Anime - coasting on emotion rollers

[Bartimaeus]

5 hours ago, majestic said:

Warning, actual spoiler content now. While I personally do not think that anything that happens in Perfect Blue is a surprise per se and knowing spoilers will not be detrimental to its enjoyment, that is only my personal opinion. Don't blame me if you click here and find yourself in a situation where you believe otherwise and can't go back.

Like I said, I only saw the poster directly before watching the movie. The poster didn't give me a definitive impression for what kind of movie it was going to be - though I did have some vague ideas - but it did give me the impression that it was a movie I absolutely had to see, that I would not be able to not see it, which is what contributed to me immediately watching it. It was...the first non-Ghibli anime movie I watched, I believe? Kon's Millennium Actress (which I liked less but still liked) would soon follow, IIRC...and then sometime later by Tokyo Godfathers and Memories, the former of which is also one of my absolute favorite films (and Memories is fun enough as well). Oh yeah, Paprika was in there as well at some point.

Spoiler

That last one didn't work at all for me - they can't all be winners for everyone, and that's just as well, because it would make the big winners less special in comparison if they were.

Actual movie spoilers:

Spoiler

I would pay a lot of money to have this in pristine quality and then frame it, but I'll have to be content with the other one I already own for the time being, because you can't really get this poster in good quality anymore. Actually, I really love the few different posters I'm aware of for this film - they all have such a sort of twisted and vaguely depraved yet solemn and intriguing artistry to them that I really love - but they're so difficult to obtain unless they're super beat up or just random scam companies making who knows what quality repros. Maybe I'll eventually fold and get one of those and see what terrible quality I get, .

5 hours ago, majestic said:

I looked up what @Bartimaeus meant with controversy, and noticed that it has something to do with a film that I have steadfastily avoided to see so far: Black Swan, which apparently was clearly inspired by Perfect Blue, with Darren Aronofsky refusing to acknowledge it. The only work of Aronofsky's oeuvre that I have seen is The Wrestler, and that only because I was told by a trusted source that Mickey Rourke was bloody fantastic in the film, and it turns out he really was.

I watched all of Black Swan. Read this spoiler if you want to know some of my thoughts on it - don't if you plan on watching it at some point with the expectation of liking it.

Spoiler

I have never been so revolted and angered by a film that I sat all the way through - I regret doing so with every fiber of my being. Tasteless, annoying, a total lack of subtlety, disgustingly indulgent, so much ripped off and yet felt like it had totally missed the forest for the trees, and it had one of my absolute least favorite lead actresses to play the role of Mima (get this - her name is Nina in Black Swan instead, ). Honestly, I almost knew I was going to hate it from the little I knew of it already, but for some reason I still did it, and I really wish I hadn't. Apparently, Aronofsky also took literally the entire bathtub scene from Perfect Blue and put it in Requiem for a Dream as well - another movie I haven't seen, and I already know I hate his style so much that I will never see it.

 

5 hours ago, majestic said:

First, before anything else, the technical side of the film - the animation is fantastic. The style is much more realistic than usual, and for a change accurately depicts the living space of Japanese people, even when they're a mildly successful idols or actresses. Mima lives in a single room appartment. The framing and film language used is great, especially when you consider that this was Satoshi Kon's first film. A real shame that his life was cut so short.

It also begs the question of what we think of when talking about anime. Is anime animation from Japan, or is it animation from Japan following a certain set of tropes and (mostly) character design patterns? If it is the latter, than this is simply an animated film. It's an interesting question, seeing how anime is just the Japanese term for animation, and even imported cartoons are anime in Japan. I'm leaning more towards seeing anime as animation produced in Japan when talked about outside of Japan. That's maybe the topic for a later post.

Arguablly the technical aspects of this film are only a minor detail. The animation quality does help in blurring the lines between dreams and reality, fiction and fact, as was clearly the intent. Therein, of course, lies a certain problem. Even without having seein Black Swan prior (even though it comes later, any given person is much more likely to have seen Black Swan than Perfect Blue), the plot of this film is readily obvious. It never really is a question of "is this real" or "is this about dissociative personality disorder" because that was perfectly obvious for me, right from the start. I cannot, of course, know what I would have thought had I seen this when it came out.

There really is something special about the animation. I remember when I was just starting the film and the opening scenes, and thinking, "Huh, even just the characters look...different than anything I've ever seen before for anime, everyone has this sort of oddball, more realistic edge to them - characters sometimes look kind of ugly in certain lights or at certain angles, and then other times they're stunningly beautiful, which is actually nice. Uh...OH MY GOSH, WHAT IS THAT GUY?". It really, really, really sucks that Satoshi Kon died so soon - him and the director of Whisper of the Heart, my favorite Ghibli movie, whose only movie WAS Whisper of the Heart and who then died right after it was finished at the age of 47, makes me so sad about what they could've still done if they had lived for another 30, 40 years... It's even worse, because Yoshifumi Kondo, the director of that movie, was apparently the guy Miyazaki and Takahata were turning Studio Ghibli over to - and since his death, though they'd given others chances, they found no-one they liked or trusted. And Satoshi Kon was working on a movie about androids that was only half-finished when he died...and I love androids even though I've never seen any movies I love about them, and androids in anime with one of Kon's oddball plots and a gorgeous art style could've been so cool, so it all really sucks for reasons even beyond them being dead, which would've been terrible as it is.

I didn't know anything about the movie going into it - not the genres, not whom it was made by, not even the foggiest idea what it was about except for a vague impression given by looking at that poster - and I was so enraptured by it that I did not think basically a single thought during the entire thing, so literally every single thing that happened was surprising and horrifying and I didn't know what the hell was going on. It is so incredibly rare that a movie could turn my brain off to that degree, like no active thought at all, just pure emotion and reactions.  I felt like a little kid getting traumatized by watching some sort of horror gorefest that they know they shouldn't be watching, that they CAN'T watch...and yet they are. Remember that screenshot I took of when the girls were reacting to Seiya getting out of the shower at Seiya's house? For a lot of this movie, I was switching between Usagi completely covering her face and Ami looking on in horror looking between her fingers. I should also say, I was half-asleep when I started to watch this movie, and that may have contributed to my brain suffering much of the same visceral confusion and horror that Mima herself was undergoing - in contrast, I was way TOO awake after the movie was over.

5 hours ago, majestic said:

The devil is in the details. It's fairly clear from early on that she cannot be her own stalker, which is what happend in The Secret Window. The stalker character interacts with reality in a manner that cannot be consistently resolved by her being him. He's not just a red herring, which was pretty neat. He really is an obsessed superfan and not a secretly actually helpful character later on.

More importantly, the super detailed blog the stalker writes was online before Mima even had a computer at home. This really is clearly shown by her friend and manager Rumi showing her how to use a computer after she bought one. This essentially also rules out herself, even if she had a second personality that was capable of using computers in a way her primary personality doesn't. The blog also contains details about her personal life and personality that even the most obsessive stalker wouldn't know. This further narrows down the list to, at best, three people. Her two former band colleagues, who have no reason to either hate or want to harm her and the actual perpetrator.

