Anime, the eternal Jettokōsutā

[majestic]

Clear Card has a new intro in episode 13.
 

Spoiler

 

It has the "plush" bunny of the Mysterious Transfer Student(TM & R) sitting on the couch, eating sweets. Before it is revealed that it's more than plush bunny. Eh, not that it wasn't totally obvious the moment she showed that thing to Sakura the first time, but good job animation team. Good job.

edit:

Well, and the episode title is "Sakura and welcome back, Meiling!" which marks the first episode Meiling appears in person in Clear Card. Her presence alone elevates the episode. I hope she sticks around for a bit.

edit 2:

This is the best episode of Clear Card yet, and the first episode of Clear Card that's really, really good. And... 5 minutes left (and that's with the outro and the new Leave it to Kero-Chan! segment), and no stupid CIG Clear Card battle yet.

edit 3:

Meiling just grew cat ears and a tail. Yeah, it was a short lived dream...

edit 4:

So it wasn't a card that did this, but Akiho... well, yay. That's slightly better. Still, really good episode!

 

 

This is the first time a Clear Card episode makes me want to watch the next one immediately.

Edited July 7, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

Character regularily stop dead in their tracks to either announce what they're going to do or talk about what they just did, in fights, and the accompanying Japanese is hilariously dramatic and over the top in this uniquely JoJoish way

This isn’t true, the English is also hilariously dramatic and over the top.

Let's be honest, JoJo doesn't just jump the shark, it beats it up before an insane captain kills it. And that's why it's awesome.

[majestic]

13 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Let's be honest, JoJo doesn't just jump the shark, it beats it up before an insane captain kills it. And that's why it's awesome.

 

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

Yes. Character regularily stop dead in their tracks to either announce what they're going to do or talk about what they just did, in fights, and the accompanying Japanese is hilariously dramatic and over the top in this uniquely JoJoish way. It's a huge part of the charm of the anime, it's also usually when the anime looks like barely animated manga panels on purpose. Never having read any of the mangas, I assume that's how they were written (why else would the OVA be like that too).

I kow I massively complained about the same thing happening in Crystal, but here it's funny and charming. Well, Crystal also had the bad sense to fully animate everything and still have the character narrate stuff because everyone involved were hack frauds. Except the voice actors, not their fault.

Ah, right, I always forget that anime very often directly follows the manga down to just about the last detail, presumably because that's exactly what fans of the manga want...but it ignores that they're completely different mediums where certain conventions and such are not necessarily going to work or make sense in another, particularly if you haven't already spent years getting used to that style...or already read the manga yourself. Guess I'll just deal for the time being - it's only 5 more half hour episodes, after all, and then I can be content, knowing that I saw all of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure that there ever was. ...Yes, that there ever was, .

2 hours ago, majestic said:

I often read Kalameet is the most difficult boss in the game, but if I had to nominate one that isn't a meme unless I'm playing against them, then it was probably Artorias.

Artorias is one of my favorite bosses, because while his move-set is difficult to master, literally all of his attacks are actually incredibly consistent, predictable, and fair. Kalameet, in contrast, is decidedly less so, and has weird move-set quirks that made him extremely frustrating at level 1. My criteria for favorite bosses is probably somewhat different from most people's after having done that SL1 NG7 run, .

2 hours ago, majestic said:

Probably.

I was kind of joking, but also maybe kind of not? There's probably a reason that all of his writing and dialogue always seem to perfectly flow and make sense to me where so many others do not.

Clear Card: Maybe eventually you'll be able to recommend Clear Card to me? ...Eventually? (e): Nope, literally contradicted like one second later.

Edited July 7, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

Anyway, turns out the last Clear Card episode was the first part of a two parter, and the second part was... the typical Clear Card episode.
 

Spoiler

 

The ears were a new card, and the new cards are apparently somehow related to the mysterious transfer student (she was reading a bizarre alternate reality version of Alice in Wonderland where someone grew cat ears at the same time it happened to Meiling last episode). What a surprise.

Shaoran gained the ability to cast time stop without a Clow Card. Long, drawn out CGI "enhanced" sequence of Sakura dealing with "Mirage".

 

The episode also, once again, directly contradicts prior episodes, and in this one it's such a bad idea, because it just messed with one of the best episode of the original (or at least, one of the most emotionally impactful). I sure hope you're going somewhere with this, show. Otherwise you're even worse than you already are. Le sigh.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

5 minutes ago, majestic said:

 

So I take it you've met Ebony Devil and Yellow Temperance?

