Anime: Emotions on a Rollercoaster

[majestic]

On 3/20/2021 at 3:44 PM, Bartimaeus said:

Yeah, but to be fair to myself, I decided to re-watch the SU episode too because I like it so much too. Whoops! SU:

  Reveal hidden contents

Yes, Pearl was acting a little odd, wasn't she?

Wouldn't you like to know - well, too bad, you'll have to wait and find out*! You have a few, uh, weird episodes coming your way, but things get more back on track after that, .

*This is the part where you learn it was actually all a ruse and the rest of the show devolves into endless nonsense saturday morning cartoons with no plot. Hope you like Crying Breakfast Friends on repeat, sucker!

 

Whelp, you sure weren't lying.

Watched episode 29.
 

Spoiler

 

It looks like the same group of interns made the animation that made the fourth SuperS episode, and one of the SuperS writers was involved. What the hell was going on there? I get that Pearl got excited in the last episode and wanted to go back and experience spacetravel again, okay. But stealing bubbled gems and hushing that up. What? Did she off-screen fuse with Amethyst too long? Why would they tell Steven that they're no longer a team now. They have been a team for while.

Are there alien body snatchers in Steven Universe? Or was that an episode that was meant to be much closer to the beginning of the season. It feels really out of place.

 

 

Okay I keep saying how weird that episode of SuperS looked. Have a picture:

No, this is really from the episode, not from some fanart tumblr.

  

29 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Wrong psycho indeed. That would be Bloodless from Bloodstained.

Was more thinking of Elisabeth Bathory, but that works too.

Edited March 22, 2021 by majestic

[InsaneCommander]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Was more thinking of Elisabeth Bathory, but that works too.

Certainly the inspiration for that character.

[InsaneCommander]

@majestic

In one of the first episodes of Super S, there was a teaser with Haruka and Michiru (see images below). But I never saw that episode and I watched 39 for the season.

At the time I saw this, I thought it was misplaced, maybe an episode later in the season, but now I remember it. Is it the Super S movie? Or did I miss an episode and counted wrong?

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Btw, how many movies were made? I haven't watched a single one yet.

Edited March 23, 2021 by InsaneCommander

[Bartimaeus]

There's an R Movie, S Movie, and SuperS Movie. None of them are important to the story in any way, but they're fun and solid enough (well, I haven't seen the SuperS one yet).

@majestic That does not look like good art, although it's a little difficult to tell for sure at the small resolution.

Regarding Steven Universe:

Spoiler

Yeah, the animation peaks and valleys are really weird, aren't they? The difference between episodes like 25/26/28 and something like 27/29 is pretty crazy: there are a lot of very static scenes where they only do like the most minimum mouth animation possible, and it looks very jarring relative to the higher quality episodes where everyone is very animated and silky smooth in comparison.

In regards to the contents of the episode itself, there are...some reasons why Pearl was acting the way she was. Not necessarily the strongest reasons for specifically messing around with the Rose Quartz bubble and...shards in the first place, but reasons that will at least explain some of her...ongoing personality quirks. Reasons that will come up again later, but without explanation right now, no doubt she probably just seems a little bizarre and incongruous.

Spoiler

You may have noticed a few times by now, particularly if you paid close attention to her in episode 24 where Amethyst's gem was damaged, or even the rocket ship episode, that Pearl is not necessarily the most...stable, to put it as vaguely as I can, of the Crystal Gems. Something to be on the lookout for.

 

 

Edited March 23, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

7 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

@majestic

In one of the first episodes of Super S, there was a teaser with Haruka and Michiru (see images below). But I never saw that episode and I watched 39 for the season.

At the time I saw this, I thought it was misplaced, maybe an episode later in the season, but now I remember it. Is it the Super S movie? Or did I miss an episode and counted wrong?

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

Btw, how many movies were made? I haven't watched a single one yet.

That's from the Sailor Moon SuperS special, which I have not seen so far. It's not the SuperS movie, anyway.

49 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

@majestic That does not look like good art, although it's a little difficult to tell for sure at the small resolution.

I don't know what's up with linking the Sailor Moon wiki images. The original is larger, you can see by clicking on it and then using the link to go directly to the wiki image.

Or click on the non-embedded link. https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/sailormoon/images/4/4e/218123.jpg

Edited March 23, 2021 by majestic
I hate this forum software!