Yeah, having two legit "perpetrators", one more obvious and one more hidden, after her for different reasons was a great choice, illustrating two different equally horrifying sides of the superfan spectrum while also providing some mystery and intrigue. I didn't catch onto Rumi being the one to tell her how to use the PC - WARNING, WARNING - or the fact that the perpetrator could really only be such a limited amount of people...but like I said, my brain was just not on while watching this, it really wasn't, so I didn't have any kind of grip on whether the story was supposed to be making sense or be grounded in any way at all, and it really didn't matter at the time while watching.

Glad you liked it. I recommended it two other people, including the other person I watch most stuff with, and both of them disliked it and couldn't believe that *I* liked it, loved it even, given how much of a prude I am and how disgustingly exploitative and horrible it is to Mima. And it was like...that's the point. Well, it wasn't the only point, but it was certainly one of the biggest points - the movie is so obviously framed in such a way that her being exploited and abused and assaulted in the variety of ways that she is is SUPPOSED to be horrifying and you're supposed to feel awful for her - you're certainly not supposed to ENJOY it! - that's what makes it compelling and interesting, particularly when you throw an otherwise really good movie around it with that kind of perspective and those kinds of themes. I don't think they really got it. Oh well.

I often connect different voice actor "personas" as well. They're not really personas, just different jobs from the perspective of the VA, but in my head, they're connected personas. There are a few different VAs, like Sarevok's from BG1*, Mr. Krabs from SpongeBob, Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time, Fall-from-Grace from Planescape: Torment, and some others whose voices are so emblazoned in my brain as one or two specific characters AND YET THEY KEEP GETTING MORE JOBS AS OTHER CHARACTERS that eventually I start looking at their biggest (to me) roles as being sort of fusions of themselves. There was a really weird example of this in Adventure Time when Amethyst from SU showed up as a character that I knew I recognized the voice of, but somehow bizarrely and mystifyingly couldn't initially place it, and I didn't really like the character at first...but when I finally placed it as being Amethyst, it was like a flip instantly switched in my brain and I suddenly loved him (she was playing a young boy character) because I knew it was her. Weird stuff.

*Boy, he sure gets type-casted into a million different villain role.

Edited May 7, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

So Perfect Blue is pretty much what Aronofsky has been stealing frombeing inspired by to float his career? That makes me want to watch it a bit less, given that I usually dislike Aronofsky's stuff.

[Bartimaeus]

Did you read my spoiler about Black Swan? Not sure, since it was contained within my mega-spoiler. Here it is again if you didn't:

Spoiler

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

3 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Did you read my spoiler about Black Swan? Not sure, since it was contained within my mega-spoiler. Here it is again if you didn't:

  Hide contents

 

Yes.

[Bartimaeus]

7 minutes ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

Yes.

Well, then I'm not sure what else I can say to PB's defense, except that both I and majestic seem to have 'loved' it. I recall that when I brought it up in the movie thread when I first watched it a while back, another commenter, maybe algroth, said something along the lines of that he thought PB was okay, he guessed - he'd already seen and loved Aronofsky's films before watching it, though, so it just wasn't very special in comparison to, you know, those. ...Might be that you like one or the other, .

(e): Although if you already read all of our spoilers, I think some of the mystique would be lost on you anyways probably...probably.

Edited May 7, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

17 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Well, then I'm not sure what else I can say to PB's defense, except that both I and majestic seem to have 'loved' it. I recall that when I brought it up in the movie thread when I first watched it a while back, another commenter, maybe algroth, said something along the lines of that he thought PB was okay, he guessed - he'd already seen and loved Aronofsky's films before watching it, though, so it just wasn't very special in comparison to, you know, those. ...Might be that you like one or the other, .

(e): Although if you already read all of our spoilers, I think some of the mystique would be lost on you anyways probably...probably.

I skim them. If you put a gun to my head well first of all not cool, but secondly I couldn't tell you the plot of Perfect Blue. Mostly I wanted to hate on Aronofsky for stealing from an anime film without acknowledgement badly copying.

In other news, the dub of Legend of the Overfiend I watched last night is hilarious if you view it as a black comedy that jumped the shark like the most insane version of Sailor Moon Says. The uncut sub isn't funny and just ends up being really gross. In either case massive content warning for monster rape.

Edited May 7, 2021 by ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP

[Bartimaeus]

Somehow, I get the feeling that I wouldn't enjoy that one. Maybe another time...or an entirely different life, .

Edited May 7, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

31 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Somehow, I get the feeling that I wouldn't enjoy that one. Maybe another time...or an entirely different life, .

Probably not. Taken straight it is really bad and is only redeeming with the English dub, which is so bad it makes it look like a comedy. I'd recommend it only if you can take really nihilistic black humor and have a tolerance for ****ed up ****.

[majestic]

  

  

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Like I said, I only saw the poster directly before watching the movie. The poster didn't give me a definitive impression for what kind of movie it was going to be - though I did some vague ideas - but it did give me the impression that it was a movie I absolutely had to see, that I would not be able to not see it, which is what contributed to me immediately watching it. It was...the first non-Ghibli anime movie I watched, I believe? Kon's Millennium Actress (which I liked less but still liked) would soon follow, IIRC...and then sometime later by Tokyo Godfathers and Memories, the former of which is also one of my absolute favorite films (and Memories is fun enough as well). Oh yeah, Paprika was in there as well at some point.

I do plan on watching his other work as well. I'm not certain when I will get to that and I really need to wrap up other projects first, before I start another venture into obsession and lose all control over my free time. I'm dangerously close already, and... it's really hard to not just follow down the next rabbit hole. It takes an annoying amount of effort right now, and it does feel uncomfortable. Not as much as having half a dozen things left unfinished though. Baby steps here, baby steps.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Actual movie spoilers:

  Hide contents

I would pay a lot of money to have this in pristine quality and then frame it, but I'll have to be content with the other one I already own for the time being, because you can't really get this poster in good quality anymore. Actually, I really love the few different posters I'm aware of for this film - they all have such a sort of twisted and vaguely depraved yet solemn and intriguing artistry to them that I really love - but they're so difficult to obtain unless they're super beat up or just random scam companies making who knows what quality repros. Maybe I'll eventually fold and get one of those and see what terrible quality I get, .

5 hours ago, majestic said:

I looked up what @Bartimaeus meant with controversy, and noticed that it has something to do with a film that I have steadfastily avoided to see so far: Black Swan, which apparently was clearly inspired by Perfect Blue, with Darren Aronofsky refusing to acknowledge it. The only work of Aronofsky's oeuvre that I have seen is The Wrestler, and that only because I was told by a trusted source that Mickey Rourke was bloody fantastic in the film, and it turns out he really was.

I watched all of Black Swan. Read this spoiler if you want to know some of my thoughts on it - don't if you plan on watching it at some point with the expectation of liking it.

