Cowboy BeBop: not me doing calculus on how to dress like the characters without looking like a total cornball.

I’ve seen Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!'s season 1. It’s one of those one joke only shows, but it’s a competent one. However, I felt it stumbled at the final few episodes. Maybe I’ll watch the sequels sometime in the future.

I really liked Chunibyo. Rikka reads as autistic to me, and I think it’s nice to have this sweet romance with an autistic main character. The sequel is not as well-liked but I enjoyed it about as much as the first season.

Reading

I finished volume 5 of Yotsuba& and have now found myself returning to volume 3 of Sweat & Soap. It’s a really good romance manga. I’m still reading Moby Dick slowly but surely. I’ve also been listening to Nolan Reads’ audiobook of The Great Gatsby as a bedtime story lately, I think I have a decent comprehension of it if for no other reason than that each night I start the playback a few minutes before I left off, and it plays on a loop after I fall asleep… Which is probably a waste of electricity, but I’m a bit of an insomniac and this has been the most effective way I’ve found to fall asleep yet. After Norway’s king died I also started reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court for its republican themes, but I’m not very far along in it.

I started playing my first ever visual novel, Katawa Shoujo, specifically the fan-made “reengineered” version on Fdroid, a FOSS release which disables NSFW content and adds a number of accessibility features. I’m about 4 hours in and have been enjoying it a lot, although there was one gratuitous panty shot about 2½ hours in, alas. It’s basically about a boy with a hitherto-undetected congenital heart condition ending up at a high school for disabled kids, where he meets a number of girls with different disabilities. The idea is pretty obviously that depending on the player’s choices, he’ll end up in a relationship with any one of the girls; but the VN has been pretty subtle about it, and more than anything it feels like a story about the main character coming to terms with being disabled and unlearning his ableism. “We’re the only minority group you can join at any time,” to quote the standup comedian Josh Blue. “You’re just one bad bike ride away!”

I guess all I want to comment on is… Why is Shizune’s interpreter a classmate? Can’t the class have a designated professional terp? Why isn’t there a dedicated DHOH class like there is for blind students? Also, not that this is at all feasible to implement, but I feel like it would’ve been nice to represent Shizune’s signing with one of the proposed sign language writing systems, instead of all of her dialog just being rendered as “…” which makes her look like she isn’t saying anything.

Non-Blorpy Stuff

@AernaLingus@hexbear.net and I are continuing Oreimo, we’re nearly done with season 2. I’m still enjoying it.

Mom and I are continuing Sailor Moon R, Ojamajo Doremi Sharp, Hunter x Hunter (1999), Kodocha, Paranoia Agent, and Skull-Faced Bookseller Honda-san. We finished Mono; it’s a good ‘un! Check it out if you like Yuru Camp. We also saw bits of Moominvalley (2019) and Moomin (1990), particularly the Norwegian dubs. The Norwegian dub of the latter changes up the voices ridiculously often. We also tried Ricky Gervais’ Alley Cats. All I can say is — it’s really tedious Every Adult Cartoon Ever type stuff. In terms of live action, we watched Elling (2001) — a really good local movie about an autistic-coded man learning to break out of his shell — and episode 1 of Agent Tørr, a local spy parody that I worried would be some lib shit but was pleasantly surprised had a joke that I read as critical of Norway’s role in NATO.

I’m continuing Kaiju Girl Caramelise, Young Ladies Don’t Play Fighting Games, and Sayonara Lara by myself. Young Ladies’ tournament arc has honestly not been the most interesting thing to me, it’s got a lot of technical terms for an e-sport I don’t really care about. SayoLara I had a thought about:

I rewatched half of Kaguya-sama: Love is War S1E1 recently, and yeah, it’s still good. I also recently returned to Maison Ikkoku and have to say that episode 59 is one of the few times cringe comedy has worked for me, I was hootin’ and hollerin’ in the middle of the night and saying “Goddammit, noooo!!!”

