dium

Mecha-Shiva was a throwaway joke in an episode of Venture Bros once.

So none of this?

Wheeljack joked about suggesting Azumanga Daioh but I dunno, maybe Patrick would like it? It doesn't have a chosen one in it!!! Full disclosure: it's about schoolgirls.

I would watch this Jesus anime just to hear people calling him "king of king"... one of my favorite Japanese borrowed English phrases.

I'm watching Unbreakable, hoping that I'll grow into it. I'm 7 episodes in and it's not happening. I like a lot of the characters, Kimmy included, but it's just not clicking with me. The whole Native American thing was a bummer of a choice, too. I'm probably gonna finish the season but I can't exactly tell you why. Hi, I've got a really unhelpful opinion: I enjoyed the final season of Parks and Recreation! But if you didn't like the first few episodes, you were probably right to stop there. Parks was a show that became more and more about positivity in a very broad sense, and was fairly unique as a comedy that way out of its way to avoid meanness as much as possible (with one obvious but ultimately irrelevant exception, you know who). The final season felt like the logical conclusion of that trajectory, for better or worse... almost to the point of eliminating conflict from the plot entirely. It worked for me, and I enjoyed the season, but I also think comparisons to fan fiction are completely valid. It dived headfirst into the realm of unapologetic sentimentality and stayed there for most of the season, and if you didn't buy into it (I can't give a convincing argument why you should've) you'll be turned off. The final episode was a bit much, even for me. There was, like, two jokes in it. Addendum: re-reading your post, now I can't tell if you're talking about Parks and Recreation or Arrested Development. Oh well.

I'm stealing that quote.

This is a fucking goofy, almost embarrassing thing to admit, but I think the two cultural artifacts that most informed my personal development were Monkey Island and Discworld. I know that I'm not unique in this. EDIT: of course this starts a new page. Damnit.

I haven't read a Discworld book in years, but I absolutely devoured them in highschool. I think I've read more Terry Pratchett than any other single fiction author, and he's had a big hand in informing my tastes and attitudes as a young adult. If it isn't obvious, I'm posting in this thread because Terry Pratchett died today. It hit me surprisingly hard. I have the strongest urge to go back, now, and read some of the ~50 Pratchett books I never got around to.

I agree with this a ton. It's so frustrating that articles about "weird Japan" seem to be the most common point of reference people have concerning contemporary Japanese culture, especially any kind of story that tries to present some marginal or fringe phenomenon as being "big in Japan". Actually, any story that has the words "big in Japan" in it at all is likely to be a piece of trash. Remember when it was so popular in Japan to get a bagel head? Ugh. FLCL is a show I need to rewatch for opposite reasons as Cowboy Bebop. Highschool-me LOVED Bebop but was lukewarm on FLCL. But that may have been a timing issue... I watched FLCL while I was in the middle of a highschool modern literature class and the show came off as much too straightforwardly Freudian for my tastes.

That's a pretty omnipresent criticism of Samurai Champloo: that it's all style and little substance. That used to be a criticism of Cowboy Bebop too, but I think the passage of time has reflected well on Bebop and most people now recognize is as more nuanced than that. But Champloo, though... I tend to agree, there's not an awful lot beneath the impeccable sense of style. The sense of style IS the show, in a way, and your personal enjoyment hangs mostly on how far that style can take you on it's own. Myself, I really dig it. I think your reaction to the final episodes might crystalize your opinions of the show in general:

The specific moe aesthetic aside, this is definitely a popular perception of anime: that it caters to the sexual interests of heterosexual men even more so than other mediums. It may or may not be fair, but it's an impression the medium definitely makes, and I can't help but let it inform my own opinions of both anime in general and specific series individually. I know intellectually that most shows aren't engineered for "sad horny dudes", but the feeling is that a disproportionate number of them are, so whenever I'm watching an anime and there's any amount of female fan service I can't help but feel uncomfortable. If I'm being honest, this is mostly a personal image concern: that anyone watching over my shoulder will see an anime art style and sexualized imagery and make unflattering but reasonable conclusions about content of what I'm watching. This is why I couldn't get into Kill la Kill, and it's the hurdle I'm facing now with Space Dandy. I know I'm not being fair: in another medium I'd more easily take a restaurant chain called "Boobies" as the absurd joke that it is and not as a frustrating piece of titillation that I have to overlook. But I can't deny how I feel.

Thanks for the input about the Bebop discs. I dunno if it's healthy or not, but I love being able to get trusted input about pretty much any purchasing decision I'm about to make. I feel so secure!

