Anime and Manga - I respect the first human to have eaten a mushroom

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

15 minutes ago, majestic said:

No. No no no no no no no. No.

No.

Nooooooo! Please no. Dear god why. And why the comments. No. Nooooooo!

 

 

 

I'm sure as hell not clicking on that trailer.

[HoonDing]

Prepare to cry with the UsaMamo's wedding scene in this final arc, just like the wedding of Nobita & Shizuka in "Doraemon: Stand By Me 2".

[majestic]

12 hours ago, HoonDing said:

Prepare to cry with the UsaMamo's wedding scene in this final arc, just like the wedding of Nobita & Shizuka in "Doraemon: Stand By Me 2".

I am going to cry while watching this. Tears of frustration, rage and bitter disappointment while it is running, and finally tears of joy when it is all over and hopefully forever gone to never come back ever again. If George Lucas can be said to have ruined people's childhood with the prequels one could say that Crystal/Eternal/Cosmos sodomizes the Baby Jesus. Everyone involved will end up next to Brutus, Judas and Lucifer in the final ring of hell, frozen for all eternity for the greatest crimes against humanity.

Edited May 1, 2022 by majestic
Stupid-ass phone making them weird apostrophes and stupid formatting!

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

34 minutes ago, majestic said:

If George Lucas can be said to have ruined people‘s childhood with the prequels

All things considered, the prequels look better with the hindsight of the sequels. I mean, they're not great by any means and Lucas' best is probably American Graffiti, but they did have a consistent idea behind them while the sequels were made with no overarching idea besides making Mickey money. And it shows, we can laugh at Darth Edgelord or podracing but all of that was better than the remake of IV. If there is a brightside to the sequels, it's that aspiring writers can take solace in that "somehow Palpatine has come back to life" was good enough for one of the biggest movie studios to go with a tentpole film.

[majestic]

I'm half an hour into Bubble, and I don't think this is going to have a happy ending. The foreshadowing is... as subtle as being hit with a sledgehammer, and considering who wrote this film I'd be really weird if this won't end in some dour and depressing, well, or at the least really bitter sweet ending. I'm not going to complain about the animation or the art style, it doesn't burn my eyes like Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop and it doesn't look as dizzyingly choppy as Orbital Children did, but it's not perfectly smooth either and it looks the way animation looks in this day and age. I can tilt at windmills as much as I want, it's not going to change any time soon.

Way too tired from today's social activities to finish the film now. Also, for @KP wants Blue Velvet: Komi is back...

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Just now, majestic said:

Komi is back...

You know who else is back?

DIO! But only in flashbacks, where he seduces a young priest and talks about going to heaven.

[majestic]

On 4/30/2022 at 3:33 AM, Bartimaeus said:

How obnoxious! That, or the people posting screenshots of it are obnoxious by trying to wow me with stupid particle spam.

The bubbles are an integral part of the film, but there are enough scenes without them, so that's by far and large on the people taking these sceneshots and probably being impressed by them. It does look a bit better in animation than it does on stills, at least - however, that is fairly subjective.

On 4/29/2022 at 11:19 PM, Sarex said:

I think Bartimaeus and majestic would have a seizure watching this (I would laugh my ass off if they ended up liking it).

You can start laughing half your ass off, at least, because I thoroughly enjoyed the film. Shocking, I know. In all fairness, I'm a bit surprised by that myself. Sure there are some weak points, and to be honest I could have done without the sledgehammer style foreshadowing. It was pretty apparent how this is going to go even without it. However, in all fairness, we're talking about a Japanese film, and I'm not exactly certain how much of a staple the story this is based on is in Japan.

Bubble (バブル)

The damndest thing happens right at the start as the film opens with a Warner Bros. logo. I'm not watching too many anime films, all in all, so this was new for me, at least. What @Sarex called an exposition dump is probably one of two things, the first being a "the story so far..." segment being narrated by one of the film's characters fifteen minutes into the film. It doesn't matter too much for the film overall, just explains the setting and how we got there. In a live action feature, this would be the intro credits with a whole lot of newspaper headlines that explain why the city in question is all but abandoned and what was going on. This is fine, in my opinion, by far and large. You can leave the audience alone in trying to figure out what happened, or add such exposition organically, but for that it would have to be an entirely different film.