  Hide contents

I have never been so revolted and angered by a film that I sat all the way through - I regret doing so with every fiber of my being. Tasteless, annoying, a total lack of subtlety, disgustingly indulgent, so much ripped off and yet felt like it had totally missed the forest for the trees, and it had one of my absolute least favorite lead actresses to play the role of Mima (get this - her name is Nina in Black Swan instead, ). Honestly, I almost knew I was going to hate it from the little I knew of it already, but for some reason I still did it, and I really wish I hadn't. Apparently, Aronofsky also took literally the entire bathtub scene from Perfect Blue and put it in Requiem for a Dream as well - another movie I haven't seen, and I already know I hate his style so much that I will never see it.

 

5 hours ago, majestic said:

First, before anything else, the technical side of the film - the animation is fantastic. The style is much more realistic than usual, and for a change accurately depicts the living space of Japanese people, even when they're a mildly successful idols or actresses. Mima lives in a single room appartment. The framing and film language used is great, especially when you consider that this was Satoshi Kon's first film. A real shame that his life was cut so short.

It also begs the question of what we think of when talking about anime. Is anime animation from Japan, or is it animation from Japan following a certain set of tropes and (mostly) character design patterns? If it is the latter, than this is simply an animated film. It's an interesting question, seeing how anime is just the Japanese term for animation, and even imported cartoons are anime in Japan. I'm leaning more towards seeing anime as animation produced in Japan when talked about outside of Japan. That's maybe the topic for a later post.

Arguablly the technical aspects of this film are only a minor detail. The animation quality does help in blurring the lines between dreams and reality, fiction and fact, as was clearly the intent. Therein, of course, lies a certain problem. Even without having seein Black Swan prior (even though it comes later, any given person is much more likely to have seen Black Swan than Perfect Blue), the plot of this film is readily obvious. It never really is a question of "is this real" or "is this about dissociative personality disorder" because that was perfectly obvious for me, right from the start. I cannot, of course, know what I would have thought had I seen this when it came out.

Expand  

There really is something special about the animation. I remember when I was just starting the film and the opening scenes, and thinking, "Huh, even just the characters look...different than anything I've ever seen before for anime, everyone has this sort of oddball, more realistic edge to them - characters sometimes look kind of ugly in certain lights or at certain angles, and then other times they're stunningly beautiful, which is actually nice. Uh...OH MY GOSH, WHAT IS THAT GUY?". It really, really, really sucks that Satoshi Kon died so soon - him and the director of Whisper of the Heart, my favorite Ghibli movie, whose only movie WAS Whisper of the Heart and who then died right after it was finished at the age of 47, makes me so sad about what they could've still done if they had lived for another 30, 40 years... It's even worse, because Yoshifumi Kondo, the director of that movie, was apparently the guy Miyazaki and Takahata were turning Studio Ghibli over to - and since his death, though they'd given others chances, they found no-one they liked or trusted. And Satoshi Kon was working on a movie about androids that was only half-finished when he died...and I love androids even though I've never seen any movies I love about them, and androids in anime with one of Kon's oddball plots and a gorgeous art style could've been so cool, so it all really sucks for reasons even beyond them being dead, which would've been terrible as it is.

I didn't know anything about the movie going into it - not the genres, not whom it was made by, not even the foggiest idea what it was about except for a vague impression given by looking at that poster - and I was so enraptured by it that I did not think basically a single thought during the entire thing, so literally every single thing that happened was surprising and horrifying and I didn't know what the hell was going on. It is so incredibly rare that a movie could turn my brain off to that degree, like no active thought at all, just pure emotion and reactions.  I felt like a little kid getting traumatized by watching some sort of horror gorefest that they know they shouldn't be watching, that they CAN'T watch...and yet they are. Remember that screenshot I took of when the girls were reacting to Seiya getting out of the shower at Seiya's house? For a lot of this movie, I was switching between Usagi completely covering her face and Ami looking on in horror looking between her fingers. I should also say, I was half-asleep when I started to watch this movie, and that may have contributed to my brain suffering much of the same visceral confusion and horror that Mima herself was undergoing - in contrast, I was way TOO awake after the movie was over.

5 hours ago, majestic said:

The devil is in the details. It's fairly clear from early on that she cannot be her own stalker, which is what happend in The Secret Window. The stalker character interacts with reality in a manner that cannot be consistently resolved by her being him. He's not just a red herring, which was pretty neat. He really is an obsessed superfan and not a secretly actually helpful character later on.

More importantly, the super detailed blog the stalker writes was online before Mima even had a computer at home. This really is clearly shown by her friend and manager Rumi showing her how to use a computer after she bought one. This essentially also rules out herself, even if she had a second personality that was capable of using computers in a way her primary personality doesn't. The blog also contains details about her personal life and personality that even the most obsessive stalker wouldn't know. This further narrows down the list to, at best, three people. Her two former band colleagues, who have no reason to either hate or want to harm her and the actual perpetrator.

Expand  

Yeah, having two legit "perpetrators", one more obvious and one more hidden, after her for different reasons was a great choice, illustrating two different equally horrifying sides of the superfan spectrum while also providing some mystery and intrigue. I didn't catch onto Rumi being the one to tell her how to use the PC - WARNING, WARNING - or the fact that the perpetrator could really only be such a limited amount of people...but like I said, my brain was just not on while watching this, it really wasn't, so I didn't have any kind of grip on whether the story was supposed to be making sense or be grounded in any way at all, and it really didn't matter at the time while watching.

Glad you liked it. I recommended it two other people, including the other person I watch most stuff with, and both of them disliked it and couldn't believe that *I* liked it, loved it even, given how much of a prude I am and how disgustingly exploitative and horrible it is to Mima. And it was like...that's the point. Well, it wasn't the only point, but it was certainly one of the biggest points - the movie is so obviously framed in such a way that her being exploited and abused and assaulted in the variety of ways that she is is SUPPOSED to be horrifying and you're supposed to feel awful for her - you're certainly not supposed to ENJOY it! - that's what makes it compelling and interesting, particularly when you throw an otherwise really good movie around it with that kind of perspective and those kinds of themes. I don't think they really got it. Oh well.

 

Spoiler

 

I do not plan on watching Black Swan, and I luckily have zero interest in the film beyond a mild curiosity of how it made Natalie Portman win an Oscar. That is the most puzzling part of it, and I'm not sure watching the film would alleviate the puzzlement. I don't mean this with any ill intention or in a demeaning way, but she's just not someone whose acting I enjoy. At the very best, for me, she's functional and works within a given film, which was the case for Léon and V for Vendetta.

In fact, in V for Vendetta she's outclassed by a guy in a mask that sometimes is and sometimes isn't Hugo Weaving who dubbed in his dialogue (although, in a way, having to wear a mask helped Hugo Weaving too).

There's something else I need to mention - kind of again, but this serves as a decent example (and excuse me for using this yet again for talking about myself, it's in my horoscope after all!). I... it might look like it when I'm doing these write-ups, but I do not spend any true conscious effort on figuring out where film or TV show plots go while I'm watching them.

