Anime and Manga - ゴゴゴゴ

[majestic]

19 minutes ago, KP on top of ZA WARUDO said:

Huh, for some reason I thought he was adopted by aliens or something. I think the one after that mutated a couple of crewman into superbeings with silver eyes or something. TOS could be weird.

Yeah, now that you mention it, you may be right. The aliens just altered Charlie so he could survive on his own, or something.  

edit: The other one had the galactic barrier affect two crewmen, I think. The order in which they are shown depends a bit on the release you have. There's some original DVDs that went by broadcast order, the remastered edition that went by remastering order and there's another edition that goes by the production order of the original show. So yeah, the one with the galactic barrier at least aired as new pilot.

Confusing, all in all.

Edited January 28, 2022 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Just now, majestic said:

Yeah, now that you mentio it, you may be right. The aliens just altered Charlie to he could survive on his own, or something.  

Or maybe Charlie used his powers to change the plot.

[Amentep]

"Where No Man Has Gone Before" was the 2nd pilot after "The Cage" with Kirk's old pal Gary Mitchell and Dr Elizabeth Dehner having their latent psychic power boosted by an energy surge at the galactic barrier.

It ended up airing 3rd, right after Charlie X as the second episode (but Charlie X was the 8th filmed). Charlie was the sole survivor of  ship crash as a kid, and the aliens did alter him so he could survive on their planet. They didn't realize he was going to get a sudden growth in power,  and end up taking him back iirc.

[LadyCrimson]

3 hours ago, Amentep said:

Dr Elizabeth Dehner

Ah, yes. Sallly Kellerman. Good actress. Terrible pants. I know in later years people would decry those mini-skirts the female Starfleet were wearing, but they were better than those pants.

To be fair, the men's pants were also terrible (basically the same) in ToS and remained terrible throughout. I sewed better pants when I was 10. And yes I probably went totally off-topic, apologies, my brain wanders.

[majestic]

5 hours ago, Amentep said:

"Where No Man Has Gone Before" was the 2nd pilot after "The Cage" with Kirk's old pal Gary Mitchell and Dr Elizabeth Dehner having their latent psychic power boosted by an energy surge at the galactic barrier.

It ended up airing 3rd, right after Charlie X as the second episode (but Charlie X was the 8th filmed). Charlie was the sole survivor of  ship crash as a kid, and the aliens did alter him so he could survive on their planet. They didn't realize he was going to get a sudden growth in power,  and end up taking him back iirc.

I'm pretty sure that we got the episodes in the intended order on TV then, rather than the US broadcast order. Interesting, thanks. That would also perhaps explain why my DVDs, the remastered one and the Netflix episode list is different.

1 hour ago, LadyCrimson said:

Ah, yes. Sallly Kellerman. Good actress. Terrible pants. I know in later years people would decry those mini-skirts the female Starfleet were wearing, but they were better than those pants.

To be fair, the men's pants were also terrible (basically the same) in ToS and remained terrible throughout. I sewed better pants when I was 10. And yes I probably went totally off-topic, apologies, my brain wanders.

Starfleet uniforms as a general rule stayed pretty pants. Except maybe those later DS9/First Contant ones. Discovery Season 4's uniforms are a highlight though:

 

[Amentep]

5 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

Ah, yes. Sallly Kellerman. Good actress. Terrible pants. I know in later years people would decry those mini-skirts the female Starfleet were wearing, but they were better than those pants.

To be fair, the men's pants were also terrible (basically the same) in ToS and remained terrible throughout. I sewed better pants when I was 10. And yes I probably went totally off-topic, apologies, my brain wanders.

Since "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was the second pilot, they tried to address NBC executive's complaints about The Cage with the new pilot.  One of the complaints was that Vina as the Orion Slave Woman was 'too raunchy'.  Thus Dr. Dehner and Yeoman Smith in the second pilot wear pants and loose fitting uniform tops and the mini-skirt outfits weren't used.

Side note, that Discovery image without context just looks hilarious.  Burnham's expression is a great evocation of "what the **** is happening?"

ObTopic - they should do a Star Trek: Original Series - Space Battleship Yamato crossover.

[majestic]

10 hours ago, Amentep said:

Side note, that Discovery image without context just looks hilarious.  Burnham's expression is a great evocation of "what the **** is happening?"

It's the same expression I had when I saw that, because Discovery's artificial gravity fails and Burnham is immediately catapulted exactly halfway between the floor and the ceiling, then something arrests her momentun and she hovers there, until falling back down.

Speaking of things that are terribly written, the Nanoha movie keeps giving me things I want to post about. His Lordship, King Whatshisface the not at all Evil Overlord(tm) summons his servant mechanical thingie, Ametista of the Black Shadows.

"Ametista of the Black Shadows" sounds like something a twelve year old Twilight fan would come up with.

I'm what the writers came up with when tasked with creating something cooler awesomererer than laservelociraptors!

Nanoha has like a ten minute fight with one of the king's servant people called STERN THE DESTRUCTOR. I'm going to assume that's a silly mistake in the subtitles and she's really just called Stern the DESTROYER, but that doesn't make the naming any better. I miss the time when Nanoha was a Chinese martial arts master, tried to talk to people and when they didn't listen just ended it in one quick blast while looking sad. That lead to the same result, just a whole lot quicker.

Again, all I can think of is how StrikerS knew that it couldn't create dramatic tension with its action sequences alone and spent time making me care about the characters in peril and what they're fighting for. It also had the good sense of knowning that the action is only a means to an end, not and end in and of itself. Therefore, the action in StrikerS mostly either served a narrative or character development purpose. It wasn't just TOTALLY RAD DID YOU SEE THE AVENGERS FIGHTING THANOS FOR FITFY CGI FILLED MINUTES ENDGAME WAS SO AWESOME.

To give you an example from StrikerS:

Spoiler

If you're not really good at guessing (or seeing) plot twists, then the reveal that Subaru in StrikerS is, like her sister, one of the early combat cyborg models made by the villain before the newer generation they're fighting now, the reveal comes during an action scene where Nanoha, Teanna and Subaru rush to rescure Subaru's sister Ginga who was captured by three enemy cyborgs. Subaru pulls ahead and leaves the other two, finds the enemies and stops thinking, going full enrage. She beats the group but is then defeated by a backup cyborg coming to help her team. Subaru is severely wounded (well, damaged) and no longer able to hide what she is.

The enemy combatans take off with Ginga, but not before showing extreme concern and emotional distress over the damage and injuries their friends sustained while fighting Subaru (at this point, this is the first time they do that). Subaru spends the next episode and a bit more on contemplating her failures while Teanna is angry because she pulled ahead alone and should have waited for the team. Just like they were taught to. The enemies meanwhile carry the day because they've worked together. Plus, none of them were ridiculously powerful hyper-god-mode entities for no reason.

The action drives character development for Subaru and Teanna, it drives the narrative because it reveals Subaru and Ginga as cyborgs and it makes the enemies they're fighting just as... human as they are. As far as action scenes go, I'd say this one is a complete win.

All THIS is missing now is a skybeam.

Nanoha and Stern have a heavy shounen off to see whose magic and resolve is the stronger. Stern yells at her, saying that she wants to protect her king. That's fine, except it's the king, Stern and Levi attacking the others, not the other way around.

Levi sums up the quality of this film's writing in one neat sentence when Fate asks her who the "king" is.

Levi says: 王様は王様だよ！The king is the king! Yeah, what a way to answer that. Levi then says this gem: "The king gave me meals and snacks and treats me very nicely. We even slept together." Sure Levi, that's fine, but I don't reall want to know about that so much. Really. I'm going to assume the subtitles mean "share a bed" in the innocent way to protect my sanity.

Take note though, evil overlords, be sure to feed your pets well and let them sleep on your bed every now and then, that'll make them more loyal in the long run. She beats Fate.