[Bartimaeus]

I tried that, but it didn't work. Similarly, that link you just posted also doesn't work - it's still the tiny version. I don't think it's the forum software's fault (surprisingly), but I think a problem instead with hotlinking from the wikia.

What happened to poor Naru? Looks like a shapeshifter-approximated version of her, .

Edited March 23, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

22 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I tried that, but it didn't work. Similarly, that link you just posted also doesn't work - it's still the tiny version. I don't think it's the forum software's fault (surprisingly), but I think a problem instead with hotlinking from the wikia.

What happened to poor Naru? Looks like a shapeshifter-approximated version of her, .

That's odd, because the separate link works for me, it doesn't work when viewed through the forum software (Firefox by the way, might be some browser issue involved too).

I'm not sure, I think Luna and Artemis are in the episode too, and they look even worse than the girls here, but I couldn't find any image of them. It's really hilarious. So let's just make a picture. Luckily I know where to stream episodes... *cough* I mean... it'll have a stupid play button in the freeze frame because there's no way to pause without the player UI showing up on this, uhm, special site, but hey, it works for demonstraiton purposes.

If you think the girls are bad, they got off easy. Look at the poor cats.

[Bartimaeus]

Firefox as well. I remember that when I tried to link from the wikia a month back or two, I had similar problems, while whenever I link from my own dropbox account (or imgur), there are never any problems, so I'm fairly confident it's an issue with the wikia sites.

lmao @ them, looking real swell. Also, good news: got the first four episodes, I'll be watching them shortly - hurray, go me, woo, great...really looking forward to it.

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

lmao @ them, looking real swell. Also, good news: got the first four episodes, I'll be watching them shortly - hurray, go me, woo, great...really looking forward to it.

Look at the stock footage in the first two episode, it looks (and is) incomplete, also... the first two episodes aren't bad, actually. They just have a good deal of creepy in them. Did you notice that you've managed to pass KP? Technically not because you're lacking 4 episodes, but still an episode ahead in spite of staring weeks later. Trying to get this over with quickly?

Man, I wish I had more time to watch SU and JoJo's. Ah, well.

Maybe I'll rewatch Stars with you guys to compare impressions. Didn't write them down by episode after all.

 

Couldn't stop myself from streaming the 8th episode of Sailor Stars (the second of the season storyline).
 

Spoiler

 

Usagi is being absent-minded and runs into Seiya, he calls her dumpling (or buns-head, whatever the English version of that insult is) like Mamoru always did in the first season, Usagi is annoyed by him not apolgizing and he says: "Most girls would be totally freaking out to have bumped in to me!", and of course Usagi is totally oblivious to the fact that she essentially just ran into the Sailor Moon setting's Robbie Williams.

Might not be the most original thing to do, bumping into Seiya and him calling her dumpling, but it works better than the first season throwback attempts in SuperS, and Usagi not acting like he expects because she doesn't care about anyone but Mamoru... man. I love this.

There's something else I haven't mentioned, Usagi was always a bit annoying for me  the first time I watched Sailor Moon. I liked the others much more. I guess I still do, in a way, but Usagi's certainly the highlight of this season, and unlike in the last season, that focus isn't terrible or misplaced, it just works.

The Three Lights show up and Minako is super happy, trying to impress them with being the fan club's 278th member. Ami just stands there being completely embarrassed and shows her membership card, #25. Minako looks at her and says: As if it's not enough that you're always better at exams!

Heh.

 

Edited March 23, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

To a degree - and coincidentally, I've had more free time lately, which is why...

Spoiler

To my great shame, I also already finished SU season 1 even though I said I wouldn't get that far ahead of you. I even had time to compile a list of my favorite episodes, but then I realized nobody needed to see that, . SU is just that show for me - the one where, for whatever reason, you can just sit and watch it and love it at pretty much any time, like it was made specifically for you (even with some of its rougher edges!). It probably won't ever be that for you, but hopefully you'll at least really like it.

Yay, I finally got properly introduced to Pegasus. Chibi-Usa running down the streets in a dream-like sequence, desperately looking for the sources of those neighs... Nobody noticed the giant lightning storm that happened while there was no other light?

