That was getting a little unwieldy to edit. And with how iffy this editor is.... well, better safe than sorry.

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Tonari no Youkai-san (or Yokai) Spirits of the Neighborhood (I guess).

One might think this is a slow-paced or healing Anime, but there's a hit of something a little dark too by the end of the first episode.

In the rural Japanese town of Fuchigamori, three friends are discussing how Takumi's cat Buchio has transformed into a Nekomata. After 20 years as the beloved family pet, he has been reborn as a twin-tailed cat, and he's a bit shy about it. The poor fellow has a long road ahead of him filling out registration paperwork and health insurance forms....

On the way home, the young girl in the trio, Mu-chan, runs into Jiro at the bus stop. Jiro is a humanoid crow spirit who watches over their valley. (His father Tazenbo is a Tengu). She tells him about the new arrival but he seems to know already.

Takumi asks Buchio if he can use any Yokai powers yet, but he has no idea. It's suggested that he go and talk to Jiro and his dad. Later, after visiting them, Jiro introduces him to Yuri Tachibana, a bakegitsune. When they first meet, she's a redheaded woman with a scowl the strikes fear into Buchio's heart. Jiro hasn't told him why he's brought him there, so she demonstrates by first manifesting fox ears, then transforming into a fox-woman. Nekomata are also natural transformers, and Jiro has brought him to her so she can tutor him. It's subtle at first. She has him cutting the stems of flowers with a pair of scissors and points out how subconsciously he's transformed his paw to the point he can use them, but that the real lesson is to consciously transform his hand into a human one. By the end of the day, he can do both hands.

Mu-chan also visits Jiro as he's making Inari sushi and they talk about some upcoming religious festivals. Watch carefully when Jiro makes an offering on the family shrine....

The lantern festival has Mu-chan's family waiting by a small fire on their doorstep to greet the spirit of their grandfather. At one point Mu-chan wishes the Oshoro she made to bring back her grandfather would have also brought back her dad. (The Oshoro is a little horse model she made out of vegetables and in the spirit world it turned into a horse.) Her grandfather's spirit lays a hand on her shoulder and tells her her father wouldn't like her to think of him as dead.

Later, her mother is taking a phone call from the police. Her husband has been missing and the detectives think he has been sucked into the void between the living and spiritual realms. She hasn't told Mu-chan, but after discussing it with Jiro and Tazenbo, the two of them discuss how Mu-chan can see it. And in the final scene, she is seeing it as a black fog collecting behind the trees at the side of the road.

If you like a contemporary view of Japanese mythology, this show should be right up your alley.

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Sentai Daishikkaku - Go Go Loser Ranger

So apparently this show was made for Hulu, and you can tell by the animation it has some budget behind it. The concept has been summarized out there. Basically when the bad guys appeared with their floating fortress over the city 13 years ago, the Dragon Rangers basically killed all their bosses the first day. The only fighters left were their mooks, the Dusters, who are effectively immortal because they get blasted to dust and eventually re-form themselves. None of them are leadership material (And I guess there are 26 of them, since they're lettered A-Z, although it's hinted some may have left already). Apparently that first day they worked out a treaty that they would stage fights every week, and lose every week. Every week the Dusters have to come up with a new Monster, and one of them transforms into this false boss (since, being made of dust, they can effectively transform into anything). They're running out of ideas however.

D, though, has gotten pretty sick of the whole business. And even though he's off shift that Sunday, he goes down anyway, first impersonating a spectator, then joining the battle and refusing to get blown away by the ultimate weapon, and when he attacks, the Red Keeper tells him to mind his place before cutting him harmlessly in half.

D re-forms on the roof of the complex in his human shape, where he again meets the girl he met before the battle. She and her partner are recruiters for a sort of Dragon Keeper's auxiliary, who maintain security to keep the battle from harming the spectators. When they first met, they tried to recruit him, but he turned them down. Up on the roof he decides that he will join up after all. He wants to be on the side of the power, of the winners, so that he can then bring them down.

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I'll edit this post as I get first episodes.

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Re:Monster has started with one of the nastiest Isekaiings ever. Our poor protagonist is getting stabbed to death and then some by a crazy girlfriend with a sci-fi knife. OP promises lots of monster girls, but mute it because it has a horrible rap theme song, with a lot of bad English. One advantage apparently about being born a goblin is that he goes from baby to youth in about three days, so that dispenses with one of the more tedious parts of a "Reborn into a new world" type Isekai - childhood.

Yeah, there are messages when he achieves something, but no hovering status screens, and no divine spirit involved. Apparently this is some carryover from an ESP power he had in the previous world, which is NOT our world, for once. He already has the power of Absorption, where he gains traits from whatever he eats, even metals and poisons. However, anything he had acquired in his previous life has been lost.

