Of imagination and family

Considering their reluctance to put in a major plot, and the short format of the whole production...

...Kyousogiga's end was fucking perfect.

Of spells and lossless compression

Every magical system that has in some effect compressed spells has no other option but to be awesome as hell. 

AWESOME AS HELL.

Of the end of Chuunibyou

From http://archive.moe/a/thread/76713627/#76718489 :

>>76718147

That they learn there is a way to enjoy life and still live one at the same time. So what if the rocks aren't magical stones? Appreciate them for their beauty. Wonder and marvel at how they took thousands of years to get that shape, to be created. So what if the stars in the sky aren't gateways to another dimension? They are actually huge giant balls of fire that have been around for millions of years and we are still not sure how everything about them works. Are you telling me that's not magical and wonderful in it's own way? What kind of a boring person are you that you think the only wonderful things can come from purely made up scenarios?

The world is mysterious and wonderful as it is. It is not solely divided between those who use their imagination and soulless drone slaves to society. You just need to look harder.

 ...
I may write a coherent post about Chuunibyou later on, but I had to save this somewhere. Posters like him are why I keep going back to /a/...

Koji Kumeta

He is virtually incapable of creating a girl character which ain't good. Oh, no, my mouth slipped, what am I saying? He is virtually incapable of creating a girl character which ain't great <3

This kind of faces

I love them.

Anyway, I kind of didn't expect this story to be THAT straightforward, but I enjoy it nontheless. Looking forward to 12 and 13, I am sure they won't disappoint me.

Yuuta's inaction

It went too far. Around half an episode too far. Yeah, I know. It's simply a cinematographic technique to raise the tension... but, up to now Chuu2 managed to use everything in its favour. Up to now. Why next-to-last episodes are always shit? Can't they just tell the story right? Why would you want to leave a whole fucking episode as a build-up for the season finale? You know, fuck this shit. Chuunibyou just lost its place in my Hall of Glo... I mean, in my list of favourite anime series.

At least I hope we'll see Mori snapping too. Not only Yuuta. It would be kind of sad if Mori has to snap so that Yuuta stops dwindling around, but I would love to see her action. I mean, as opposed to Yuuta's inaction.

In unrelated news, I love what KyoAni is doing with the colors. And the animation. And everything. Well, the sixth ep scene with the passing train still takes the crown. For the whole year.

P.S. And I still consider this a romance, to boot, the best one lately.
P.P.S.

Best imouto ever!

That being said, I do occasionally make such statements, without remembering them afterwards, but goddamn, that's one fine imouto.

Next episode: we finally see his ex.

「It's not my fault」

「It's your fault　

It's your fault

It's your fault

It's your fault

It's your fault

It's your fault

It's your fault

It's your fault

It's your fault

It's your fault

　It's your fault」

Do you know about Old Man Henderson?

 I just had to share.

Ахчо0о told me to say

that his favourite anime of the season is Zetsuen no Tempest.

And I am afraid to ask him if he is enjoying it ironically or not.

Of Names And Witches

No, this is not about "A Nameless Witch". Geeze, that book was one great piece of literature, I should reread it...

This is about my belief that the names of the witches in Madoka Magica were not simply meta information, but were available in-universe too. Why would they be written in such an alphabet otherwise? (yes, that's Shaft, and yes, that's Gen) But I still like to think that Kyubei for example could have known them. (read the serialized mangas finally, maybe there...) Okay, okay. But, assuming that the manga series tackle this question in exactly the same way as the anime... there were a lot puella magi. At least one of them could have taken upon herself to decipher that which took us only two episodes, right? (...so?) So, this is about names.

Names carry power, that's a common belief within the set of magical systems. Ursula Le Guin would be an author I would show as a prime example, but, as always, this comes from down below, from the myths and legends of the different nations. Would not even try to say anything about this, it simply is outside my sphere of mastery. Names are special; and if you know the name of the wind, you can bend it; you can ride it... knowing the names is what gives you power to control. But that's only one of the sides of the same coin. Truly, the other is less prominent nowadays. (Why?) Magic is no longer a story of fear to thrill your kids around the fireplace, it's a tale of adventure about a world where the larger scale and the smaller scale are less contradictory. But it's exactly that other side I believe to be the case in Madoka Magica. That is to say, if we assume that names do carry power, the evolutionary correct variant would be the witches gaining power over the one who utters their name. Paraphrased, those girls stupid enough to learn the names of the witches just died off.

