Amentep

The MegaTen games have had adult protaganists (Persona 2: Eternal Punishment's protagonist is an adult reporter for a teen magazine, Strange Journey's protag is a military man) but most tend to be high schoolers. I've heard that Japan sees high school as a time for learning and experimentation and that's why so many protaganists in stories (video game or not) are in high school; those with adult characters have the adults as people whose jobs give them the freedom to investigate and explore (reporter, military, royalty, martial artist traveling the world to train, mercenary).

Big Trouble in Little China

Heinz introduces Mars Ketchup

Must have had to renegotiate music licenses for the remaster.

Yup. You don't really start seeing a lot of people going hatless when outdoors in old photos until the mid-to-late 50s. My understanding is as more modes of transportation and buildings were being climate controlled, it led to hats, scarfs and gloves declining in popularity as functional items, as you weren't spending the majority of your time at the mercy of the outdoor temperature. I think some hats as business attire and for fashion took longer to winnow away.

November 19.

Yes, I hope things end up well and fine.

I can imagine it'd get frustrating having that happen.

That marble machine was neat, but a bit disappointed it wasn't actually music from Marble Madness...

Get them enchanted for a high armor class. Actually, are they like rings and cancel each other out if enchanted, or are they cumulative? 🤔 I actually kind of agree with this. I hate it when to improve AC you have to switch to some stupid looking armor set (like the Dwarven armor in Skyrim or something that looks terrible and makes everyone look the same). I guess it may also depend on whether the game is striving to be a simulation at some level or not. Most fantasy RPGs aren't.

That's ceremonial armor, AFAIK. The Lord wearing that wouldn't be fighting in it and, again AFAIK, comes from a period when armor was becoming more for ceremony than utility anyhow. If worn in battle, a sword that glances down the torso could easily get stopped on the knobby outcropping and the tip of the blade guided inward past the armor, something that doesn't make the armor terribly useful in a fight. Similarly boobplate with cleavage could deflect armor off the boob towards the inner chest, the place you don't want blades to go. Anyhow, if I'm correct, I don't think anyone would be complaining about cleavage baring or boobplated ceremonial armor provided the Lady in question didn't run out of the castle in it to start fighting rampaging ogres outside the gate. (anyhow magic throws the whole thing in a high magic setting because, theoretically, you could have a magic ring that gives you a better AC than plate mail and fight buck nekkid).

In one of those weird things, a local bookstore started getting untranslated photo-novel books from Japan and one of them that my brother picked up* was (as they seemed to be for movies rather than TV series) 1982's MACROSS: DO YOU REMEMBER LOVE? This was prior to Harmony Gold's mash-up ROBOTECH, so it was a bit surreal when a year or two later Robotech hit the air and I recognized the character, ship and mech designs. Not sure why the bookstore decided to start getting in untranslated photo-novel's from Japan; it wasn't a specialty book store (that would be a different story, but that was untranslated manga I picked up and right now I'm blanking on just what title I did pick up there). Speaking of Robotech, I believe there have been releases for Super Dimension Macross outside of Robotech - did Mospeda or Southern Cross ever get non-Robotech releases in the US? *I picked up a three or four volume photo-novel version of 1979's Castle of Cagliostro and one for 1980's Cyborg 009: Legend of the Super Vortex...my brother's second series was 1982's Andromeda Stories.

Yeah, I'm not crazy about the # of games creep (in the NFL or the NBA, but the latter is a different thread entirely).

Hahaha, that's kinda sad. I mean it'd be nice if we managed to roll on into a post-season of some kind, but still we used to have this kind of start and already be mathematically eliminated from the post-season 8 games in. lol.

Lol, you have a point. 😛 Hahah, well it definitely reminds me of some other 70s-early to mid 80s anime's I've seen (Gatchaman, Yamato, Getter Robo, Mazinger Z, Fist of the North Star, Tekkaman the Space Knight) in production value. Style is different, Terasawa's character design being both in keeping with the period but a bit chunky as well and the use of sort of the trippy colors is a bit different.

TNG - "Descent, Part I" Okay, so Borg attack the ship (!) acting weird (!!) singling Data out (!!!) who has an emotional reaction (!!!!) of anger and joy (!!!!!) and not one person on the Enterprise goes "Hold up, the only other times Data has had a surprise outburst of emotion its been at the hands of Q and Lore - maybe we should double check these clearly abnormal Borg to determine if they're emitting some form of communication/radiation/technobable forcing an emotional response out of Data...?"(!!!!!!) I like Lore as much as the next guy, but the lack of response to try to understand what's happened to Data from the crew kinda borders on irresponsibility. And it was obvious it was Lore not Q. 😛 Lower Decks - "Moist Vessel" Kinda okay episode, with Marriner and her mom ironing some things out, but a little silly too (but I guess to be expected).

