...but this is a thing:

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Somehow, I'm all caught up.

Ah, that's why, I've been filing the Monogatari and Re:Zero shows into their own category....

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You'd think by the third episode we'd be past infodumps, but no. On the other hand, we finally get our tanned-white-haired girl (shame about the heterochromia). But since she's been trained to be a deadly assassin instead of a seeker-scout, she needs shit explained to her.

Okay, that's interesting, I just noted that the Ember release has two sets of English subs. I'm not quite sure which is more literal.

Anyway, Alma seems to alternate between sweet and innocent and jaded and cynical, depending on how closely the topic is related to the assassin's guild, which she was forced to leave after her Grandfather, the leader and founder, died a month or two ago. The new management is more interested in working intel for the monarchy than being into murder for hire, so she was booted.

He gives her a test to see how compatible with his buffs she is, and the answer is very. So they set off to do a bandit protection job for a small town as a first task for their new clan. Halfway there they get stuck in the last room available and some level-setting occurs.

Anyway, have a de-panned shot.

Posted by: J Greely at October 17, 2024 03:33 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Mauser at October 22, 2024 02:35 PM (nk1Z+)

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"Acro Trip" - Ep. 03

This is an epic farce, and if you're not watching it, you're really missing out. Hell, I have to pause periodically just to finish laughing my head off.

Chrome is the most reprehensible of villains! His latest plan? He's going to be in the park (conveniently situated near Chizuko's home) and at the appointed time, he's going to sit on a swing and NOT get out of it for any little kid who wants to swing! The horror! How Vile! He even had the Kuma Kaijin passing out flyers in town with this declaration to make sure Berry Blossom gets it. And in her normal guise as Noichigo Kaju, she does indeed get one.

But the next day, the weather is horrible! The wind is blowing like mad. Chrome wants to cancel. But on the off chance Berry Blossom has shown up, Chizuko wants to see her. And there she is, clinging to a tree for dear life, with her cat (later we learn his name is Mashirou, he has business cards) clinging to her hat, trying not to be blown away. Unfortunately a trash can is not so dutiful in clinging to its place and flies through the air and smashes Berry Blossom in the face, and she's down for the count. Chizuko offers them shelter, and tries to stuff Chrome in another room, but once the infodump is over (Mashirou is her manager, and he's the one taking all the vids, which is why nobody's seen him), you know Chrome is not going to stay put. The question of why Chrome is in the house does not get answered. And with the weather clearing, Mashirou takes the still napping Berry Blossom and beats feet.

The next day, Mashirou shows up at the house with a thank you gift. And per their morning discussion where Chizuko came up with a far more evil idea than Chrome could conceive of, Chrome decides to take Mashirou hostage, tying him up with a jump rope. Then he gets on the phone... and Mashirou's phone rings. So Chizuko has to help him with it and dial Noichigo for him. When she picks up, Chrome grabs the phone to make his demands... but she doesn't recognize his voice. He collapses, gives a very convincing death speech to Chizuko, and she takes up the cause, naming herself General Dante, right in front of Mashirou.

Taking up the phone, Chizuko prepares to deliver her first villain speech, but she is overcome by Berry Blossom's cuteness. She can't do it, and falls down too. Gramps unties Mashirou and sends him on his way, and Mashirou contemplates that they have a new, formidable (?) enemy in Dante. And Chrome has Chizuko cornered into evil again, since she's now been identified as being on his side.

This is fun!

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My internet speed has been... well, it still can reach its top speed, but it takes a while to get there. Or at least, that's how it was up until today. I bookmarked the address of my cable modem, because it shows some interesting data, like a list of all the channels it's using and their respective Signal to noise ratios, power levels, and corrected and uncorrected errors. There's not much you can DO with that data. I was considering calling customer service, but getting past a bot so someone who can understand what I mean when I say "Every channel above 39 is very degraded" would be unlikely.

But I guess that telemetry is available to them too. When today's shows downloaded in less than a minute and a half, I knew something was up. I checked the modem, and it was using a much lower range of channels, and they all had fantastic s/n ratios. SpeedTest jumped almost immediately to 350 mb/sec, instead of taking half the test to get there. So I'm pleased.