It's a unique set-up at least.

And at 6 days old, he's got a goblin girl hitting on him....

Okay, you can tap your head for a status screen, and evolve at 100 points, and he's already up to 86. He'd better evolve quickly though, Goblin lifespans are only about 20 years. So of course he sets a speed record for evolving into a Hobgoblin, and with every new creature he kills (With his two companions) the list of skills inflates incredibly. And soon, he's running the entire cohort he was born in.

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Shuumatsu Train Doko e Iku - Train To The End Of The World. Cute girls ride an antique (but I imagine highly fetishized by Japanese Railfans) 2000 series electric train from their home town of Agano to Ikebukuro.

It seems someone invented 7G networking but didn't realize that it threatened the laws of physics. If you thought Flip Flappers was psychedelic, you should see what happened when they turned it on....

Two years later people are living with the consequences, which are different all over. In Agano, it means anyone over 21 years and 3 months old turns into a random animal. Some places everyone turned into trees. The distances between places have expanded enormously. Shizuru and her three friends haven't changed yet (they may still, no matter where they go). Shizuro is determined to find her friend Yoka with whom she had a falling out shortly before the 7G disaster. A chance bit of newspaper has a picture of Yoka, placing her in Ikebukuro only a month prior. And so, after a crash course in how to operate a 2000 Series engine, the journey begins.

Which includes a count of the number of intervening stops, so I imagine each place will be a different surreal adventure. Although there are more than there are episodes, so they'd better get a move on.

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Maou no Ore ga Dorei Elf wo Yome ni Shitanda ga, Dou Medereba Ii? An Archdemon's Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride (Short title: Midome). It's a mistake to call the sorcerer with no social skills an Incel, since he's quite fine with that state of affairs. At least until he get a chance to buy an enslaved Elf at auction.

Now, while I'm all in favor of white haired elf characters, especially with collars, even if they're not dark skinned, for some reason my initial impression of her reminds me of Carla from Kono Healer Mendodkusai, and she hasn't spoken a word yet.

Zagan (the sorcerer) Rolls a 1 for Initiative and Nephelia (Nephy) totally drives their initial conversation by asking questions about how horrible he is going to be to her. Despite his denials, she keeps on asking how she is to be tortured and killed. I started getting the feeling she actually wanted it, the way she kept volunteering. Either that or she was playing 4-D Chess. In any case, in classic sorcerer style, he takes the fair maiden up to a tower room and locks her away gives her free rein to do with it as she likes. It's a "Master has given Dobby clothing!" moment.

The first episode felt really short, even though it was full length. Guess that's why they debuted with two. Before I delve into the second, I predict that all the comedy will center around her unspoken assumptions putting him on the spot and leaving him unable to communicate either.

And the opening of episode 2 is exactly that. He can't even figure out how to answer "Good morning, Master." Considering he grew up in the streets of the city, he shouldn't be THAT clueless about human social etiquette.

But he is.

The show takes a turn for the strikingly mundane as he discovers that people can actually appreciate a sorcerer who isn't doing evil shit to them. After he fights off some bandits attacking a Caravan, and the sorcerer behind them, ostensibly to impress Nephy that he will protect her, The cart owner pays him a huge bag of silver (Which the bandits were about to take) to ride with them for security. This solves the plot hole where they couldn't afford to pay for a ride, but were heading into town for shopping. He decides to get stuff for his elf girl, and the clothing shop is clearly a Flag event, since the Harpy proprietor Manuela appears in the OP, and somehow she floats around the shop without flapping her wings.

Hmmm, Manuela appeared to be shocked by Nephy's collar, but then the first outfit she produced for her is a barely-there strappy number that embarrasses both of them. But her enthusiasm for that outfit and the other ideas she has makes it seem like she's really into that herself. Fortunately that enthusiasm forces Nephy to finally express an opinion for herself and she decides that she's happy with the Maid outfit she was dressed in second, before a worse third outfit could have been offered.

I do hope an actual plot kicks in at some point, but the rest of the episode is filled with domestic cuteness.

Flag #2 the story cuts away from our awkward couple to a redheaded knight who also appears in the opening credits. She was actually in the very first scene of the first episode, but unarmored, and unconscious for most of it. But that scene established that there's a religious order opposed to sorcerers, and this one establishes that she's a knight of that order, and conflicted because she was rescued by a sorcerer.

