Codicier

My tiny little country has qualified for their first football tournament in my lifetime! Woooooooooooooo! I sorta can't entirely believe it I've spent my whole adult life as a manic football fan always having to pick a neutral team at big tourneys so the fact Wales are of to France next year is super cool as fast as I'm concerned Maybe it's time to save up and make free time to try and make the trip to France next year.

I perhaps had different hopes for the series that most, I was really rooting for it to turn out the seventh was Goldov, but that he wasn't in control of the Fiends in any way. That he'd just faked his tattoo because he believed he was destined to be a Brave, and couldn't bear to parted from Nashetania. so we would have had all this setup about supernatural forces but it would have turned out they had all been killing each other due to one man's pride But nah supernatural shenanigans ahoy! I'm hoping for a Manchurian Candidate second season where it turns out it was Rokka all along and the series one villain was just there to make sure he seemed above suspicion or at least i would be but i'm not sure i'll actually watch it because the fanservicey character design is really starting to get on my nerves which brings me to.............. So my feelings on this can be summed up in two words "boob plate" (I'm gonna say this is two words rather than one in the tradition of video games) Boob plate is a near perfect example of why fan service of the kind that can be particularly prevalent in anime is bad, good character design is all about making what someone wears meaningful, to make them belong in the world of the story, to represent their choices. Fan Service in general and boob plate in particular are bad because they break immersion and take agency away from the character. Additionally it's often not about if any skin is being shown it's how the camera reacts to it. Looking at the examples you mention Food Wars/Shougeki no souma is both interesting and problematic at different times. Firstly lets get the good out of the way, in the world of Food Wars (i accidental capitalised World first time i wrote that which made me think of what would be a really weird MMO) the reasons for, and the amount of skin shown is actually fairly consistent between both genders, and arguably among the characters its a man who shows the most, and while some might find the idea of equating the taste of good food with sexually ecstasy a little creepy it is a consistent conceit that the show sticks too, it is how this particular world works. However Food Wars is far from problem free, because of how it chooses to populate that world and how it chooses to depict that ecstasy. The women in the world are almost uniformly generically beautiful, where as the men have a far greater range of age's and body types, something that becomes even more silly when you consider that even the one obvious exception (the old dorm mistress) conveniently transforms into a younger version of herself when "enjoying" the food Then there's the problematic vibe to the way the show presents some of the women as being essentially enjoying the food against their will.

Maybe Death Note? If you consider Light the protagonist?? (But im stretching & my memory of that series is incredibly bad) I can definitely think of some series who's antagonist use that sort of logic though(scrapped princess, guren lagann, are the ones which come immediately to mind) Besides i think the woman in question in rokka isn't a protagonist. Tbh i ended up with far bigger problems with it though

"The Idle Weekender" sounds like the most laid back name for a cast ever, so I find myself weirdly looking forward to seeing what is done with the cover art.

If you had watched it you would know Kuroni Kenshi (TV) Trust & Betrayal (OVA)

btw would love to see how you guys get on with your various projects, I've been really slacky painting wise recently and maybe seeing some peoples projects taking shape will motivate me to push myself again

Just to give you guy's some extra resources to read up on when you actually get the brushes out here's a links to one of my favourite mini painting blogs's tutorial section http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/tutorial-overview.html#basics along with some of the best articles to read through to get yourself started kongs-priming-thoughts how-to-wet-palette-2.0 basic techniques tutorial painting true metallic metal tutorial-how-to-paint-blood tutorial-weathering-overview there's a huge amount of info on that site plus some astonishing paint jobs

I use vallejo model air primer together with a airbrush to do my priming, typically i will u do a two coat zenelith prime, using first a grey coat from beneath the model then a dusting of a fine white coat from above to create natural shadows to work with. I'd recommend this grey/white combo in most situations as it both acts as a visual guide and brightens/darkens the paints you are working with without resorting to the harshness of black In terms of spray primer in a can it's the usual suspects games workshop, vallejo, army painter