That Madoka post a couple of pages back (again, this is simply to illustrate what I mean, not to badger you into watching... I promise)? That was by far and large a stream of consciousness. There was an initial spark that kicked this off that came unbidden in the middle of the night while I was asleep (it actually woke me up, or I suppose a dream did, and this was the lingering thought in my mind that I could recall). I did go over the first 20 minutes of the movie to figure out timestamps and spent a bit googling for images I could use for the characters, but the idea to post concept went through nothing but a single iteration in my head.

It is noticable in the mistakes I make. The oddball placement of words, sometimes a leftover preposition or weird sentence structure that comes from typing up what is on my mind, then replacing half of it with another stream of thoughts without any effort to get it to have some coherency. In a way, I do write these posts like Ulysses reads. Maybe that's why I reacted so badly to the book.

The prelude to the actual talk about the film that completely jumps from thought to thought didn't take me long at all to write. Sometimes that's how I talk, which irritates people, especially when I skip the parts that I actually typed down, I'd go from talking about ultramarine blue to comparing the voice work of Junko Iwao in Perfect Blue and Card Captor Sakura in a way that no one else could possibly follow. It's barely followable even with my train of thought spelled out.

I thought it was appropriate given the subject matter of Perfect Blue, with its deliberate jumps from one day to the next, to alternating between imagined and real dialogue on the set of Double Bind and the way Mima kept seeing an innocent version of herself. That was fun to write. The film was less fun to watch, but it wasn't meant to be fun.

My post called it a deduction, but was more like a feeling*. The opening of the film, with the fake power ranger style, Mima's last appearance as a member of CHAM! - and I really adore that silly J-Pop song, by the way - and the way the stalker was framed, immediately convinced me of watching something that is really about dissociative personality disorder. The only thing I knew about the film going in was that you liked it, that it showed the main character being put in exploitative situations from an earlier post and that it is a psychological thriller - well, and having seen a long list of films where one of the characters have split personalities (taken to its extreme in Identitiy where literally every character that is on screen for any meaningful amount of time is just an aspect of the main character). Felt like it matched the pattern, and look, it did.

The opening drops the stalker as potential aspect of Mima immediately. I went from believing that it'll eventually be revealed that Mima broke under the strain of what she thinks was a terrible life decision until she turned out to be completely clueless about computers, Rumi showing her how the internet works, and most importantly that scene earlier where Rumi is completely unfazed by her mentioning Mima 's Room as something that apparently exists and is not meant as a way for a weird creepy superfan to express that he's following her every movement in life.

No dear Rumi, that certainly is NOT daijoubu. I didn't even think about this scene until Mima finds out what Mima's room reall is. Rumi hiding the bloody clothes in Mima's room felt like a red herring. I can't even base this on anything but a feeling, and I am frustrated right now by my inability to express this in a way that makes sense. Bah.

Look at this post becoming essay length just to express one thing - I'm kind of envious that you managed to experience this film in the way it was intended to be experienced. Me? I was always like this for as far as I can remember back. When I was really little I watched this anime called Bismarck. Our dub was based on the US version called Saber Rider and the Star Sherriffs. In fact, that show is actually more of an adaptation of the original**.

Anyway, one of the things that were changed from the original is that the enemies, who in the original are just regular aliens, return to their home dimension when they're shot. That was meant to make this less violent - the heroes didn't kill the enemies after all, they just go home. I was 6 at the time, the show was on, the explanation came up and I asked my mother: "Mom, if they can't actually kill their enemies, how are the ever going to win the war?" I'm not ever going to forget that situation because my mother looked really concerned. Looking back I can understand why. That's a thought no six year old should have when watching cartoons.

I don't have anything to add about the animation style. It is pretty unique even for the more realistic anime that I was already used to, like I said a hundred times before, I did grow up with a lot of Isao Takahata's work on TV, and I'm not really surprised that Satoshi Kon cited his work as inspiration. I have also just now put Whisper of the Heart on my Netflix watchlist. Not sure when I will get around towatching it.

Also agree re: the others not getting the point. It's a look into the darker side of being famous. I was really glad things worked out for Mima in the end. For a short time I was worried that this would end with something bad happening to her even as the film closes, but it didn't. Phew.

*Can do the same thing for certain logic puzzles (but not all of them). This is one my boss found at work a while ago. Like when we could still go to the office long ago. He, and a colleague who recently changed to a different department, sometimes watch videos like that (or do these weird online quizzes) during lunch break.

He was staring at this for a while, then went like: "I'm sure you can solve this, can't you?"

Spoilered just in case you want to figure it out yourself (I didn't know this one before).

Spoiler

I walked over, read the puzzle and immediately said: Yes, 99 liars.

He asked why, and I said: "It's the only answer that makes sense." which really didn't help him at all. How could it. It's the answer, but there's no followable deduction going on in my mind when arriving at it. It just is.

The channel itself is pretty interesting, by the way, I mean if you like math and logic. I try to avoid it because it feels like work, but he does have interesting things on it.

**I think this explains why I enjoyed the Outer Limits remake of the mid 90ies so much. It also had a lot of twist endings, but they were almost never set up. It was impossible to guess them and thus were always a surprise. It is kind of cheap, and most of them are cruel just for the sake of being cruel, but I really liked that show for it.

It also doesn't always steer me right. I was totally surprised by Yoshimo in Baldur's Gate 2 being played straight. I felt like that setup was far too obvious for him to be an actual plant by Irenicus. Boy was I wrong.

 

 

3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I often connect different voice actor "personas" as well. They're not really personas, just different jobs from the perspective of the VA, but in my head, they're connected personas. There are a few different VAs, like Sarevok's from BG1*, Mr. Krabs from SpongeBob, Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time, Fall-from-Grace from Planescape: Torment, and some others whose voices are so emblazoned in my brain as one or two specific characters AND YET THEY KEEP GETTING MORE JOBS AS OTHER CHARACTERS that eventually I start looking at their biggest (to me) characters as being sort of fusions of themselves. There was a really weird example of this in Adventure Time when Amethyst from SU showed up as a character that I knew I recognized the voice of, but somehow couldn't initially place, and I didn't really like the character at first...but when I finally placed it as being Amethyst, it was like a flip instantly switched in my brain I suddenly loved him (she was playing a young boy character) because I knew it was her. Weird stuff.

*Boy, he sure gets type-casted into a million different villain role.

A friend of mine and I like to play the "spot voice actors in Bioware games" game, because they really recast a lot of them. Since you mentioned Jennifer Hale already, that is one voice that is becoming somewhat problematic for me. She's... becoming immersion breaking. It sure feels like she's in everything. Looking at her IMDB page that isn't just a feeling. She is in everything (including Eternal Darkness, which is incidentially a game that made me feel a similar unease playing as you did while watching Perfect Blue).

Keith David has the opposite problem for me, it becomes really weird when he's in a film, like in Pitch Black. Claudia Black is also in this film, who... is also a staple of Bioware game voice actors.

