PokeNirvash

It can, just not episode 2.

And here's something similar set to some trippy (but awesome) music. At least, it was something similar when I last saw an AMV for this song.

Ah, Fitgum. That makes sense.

Okay, your comment makes more sense now, but still, in-universe ranking wasn't what I was talking about.

Technically a waifu, but whatever.

Let's see... All Might, Eraserhead, Mirio, Endeavor (reluctantly)... Who's #5?

Echoes/Reverb Act 0: '80s Edition.

Considering it's the only CLAMP series I watched all the way through at attention - 23 for 26 on Tsubasa season 1, barely paid any attention to X/1999 when it aired on SyFy - I don't blame you. Edit: Oh! And Geass, can't forget Geass.

But the Japanese don't, which is why they said it. Are you fucking deaf? He said that the brown sugar draws out the umami of the bacon, not that it is umami in and of itself. Those bedroom eyes on Gin. 😄 News flash, nobody fucking cares you fourth-rate armchair critic with manic-depressive schizophrenia towards this show in particular. Personally, I'd say it's more of a /ll/ thing than it is a JoJo reference. Megumi and Taki have the same body type, so maybe that's what's got Hinako all excited.

And now the rest. FOOD WARS! - I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if the scene with Tsunozaki messing with Sonoka's tits out of frustration was cut for the Toonami broadcast, it's superfluous and sexual enough to rattle Demarco, or at least the goons in S&P, into cutting it. I'm a little disappointed that the extra beef Soma used as garnishes were all stuff he bought that morning. (So much for Meat-Meat's gift having any importance outside of inspiration...) On the flipside, I'm surprised the dub chose to refer to it as "honeycomb" instead of its more common name of "tripe". Whatever matches the lip flaps, I guess... Forget Disney Land, I'd rather go to Yukihira Land. [sees Clown-Mascot!Soma] On second thought, I'm better off staying home. Huh, never expected Mimasaka to be a former rich kid with cute meidos. I eagerly await the moment Erina quits refusing to acknowledge that maybe Soma's actually kinda good at what he does. Really, I'm just glad Hisako isn't there to make things worse. SAO ALICIZATION - Not even gonna bother watching this in fullscreen like I did with Food Wars (hence the protracted review), so it's going straight to picture-in-picture, like Flayaway before it. For starters, neither side's worth rooting for in this battle. The "good guys" side is all meh and boring, while none of the obvious bad guys, obviously, are remotely likeable, not even the ones who look like they could have at least a little bit of humanity in them. (Here's looking at you, Pugilist Boy.) "What's this 'Final Load Test' the gate speaks of?" Wrath and the STL: the Hollywood SFX industry's greatest enemy. We get it, you're evil, quit flaunting it like all your dicks are out at once. The transition to the OP was oddly appropriate-looking. Hate to break it to you dude, but your wife was a hentai protagonist, she wasn't worth it. THE ONLY GOOD GOBLIN (male) IS A DEAD GOBLIN (male). I'll give her credit, she was smart enough to aim for the biggest guy first. Shut up, murder lolis. They're gonna stab him again aren't they. Was his weapon always a whip? Oh no, stereotypically shaped smoke bombs! An Ethan Murray/Ezra Weisz character and purple smoke? Sounds familiar... Wait, that green-haired knight's a dude? 😮 RECYCLED ANIMATION NO JUTSU. Who knew goblins vs. a fire guy could look so boring, even with a Yuki Kajiura soundtrack to back it up? Oh hey, that guy finally speaks! This guy's fluctlight looks like it's about to go haywire. AND IT DID, WHAT A SHOCKER. I'll admit, seeing him glitch the absolute fuck out like that is honestly a cool scene. Yes, kill the cute girl with the freckles literal seconds after she gets facetime, that'll win me back for sure. >_> She looked prettier with pink lips, if I'm being honest. And then he was half the giant he used to be. Meanwhile, more goblins and humans killing each other like I'm supposed to care. Welcome to Namek Time, we hope you enjoy the next several weeks you'll be staying here the rest of today. I prefer the Council of Ten from that one cooking school in Japan, myself. And that one was half the goblin he used to be. Welp, Eugeo's mentor is doomed as fuck. Using your sword as an arrow is also too cool a move for this show. FAIYUR. Meanwhile, Bercouli's just standing around looking cool. I wish I was rewatching this week's JoJo right now. What is that she's making up there, a giant pinball? You suck, Green Zenitsu.

