Remarks on The Slime Daries - S01E6 - Changes

This week’s episode of Slime Diaries basically had me bust a gut from the first scene.

Shizu’s spirit comes to visit Tempest for Obon, and comments that she’s heard rumors that Rimuru now has a human form similar to her own appearance. Oh, how embarrassing! Clue Rimuru dressed as a bunny girl, crying and running away from Shion and Shuna, whom are chasing him with a swimsuit and maid outfit.

As usual a multitude of amusing stories, but this joke basically runs through the entire episode. Again with the three adventurers visiting the town to pay their respects, and ask Shizu to continue watching over them. In walking off discussing having dreamt of Shizu, we learn that it involved her running in a bunny outfit and their thoughts on how well that suited her. If a ghost could die of embarrassment, I’m pretty sure Shizu-san would, lol.

The view of Shizu watching Rimuru and the others at the festival, is a beautiful and heart warming render. After which a good short summary of her life is inserted. That’s quickly followed up by a cut to Rimuru in front of a mirror, again being tormented by Shion and Shuna. I kind of like the final scenes where Rimuru pays his own respects, and the “Tell that to them” moment pops up, hehehe.

Slime Diaries is definitely an amusing spin off 😃

As it turns out there seems to be more upsides to building a demon lord class machine than expected. A while back, I discovered the massive improvement this makes in H.265/HEVC encoding times.

Series currently running has been averaging about 6 minutes per episode, since it’s one that’s more talky and less stabby than some. But the interesting thing is the responsiveness. See, Centauri could do video encoding at a modest pace but HandBrake would render the desktop hardly usable and nicing it out to take over the whole system didn’t help much because there was no head room above the encoding. Thus leaving the system rather lethargic even if you tried to keep it usable. Rimuru, just doesn’t care.

Rimuru on the other hand remains functional and responsive despite running full bore, it’s spare cycles just breeze through. To the point that I was able to pipeline my work by having MakeMKV start ripping the second disc while the first was still encoding in HandBrake. I couldn’t even tell that my system was under load, as opposed to the “Gah, I’ll come back in half a day” approach that Centauri could offer.

 Watching The Way of the Househusband on Netflix, and my initial thoughts: "Oh my fuck, this guy is awesome". A few episodes in, and I'm already tempted to check if the manga has any English digital releases.

Mobile Suit Gundam Anime That Started It All Launches on Crunchyroll.

Now there's a surprise. Crunchyroll has long had plenty of Gundam series available, but I don't recall anyone carrying the original series. Thus why /dev/shelf contains the Blu-ray 😉.

Don't think that I've watched the entire series from end to end in a decade plus. But it's definitely one worth watching. I can't say that I'm a huge fan of the animation style from back then, so much as Gundam's One Year War era.

 https://www.cnn.com/videos/travel/2020/09/24/giant-robot-gundam-japan-jba-lon-orig-scn.cnn

Oh he still my beating heart....and I may be hard after watching that.

 Sometimes it’s hard to gauge whether he’ll hath frozen over a few more degrees, or if I should be hopeful.

Crunchyroll’s Fire TV app has been upgraded to “2.0”, making an experience more like what their iPad app has been like for quite a while now. Even more so than the redone Xbox One app from a while back, but that’s probably because Android and iOS have more in common.

Being less useful to me, I don’t use the iPad app much unless I’m working around bugs in the old Fire TV app, like how it would like to only list partial data; like showing several European dub and omitting the English sub version from the UI.

Thus far the new app doesn’t seem to have any obvious bugs, and brings the more useful data set the iPad app does. Somewhat slow, but hey, at least the fucker works. I’m usually just glad if their (often crappy) apps work without death by buggy crash happy software.

Of course my test of the app? KonoSuba!!!

Catching up on where I left off with Re:ZERO, the The Self-Proclaimed Knight and the Greatest Knight worked out as an excellent return point. Perfect for wrapping up the first season in the hopes of catching up to season two before it finishes.

While my opinion of Subaru is a bit mixed, the combination with Julius makes a fine battle against Sloth. Two people who hate each other greatly yet are friends enough to work together the way they do: it’s a superb kind of crazy for their personalities. I kind of felt like applauding Subaru’s crackpot plan for finishing Sloth, after how carefully and painfully orchestrated his campaign went.