And Fate gets turned into Fateservice once more. Who needs dignity.

Lindy shows up and protects Fate from a mortal blow, and ends up wounded mortally herself. For a moment I thought they'd actually kill off Lindy because why not in a new continuity, but no. Fate suddenly has healing powers coming from nowhere - really, nowhere. In all of the other seasons, spinoffs and whatnot, she never once showed any affinity for healing magic. Well, they might be in the manga maybe, but he gives a sh*t about that.

The movie makes a flashback to Fate's second season / second movie perfect childhood illusion and pretends it was real. Or maybe Fate tells herself it was real. Lindy has her upgraded Bardiche and ho boy, now it's payback time.

Payback! Does this count as sky beam? No? Yes? Maybe?

Meanwhile, Hayate one-shots Ametista of the Black Shadows without that thing doing something even once. This is the epitome of something useless that should have been cut. How did that not end up on the cutting floor? Mr. King-sama respons by casting SWELLING DARKNESS. Yeah, we're sort of back to being a JRPG here.

Mr. King-sama unleashes MORE DAKKA on Hayate, and then we... finally... FINALLY... get this:

BLUE SKY BEAM TIME! VERY COOL. VERY, VERY COOL!

In the next scene the blue skybeam is actually reddish/purple and Iris actives her "Virus Code" to infect the ETERNAL CRYSTAL.

BEAM BEAM BEAM BEAM!

Okay, the film now officially goes off the rails. The space cops show up and Iris the AI, now powered by the ETERNAL CRYSTAL, becomes La Magra as the space cops bodies explode into blood and gore and she absorbs it to fashion a body from herself. Uhm, okay film, introduce some ultraviolence in the last couple of minutes. Why not.

Uhm...

Where's Blade when you need him?

Iris tells Kyrie that inside the ETERNAL CRYSTAL rests a WINGED DEMON I'm going to call AMON because why not? As if this film isn't bullsh*t enough already. Oh, what a surprise, Iris tells Kyrie that the demon isn't able to help her family or her planet. What a surprising twist. Next up, the usual gang, Amita and Kyrie will team up to defeat GOD MODE SUPERPOWER AI and her WINGED DEMON THING. I'm just assuming that the King's gang will MAYBE ALSO work with them, because there's been some dialogue between them and Hayate, Nanoha and Fate to make sure we know that they're not totally bad, even if the king sleeps with his subjects in exchange for snacks. Who am I to judge other culture's way of rewarding badly written subtitles.

Kyrie is supremely unhappy about getting a dose of her medicine. In a different universe where this film would have been written differently, I might have cared for her broken heart. Felt something, at least. In this film? Not so much, no. Oh, and Iris isn't an AI, but a real mind trapped in a tablet, and now she has a new body. Uhm, whatever, really. The king and the gang takes off after he feels the presence of AMON, the WINGED DEMON.

Iris tells the king something stupid about the power in the chest of a girl. Which one? Well, AMON's, who really is a blonde girl who wakes up and begins to... kill space cops left and right by making them explode in similar ways to Iris' La Magra summoning spell. This is weird and confusing. Also, Iris and her virus code assimilated AMON the little blonde girl.

YOUR BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVENESS WILL BE ADDED TO OUR OWN.

Quote from Star Trek Armada, by the way, lest Shady or someone else shows up and tells me it's actually We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.

Kyrie shows up out of the blue and instead of pulling the trigger on Iris immediately starts talking to her. Girl, have you not been paying attention? Fate and Signum start bleeding life force too. How riveting this all is. Amita shows up and shoots at Iris.

Fate suffers some more indignities. Because she has to. It is known.

Oh right, that's Nanoha showing up with her newly upgraded Raising Heart. Nanoha fires her newly installed FORMULA CANNON or something. PEW PEW PEW PEW. An explosion saves Fate from her state as blood lanced fanservice object, Iris is surprised by the power of the blast, Nanoha resolves to SAVE EVERYONE and we CUT TO CREDITS. FINALLY. One down, one more to go.

Final statement:

This guy is a complete hack fraud. While the film does include a full transformation sequence by Hayate, Nanoha and Fate, that's nothing that wasn't in the shows or the other movies yet.

WHERE THE TIDDIES AT YOU PROMISED, YO?

Honestly, whatever you do, do not watch this film. It's trash, and not in the good way. I can't believe the next one is 110 minutes long. What could they possibly still do with that setup for ALMOST TWO F*CKTARDED HOURS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, we're essentially at the final battle already. Plus handwaving some way to save Kyrie's and Amita's parents and their planets. That can't take two hours.

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

20 minutes ago, majestic said:

It's the same expression I had when I saw that, because Discovery's artificial gravity fails and Burnham is immediately catapulted exactly halfway between the floor and the ceiling, then something arrests her momentun and she hovers there, until falling back down.

Speaking of things that are terribly written, the Nanoha movie keeps giving me things I want to post about. His Lordship, King Whatshisface the not at all Evil Overlord(tm) summons his servant mechanical thingie, Ametista of the Black Shadows.

"Ametista of the Black Shadows" sounds like something a twelve year old Twilight fan would come up with.

I'm what the writers came up with when tasked with creating something cooler awesomererer than laservelociraptors!

Nanoha has like a ten minute fight with one of the king's servant people called STERN THE DESTRUCTOR. I'm going to assume that's a silly mistake in the subtitles and she's really just called Stern the DESTROYER, but that doesn't make the naming any better. I miss the time when Nanoha was a Chinese martial arts master, tried to talk to people and when they didn't listen just ended it in one quick blast while looking sad. That lead to the same result, just a whole lot quicker.

Again, all I can think of is how StrikerS knew that it couldn't create dramatic tension with its action sequences alone and spent time making me care about the characters in peril and what they're fighting for. It also had the good sense of knowning that the action is only a means to an end, not and end in and of itself. Therefore, the action in StrikerS mostly either served a narrative or character development purpose. It wasn't just TOTALLY RAD DID YOU SEE THE AVENGERS FIGHTING THANOS FOR FITFY CGI FILLED MINUTES ENDGAME WAS SO AWESOME.

To give you an example from StrikerS:

  Reveal hidden contents

If you're not really good at guessing (or seeing) plot twists, then the reveal that Subaru in StrikerS is, like her sister, one of the early combat cyborg models made by the villain before the newer generation they're fighting now, the reveal comes during an action scene where Nanoha, Teanna and Subaru rush to rescure Subaru's sister Ginga who was captured by three enemy cyborgs. Subaru pulls ahead and leaves the other two, finds the enemies and stops thinking, going full enrage. She beats the group but is then defeated by a backup cyborg coming to help her team. Subaru is severely wounded (well, damaged) and no longer able to hide what she is.

The enemy combatans take off with Ginga, but not before showing extreme concern and emotional distress over the damage and injuries their friends sustained while fighting Subaru (at this point, this is the first time they do that). Subaru spends the next episode and a bit more on contemplating her failures while Teanna is angry because she pulled ahead alone and should have waited for the team. Just like they were taught to. The enemies meanwhile carry the day because they've worked together. Plus, none of them were ridiculously powerful hyper-god-mode entities for no reason.

The action drives character development for Subaru and Teanna, it drives the narrative because it reveals Subaru and Ginga as cyborgs and it makes the enemies they're fighting just as... human as they are. As far as action scenes go, I'd say this one is a complete win.

All THIS is missing now is a skybeam.

Nanoha and Stern have a heavy shounen off to see whose magic and resolve is the stronger. Stern yells at her, saying that she wants to protect her king. That's fine, except it's the king, Stern and Levi attacking the others, not the other way around.

Levi sums up the quality of this film's writing in one neat sentence when Fate asks her who the "king" is.