Ok staring clockwise from the top left Brush soap: essential If your brushes are in bad condition you work will suffer a good brush soap clears off acrylic far better than normal soap or detergent will, plus they will help keep the bristles I good condition. I'd put this as the number one peice of kit people skimp on but will save them money and improve their work I the long term. Flow enhancer & Retarder: optional These are both great when you are blending paints or working with glazes or washes where you want a very dilute low opacity paint. The flow enhancers is the more important of the two since it can help even beginners get a far more even coat of paint Paint varietys: Vallejo & Citadel are my paints of choice. Both these brands are very solid these days. I personally prefer vallejo it is closest out of the bottle to the consistency that should be used when painting and seems to have a nice strong pigment level and dries to a nice silk/matt effect unlike the more glossy citadel. It's also very worth having washes for most of the primary & tertiary colours "Technical" paints: optional extra mimic weather effects like oxidation can also be very useful but you can normally achieve the same effect with a little work. Weathering 'dust': optional extra fills a similar role to the technical paints, i like tamiya's best Artists inks: nearly essential Artists acrylic inks typically have a very high pigment density and so are great for mixing colours, keeping a black and a white to hand makes mixing shadow or highlight versions of colours very easy Wet pallet: essential A wet pallet consists of any sealable waterproof container (here a old bit of take away Tupperware), a layer to hold the water (i use foam cut to fit the container but kitchen towel paper works fine to), and a semi water permeable paper that sits on top (baking paper, greasproof paper, & some types of artists pallet paper will all work). The idea here is that you get the foam damp put the paper on top to use as a pallet, this should stop your colours drying out too fast and allow you to seal up the pallet at the end of a painting session and resume later without having to remix colours. The thing to be most careful about is the paper getting too damp and starting to come apart leaving small bits of paper in your paint. Dentist tools: optional Useful if you are doing any sculpting or repairs to miniatures with putty such as green stuff. Pin hand Drill: nearly essential Often it's necessary to 'pin' larger models together using copper wire where super glue alone would struggle to hold the miniature's weight. Needle files: essential Often even the best quality cast will have mould lines and flash around the edges, which can ruin a otherwise great paint job. Brushes: You get what you pay for & it's worth paying a decent amount, id advise a 1,0, & a 00 as a good starting selection with maybe a larger basecoat brush and a smaller 000 or 0000 for fine detail. Windsor & Newton series 7: the gold standard of minute painting brushes but perhaps more expensive than needed unless you are very confident in your skills and need the precision they allow. Vallejo & Citadel: once again both these produce good sable brushes (& once again i prefer vallejo) more than fine for pretty much anyone who's not painting to win awards. Jewellers eye glass: optional Can be great for dying very small details such as eyeballs or painting free hand patterns or images. Wine cork: optional Sometimes you won't want to be handling the miniatures while you paint them, maybe you want to put a wash over the whole thing or whatever. By attaching the mini to a old wine cork using either some bluetak (or the pin if you've used one) like it was a plint, you can hold it and turn it without smudgeing paint or getting your fingers dirty. Spare paint pots: optional if you are painting a whole army or squad you will want to be able to mix consistent colours to use through out. Also having at least one pipette/dropper to help get the paint and flow enhancer, retarder ratios correct is useful I think that's it hopefully that's a good start for any thumb who's interested

Painting minis can easily cost you several appendages if your not careful to watch the cost but it all depends what your prepared to pay, if it would be helpful i can post a picture of my painting equipment with a quick rundown of each part and how important i consider them

The Hots meta certainly has a couple of problems at higher level play but I'm not sure the over representation of warriors is the biggest of them, because warrior's essentially have a three subclass. There is what are affectionately known as "bruisers" these have mainly dmg abilities but can gain some extra survivability through talents, then there's initiators they tend to have some combination of gap close/escape & a stun, and finally the traditional tanky tanks. The three types obviously do very different things the problem only come when one tank can do multiple things which is exactly what's wrong with Leoric atm. He is not only is under tuned, but his baseline skill set allows him to be a traditional tank or initiator a problem made worse by early talents talents which make him more effective at both those roles, all of which is made worse by some of his best bruiser talents being on different tiers from his best survivability ones allowing him to further get the best of both. Thankfully though there are enough maps and enough heroes that team comp is still not a solved problem, and allowing teams to have interesting pocket strat's ready to pull out something like this 0 warrior comp which looses the early game and then smashes their way back into the match in dramtic style. if you want to skip to the good stuff go to 23 minutes in

In terms of music anime I'm also tempted to recommend Kids on the Slope which to me is basically the anime version My So Called Life but with jazz. But I know that's one of those series that seems to divide opinion a lot. On a side note of hate watch anime, I'm sorta going through that with GANGSTA atm. What started out as possibly one of the most thematically problematic but visually slick shows has obviously hit HUGE financial problems because its quality has nosedived at a almost unprecedented speed. Never before have i seen something go from near the technically best examples of it's form to close to the worst. It must be heartbreaking to be someone who worked on it.

Do we need to create a "anime quitter's club" thread just to rescue you from this high school purgatory Twig? I'm not familiar with You Lie in April beyond its basic premise, but if the you like the whole music school thing but want protagonists who are a bit older maybe it might be worth looking into Nodame Cantabile, I have a huge soft spot for it because it was one of the first non-shonen series i discovered back in the day, and did a generally good job of being a very watchable light drama without falling into the melodramatic traps that can plague the genre.