The second, more problematic one, is Makoto reading a story to Uta. What this means, and why it is a problem that can and does detract a little - or a whole lot, depending on how forgiving one feels at the time - from the film, will be talked about in a spoiler below. One instance in particular feels like an ex post facto explanation dump for the hard of thinking.

There's also a teeny tinesy wittle bit of fanservice, of course, because you can't have anime without it, apparently. It consists mostly of anime boob inflation syndrome and a couple of awkward sitting and standing position to expose the features of Makoto. It's fairly mild and not a whole lot, but it feels more out of place in this film than in other anime stuff, so it's kind of awkward when it does happen.

Anyway, the film contains a bunch of characters, and most of them have one thing in common: They're not entirely worth mentioning. The feature is by far and large about the two leads, Hibiki and Uta, and the next most important character is Makoto. So these are the ones to talk about. In an anime series, the other characters would probably also get some character development, but with a movie with a runtime of 1:40, there are limits to what can be done, and I'm certain even at that length this film is going to feel overly long (insert Mike Stoklasa stupid face going "Boooooooooring!" here) for a whole lot of anime fans.

So, to "spoil" the exposition dump that happens, because it only sets the background, the film is set in Tokyo after a global bubble rain phenomenon happened. For some unknown reason, an incident at Tokyo Tower (it always is the Tokyo Tower, after all) concentrates all the bubbles in the area, flooding the city and distorting gravity, causing Tokyo to be abandoned. Mostly, at least, beacuse a group of orphans having nowhere else to go and some daredevils, of course, just have to make use of the gravity distortions to create the world's most... unique parkour. Forming teams, they compete for resources, fame, and in the case of one group, streaming viewership. After a brief intro, the film begins with one of these competitions.

One thing is fairly notable, and that was a big surprise, this is the first time I've seen 3D animation effects giving some of the scenes depth in a way that did not look completely uncanny. It doesn't work in every scene, but some of the parkour running they do has a certain amount of 3D animation that did not weird me out. I'm not going to say the film looks good, some of the backgrounds are fine, but the character design is, quite frankly, very modern. You know the type. 2010s, 2020ies apparently too.

Characters of note

Hibiki

Hibiki suffers from hyperacusis and for that reason always walks - runs and jumps, because he's by far and large the parkour star - around with earmuffs simply to stop the onslaught of sound. He apparently can hear things the others can't, and for that reason is capable of using what's left of the bubble rain as platforms to jump on, giving him a distinct advantage over other competitors. Otherwise a loner, he by far and large wins the matches for his team.

Makoto

Not many images online, and I don't feel like making one myself.

Makoto has three jobs in this film. First, her bust grows as demanded and is strategically placed where it can be seen, secondly she serves as exposition dump character for both the background story narration and the reading of a certain story to Uta, and thirdly she's a sort of super flimsy explanation as to why these kids are allowed to run around in an obviously dangerous area without intervention. She's a scientist, always collecting data and once mentions that if the kids don't reign their more risk taking adventures in, she's going to have to report them. That suggests whoever is in charge is cool with children being in danger, just as long as it yields decent observations. Sounds creepy, but the film isn't doing anything with that.

Uta

If you think Uta looks like an anime character, then that's because she is. In a different way than you might think.

Uta is the other lead character. Her name means song (歌, spelled ウタ in katakana in the film), which is the name given to her by the group after she sings a song that Hibiki has been obsessing over for a long while. A song that also more or less serves as a small theme throughout the film. Uta looks like she came straight from an anime, with a sailor fuku with a short skirt and stockings with mismatched colors. For all intents and purposes she's a manic pixie girl. She's really strange, but her presence is a positive influence on Hibiki.

So that's about all we can talk about without going into spoilers.