Levi says: 王様は王様だよ！The king is the king! Yeah, what a way to answer that. Levi then says this gem: "The king gave me meals and snacks and treats me very nicely. We even slept together." Sure Levi, that's fine, but I don't reall want to know about that so much. Really. I'm going to assume the subtitles mean "share a bed" in the innocent way to protect my sanity.

Take note though, evil overlords, be sure to feed your pets well and let them sleep on your bed every now and then, that'll make them more loyal in the long run. She beats Fate.

And Fate gets turned into Fateservice once more. Who needs dignity.

Lindy shows up and protects Fate from a mortal blow, and ends up wounded mortally herself. For a moment I thought they'd actually kill off Lindy because why not in a new continuity, but no. Fate suddenly has healing powers coming from nowhere - really, nowhere. In all of the other seasons, spinoffs and whatnot, she never once showed any affinity for healing magic. Well, they might be in the manga maybe, but he gives a sh*t about that.

The movie makes a flashback to Fate's second season / second movie perfect childhood illusion and pretends it was real. Or maybe Fate tells herself it was real. Lindy has her upgraded Bardiche and ho boy, now it's payback time.

Payback! Does this count as sky beam? No? Yes? Maybe?

Meanwhile, Hayate one-shots Ametista of the Black Shadows without that thing doing something even once. This is the epitome of something useless that should have been cut. How did that not end up on the cutting floor? Mr. King-sama respons by casting SWELLING DARKNESS. Yeah, we're sort of back to being a JRPG here.

Mr. King-sama unleashes MORE DAKKA on Hayate, and then we... finally... FINALLY... get this:

BLUE SKY BEAM TIME! VERY COOL. VERY, VERY COOL!

In the next scene the blue skybeam is actually reddish/purple and Iris actives her "Virus Code" to infect the ETERNAL CRYSTAL.

BEAM BEAM BEAM BEAM!

Okay, the film now officially goes off the rails. The space cops show up and Iris the AI, now powered by the ETERNAL CRYSTAL, becomes La Magra as the space cops bodies explode into blood and gore and she absorbs it to fashion a body from herself. Uhm, okay film, introduce some ultraviolence in the last couple of minutes. Why not.

Uhm...

Where's Blade when you need him?

Iris tells Kyrie that inside the ETERNAL CRYSTAL rests a WINGED DEMON I'm going to call AMON because why not? As if this film isn't bullsh*t enough already. Oh, what a surprise, Iris tells Kyrie that the demon isn't able to help her family or her planet. What a surprising twist. Next up, the usual gang, Amita and Kyrie will team up to defeat GOD MODE SUPERPOWER AI and her WINGED DEMON THING. I'm just assuming that the King's gang will MAYBE ALSO work with them, because there's been some dialogue between them and Hayate, Nanoha and Fate to make sure we know that they're not totally bad, even if the king sleeps with his subjects in exchange for snacks. Who am I to judge other culture's way of rewarding badly written subtitles.

Kyrie is supremely unhappy about getting a dose of her medicine. In a different universe where this film would have been written differently, I might have cared for her broken heart. Felt something, at least. In this film? Not so much, no. Oh, and Iris isn't an AI, but a real mind trapped in a tablet, and now she has a new body. Uhm, whatever, really. The king and the gang takes off after he feels the presence of AMON, the WINGED DEMON.

Iris tells the king something stupid about the power in the chest of a girl. Which one? Well, AMON's, who really is a blonde girl who wakes up and begins to... kill space cops left and right by making them explode in similar ways to Iris' La Magra summoning spell. This is weird and confusing. Also, Iris and her virus code assimilated AMON the little blonde girl.

YOUR BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVENESS WILL BE ADDED TO OUR OWN.

Quote from Star Trek Armada, by the way, lest Shady or someone else shows up and tells me it's actually We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.

Kyrie shows up out of the blue and instead of pulling the trigger on Iris immediately starts talking to her. Girl, have you not been paying attention? Fate and Signum start bleeding life force too. How riveting this all is. Amita shows up and shoots at Iris.

Fate suffers some more indignities. Because she has to. It is known.

Oh right, that's Nanoha showing up with her newly upgraded Raising Heart. Nanoha fires her newly installed FORMULA CANNON or something. PEW PEW PEW PEW. An explosion saves Fate from her state as blood lanced fanservice object, Iris is surprised by the power of the blast, Nanoha resolves to SAVE EVERYONE and we CUT TO CREDITS. FINALLY. One down, one more to go.

Final statement:

This guy is a complete hack fraud. While the film does include a full transformation sequence by Hayate, Nanoha and Fate, that's nothing that wasn't in the shows or the other movies yet.

WHERE THE TIDDIES AT YOU PROMISED, YO?

Honestly, whatever you do, do not watch this film. It's trash, and not in the good way. I can't believe the next one is 110 minutes long. What could they possibly still do with that setup for ALMOST TWO F*CKTARDED HOURS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, we're essentially at the final battle already. Plus handwaving some way to save Kyrie's and Amita's parents and their planets. That can't take two hours.

 

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Ametista of the Black Shadows

"There's no way they actually use the full name when talking about her though, right?"

*screenshot*

Oh. Yeah, that is not good.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Kyrie is supremely unhappy about getting a dose of her medicine.

I couldn't help but laugh at this, because there's a famous American basketball player named Kyrie (Irving) who has been very publicly sitting out the entire current season because he refuses to get vaccinated. ...But that's pretty much the only thing I laughed at, because the rest of that was terrible. I don't think you have to worry about any of us watching this trash, .

1 hour ago, majestic said:

This guy is a complete hack fraud. While the film does include a full transformation sequence by Hayate, Nanoha and Fate, that's nothing that wasn't in the shows or the other movies yet.

Maybe it was because there was nothing else of note to talk about this for this movie?

Edited January 29, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Gorth]

Before I started on JoJo, I got sidetracked by one of those short (12 episodes) animes, which I just couldn’t put aside once started, so I guess by the end of today I’ll have finished Goblin Slayer. Like watching a live action D&D session with added blood, gore and brutality. Who cares, I was entertained, good enough for my low brow needs

[majestic]

5 hours ago, Gorth said:

Before I started on JoJo, I got sidetracked by one of those short (12 episodes) animes, which I just couldn’t put aside once started, so I guess by the end of today I’ll have finished Goblin Slayer. Like watching a live action D&D session with added blood, gore and brutality. Who cares, I was entertained, good enough for my low brow needs

@InsaneCommander watched Goblin Slayer a while back.

10 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

"There's no way they actually use the full name when talking about her though, right?"

*screenshot*

Oh. Yeah, that is not good.

It is also the best indicator of the writing quality of the film. The King summons it from somewhere, says it will destroy everyone and in the end it does nothing at all because Shamal figures out how to deal with the summoned mech things. She analyzed that only to find out that if you destroy their power supply, they just turn off. No kidding, Shamal. Each of these things contains a glowing ball that both control unit and power supply, and destroying it turns the thing off. Who would have thought? By the time the movie cuts to Hayate's fight with the King, she just one-shots it.

I don't know if they animated ten hours of supremely stupid action for this only to cut the film this badly or if that's really in the script like that, either way, it's objectively awful writing, cutting and just plain bad filmmaking, as is Fate suddenly developing healing powers for no other reason than to heal her adoptive mother.

That last bit even ruins a potentially nice scene that was set up earlier where Lindy talked about how Fate doesn't call her mother yet because the adoption wasn't that long ago. It's meant to be a touching moment of bonding between the two, but the film is so bad it just falls totally flat. Even though this is a spin-off in a different continuity, there's a certain measure of lingering appreciation for Fate, Lindy and the others from the much better TV show - especially StrikerS - and not even me actually liking these characters helps this.