Pitch Black is also a much better film than you might think if all you know are the much more ubiquitous action trash sequels, and it's interesting to see Vin Diesel playing something else than the power/revenge fantasy he becomes in the sequels (and is in his other films).

Sarevok, by the way, was in an episode of How I Met Your Mother as security guard with the soul of a poet:

Such a disconnect from the usual association that comes with his voice.

[Bartimaeus]

More PB:

Spoiler

 

1 hour ago, majestic said:

I do not plan on watching Black Swan, and I luckily have zero interest in the film beyond a mild curiosity of how it made Natalie Portman win an Oscar. That is the most puzzling part of it, and I'm not sure watching the film would alleviate the puzzlement. I don't mean this with any ill intention or in a demeaning way, but she's just not someone whose acting I enjoy. At the very best, for me, she's functional and works within a given film, which was the case for Léon and V for Vendetta.

In fact, in V for Vendetta she's outclassed by a guy in a mask that sometimes is and sometimes isn't Hugo Weaving who dubbed in his dialogue (although, in a way, having to wear a mask helped Hugo Weaving too).

Well, as I said in my previous post, she's one of my absolute least favorites. I have an intense dislike of everything I've seen her in except her very first, Leon the Professional. And now knowing what we know about that movie and its director, that's a big yikes for other reasons. As far as I know, she's a nice enough person - as an actress, I'm literally never going to give a movie where she starred another chance ever again. A more completely wooden and perpetually pukey-faced actress I cannot name - just can't do it again.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

There's something else I need to mention - kind of again, but this serves as a decent example (and excuse me for using this yet again for talking about myself, it's in my horoscope after all!). I... it might look like it when I'm doing these write-ups, but I do not spend any true conscious effort on figuring out where film or TV show plots go while I'm watching them.

That Madoka post a couple of pages back (again, this is simply to illustrate what I mean, not to badger you into watching... I promise)? That was by far and large a stream of consciousness. There was an initial spark that kicked this off that came unbidden in the middle of the night while I was asleep (it actually woke me up, or I suppose a dream did, and this was the lingering thought in my mind that I could recall). I did go over the first 20 minutes of the movie to figure out timestamps and spent a bit googling for images I could use for the characters, but the idea to post concept went through nothing but a single iteration in my head.

It is noticable in the mistakes I make. The oddball placement of words, sometimes a leftover preposition or weird sentence structure that comes from typing up what is on my mind, then replacing half of it with another stream of thoughts without any effort to get it to have some coherency. In a way, I do write these posts like Ulysses reads. Maybe that's why I reacted so badly to the book.

The prelude to the actual talk about the film that completely jumps from thought to thought didn't take me long at all to write. Sometimes that's how I talk, which irritates people, especially when I skip the parts that I actually typed down, I'd go from talking about ultramarine blue to comparing the voice work of Junko Iwao in Perfect Blue and Card Captor Sakura in a way that no one else could possibly follow. It's barely followable even with my train of thought spelled out.

I thought it was appropriate given the subject matter of Perfect Blue, with its deliberate jumps from one day to the next, to alternating between imagined and real dialogue on the set of Double Bind and the way Mima kept seeing an innocent version of herself. That was fun to write. The film was less fun to watch, but it wasn't meant to be fun.

My post called it a deduction, but was more like a feeling*. The opening of the film, with the fake power ranger style, Mima's last appearance as a member of CHAM! - and I really adore that silly J-Pop song, by the way - and the way the stalker was framed, immediately convinced me of watching something that is really about dissociative personality disorder. The only thing I knew about the film going in was that you liked it, that it showed the main character being put in exploitative situations from an earlier post and that it is a psychological thriller - well, and having seen a long list of films where one of the characters have split personalities (taken to its extreme in Identitiy where literally every character that is on screen for any meaningful amount of time is just an aspect of the main character). Felt like it matched the pattern, and look, it did.

Genuine stream of consciousness in writing is difficult for me, although I can sometimes do it for short bursts, but for the most part, these posts can take me a long time to write and they can be a bit exhausting, and then I make tons of errors and omissions and have to go back and correct, delete, and add on anyways - worst of both worlds. For example, this first paragraph was absolutely horrid and I already added and deleted about 3-4 sentences and rewrote major parts of a few more when I realized they didn't make sense together. While watching stuff, usually I uncontrollably get thoughts in a similar fashion as you do, although maybe not quite as extreme, that help reveal to me how something is going to go: semi-conscious pattern-recognition skills combined with intuition, I suppose, so I definitely understand that - it can often be disruptive. Any time I'm listening or watching to something I'm not enjoying, it is so incredibly difficult to pay attention because my brain just can't stay focused on it and just goes literally anywhere else - another reason why trying to stick with something I'm not enjoying is utterly futile!

Sorry about mildly spoiling the movie that one time I talked about it (although I'm sure you'll say it's not a big deal) - for some reason, I kind of just assume all y'all have always seen what I've seen because...well, why wouldn't you? I've only just barely watched any anime and the rest of you have apparently been watching it all your lives, it only makes sense! Whoops.

I *love* the soundtrack of this movie, silly songs and all. Angel of Love is probably my favorite song in the movie...followed by the instrumental Nightmare. Oddly, they actually recorded an English version of Angel of Love, renamed Angel of Your Heart, that I heard on the bluray extras...but they didn't use the same singers, and instead used the singers from the credits song instead. Don't know how that happened - I like the singers of the original Japanese version better, but it's sort of an additional curiosity as the only song they directly translated.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Look at this post becoming essay length just to express one thing - I'm kind of envious that you managed to experience this film in the way it was intended to be experienced. Me? I was always like this for as far as I can remember back. When I was really little I watched this anime called Bismarck. Our dub was based on the US version called Saber Rider and the Star Sherriffs. In fact, that show is actually more of an adaptation of the original**.

Yeah, that's what made it so special for me - it's so rare that something can utterly silence my brain in that fashion, where I'm purely experiencing the movie. And it was perfect because Mima had no clue what the hell was going on, and neither did I because I wasn't thinking at all, so in a way, it felt like I was her. It was a visceral, traumatic experience that will always make Perfect Blue one of my very top movie-watching experiences, and is why even though it's so horrible, will probably stick with me for the rest of my life. Sort of like the one solitary time in my life I had a lucid dream, and even though it was an utterly boring, pedestrian, worthless dream...it was so incredibly vivid and reactive to everything I did that, in the moment, it genuinely felt more like real life than real life ever had. I'm the sort of person that only ever gets maybe 3-4 dreams in an entire year to begin, too, much to my chagrin - I love dreams, even nightmares...but I don't hardly ever get them, try as I might to use the techniques people say to use online, .

I tried to figure out the logic puzzle for a minute, but it made no sense to me - how would a prospective truth-teller be able to tell if they shook hands with a liar or another truth-teller? I stopped thinking about it when I reached that - I usually get caught up on small stupid details like that and don't want to try to logically deduce whether such a detail is at all relevant or indeed actually a critical part of such a logic puzzle, .