In response i shall quote myself from over 2 years & 104 pages ago I also have a vague memory of NinjaS hating the series and laughing at it's increcibly low dvd sales

Thanks for that link Gorm, sounds like that guy at least does feel that polytheism does seem to have some effect on the nature of Japanese culture's approach to philosophy and religion. I think i may actually have polytheism on my mind atm because I'm re listening to The History of Rome and they are right in the middle of the whole Constantine/Theodosius transitional period from paganism to Christianity.

I'm going to float this out there as just a silly thought, but could the whole ham-fisted mish-mash of religions & philosophy we perceive in a lot of Japanese stuff be because it has a long history of Polytheism? (as opposed to western Monotheism) and if so people could maybe be more open to the idea of taking different things from different belief systems and combining them?? (someone who has a lot better knowledge of Japanese religion & Shintoism in particular than i do probably has a much clearer idea if thats true or not)

I feel a few people have mostly covered why using a whole art form as a shorthand for anything is probably a bad idea, however........maybe there's something to it? First things first, I've never played any of the MGS series so I make all these assumption about what it's supposed "animeness" is from a place of ignorance but, from what people are saying here and what I've read before about it, the things it seems to share with quite a few anime is that they can have have rapid changes in tone, tend to value the iconic over the realistic, & like to push and occasionally break the 4th wall. I think I've seen more characters break the fourth wall in animation than any other medium by a country mile. I feel like it must be because there's already a baseline awareness of the artifice of the world present in the audience of a animation that isn't necessarily as present in other narrative mediums. So breaking that artifice of the world with a incredibly over the top character design, or making a stupid joke which totally doesn't fit the tone, or turning to wink/talk directly to the audience doesn't feel as jarring because the audience has already accepted the world as artificial. Perhaps someone like Kojima brought up in a culture where the acknowledgement of the artifice involved in media might be more common could be instinctively less precious about the artifice in games than a load of us who were raised on the idea that immersion is this fragile thing we should strive never to break. That or it's just all about the damn giant Mecha

I've just finished The Long Utopia, and it's conclusion honestly felt heart breakingly raw to me knowing what Pratchett was going through when he wrote it. i need a bit more time to fully unpack my thoughts on it

In the past decade the NHS frequently has been measured as one of, if not THE most efficient Health Service in the world. http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst/most-efficient-health-care-2014-countries Although it has in the last few years been getting less efficient ....................... maybe due to a ageing population (maybe also to do with un-needed structural reforms). The simple thing is though if you asked me what one thing i was most proud of the UK for it would be universal healthcare

I have just finished watching two seasons of working!!! and are now a good way into the third, & I may to my surprise have very much have enjoyed the journey despite the utter lack of plot development in the first two seasons(which had been made up for by a third season which seems to be rapidly trying to tie up all the plot threads in a rapid succession) I think this may be the case of it being exactly the sort of anime that i needed at this time I my life, a light hearted, busy, junk food anime that i could digest with very few functioning brain cells when i have been mentally exhausted

Its strange I basically agree with most of the things you said about Kids on the Slope apart from the fact you say you wanted them to flesh stuff out more. For me I really liked how their lives came together influenced each other deeply and then flew apart. I had always wondered if they picked the kind of music not just because the director had a love and affinity for it but because it'a a style of music where the players roles are not set in stone, where they come in to each meeting far from certain that what they are doing is going to work. This idea that it was a kind of music which was not about being a virtuoso, but about developing the empathy to hear what the other person saying and then the bravery to try to respond to it. Idk it just felt like this idea of a music with risk to it, where things can go wrong and can go right all in the same performance. I'm not sure anything but a bittersweet ending would have worked for me.

Yeah wow feels like a weird example especially This expansion.Not only did they replace they update the models, they gave you the option to toggle between those brand new skins and the 10 year old originals. But perhaps the biggest thing that has happened in this current expansion is the change to the economy because they basically brought in Free to Play by stealth, you can buy a token for a months game time for cash, and then sell it to another player for gold (using a weird anonymous auction house system).

I honestly think if Germany had any idea just how poorly this whole thing is going down in Britain it might at least have second thoughts about what it's doing, the cost of a Greece leaving the Euro is pretty high, but the cost of a Brexit from the EU on top of that itself could be even greater in terms of political stability of the whole EU project. The one huge issue that the EU sceptics bring up again & again in the UK is perceived democratic deficit, the idea that the EU shouldn't be telling a democratically elected government what to do............ On a side note: Seem's china's having a stock market crash, you gotta love the timing

Going too "inside baseball" without giving enough context is one of the skills I'm confident everyone will get better at as time passes, overall I think the guys did a good job in shining a light on some of depths anime fandom can run too without descending into that particular abyss

Your nations lady's did you more than proud badfinger, in particular that lob from the halfway was hella audacious. It's worth noting that sort of goal will hopefully stand for years as a wonderful rebuke to anyone who criticises the woman's game for lack power and skill.