"Sometimes, you just have to hop on your white horse..." NO, BAD CHIBI-USA! Tiger Wallet is being extra creepy in this one. Chibi-Usa and Usagi are at least getting along like it's still the end of S, though!

Oh man, this old stock footage (not to mention the lack of a super long attack animation) is so much nicer than the new stock footage - kind of wish they'd just stuck with that, especially with Chibi-Usa just humorously running into frame, .

(e): lol, I just noticed that in the second episode, the cast just screams "SAILOR MOON...SUPER!" during the title drop. For some reason, they only do this for the first four episodes, coincidentally the first four episodes I didn't see yet?

Edited March 23, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

I've mentioned it once or twice, but the first two assault scenes are really... the worst. The first one because the entire spiel of Tiger's-Eye hits really close to the mark of how these things tend to happen in real life (less magical wallet stealing of course), and the second one because the writers and animators felt it was a good idea to have Reika beg Tiger's-Eye to stop violating her. Which you probably didn't see, assuming you've skipped ahead like usual. Or will not see, if you're still watching.

I don't recall any title card yelling for SuperS at all, so I don't know. Seems weird.

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah, that was pretty messed up by Tiger: he seemed even more creepy than usual in this episode than the rest of the season that I saw him. Also, unlike later, I did watch all of the first episode, since I was curious about the stock footage. It was greaaaaat.

Seems to happen in both English and Japanese: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/gk2qo6znvndqpc9/YpS51mE0wr.mp4 Very strange, since, again, only the first four episodes (and my episodes are all from the same source, so that's a weird coincidence that it was these episodes in particular that were missing!).

Minako and Usagi abusing the hell out of Artemis and Luna in tandem - good job, girls. Those cats have it coming to them, especially Artemis. Well, not really, but

Chibi-Usa with the stone-cold, "...Welp, I guess she's handling things pretty darn well." Even though she has a serious horse problem, I'm pretty sure I've liked Chibi-Usa a bit more this season than I have Usagi. At least Chibi-Usa's still a twerp to explain some of her more childish regressions...Usagi doesn't have that excuse as much.

Tiger Horse is making me cringe so bad right now, why is he so much creepier now than he is later? Do I already have amnesia for SeasonS even though I haven't even finished it yet? This dancing sequence with the minion, though...

Also, we have Matoki's sister targeted in the first episode, then Matoki's girlfriend in the next? This poor guy - with all the random people that were targeted this season, friends and family alike, I'm surprised Fish Eye didn't target like Shingo or something at some point.

(e): Good lord. Well, I guess I should've watched the next episode preview first before saying that, because I guess the next one is going to be Usagi's mom... What the hell?

Edited March 23, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

On the topic of having that one perfect show that seems made for me, wow, that's a tough one. I've seen a lot, both live action and animation. The closest I got to enjoying virtually every episode was with Sailor Moon and, not very surprisingly, X-Files. Sailor Moon has SuperS of course and X-Files has the later seasons without David Duchovny, that, while having really great episodes in there, are suffering from not really being X-Files. That's the sort of thing that happens when your show lives almost entirely off the atmosphere and character chemistry.

But they don't feel like they were made just for me. There's only one show that felt that way and it's fate was... terrible. They replaced the creative team halfway through season two and it all went to hell in a handbasket from there. I mentioned it once or twice because I'm a total Stan (okay can we use something else, I don't like Eminem, there, I said it... at least Stan had Dido, who I could listen to for hours, in spite of not really liking the music she makes - I played Life for Rent on repeat in 2003).

What's interesting is that the show had, also kind of like Sailor Moon, a complete zero budget. It looks ridiculous. Especially the first few episodes. But it has everything I love. A cast of whacky characters that are just the right mix of tropey, real and relatable, actors that feel like they were born for the role they were playing (including one Kevin Sorbo, regardless of what I may think of his nutjob world view, I love him in this). It explores some nice concepts and has absolutely loveable character interactions* and a mystery plot that was just beginning to unfurl properly by the time Tribune Entertainment shat all over it.

*There's one that kind of harkens back to my love of shojo anime, I guess. The ensemble has three women, one of which is a manic pixie fairy / cloud cuckoolander with a secret agenda, then the pilot with a tragic family background of living on the street and having a drug-runner who died as father and... well, the ship's AI avatar (by now it should be clear that I'm talking of course about Andromeda) who at this point has just gotten a new robot body.

