Codicier
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Posts posted by Codicier
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(Spoilers ahead.)
I don't disagree exactly, I actually enjoyed the show for the most part, but I think the tension was hurt by a couple of things. Firstly, you're right, most people probably didn't guess the seventh (looking at some reactions, it seems like a lot of people still thought it was Mora up until the end, which is like... come on), but actually I think it was kind of easy to guess if you thought it through enough? Gormongous' point has something to do with this but it's actually not how I knew. All it took was thinking forward to the end and figuring out who the most dramatic reveal would be. Adlet is out because we know he's innocent from his internal monologue, and they go to such lengths to prove Flamey/Fremy's innocence, so it most likely wasn't going to be her unless they pulled a big, dumb 180 (also she has the half-fiend thing, so it would have been too obvious). Nashetania is the only main character left, and conveniently the one with the least amount of suspicion cast her way, so of course it was going to be her. The rest of the cast are all side characters who would make for a really dull reveal. "Oh, it was Hans!" So what? Boooo. Anyway, being able to guess it didn't really ruin the show for me, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered finishing it, I just thought it was a little lazy.
The other thing that hurts the tension is how much stuff they invent out of whole cloth in order to either trap or exonerate characters. "The temple stays open once the seal is broken!" Okay, I can accept that. "Only one barrier can be set up in one place at a time!" What? Why? Whatever, I'll take it. "We found an extra set of tablets under the temple!" Okay, are you fucking kidding me? Mind you, this has everything to do with what I value in a good mystery, so if you enjoyed it then more power to you. I just don't find it intriguing at all when the audience isn't given the tools to at least conceive of a possible solution themselves. If you're going to have a bunch of weird fantasy rules and lore, at least lay them out at the outset instead of introducing a bunch of bullshit at the eleventh hour. That's not dramatic, it's just convenient.
All that aside, it was a pretty alright show for the most part. Ultimately the thing that made me regret watching was everything that happens in the final episode. I already had Nashetania picked, but I was expecting a more interesting motivation than "I'm a demon and sacrificing a bunch of people is the only way to attain TRUE PEACE muahahahahaha." Like Gorm said, that is literally the most played trope in the history of anime (or at least a close second behind guys accidentally knocking down the wall to the ladies side of a hotspring). It was already played when it was in every single SNES-era JRPG. So... yeah, after a fairly compelling build-up, I was pretty disappointed. Everything that follows that ("whaaaaaaaa, why are there seven of us again???" *sad trombone*) is like a bad sitcom or something. It seriously felt like they were trying to parody themselves.
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..............
lol yep, it's the worst.
So I was thinking about fanservice last night, after twig said that he complained about it after every show we talked about.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that nobody cares when boobs are shown on Game of Thrones, Sopranos or Orange is the New Black, but draw some tits and all of a sudden it's weird and wrong.
Certainly in the case of GoT, there is worse stuff shown on that than even the most fan-servicey of shows.
I mean, it could be that because they're drawn, they're so much more easier to sexualise, which, yeah, that's a good point, but then again all western super heroes wear skin tight lycra, and are similarly drawn in ridiculous poses to show off assets.
I guess I'm just getting more and more frustrated trying to forgive my personal favourite form of media, when literally every other form of media does it, and no-one bats an eyelid when it does. Sex sells, it's as simple as that, and it applies to literally everything.
I'm by no means saying it's right, I'm just saying I refuse to knock a great anime down like shokugeki no souma just because it wants to make a few more DVD sales by showing some boobs.
idk, what do you guys think?
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. -
I don't know, can you give any examples of anime/manga protagonists who are like "I want to stop all fighting forever and I'm going to kill as many people as it takes for that to happen"? I'm struggling to think of one, although I'm sure my impressionistic take on the trope has exceptions out there.
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
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"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.
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what is rurouni kenshin: trust and betrayal and am i likely to have watched it when i went through that rurouni kenshin phase 15 years ago or whatever
If you had watched it you would know
Kuroni Kenshi (TV)
Trust & Betrayal (OVA)
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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
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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
tutorial painting true metallic metal
there's a huge amount of info on that site plus some astonishing paint jobs
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Codicier, do you use a primer to start? That's maybe the only thing I don't see in your excellent guide.
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
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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
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Hey I recently received my first shipment of Kingdom Death: Monsters! I backed this originally with the intent to learn how to paint minis so I could make 'em look awesome. Also maybe try to cover up some of the gross female art, which is really bad. But I love the monster design so much I backed it anyway... at an embarrassingly high level......
Anyway now that I have this junk I don't even know where to start.