I've mentioned my Substack, where I've been moving some of my writing and posts about writing from Wordpress. It has been somewhat less than stellar. In fact, the lowest ranking of all my posts are the first three chapters of my WIP. But if there's one thing Substack loves, it's Memes. I made a post of about a dozen of the latest memes that I've made myself, and it BLEW UP. In under 24 hours it's gotten ten times the views of the average week. And about ten times the likes of the best day.

And since I've got so much free time on my hands, my last Amazon order included an Ardruino Uno R3 board starter kit, and a 37 additional sensor kit.

Of course, I still haven't finished figuring out the proper compile for my Ender with the Big Tree Tech board in it to implement the MicroTouch sensor. That's been sitting for too long.

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Kimi wa Meido-san - "You are Ms. Servant" Ep. 01:

Sheesh. What a Moeblob. And yet the slapstick seems more cruel than funny.

And the guy, "Well-meaning idiot" isn't much of a personality either, but it's more grating.

On the one hand, she's not too bad to look at, but things need to pick up in episode 2.

If it weren't in the title card, I'd disagree with the English title.

Posted by: Mauser at October 09, 2024 02:18 AM (nk1Z+)

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Kabushikigaisha Magilumiere - "Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc." Ep.01: The opening promises action. A blonde magical girl is straddling the back of two motorcycles riding side by side, while a grotesque horror with as many eyes as teeth, and there are a LOT of each, comes barreling down the highway behind them. She speaks her magical words... which are more like a list of program parameters, blasts the beast with her wand, and sucks it into a USB drive like device.

There's a brief expository bit explaining how the Magical Girls exterminate Kaii, monsters that have been appearing with much greater frequency. The girls are popular and famous, and paid well, and there is a big boom in the industry.

After the opening credits though, we meet Kana Sukaragi, as she bombs a job interview she was actually extremely prepared for. She knew things about the company that even the interviewers didn't. But when asked to come up with something in her own words, she froze. It was the 15th interview she botched. Apparently she's got an eidetic memory. Afterwards, she stops in a pseudo Starbucks and when the clerk gets overwhelmed and forgets the previous three orders, she's able to recall them off the top of her head, including which is for whom, when she was worried about her own stuff and had barely gotten in line when this scene started. I'm surprised she wasn't offered the job. But she just really likes helping people.

Now Interview #16 is at a financial services company. A Manager and his assistant are going to the conference room, and in a dialog straying awfully close to "As you know, Bob" territory, they say the company has been skimping on things, like the heating that's always off in the conference room, and not checking Kaii levels, but of course it's really unlikely there'd be an attack there. Really. But they'd be so screwed if there were. Foreshadowing with a Kleig light....

So of course, right in the middle of the group interview, where the room is so cold there's frost on the desk, but they're still going through with it... can you guess what happens? Did you say Kaii attack? And what does the executive do? He has to do damage control, and tells his assistant, who has no idea who to call, to find someone cheap who won't make a big public stink. So the phone rings at Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. And their one girl, Hitomi Koshigaya, rushes to the roof to transform. Which she does by logging in to the system with her company badge (You were expecting a wand?) and it is the most Corporate-sounding transformation speech you've ever heard.

I'm not entirely sure what everyone's so afraid of, because the "Frostoid" Kaii who came out of the AC vent hasn't moved since it busted into the conference room. But it's HUGE (Because the Kai has collected there for a long time thanks to the neglect), it's a Two Magical Girl job. And while the executives are trying to sort out how to blame maintenance, Hitomi is trying to figure out how she can manage the job herself. She just needs someone to help feeding her ammo, but the corporate types don't think they're allowed to help, maybe they could get someone from sales... and can they get a discount? And Kana is just standing there, so she volunteers to help. The hiring manager tells her that this is not a test and won't affect her interview score, but she tells him she's withdrawing her application.

And so Hitomi hands her a tablet, and tells her she just needs to hit the reload button when the spell counter gets down to around 50. We're in serious Clarke's Third Law territory here (or is that Niven's Corollary?).