Spoiler

First and foremost, the film is a modern version of The Little Mermaid, which is also the story Makoto reads to Uta at some point, just to make sure the audience gets what they were just seeing on screen. Uta forms from one of the bubbles that are apparently sentient beings while Hibiki is trapped under water and drowning. She takes the shape of a girl from an ad she sees - hence why she looks like an anime character and that is why her outfit stands out so much. Not originally being from Earth and now having human shape, she has this childlike curiosity and strange demeanor that make her one of the better justified manic pixie dream girls in film and TV.

In the film, she's the little mermaid, and Hibiki is her prince, and like in the original tale, she's destined to lose her life while saving his. This is the biggest problem of the film - not that it is a retelling of an old fairy tale, although that's certainly something I generally don't care about too much (see my posts about the Sailor Moon SuperS film or Princess Tutu) - but that the exposition for this is fairly crude. Uta picks The Little Mermaid as the book she wants Makoto to read to her, and sometimes the film cuts back to Makoto narrating the story to Uta just to make sure that the audience understands what's going on.

It is shown fairly early that contact with human skin (or at least with Hibiki, who is the only one that Uta tries to touch) reverts the parts of her body that come into contact back into bubbles. And, like in the little mermaid, that is of course what happens at the end of the film. She saves Hibiki from her sisters (the other bubbles try to kill off Hibiki because they anchor Uta to this world, or at least that's one way to interpret what happened) and turns into sea foam. Well, bubbles.

The reason why this crude exposition doesn't destroy the film for me is because it's good enough otherwise. It's fun to watch Uta learn to be a part of the team, and in the process manages to integrate Hibiki more into the collective as well. It doesn't matter that she does stupid things like accidentially crushing eggs by holding them with too much pressure, or that she tries to eat a shell. She's an alien in human form.

There's also the rest of the film that isn't narrated so much and sometimes reminded me an awful lot of Annihilation. Not in tone, but in style. Some things are never truly explained, and work all the better for it.

Ultimately, I wish there would have been less of a sledge hammer applied to certain parts of the film, but overall, this was still really good. Not sure I can really recommend it though. It does have its weaknesses, in the end, but when something works for me, it works.

Edited May 1, 2022 by majestic

[Sarex]

I am now seriously thinking of giving it another go and to try to get over the hump, although I am going to have to disagree with you regarding the animation, it's all over the place quality wise.

 

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Not sure I can really recommend it though. It does have its weaknesses, in the end, but when something works for me, it works.

You're just afraid of a repeat of Madoka, aren't ya?

[majestic]

7 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

You're just afraid of a repeat of Madoka, aren't ya?

It is from the same writer and the writing shares some of the ups and downs, so why yes, indeed, and not without reason I would argue.

43 minutes ago, Sarex said:

I am now seriously thinking of giving it another go and to try to get over the hump, although I am going to have to disagree with you regarding the animation, it's all over the place quality wise.

 

I said it does not make me want to gouge my eyes out and that some of the 3D animation works relatively well instead of being a complete failure. Faint praise, all in all.  

[Sarex]

37 minutes ago, majestic said:

I said it does not make me want to gouge my eyes out and that some of the 3D animation works relatively well instead of being a complete failure. Faint praise, all in all.  

Hmmmm... From you that is mighty praise.

[majestic]

Komi is the same as it was when it went on hiatus. It's nice when it is only Komi and Tadano, and falls apart when anyone else shows up. Makes-Komi-eat-a-sausage stalker girl and Dragon-girl have a WHO LIKES KOMI MORE competition. Yes, it was as bad as it sounds.

[Sarex]

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/asus-unveils-limited-edition-neon-genesis-evangelion-motherboard.html

 

[Bartimaeus]

Not quite the right shades of purple or (to a lesser extent) green, even if you assume this is for Rebuild, but I guess it's not the worst thing in the world.

(e): That or the pictures aren't right - that's certainly possible too, but the green is a little too neon and the purple is pretty clearly too deep and vibrant. Looks like a very slightly off-brand Unit-01. Someone might've just jacked up the contrast and vibrancy on the photos, though.

Edited May 2, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 hours ago, Sarex said:

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/asus-unveils-limited-edition-neon-genesis-evangelion-motherboard.html

 

Can it can devour Angels and cause the Near Third Impact?