The other two women play dress up with her, and she doesn't really get why. She's just female because humans respond better to female voices, and she let's the other two treat her as mannequin because it helps crew morale. Everything she does is simply in service of the crew, it's what she was made for.

Beka (the pilot) then says (paraphrased, can't find anything worth a damn on YouTube these days): "So let me get this straight, the reason you're looking like a walking heart attack is for our benefit?" to which Andromeda responds: "Andromeda was a Phoenician princess, and since no one knows how the ancient Phoenicians looked, I made an approximation based on..." and Trance (the pixie) says: "She thinks you're pretty."

Andromeda is more confused than ever at this point and Beka asks her if that's just the first face she came up with, and she says she went through several hundred thousand iterations. Beka cuts her off with a "I knew it!". Cue end of scene.

Random, fun scene with nothing really happening except some character building and the crew becoming friends. A bit like Sailor Moon, only in space. Also has copious amounts of stock footage and not even enough budgets for proper CGI fight scenes. Often they just use a tactical display with little triangles designating fighter craft and missiles. Actually that's pretty cool, like Homeworld's tactical overview. Gives the scenes a nice atmosphere, looks good and was cheap. Genius move, really.

edit: There's also a scene later in the show where the three meet up again to just chat, or how Andromeda calls it at this point: For girl talk. Beka shows off that she has a nano-bot augmentation with which she can change her hair color at will and Andromeda just does the same (she's a robot, after all). edit 2: What a great display of her growing as a character. Man. Why did they think this needed more action and less "brainy" plots? F*ck you Tribute!

Eh, ok. That's enough from me. The problem is, as much as I love this, I can't recommend it to anyone. It's really too bad this ended on a cliffhanger in the middle of season 2... (at least in my head canon).

Edited March 23, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

Okay, I think we can now pinpoint the exact moment Usagi completely regressed in SuperS: her mom showing her terrible test scores to everyone while not giving her a piece of the lemon meringue pie. It was a quintuple whammy - humiliated just like back at the start of season 1, and denied her greatest and most favorite vice: food...and then it turns out she WAS supposed to get a piece but Chibi-Usa ate it, then her mom told her to be the bigger person, AND THEN her mom told her she was basically stupid and to grow up! It all makes sense!

[Bartimaeus]

51 minutes ago, majestic said:

On the topic of having that one perfect show that seems made for me, wow, that's a tough one. I've seen a lot, both live action and animation. The closest I got to enjoying virtually every episode was with Sailor Moon and, not very surprisingly, X-Files. Sailor Moon has SuperS of course and X-Files has the later seasons without David Duchovny, that, while having really great episodes in there, are suffering from not really being X-Files. That's the sort of thing that happens when your show lives almost entirely off the atmosphere and character chemistry.

But they don't feel like they were made just for me. There's only one show that felt that way and it's fate was... terrible. They replaced the creative team halfway through season two and it all went to hell in a handbasket from there. I mentioned it once or twice because I'm a total Stan (okay can we use something else, I don't like Eminem, there, I said it... at least Stan had Dido, who I could listen to for hours, in spite of not really liking the music she makes - I played Life for Rent on repeat in 2003).

What's interesting is that the show had, also kind of like Sailor Moon, a complete zero budget. It looks ridiculous. Especially the first few episodes. But it has everything I love. A cast of whacky characters that are just the right mix of tropey, real and relatable, actors that feel like they were born for the role they were playing (including one Kevin Sorbo, regardless of what I may think of his nutjob world view, I love him in this). It explores some nice concepts and has absolutely loveable character interactions* and a mystery plot that was just beginning to unfurl properly by the time Tribune Entertainment shat all over it.

*There's one that kind of harkens back to my love of shojo anime, I guess. The ensemble has three women, one of which is a manic pixie fairy / cloud cuckoolander with a secret agenda, then the pilot with a tragic family background of living on the street and having a drug-runner who died as father and... well, the ship's AI avatar (by now it should be clear that I'm talking of course about Andromeda) who at this point has just gotten a new robot body.

The other two women play dress up with her, and she doesn't really get why. She's just female because humans respond better to female voices, and she let's the other two treat her as mannequin because it helps crew morale. Everything she does is simply in service of the crew, it's what she was made for.