Well, the magic isn't working on Frosty. And looking at the tablet, Kana figures she's using the wrong kind of magical ammo. Hitomi left it set to "Speed Type" after her last job. She really hates the device, it's confusing to her, but Kana apparently remembers a demo she attended and had researched to interview with the company that made it, so thanks to her perfect memory, she knows how to switch the ammo for her.

So, Huge Success. Hitomi brings Kana back to her company, since they were looking for someone new anyway. Kana is struck by how different this four person operation is from the big corporations. And then she meets the boss, who, much to her shock, is a tall man who dresses like a magical girl, including growing his hair long.

This reveal though would have worked a LOT better if they hadn't saved it for the post ED scene, which features the whole cast, and if they'd skipped the first episode OP too, for the same reason.

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"Dan Da Dan" Ep. 01: If you've been missing something with a gonzo plotline and animation more along the lines of Kill la Kill or FLCL. Here you go.

"Acro Trip" Ep. 02: Seems the magical world in this town is really small. It's just Berry Blossom and Chrome fighting over minor stuff. And the rules are that you can't do magic on the mundanes. So when a robber with a knife invades the convenience store where we last left our characters, The pink-haired girl who is BB is left hiding behind the chips, while Kuroma's natural talent for talking people into evil changes a simple robbery into a hostage situation. Chizuko is miffed at Kuroma for not being able to use his powers (Which are?) to fight back, which is how we find out that magic is limited to the people involved in this world. In the meantime, Chizuko's hero-worship of Berry Blossom shames her into sneaking into the back room and transforming. She comes out in typical Magical Girl fashion, but then takes down the robber with a clothesline to the neck. After untying the two, she excuses herself, saying that she and the police don't get along so well....

In the second half, I turns out that Chrome and Grandpa know each other. They're having snacks when Chizuko gets home (She's in a rush because there's a Berry Blossom special on TV she desperately wants to see). But Chrome teleports her into his lair in order to show off. While showing her around, he leads her into a storage room, and the door gets stuck from the outside due to a suspiciously out of place broom propped up against the sliding door. Chrome then claims that the teleport used up his magic for the month, since it's like data on a phone plan, and he's throttled now. And uses that as a pretext to get Chizuko to sign the magical contract which is conveniently in a box there in the store room. He tries to teach her how to use the magic to remove the obstruction - which is funny, because he explains that he just uses it, he doesn't understand it. (Hello Clarke's third law, or Niven's corollary) He just tells her to grunt and imagine pushing it. But then suddenly the door opens, and... It's Grandpa! What's he doing there? Turns out some time ago Gramps found a dejected villain sitting by the side of the road and decided to take him home, and let him live in the crawlspace (how kind...) although this huge base is a lot bigger than he remembers the crawlspace being. And here Chrome had told Chizuko that it was extra-dimensional, it's actually under the house. So they climb the stairs into Grampa's place and she gets to see her show.

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I've now seen the first three new shows of this season.

Hitoribocchi no Isekai Kouryaku - "Loner Life in Another World": Took a flyer on this because it was mentioned on .clue. It is, alas, a pretty typical "Class is summoned to another world" Isekai. Our protagonist is the book-reading loner in his class that is otherwise evenly divided into easily identifiable, stereotypical cliques (Jocks, Nerds, Gyaru, and Student Government). He's genre-savvy enough that he tried to dodge the magic circle that appeared under the class, but it followed him into the vents. The reward for his evasion is that he gets the last pick of the skills the "God" has on offer, and they're just the scraps, except they serve him pretty well for wilderness survival.

The episode ends though with the four cliques approaching him from all directions with unknown intent (Although I guess we can assume the Jocks are evil.) but any kind of reunification is already ruled out by his assigned class that prevents him from forming a party.

Not expecting much from this one.