Edited May 2, 2022 by KP wants Blue Velvet

[Sarex]

57 minutes ago, KP wants Blue Velvet said:

Can it can devour Angels and cause the Near Third Impact?

It can devour cash and impact you valet...

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Komi Can't Communicate: s1 part 2 episode 13

Naijimi uses the Behelit to sacrifice their friends and......oh wait, wrong anime. Uh, there was a guy version of Komi and some videogames. I don't really remember much else because I was cleaning up the kitchen with Komi playing in the background. As the pattern seems to go for this show, I'm more bored than offended like @majestic seems to be.

Netflix is also trying to get me to watch Bubble, which I may check out when I'm in the mood for a sledgehammer (of exposition) to the face.

14 minutes ago, Sarex said:

It can devour cash and impact you valet...

Well we can't have that. Sorry Shinji, you'll have to get in someone else's robot.

[Bartimaeus]

Something a friend linked me:

With an emphasis on shoujo-y characters instead of seinen-y action, it could be great. Unfortunately, my bet is that with actual adult characters, it would probably go the latter's way...

(e): Princess Tutu, episode 8 finally. Probably my second favorite episode so far, and it seemed like we finally moved the story along in a way that wasn't essentially a repeat of an earlier episode. I don't hate repetition, but since I'm still not exactly in love with the show, it's more noticeable here that most of the episodes have been structured the exact same way over and over.

Edited May 3, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

Bubble. The heck kind of screwed up nightmare hellscape are these people living in? The CGI is horrific, so right off the bat, I can't agree with majestic there - of course, I'm famously more sensitive about these things than even he is to begin with. Even the 2D character animation is pretty choppy...and for the love of all that is holy, please stop doing the terrifying close-ups. They go to a pretty different art style when they do closeups that makes everyone start looking like Handsome Squidward.

You really don't want to look like Handsome Squidward, okay?

My biggest complaint about Uta is the mouth sounds. Oh, how I hate the mouth sounds, even when the VAs aren't breathing into their microphones like they were during that 12 minutes or so of Steins;gate that I watched.

Anyways, I got through a third of the film before being "eh, I just realized I don't care that much", but hey, still better than the two latter Rebuild films, but unlike those, I'm not being compelled to watch this, .

Edited May 3, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

11 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

With an emphasis on shoujo-y characters instead of seinen-y action, it could be great. Unfortunately, my bet is that with actual adult characters, it would probably go the latter's way...

Stephen King's IT, magical girl edition?

It could be worse than seinen-y action. It could be a full blown josei. Now, while I have to admit to have seen preciously little of those, the descriptions I've read of them are all horrible. I'd rather take Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS than, say, My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness or Princess Jellyfish. Still, could be a fun idea, all in all. Fighting evil by the moonlight, winning bread by daylight? Jealous husband would hire a private eye to see where his wife goes off to at night all the time, only to find out that she goes anime cosplaying with her old friends from school.

"It's not what it looks like, honey!" "No darling, it's worse, I thought you were cheating on me, but you're an otaku! Why can't you have an affair like everyone else?"

The problem is, in the end, it would most likely turn into something like Charmed. Husband and/or love interest of the lead character would be the bad guy or the leader of the bad guys, or super stupid ecchi comedy like a more adult version of Magic User's Club ("Shoot out of your wand!" "Don't say such filthy things!" "Himiko, maybe you should have your legs..." "I wasn't planning on wearing a mini skirt today!"). Try as I might, there aren't many good ideas I can come up with. A whole lot of bad ones, a whole lot of stupid ecchi stuff, but really, something good? Yeah, dunno. No, scrap that, please let's turn the Miyu idea into reality. Thanks!

12 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

(e): Princess Tutu, episode 8 finally. Probably my second favorite episode so far, and it seemed like we finally moved the story along in a way that wasn't essentially a repeat of an earlier episode. I don't hate repetition, but since I'm still not exactly in love with the show, it's more noticeable here that most of the episodes have been structured the exact same way over and over.

The worst is yet to come in season two where it suddenly drops into having repetition after it was thankfully gone from a show that does not truly benefit from it. Now, we could debate the merits and issues of repetition, but some shows make better use of it than others, and for some it matters less than for others. Tutu's repetition is kind of the bad kind, all in all.