10 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I couldn't help but laugh at this, because there's a famous American basketball player named Kyrie (Irving) who has been very publicly sitting out the entire current season because he refuses to get vaccinated. ...But that's pretty much the only thing I laughed at, because the rest of that was terrible. I don't think you have to worry about any of us watching this trash, .

Yeah, dunno, just saying in case someone else develops an interest in the Nanoha series for some reason. Someone who isn't a lowlife anime otaku mouth breather, at least. As much as I enjoyed StrikerS due to its unique mix of interesting character exploration, teamwork focus and meaningful (not necessarily suspenseful though) action I don't see anyone of the regulars here liking it. Doubly so when it takes watching the first season and A's to get to it. 

At least some part of the post made you laugh. I laughed at the skybeam. Hard. Unintentional comedy is the best, although I can't credit the film with any of that.

10 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Maybe it was because there was nothing else of note to talk about this for this movie?

If that's the case, then he wouldn't have shown the film as the reason to watch Nanoha over other magical girl shows because it's so different and awesome and whatnot. Then again, he recommends skipping the TV animes in favor of the movie series, so yeah, that's... sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't make a YouTube channel dedicated to showing people how stupid YouTubers are, but then I'd have one viewer or so, and editing videos is even more work than writing these posts. I guess I'm good. Heh.

Edited January 29, 2022 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

5 hours ago, majestic said:

If that's the case, then he wouldn't have shown the film as the reason to watch Nanoha over other magical girl shows because it's so different and awesome and whatnot. Then again, he recommends skipping the TV animes in favor of the movie series, so yeah, that's... sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't make a YouTube channel dedicated to showing people how stupid YouTubers are, but then I'd have one viewer or so, and editing videos is even more work than writing these posts. I guess I'm good. Heh.

You know, this guy is starting to sound a little like a moron.

5 hours ago, majestic said:

I laughed at the skybeam.

So...what's the deal with the skybeams? Is there some sort of humorous and stupid overuse of them in anime I don't know about?

[majestic]

19 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

So...what's the deal with the skybeams? Is there some sort of humorous and stupid overuse of them in anime I don't know about?

Not in anime, but it stupid action things, and Mike & Jay liberally complained about them being some sort of action and sci-fi/superhero film staple a while back while reviewing the Transformers movies, Avengers and some other stuff. It basically comes up every time they see a final battle in a spectacle film where some random laser beam shoots into the sky for some reason. Star Trek Picard had one too at the end.

That's why I said all this stupd film lacks now is a skybeam for the final fight, and it delivered one right on cue.

[uuuhhii]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

You know, this guy is starting to sound a little like a moron.

So...what's the deal with the skybeams? Is there some sort of humorous and stupid overuse of them in anime I don't know about?

dark cloud vortex are one of the common visual trope in anime

not exactly sky beam but close enough

[majestic]

The End of Nanoha: Detonation.

I seriously hope this is the last time I'm subjected to Nanoha stuff. I managed to get through the opening two minutes which is a recap of what happened in the first film. It gives the king a name, Dearche, and it reminded me that I've forgotten to mention that AMON, the little blonde girl, is actually called Yuri. Yuri is mind controlled by Iris, which is weird, because that should be Yuri's job, right?

No, comrade premier, it has only begun. Also, exactly my expression.

Nanoha does her spiel of offering to help Iris with whatever her issue is, Iris rejects that and Yuri gets a transformation sequence that, while it isn't actually showing her fully nude, might just be the most offensive thing in the franchise, and that's saying something considering it had hypersexualized naked minors of the first season's bath house sequence. I'm not sure what happens exactly, but it looks like Yuri's clothes burn off, leaving only shadowy, somewhat irregularly shaped blackish strips that tightly wrap around her lady parts while she howls in pain.

Images in the spoiler (think about looking at them before you click, don't blame me if you do):

Spoiler

 

Yuri's clothes burn off, because why not.

The screams are pretty bad, but honestly, who can blame her?

This scene really drags on for an uncomfortable amount of time.

Like, really, really, REALLY uncomfortable.

It's losing something with only the pictures, you'd really need to hear her scream.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEE ~pained cries~ Don't worry, we're almost done now.

Sorry, I lied.

Now we're done.

Yeah, no.

Hey, writers, animators, please, I know I complained a whole lot, but can we go back to regular nudity in the transformation sequences and leave out the shadow extremities rape implications?

You can find the opening for this piece of trash if you search for Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoah: Detonation Starting Scene on YouTube. I'll leave you with a screenshot of the top comments:

This movie makes my hemorrhoids flare up. Does that mean I am a badass or do I have a bad ass?

Time to watch the rest of this at 2.0x the speed. It's cutting it really close with the subtitles, but I don't think I can manage this without increased playback speed. Iris summons one of the giant mech kaiju things. There's an endless supply of those under the pacific ocean, apparently. Nanoha fights Yuri and uses her tried and true approach.

ION CANNON READY.

Yuri apparently knows the king and his entourage. Iris shoots Amite and then stabs Yuri through the chest. This film has gotten pretty violent, pretty quickly. Not a surprise after the ending of the last one, but still a stark contrast to the usual cartoony violence. I mean, Nanoha just unleashed GDI's Ion Cannon on Yuri and all she got from it were a few little scorch marks, and now... time to see if any of the "deaths" stick this time.

Iris takes Yuri and leaves, so that pretty much means she isn't dead, and Amite is of course fine too. What's the point of these near deadly injuries when they're handwaved away in the next scene? Risking to sound like a broken record, experiences like these served a purpose in StrikerS...

There's some exposition regarding Dearch and friends, everyone's befriending each other now that they have Iris to fight, and some backstory on the dying planet Kyrie was trying to save. It's been slowly wasting away from a pollution creep dubbed DEATH ECLIPSE. This reminds me a little of an old World of Warcraft fan content where a relatively well known German World of Warcraft player recorded his thoughts on classes in WoW.

When talking about rogues he said: When creating a rogue you need to keep in mind that you're a) true and b) EVIL. Name your character by picking a combination of DEATH, VENOM, NIGHT, SHADOW, KILLER, MASTER, DEVIL, SILENT or ASSASSIN.

Made one for every class except shaman because shaman was something he made a forum post for, not a voice recording. He referenced the rogue one in the hunter video when he says that there are two kinds of hunters in World of Warcraft, one of them being former Counter Striker players with names like Powersniper, Allikiller and Fastfragger who play with their rogue friend Shadowdeath and a shadow priest called Facemeltor in the guild Lords of Ownage.

The writers of this travesty seem to have taken a page or two out of his naming scheme playbook. DEATH ECLPISE. This anime makes Sailor Moon bad guy names look creative in comparison. I'm sorry I doubted you DEATH PHANTOM and PHARAO 90.

Levi of Lighting (lol) restores a page of the Tome of the Night Sky and it contains the background history of Iris and Yuri. Since Yuri refers to it as the Tome of the Night Sky, this plays before it was turned into the BOOK OF DARKNESS (tm). I mean, at least it should, one never knows with the hack frauds who wrote this. Iris immediately bonds with Yuri when Yuri can repair the damage caused by the DEATH ECLIPSE.

Two scientists watching the scene play out on their CCTV system say "This is like watching a friendship drama" and I kind of agree. A bad friendship drama, at that. At least it's not stupid and pointless action, but I feel like the exposition here could have been handled better. The space cop finds Iris, and Iris creates copies of herself and starts killing Space Cops by the dozen. That's cool. She clearly has style.

I love killing stuff!

The entire gang rolls out to kill endless swarms of Iris copies. Thanks to only having a movie runtime, they go from trying to kill each other to being allies in the span of half a day. I'm a little worried as there's nominally an hour left to watch, and we're already attacking Iris, or parts of her. Sigh.

ENDLESS WAVES OF MOOKS.