I shouldn't have wished for plot. The backstory for the first scene gets recalled. She had a force of Angelic Knights that were wiped out by the cult of "Face Stealer" sorcerers who had been kidnapping young women in the area. The last of whom was the fellow Zagan had rescued her from. So, we get the standard "Corrupt church leader" who lies to her and says that a search of the Face Stealer's lair implicates Zagan as the mastermind, and he orders her after him, saying that even if that IS a mistake, he's still an evil sorcerer and must be wiped out. And we get her name, which really just rolls off the tongue, even less so in Japanese: Chastille Lillqvist.

I'm following the Ember version. They like to stick a manga panel at the last frame. In this case, we see that yeah, that third, or even fourth outfit would have been FAR worse....

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Posted by: J Greely at April 05, 2024 04:55 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Mauser at April 05, 2024 06:08 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: mikeski at April 06, 2024 11:59 PM (DgGvY)

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That was a really satisfying ending. Tied up all the loose ends, and kinda shows how things would continue for them, absent an overall plot. You can fill in the rest with your imagination.

I mean, there's certainly room for another season, but this one was a nice, complete package with a complete arc. More shows should be like this.

Posted by: Mauser at March 27, 2024 08:10 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: J Greely at March 28, 2024 04:08 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Mauser at March 29, 2024 09:18 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: J Greely at March 30, 2024 09:01 AM (oJgNG)

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In contrast to the serious disappointment the last episode of Kekkon Yubiwa Monogatari was, the last episode of Hime-sama Goumon No Jikan Desu ended on an absolutely hilarious note with a parody of the Isekai genre. It's been a long time since something made me laugh as thoroughly as that.

I have to apologize for my doubts at the beginning after reading the first story in the Manga. It may have started as basically a 4-Koma joke anime, but it grew into something really wonderful.

And it said it would be continued at the end. Then again, so did the wedding ring story.

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Suddenly reminded why I didn't mind giving my my software career so much.

I installed the new main board for my Ender 3 printer (Big Tree Tech SKR Mini E3 v 3.0, with Microprobe), and it needed firmware installed. However being a Chinese company, the stuff they have at GitHub isn't exactly well documented. I probably flashed the firmware from various versions a dozen times. (Some versions couldn't even read the MicroSD card!).

I've got it working and printing out my phone case. It's nice that it's virtually silent now except for the fans. But it's doing some odd shit too. Like deploying the probe in the middle of the print. I had to unscrew it and move it out of the way before it yanked itself off!

In any case, if I wanted to fix the configuration, I needed to download and install Visual Studio Code, a couple of plug ins, the actual source repository for Marlin (the firmware in almost all printers), run a test compile, download the configuration for the board I'm actually using, try to compile that.... notice the word Try.

This is the shit I hate, trying to track down compiler errors, I don't even know what's significant, and there was something about two different libraries with the same name, a message to pick one, and no ability to do so before it went flying on. Then a list of other errors, and suddenly it's downloading Python, which still doesn't help.

Drilling holes in airplanes is so much simpler, even if the management suite makes you want to strangle them.

Posted by: Mauser at March 24, 2024 01:31 AM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: Mauser at March 24, 2024 07:01 PM (nk1Z+)

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Man, they are running out the clock on picking up the final wife.

They've been telegraphing for a couple of episodes now that the Dwarves, or their successors in the Earth kingdom are missing. And when our party finally arrives on site at a city that could certainly never be supported by its treacherous access, it is indeed empty. Even worse, it seems the demon lord has gathered enough negativity from the rings he sent out that he's already resurrected and is at full power while our feckless hero is still down by a wife.

Then, to my surprise, just as the evil troops are going to crush our heroes like a tidal wave, Gramps opens the portal back to our world and sends everyone else through.

It occurs to me that this might be where our technologically inclined Dwarves might be hanging out. But that can wait while everyone tries out Krystals' bras, which don't fit any of the other girls.

Priorities, don't you know.

Posted by: J Greely at March 17, 2024 06:00 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Mauser at March 17, 2024 02:01 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: Mauser at March 17, 2024 02:15 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: J Greely at March 20, 2024 07:24 PM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Mauser at March 20, 2024 09:08 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: J Greely at March 23, 2024 07:47 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Mauser at March 24, 2024 01:04 AM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: Mauser at March 24, 2024 07:03 PM (nk1Z+)

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If only Wonderduck could have been alive to see this:

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So going through next season on Anime Charts, I've got too many possibilities. So I'd like to hear your thoughts. Links to the show pages that include the promotional videos and show descriptions.