In/Spectre's already airing so I don't think it counts as a "coming soon". Also, I literally just remembered that it was God of High School that I read the first chapter of on Webtoon a ways back. I wonder if that promotional cow-girl ever showed up... Maybe now we'll get some actual plot and footage for HGS instead of more behind-the-scenes "muh diversity" videos.

Okay, so my DVR's been acting screwy again regarding what they consider "new episodes" of stuff, so I'm gonna have to root around in other places for this week's SAO and Food Wars. I'll get to those later, so for now, here's the other five. DR. STONE - God this show is great. If Toonami doesn't pick up season 2 immediately, I might just start watching the simuldub all on my own. Regarding episode specifics, full opening is a welcome one-week-only surprise, not sure if Chrome's as dense as everyone thinks he is, I'm amazed at how well Senku's dad planned ahead with communicating to him long after his natural lifespan, Taiju and Yuzuriha have been gone so long I forget how the latter sounded for a moment, and was that a Goku I saw for a second there? DEMON SLAYER - Great, an episode (mostly) focused on Zenitsu. For what it's worth, I appreciate him a little more now, even though I assure you he'll still get on my nerves more often than not. (Because he is the true Benji-kun.) And also because I watched this after Dr. Stone and not SAO, so things may change once the course it's taken starts making my blood boil again. BLACK CLOVER - You don't have to like it, you don't have to admire it, you don't even have to appreciate it, but you can't deny that the Black Bulls have some high-level teamwork going on when it comes to fighting. I'm surprised that guy whose ass and identity Zora kicked and stole respectively is still alive. Okay, show, you're starting to make me like Sally again, even if she isn't wearing her glasses right now. VENTO AUREO - Is it safe to say Giorno isn't even the main character of his own part at this point, because he had literally no lines this episode. I figured that random old guy was Prosciutto based on his pants. Bruno's my favorite for reasons both obvious and non to you. NARUTO SHIPPUDEN - God, that random mist ninja who killed Pakura is a Karma Houdini if I've ever seen one. He probably got unceremoniously killed off-screen before the show began, knowing the mortality rate of faceless ninja in this show. Also holy shit this episode was literally nothing but minor characters, unless you count that random pseudo-flashback Sai cameo. Also, I passed the first half of the grad school exit exams needed to get one of my two Master's degrees, so that's something worth mentioning.

My inner frustration with this community not liking one specific anime as much as I do put into words, that's what I'm talking about.

Tsubame's parents were way cooler than I expected, but man do I fucking hate that sharktoothed bitch from the student council who clearly only existed to serve as an obstacle for the Eizouken's anime screening. There should've been a scene where she tried to nab Mizusaki after the screening only to be stopped by the blacksuits working for her parents. Not only would it have been an improvement on the episode, it'd have made for some damn good irony.

I saw the first episode of Speed Grapher a little over a decade ago on a whim. I never really got back to it (yet), but I remember liking half of what I saw and being disturbed by the other half. Though it was more Saiga getting boners from taking pictures in warzones and Ginza threatening to use her gun while flirting with him that disturbed me than the ballet dancer who broke a little girl's arm to prove a very vague point or the scenes in and around the underground fetish club Saiga snuck into. By the way, the word you're looking for is "perverts", not "pedophiles". Two distinguishably different concepts that only occasionally overlap, like "sexism" and "misogyny".