Iris has... or is some rapidly replicating creation system originally designed to terraform Eltoria, or to save it from DEATH ECLIPSE, at least. At least that explains where the constant supply of weird underwater mechs comes from. Iris is building them from scratch every time. Hm, that means Iris is more like RepliCarter, right? Kind of explains how she can transform stuff into weapons, and the transformers. Yay.

I am RepliCARTER. FEAR ME.

Dearche, Levi of Lightning and Stern the DESTRUCTOR end up fighing Yuri in a seizure inducing cacophony of flashing lights and yelling. This is actually making me a little queasy. Ugh. Dearche touches Yuri and there's a sudden flashback to a reveal that's so weird I have to post a picture of it.

From left to right, Stern, Dearche, Levi (guessing based on the color scheme). Because they once were Iris' and Yuri's cats.

Take me back, the way I came. I don't want to see... *sings*

Dearche talks to himself about how they were three shounen cats who wanted to repay their owner's kindness by becoming STRONG and PROTECTING them. Wow. I don't even. I'm honesty struggling to make something of this.

Eltoria Restoration Committee Leader guy and creator/father of Iris shows up, apparently not being as dead as he should be, and attacks the cats and Yuri, who is now free of the Borg nanites Iris planted in her. In a twist that nobody saw coming - I swear, it wasn't totally obvious that nice girl Yuri didn't straight up murder an entire planet, really, I entertained that notion for a while! - it now seems as if something else went wrong at Eltoria.

Creepy research guy stabs Levi and Stern (this is a stabathon, everyone gets a stab. Here a stab, there a stab, everywhere a-stab-stab!) then punches out Dearche and leaves with Yuri. Yuri can't catch a break, huh?

Flashback time to what happened back on Eltoria. The restoration project was closed down and the project leader guy, Phill Maxwell (odd, no death, devil, silent or anything) just goes and activates a cleansing program, killing everyone. Yuri stops him, but apparently not thoroughly enough. It is revealed that Iris has a secondary function as self-replicating soldier, or else Maxwell wants to reconfigure her and work for the industrial military complex.

Okay. This is after an hour of runtime, and two hours and 46 minutes into the movie duology. 50 minutes (with credits) left, and you had the idea to drop that sort of information without any prior setup? Yes, this clearly is the most awesomest Nanoha film to date. Maxwell enforces his control over Yuri and Iris and begins another seizure inducing, CGI filled battle madness with everyone. Levi and Stern decide to transmit the last of their power to Dearche, turning back into cats. Dearche the Meow Meow fusion goes off to fight Yuri.

Pew pew pew pew pew, pew pew! Meow meow moew...

Meow meow fusion ends up using all of his power, going back to Dearche!Cat and beating Yuri's mind control something out of her system, because that's how things work in this universe. You blast them with lightning until it solves all your problems.

Nanoha and Fate double ION CANNON Maxwell who vanishes in an explosion rivalling the detonation of the Soviet Union's Tsar Bomba. That did something to Iris, probably shut down her mind control too, or something. Who knows. There's also no telling if Maxwell didn't just survive his nuclear facebreaker. Hayate finishes an incantation she started a while back, and a couple of skybeams clear out all remaining forces in an instant.

Poof.

Why not start with that? Who knows. Oh right, we needed 20 minutes of seizure inducing battle madness and a whole lot of back and forth with NO TIME FOR TALKING BECAUSE THAT'S AWESOME.

Fate finally breaks my brain by putting what's left of Director Maxwell under arrest. She stands there, straight faced, looks down on Maxwell and calmly proclaims he's under arrest. He can't quite believe it himself. Neither can I.

Prime candidate for StrikerS' brain in a jar thingy, I guess. How else would you put that under arrest?

This is the best laugh in the movie, and I love it. Maxwell has transformed a satellite in orbit and now has an actual Ion Cannon waiting to obliterate parts of the city. He also built a space launch platform out of a theme park in a couple of minutes to launch a "present" for Iris into space. He wants to make a deal. Safe passage for him, Yuri and Iris in exchange for not obliterating Japan. Seems like a fair deal.

Nanoha and Amita realize it's a bluff and that the rocket launched carries the satellite cannon uplink system as it can't transmit from the ground yet (the area is protected by a space cop barrier). Fate keeps talking to Maxwell while they shoot down the rocket and Amite is again hit by one final copy of Iris, or something. Nanoha continues on to the ION CANNON and punches Copy!Iris like a boss, shooting a laser blast from her fist powerful enough to obliterate everything.

KO in round one.

Clone!Iris grabs Nanoha and self-destructs. Hey, looks like the franchise ends here. On the other hand, YouTube comment guys say they are looking forward to more Nanoha films, so Nanoha can't very well actually be dead now. Raising Heart is damaged and Nanoha is hurt, and they're floating in space. Sure. The sun is shining in Nanoha's face, that's going to be one hell of a sunburn, assuming she survives decompression somehow.

Nanoha talks to herself in a near death experience about feeling like a failure and not liking herself. That comes completely out of nowhere. It's not bad, it's just utterly baffling how this happens now, at the end of the film, for no established reason. Fate and Hayate come to pick her up. None of them have any sunburn. Ah well, it's magic, anyway.  The cats are back to being people, but are like five years old now and still need to grow.

Yeah, that's one very nice way to take a total dump on their sacrifice. Not that it had any emotional impact, but really, why do that?

Amita, Kyrie, the cats and Yuri leave, and everyone becomes friends. There's friendship to be found in almost beating each other to death. Yeah, that worked in the first season and A's because that was the point of the character development, and the action a means to an end, not the other way around. *sigh*

Yuri heals Kyrie and Amita's parents and they one again begin work to restore the planet that DEATH ECLIPSE almost killed off. Iris is still in custody but promises to make amends, and everyone forgives her. Nanoha and the gang are back at school.

A last second flash forward shows a fully restored Eltoria and grown up versions of Kyrie and Amite bringing flowers to their father's grave. Roll credits.

This film was tentatively better than Reflection, but that's like saying losing both legs is tentatively better than losing both legs and a testicle. It's still a pretty rough deal, and the beginning is just terrible. The writing quality is still in the dumps, and it has so many silly contrivances happening, craps over its own character development at leisure and has seizure inducing battles that are almost as bad as those in Rebuild, only marginally better because the scope is smaller and there's less visual noise on the screen.

I think these two are the worst animated films I've seen to date. That doesn't say much because my actual anime (and animated, even) movie experience isn't that big, but still, ugh. To drive that point home, normally when I have to watch something with fan subs because there's no other way yet, once I'm done I move it the files to my external hard disk. These two films? They just got the SHIFT+DEL treatment. If I never see them again, it'll be too soon.

Edited January 29, 2022 by majestic
Typos, formatting.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

13 minutes ago, majestic said:

The End of Nanoha: Detonation.

I seriously hope this is the last time I'm subjected to Nanoha stuff. I managed to get through the opening two minutes which is a recap of what happened in the first film. It gives the king a name, Dearche, and it reminded me that I've forgotten to mention that AMON, the little blonde girl, is actually called Yuri. Yuri is mind controlled by Iris, which is weird, because that should be Yuri's job, right?

No, comrade premier, it has only begun. Also, exactly my expression.

Nanoha does her spiel of offering to help Iris with whatever her issue is, Iris rejects that and Yuri gets a transformation sequence that, while it isn't actually showing her fully nude, might just be the most offensive thing in the franchise, and that's saying something considering it had hypersexualized naked minors of the first season's bath house sequence. I'm not sure what happens exactly, but it looks like Yuri's clothes burn off, leaving only shadowy, somewhat irregularly shaped blackish strips that tightly wrap around her lady parts while she howls in pain.

Images in the spoiler (think about looking at them before you click, don't blame me if you do):

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Yuri's clothes burn off, because why not.