Do you understannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnndu?

[majestic]

2 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

So I take it you've met Ebony Devil and Yellow Temperance?

Do you understannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnndu?

Yeah, I'm not just watching weird stuff or hate watching Clear Card.

Although I have admittedly spent a huge chunk of time on Hollow Knight recently. At least I'm getting somewhere there.

[majestic]

43 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Artorias is one of my favorite bosses, because while his move-set is difficult to master, literally all of his attacks are actually incredibly consistent, predictable, and fair. Kalameet, in contrast, is decidedly less so, and has weird move-set quirks that made him extremely frustrating at level 1. My criteria for favorite bosses is probably somewhat different from most people's after having done that SL1 NG7 run, .

I guess that's like playing Radiant bosses in the Hall of Gods in Hollow Knight. Nightmare King Grimm, which was the hardest boss in the game (well, arguably) until Absolute Radiance and Pure Vessel were patched in, ends up being one of the "easier" Radiant kills, the early game bosses and meme fights aside. He's 100% fair, telegraphs well and when you die, it was your own fault.

Unlike Grey Prince Zote, who can just randomly start his flailing attack while simply walking forward with no indication that he's going to move, and at any point during his flailing he can fall over and cause shockwave. He also... sometimes jumps around, and when you dodge too far out of the way, the game just moves him laterally over your head and drops him on you. Whenever he jumps, he can land on the floor or fall through it. Landing on the floor causes a shockwave you need to jump over, falling through causes him to fall on your head. Good luck if you committed to a jump and your i-frames are on cooldown then.

There are ways to deal with all that, of course, but... bad design is bad.

43 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I was kind of joking, but also maybe kind of not? There's probably a reason that all of his writing and dialogue always seem to perfectly flow and make sense to me where so many others do not.

Clear Card: Maybe eventually you'll be able to recommend Clear Card to me? ...Eventually? (e): Nope, literally contradicted like one second later.

It's probably at least partly what happened. Pretty sure someone like Satoshi Kon would push for less exposition, especially when there's animation that shows what's going on anyway.

I really wish I could, but so far there's little redeeming about this. What there is I can't talk about because spoilers* for the Sakura Card arc. So far though, everything is just not good. It's not bad, but it is nowhere near the quality of the first anime, and it took 13 episodes and Meiling to come back to make Sakura have a decent conversation with someone.

Tomoyo has been flanderized. She already got some of that in the Sakura Card arc, but it's waaaaaaaaaay over the top now, and Kero was like that for the first 10 or so episodes, at least he's getting to do something else.

Then there's the issue that the new Clear Cards are all just variations of Clow/Sakura Cards. That one is intentional because the only other thing Tomoyo does besides starry-eyed Sakura stalking is pointing out that the cards to similar things.

The absolute worst part is that everyone who isn't Sakura (and spoiler character and Kero) hides something from each other, and from her. Mysterious Transfer Student 2 from Sakura Card and Shaoran (the original Mysterious Transfer Student) know what's going on but won't tell Sakura. Toya on the other hand keeps secrets from Yukito. That's probably related in some way, well, I'll know soon, not that many episodes left. Unless this ends on a massive cliffhanger.

Right, and Toya, her father and Yukito are barely in the show. Hoe?

There's also way, waaaaaaaaaaay too much time spent on Sakura and Card shenanigans, and way too much time on Mysterious Transfer Student 3. Unlike in the original, where dealing with the cards feels like its naturally a part of the world (except for some parts of the Sakura Card arc, but that one isn't about CATCHING cards), it's almost always tacked on. Sometimes there isn't even a setup and ceratinly no payoff.

For instance, Tomoyo and Sakura visit Akiho's house, and find Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak the "Lucid" Card. They're in Akiho's library, and she's off to get some tea, and they come across a part of a shelf where a section is seemingly missing. Sakura touches it, feels that there's something there, makes a card, done. What? Setup? Payoff? Guys? You can do that, you did that for a lot of the earlier episodes.

Whee, that turned into a rant. Sumimasen!

*You're pretty close to an episode that should allow you to, uhm, guess some of the more major character developments coming up. That's episode 40.

 

 

Edited July 7, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

47 minutes ago, majestic said:

Yeah, I'm not just watching weird stuff or hate watching Clear Card.

If JoJo isn't weird stuff then I don't know what is.

Shadow DIO blew up a TV lmao

[majestic]

4 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

If JoJo isn't weird stuff then I don't know what is.