[Bartimaeus]

1 minute ago, majestic said:

Stephen King's IT, magical girl edition?

It could be worse than seinen-y action. It could be a full blown josei. Now, while I have to admit to have seen preciously little of those, the descriptions I've read of them are all horrible. I'd rather take Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS than, say, My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness or Princess Jellyfish. Still, could be a fun idea, all in all. Fighting evil by the moonlight, winning bread by daylight? Jealous husband would hire a private eye to see where his wife goes off to at night all the time, only to find out that she goes anime cosplaying with her old friends from school.

"It's not what it looks like, honey!" "No darling, it's worse, I thought you were cheating on me, but you're an otaku! Why can't you have an affair like everyone else?"

The problem is, in the end, it would most likely turn into something like Charmed. Husband and/or love interest of the lead character would be the bad guy or the leader of the bad guys, or super stupid ecchi comedy like a more adult version of Magic User's Club ("Shoot out of your wand!" "Don't say such filthy things!" "Himiko, maybe you should have your legs..." "I wasn't planning on wearing a mini skirt today!"). Try as I might, there aren't many good ideas I can come up with. A whole lot of bad ones, a whole lot of stupid ecchi stuff, but really, something good? Yeah, dunno. No, scrap that, please let's turn the Miyu idea into reality. Thanks!

Yeah, it's pretty easy to think of all sorts of ways it would easily be terrible if you assume it's going to be aimed at the lowest common denominator for a given set of genres/a demographic. And maybe I'm part of the lowest common denominator for shoujo, but if so, that's a badge I'd wear pretty proudly in comparison to the alternatives.

4 minutes ago, majestic said:

The worst is yet to come in season two where it suddenly drops into having repetition after it was thankfully gone from a show that does not truly benefit from it. Now, we could debate the merits and issues of repetition, but some shows make better use of it than others, and for some it matters less than for others. Tutu's repetition is kind of the bad kind, all in all.

If I liked the characters, themes, and storytelling just a little bit more, it might not be so glaring, but I just don't have much love for any of it. Tomoyo are probably the two that I like the most, and that's pretty much just because they're Tomoyo...and they aren't even around that much. Hell, I don't even know their names, I'm literally just calling the two of them Tomoyo!

[majestic]

24 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Bubble. The heck kind of screwed up nightmare hellscape are these people living in? The CGI is horrific, so right off the bat, I can't agree with majestic there - of course, I'm famously more sensitive about these things than even he is to begin with. Even the 2D character animation is pretty choppy...and for the love of all that is holy, please stop doing the terrifying close-ups.

  Yeah, dunno, I was mostly talking about the depth-effects of the parkour running, there are some scenes where the characters are moving in front of animated backgrounds that looked - not good, I guess, because what does with modern animation, but not bad in the sense that it was immediately noticable that the characters do not actually move, but rather the background does. It doesn't always work and there's some serious uncanny stuff too.

24 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

They go to a pretty different art style when they do closeups that makes everyone start looking like Handsome Squidward.

Makoto's closeups are the worst. I think character art in this decade - or at least the last decade and the first parts of this one - is a lost cause. All the characters look similar nowadays. Well, unless you're watching Komi, where they did something else, but it's, uhm, Komi. Komi has some of the funniest silly anime emoting I've seen, and it's so wasted on it being in Komi.

24 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

My biggest complaint about Uta is the mouth sounds. Oh, how I hate the mouth sounds, even when the VAs aren't breathing into their microphones like they were during that 12 minutes or so of Steins;gate that I watched.

Hard to argue with. It takes a long time for Uta to learn words, and even then it's very limited. She emotes and communicates with looks, body language and a whole lot of mouth sounds. It's one of these things that I barely pay attention to, to be honest. I guess that's from actually growing up with anime, because I can easily see why one would think it is stupid, particular in that cut you linked.

24 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Anyways, I got through a third of the film before being "eh, I just realized I don't care that much", but hey, still better than the two latter Rebuild films, but unlike those, I'm not being compelled to watch this, .