The screams are pretty bad, but honestly, who can blame her?

This scene really drags on for an uncomfortable amount of time.

Like, really, really, REALLY uncomfortable.

It's losing something with only the pictures, you'd really need to hear her scream.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEE ~pained cries~ Don't worry, we're almost done now.

Sorry, I lied.

Now we're done.

Yeah, no.

Hey, writers, animators, please, I know I complained a whole lot, but can we go back to regular nudity in the transformation sequences and leave out the shadow extremities rape implications?

You can find the opening for this piece of trash if you search for Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoah: Detonation Starting Scene on YouTube. I'll leave you with a screenshot of the top comments:

This movie makes my hemorrhoids flare up. Does that mean I am a badass or do I have a bad ass?

Time to watch the rest of this at 2.0x the speed. It's cutting it really close with the subtitles, but I don't think I can manage this without increased playback speed. Iris summons one of the giant mech kaiju things. There's an endless supply of those under the pacific ocean, apparently. Nanoha fights Yuri and uses her tried and true approach.

ION CANNON READY.

Yuri apparently knows the king and his entourage. Iris shoots Amite and then stabs Yuri through the chest. This film has gotten pretty violent, pretty quickly. Not a surprise after the ending of the last one, but still a stark contrast to the usual cartoony violence. I mean, Nanoha just unleashed GDI's Ion Cannon on Yuri and all she got from it were a few little scorch marks, and now... time to see if any of the "deaths" stick this time.

Iris takes Yuri and leaves, so that pretty much means she isn't dead, and Amite is of course fine too. What's the point of these near deadly injuries when they're handwaved away in the next scene? Risking to sound like a broken record, experiences like these served a purpose in StrikerS...

There's some exposition regarding Dearch and friends, everyone's befriending each other now that they have Iris to fight, and some backstory on the dying planet Kyrie was trying to save. It's been slowly wasting away from a pollution creep dubbed DEATH ECLIPSE. This reminds me a little of an old World of Warcraft fan content where a relatively well known German World of Warcraft player recorded his thoughts on classes in WoW.

When talking about rogues he said: When creating a rogue you need to keep in mind that you're a) true and b) EVIL. Name your character by picking a combination of DEATH, VENOM, NIGHT, SHADOW, KILLER, MASTER, DEVIL, SILENT or ASSASSIN.

Made one for every class except shaman because shaman was something he made a forum post for, not a voice recording. He referenced the rogue one in the hunter video when he says that there are two kinds of hunters in World of Warcraft, one of them being former Counter Striker players with names like Powersniper, Allikiller and Fastfragger who play with their rogue friend Shadowdeath and a shadow priest called Facemeltor in the guild Lords of Ownage.

The writers of this travesty seem to have taken a page or two out of his naming scheme playbook. DEATH ECLPISE. This anime makes Sailor Moon bad guy names look creative in comparison. I'm sorry I doubted you DEATH PHANTOM and PHARAO 90.

Levi of Lighting (lol) restores a page of the Tome of the Night Sky and it contains the background history of Iris and Yuri. Since Yuri refers to it as the Tome of the Night Sky, this plays before it was turned into the BOOK OF DARKNESS (tm). I mean, at least it should, one never knows with the hack frauds who wrote this. Iris immediately bons with Yuri when Yuri can repair the damage caused by the DEATH ECLIPSE.

Two scientists watching the scene play out on their CCTV system say "This is like watching a friendship drama" and I kind of agree. A bad friendship drama, at that. At least it's not stupid and pointless action, but I feel like the exposition here could have been handled better. The space cop finds Iris, and Iris creates copies of herself and starts killing Space Cops by the dozen. That's cool. She clearly has style.

I love killing stuff!

The entire gang rolls out to kill endless swarms of Iris copies. Thanks to only having a movie runtime, they go from trying to kill each other to being allies in the span of half a day. I'm a little worried as there's nominally an hour left to watch, and we're already attacking Iris, or parts of her. Sigh.

ENDLESS WAVES OF MOOKS.

Iris has... or is some rapidly replicating creation system originally designed to terraform Eltoria, or to save it from DEATH ECLIPSE, at least. At least that explains where the constant supply of weird underwater mechs comes from. Iris is building them from scratch every time. Hm, that means Iris is more like RepliCarter, right? Kind of explains how she can transform stuff into weapons, and the transformers. Yay.

I am RepliCARTER. FEAR ME.

Dearche, Levi of Lightning and Stern the DESTRUCTOR end up fighing Yuri in a seizure inducing cacophony of flashing lights and yelling. This is actually making me a little queasy. Ugh. Dearche touches Yuri and there's a sudden flashback to a reveal that's so weird I have to post a picture of it.

From left to right, Stern, Dearche, Levi (guessing based on the color scheme). Because they once were Iris' and Yuri's cats.

Take me back, the way I came. I don't want to see... *sings*

Dearch talks to himself about how they were three shounen cats who wanted to repay their owner's kindness by becoming STRONG and PROTECTING them. Wow. I don't even. I'm honesty struggling to make something of this.

Eltoria Restoration Committee Leader guy and creator/father of Iris shows up, apparently not being as dead as he should be, and attacks the cats and Yuri, who is now free of the Borg nanites Iris planted in her. In a twist that nobody saw coming - I swear, it wasn't totally obvious that nice girl Yuri didn't straight up murder an entire planet, really, I entertained that notion for a while! - it now seems as if something else went wrong at Eltoria.

Creepy research guy stabs Levi and Stern (this is a stabathon, everyone gets a stab. Here a stab, there a stab, everywhere a-stab-stab!) then punches out Dearche and leaves with Yuri. Yuri can't catch a break, huh?

Flashback time to what happened back on Eltoria. The restoration project was closed down and the project leader guy, Phill Maxwell (odd, no death, devil, silent or anything) just goes and activates a cleansing program, killing everyone. Yuri stops him, but apparently not thoroughly enough. It is revealed that Iris has a secondary function as self-replicating soldier, or else Maxwell wants to reconfigure her and work for the industrial military complex.

Okay. This is after an hour of runtime, and two hours and 46 minutes into the movie duology. 50 minutes (with credits) left, and you had the idea to drop that sort of information without any prior setup? Yes, this clearly is the most awesomest Nanoha film to date. Maxwell enforces his control over Yuri and Iris and begins another seizure inducing, CGI filled battle madness with everyone. Levi and Stern decide to transmit the last of their power to Dearche, turning back into cats. Dearche the Meow Meow fusion goes off to fight Yuri.

Pew pew pew pew pew, pew pew! Meow meow moew...

Meow meow fusion ends up using all of his power, going back to Dearche!Cat and beating Yuri's mind control something out of her system, because that's how things work in this universe. You blast them with lightning until it solves all your problems.

Nanoha and Fate double ION CANNON Maxwell who vanishes in an explosion rivalling the detonation of the Soviet Union's Tsar Bomba. That did something to Iris, probably shut down her mind control too, or something. Who knows. There's also no telling if Maxwell didn't just survive his nuclear facebreaker. Hayate finishes an incantation she started a while back, and a couple of skybeams clear out all remaining forces in an instant.

Poof.

Why not start with that? Who knows. Oh right, we needed 20 minutes of seizure inducing battle madness and a whole lot of back and forth with NO TIME FOR TALKING BECAUSE THAT'S AWESOME.

Fate finally breaks my brain by putting what's left of Director Maxwell under arrest. She stands there, straight faced, looks down on Maxwell and calmly proclaims he's under arrest. He can't quite believe it himself. Neither can I.

Prime candidate for StrikerS' brain in a jar thingy, I guess. How else would you put that under arrest?

