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PaperclipPerfector
1d ago
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Another digital Lent, another report:
What I've read and watched during Lent. My rules were: no social media, peruse unread or unfinished works from my existing collection as much as possible, but new books were OK. I didn't quite follow the rule, but oh well.
As you know, I abstained from every form of social media and algorithmic entertainment during Lent. No Motte, no Reddit, no YT, nothing. I am quite happy with that decision and plan to stay away from them during office hours. Anyway, on to the list. The items are rated from -2 (utter trash) to +2 (universally recommended):
Puella Magi Madoka Magica, +2. I started watching it almost a year ago, but couldn't get myself to finish it because YT is such a low-effort form of entertainment. Finally finished it in a couple of days. It's a seminal work in the "magical girl deconstruction" genre and I won't spoil it for you if you somehow have missed it. The art is distinctive and great, the story is good. Most importantly, it isn't long. It has a story to tell and it tells it with zero filler. That's what I want from any TV series.
Redo of Healer, -1. Someone mentioned it was an HBO-style anime (i.e., T&A, but no genitals) anime, so I obtained it and promptly forgot about it until this Lent. It's a revenge porn story set in a generic Japanese fantasy world: the protagonist is the weakest member of a hero party, is gratuitiously abused by the other members. Before the story starts, he fixes some of his drawbacks, beats the rest of the party to a wish-granting mcguffin and uses it to rewind time and exact his revenge.
Technically, this is an okay premise, but the execution is subpar. "A smart almost-normie with secret knowledge beats superpowered opponents" is a common and popular story, but instead we see the protagonist duplicate and acquire multiple skillsets in the first episode, so the rest of the story is mostly a straight wish fulfilment fantasy with no elaborate scheming or skullduggery.
What about the promised secondary sexual characteristics? The series is surprisingly chaste, preferring to clumsily tell instead of showing even when whatever is happening is within the range it considers acceptable. It's not "hentai with a plot" at all, and there's hentai with better plot out there.
Black Lagoon, 0. I've had in on my NAS since forever, and I'm kinda disappointed. It's just Cowboy Bebop, but worse. It's the same mix of over-the-top characters and A-Team firing skills with moody dialogue, but CB has actual character arcs. The fact that BL was an adaptation of an in-progress manga is partly to blame for that, but there's literally marginal change in Rock and Revy, mostly happening offscreen and shown in the final arc of the second season. The other two crew members might as well not exist. But hey, it turns out I know the girl that worked as their Russian consultant, we hung out at the same IRC channel before it became a meme.
Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven's Door, +1. Okay, I've violated my rule and watched something I'd watched already. I just wanted to compare Black Lagoon against fresher memories. Well, what can I say? My memories were rosier. Don't get me wrong, the soundtrack is still the best, the art is still great, your screen will still ooze with coolness, but the movie still has plot holes you can drive an army truck through.
Magical Girl Retires, by Park Seolyeon, -1. After finishing Madoka, I went on TV Tropes in search of more recommendations. I got this book. It's a novelette, so I didn't waste much time on it. It spends a lot of time on exposition and then it's suddenly the story climax and it ends. And it's not really interesting exposition, either, the author is not Ted Chiang. "Magical girls fight mundane crime and have mundane problems like job security and liability insurance" is a take that can be extremely interesting if you explore it, but the book is too short for that. Instead, the main theme is "life in South Korea is a remorseless grindfest and it sucks to lose the rat race", which is not exactly news.
Sailor Nothing, by Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne, +1. Quite surprisingly, it's a very old fanfic, written back in 2000-2002. Its major point of reference is obviously Sailor Moon, down to the matching names of the evil generals, since they didn't have any other magical girl anime in the US back then. Cardcaptor Sakura, maybe, but that's it?
I was also amused by the fact it lacks a lot of modern weebery, probably because people's knowledge of Japan was much more limited then than it is today (the Japanese highschool is probably the second most common modern day setting after the American suburb). There are a few Japanese words snuck in here or there, but there's no honorifics, onee-/onii- siblings, senpai/kohai, no stock Japanese characters. It almost makes you feel nostalgic.
Anyway, the plot is great for a fanfic written in the early aughties. There's a very nice punchy scene close to the very end where Stefan carefully lays down a landmine for the reader and watches the fireworks. The very ending itself is not the best, but it's still better than qntm's Antimemetics.