Beka (the pilot) then says (paraphrased, can't find anything worth a damn on YouTube these days): "So let me get this straight, the reason you're looking like a walking heart attack is for our benefit?" to which Andromeda responds: "Andromeda was a Phoenician princess, and since no one knows how the ancient Phoenicians looked, I made an approximation based on..." and Trance (the pixie) says: "She thinks you're pretty."

Andromeda is more confused than ever at this point and Beka asks her if that's just the first face she came up with, and she says she went through several hundred thousand iterations. Beka cuts her off with a "I knew it!". Cue end of scene.

Random, fun scene with nothing really happening except some character building and the crew becoming friends. A bit like Sailor Moon, only in space. Also has copious amounts of stock footage and not even enough budgets for proper CGI fight scenes. Often they just use a tactical display with little triangles designating fighter craft and missiles. Actually that's pretty cool, like Homeworld's tactical overview. Gives the scenes a nice atmosphere, looks good and was cheap. Genius move, really.

edit: There's also a scene later in the show where the three meet up again to just chat, or how Andromeda calls it at this point: For girl talk. Beka shows off that she has a nano-bot augmentation with which she can change her hair color at will and Andromeda just does the same (she's a robot, after all). edit 2: What a great display of her growing as a character. Man. Why did they think this needed more action and less "brainy" plots? F*ck you Tribute!

Eh, ok. That's enough from me. The problem is, as much as I love this, I can't recommend it to anyone. It's really too bad this ended on a cliffhanger in the middle of season 2... (at least in my head canon).

Literally the only place I've ever heard of this show is the couple of mentions you've given it in this thread, . "middle of season 2" >has 5 seasons. Yikes. Let me guess: you hate-watched the rest of it?

Hawk's Eye, and I quote:  "She's got a kid with her. Well, that's okay - it might make it even better."

My gosh, this whole mother sob story with Hawk's Eye is so incredibly uncomfortable, I'm just letting it play without actually watching right now.

How the hell doesn't Ikuko recognize her children or their voices - COME ON, LADY! Oh, actually, she was passed out. Hey, Minako used Love Me Chain to move Usagi and Chibi-Usa out of the way - that's what I'm talking about regarding different attacks having different uses!

I thought Ikuko might actually be spared after Sailor Moon's Sailor Body Attack, but alas, .

Edited March 23, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

Fourth and final episode of Sailor Moon, Catch Pegasus: The Amazon's Trap. Good lord, the animation is so terrible. If anything, you undersold how bad it is. Also, I'm so glad this part of the show is over, these guys are really truly the worst. Here's a collection of 'nice' screencaps I put together, for history's sake:

Spoiler

 

 

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Literally the only place I've ever heard of this show is the couple of mentions you've given it in this thread, . "middle of season 2" >has 5 seasons. Yikes. Let me guess: you hate-watched the rest of it?

No, much to my everlasting shame I did not hate watch until season 5. I don't know if you remember, but I mentioned having a crush on a second fictional character... and that totally was Andromeda, not  because she looks like a walking heart attack, although that's certainly part of it (at least once they stopped making Lexa Doig wear those ridiculous jelly boobs because this show is for nerds and nerds love BOOBIES, get it? Did I say f*ck you, Tribute Entertainment yet?). Her character and character arc pushes all the right buttons for me*.

Seasons three and four are terrible (although they hired Bob Engels to write the show, but not even he could fix that mess), but I didn't care, much. No matter how awful this got, those were still the characters I loved. But... eh. You can only watch Sailor Moon SuperS for so long until it grinds you down. I mean, the episodes were fun in the same way Hercules is. That's a decent analogy. Tribute fired the creative team and made Kevin Sorbo executive producer and the show ended up being Hercules in Space where he got every woman of the week. Eh. It's fun in its own way, but it's not the show I started to love. Not by a long shot.

I still love the first two seasons (albeit the latter half is already a little... let's call it ugh, but it still works, mostly). The most hilarious problemy part is when there's a clip show at some point in time later, and all the scenes from the prior episodes shown have so much better dialogue and characterization than the ones that aren't flashback it almost physically hurts watching.