Not to mention the aftermath with oh shit, magic stones and the big bad doesn’t want to stay dead. The final episode for season one: “That's All This Story Is About” also rocks because that really is what it’s all about.

As a protagonist, I feel Natsuki Subaru somehow manages to channel both the worst and best qualities as the story evolves around him. Yes, sometimes you’ll want to throw a book at his head, and sometimes you’ll want to shout his awesomeness. It’s kind of amazing how one character can be both in one story.

But in the end, Subaru’s reason why is all that really matters 😀.

Watching this week's episode of My Next Life as a Villianess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, I find myself quite amused.

While studying in the library, a few characters lead to prepare tea and sweets as Catarina and most of the cast are sucked into a book of desires. Things largely proceed like a set of clips from some meh romance novels as character's desires are played out, causing Mary to smoosh the book shut and threaten its destruction. Sophia may even have out done the princes when it comes to it...

And then we finally get to Lady Catarina's desire. She was starving when this began: so a house of candy shows up like something out of Hansel and Gretel. Followed by much eating, until it explodes, and she makes like a vacuum eating candy until finally exploding. After which the book spits everyone out. Most of the male cast eventually flees in embarrassment. Meanwhile Mary and Maria suppose that rather than her desire being met, since sweets weren't real: her desire kept growing until even the book couldn't take anymore. Then the camera cuts to her enjoying sweets in the background.

Yes, I am both strangely amused, and share Catarina's desire  ^_^

8 Great Anime Series For People Who Don’t Like Anime
https://flip.it/7HLUW_

Not sure if it makes it better or worse that many of these are on my watch list...

From tonight’s movie:

鳴る神の 少し響みて
さし曇り
雨も降らぬか
きみを留めむ
[A faint clap of thunder
Clouded skies
Perhaps rain comes
If so, will you stay here with me?]

鳴る神の 少し響みて
降らずとも
吾は留まらむ
妹し留めば
[A faint clap of thunder
Even if rain comes not
I will stay here
Together with you]

That was kind of beautiful enough, that I almost wonder if there’s any collection of the poems that are in both Japanese, and a worthwhile adaption to English.

Check out what I'm watching on Crunchyroll! http://www.crunchyroll.com/rezero-starting-life-in-another-world-/episode-20-wilhelm-van-astrea-702439

In cycling back to ReZdro, where I left off at the subjugation of the white whale: I’m reminded that all great battles, should probably be fought in the name of love; and sometimes you’ve just gotta lead off with following the two idiots up front....lol.

Also pretty sure that eating the old man’s beloved wife was the biggest mistake the white whale ever made. Followed by the whole thing with Rem’s death in the Return By Death process that lead Subaru into this insanity.

Yes, never piss these folks off.

Check out what I'm watching on Crunchyroll! http://www.crunchyroll.com/my-next-life-as-a-villainess-all-routes-lead-to-doom/episode-4-i-enrolled-in-the-magic-academy-794622

Okay, as the ROFL continues, I’m definitely calling this worth watching.

The scene with her “Hijacking” the bullying event in the name of sweets, and giving them the death glare, especially made me laugh my ass off. Not to mention there’s several such awesome scenes in this week’s episode....lol

10 Anime To Watch If You Love Overlord

To this: I’ll just append the note that all of these are worth watching 😝

Check out “Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll” on Netflix
https://www.netflix.com/title/81208936?s=i&trkid=14170286

Rather thrilled to find the #VioletEvergarden movie released, and made its way to Netflix.

While the series is principally Violet's story, the film is a more heartwarming tale focused on the side story of the two sisters that she meets. Which I think is a rather lovely thing. The side story takes place at a time after Violet has developed as a character, and shows a world that has like her, begun to recover from the war. So it makes more sense for a movie like this than one focused on Violet's story; the main series rewards us with a character that can create such an aside, and not have to devote extra to her development. Well, providing you actually watched the beautiful series ;)

Violet Evergarden is one of a handful of anime characters that will likely stick with me a long time. A character introduced to us as constantly on fire, and not yet able to realize that her arms were perhaps the smallest thing she lost to the war.