CēterumFurthermore cēnseōI think iūs auctōriscopyright esse dēlendummust be destroyed.

My favorite parts are the seemingly self-contained stories, like the Kizumonogatari movies, or the currently watched Zoku Owarimonogatari, where the author’s writing skills shine through.

Koimonogatari is even better IMO. And also it has zero (well, sort of has, but the other kind).

Just finished reading Witch on the Holy Night. It was alright, I’m satisfied. Can’t wait to see the movie adaptation

Akira! Saw it in theaters!! What a stunning movie. I had seem like 15 years ago and it was fun to revisit. I brought two artist friends along who also enjoyed

oh yeah Monogatari is great. I’m also somewhere in the side stories, but haven’t watched in a long time now

All I know about Ideon is that the opening is a fucking banger. I really enjoy early Gundam so I probably should watch it

Just finished binging both season of “how dare you?!”. It’s a Donghua about people stuck in a historical novel. I absolutely love it, since it avoided a lot of typical tropes about using modern knowledge and in story knowledge to exploit the situation or people and coming out ahead. Instead the focus is on humans helping each others out during a terrible situation, minimize the suffering of common people in this fantasy world, and finally helping realize their life goals and prosper.

It’s 3d animated and have a lot of reused assets but the team really put effort into it and it’s clearly well made and looks and feel good when needed. The cast are very colorful, lovable, and very memorable. There’s a lot of very sad moments in the show but it’s very cathartic and I couldn’t put it down until it’s over.

Finished Legend of the Galactic Heroes Gaiden OVAs. Some good, some bad, I’d absolutely suggest doing what I did, which is finishing the mainline series and burning out in the process, and then coming back to these several years later. I think something like 2/3 of the arcs are Reinhard’s backstory of how he shot up the ranks to be the youngest admiral ever, which means there’s a lot of Reinhard and Siegfried being extremely good friends who certainly are not gay no siree.

Watched Lycoris Recoil with a friend and it was frustrating garbage. The final arc just keeps undermining itself by cancelling out the stakes it set out. The story is about how cool working for the girls-only fascist teenage deaths squads is. The vast hordes of vaguely defined terrorists have no motivation whatsoever, I guess they just want to blow shit up for fun. I could forgive all of that if it had great action scenes, but sadly they’re just not interesting.

Watched Apothecary Diaries and loved it, though S2’s climax is much weaker than S1’s. The general structure of mystery of the week was satisfying, even if at times it gets a bit ridiculous. I noticed an odd phenomenon, where due to the show wanting to focus on the women in a patriarchal society that it kind of ignores the men causing all the problems and puts the blame on the women. See the conclusion of S2 where the evil man is given credit for doing some good and being noble while the evil woman is depicted as irrationally evil. Also the whole Maomao-Jinshi relationship is pretty fraught, where we’re shown a woman who is simply not interested constantly have to fend off the advances of a man who, due to his status, she can’t say no to, but I think you’re supposed to like him? Yuck. I will still watch S3 and the movie when they come out.

Also watched Zombieland Saga: Yumeginga Paradise, and it’s pretty solid, definitely the best part of the franchise. I was really on board until the climax is resolved, at which point there are eight minutes straight of very boring idol musical performances with no stakes because the conflict is already over. Yamada Tae as the main character is a hilarious decision.

Bookworm continues to air. There are some good moments here and there, and the worldbuilding continues to be interesting. Sadly Myne does not care about the wider world and only wants to read books, so what you learn is fairly restricted.

Started the next thing on my list, which is Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-Kun!. I have watched the first episode, it was okay.

has no one here seen legend of hei 2?

People are raving about false memory, what are your takes hexdweebs? *fuck it, downloading it, the raving is too good

*holy fucking shit

without going into the plot too much, i think it’s just very neat show: it’s incredibly cleanly drawn, animated and scored. it’s packed with symbolic references and self references, that make rewatching a joy, observing aspect ratios, colors, background designs and offhand comments

after third rewatch I’m bumping plot to 9/10, but with new caveat: