Grinding Cuts

A buddy of mine back in high school once made a mix tape he called "Grinding Cuts" - basically a long series of excellent songs (from his very eclectic and non-mainstream collection) that by no means should ever be juxtaposed.

That happened in Brynhilder in the Darkness. At the end of the drug-stealing arc, they tried to bring the ship hard about into standard Harem territory, and damn near capsized the thing.

The harem of witches have relocated to the Observatory. Gothy Precog and Psychic Hacker are, for the moment, alone, while Not-Kuroneko and Our Hero are at school. Now, Psychic Hacker is one of those girls in anime who should be drawn with a permanent smirk, based on her attitude, and she's one of those hyper-capitalist types. The kind of girl who inflicts her own rules on you and steamrolls you into giving her what she wants. While these two are alone at the Observatory, Psychic Hacker basically wonders out loud in front of Gothy Precog what will happen if she tells Not-Kuroneko that she's not really paralyzed. Gothy Precog says she'll kill her, which gets a laugh. True or not? I dunno. If she's acting, she must be REALLY disciplined for not running out of the burning house.

Our Hero and Not-Kuroneko are coming back from school, and get caught in the rain, which has stopped by the time they get to the observatory. At which point, it is conveniently revealed that there IS a hot spring nearby, but, um, it's co-ed, so Our Hero modestly suggests they go one at a time.

Yes, it's Onsen Episode time already.

While Our Hero is taking his bath, Psychic Hacker lays her trap. Sitting on the edge of the spring, she gets him to turn around and get an eyeful. Or half eyeful, since her bounty is less than bounteous. Actually, with the way she's sitting, he gets the full show, but she "forgives" him that but insists that she's going to collect a "Boob Fee" for seeing her breasts. And like any anime hero in such a situation, he accepts this blackmail.

Shortly later he detects someone entering the spring, and thinking it's Psychic Hacker, he turns to give her a shove, or something, except it's actually Not-Kuroneko, and he ends up getting a double-handful of her double-handfuls. And again, like a typical anime hero, he gets all embarrassed and flustered and takes his time about letting go. And after excusing himself, he realizes that he failed to take advantage of this golden opportunity to see if she has those three distinctive moles.

Finally, it's bedtime. This surprisingly well-equipped love-nest observatory even has futons. And Psychic Hacker is setting up one for herself. Our Hero objects, and she says that letting her stay there is how he will pay back his "boob fee" (since her squat is being surveyed for the hyperspace bypass reservoir, she can't stay there).

She also improbably enrolls in the school as another transfer student.

Then even MORE improbably, a busty freshman transfers in, and immediately wants to join the astronomy club.

She's actually another witch, sent by the evil lab administrator to terminate the others. Which apparently she's going to take her own sweet time in doing.

We find this out during a meeting by the board of directors of the lab, who are not happy about all the escapees, and the drug theft, but he swears, this girl will help clean up the mess, because shes got an AA-PLUS rating (really, AAA is going to be saved for the final Boss, just you wait). We also get a count of the number of escapees, and the number killed, and number of ebola'd corpses found.

I suppose the onsen interlude was meant to give relief from the really heavy shit they've been laying down, but really, the Harem Hijinks do not suit the story. That is, unless they're going to stick with this course change, but I have my doubts. Frankly, I can't be sure WHAT they're trying to pull here.

Posted by: Mauser at 03:09 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Gokukoku no Brynhildr - Brynhilder in the Darkness - series so far

This series is Dark. Really, really fucking dark. How dark? Take Elfin Lied and remove all the cute bits with a plasma cutter, that's how dark.

I think I mentioned when I listed the series I was looking at watching a few articles down that the first episode was a downer. But that was the bright spot.

