rpgamer

Tbh.. there's a lot of hand-waving/dismissing you have to do for any story set like this. Internet is down.. but they still have cable access? They still have electricity? And, y'know, they haven't been nuked to oblivion yet? Really, thinking at all about the actual logistics of a "zombie apocalypse" is usually what immediately turns me away from any such stories.. It's actually kinda refreshing that I can almost sorta just about ignore a lot of that here simply due to main character being so obliviously care free. It's less about the zombie apocalypse, it's more about freedom. I can respect that.

Can you imagine, under Lazzo, a show like Bojack Horseman would've 100% been canned long before it really picked up stride? Meanwhile, we got... Mr. Pickles. Anyway, on subject, one thing I really appreciated about the movie was the occasional animation nods. I swear, Knubbler's final scene reminded me of something out of DBZ maybe, or something similar. There's a shot in the final fight that seemed very Evangelion, and I think there may have even been an Akira reference around there as well. Definitely a lot of little easter eggs to pick apart. My (maybe) one criticism would be Abigail. I mean... I guess they needed to add her character to give Nathan a serious case of rejection.. but, after everything she did in the last season, and all they went through to rescue her (maybe incidental to rescuing Toki...), it just felt a little cheap to have her show up, turn Nathan down, and then that's just the end of her story.

There may have been some extra layers to it, but building up an actual plot certainly didn't do it any favors in Lazzo's eyes. Which, I get the desire to want to focus on leaning into the funny, but.. I'd maybe argue that a network needs shows like this every once in a while to actually stay relevant. You can load yourself up on all the Family Guys and Robot Chickens etc, and they might be good for ratings, but, they're not much use beyond background noise after a while. You need something that makes waves and leaves an impression. You need shows that leave a legacy, for their own sake, for the creators, and for the network. I'd wager you couldn't build the loyal fanbase [as] has without these occasional gems that did more than just make people laugh.

(yep I'm gonna just keep posting) It's kinda funny, too, earlier in the day, prior to Checkered Past, Regular Show was also re-airing its finale, which sorta captured a lot of the same sentiments. And as I dwell on it, it makes me think, the mark of a great show must surely be that capacity to smoothly transition from simply entertaining to truly compelling. Regular Show and Adventure Time, Steven Universe, even Craig of the Creek seemed to grasp at it. And on the [as] side.. it feels like the closest they've come to that lately is Rick and Morty, but that's certainly falling far short of compelling. Even the "Evil Morty" or "Rick Prime" arcs never seemed like they wanted to amount to much. Ballmastrz, maybe? It didn't really click for me, but I seem to recall it trying to go out with a bang.. The flip side of that is probably that, by avoiding anything that could become too grandiose, they dodge the budget bullet that briefly killed this and VB. Could even be a simple matter of the network just not wanting to stray too far from their mindless comedy lane. You could maybe even make a case for this being why Unicorn Warriors Eternal kinda just stumbled. It was trying to be that truly compelling story from the start, without having the gentle buildup and time to grow. FLCL may be a great example of how you can make that transition quickly, as well as demonstrating that the transition is practically necessary for something to truly take off. And then you have all of the sequels that just can't quite get it right, as if they fail to find the right balance, being too eager to get to the "compelling" point.

And just like Venture Bros, the last feeling I'm left with is... "It's over." It's such a bizarre feeling of.. Finality? I've never been a super fan, never been to cons or kept up with news or followed the creators.. but these are things that were always there, somewhere back in my youth.. things that never got any closure, so they remained with a sense of "that was great, and I'll forever wonder where they were going with it." The return is like finally reading the final chapter of a book, and knowing you have to leave that world behind now. I'm glad they got to make this. Glad for the creators, and glad for the fans. Time is rough on everyone.. so you really got to appreciate when it gives you the chance to say what you set out to say, to give to the world everything you intended.

So, after this... what's left? Venture Bros got to wrap things up, Metalocalypse finally got theirs.. what big names are left that still deserve a proper ending? Do we bring back Moral Orel?

Ugghh. They're moving MiA around? Oh, wait.. now that I think about it, I did have trouble re-watching that one. Movies were up on Hulu at the time, I think, but I remember having to use the [as] app for season 2. Will definitely need to keep that in mind if/when new content comes out (next year at the earliest probably.....).

Eh, worth a shot. I know Demon Slayer was obviously available long ago on Hulu, and did see a few other Toonami picks on there at the time.. I don't really care about One Piece so missing out on that won't be a bother, and Naruto is ending. Crunchyroll seems to have a lot of crossover, what with generally picking from their library, I think?

Yayy another potential cord cutter.. Anyone here familiar with what's available (or what isn't)? Most of [as]-proper seems to end up on Max right away, right? Might not all stay there forever (sad to see Xavier isn't listed anymore..) but honestly, who has time for rewatches. (such a shame the [as] app doesn't take Max as valid login credentials...) So I could maybe keep up with the few good things left on that front. But, Toonami? Does what gets picked up also get streaming rights there? Or am I left cherry-picking other/anime streaming services to keep up? I knowwww, I could just pick one or two services and have all the content I'd ever want to watch.. but I still like the idea of retaining some connection to the block. But, kinda first thing to look at when finances need tightening.

