Just a short note to say in two weeks time I will be at LibertyCon in Chattanooga Tennessee, which would be a great excuse for not posting then, if I had any kind of regular posting schedule. Come up and say Hi, and I'll ask "Who the hell are you?" :-) I can't imagine anyone would be there to meet me, but as the Home Convention for Baen Books, the Author/Fan ratio is through the roof! And it's the anti-WisCon. Which is such a rarity it's no wonder I'll travel across the country to visit and totally ignore cons in my home state.

Plus, REAL Biscuits and Gravy!

Posted by: Mauser at 08:21 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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1. "Let's welcome our new Transfer student!"
The Alien/Robot/Space Princess from the future just HAS to enroll in Our Hero's school, and go to his class, and embarrasses the living shit out of him with her introduction. SO sick of this. Clockwork Planet just pulled this for NO reason.

2. Arena combat.
There is nothing that makes a show grind to a halt faster than suddenly forcing the characters to fight in some kind of staged tournament. Sure, you came up with all kinds of nifty powers, and maybe even theories behind why they work, and oh, of course they have all kinds of wonderful attack names, and I know you, the author, are SO fucking proud of them. But there's no story there. Bleach and Naruto were two of the worst offenders. Bleach, I especially hated your characters referring to incredible, unbeatable special attacks that the characters had somehow both perfected, knew were unbeatable, yet had rarely, or even NEVER pulled out in combat before. Well, yeah, I suppose it's never been beaten if you've never used it....
And Naruto, I pretty much gave up the first time this cliche reared its ugly head in some "Training exercise." But it's hard to tell when it started because Naruto at that point was having more flashbacks than Dr. Timothy Leary. In fact, at one point I swear Naruto was having a flashback to the previous episode where Hinata was having a flashback to her childhood.
Look, there's filler, and then there's fucking sandbagging. Either you have a story to tell or not. Smashing your characters together two by two might be nifty for a showing off aspects of their personalities, but having everyone else on the sidelines infodumping about the action, and rules-lawyering at each other as to why the unbeatable attack that was secret until just now didn't work, it's boring. It's like that embarrassing high school party where you tried to explain D&D to the cute girl who started gnawing off limbs to get away.

There will be more. Unfortunately, but feel free to add your own.

Added 6/3
3. Freaking out over girls.
I sometimes wonder if this is a contributing cause, or a symptom of Japan's low birth rate. But it bugs me that virtually every guy acts like they've never seen a girl before (even though they've been going to school with them for as long as they've been alive), and goes from lusting like a pig in the distance to terrified, quivering lump of jelly when she so much as talks to him (while apparently girls have no such trouble). We've come a long way from Ataru Moroboshi....

Posted by: Mauser at 04:02 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Apparently Neregate shut down in April, ending the tremendously useful anime charts. Thus when I finally went to look for this season's, it was gone.

I found a site hosting the last one, but it IS the last one. I found another site, but I'm a little unsure about how to navigate it, since it seems to be a document host that may be linked from somewhere else, that host has not been located yet.

On the plus side, I discovered that there's a new Bahamut series, which I'm getting at the moment (And I'm becoming a fan of Magnet links now) and I thought Clockwork Planet looked interesting. This is about half a season of each at this point.

Maybe someday I'll even get a chance to watch all this stuff.

Posted by: Mauser at 06:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Former admins of Nyaatorrents have a new server up. It's still a bit overloaded, and some features are broken, but, it's there at nyaa.pantsu.cat . They don't have their own tracker any more. But it IS being updated, even if it's just Magnet links.

More Info

Posted by: Mauser at 08:36 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Hit the 13th episode of Little Witch Academia, and realized the story wasn't over yet. Hit Nyaatorrents and yes, two more episodes waiting for me!

And still not a single Onsen or beach episode! Yay!

And I totally called it on Chariot's identity.

(In the video below, there are two LWA clips, and they're two of the funniest bits).

Posted by: Mauser at 04:42 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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There are lots of guys who do videos like this, but this guy consistently has a few bits that make me laugh in spite of myself. (Recently, in response to requests, he started adding titles and clip names to the bits, but they aren't always accurate). Definitely NSFW.

Posted by: Mauser at 11:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Where's the Beef? Shorter: All those stalwart defenders of the Hugo from two years ago couldn't be bothered with voting for it this year when there are no Puppies to kick.

Posted by: Mauser at 08:58 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Last July I wrote about the liquid cooler on my PC going kaput. Looks like the warranty replacement unit is crapping out now too. I had one overheat incident yesterday, and a couple of pump stoppages that were "cured" with a solid rap today. I know it will get worse. I've already contacted support. If they say its out of warranty, I'll switch brands.

Posted by: Mauser at 04:34 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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A number of hours ago I mentioned in a comment that I'd watched the first episode of "Youjo Senki", also known as "The Saga of Tanya the Evil."

Holy shit!

This is not your typical magic flying girl soldiers kind of anime. Hell no! This is to Strike Witches what Madoka Magica is to Sailor Moon. The first episode was merely setup of the current war situation. The second episode gives us Tanya's back story. And it is a trip, temporally, theologically, and dimensionally.

Yeah, the "Heroine" is a socipathic atheist being punished by God with a really unfortunate reincarnation in order to push "Him" into such straits that "he" will finally admit to faith, and he's determined to live this life as a gigantic "Fuck you" to God--or "Being X" as he allows the divine to be called.

Sweetness and light it ain't. And that's only two episodes in.

Posted by: Mauser at 05:05 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Just throwing down a Marker here, after 6 episodes, I'm betting the big secret is:
Ursula is Shiny Chariot. They totally gave it away this episode.

Funny thing is, this show reminds me of something I only saw a single episode of in the '80's at the Philadelphia Animation Society, about a poorly regarded school magic club where the witches fly out on brooms and save the city (Tokyo?) from something attacking from the sea. I have no idea what it was called.

And while I'm flashing back on the days of 50 anime fans crammed into a rented room to watch fuzzy tapes on 19" TV's, does anyone remember "Prefectural High School Earth Defense Force"?

Posted by: Mauser at 03:42 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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