Extelligence, +2. Got to it from the ACX sidebar. Didn't really care about the guy's big idea about finally making a news site that is about truth, but his stories about growing up in a dysfunctional family are great. I'm happy he's been able to reach escape velocity, but it's a great window into the lives of those we try to self-segregate from.
It's also a great reminder that some people are just born writers. You can imagine yourself sitting down and writing a novel during the next NaNoWriMo, or maybe diligently studying literary theory and practicing until you get good, but there are people who can't imagine themselves not writing, who have been writing since school, because it's the most natural thing to them.
More Bits about Money, +2. There were not that many new articles written since the previous Lent, but this one was great. Why would a bank teller hand out fifty grand in cash, the bulk of their laptop-class customer's savings, without raising an eyebrow? The Motte is probably one of the best-equipped places to guess correctly, but if you can't, read to find out.
Blazing Saddles, by Mel Brooks, 0. I guess I operate on a different frequency than Mel Brooks, but I've never found his movies funny. Maybe the movie was funnier and more original fifty years ago and this is the O.Henry effect in action, but Gene Wilders and Slim Pickens couldn't save this snoozefest.
Samsara, 0. I thought I'd never watched it, but the sense of deja vu was getting stronger and stronger until I realized I had. Anyway, it's a non-narrative movie, a spiritual sequel to Baraka, which you might be familiar with if you've played SMAC. The secret project clips that were not 90's CGI were from there.
Samsara starts like one of these "please buy this 8K TV" movies: exotic locations, exotic people staring too hard, a few shots of very dead people and some scenery gorn to keep you on your toes. Then there's the best part: Chinese assembly lines, factory farms, meat packing plants. I don't know what the authors wanted to say, but I am fucking grateful to these people providing me with cheap protein and disposable consumer goods at incredibly low prices. Also, the chicken harvester is so damn cool. The movie goes downhill from there.
Berserk (1997), rating pending. A delightfully old-school anime I had never gotten around to watching. The opening theme is probably the most discordant I've ever heard: what kind of song do you pick for your grimdark fantasy anime with gallons of blood and a protagonist that is named after the lower digestive tract? Yep, some upbeat Japanese pop punk must be perfect.
I can't rate it because I abandoned it after three episodes, again. Maybe he gets better, but Guts is the kind of character that inspires rants about toxic masculinity.
Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, episodes 15-28, 0, +1 for the whole series. When I watched the first 14 episodes in 2008, I was enraptured. I loved the art style, the characters, the plot so much I even read the fan translations of the original novels. And then I somehow forgot about it and completely missed the second season (technically the second half of the first season). Then I grew older, discovered it was out, pirated it and forgot about it. So, how do I find it 13 years later?
Eeeh, it's complicated. The first episode covers one of the most important chapters in the original novels. The next eight cover a filler one. Mild spoilers ahead. It's a time loop chapter. I love time loops. However, I don't quite know what the creators had in mind when they spent eight episodes on a time loop story. In the first episode, we're introduced to the events of the loop. In the second episode, the characters realize they are in a time loop, but fail to break it and everything resets. The third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh episode have literally the same script: the characters realize they are in a time loop, but fail to break it and everything resets. In the eighth episode, the characters realize they are in a time loop and break it. Why would they make six episodes with the same script?
No matter what it was, it was first and foremost a giant waste of screen time. Eight episodes out of fourteen wasted on an inconsequential storyline. At least I could frame-skip through the filler episodes.
The next five weren't that good either. The first season opened with a movie-in-a-movie episode which hinted that things weren't what they looked like. The second season used five episodes to cover the filming process. It wasn't bad, I prefer the novel-sized stories to the shorter ones, but again, three stories in fourteen episodes?
Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, +1. Okay, I'm a big fan and it's one of the most important novels in the series. No, it won't be enjoyable as a standalone movie. Yes, cel-shaded 3D is still uncanny even if it's the best way to achieve total animation. Thankfully, there's not that much of it. I'm still a bit miffed they never continued the main part of the franchise and instead switched to stuff like...
Disappearance of Nagato Yuki, -2. Another breach of my rules, but when I was upgrading the resolution of the previous two items, I downloaded a pack that contained every spin-off as well. The series is a blatant exploitation of the fans, like modern Star Wars. I dropped it like a hot potato.