If you ever feel the need to watch this dumpster fire go ahead, just don't expect any of the small plot points that come up to have a resolution. There's a time travel plot early on, but it's actually quite interesting (and has a major moral dilemma to resolve for three of the characters). Like I said, the first season and a half might just be my most favorite live action  show, warts and all. Even without having a crush on Rommie (terrible nickname). It's just that the show ends there, unresolved, and a totally new one begins (the final episode of season two simply declares part of the ongoing storyline as having been resolved off-screen).

*I'll make a separate post for this, I think.

  

51 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Fourth and final episode of Sailor Moon, Catch Pegasus: The Amazon's Trap. Good lord, the animation is so terrible. If anything, you undersold how bad it is.

I did? How did I undersell this. I said aliens made this, and even the Ancient Aliens guys agree with me! Also, yeah, REALLY awful on Tiger's-Eye's part there. "Well if you don't want, I'll just assault you." Yeah, great, now GTFO please. Poor Naru. Or rather, poor alien made approximation of Naru.

Edited March 23, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

Good lord, I'm retarded. When you mentioned her being a "walking heart attack" just now combined with what you said earlier about her letting other fellow crewmates dress her (again, you specifically mentioned her dressed as a 'heart attack' for morale reasons), I decided enough was enough and I had to see this heart attack outfit that was so great. After a a couple of minutes of searching for "lexa doig" and "andromeda" and "heart" and then "heart attack", I have since realized that you just meant she looked attractive. Not that I really see it (and maybe this is why I didn't initially understand), but I am one of those weirdos that really only ever is attached/attracted to a person or character after hearing their voice, seeing their mannerisms, their personality and how they behave, etc., so I'm just about the last person to ever ask this to begin with.

I have a notorious difficulty with enjoying live-action sci-fi television (animated stuff or books are fine, television and often even feature films completely fall apart for me - what I have watched of shows like Star Trek, X-Files, Firefly, etc. has never been me personally deciding to watch them). Theoretically, if I fell enough in love with the cast, I suppose the limitation probably wouldn't apply...but the chances of that happening for any given show are very low.

[majestic]

22 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Good lord, I'm retarded. When you mentioned her being a "walking heart attack" just now combined with what you said earlier about her letting other fellow crewmates dress her (again, you specifically mentioned her dressed as a 'heart attack' for morale reasons), I decided enough was enough and I had to see this heart attack outfit that was so great. After a a couple of minutes of searching for "lexa doig" and "andromeda" and "heart" and then "heart attack", I have since realized that you just meant she looked attractive. Not that I really see it (and maybe this is why I didn't initially understand), but I am one of those weirdos that really only ever is attached/attracted to a person or character after hearing their voice, seeing their mannerisms, their personality and how they behave, etc., so I'm just about the last person to ever ask this to begin with.

One of the characters on the crew calls her a walking heart attack (literal, actual dialogue here) because she's, well, attractive. Or at least, Beka (the pilot) thinks so. The engineer who built her body sure does so too, and that's the basis for all sorts of hijinks (one of the funnier ones is Rommie asking if he was wearing gloves when he made her body - it's less creepy and weird and much more lighthearted in context, although the implication remains there).

The entire interaction was meant to highlight that she's not used to having an actual body and interacting with people, the ship itself - and the AI - is fairly new, or at least that's the assumption until Harper (the engineer) finds a backup of her personality hidden away, where a different captain was on a secret mission that did not end well and her entire personality was scrapped and rebuilt afterwards. This is about the time the actual "main" plot really begins - the one that really goes nowhere somehow. Like... everything. Man, f*cking Tribute.

And no, while I would agree with Beka that Andromeda is pretty, that's not what makes Rommie so great. It's also why I mentioned fictional character, because I crushed hard on Rommie, not her. She plays a different character in Stargate SG-1, and there she's just the character she plays.

I get what you mean.

22 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I have a notorious difficulty with enjoying live-action sci-fi television (animated stuff or books are fine, television and often even feature films completely fall apart for me - what I have watched of shows like Star Trek, X-Files, Firefly, etc. has never been me personally deciding to watch them). Theoretically, if I fell enough in love with the cast, I suppose the limitation probably wouldn't apply...but the chances of that happening for any given show are very low.