So, we started off with Our Hero being saved by a girl with destructive "Magic" power from a landslide that her other magic friend predicted. Okay, that had the potential to be uplifting. But no, that's not the road this takes. We find out that this girl, who sure as hell looks like a grown up version of his childhood friend "Kuroneko" - who died tragically, leaving him angst-ridden and living the life she would have if he hadn't doomed her - gained her magical power through this big metal plug installed in the back of her neck by some lab, and they're out to get her back... to kill her.  And her friend with the precognition, and a bunch of other girls on the scheduled for destruction list who got away, and anyone who helps them, like Our Hero. In fact, in the second episode some JSDF trucks roll by our unsuspecting hero, and in the back of one are two of these other girls, naked and heavily bound (but not in some kinky way) and once they are repatriated to the lab, we are treated to what happens to one of these girls when her plug is removed (actually, they call it a harness, which is a setup for a badly crafted Engrish word-play later on). Basically she dissolves into goo.

But a pop-o-matic spinal tap that forces you to do a Lugo-man cosplay with the push of a single button isn't bad enough. They also apparently require certain medication every 35 hours or they start to spontaneously bleed all over like an Ebola victim. Not-Kuroneko tries to stretch out her dwindling supply by coming to school heavily bandaged one day (or else it's a killer Evangelion cosplay, I'm not sure which) but she's absent the next day.

Our Hero, determined to meddle in her affairs, even if it means the lab guys will kill him too, tracks her down via some school paperwork to an abandoned village in the valley below the Observatory (it was condemned to make way for a hyperspace bypass reservoir that was never built). He finds her there, and ignoring her demands to go away, sneaks into the house they're squatting in and meets her housemate. The Precog girl is totally paralyzed less her left hand, which she uses to speak via some sort of type-and-talk device. She's also dressed up like a little goth dolly. Naturally she accuses him of being some kind of perv who wants to have his way with her. That colors their banter from then on out.

Not-Kuroneko explains to Our Hero about the whole medicine thing, and shows him her remaining supply of 10 capsules, and explains why she therefore can't go on the school trip to the beach, even though she really wants to (Another of Kuroneko's dreams) because she's gonna die first, and then, while trying to boil some water in the firepit (this being a semi-traditional Japanese house they're in) she sets the house on fire. Our hero manages to rescue the Gothy Precog, and Not-Kuroneko puts out the fire by blowing apart the house with her destructive power. But it's too late, all the drugs were burned up, and Gothy Precog is already starting to bleed.

Sheltering at the Observatory, Our Hero reveals his suddenly convenient gift for photographic memory. He knows the drug number from the blister pack the pills are in, and they do a little Googling to find the place it comes from. Now "Don't Hemorrhage From Every Pore As A Side Effect From Your Magic Powers" isn't exactly an over-the-counter medication, so they plan a raid on the factory to get some more. They enlist the help of another magic girl via their surprisingly unmonitored ham radios, whose gift is the ability to access computers remotely with her mind. Her price for disabling the security system is half of their take.

(Why am I having a flashback to the Deadman Wonderland "candy" here?)

Gothy Precog is concerned, because she sees that Not-Kuroneko is gonna get killed by another magic girl at the facility. Precognition in this story however is changeable, so they adapt their tactics. Except that the reason for the prediction is that Not-Kuroneko is planning to make a Noble Sacrifice so that our Hero can get away with the drugs, and of course, Our Hero won't let that happen.

Unfortunately, the explanation for why the defending magic girl is such a problem involves "Classes" or levels (if they start Arena Combat, I am SO out of here). All of our escapee friends are mere Class B's whose powers are either not interesting to the Lab Boys or have drawbacks, like Gothy Precog's paralysis, for example, or Not-Kuroneko's progressive memory loss the more she uses her powers.

Ah, my astute reader (readers?) can see exactly where THAT little tidbit is leading.

The lab defender is Class AA, which means she can use TWO A-class powers (they mention it goes up to AAA, which I assume they're saving for the final boss fight.) The first one is that she can slice the bejeebus out of anything in a 6 meter radius, and the second is... (sentence cut off by episode ending for cheap plot manipulation.)

So, predictably, Not-Kuroneko goes off to get herself honorably killed by the defender, and Our Hero goes off to make her sacrifice meaningless by trying to save her instead of going after the drugs for the other girls. Gothy Precog freaks that the prediction has changed to both of them dying.