1 hour ago, majestic said:

It also doesn't always steer me right. I was totally surprised by Yoshimo in Baldur's Gate 2 being played straight. I felt like that setup was far too obvious for him to be an actual plant by Irenicus. Boy was I wrong.

It took me like a decade to learn that Yoshimo is supposed to betray you, because the first time I met him when I was like 8 years old, I immediately disliked him and kicked him out of the party and never let him back in ever again thereafter. I was a very judgemental 8 year old...and I still sort of am, .

 

I don't mind Jennifer Hale, but I wouldn't - I love her Fall-from-Grace/Mazzy voice, so whenever I hear her pop up in something, it's like seeing an old friend again. I didn't remember Keith David being in Pitch Black, but that makes sense, since I haven't seen that movie in forever. My mom was a big Vin Diesel fan when I was growing up, so I watched that when I was fairly young. As I remember it, the way that movie ends is a little traumatic for a kid... But hey, at least it's a better movie than the sequel which I also watched as a kid...

Edited May 8, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

So to move away of monster rape and to child trafficking, more Great Pretender. Episodes 3, 4, and 5. God damn it's good.

Edited May 8, 2021 by ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP

[majestic]

Spoiler

 

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Well, as I said in my previous post, she's one of my absolute least favorites. I have an intense dislike of everything I've seen her in except her very first, Leon the Professional. And now knowing what we know about that movie and its director, that's a big yikes for other reasons. As far as I know, she's a nice enough person - as an actress, I'm literally never going to give a movie where she starred another chance ever again. A more completely wooden and perpetually pukey-faced actress I cannot name - just can't do it again.

I don't know anything about how Natalie Portman is as a person, but that's okay. While I'm someone who can obsessively watch an actor's work for a while and even kind of enjoy the worst garbage when he or she makes an appearance (i.e. two thirds of what Malcom McDowell has done over his carreer), I'm... absolutely not a stalker. I might pick up some information here and there, but that's about it.

A friend of mine and I went to a Nightwish concert once, and his little sister tagged along. She's the worst sort of fangirl you can imagine. So we actually waited, out in the cold, for like an hour near the tour bus (heaven knows how or why she knew where it was parked). That was so uncomfortable for me, but what can you do when you need a ride home and he wanted to indulge his little sister. Waiting for these strangers to show up, interacting with them (although I did get a signed ticket out of the deal). Tarja (original singer still with the band at the time) looked properly annoyed by us too. At least we weren't the only ones waiting, some other creeps fans waited too.

Luc Besson and watching his films, that's a tough one for which I really have no answer. I have numerous copies of Leon and The Fifth Element - VHS tapes, DVDs, Blu-Rays. Only thing I can do is make sure that he no longer makes money by anything I consume, but that's... not really going to make any difference, is it?

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Genuine stream of consciousness in writing is difficult for me, although I can sometimes do it for short bursts, but for the most part, these posts can take me a long time to write and they can be a bit exhausting, and then I make tons of errors and omissions and have to go back and correct, delete, and add on anyways - worst of both worlds. For example, this first paragraph was absolutely horrid and I already added and delete about 3-4 sentences and rewrote major parts of a few more when I realized they didn't make sense together. While watching stuff, usually I uncontrollably get thoughts in a similar fashion as you do, although maybe not quite as extreme, that help reveal to me how something is going to go - semi-conscious pattern-recognition skills combined with intuition, I suppose, so I definitely understand that - it can often be disruptive. Any time I'm listening or watching to something I'm not enjoying, it is so incredibly difficult to pay attention because my brain just can't stay focused on it and just goes literally anywhere else - another reason why trying to stick with something I'm not enjoying is utterly futile!

I sometimes pick up wrong words or typoes later and edit them. I should really step back and re-read a post 10 minutes after finishing it, but I don't. My posts also take a while to come up with, they're usually full of weird tangents and the paragraph in my prior post where I complained about how much I've written just... to explain how my background pattern recognition works for no reason at all, that was me cutting myself off.

It's not like I never hit any roadblocks and stumble for a bit either. Sometimes I get unsure and research something online, or I delete half a post and start from scratch. It's never really planned out though. Not even the Sailor Moon Sailor Stars posts that have fun headlines and look like they were structured ahead. They weren't, that just happened. A happy accident, like a Bob Ross tree, and the largest bulk of each post is really just one continous stream of whatever pops into my head.

I mean I do have a vague idea of where I want to go before I begin. Like I said, the idea for the Madoka post came after I woke up from a dream I can no longer recall. Literally... woke up, thought "Hey, it's pretty ingenious how well crafted the character introductions in this are, let's make a post later" and went back to sleeping. But that's no pre-planned structure or anything.

For all my problems and faults, a lack of focus was never among them. I might stand in front of a bakery for 10 minutes being unsure if I want to go in for a croissant and a coffee to go because while that normally is not an issue for me (at least, not any longer), having to wear FFP2 masks and making sure that there is no more than one other customer present in the bakery when I go in? Oh dear. Bad. 

Focus? No. I can work on something really complex and get an e-mail, switch to support mode and pick up where I left off with no real issue.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Sorry about mildly spoiling the movie that one time I talked about it (although I'm sure you'll say it's not a big deal) - for some reason, I kind of just assume all y'all have always seen what I've seen because...well, why wouldn't you? I've only just barely watched any anime and the rest of you have apparently been watching it all your lives, it only makes sense! Whoops.

Don't worry, you didn't mildly spoil anything, and the assumption is of course perfectly logical. It's true that I have been watching anime for my entire life, in one way or the other.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

I *love* the soundtrack of this movie, silly songs and all. Angel of Love is probably my favorite song in the movie...followed by the instrumental Nightmare. Oddly, they actually recorded an English version of Angel of Love, renamed Angel of Your Heart, that I heard on the bluray extras...but they didn't use the same singers, and instead used the singers from the credits song instead. Don't know how that happened - I like the singers of the original Japanese version better, but it's sort of an additional curiosity as the only song they directly translated.

I've been listening to Angel of Love the entire day. Just tried the English version, hmm. No, the Japanese one fits better.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yeah, that's what made it so special for me - it's so rare that something can utterly silence my brain in that fashion, where I'm purely experiencing the movie. And it was perfect because Mima had no clue what the hell was going on, and neither did I because I wasn't thinking at all, so in a way, it felt like I was her. It was a visceral, traumatic experience that will always make Perfect Blue one of my very top movie-watching experiences, and is why even though it's so horrible, will probably stick with me for the rest of my life. Sort of like the one solitary time in my life I had a lucid dream, and even though it was an utterly boring, pedestrian, worthless dream...it was so incredibly vivid and reactive to everything I did that, in the moment, it genuinely felt more like real life than real life ever had. I'm the sort of person that only ever gets maybe 3-4 dreams in an entire year to begin, too, much to my chagrin - I love dreams, even nightmares...but I don't hardly ever get them, try as I might to use the techniques people say to use online, .