...I would love to see a story about such a girl. Or maybe there already is such a story? Oh well, one day I will feel like finally reading the spinoff series. For now, I am continuing with "The Name of the Wind", having dumped a little side thought on the piece of pa... blog already.

Of Dreams And Such, pt1

Quantum Mechanics is a field in mathematics, created to explain particle physics.

My dream: to create a field in mathematics in order to explain a magical system.

P.S. Harem ending?

Goddamnit, Dowman, stop making me feel all these feels. Really.

I mean, what the hell? I feel giddy, smiley, happy and sad. That's love, not admiration. Yeah, I am an established fan, that is to say, I know how to enjoy whatever is thrown in front of me, but... the most the good authors ever reach is to make me admire how well is their oeuvre created. This is something else entirely.

@6th ep of sign

So... everybody in this anime is an asshole, except for the main girl.

And, if the main girl was an asshole too, right now she would be spreading rumors how the Crimson Knights caused these monster appearances, and are endangering the physical well-being of all players of this game just because they couldn't leave a single human being alone. But she is too nice for that. And a little gullible, but that comes from "too nice" too.
Actually, turns out the main guy(?) is just a lot of sociopath, and a little of an asshole. A pebble when compared to the boulders that are the rest. And at least Sora has the excuse that he is, well, roleplaying an asshole.

I really wish at least one of the characters had common sense. Or at least to be genre savvy. They are fucking gamers, how can they be not genre savvy? Sigh. At least Yuki Kajiura is there to sooth my soul. How must I know where obsession needs to go...

Tenri Hen and translation efforts.

First, the cover, as for some reason I really like Watanabe's design for Tenri:

Then... whoever that Hinoka guy is, I am glad he spent the effort to release this OVA, especially how nobody can even find an .iso, not to mention translate and release it. But... His japanese is obviously on a rather low level, and he didn't bother much to smooth over the English. Instead, the script was really faithful to RHS' scanlation of said chapters. And by "really faithful" I mean, lots of the lines were directly copied from there. It... you know... does not actually work. The OVA changed some stuff, especially at the beginning. To be precise, in the manga Keima first goes to his game library, falls over, then goes shopping; instead, in the OVA, Keima directly goes hunting for new games. That's okay, direction-wise, I actually like it this way more, it's more... concise and to-the-point. But, because of this director's decision, the translation was absolutely off, being simply copied from the manga. Putting this aside, there were several moments, where Hinoka shortened lines in order to make them fit in the time constraints... which changed the meaning. Oh well. I can bitch about the timing and typesetting too, but considering I didn't bother at all to fix them, I am guilty too.

Speaking of guilty... yeah, I am a native bulgarian speaker, I don't live in an english-speaking country for three years already, and I know just a little japanese... So, whatever efforts I spent to correct Hinoka's scripts are, by definition, useless. The best I can hope for is that my script is a little less wrong. But, you know what? Such shit is one of the things you should do at least once in your life. Like... like walking in the rain. No, not the summer rain, that warm thing that cleanses you, just the normal October rain. Heck, the weather is going to hell anyway, so I am not even sure what "normal October rain" even is. But yeah, at least once in your life you should get soaked to the bones. Just so that you know what the feeling is. And, as an anime fan, you should at least once in your life release (shitty) subs for a favourite show of yours. A tide of life, so to speak.

Ha, all in all, I certainly don't regret the slightest these wasted two hours of my life.

Miya, you got it right this time!

This scene was ... one of the best ever. I cannot rationally say why I loved it so much, but...

...yeah, it's around the level of that train-passing-by scene from Chuu2, ep6.

Enter the Imouto

キタ━━━(゜∀゜)━━━！！！

Miya is a miracle of the universe

<what title says>

Genetical engineering and teen drama

So. Shun raised a death flag around the size of Jerusalem. What else?