S'ok. Nothing truly concerning, more a curiosity. There's just the faintest of gradients around the thread preview box. I can't even really show it off any better, it's so faint. But if you look close careful at the right side of that image, especially around the corners, you can see some rounded off not-as-blackness just outside the preview box (almost touches the corners, and just a bit outside that is another rounded region of slightly-not-as-dark. Maybe probably a desktop-only thing? I have no idea how/if thread previews work on mobile.

I just woke up from a dream of me watching some weird Toonami mashup special.. kinda like that DBZ x One Piece x [that other show] thing.. but zanier, broadly Toonami focused, lots of characters, some incomprehensible plot.. I distinctly remember the music having a bunch of old callbacks to some absolute classic [as] bump tracks. So.... if they ever pull something like that off, I'm going to start calling myself a psychic.

*Parents have Neji fight a 3 year old girl* "Man, that Neji kid sure is strong! Look how good he is at beating up someone smaller and weaker than him!"

This is all very sensible... except, there's already precedent with Arizona and Hawaii, so, if Florida is so hung up on this (considering they're constantly the ones proposing an end to it), why don't they just get rid of it in Florida and be satisfied? Or make it permanent, hard to tell which way they want it. In any case, clearly it doesn't have to be country-wide.

They've been "trying to stop it" (or make it permanent) since forever. It never goes anywhere. And then there was the time..

Coworker hasn't been able to smell or taste properly for more than a year now, I think.

A lot of those look pretty damn old. Does steam charge to continue keeping a game available on their servers? Seems fair to drop these if nobody even remembers they exist anymore. I should go play Super House of Dead Ninjas again sometime.. Hopefully at least some of these get preserved somewhere on the high seas.

Judging from the titles alone, it's fairly clear everything after this is just fluff, filler or not. I still say they just intentionally padded everything out to hit that big 500 number. One feeling that came through with this episode was.. wondering if there was any sort of sense of relief once these chapters had been written and put out. All the ups and down and years and years, build up and retcons and breadcrumbs, on and on leading up to the finale. I can't help but get the impression that there was a huge burden lifted knowing everything came together and it was all over.

An episode where literally nothing important happened. Completely forgot the first half, was expecting a mid-roll when the credits hit.

One thing I'm not enjoying so far is how they seem to be making the black characters sound... excessively exaggerated. Gotta make it super clear that they're totes ethnic and not just a diversity skin tone. And then I realized, yeah, that tracks for being produced by [as]/DeMarco. Seems like everything they've made has had that faint whiff of mid-tier fanfic by a shoddy writer. Can't wait to see how they fuck this one up in the end.

I will admit, back when I first watched this and the previous arc, I was also sorta disappointed in how little ground they truly cover. Both arcs kinda just amount to killing one demon, in a fairly static setting, with very little exposition or anything that truly forwards the overall plot. Sure, the fights might be visually pleasing, decently animated/choreographed, etc. But... end of the day it's a whole lot of eye candy to distract you from the fact that nothing else is really happening.

I only just noticed that the thread preview (when you hover over a thread title) has a weird very faint mis-aligned bubble around it. Has that always been a thing? Oh wait, it's actually two bubbles. There's the thread preview box, then right around the edges is a rounded border that's just a few shades darker than background, and around that is another larger rounded border that's closer to the background grey bit still just slightly off.

Ehhh... it comes off a little better if you just accept he was putting up a front from the start. Whole family is dead, and he knows his favorite brother did it, he knows the whole village gives him the side-eye as a potential traitor/usurper just because of his family, etc. It's not so incredibly unreasonable that he decides to push everyone away before they have a chance to turn their back on him. Sure, in fairness, he does get carried away with letting himself believe he's actually better than everyone and they're all beneath him. But that's kinda where Naruto comes in to prove him wrong. In his own way, he sees through the front, sees the whole "I'm better than everyone" act as a means of keeping everyone away, and he's determined to break through it. He sees it because he knows his own actions were a way of controlling how everyone shunned him. That's the whole dichotomy here, that they were both doing it, exerting whatever control they could to twist the glances and whispers into a narrative of their own choosing, rather than something out of their control. While I'm not explicitly opposed to the "romantic" memery, it's really only ever seemed to me like this is blatantly just a "two sides of the same coin" scenario. They both needed to work on accepting themselves. Y'know, a little self-love. Maybe with each other.

Totally called it being a flashback-heavy ep (I mean.. I guess you could flip a coin on that and it'll usually be right for this show......) But, it did kinda work with the structure of being a bunch of disjointed memories. Despite the flashbacks, the episode very clearly had to be laid out the way it did; there's no other way you could've gotten those final shots without setting up the whole episode for the reveal. With all the ways this has been going so well, it's really hard to imagine the final stretch of episodes being able to hold onto this level of quality.

This thread is also the first I'd noticed they're actually airing the sub version as well.. Was there, like.. a reason for that? Admittedly didn't really dig the Morris VA.. Should probably record an ep just to see the bumpers for it, if they're any different.