Sometimes, a film does something that I can't quite explain, and I like it in spite of everything. Silly parkour running, or slegehammer exposition. Sometimes a film does that within its first few minutes, or even seconds. I'd call it having a certain atmosphere, but I'm not sure that's right. One of these films is the Last Samurai, which all in all should not be something I enjoy all too much, but simply, right from the bat, there's something that, say, spoke to me. Bubble was the same. Annihilation was another one.

11 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yeah, it's pretty easy to think of all sorts of ways it would easily be terrible if you assume it's going to be aimed at the lowest common denominator for a given set of genres/a demographic. And maybe I'm part of the lowest common denominator for shoujo, but if so, that's a badge I'd wear pretty proudly in comparison to the alternatives.

Indeed, I also just realized something. Maybe it's not just writing for the lowest common denominator of a genre, it's also much easier to come up with silly comedic stuff and ecchi moments than it is to come up with ideas for something more serious, or more worthwhile.

11 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

If I liked the characters, themes, and storytelling just a little bit more, it might not be so glaring, but I just don't have much love for any of it. Tomoyo are probably the two that I like the most, and that's pretty much just because they're Tomoyo...and they aren't even around that much. Hell, I don't even know their names, I'm literally just calling the two of them Tomoyo!

I didn't entirely like Tomoyo because they were always so mean to Ahiru, but I think they're also just a part of Ahiru instead of real characters. Her fears and insecurities made manifest, perhaps. Overall, the three of them are quite fun, and like I said when I watched it, Ahiru on her own pretty much carried a whole lot of the show for me. There's something about her that I liked. Including the insane, ahm, voice. She sure has a unique voice, eh?

Edited May 3, 2022 by majestic
Keep spelling becaus without e. :shrugz:

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

37 minutes ago, majestic said:

Stephen King's IT, magical girl edition?

Hopefully without the sewer gangbang though.

12 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Something a friend linked me:

With an emphasis on shoujo-y characters instead of seinen-y action, it could be great. Unfortunately, my bet is that with actual adult characters, it would probably go the latter's way...

I think josei is for adult women while seinen is for adult men. Both would be fine with me, something like a magical realist take on retaining childhood optimism into the oppressive real world of work and responsibility that is modern life would be kino for me. But my tastes really do go crazy for weird ****.

[Amentep]

Space Cobra

Episode XX - "****ō! Suna no Umi no Kyōfu" aka "Death Match! The Horror of the Sand Ocean"

Cobra and Lady go to take a break on a planet they're not that familiar with, and encounter trouble.

Spoiler

Cobra and Lady walk along a city while strains of a bard telling a tale of the sea of sand and the lost sword people.  Kids kick a ball at Cobra who playfully kicks it back before entering a nearby tavern.

Having mastered the world of Rubgall, Cobra contemplates taking a run at a professional Soccer career.

Cobra and Lady order a drink and listen to the remainder of the tale, but the people in the bar gets increasingly  upset at the man singing the song.  Eventually they throw things at him and one even pulls a gun and fires in his direction.

I promise that this scene shows a man firing a laser blaster at a bard and not, in fact, someone whizzing flame at a lyre player.

The singer pulls a sword, but backs down and instead stops singing.  Cobra and Lady go for a ride in the sea of sand (literally the sand flows like water) and talk about the story about the sword people they heard, debating its truth. Traveling back to the city, they find it strangely deserted.  They wander back to the bar, but find the door locked.  Forcing their way in they find everyone dead.  Lady goes to look outside and finds more dead bodies.  Eventually she is attacked by marauders carrying swords who swim through the sand.

The hand of DOOOOOM!

Cobra responds to Lady's call as she is attacked, but the marauders can't be stopped by their guns - they keep getting up.  Even blowing ones head off with the Psycho-gun is no help.  They run and eventually stumble across a handful of survivors, including the soccer kids and the singing dude from the bar.  Also the most gripey person ever, Grom.  They decide to wait for nightfall and try to cross the sand ocean to escape the terror in the city.

I like big gripes and I can't deny, you other aliens can't deny...