I love the distressed Saki. "Should I leave Maria for Mamoru's sake? But no, that won't work... Am I right to date Maria? Isn't it just following my genotype's stress relief algorithms? But what about my Shun? What is Satoru doing? Why don't we all just become a happy fivesome? But wouldn't this be just giving in to our genotype? [...]", and so on, and so on.

I love the setting too. Heck, can't you smell all the angst?

And I love all the sexual tension. Unlike some normal book, the sexual tension here is... creative. Ha. I said already about Saki's thoughts, but... even leaving this aside, it's really fucking fun to watch the sexual tension with gay couples as a base for it.

Let's see what will happen from now on... probably we won't see much next episode, but that's ok. The pacing's just like that.

That being said, besides the ED and the amazing OST, this adaptation is still shit. Not as shit as before, but... sigh. Also, the VA for Satoru's rebound is terribad.

Side notes: chapter 386

Hamster is the best girl.

Leaving this aside, Ruka is surely annoying. She decides on something, and stays true to it... which is okay, but she just jumped on the decision that she loves Hayate, and proceeded to screw up everything from there on for the sake of that idiot. Well. Can't blame her too much, she is just lacking in the intelligence department, as observed... and Hata is probably just using her to get Hayate to realize his own feelings. As with Hinagiku, kind of. Hinagiku had main role in getting Hayate to admit to himself that he loved A-tan. And Hinagiku got one of the worst rejections possible, after which she kind of got sidelined, not as a main love interest. That's why she hasn't annoyed me to hell in the last 200 chapters. Ruka will probably be used in a similar way, then thrown like a dirty rag to the side too (yeah, getting a major secondary role, and all, but still only secondary). Considering the anime adaptations by Manglobe, and the themes that Hata is putting in the last hundred chapters or so, it will probably be how Hayate reaches the conclusion that he wants to pay his debt to Milady back himself, and how he realizes that even without the debt, there is no way he could leave her. Which I imagine will make himself an even better/more enjoyable character, and I will be fuck-yeah-ing for hours after I read the relevant chapters, but... for now... Ruka is annoying.

Eh. That was just a side note to the story, as long as Hamster's there, and Nagi continues to grow up as a human, nobody cares about stuff like Ruka.

P.S. I am still at 40/78 of the JC Staff adaptation... I wonder if I will ever finish it...
P.P.S. Aika is the only character I do not trust, so... ch386 ends in a cliffhanger for me. Fuck. I am actually worried what will happen...

Ideas behind MaoYuu (part 0.9)

Really, I can't even begin to count all the ideas that the author of MaoYuu incorporated inside. It already has most of the "fuck yeah" moments in human history in its story... Ha, it even has the Russia winter wars in the making. Besides this? The technological progress behind the Age of Discovery and, later on, the Industrial revolution, the printing press, the first universities, bringing new crops from the overseas territories, the potato that saved Europe, Protestant/Anglican churches, a flavour of communism, large quantities of medieval economics theory, and so much more... Oh well, I caught up with the manga, time to lament a little how bad the anime will be... for no other reason but to lower my impossibly high expectations. Ah, and omake:

Fried Chicken and Rice Balls

So. When is the last time you saw such a line, which was not emphasized to oblivion how caring, loving, erotic it is? Completely normal acts, the meaning of which gets exaggerated by the stiff japanese society... Hell, I myself am so touchy-feely, that if Yuuta's behaviour this ... second half of an episode counted as "confession of true love", I would be a proud follower of Key-kun. Not that I am not, but... even I cannot love dozens of girls. So yeah. While I was watching this scene, my thoughts were along the lines of "now I will be laughing really much if people start using this as an example that Yuuta likes her"... and, several seconds later, the realization hit me.
The director is by no way trying to imply with this scene that Yuuta loves her. Care, yeah, romantic feelings, heck no.
...no less expected from Ishihara. That's one of the guys who got me into anime in the first place.