Arcane, season 1, +2. I know I'm late to the party, but damn, these Frenchmen know their stuff. The animation is superb. I don't know what Druidic witchcraft they used to convert 3D to 2D, but it no longer feels uncanny. The story is great as well: the first act is just an extended prologue, but the pacing and the beats never let you guess. What's the previous time when such a mundane IP spawned such a great spin-off?
Get your house right, by Krier et al., 0. I have no idea how I have obtained this book. It certainly followed the post by Scott about his love of McMansions. It echoes some of my ideas why McMansions are ugly. But did someone recommend it to be because they'd read my posts? Or do great minds (lol) think alike?
Anyway, the book is about traditional architecture. The author is the architect that designed Poundbury, "Charles' folly", the new town that is not a tract development, and the book is a series of dos and don'ts, mainly aimed at reproducing existing styles.
I want to compare Krier with another non-mainstream architect and another Alexander. Late Christopher Alexander, like Leon Krier, was an outspoken critic of architectural modernism, and both come from greater German cultural sphere, but Krier ended up in Notre Dame, Indiana, the seat of reactionary Catholicism, and Alexander ended up in Berkeley, the seat of West Coast woo woo.
And yet Alexander's projects, even though they are driven by different principles, end up no less traditional than Krier's, whose buildings have this "Courthouse Square" look of a film studio backlot. The book is still useful, it's just that it will help you build a house from the past, with no path towards the harmonious vernacular housing of the future.
Arcane, season 2, +1. Technically, another violation of my self-imposed rules, but the first season was so good I had to finish the show. I have no idea how, but the Frenchmen really screwed the pooch. One reason is probably the GRRM plot disease: you have to keep the main characters together, especially when you have more than a handful. But when you have the two sisters, English Rose, Chad Beefcake, French Cripple, Sexy Negress, her Muscle Mommy, Pomeranian Professor and the Totally Radical Black Guy each do their own thing then by the time you show at least half of them just so the viewers don't forget they exist, the episode is over. The first season managed to keep the bulk of them together and never had to juggle more plots than it could handle, but the second season starts with an October 7th plotline (I refuse to believe it's a coincidence), then abandons it, muddles through several abbreviated plotlines and tries to tie them together with a big dumb battle. I guess the fans of the game really like it when character X finally gets or uses ability Y.
The Foo of Haruhi Suzumiya light novels 6-13, by Nagaru Tanigawa, rated below. Yeah, I decided to finish the ones I didn't read in 2008. In general, the quality of the writing goes downhill. For those who don't know, the novels are about a high school girl that is disappointed with how mundane the world is and tries to live as interesting life as possible. Unbeknownst to her, she's the most powerful thing in the universe and attracts a cast of paranormal beings that all really want her to stay unaware of her powers, plus the narrator, a completely mundane classmate and semi-willing friend of hers. This was a fresh premise back in 2003 and it carried Tanigawa through three novels and a short stories collection, but it's hard to write an original story within the constraints: supernatural stuff must happen, Haruhi Suzumiya must remain unaware of what's happening around her, Yuki Nagato is the only other member of the cast that can handle supernatural phenomena, Kyon does nothing of importance. Anyway, here's my rating, broken down by novel, including the first five I read when it was a more age-appropriate activity for me:
Breaking Bad, rating pending. Yes, I am late to the party. No, I haven't finished it. I guess I'll finish it during the St. Peter's fast. The first two episodes were great.
The book is intended to convey the architectural fundamentals that make good buildings. If you follow the rules in the book, you'll end up with a perfectly nice looking house. The thing is - this is already better than most houses being built today. It's true that the rules in this book will not allow you to produce a masterpiece, but this is entirely missing the point. Most people do not have an architectural masterpiece in them, and are much better off painting by numbers if they want a reasonably nice looking house. The alternative for most people is not "the harmonious vernacular housing of the future", it's yet another fucking ranch house.
No it doesn't. It has rules that will help you build a neoclassical house instead of a pastiche called McMansion, but that's the limits of its scope. What it lacks is exactly the architectural fundamentals that make good buildings in any style. Or in no specific style at all.
Hardly. The proportional system it describes stems from the classical system, but it talks about plenty of ways to alter the style of the house, from choice of materials to shapes and forms (or indeed absence) of decorative elements. To the extent that it describes the proportions of the classical system, it does this because western architecture is generally founded on those proportions far beyond mere neoclassicism.