What sort of equipment do I need? Will it cost me an arm and a leg or is it relatively cheap? If I fuck up, can I easily start from scratch? How do I take the pieces off the plastic grid thing?
Help!
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
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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
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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.
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One episode away from the end of School-Live!
I hope they all fucking die.
Do we need to create a "anime quitter's club" thread just to rescue you from this high school purgatory Twig?
I was thinking before just anime that wasn't primarily about kids but perhaps I'm limiting myself too much. The anime that I've enjoyed the most is stuff about adults, things like Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop.
Although I did watch Princess Jellyfish a little while ago and found it surprisingly refreshing since it wasn't massive stakes melodrama. I've also been watching Your Lie In April and kinda liking it so I guess I don't know what I want
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.
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RE Aku no Hana: I feel like this show probably won't get another season, which is kind of a bummer considering how much of the story's themes are fleshed out after the events of the first season, and how the focus of each character changes. I would recommend the manga, but the art is kind of bad to the point of distracting from the story.
I also feel like everything in the story is really ad-hoc and melodramatic (especially later in the manga), but because the subject matter is so grounded and because plotlines are all coherent and consistent, it definitely had impact for me.
What do you think about the rotoscoping? I like the idea is that it's supposed to be as uncomfortably familiar as the feelings in the story are (uncanny valley and all that), were it's really distracting and in some places ugly.
In response i shall quote myself from over 2 years & 104 pages agoAnyone watching Aku no Hana? Had my doubt's about the Rotoscoping initially, but it's been used to really good effect so far with some of the expressions on the characters face's genuinely creeping me out a bit.
I'm not sure how much this is intentional and how much because it actually steps into uncanny valley territory at times, showing something that doesn't feel like a abstraction of a human or a real human.
My interest in Aku No Hana initially came from the animation style it employed, its been a long time since I've seen rotoscoping used but now I've seen the story they chose to tell with it i think it was a good choice. The series also bucks the tendency in anime to romanticise small town rural life, i think because of that (& my own small town upbringing) i sympathised more with the central character than i expected.
In many way hes not that different to the way Syntehicgerbil describes the protagonist of Tatami Galaxy, however instead of going through a typical character development arc, he spent most of the series not learning from him mistakes and instead just making things worse for himself.
I'm also kinda interested in the way the show treats its protagonist (& therefore its own) earnestness, It tells the whole story seriously while at the same time mocking its lead characters tendency to see his own troubles in a melodramatic way.
I also have a vague memory of NinjaS hating the series and laughing at it's increcibly low dvd sales
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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.
Japan has historically approached religion in a rather pragmatic way. Shintoist, Buddhist, and Confucian beliefs exist together in Japan, but only as far as they’re convenient. When Portuguese Jesuits arrived in Japan and sought to convert its people, not only did the Japanese sometimes interpret Jesus as a kind of “Buddha” that conformed to their own polytheistic views, but many of the daimyo who converted did so because the Portuguese also sold firearms. Spirituality exists, but it has existed to to serve the people, rather than having people be absolutely beholden to one or more gods
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.
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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)
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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
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But if people who get no use from it aren't paying for it, who is? Where is the money to pay for the healthcare of those who can't afford it supposed to come from? Either it's the state, i.e. you and me and everyone else through taxation according, in theory, to our means; or it's from charity, which is less reliable and a much less fair distribution, because it depends on conscience. At least with tax the bastards have to put a fucking effort in to dodge it; with charity all they have to do to avoid contributing is nothing at all.
Or how about you look at it like this: your prize for paying for more than you use is that you get to live in good health. It's not like sick people are laughing their way to the bank.
I can believe the NHS is inefficient, but private health insurance isn't any sort of a replacement unless we all pool our money together and pay for health insurance for everyone in the country. That seems unlikely.
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
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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
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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.
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It's interesting that World of Warcraft was used as the example of "an MMO would never upgrade its engine like DOTA going from Source 1 to Source 2", because World of Warcraft has totally revamped nearly everything about the game, engine-wise. They didn't come out and say it's WoW 2, but Cataclysm and Warlords of Draenor were both very large visual bumps and the game requirements jumped a bit too as far as I know.
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).
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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
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I think this was the most on-point podcast but also the one where I understood the least, maybe. Which is part of why I listen, so that's fine.
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
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There are an awful lot of things I'm "supposed" to celebrate as an American that make me very uncomfortable. The US Women's National Team winning the World Cup does not have any of those reservations. Incredible game. So happy to see Abby finally get to ride off into the sunset a champion like she deserves. I am so devastatingly in love with Carli Lloyd, the most attractive lady in America. Beating the keeper from midfield is just absurd. What a game.
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.
Sports
in Idle Banter
Posted
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.