 

  Hide contents

Shadow DIO blew up a TV lmao

 

I meant Love Live! which isn't weird in the JoJo weird way, but weird because it's an apparently popular anime that has no clear target audience. Heh.

edit:

I see your confusion and raise an edit. There's not enough fanservice, nor is any of it good enough for people who enjoy Seinen and/or Ecchi anime for that. There's some singing and dancing, but not enough for people who would like to watch a musical anime, and the slice of life parts are fun at times, but there's not enough to outwheigh the problems the other two parts cause.

So, no idea who this is for.

Edited July 8, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 minutes ago, majestic said:

I meant Love Live! which isn't weird in the JoJo weird way, but weird because it's an apparently popular anime that has no clear target audience. Heh.

Is that really weird tho? Seems like a happy accident.

[majestic]

Just now, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Is that really weird tho? Seems like a happy accident.

More like a strange outlier, yes. A happy accident is when a tree looks good even if it accidentially grows over half your painting.

[majestic]

Clear Card has maybe switched the set up. It's been another almost entire episode of decent interactions (Tomoyo shows MTS #3 her recording of the second movie, much to the embarrassment of Sakura), then introduces something magical in the last second, which will then be dealt with in the next episode.

That's not really any better, but at least provides the occasional decent episode.

Eh, and the epsiode took care to re-animate parts of the second movie for Tomoyo's recording, but the writing is still from the movie, of course. It doesn't look as good, but it's better than the regular Clear Card episodes. Which means this really is more of a writing problem, then something caused by not so great animation. That certainly doesn't help, but the issues are somewhere else.

Eh.

In hindsight, this will have something positive to show for. I've been kind of hard on the Sakura Card arc in the past. It was still good, but the setup for made it less appealing than the first arc (well, in my opionion) - except for a couple of highlight episodes (54, 60 and 66 stand out there - I'm suspecting 60 will be more... uhm, highlighty for @Bartimaeus than 66 ).

While Sakura card has strong contenders for the best episode of the entire anime, the average quality dropped a little. Or so I thought. Next to Clear Card, that was still really, really, really good. If nothing else, at least, this will make me appreciate Sakura Card more than I already do. Yay!

 

[Bartimaeus]

I'm definitely gonna take a long break after finishing the original show before even thinking of starting Clear Card. Have to let the greatness of the original fade at least a little before I jump into its inferior sequel, .

Watched a few more of the JoJo prequel; it's thankfully picked up a little because it's actually started to get on with what it wants to show instead of meandering on silly nonsense like the first couple of episodes did. If I could ever learn to only be semi-engaged with a show instead of fully engaged like I always have to be, my tolerance for the bits and pieces of shows that I don't like would probably go way up...but I'm the worst multi-tasker and I completely lose the plot if I look away for more than like a couple of seconds.

Polnareff is the least convincing "dramatic" villain I've ever seen in my entire life, and not just because I've already seen the second half of this. The only people he could scare away are MAYBE very small children with his ridiculous hair.

(e): fixed terrible grammar

Edited July 9, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

10 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I'm definitely gonna take a long break after finishing the original show before even thinking of starting Clear Card. Have to let the greatness of the original fade at least a little before I jump into its inferior sequel, .

Watched a few more of the JoJo prequel; it's thankfully picked up a little because it's actually started to get on with what it wants to show instead of meandering on silly nonsense like the first couple of episodes did. If I could ever learn to only be semi-engaged with a show instead of fully engaged like I always have to be, my tolerance for the bits and pieces of shows that I don't like would probably go way up...but I'm the worst multi-tasker and I completely lose plot if I looked away for more than like a couple of seconds.

Polnareff is the least convincing "dramatic" villain I've ever seen in my entire life, and not just because I've already seen the second half of this. The only people he could scare away are MAYBE very small children with his ridiculous hair.

Do they encounter the bug on the plane in the OVA?

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Do they encounter the bug on the plane in the OVA?

I had to go back and check because I legitimately couldn't remember. My initial thought was no, pretty sure the plane just crashes by itself...I remember a monkey, I remember Polnareff being a giant joke, I remember the monkey getting cut in half by Polnareff, but no bugs... But wait, why would it just crash by itself? Maybe there was a bug and I just missed like a second that showed it? Turns out, no, the plane just inexplicably crashed with no explanation, .

Also, I guess that monkey was the one majestic mentioned? Didn't do what majestic said he did, but that's the beauty of a cut-down OVA I guess, .