So for a half a minute today I considered buying the new-ish blu-ray edition of Cowboy Bebop, since it was my favorite anime once upon a time and I intend to re-watch it to see if that's still true. But then I realized how I haven't bought a TV show or movie on physical media since... 2011 maybe, and it feels very silly to start doing it again now. Does anyone have the newest version of Bebop on blu-ray and have anything good or bad to say about it? I have Hulu plus... does anyone know if the version of Bebop on Hulu the same as the one on the new blu-rays ( ads and the potential for streaming-related quality dips aside )?

If they do it, they do it in private.

It's not really in response to anything specifically, but is related to a growing trend of ironic self-proclaimed misandry. As you can probably figure out, most feminists who claim to "hate men" and drink their tears do not actually, in matter of fact, hate men. Or they might, but not all men. Heh. Eh. Hmm. Sorry.

This is such a weird sentence to read, given my very high opinion of Bebop and fairly low first impressions of Dandy. I guess I need to give Dandy another shot, cuz I thought the first few episodes were just embarrassing (if attractively animated).

Progressive Game-Industry Twittertm is exploding about Wu right now. People are very angry and sad about the Wardell meeting. People aren't merely disappointed in her, people are distancing themselves from her entirely. Public unfollowings, the whole shebang. And from people who I might describe as radical, maybe, but certainly not unreasonable. From the perspective of someone like me, who has a lot of very progressive friends in the game industry but who isn't really part of that whole world, it's very confusing. Enough people I respect have denounced Wu that I have to assume that this is some sort of camel-breaking straw, and that there's more to criticize here than is... actually being criticized. I see references to ablism everywhere, does anyone know what that's actually about? It may also simply be the case that the people I follow on Twitter are way more staunchly anti-capitalist than I thought, and that the real sticking point was her claiming to share some of his "business philosophy". That seems like a very strange thing to say publicly about the CEO of Stardock. Anyway, this whole thing has been more confusing than anything. Most of this (like Twitter in general nowadays) has taken the form of subtweeting, so I read an awful lot of emotional reactions before I even figured out what they were reactions to.

I'm in the same boat as you, Rubix, and probably the exact same part of the game. I've barely done anything past hunting the great jaggi, but I've done that twice and it was fun enough that I'll probably mimic what you're doing and try it again with different weapons. I've been playing with the Lance almost exclusively, and now that I have a handle on it I feel so clumsy when I try anything else. But that hunting horn is calling to me... being a master-wielder of a hulking metal bagpipe is maybe the very coolest. I'm afraid of trying out any of the ranged weapons, but I feel like I should eventually start trying to use at least one of them.

Useful perspective, thanks! I think I'll be picking up Tokyo Crash Mobs for sure, undecided on what else (it may end up being a bunch of nostalgia picks because I'm a dummy).

I too have a crapload of points now. I haven't even registered my new 3DS (EDIT: just learned I can't anyway) and I already have enough for the messenger bag. I think I'd rather get a ton of games, though. I'm sorry if everyone already made posts like this back at the start of the month, but are any of these games something you'd urge me to pick up?: Wii U: The Wonderful 101 3DS: Kid Icarus: Uprising Paper Mario: Sticker Star Tokyo Crash Mobs Dillon's Rolling Western OR Dillon's Rolling Western: The Last Ranger 3DS Virtual Console: Either of the Mario Vs Donkey Kong games Chibi-Robo Photo Finder

I'm picking this up tonight, if my local game store has it in stock (why wouldn't they I guess). Never played one of these before. Barely played the demo. Every post about it on every forum is, like, a small essay. I feel like I'm jumping into the deep end here, but I'm excited.

This is true, but the effect of the slow-as-frozen-pitch intro and tutorial can't be understated. I have fond memories of TP but I can't replay it, it bores me so fast. As they are now, Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword are my two least favorite Zeldas (that I've played). But I don't know if they'd rank so low if you could enter the first dungeon as quickly as you could in OoT.

I'm playing this game for the commentary, essentially, since I've replayed Grim so often that I could probably try to speed run it (which would be very boring). One thing I've noticed is that, out of the many times I've played this game, I must pick the same dialog options every time. I just recently heard some dialog from Lupe (the coatcheck girl) that I've never heard before, which was surprising. Unfortunately, while I can remember all the puzzle solutions clearly, I can't remember which dialog options are mutually exclusive and which ones I've never chosen. But perhaps this is a particularly neurotic completionist thing to be worrying about.

I have a bunch of very dorky friends who keep posting "Dawn of the ___ day, __ hours remain." memes on social media, and I've chosen to interpret this as them being very excited for my birthday. Because this makes slightly more sense to me than excitement over a 15 year old game (no matter how excellent).

Don't worry about this. Some nice instructions on how to get your 64gb card into your 3ds here: http://lofi-gaming.org.uk/blog/2015/01/15/upgrading-your-3ds-sd-card/ Did this with the old 3DS, works perfectly.