Because of how the main series tells Violet's story, I can appreciate the depth of the backdrop even more. You'll notice how rapidly the city has evolved, and how common place postal service has become. It's quite nicely executed behind the story, IMHO.

In an effort to catch up on some of my reading backlog, I recently found myself revisiting The Fruit of Grisaia, both the visual novel and the anime. Because sometimes time for reading is limited, and the story is pretty damned long.

In doing so, I'm kind of reminded of several things. The anime adaption while extremely well executed is also extremely condensed. Many key scenes are filtered through but as a whole: you only get something on par with 20% of the visual novel's content. That is to say: the anime is great, but it's like looking through a pinhole compared to the original media. Episode one's one line summary of each character's story is also spot on.

About 90% of the crude humor that makes Yuuji's school life so enjoyable is cut, and each characters story is condensed heavily for time. For me that's kind of sad because the joking and clowning around is part of why the novel left me laughing my ass of more often than not.

Considering that each characters story is practically a novel in of itself, the anime fairs pretty well for cutting out so much. You still get key moments like burying his classmate alive, but much of the detail around it is lost, such as the airhead's true nature. I think Amane's story is the only one that really escaped massive trim: probably because there's no way to actually trim her story and keep the jist. By contrast, Sachi's which is the longest character story in the novel: only got one episode that struggles to tell the jist of her condition. And the series totally misses out on her sadomasochist sense of humor to a fine degree, and Michiru's constant bombardment of idiocy and subtle kindness. All sorts of things in the name of fitting into a standard season length.

Likewise things are quite twisted to create a point of co-existence out of the novel's ladder like structure. So we don't get to see how much Yuuji / Makina truly mirrors his relationship with Asako, as that would be destructive to a shared finish. And a host of other things. I don't think we even get the hilarious Lamborghini and frozen turkey scene from Yumiko's route which was just freaking awesome sauce. Instead a new ending is sort of created, and much of the characters' suffering and healing is drifted off to the cutting room floor. But if you had to cram it down to about a dozen episodes, I'd say the anime is about as good as could be done with the story.

But then I remember what really made me interested in the story wasn't Gurizaia no Kajitsu itself: but the anime adaptions of the follow on media. Which pretty much starts out by telling Yuuji's story, and the road from his truly fucked up youth to his master, Asako, saving him for the pits of hell. It wasn't until after the anime adaptions of the The Labyrinth, and The Eden of Grisaia that the original visual novel really went on my radar.

Which kind of leaves me wondering: and just how heavily condensed was the rest of the trilogy when they adapted them to anime!?

Catching up on some of my backlog, I’m not sure if it’s sad, or not, that I kinda hope that Isekai Quartet gets milked for every season it’s worth as an idea—but I’m really glad that there is a third season planned 😆.

Check out what I'm watching on Crunchyroll! http://www.crunchyroll.com/my-next-life-as-a-villainess-all-routes-lead-to-doom/episode-1-i-recalled-the-memories-of-my-past-life-794619

Okay, I figured it would probably be amusing, and I was right, lol.

Particularly like the planning committee inside her head, and how the princes proposal kind of ends up with her going “Oh, shoot!” at failing to dodge such a clear doom flag. Once Keith shows up, amusement continues, and her efforts seem more successful.

Because who doesn’t want to be the villainess in an otome game, who either ends up exiled or killed in every boy’s route? 😄.

RetroCrush: Free Anime Streaming Service to Showcase Classic Series and Movies

Interesting prospect. Especially with how hard older series can be to come by, between streaming services that usually cater to the past decade.

Fruits Basket Season 2 Joins Crunchyroll's Spring 2020 Anime Lineup.

Yay, season two hits this April! Two series I’ve been waiting to see return to the crunchy waves are Fruits Basket, and a certain reincarnated slime. Sounds like good things are coming.

Thumbing through my Hulu backlog, I’m surprised to come across Absolute Duo—and find it a rather excellent series.

It’s a nice mixture of ecchi humor, brutal seriousness, and cute jokes. So pretty much it’s exactly the kind of action anime that I would enjoy, lol.