Edited July 9, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

39 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Also, I guess that monkey was the one majestic mentioned? Didn't do what majestic said he did, but that's the beauty of a cut-down OVA I guess, .

If he didn't solve a rubik's cube only to break it, then the OVA monkey is a let down.

[Bartimaeus]

27 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

If he didn't solve a rubik's cube only to break it, then the OVA monkey is a let down.

Sadly, no. He didn't really stick around for too long - they found him in a cage, let him be, went and fought Polnareff, then he came out of nowhere and tried to kill Jotaro, but Polnareff cut him in half and that was that. Not much characterization at all, really.

I had something else I came on here to post, but I forgot what. Mush brain.

[majestic]

9 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I'm definitely gonna take a long break after finishing the original show before even thinking of starting Clear Card. Have to let the greatness of the original fade at least a little before I jump into its inferior sequel, .

Seems like a good idea, that should lessen the impact. If you have to try Clear Card, that's the way to go, I guess.  

edit:

One of the biggest issues in this season is the decision to make Shaoran know what's going on, so his involvement in the episodes is sort of limited. Tomoyo got flanderized for the first half of the season being almost exclusively the obsessive stalker type, and that leaves Sakura interacting with MTS #3, who on her own is not all that interesting. Her other friends are also not around much.

I don't think it's much of coincidence that bringing Meiling back and toning Tomoyo down to normal lead to the much better episodes in the second half of the season so far - at least when they're not focused on useless action pieces, MTS #3 or Shaoran suddenly having the ability to stop time for which he so far always needed the Time card. 

 

Edited July 9, 2021 by majestic

[HoonDing]

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, HoonDing said:

 

I have no idea what that says, but also, that is one terrible upscale.

One episode left of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

Spoiler

I don't think this prequel OVA fits very well together with the original OVA, or at least my perception of it. Avdol apparently met Dio in Cairo (he specifically says this) before, but they didn't think to expect that maybe...just maybe that Dio was in Cairo? And then they meet Kakyoin, who was also attacked and brainwashed by Dio during a trip in Egypt? ...Cairo, Egypt, does this really take a rocket surgeon to figure out, guys? Furthermore, apparently Dio knew Joeseph Joestar et al. were after him from the very beginning, and we constantly see way too much from his perspective - the original OVA took its sweet time to actually get to and reveal him, which made sense, seeing as he's the big bad of the arc, you should really be building up to him (also, his parts have not been even slightly interesting or funny and really should've been cut for all of these reasons). The other person I know that is going to watch this will have the mystery of Dio spoiled immediately, then get to the original OVA and suddenly he's going to disappear from the show for most of it as the show starts to inexplicably build him up when we'd already seen and heard him plenty in the prequel OVA. I think some sort of creative wires got crossed during the making of this prequel OVA.

Also, I think Jotaro only knows three words: "What a pain..."

 

Edited July 9, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

41 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Also, I think Jotaro only knows three words: "What a pain..."

Yare yare... one of the easier ways to spot someone who tried to learn conversational Japanese from anime.

 

It is not commonly used in conversation. Mostly in writing and anime.

 

For JoJo’s it is a meme all on its own. There are even t-shirts you can buy.

Edited July 9, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

Final episode:

Spoiler

Well, I wasn't expecting this to end with Jotaro literally having his stand just eat the lady's own stand, but I guess that's what happens in JoJo's. The end.

 

Edited July 9, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[InsaneCommander]

LOGH 38-40:

No actual spoilers for the main story.

Episode 40 told how the first Emperor rose to power. And it was not a nice story. It looked like some things we see today: politicians that don’t respect democracy being acclaimed by the people... The guy eventually was elected president and also premier, having all the power. Then he took over permanently, repressed what he considered immoral and before anyone could think about it, he went full nazi.

The beginning of the Empire was basically The Man in the High Castle. "Euthanasia" was done to those with mental diseases and sterelization of the poor and disabled people. The parliament was dissolved, the republic became a police state and they had gulag planets. It even came close to a zombie apocalypse (not really lol), with people that were forced to ingest drugs or that were lobotomized.

And that is why everyone on the imperial nobility has german names. The first emperor selected the descendents of the “arian race”. Mankind not changing really is a theme in this series.

Unless the subtitles had a mistake, the population when the empire was founded was over 300 billion people and now, 500 years later, it’s just about 40 billion. I guess the sterelization idea was taken very seriously.

[Bartimaeus]

I wonder how realistic it would be for a nation to be able to genocide itself down to 1/8th of its original population...