During the fight, Not-Kuroneko gets ALMOST MCSA'd, (wait for the re-animated scene in the Blu Ray) but it's enough that our hero can see that she really DOES have the unique three mole pattern on her side, he just couldn't see it in her armpit before because, well, the skin moves a bit when one grows boobs. Proof! Not-Kuroneko really IS Kuroneko! The plot thicks.

Except that in her next attack, the defending girl makes Not-Kuroneko go *Spluch*. The End.

But no! Our Hero manages to drive a pointy crowbar thing into Spluch-girl right through the heart! And he demands that she use her OTHER power right now or else she'll die. (Or maybe, mortally injured like that, she'll die before she can use it, dumbass). Instead, she Spluches Our Hero. Yay! But then she realizes she has no choice, because she's gonna die unless she does it, so faster than you can make a Cher reference, she turns back time. One whole minute un-elapses.

Now this has a lot of terrible consequences. For one thing, it renders Our Hero and Not-Kuronkeko not dead. Second, it uses up all of Spluch-girl's magical reserves. Her "Harness" plug pops slightly out. This being "on Hold" condition happens when you use too much magic, or can be induced by pressing button number two of the three buttons on the plug (number one being the whole dissolving into goo thing, and number three remains un-named for future dramatic purposes). And the third thing is that now Our Hero loses all knowledge of having seen Not-Kuroneko's side-boob... oh, and her identifying moles.

Now apparently the lab guys really don't value their creations at all, because as Spluch-girl is captured and tied up (but not in some kinky way) by our heroes, they decide to pull the plug on her, remotely for her failure, and Our Hero is treated to the sight of a girl dissolving into goo before his eyes.

Oh, and speaking of eyes. Amid the fizzing girl-goo, some slimy blob of a creature with eyes all over it is slithering about. Perhaps THIS is the source of their powers? Our hero valiantly dispatches the disgusting creature with the heel of his shoe. And observes that "Harness" might actually be "Her Nest" - yeah... no.

(I will give it one plus.  The opening theme is pretty epic, for the most part.)

Posted by: Mauser at 10:19 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Bratz dolls as post-apocalyptic bounty hunters?

So I just stumbled across this south Korean girl band with a rather edgy, dystopian futuristic visual style. The girls themselves are smoking hot. Too bad I hate the music, but they sure are fun to look at. But this Animated video is the first thing that caught my eye.

Posted by: Mauser at 12:11 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Not Pathe-tic at all

British Pathe has posted their entire archive of newsreels, from 1896 to 1976 on YouTube in full definition.

http://www.youtube.com/user/britishpathe

Make a note of it.

Posted by: Mauser at 12:20 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Magical Sniper girls

Steve did a couple of posts of magical sniper girls, so I simply mentioned that Chaika from Hitsugi no Chaika was also a magical sniper (It wasn't a "Suggestion" or anything, just a statement of fact.).

It's actually a pretty cool effect, as she's firing, the spinning magical circle gets drawn back along the barrel in the center and then slingshots outwards.

You won't see that mention though, because Steven deleted it. In fact, he's deleted a lot of my comments lately, so I won't be making any more. I'm sure we'll both be happier that way.

Update: It turns out the bookmarks on my Etna aren't up to date with the ones on Himawari, so I ended up seeing Steven's blog when I opened all in tabs. And after a couple of weeks, I guess he noticed my absence or something. I just wanted to correct his update. The last time I found a duck, I asked Wonderduck if he was interested, and he said no, and explained his rationale. I understood it and dropped the issue and haven't suggested any since (A little disappointing, I remember how enthusiastic he was about the Smug Duck I found in Wakfu.) But the message, the correct message DID get through. This is where Steven's update is incorrect.

The difference is obvious. Actions may speak louder than words, but words are far less open to misinterpretation. Once, I e-mailed Steven a de-panned image from Asobi Ni Iku Yo, and he said "Don't do that again," and so I didn't. This time he opted for me "Getting the hint." Well, without explaining himself, he has no control over the hint received. Deleting comments is more typically translated as "Go away, you're not wanted here" (much like sunglasses spammers). It's a hostile thing. It's a giant "Fuck you!' when you thought you were participating. It's rather jarring when you think things are going well and you get slapped down with no explanation.