Saikyou no Shienshoku "Wajutsushi" de Aru Ore wa Sekai Saikyou Clan wo Shitagaeru - "The Most Notorious "Talker" Runs the World's Greatest Clan": A Fantasy, rather than an Isekai. Demon portals open up randomly over towns and "Seekers" fight them off. Our protagonist's grandfather is legendary, but goes down in a final battle defending their village. He raised him to be a Seeker, but they assigned him the "Talker" class, which basically boils down to being the tactician with bard-like abilities to buff his party by giving them orders, a few weak offensive spells, and a magic revolver (just roll with it). Apparently there's a huge boon in monster leftovers for advanced magic tech, and Seekers are famous. But our hero's four-man team are mere subcontractors to a clan, so they get the short end of the stick. Surprisingly, he isn't the leader, that's their swordsman, and the healer is the leader's girlfriend. They also have a tank with a huge axe, which he has to grind with our hero, while he also crudely hits on the healer. Now our hero of course has the goal to be "The Best" even in the weakest class, and apparently he's rich thanks to gramps (Mum apparently wasn't all that good of a Seeker, which is why gramps raised him). He offers to put in his cash along with the group's funds to start a clan, so they don't have to subcontract any more. They all agree to meet over it in another couple of days.

At the appointed time, the tank busts into our hero's room and tells him that the leader and the healer have taken off with all the money. That's an interesting surprise. We'll see where they go with it. I wasn't expecting much from this one either, but at least there's a bit of a twist at the start.

"Acro Trip": Date Chuzuko is a young girl who gets shunted from place to place as her mom constantly gets relocated for business reasons. We meet her as she's riding with her Grandfather in his Kei truck to his place, where she'll be spending the week while the movers relocate her mom's house. Nothing excites her much. She's considered "Mature" by her folks. During the drive something brown lands on the truck and takes off, but she doesn't get a good look at it and thinks nothing more of it. Later, her grandfather takes her to the mall (Which does not impress her, she's seen malls before) but he has to leave her there because he has to drive a neighbor with a bad back to the hospital. She's surprised when she sees a claw machine at the arcade full of bear dolls that look like the thing that landed on the truck. She surmises that they're not popular since nobody's going for them. And later she nearly sits on a strange cat who makes a very distinctly non-cat sound. Then a girl with long pink hair and an empty cat carrier runs up and thanks her for finding her cat. Not a Circle K anywhere in sight, but strange things are still afoot, and she's barely scratched the surface.

Strange things or not, it's not enough to break through her apathy. She's walking back to her Grandfather's place, along the canal. She wonders if she'll ever find a place she wants to settle down. Whereever it is, it's going to be quieter without these air raid sirens going off. That's when she sees a guy in fancy clothes running along the river with a couple of giant bears running beside him, and a pink-haired magical girl appears on the bridge. A battle ensues, during which the bridge gets totally destroyed. Chizuko watches this with utter amazement. Not even noticing as she gets soaked by the rain.

When she gets home, she is excited beyond belief, and begs her mother if she can keep living with her Grandfather. This is where she wants to live. Naniga City has a Magical Girl!

In the second half of the episode, she's started in the new school. The intercom announces that there's a "Kaijin" alert, and her classmates are NOT thrilled. I guess the ongoing magical girl battles are old hat to them. A couple of girls mourn that this means they can't go to Karaoke. But not Chizuko. She grabs her backpack and rushes off in the rain to try to get to the site of the battle in time. Alas, she can't, but she CAN see the Jumbotron with witness-supplied video of the battle, which is how she learns the Magical Girl's name is Berry Blossom, and the Villain is Chrome. The battle is over in seconds. It was very lame.

Did she say that out loud? Yes she did. Did anyone hear her? Just that still sizzling villain standing behind her. She doesn't even look before she launches into her critique. When she's done, she finally notices who it is, but when he advances on her, she folds her umbrella and whacks him with it, which is enough to send him crawling. But he says he appreciates her insights, and asks if they could talk elsewhere. After all, they both love Berry Blossom....

At an outdoor table at a nearby cafe, Chrome starts monologuing at her about his origin, when he first started terrorizing this town, and their first battle, and how she rose to the occasion to defeat him. Chizuko pegs him as a masochist who just likes it when Berry Blossom takes him down. He ripostes with how she wants her to endure harder battles. She's smart enough to realize that she needs to run. But the bears catch her. She was afraid he was going to kidnap her and use her as bait. He didn't think of that option, he just wants to recruit her to his evil organization, Fossa Magna. She runs again, making her escape. But she's haunted by the offer. She convinces herself it was only a dream, until she goes to the convenience store and Chrome, in his civilian role as Kuroma, is working the cash register.

Surprise!

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