This is the best laugh in the movie, and I love it. Maxwell has transformed a satellite in orbit and now has an actual Ion Cannon waiting to obliterate parts of the city. He also built a space launch platform out of a theme park in a couple of minutes to launch a "present" for Iris into space. He wants to make a deal. Safe passage for him, Yuri and Iris in exchange for not obliterating Japan. Seems like a fair deal.

Nanoha and Amita realize it's a bluff and that the rocket launched carries the satellite cannon uplink system as it can't transmit from the ground yet (the area is protected by a space cop barrier). Fate keeps talking to Maxwell while they shoot down the rocket and Amite is again hit by one final copy of Iris, or something. Nanoha continues on to the ION CANNON and punches Copy!Iris like a boss, shooting a laser blast from her fist powerful enough to obliterate everything.

KO in round one.

Clone!Iris grabs Nanoha and self-destructs. Hey, looks like the franchise ends here. On the other hand, YouTube comment guys say they are looking forward to more Nanoha films, so Nanoha can't very well actually be dead now. Raising Heart is damaged and Nanoha is hurt, and they're floating in space. Sure. The sun is shining in Nanoha's face, that's going to be one hell of a sunburn, assuming she survives decompression somehow.

Nanoha talks to herself in a near death experience about feeling like a failure and not liking herself. That comes completely out of nowhere. It's not bad, it's just utterly baffling how this happens now, at the end of the film, for no established reason. Fate and Hayate come to pick her up. None of them have any sunburn. Ah well, it's magic, anyway.  The cats are back to being people, but are like five years old now and still need to grow.

Yeah, that's one very nice way to take a total dump on their sacrifice. Not that it had any emotional impact, but really, why do that?

Amita, Kyrie, the cats and Yuri leave, and everyone becomes friends. There's friendship to be found in almost beating each other to death. Yeah, that worked in the first season and A's because that was the point of the character development, and the action a means to an end, not the other way around. *sigh*

Yuri heals Kyrie and Amita's parents and they one again begin work to restore the planet that DEATH ECLIPSE almost killed off. Iris is still in custody but promises to make amends, and everyone forgives her. Nanoha and the gang are back at school.

A last second flash forward shows a fully restored Eltoria and grown up versions of Kyrie and Amite bringing flowers to their father's grave. Roll credits.

This film was tentatively better than Reflection, but that's like saying losing both legs is tentatively better to losing both legs and a testicle. It's still a pretty rough deal, and the beginning is just terrible. The writing quality is still in the dumps, and it has so many silly contrivances happening, craps over its own character development at leisure and has seizure inducing battles that are almost as bad as those in Rebuild, only marginally better because the scope is smaller and there's less visual noise on the screen.

I think these two are the worst animated films I've seen to date. That doesn't say much because my actual anime (and animated, even) movie experience isn't that big, but still, ugh. To drive that point home, normally when I have to watch something with fan subs because there's no other way yet, once I'm done I move it the files to my external hard disk. These two films? They just got the SHIFT+DEL treatment. If I never see them again, it'll be too soon.

ZA HANDO!

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

You can find the opening for this piece of trash if you search for Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoah: Detonation Starting Scene on YouTube. I'll leave you with a screenshot of the top comments:

Haha, that first comment broke my brain - started laughing out loud for a solid 30 to 45 seconds after I read it, starting with a Picard facepalm. The exact way they said that is phrased as if they were being completely sarcastic...and yet, in the back of my head, I knew that they were not being sarcastic, and so that juxtaposition was just hilarious*. I guess you have a better idea of who this garbage is made for now...and you're now armed with the knowledge that StrikerS (and even the original series) were complete aberrations. You really need to implement my "[X] doesn't exist after [this date] because I decided it doesn't anymore" OCD-avoiding cheat, at the very least. I mean really, what if I sent you an .mp4 entitled "Sailor Moon S Super Secret Lost Episode!" and it was actually the first episode of Sazae-san or something (+8000 episodes!) - would you still try to watch all of them?

*Although the commenter probably meant that it isn't filled with idiotic pointless internal monologues or any kind of equal that I would agree do tend to unnecessarily burden any show that makes frequent use of them, what they said was "[no] pauses for talking", and that's a different thing entirely.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

The writers of this travesty seem to have taken a page or two out of his naming scheme playbook. DEATH ECLPISE. This anime makes Sailor Moon bad guy names look creative in comparison. I'm sorry I doubted you DEATH PHANTOM and PHARAO 90.

Man, looking back, a lot of the parts of Sailor Moon's main story feel like they don't even belong in Sailor Moon to me. Any time I ever think about Death Phantom or Black Lady or the circus crap from SuperS or even the non-silly Hotaru/Professor Tomoe stuff from S...pretty much anything besides defeating Queen Beryl from season 1 and I guess the Sailor Starlight stuff from season 5 to a degree isn't even really like a part of the Sailor Moon canon in my head.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Meow meow fusion ends up using all of his power, going back to Dearche!Cat and beating Yuri's mind control something out of her system, because that's how things work in this universe. You blast them with lightning until it solves all your problems.

The beatings will continue until morale improves the mind control situation improves.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

To drive that point home, normally when I have to watch something with fan subs because there's no other way yet, once I'm done I move it the files to my external hard disk. These two films? They just got the SHIFT+DEL treatment. If I never see them again, it'll be too soon.

Edited January 29, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

16 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Haha, that first comment broke my brain - started laughing out loud for a solid 30 to 45 seconds after I read it, starting with a Picard facepalm. The exact way they said that is phrased as if they were being completely sarcastic...and yet, in the back of my head, I knew that they were not being sarcastic, and so that juxtaposition was just hilarious*.

*Although the commenter probably meant that it isn't filled with idiotic pointless internal monologues or any kind of equal that I would agree do tend to unnecessarily burden any show that makes frequent use of them, what they said was "[no] pauses for talking", and that's a different thing entirely.

I'm almost certain that comment kind of applies in-universe to a degree to the better entries in the franchise. Outside of these movies and the ViVids that focused on magically enhanced martial arts nonsense, the combat in 魔法少女リリカルなのは (the kanji for magic is barely readable at this font size, huh?)  is relatively slow paced and has some free-action talking moments. I can see people who really enjoyed these two fusterclucks saying that about the more JRPG-esque turn based feel of the earlier Nanoha combat.

Of course there's every chance he means other shounen nonsense that uses internal monologue for filler, I hear DBZ did that to ridiculous degrees at times.

16 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

You really need to implement my "[X] doesn't exist after [this date] because I decided it doesn't anymore" OCD-avoiding cheat, at the very least. I mean really, what if I sent you an .mp4 entitled "Sailor Moon S Super Secret Lost Episode!" and it was actually the first episode of Sazae-san or something (+8000 episodes!) - would you still try to watch all of them?

I kind of expect that there's no way to actually watch all Sazae-san episodes, so that's a problem which doesn't arise in the first place. I've watched the new Doctor Who series (the one that began back in 2005) without feeling the need to go all the way back to the 60ies and watch everything - but mostly because there are episode that are just gone, and what's the point when you can't complete it anyway? Especially since old Doctor Who often has four to six episodes in a story arc and then there's the last episode missing? I'm not that insane.

Funnily enough the talking about the Blood franchise a couple of pages back is currently the biggest issue, because I want to check out that first Blood film, but assuming I even like that a bit I'll end up watching Blood+, and I really don't want to.

Now, if you'd somehow manage to trick me into watching a Pretty Cure episode and, heaven forbid, it's at least decent, now then I really would have a problem.

16 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Man, looking back, a lot of the parts of Sailor Moon's main story feel like they don't even belong in Sailor Moon to me. Any time I ever think about Death Phantom or Black Lady or the circus crap from SuperS or even the non-silly Hotaru/Professor Tomoe stuff from S...pretty much anything besides defeating Queen Beryl from season 1 and I guess the Sailor Starlight stuff from season 5 to a degree isn't even really like a part of the Sailor Moon canon in my head.