It's a bit disappointing, what could be a fun game to play along with is one you're not allowed to play. But that's alright, it's been explained and I understand it. However, I have a helpful nature and if I have knowledge about something, I like to share it. It's not an attempt at "Co-blogging." But if the response is akin to the mistake of holding a door open for a Feminist, then I guess I'm not a good fit there.

I could have said this there, but I said I wouldn't comment there any more, and I'm a man of my word. Besides, I can't trust that it wouldn't be deleted. He has a record of not brooking any dissent, and I also said that I wouldn't go over there to start an argument. And now what I tried to leave as a mature parting of the ways is being portrayed as petulance. That's not leaving me with a warm and fuzzy feeling like he really thinks it's a shame, it's more shame-shifting.

After sleeping on this, I wondered why he bothered to post at all instead of letting it all go silently into the past. Then I figured out the purpose. Steven made an editorial decision and did not get the result he wanted, and so he had to publicly declare that I'm a bad guy who spoiled the fun on his blog, and then, to make it not seem personal, he had to claim that I was a bad guy on another blog as well. I never saw anyone else talking about it, so I don't know why he felt the need for Face-saving at this point in time, but there it is.

Posted by: Mauser at 04:27 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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What a waste of time

Some filthy fake sunglasses spammer just tried to load me up with 326 spam comments. Pixy's wonderful spam limiter only let 22 show, and all of them are now gone.

Whoever paid this spammer for his "Search Engine Optimization" just wasted all his money. You deserve to go out of business and be stuck with your thousands of boxes of un-paid for counterfeit goods. Hopefully the Triads will break both your legs and your arms in three places each for the loan money.

As for the spammer himself, you, sir, can die in a fire. Slowly. If anything causes the internet to fail, where people only go to big, corporate controlled systems, it will be because sub-human shitbags like you will have ruined it for everyone else.

You wasted enough of my time dealing with your fraud. You have my permission to cease breathing.

Update: Oh wow, Shitbag is still at it, another dozen attempts just as I was writing this.

Posted by: Mauser at 07:14 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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This season

So far, and subject to updates:

Blade and Soul. Not entirely sure of the plot just yet, but a pretty white-haired, supposedly emotionless (But there are definitely some undercurrents in there) assassin girl is on the run from an evil empire. We know it's evil because they raze the village she takes shelter in. She's fast, bullet-dodging fast, and the empire wants her bad, blaming her for killing "The Master" when she's actually out to avenge him. Atakushi's subtitling needs some heavy-handed QC. We'll see who else picks this up.

Brynhildr in the Darkness (Gokukoku no Brynhildr). The first episode is a real downer, but that's all just setup. The lead is a young boy into astronomy because of his childhood friend "Kuroneko," who also watched the stars and believed in aliens. After they have an accident falling off a dam (she said she was taking him to meet the aliens), he is injured and she dies, or at least so he's told, and he never sees her again. Out of devotion to her, and guilt (Why did he have to clutch her hand as he fell off the dam?) he dedicates his life to astronomy and trying to find Aliens. Then a girl shows up who looks exactly like a grown up Kuroneko, who has a name that easily becomes Kuroneko (oddly, our hero doesn't know Kuroneko's real name). He embarrasses himself in front of the class assuming it's her. The girl is a little weird, with her own "original" school uniform, and she doesn't know much - so how did she get into their exclusive school? But things happen around her, things that help save people's lives, including our hero, who tries to cut it a little too close with her death prediction for him just to confirm it. In the process, he forces her to confess to being a magician. Although magic power seems to have come from surgery and drugs. It confirms that she is not his childhood friend, but opens up a whole new, unscientific world to him. Mezashite is doing it, and I didn't see any obvious problems.

Both of these seem interesting so far. I have two other things I'm looking at, and once they come out, I'll update.