Mushoku Tensei Ⅱ: Isekai Ittara Honki Dasu 2nd Cour
Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation Season 2 Part 2
https://www.livechart.me/anime/12251

Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! 3
KONOSUBA -God's blessing on this wonderful world! 3
https://www.livechart.me/anime/11233

Kaijuu 8-gou
KAIJU No.8
https://www.livechart.me/anime/11352

Lv2 kara Cheat datta Motoyuusha Kouho no Mattari Isekai Life
Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers
https://www.livechart.me/anime/12375

Maou no Ore ga Dorei Elf wo Yome ni Shitanda ga, Dou Medereba Ii?
An Archdemon's Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride
https://www.livechart.me/anime/11578

Re:Monster
https://www.livechart.me/anime/12334

Sentai Daishikkaku
Go! Go! Loser Ranger!
https://www.livechart.me/anime/11714

URUSEI YATSURA (2022) 2nd Season
https://www.livechart.me/anime/11333

Tonari no Youkai-san
https://www.livechart.me/anime/11169

Posted by: Mauser at March 16, 2024 04:54 PM (nk1Z+)

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Since I keep mentioning those desks. Finally dug the pictures out of the camera. These are actually LESS messy now than at this point, when I was still getting things organized. You can see why the before picture was not conducive to productivity, although I actually DID get a fair amount of writing done that way. Note the white printer stand that got placed BEHIND Desk 2 to stack the printers. (And I moved one of those drawer units.)

This is the before. It's amazing I got anything done like this.

The desks are actually cleaner and a bit more organized since these pictures were taken. The bins under Desk 2 are full of audio and data cables, and printing supplies are in the one under Desk 3. The dining room table is ALMOST clean. Still some printing remnants there to sort through.

Hidden behind Desk 3 is the damaged desktop, which I can press into service if I want, possibly on those end tables my Dad built (With the speakers on them). The "Bridge" has been rendered into its component parts on the woodpile in the shop, as was the (not shown) DVD shelf that used to be where 1 and 2 are. Also not shown is the stack of 3 old Macs and 2 old PCs. Still deciding what to do with those. The coffee table is pushed closer to the bookcases, and is still cluttered for now, but getting better. There's an amazing amount of open floorspace now, which will get even better once I do something with the old computers.

And one of the best features is that now no lights are directly reflecting off of the screen.

Originally, My AV setup spanned that whole bay window. Note the CRT TV and PlayStation. Grandma's old armchair and sofa with the decaying rayon fabric are long gone now. You can also see the DVD shelf I mentioned, except back then it was all VHS! Barely visible was a companion that filled the space under the bridge. Those date all the way back to my apartment in Vancouver. (The end tables, coffee table, and the sofa and armchair were given to me when I moved to my first apartment in Herndon VA).

I also built this stand when I first bought a large format Epson printer to go with my first digital camera: The Amazing 1.8 Megapixel Sony Mavica MVC-FD88 (which saved on floppies). The large format UMax scanner on the top eventually seized up, and the replacement had a noisy power supply that resulted in banding across the image. The LaserWriter 12/640 PS would probably still work but it's got a chunk of paper wedged somewhere in the infeed where you can't get it out without some major surgery. The Mac had a second hard drive, a 27 gig IBM that died hard and took all my email from before 2010 and lots of other good stuff with it. The original 4 gig still works. Or I assume so, I haven't powered it up in a year, and that was to try and save everything left to a 32 Gig USB stick (although that doesn't work for anything with a resource fork). There's also a Magneto-Optical drive and a CD-Rom burner. I wonder what ancient treasures I can find on those.

The desk is one I built an even longer time ago. It was one of two wings for a corner desk unit I never finished that would have gone in the den of my old house in Vancouver (WA). It was going to have an edge made of Ash around the sides, that's why it's rabbeted.

The Mac, a PowerPC 8600/300, had RCA video inputs, that's what the VCR was for. I could watch TV while reading Usenet. And yes, that's a modem next to it. It used to have Apple's 850AV monitor, which was a whopping 21", but FLAT, with built in color correction and stereo speakers. It was actually worth repairing once when the power supply went. Once.

Posted by: Mauser at February 23, 2024 05:54 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: Mauser at March 03, 2024 09:17 AM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at March 15, 2024 11:56 AM (LZ7Bg)

Posted by: Mauser at March 15, 2024 09:16 PM (nk1Z+)

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Hime-sama Goumon no Jikan desu Episode 7

Goumon means torture, right? That's my vocabulary lesson this season. But they very advisedly have it in scare quotes in the title. Really, with all the food and other treats, it should be Temptation instead.

This time the Beast Master brought some kitties. But they're insidious! The princess is kneeling on the floor with a cat on her lap, and her legs fall asleep, but she dare not move, it might wake up the cat!

But the rest of the episode is an outing, to go to the Demon Lord's Daughter's pre-school Field Day. How utterly wholesome!

And the Demon Lord's wife isn't so hard on the eyes either.

Posted by: J Greely at February 21, 2024 06:04 AM (oJgNG)

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