <insert painful body part of your choice here>. A shounen love triangle story? Kazemakase Tsukikage Ran sounds like an interesting idea and it's short, so, hey... not a lot that can go wrong if it's not good. Not that long ago I would have dismissed Maison Ikkoku out of hand, but hey, seinen isn't necessarily always bad as I've noticed. However, I'd suggest you prioritize Angelic Layer and let me know if that's worthwhile. Watched this week's Komi Can't Communicate. It's episode number I have lost count. The series is broken up into chapters anyway, so episode numbers aren't the most useful anyway. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this really needs to do away with all side characters, and in this episode that includes Najimi, but most importantly the insane stalker girl who insists that Komi eats her sausage. Yeah... no... really, that's a thing that happens. She wants Komi to eat her sausage. I don't know if that's some Japanese weird thing or a joke that totally misfired, or if my broken mind is going places when I see scenes like that, but she tells Komi to kneel down and then whips out her sausage and... sorry... I... Nope. To think that there's a Star Dreck episode waiting for me too. Sigh.

Ah, I kind of forgot about the other half of the Dire Straits. Ewery-ting is myusical (helfpully linked at the proper time, as per usual)!

Josefu:

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?