I never tried any dream techniques, maybe I should. I do have a couple of recurring dreams that all circle back to school time, but that's something many people have as I have learned. The most disturbing dream I ever had was perfectly pedestrian (wasn't lucid though). In fact, it was so perfectly normal that I just dreamed I was living a day in the life some someone else. I got up in the morning, drove to work, went to pick up my wife (when I had this dream I wasn't married yet or had a driving license), a woman I have never seen before, then went home, talked a bit and woke up when I went to bed.

For a good five minutes after that I wasn't even sure who I am or what was going on.

In contrast, the more surreal dreams that I sometimes have are often more terrifying than that, but they leave a lot less confusion. I dream often though, but I rarely remember the dreams. The usually begin to fade away the moment I wake up and all that's left later is knowing I had a weird dream. Makes the once that I do remember special, so that's okay.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

I tried to figure out the logic puzzle for a minute, but it made no sense to me - how would a prospective truth-teller be able to tell if they shook hands with a liar or another truth-teller? I stopped thinking about it when I reached that - I usually get caught up on small stupid details like that and don't want to try to logically deduce whether such a detail is at all relevant or indeed a critical part of such a logic puzzle, .

Don't look at me, I just know the answer is 99 liars, but your train of thought there is actually the answer. This cannot be logically resolved if more than one person would tell the truth, and that's the one that shook hands with the 99 liars and says: I shook hands with 0 people who told the truth.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

It took me like a decade to learn that Yoshimo is supposed to betray you, because the first time I met him when I was like 8 years old, I immediately disliked him and kicked him out of the party and never let him back in ever again thereafter. I was a very judgemental 8 year old...and I still sort of am, .

I was 18 at the time. No, not quite, I bought the game when it came out and I was 18 then, but I only played it later. I let him tag along once because I really didn't think he'd betray the party. Good job Bioware, fooled me there.

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

I don't mind Jennifer Hale, but I wouldn't - I love her Fall-from-Grace/Mazzy voice, so whenever I hear her pop up in something, it's like seeing an old friend again. I didn't remember Keith David being in Pitch Black, but that makes sense, since I haven't seen that movie in forever. My mom was a big Vin Diesel fan when I was growing up, so I watched that when I was fairly young. As I remember it, the way that movie ends is a little traumatic for a kid... But hey, better than the sequel which I also watched as a kid...

Yeah, Pitch Black certainly wasn't made for kids. I had a similar experience with accidentially zapping into A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. Didn't really want to go to sleep after that.

I really do like Jennifer Hale's voice, don't misunderstand me there. Her older characters just seep into my perception of newer ones and it is increasingly becoming a little distracting for me (entirely my problem).

Learned something just now, by the way. She voiced Alexandra Roivas in Eternal Darkness (which I knew already), but I did not know until now that there's a cutscene where Richard Doyle is talking to himself:

Not bad.

Edited May 8, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I remember renting Eternal Darkness over a decade ago. It was confusing and I got stuck in the bottom of a church or hospital fighting a giant monster.

[majestic]

12 hours ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

Probably not. Taken straight it is really bad and is only redeeming with the English dub, which is so bad it makes it look like a comedy. I'd recommend it only if you can take really nihilistic black humor and have a tolerance for ****ed up ****.

So, when are you watching La Blue Girl then?

(Warning, explicit and sufficiently Japanese stuff ahead)

Spoiler

It features a ninja girl called Miko that fight demons with sex and who can shoot razor sharp pubic hair at enemies, and if that doesn't convince you yet, she also has a secret technique where she can elongate her clitoris and use it as ****, you know, in case she has to fight other girls (or stop them from turning into a werewolf, because why the hell not). Unsurprisingly, written by the same guy who wrote Legend of the Overfiend.

 

6 hours ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

I remember renting Eternal Darkness over a decade ago. It was confusing and I got stuck in the bottom of a church or hospital fighting a giant monster.

That's the so-called Black Guardian, and while Eternal Darkness sits near the top of my best games ever lists, the gameplay isn't... really its strong suit. The mechanics standard for early 2000s survival horror games, but that doesn't mean they're good. It's telling that the game has an auto-aim feature that you can't even turn off, because otherwise you wouldn't hit anything anyway.

It's also both a church and a hospital, the chapter is playing during the first World War - the church serves as a field hospital. 

The thing has three separate designs depending on which Eldritch Horror you chose to follow in the beginning.

Edited May 8, 2021 by majestic

[majestic]

Apparently, in Japan, Sailor Moon Eternal was released on blu ray some time ago. Long enough ago to make AMVs out of it, at any rate (but apparently not long enough ago to create fansubs, by the looks of it, or I just don't know where to look - not that it really matters).

Here's a random collection of things to look forward to in the two films!

Remember Dak'kon when you see this. Endure. In enduring, grow strong.

Great new transformation scenes

Well, at least the body proportions are no longer giraffian. Got to look at the bright side here, right?

Body switching insanity

You two better get changed really quickly, huh?

Look Mamo-chan, I know how this looks, but you weren't shy about stalking me when I was a little older? Pretty please?

She didn't change. How did the two make it from the street to Mamoru's appartment without changing? Seriously.

Awww, look at the two. It's soooo cute... not.

The Trio Infernale!

Hey guys, we're back, but this time around we'll all die and it will be over much quicker, we promise!

PEGASUSU, PEGASUSU!

Hi, I'm Pegasus, the alicorn of love and dreams! Cynics call me Pedosus, but I don't know why.

Looks like Pegasus isn't only interested in little girls this time around, look out Mamoru someone's about to mount you in your sleep. Payback for the first season, I guess.

TWINKLE YELL!

Flying on the wings of love, when taken literally...

Smooch! But I promise, this gets worse. Scroll down a bit.

So, what's better, Pegasus the Alicorn or his aged up Helios version? HOW AND WHY IS HELIOS SO AGED UP. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?

LOVU LOVU ROD POWER

Seriously, just when you thought these things couldn't get any more phallic. I'm sorry Mamo-chan, I don't think you can compete with Pegasus'... gifts.

[Bartimaeus]

The art style and design does look better. Too bad that was by no means the biggest problem with the show. I'm sure you'll love it, majestic, .

 

[InsaneCommander]

5 hours ago, majestic said:

She didn't change. How did the two make it from the street to Mamoru's appartment without changing? Seriously.

I think the real question is: did anyone call the police? Imagine seeing a grown up man with a little girl in a teenager's clothes shouting "Mamo-chan! Mamo-chan!"

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

9 hours ago, majestic said:

So, when are you watching La Blue Girl then?

Right away with that description lmao.

9 hours ago, majestic said:

That's the so-called Black Guardian, and while Eternal Darkness sits near the top of my best games ever lists, the gameplay isn't... really its strong suit. The mechanics standard for early 2000s survival horror games, but that doesn't mean they're good. It's telling that the game has an auto-aim feature that you can't even turn off, because otherwise you wouldn't hit anything anyway.