I agree on the final parts of the R storyline (although bonus points for actually being able to make the death of Saphir something I felt bad about) and everything in SuperS, but the more serious Hotaru and Professor parts of Sailor Moon S weren't that bad, although... they were much better in my memories than they actually ended up being on the rewatch. Except maybe the episode where Hotaru just floats out of the frame and transforms into Mistress 9. Not sure if that was intentional camp or not, but that was just awesome.

Nostalgia goggles kind of made Hotaru better as a character than she actually was. Funny how perspectives shift, the intense dislike for Chibi-Usa is gone while Hotaru no longer really worked as a woobie. Hmmm.

Sailor Stars' ending is a mess. Unlike KP, I thought it was a good attempt. Pacing is all over the place, that was six episodes with the content for three at best. Instead of giving the Inner Senshi something to do, they're done away with excessively quickly, then we have a lot of meandering in between and the final episode could have used some more time to breathe. Yet I thought it was fine and I probably give it more credit than it deserves.

The storyline of the first season is the most coherent and has a concise ending, but it's also the least interesting of them all.

I think the biggest reason why they feel like they don't belong to the same anime isn't that they're not the most interesting or convincing or even decently written storylines, even though all of that is true to a degree, it's how disconnected they are from the "filler" episodes, might as well be watching a completely different anime in a different genre.

16 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

The beatings will continue until morale improves the mind control situation improves.

That's something that was part of the franchise, but like Mike and Jay sometimes say when they're watching a film that is especially strange, it feels like these two Nanoha films were made by aliens that watched the first three seasons and recreated something similar but without the knowledge or appreciation of what made the series different. The result is two fast paced, action packed spectacle films with no narrative coherence.

It's true that Nanoha befriended Fate and the Belkan Knights after having to deal with them for a season, but that's part of what the seasons were about. There was enough time, not just "blast character to acquire friendship" like the comments say. That's ridiculous. Imagine Usagi would blast the Spectre Sisters with MOON CRYSTAL POWER without any prior interactions and they'd get up and everyone would hug each other and say YAY WE'RE FRIENDS NOW, because that's essentially what's in those two films and the fans love it because that's soooooo "Nanoha" and what?

That franchise has a fandumb that rivals that of NGE, although that's not very surprising, I guess.

Also, hilarious comments everywhere:

Hey, wanna talk about who would be stronger? Sailor Moon and Sailor Saturn vs. Blue, Pink, Yellow and White? Saturn would just cast DEATH REBORN REVOLUTION and it's over, right? RIGHT?

*blink*

This one got it almost right:

Yeah, that's a no on both accounts, Dave.

And finally...

So... there's this Madoka mobile phone game called Magia Record and there's a rare Nanoha character in it and suddenly it all makes sense. This is all Kyubey's fault. All of it.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

24 minutes ago, majestic said:

This is all Kyubey's fault. All of it.

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, majestic said:

I agree on the final parts of the R storyline (although bonus points for actually being able to make the death of Saphir something I felt bad about) and everything in SuperS, but the more serious Hotaru and Professor parts of Sailor Moon S weren't that bad, although... they were much better in my memories than they actually ended up being on the rewatch. Except maybe the episode where Hotaru just floats out of the frame and transforms into Mistress 9. Not sure if that was intentional camp or not, but that was just awesome.

It's not that they're universally bad, it's more that they just don't feel like they belong to the show in my head for some reason. It's probably a function of it being arguably the least important part of the show for me by and large...meanwhile, it's apparently the most to a number of other viewers. Maybe also because a lot of it feels pretty tonally disconnected from the otherwise pretty silly lives of the group...

3 hours ago, majestic said:

The storyline of the first season is the most coherent and has a concise ending, but it's also the least interesting of them all.

I think the biggest reason why they feel like they don't belong to the same anime isn't that they're not the most interesting or convincing or even decently written storylines, even though all of that is true to a degree, it's how disconnected they are from the "filler" episodes, might as well be watching a completely different anime in a different genre.

Oh, yeah, I guess you said that before I wrote it.

3 hours ago, majestic said:

Of course there's every chance he means other shounen nonsense that uses internal monologue for filler, I hear DBZ did that to ridiculous degrees at times.

Worst example I can think of that I've experienced is still My Hero Academia. Multiple pauses for pathetic minute-long monologues in the same fight that would otherwise be 20-30 seconds long. Man, screw that show.

3 hours ago, majestic said:

Funnily enough the talking about the Blood franchise a couple of pages back is currently the biggest issue, because I want to check out that first Blood film, but assuming I even like that a bit I'll end up watching Blood+, and I really don't want to.

It's just 50 episodes of edgy, boring shonen trash - what's the problem?

3 hours ago, majestic said:

Hey, wanna talk about who would be stronger? Sailor Moon and Sailor Saturn vs. Blue, Pink, Yellow and White? Saturn would just cast DEATH REBORN REVOLUTION and it's over, right? RIGHT?

Yes, what a terribly interesting subject, especially in a series where the heroes are just arbitrarily given new power-ups whenever the writers decide that the old one wasn't quite powerful enough for whatever reason even though it makes no functional difference 99.9% of the time.

3 hours ago, majestic said:

So... there's this Madoka mobile phone game called Magia Record and there's a rare Nanoha character in it and suddenly it all makes sense. This is all Kyubey's fault. All of it.

Oh, so Nanoha was actually a JRPG.

Edited January 30, 2022 by Bartimaeus
they -> they're

[uuuhhii]

this is why many shonen reader just stick with manga

even early seiya have 15 minute recap at the start of the episode

one piece have recap episode for every major character in the middle of an arc

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Aggretsuko s2: AI and marriage.

Nice and fun without being too heavy.

[majestic]

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

It's just 50 episodes of edgy, boring shonen trash - what's the problem?

No, no problem with my droid. I mean, with Blood+.

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yes, what a terribly interesting subject, especially in a series where the heroes are just arbitrarily given new power-ups whenever the writers decide that the old one wasn't quite powerful enough for whatever reason even though it makes no functional difference 99.9% of the time.

Oh come on, what about when Mamoru and Usagi make their love rod? *scnr*

Yeah, these my dad can beat up your dad discussions are pretty pointless, and they're not getting any more interesting when comparing magical girls, or starships, or... speaking of starships, there are videos on YouTube where people calculate the potential power output of Star Wars starships and compare them to Federation ones in order to find out if the Enterprise would win against the Executor in a fight.

Why are we trying to contain climate change again?

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Oh, so Nanoha was actually a JRPG.

I, of course, immediately set out to find out what is what. I already knew that Nanoha was a side character in an H-game, but there are also two fighting games based on the series and a card game for mobile phones. That's the good news. The bad news is that there are a whole lot of what once were Flash games and now is something else, almost all in Japanese, with Nanoha content so terrible it singed my eyes and broke my brain.

Do not google Nanoha games. Like, ever. Also, please, like NEVER EVER look at Nanoha merchandise. Why did I do that? What is WRONG WITH ME?

Spoiler

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Magical-Girl-Lyrical-Nanoha-Vivio/dp/B006AYJRJU

Yes, that's a Nanoha sheet, and it's... uhm, listed as for girls, at least on the German Amazon page. Yeah, I'm sure that's... accurate. Oh so accurate.

 

Edited January 30, 2022 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

40 minutes ago, majestic said:

these my dad can beat up your dad discussions are pretty pointless

Yeah, the real discussion is on who has the most style.

Anyways Aggretsuko s3 ep1. There is now a unicorn. Instead of chasing underage girls, he promotes microtransactions in a dating videogame.

[majestic]

2 minutes ago, KP on top of ZA WARUDO said:

Yeah, the real discussion is on who has the most style.

Do I win?