After a few travails, they stop for the night at a stone island in the sand sea, and the storyteller from the bar explains that the Swordians, of which he is one, were once the natural inhabitants of the planet.  Honorable hunters, but aliens destroyed the food they hunter and ran them off.  Eventually their leader was defeated by a war monger who has been leading them against the invaders ever since from a giant tower he created in the sand sea.

They start out the next day, but encounter sand piranha that devour one of their steeds

Sand piranha attack!

Grom, the complainer dude, shoots at them to keep them at bay, which causes the Swordians to swarm on their location and subsequently kill Grom.  The group scatters as the Swordian's attack, while the singer tries to slow them down.  They get separated, the singer is killed but before he dies reveals the Swordians secret to Cobra - they are the swords.  The bodies carrying them are just shells they manipulate and that's why the Psycho-gun couldn't stop them.  Cobra reunites with the rest of the group, but Lady gets captured.  The Swordians demand their surrender or they'll destroy Lady.  Cobra rushes headlong into the group who try to kill him; but he dives into the sand and swims.  Ignoring the piranha trying to eat him he gets behind the guards, kills them and kills the riders coming for him by shooting through the sand, creating a sand explosion that kills riders and mounts.

"You thought I was playing Pachisi, but I was playing Chess all along!"

With Lady free, he rejoins the other as they now have to decide where to go next to avoid the Swordians.

A very nutty episode, but creative and full of action, if you like that sort of thing.

[Bartimaeus]

Princess Tutu, episode 9. We follow up the second best episode with the very worst episode. I finally know what to call this kind of storytelling: talking to the camera. If you love characters just talking straight to the camera about silly plot/theme stuff or random dumps of thoughts/motivations to the complete detriment of them being actual characters, this might be the episode for you, because that's all they did this episode. For me, that's always been the very worst part of the show, where the show can't figure out how to make the the plot (either the individual episode's or the overarching) move without having characters just talk at the camera endlessly - when there are nice character interactions that work in of themselves is when it is at its strongest, but the show seems to vastly prefer navel-gazing with its own story.

Episode 10 was better, thankfully. Ahiru and Fakir's interactions have probably been high point of the past few episodes, and this one had a lot of it. Episode 11 was fine as far as story-heavy episodes go - the story happened more in between characters, as opposed to them just constantly repeating "I think/feel this", "I have to do something", "that must not come to pass", et cetera, to themselves like episode 9.

22 hours ago, majestic said:

I didn't entirely like Tomoyo because they were always so mean to Ahiru, but I think they're also just a part of Ahiru instead of real characters. Her fears and insecurities made manifest, perhaps. Overall, the three of them are quite fun, and like I said when I watched it, Ahiru on her own pretty much carried a whole lot of the show for me. There's something about her that I liked. Including the insane, ahm, voice. She sure has a unique voice, eh?

They talked to both Mytho and the teacher a little bit these past couples of episodes, which surprised me. Up until then, they were figments of Ahiru's imagination.

@Amentep There's something kind of funny about the horribly gangly-looking Cobra standing right next to Lady in that first image.

Not his most flattering look, particularly next to ridiculous Lady. Guess that's the 80s for you.

22 hours ago, majestic said:

Yeah, dunno, I was mostly talking about the depth-effects of the parkour running, there are some scenes where the characters are moving in front of animated backgrounds that looked - not good, I guess, because what does with modern animation, but not bad in the sense that it was immediately noticable that the characters do not actually move, but rather the background does. It doesn't always work and there's some serious uncanny stuff too.

The parkour running/jumping is precisely what I thought looked horrid, .

22 hours ago, majestic said:

Hard to argue with. It takes a long time for Uta to learn words, and even then it's very limited. She emotes and communicates with looks, body language and a whole lot of mouth sounds. It's one of these things that I barely pay attention to, to be honest. I guess that's from actually growing up with anime, because I can easily see why one would think it is stupid, particular in that cut you linked.

"Stupid" is probably too harsh, but I can see how I implied that with the video I sent - I mostly just find it annoying on a visceral level. Cardcaptor Sakura got me to be a little more O.K. with it (what with Sakura doing her affirmatives), but certainly not to that level.

Edited May 4, 2022 by Bartimaeus