rpgamer

Even I feel like I was dimly aware of the grape soda stereotype... maybe there's regional variants? Or tsar's just finally going senile.

Basically, I'd take a hundred more seasons of this than ever risk picking up more Sword Art Online. Plot hole, tho: complete failure to establish the significance of the 5 leaf grimoire prior to sealing a devil in it. She "just found it." Did it have magic pre-devil power? Did she also seal the swords in there? Was it somehow just a blank slate? Who knows! It's just an (in)convenient plot device that they had to retroactively cram some backstory lore into. Fortunately, just a bit of throwaway lore that they'd never likely return to anyway, it simply is what it is now.

Just wait til you see the poops after.

Ain't it kinda funny, tho, how something so simple triggers our dumb monkey brain? Like. Just a glass marble. Nothing exceptional about it. There's no logical reason to want to have it or anything. But. It's there. Teasing you. And people go to all this effort to get it out, just for the satisfaction of it. Brilliant marketing, really.

Holy hell am I so done with this mechanic. Stop in last Thursday: "Hey, my parking brake hasn't worked since you replaced calipers months ago, let's try swapping those out." "Ok, bring it in Monday, we'll get it figured out." Monday: *nothing* Tuesday: "Hey where we at on this?" "They're still trying to figure out what's wrong" Wednesday: "Turns out you need new calipers, they'll be here tomorrow." ".................." Thursday: "So turns out one of these new ones still isn't working right, gotta order another, it'll be here tomorrow." "........................................" Frankly I'm only here because they're under warranty and this is getting done for free, but damn, not even sure that's worth it at this point.

I'd wager, after the voices, the music is going to be the second big hurdle in whether this turns out acceptable. Even if they got Kanno on board, there's no guarantee it'd have the same punch these decades later..

Yeah, but, like, the old cartridges didn't really need a thing to hold the main item. They were pretty well contained. Disc boxes were surely easier to hold onto, because nobody wanted a scratched disc. Yeah, smaller options or carry cases or whatever, but still, the disc box seemed far more practical than the cartridge box. Other than that, yeah, all true, naturally and especially those boxes would be more valuable, as something that wouldn't seem worth keeping at the time. Kinda forgot I had Ages and Seasons at one point. I held onto my GBA for quite a long time before I realized "...This thing is just kinda puny and hard to see anything on." and decided meh, I've got no problem running those games on emulators.

Honestly kinda amazed at anyone that kept the old cardboard cartridge boxes. I mean, if you're old enough to have the sense to know to keep the whole kit, yeah. I definitely wasn't for sure. Those boxes didn't seem to be very practical, unlike the disc cases later.

Y'know, from back in the day when you could actually own games and not just license them. Mulling over what I want to play next/again, happened to read a bit on one of my favorites, the .hack series. The sequel series, G.U., got a re-release on PS4 or something a while back (and I paid a fair sum for those games years ago, too..). But not these. Evidently the last one was a fairly limited release as well. There's some pristine unopened copy floating around out there some dude's trying to get a cool $1000 for. Seems like most generally go for somewhere in the $300 range. Just for that last installment. I've got the whole set, cases, manuals, DVDs, not a bad haul, if I were ever inclined to part with it. Games aren't really all that stellar or anything. Niche audience, as you'd expect. But. Kinda nice feeling to find something simple you enjoyed long ago and have stashed away has actually been appreciating in value.

Literally the first card in the credits lists two script writers. Dude might write the manga, but manga doesn't translate directly to a television script. Just because you start with a good foundation doesn't guarantee the finished product will turn out as good.

Kinda had a gut feeling as the tension was dying down. Something about the way Yami mentioned taking down their strongest devil possessed. Classic trade-off. If he's strong enough to take down the strongest, can't have him around for the rest of the underlings.

Honestly, this show really is better than it has any right to be. Like. Not strictly amazing. But the narrative is done pretty well. Got a good tension cycle going for it. Some of these writers must be way overqualified.

My takeaway from the finale was "ok fine, here's a lore dump of all this continuity shit, this is boring, we just wanna do random adventures."

A thought occurs to me, about why this show manages to be at least a little refreshing, over everything else on offer lately. It's kinda nice to have a (shounen) anime that's not just purely about the main character powering up and winning through violence and aggression. Like. It's just cooking. With enough patience (and the right equipment/ingredients), anyone could probably pull most of this off. It's still way over the top and ridiculous, heavy handed writing, etc. But, it's curiously novel to have something that's all about learning and skill over "must get stronger."

It really is a shame that Pokemon is a kids show/IP, there'd be some really wild places it could be taken in a more mature setting.

Samurai metal

This thread is a sausage fest. (I'm not a metal head, I just enjoy subverted expectations.) Japan is clearly kicking ass in the metal scene. Seven years of content, 32k subs. Even I'd say folks are really sleeping on this group.

I also got hit with a bunch of those yesterday. But I've only ever seen it on mobile, I think. Maaayyybe once in a great while on desktop. But my brain could be making that part up.

Calling it now, Kuga loses. Obviously. Because Tsukasa has to square off with Soma at the end.

"We need the girl" is your cue to call their bluff and charge in.

...This is how Pokemon Centers work, isn't it? Heal your pokemon? Do these people look like professional veterinarians? Nah, easier to just re-write them to a healthy state.

Can the recoding be used to teach pokemon to understand sign language? Could it be used to teach pokemon sign language we could understand? I mean. DNA doesn't really have much say over what you know, I don't think. But, it does still make a simple sort of sense.

More accurately should be "mute people" but you get the idea. How's a pokemon supposed to battle if you can't give them commands? For that matter, how do pokemon just understand all these commands, no matter the language? You're telling me I can go out in the ocean and catch a pokemon that probably hasn't ever seen a human, and it'll just instantly know exactly what I'm trying to tell it to do? Setting aside how they might understand any language their trainer might use, how would they even understand the moves they call out? "You're asking me to 'fly'? Can you not see my wings flapping here?" "Wtf is 'swift'?" "Did you just tell me to use 'acid'? We're in the middle of a fight, bro." Pokemon spend all this energy learning to understand humans and all the dumb names they come up with for moves, I wonder if pokemon are ever frustrated that humans never even bother trying to understand any pokemon language.