But that's not all. Noooo, Ishihara is far from all that matters here.
See, this season brought us Shin Sekai Yori. If nothing else, SSY anime emphasizes the importance of good directing and good money saving techniques in the animation. Because, let's be honest: SSY the anime sucks monkey balls. And even this mishmash of an adaptation does not manage to hide the pearl that is the original novel. The converse is also true: even good directing and amasing animation cannot straight out the lackluster source, as seen in Hyouka for example.
And, now for the best case scenario: even Ishihara and KyoAni with a huge budget cannot overshadow the original novel.
This is romance done right. Now, this is not the only method to do romance right, and we are still in the early stages of them falling for each other; but for 8 episodes in, it isn't bad at all. Considering that we'll get probably some more timeskips, and the very last episode will show them getting together, for example after the school festival, I think the pacing's a-ok. Leaving this issue aside, let me elaborate a little, trying to topologically sort the mess of a tree that constitutes my thoughts at the moment.
So, the general guidelines that almost any fictional work fails:
1) The characters must be characters by themselves too; we do not need somebody defined by his significant-other-to-be. Nor do we need plot devices, or machines that shout VICTORIKAAAAA KUJOOOOOOOOO at each other, which shouting for some reason being taken as an ultimate sign of love. I think there is no doubt Yuuta fulfills this condition; even though he is the PoV, he strikes as a reasonable guy, somebody you would drink a beer with and have a laugh about youthful indiscretions. Which, y'know, is enough; if you feel a character as a human indeed, the character is well written. And what about Rikka? Yes, on the surface she seems like a one-trick bunny. But, deep down it seems, no, if we accept Yuuta's words, it is certain that she puts her little head to good use, and that she is more than just the outer shell.
2) The characters must be equals. Must feel each other on an equal standing. That's why I have been arguing against Haqua for so many years already... she felt inferior to the genius Keima; but, well, with the endgame of the Goddesses arc I think she finally mustered some confidence --which is good. As for Yuuta and Rikka... no, Yuuta may think what Rikka does is embarrassing as hell, and he may take care of her, but he certainly does not feel superior to her. If you ask him, you may get "But of course I am better than her", but he wouldn't really feel that way. Rikka, on the other hand, has plenty self-confidence. Seems like that entire act of hers is based on her self-confidence. And confidence in her father, but that's the same thing nowadays.
3) We generally don't need too much drama. Yeah, it worked beautifully in ef. But the setting there was such; actually... the best pair was indeed the one with least normal setting: Renji and Chihiro. That was beautiful. But that's not the only way to be beautiful. That normal, common relationship between Yuuta and Rikka, watching it develop normally, not being forced by drama on every corner... it's good too. I like it.

Now, humanity loves the number three, and, as we are optimizing and linearizing the tree only locally at a time, that's all you get as guidelines. What am I going to use them as a proof of?
These characteristics of this series... they all come directly from the source. They are further developed by the adaptation, but they, as key themes in the anime, you can feel how they are the underground... I mean, underbook ley lines in the intersection of which the animation was built on. Hooray, I have not even read the book, yet here am I, claiming it's worth spending time on it.
But... when was the last time we saw a well-made adaptation of a well-written book? The first example that comes to my head... is Haruhi. Certainly Haruhi, if we limit ourselves to KyoAni's production. Sweet. For first time in years, I am not lamenting the fact that KyoAni's doing everything else but working on my second season! Now, you'll excuse me, I have to drink to that.

We all need a full-lesbianism S2

The central theme in Symphogeah is how one of the heroines wants to fuck the main character, but she, as a MC, is always busy with boring stuff like saving the world.

And I probably don't even need yuri googles.

Putting this aside; the first time I watched Symphogear I marathoned it on the large TV, and the experience was simply beautiful.

Then, thinking back to what mishmash I just finished, I wondered if I am not just overexalted, and the adrenaline rush is affecting my judgement. But... continually in this last half an year, no matter when did I decide to watch a segment of it again, no matter what I felt at that moment, I still thought it great.

Something is wrong with me, eh?

Screw that, the very act of giving a chance to Symphogeah means something is probably wrong with you, so I am just going to enjoy the heck of Volume 3... one more time for tonight.

In Anticipation

Imagine this animated

then weep

as it will never be animated with the glory it deserves

MaoYuu, volume one, reread n+1