It's also both a church and a hospital, the chapter is playing during the first World War - the church serves as a field hospital. 

The thing has three separate designs depending on which Eldritch Horror you chose to follow in the beginning.

It was the blue tripod one for me. I couldn't ever beat it, seemed to just crush me after little bit. The game was pretty clunky and broken, but at that point I don't think I'd ever played a game like it. To be honest I still haven't, nothing with shifting narratives across time periods or the game itself messing with the player (with stuff like turning down the volume or advertising sequels) comes to mind.

6 hours ago, majestic said:

Seriously, just when you thought these things couldn't get any more phallic. I'm sorry Mamo-chan, I don't think you can compete with Pegasus'... gifts.

Not only is Pegasus showing off his horse sized rod, but he also has two of them? Mamo-chan doesn't stand a chance.

[majestic]

6 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

The art style and design does look better. Too bad that was by no means the biggest problem with the show. I'm sure you'll love it, majestic, .

I sure look forward to seeing it in its full glory. It really does look better than before, but even if it was the prettiest anime ever, it would still be linked far too closely to the source material, and some of the scenes in that video looked like they were taken directly from SuperS. Which... is an association they should better have made use of in the earlier seasons.

2 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

I think the real question is: did anyone call the police? Imagine seeing a grown up man with a little girl in a teenager's clothes shouting "Mamo-chan! Mamo-chan!"

I think they go to Mamoru's appartment without calling him to come pick them up. They don't go home like in SuperS, that would be the sensible thing to do. In the manga Usagi lies to her mother and tells her she's having a sleepover at Makoto's place.

1 hour ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

Right away with that description lmao.

Of course. Heh.

1 hour ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

It was the blue tripod one for me. I couldn't ever beat it, seemed to just crush me after little bit. The game was pretty clunky and broken, but at that point I don't think I'd ever played a game like it. To be honest I still haven't, nothing with shifting narratives across time periods or the game itself messing with the player (with stuff like turning down the volume or advertising sequels) comes to mind.

Ulyaoth is easily the best Ancient, so that makes sense. If I remember correctly, Nintendo has a patent on the "sanity" effects used in Eternal Darkness. Still, quite nothing like Eternal Darkness out there. It's a flawed gem. Players who value gameplay over atmosphere and storytelling will certainly find this totally unappealing. It's also pretty creepy and had me feeling super uneasy while playing it in a way other survival horror games never did.

1 hour ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

Not only is Pegasus showing off his horse sized rod, but he also has two of them? Mamo-chan doesn't stand a chance.

[LittleArmadillo0]

Finished episodes 3 and 4 of Paranoia Agent

Spoiler

Weakest marriage proposal I ever saw. I don’t think I have ever seen Dissociative Identity Disorder depicted in such a way. It is usually ever used to justify if someone is menace to society or a murderer. It was a very interesting way of depicting someone living with it and the struggles that come with it. The fact that they were never in the same room but had that tension mounting was great and the last scene of Maria and Harmui pulling one another for control was so well done .

 

Just a hardworking Dad trying to work to provide for his family! A Real family man at that! Wow, it's so inspirational! 
On a side note I didn’t expect Lil Slugger to be caught that quickly. Never underestimate the power of a shoe flying at your face.

 

[Bartimaeus]

  

20 hours ago, majestic said:

I really do like Jennifer Hale's voice, don't misunderstand me there. Her older characters just seep into my perception of newer ones and it is increasingly becoming a little distracting for me (entirely my problem).

Oh man, I knew I was missing someone major when I listed the handful of examples I had: Grey DeLisle. If you ever watch Avatar: The Last Airbender, her role in that is...woof. Let's just say that you'll never be able to hear her voice ever again and NOT think of her character in that show and be immediately suspicious as a result. ...Well, that's not entirely true, because she's actually super talented and plays a number of characters I didn't recognize her as, but any character where she plays a similar sort of voice to the one she played in Airbender, . (e): Speaking of BG characters...

20 hours ago, majestic said:

Just tried the English version, hmm. No, the Japanese one fits better.

Agreed. The English isn't...bad per se, and it's nice to be able to actually understand the lyrics directly, but otherwise it's impossible to argue against the Japanese.

@LittleArmadillo0 What's your rough impression of the show so far?

Edited May 8, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

28 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Grey DeLisle. If you ever watch Avatar: The Last Airbender, her role in that is...woof. Let's just say that you'll never be able to hear her voice ever again and NOT think of her character in that show and be immediately suspicious as a result

https://9gag.com/gag/a9n0zRD

[Bartimaeus]

what the actual **** lol

(also, this is not a good way to be introduced to her character, but still, lol)

unrelated, someone I know that knows I'm a sailor moon fan sent me this today:

Spoiler

alright pal, I don't even watch this show, but sure, troll me with this smh

 

Edited May 8, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

 

50 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Oh man, I knew I was missing someone major when I listed the handful of examples I had: Grey DeLisle. If you ever watch Avatar: The Last Airbender, her role in that is...woof. Let's just say that you'll never be able to hear her voice ever again and NOT think of her character in that show and be immediately suspicious as a result. ...Well, that's not entirely true, because she's actually super talented and plays a number of characters I didn't recognize her as, but any character where she plays a similar sort of voice to the one she played in Airbender, . (e): Speaking of BG characters...

I do plan on watching it eventually, I've heard only great things about it. Except that movie, obviously.

Grey DeLisle is in a lot too - she's like voicing half the female cast in Clone Wars, for instance (ok, slight exaggeration here, but she does have 4 or so prominent roles). She's also in a lot of the animated DC films that are almost all way better than the live action DC movies, like Gotham by Gaslight. Or of course the Handmaiden, Nalia and Viconia. However, I often don't recognize her. Unlike Jennifer Hale, although she does have a few roles that are "huh, that was her?" like one of the two voices of Xel'lotath in Eternal Darkness.

Then there are cases like Kristoffer Tabori or Kath Soucie, whom I do not think aren't talented, don't get me wrong, but they do have really distinct voices that are easy to pick out. In Jennifer Hale's case it's probably her accent and when it comes to Claudia Black, oh boy. Try as she might, she just cannot not sound like Claudia Black. I mean, not unless she's wearing a voice distorting battle suit.

edit: I just realized that joke comes off as mildly homophobic when you don't know what's usually inside that armor:

 

15 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

what the actual **** lol

(also, this is not a good way to be introduced to her character, but still, lol)

unrelated, someone I know that knows I'm a sailor moon fan sent me this today:

  Reveal hidden contents

alright pal, I don't even watch this show, but sure, troll me with this smh

 

Imagine how much worse this gets when Pedosus starts appearing in Netflix suggestions.

Edited May 8, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

14 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

what the actual **** lol

(also, this is not a good way to be introduced to her character, but still, lol)

unrelated, someone I know that knows I'm a sailor moon fan sent me this today:

  Reveal hidden contents

alright pal, I don't even watch this show, but sure, troll me with this smh