Update:
[Anime-Koi] Hitsugi no Chaika: Strange white haired goth loli running around with a Coffin on her back. That's what you get from the previews. Well, that and her magical Barret rifle. Okay, not necessarily a Barret, but it is her spell casting device (much like the Caster from Outlaw Star). Her broken Japanese will probably get annoying very quickly. She speaks in one or two word sentences. Apparently she's on a quest to, well, from the looks of things, accidentally re-release a terror on the World. She doesn't know this, as far as I can tell. But just based on the first episode I can guess where this is going. There are eight legendary heroes who defeated an evil (as in probably powered by Satan or something ) emperor. The hero seen in this episode has an artifact from that battle, a hand (no, not the Doctor's). There's a faction from some corporation that wants to acquire it, and this lost goth loli girl who appears to be the emperor's daughter, if my guess is correct.

While running around lost on a mountainside, she runs into a ne'r-do-well, and decides to employ him. They are chased by a Unicorn, and this beast is NOT Twilight Sparkle. The ne'r-do-well is resigned to the fact that he's going to die, because once the Unicorn lays eyes on you, well, it's gonna follow you and kill you. Goth Loli opens the coffin and inside the false lid is her taken-down rifle-thing. If he can buy her time to prepare, they might make it. He recites an incantation invoking his Iron Blood power (makes him glow red, fast, and hard to damage), she sets up the rifle, and blows the thing in half. Neatly in half. Well, as neatly as a unicorn bisected the long way will be after it falls to the ground....

Upon returning to town, they encounter ne'r-do-well's sister. Goth Loli hires them both to help her break into the hero's mansion to acquire the McGuffin, without telling them what it is. The hero catches them, but once he sees Goth Loli, he's in utter shock. She's supposed to be dead.

Simply because it doesn't take place in a school, I'll give this more of a try. But I'm guessing we're going to visit 8 heroes, steal back 8 pieces of the dead emperor, resurrect him, and realize it's a really, really bad idea, and lay him to rest for good.

One thing of note, apparently magic this season involves large circular plugs in the back of your neck. Not Kuroneko gets some of her magic from a big steel knob attached to her cervical vertebrae, and Goth Loli also has a large circular jack on the back of her neck that she plugs her Barret charm-caster into.

Posted by: Mauser at 04:28 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I didn't want to have to do this...

FFF seems to have stopped Zvesda at episode 8.  Cthuko at 10.  It seems the only circle finishing it off is HorribleSubs, and I'm not happy about it, but I HAVE to know how it ends.

It annoys me especially since it speaks to the future reliability of those circles.  Why start a series with them if they're not going to finish.

Same thing happened with Commie and Space Dandy. Admittedly, 9 was a shitty episode, but it got a little better afterwards.

Posted by: Mauser at 11:38 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Zvesda - Ep. 9

This show continues to amaze me. Yes, it's an Onsen episode, and yes, It's full of absurd coincidences, but it's actually very well played and manages to actually AVOID most of the common Onsen-episode Tropes.

Although I really don't get the thing with Natasha and the Monkeys.

It also does a lot to advance the plot.  Identities are revealed, and the scale of Zvesda takes a step upwards.

(And Cthuko is flying way ahead of blue-rated FFF on the Translations.)

Posted by: Mauser at 03:16 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Space Dandy - Ep. 9

WTF did I just watch? This show has had some funny episodes, some surprisingly touching episodes, and some beautifully animated episodes. This one was none of the above. It was so utterly pointless, and nothing happened in it.  Hell, Dandy himself spent an awful lot of the episode just laying back with his hands behind his head doing nothing.  Even the animation was utterly lazy.

All I could find myself thinking of were those inevitable sections of any Tezuka movie where crudely animated "Strange creatures" are shown through a few cycles while the characters (offscreen) gaped about what strange creatures they were.

There was no real threat (Meow got fat, supposedly to be eaten by primitive plant people who didn't appear to have any mouths, and if there were no animal lifeforms on the planet, how'd they know he was edible?) no real plot, no development. It was stone soup, minus the stone (And all the other ingredients, if you go with the real meaning of stone soup).

I'm guessing this is the episode where they ran out of money, but they inserted it earlier into the sequence so they wouldn't end on a bad note.

This one is not a keeper.

Posted by: Mauser at 04:59 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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