It's the same for me with cetain other genres. Not sci-fi or fantasy, but anything that's supposed to be funny, like sit- and romcoms. I'd never watch a sitcom without being prodded. It's also true for most western animation, had you not recommended Steven Universe I'd never have bothered after the first look at it... and BoJack Horseman I just watched because a friend badgered me into watching it.

Edited March 23, 2021 by majestic

[InsaneCommander]

Sailor Stars 1-3

 

Spoiler

 

Hotaru is back and even as a baby she is more powerful than everyone else.

 

Then they all go live together, Haruka, Michiru, Hotaru and Setsuna. Not sure what happened with the professor. Did he get an explanation? Were his memories wiped? Will he became a villain again to get revenge? Is he laughing maniacally?

 

The H&M theme is used for two random guys on the street and that is great because at least they are not Fish Eye.

 

Everyone gets distracted by Tuxedo Mask and the enemy catches them. Well, except for Sailor Moon and Chibi Moon, who are running away. And then the outer guardians arrive. How embarrassing.

 

Usagi and Minako keep their tradition of being late, now in High School.

 

Why is Usagi sneaking near Mamoru’s apartment? She even has a key to it. And she was almost jealous of the guy who was there.

 

So, after Makoto sensed an evil energy in a mirror, Usagi finds out Mamoru bought dozens of mirrors and she just leaves him there, staring at them? Sure, all he needs it to rest. Standing.

 

And they finally notice Nehelenia is back. How did they manage it? Was it the identical creatures? The mirrors?

 

 

[InsaneCommander]

I really like the Andromeda series. I didn't watch all episodes in the later seasons, so I can't judge their quality, but the first 2 seasons I liked a lot. I had a crush on Rommie too. She is a badass and after watching the episode she crushes some invaders with increased gravity, telling them she is a god inside the ship, I couldn't understand why this isn't a mandatory thing. Every ship should have an AI goddess to do things like this.

Some episodes have surprisingly good ideas from physics. The very beginning shows a ship that skips a couple of centuries while being near a black hole. And there is one episode later with a ship from the 20th/21st century that has been traveling for millennia, but, because of time dilation, the crew has experienced only two decades.

[majestic]

1 minute ago, InsaneCommander said:

I really like the Andromeda series. I didn't watch all episodes in the later seasons, so I can't judge their quality, but the first 2 seasons I liked a lot. I had a crush on Rommie too. She is a badass and after watching the episode she crushes some invaders with increased gravity, telling them she is a god inside the ship, I couldn't understand why this isn't a mandatory thing. Every ship should have an AI goddess to do things like this.

Different things for different people, huh? The power fantasy part of Rommie was what I just took for granted. It makes sense in context, what with her being the avatar of a ship of the line, but her friendship with the crew, her sense of loneliness after they're left with only a handful of people manning the station and the fear she displays after seeing what happened to her fellow ships is what I really enjoyed about the character.

But... don't bother looking at the other seasons. It's not worth it.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I never watched Andromeda, which is weird because I watched a lot really dumb scifi shows as a kid. Looks like I dodged a Kevin Sorbo shaped bullet lmao.

Not really sure I ever had a crush on a fictional character. I remember as a horny kid recording movies to look at stuff before I had a device I could use privately, but no real romantic feelings or anything.

[majestic]

10 minutes ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

I remember as a horny kid recording movies to look at stuff before I had a device I could use privately, but no real romantic feelings or anything.

At that age I watched Peep! mostly. No need to record things, but we were always more liberal with sexuality on TV than the US. Was an interesting show with celebrities showing up to talk about relationships and sex. Hilarious host too, constantly fumbling words, ended up being the butt of a lot of jokes on spoofs.

[Bartimaeus]

It's easy for me to get attached to a character - the number of attachments I have for 'favorite' characters can probably be measured close to the triple digits somewhere across all the different things I like (both female and male, although mostly female because male characters tend to be so much more boring...at least to me). I even still have attachments to characters from some of the very first video games I played. Attraction/crushes is a wholly different thing, though - can't say I can ever recall a time where, like, I felt like I loved a character so much that my heart fluttered at the thought of them or when I'll see/hear/read about them next or something like that. So I might be a Minako fan and love her character, but I'm not ever going to be in love with her, . Fictional characters can be really fun and lovable (albeit limited and simplified) ideas of people, but they're no substitute for the real thing.

Edited March 23, 2021 by Bartimaeus