What are they normally called? I've never had grilled cheese for breakfast before, but its what I thought of when I read "Cheese griller".

Supēsu Kobura aka Space Cobra aka Space Adventure Cobra - Episode 1: "Fukkatsu! Saikogan" aka "Resurrection! The Psychogun!" So my context for this series is the 1982 movie. The movie assumes you know Cobra, and moves on from there, so I've been interested in trying to watch the tv series that preceeds it to get more information on Cobra and Lady Armaroid as characters. Its a bit like, if you only know Lupin III from Castle of Cogliostro, you miss out a good bit on the characters; I've always felt like if I knew more about these characters I'd like the movie more than I do. Stylistically, it happily reminds me of the 1982 movie on a tv budget, but with some of the same trippy neon-light visuals that the movie had still firmly in place. From a stories perspective, you can tell that Buichi Terasawa was a fan of Philip K. **** and he uses his interests to mix together a number of sci-fi elements into something new. I'm a sucker for older styles in anime, and so really enjoy the aesthetic and even some of the rough animation. All in all a happy start to this series for me. As an aside, is it just me, or...

True confession, I'd never heard of a cheese griller before. I take it is a type of sausage with cheese already mixed into it?

Falcons beat the Saints to move to 4-4. Given the way we opened (3 preseason losses and then lose first two games) its nice to be at .500, I guess.

Blake's 7 has sadly been one of the UK Sci-Fi shows that have missed me over the years. Hopefully I'll see it eventually.

... ... Didn't Cardcaptor Sakura already cross mediums (manga came out in 1996, first anime in 1998)? Don't get me wrong, a lot of adaptions are crappy, but I don't think it has to do with crossing mediums, per se.

There actually are wrong ways to get a correct answer, they usually involve faulty logic and faulty operations that happen to cancel themselves out and give the correct answer for the wrong reasons. I used to tutor math a long, long time ago (insert chuckles from anyone whose seen my math blunders here) and one of the frustrating things as a tutor was trying to teach a student the teachers way to do something when there were logically equivalent other ways to solve the problem but didn't fit the 'format' the teacher wanted students to use.

While I think the guy has a point, he also kind of messes his point up (totally losing the plot IMO when he brings in that ****ing army recruitment video that all the people who get military hard-ons have been bitching about that wasn't made to appeal to the average recruit types) and I think misses the causes. Blockbuster films are so expensive these days that, yes, as he says they have to bring in a big audience. But the studios handicap this as well - they don't want to spend 100 million to make 250 million, they want to spend 500 million to make 3 billion worldwide. The increasing pressure on films to rake in ridiculous amounts of cash is a huge problem and the reason why mid-tier projects (including what used to be the 'Oscar-bait' films) are being pushed to cable or, more prominently these days, streaming and why low budget horror films and super-budget effects blockbusters are increasingly what find its ways into cinema. But its also a problem to use Star Trek (notice he conveniently DOESN'T look at the TNG films because Nemesis, at least, would invalidate his comparison between 'classic' Trek and 'new' Trek, as would, frankly, a number of episodes of TOS and TNG) because the people behind the Star Trek properties of recent years (Abrams and Kurtzman particularly) have, very basically said, they want to make Star Trek more like Star Wars, which is where their SF interests lie. This is the reason you get the weak Chain-of-Command on the ship stuff - because Luke used to be able to mouth off to Han, or Chewie could bitch about Han's driving or any of the other things because Star Wars didn't have a hard coded military structure in its heroes (and where it did have structure, like in the Jedi Order, it didn't have a strict one that would forbid the junior member questioning the senior). Its also the reason you get weak story-arcs for the characters in the new Trek movies (to the point that making nods to the old movies is character development) because they can't figure out how to make Captain Kirk fits the Hero of 1000 faces model if he's also in a strict command structure (and sadly, I kinda think "Beyond" is the best of the three reboot films even with its lame "i'm aging at 30-something" bit) because they can't crack the motivation of the characters to exist in that structure (because, sticking it to the man is cool and you can't do that when you work for the man). Star Trek's problems (and this goes back to TNG) is that it has increasingly been led by people who not only dislike SF (most of the TNG production, as I recall) but actually don't like Star Trek. So rather than trying to figure out why Star Trek works on its own terms, the increasing tendency is to make it something it isn't.