This is indeed outside the scope of the book. This is in the scope of an architectural degree program.
The book is not for experts or for those wishing to become experts, the book is for those wishing to avoid easily avoidable mistakes at the expense of not pushing the envelope.
We can see the effects of building in no specific style at all throughout the country.
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Neat author, I tried getting into his Slayers Trilogy but couldn't really manage to back in the day. Absolutely loved his Neverwinter Nights (2002 version) fantasy comedy module series Penultima. I might have to redownload the game just to replay Pastor of Muppets in particular. Absolute height of comedy for me, age
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This was always my impression of the Endless Eight portion of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya S2. S1 was, IMHO, an absolute masterpiece, and one of the reasons for this was the intentional non-chronological episode order, which made the pacing of the season very good while telling essentially one long story with a bunch of episodic events that take place after that initial one long story but are interspersed in between (this is why I find later releases where they reordered the episode into chronological order to be misguided and worse for it). I haven't seen any other work use non-chronological ordering like this - maybe Hidamari Sketch S1 and the Kara no Kyoukai films do something kinda similar, but not quite the same - and they pulled it off brilliantly. So to follow it up, KyoAni might have felt that they had to do something else clever with chronology and timing, and they ended up doing what they did with Endless Eight.
Which ended up just not working at all. I'd read the light novel before the season was even produced, and I only watched the season long after it had come out, so I both knew what would happen going in and I didn't have to deal with the genuine fan experience of waiting for each "new" episode week by week for 2 months, and even so I found the whole thing pretty painful to watch. A completely pointless exercise and a waste of a lot of talented animators and voice actors.
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Berserk 1997 is more or less the only Berserk adaptation worth watching. I'm trying to remember how much we know about Guts 3 episodes in, and if they had the flashback episode to his childhood yet. He goes through quite a journey over the course of this series, and the manga is one of the few I bother to keep up with for over 20 years now. Other manga series either concluding, or going too far up their own anime asshole to be entertaining anymore. Berserk I can sit down with like an old friend like no time has passed and reread. All that said, if you are the sort of person who views the tropes Guts plays to as "Toxic", so much so that you quit the show, you don't deserve to bask in it's greatness.
I didn't say I was that kind of person, but so far Guts has shown the following range of emotions: anger, sullenness, rage and steadfastly refused to talk to anyone.
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Well, I don't want my only comment in this thread to be about Redo of Healer, so here's some thoughts on something else and a recommendation.
I remember watching this when it came out. The Endless Eight portion was not received well. I'm someone who, like you, got really into the series with the first season and then read all the fan-translated novels. It took the author 4 years to release the first part of Surprise after Dissociation, and by the time it came out I had moved on to other things.
As a recommendation: if you haven't seen Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, I would highly recommend it. The setting is pretty "standard Japanese fantasy", there's an evil demon king terrorizing the world and a hero and his companions go out to kill the demon king. The story of Frieren starts as the hero's party is returning home after killing the demon king. It follows the titular Frieren, an elf mage and member of the hero's party. There's a lot of world building, character examination, and a bit of action here and there.
After hearing a lot of praise about the anime, I read the manga first. I really enjoy the manga, and I think the anime is a very good adaptation.
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Huh, either I'm a bit more squeamish than you (very likely), or the anime is quite a bit different than the manga adaptation (also likely). As an example, in the manga, (if I'm remembering correctly) there is a part of the story where he takes one of his (lesbian) abusers, partially paralyzes her, and sets a bunch cannibal zombie guys on her. I wonder if the anime didn't cover that, or if they didn't depict it as explicitly.
I wouldn't recommend reading/watching it, though.
Yes, the scene where she has to keep the zombies more horny than hungry is in there, it's the show creators that are squeamish. It's one thing when you say, "I don't want to watch that" and avert your eyes and another when they say, "well, no one would want to watch that" and cut away. This only highlights how much of an edgelord the writer was, because when you excise all the grisly bits, the story can no longer shock you and you can plainly see how mediocre it is.
I wonder why it's reportedly so popular with women.
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really nice write up, thanks for the effort. By the way Madoka has a series of Movies from which the last one "Rebellion" is a continuation of sorts for the series and there is a new movie announced to follow the storyline.
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