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! #7: I Have to Do it For Myself! The Qwaser of Stigmata #2: Masked Friendship Case File No. 221: Kabukicho Sherlock #19: The Curtain Rises on the Grand Guignol

Kabukicho Sherlock 19

Well, the fact that the series gives focus to the lives of the main characters outside of the races and training for said races is the most prominent point of proof for that. It demonstrates them as being more than just the pilots for the titular sport's machines they're portrayed as in the media, almost as if they're actual people in their own right! Hence why we see not just the races, but the behind-the-scenes conflicts, especially concerning teammate infighting. Real world people aren't ideal. They have flaws, they contradict themselves, they can come off as petulant or even unlikable at times. Which is pretty much how many of the characters in IGPX - especially Takeshi in the first half of season 2 - are portrayed. A good example of the believability of character interactions that I never got the opportunity to bring up back when they reaired the show in 2013 was the relationship between Takeshi and Fantine, conceptually. Lots of people claimed it didn't make sense - except for Ranlsa, but who cares about her - but after giving it some thought (something people here are more often than not averse to), I realized that it did, but not in the way they thought. Takeshi didn't have as much chemistry with Fantine as he did with Liz, that's for certain, but that was the whole fucking point of it. Much like Takeshi, I was a teenager once, and when a teenager has someone of the opposite sex (or at least, the same sexual orientation) interested in them, they jump on the opportunity to date them, if only for the sake of having a girlfriend. Granted, I was too socially awkward to do it myself, but Takeshi took that opportunity, and felt the burn when his first romantic relationship ultimately fizzled out. A burnout that ultimately gave him the opportunity to realize who it was he had real romantic chemistry with. If that's not a realistic look at how a romantic relationship works for teenagers IRL, at least in comparison to your average lawlharem anime, then I don't know what is. However, despite my attempts to support the more realistic facets of IGPX, I'm not in any hurry to flat-out call it "realistic". Not after Metatronda claimed that Andrei secretly being the Rocket all along makes no sense when internet search engines can allow anyone to look up even the most shameful details of an athlete's private life. You know, despite the fact that Andrei claimed he wasn't trying to keep his past in the dark (just that it wasn't worth mentioning), on top of assuming the "confidentiality agreement" he claimed kept him from saying such things wasn't just a lie he told Takeshi to avoid talking about it right then and there, and assuming further that Andrei Rublev was his real name and he didn't change it to that after "Rocket G" left the spotlight all those years ago. My frustration with him utterly destroying me in that argument was admittedly what inspired me to conceptualize a sequel to IGPX exploring my headcanon take on those elements, alongside Top_Gun's 180 in opinion on the show come the second half demonstrating itself as most forced attempt at agreeing to popular opinion I've ever seen. Granted, my thoughts on all of this are way too in-depth for a show that's almost 15 years old and has likely been forgotten by most people by now, but my reasons for being so defensive of IGPX are valid. Besides my dislike of negative opinions towards stuff I genuinely like, I viewed IGPX as the "cool guy" show on Toonami back in '05-'06, no doubt in part thanks to it being at the ass-end of the block next to [as], in letterbox (the best aspect ratio preservation formatting), having really cool visual shots, and actually using profanity when the other shows couldn't! (11 year-old me practically shat bricks when he heard Miss Satomi say the ass-word in episode 12.) My official beginning-to-end watch in 2009 gave me a higher-than-before appreciation of the NINJA TUNE record label, to the point where I now own albums from several of their artists, including Mr. Scruff, Amon Tobin, Jaga Jazzist, The Herbaliser, and Bonobo. (The former's Trouser Jazz and the latter's Black Sands are some of my all-time favorite albums.) Not to mention somehow, I wound up integrating it into the timeline shared by several of my then-present and soon-future anime ideas, to the point where I viewed attacks towards IGPX's plot and characters as attacks towards that universe in general. It got so deep ingrained that not only did I create the hypothetical prequel IGPX Legend out of it, but I also snuck an extremely subtle reference into one of the chapters of the original anime idea I wrote up over a year ago. (By the way, Ben, your "Viewer Apathy Dynamo" comment from way back saw reference when I initially posted it here, so thanks for that.) IGPX is far from my favorite series, it's not even a 10/10 in my book! But I appreciate what it tried to do, what it succeeded at doing, and the unseen ways in which the former could be seen as the latter, and that's enough for me to consider it one of my secret favorites, if not an outright guilty pleasure. According to Anime News Network, IGPX's Japanese scripts were written between four individuals - one of whom was the director, another an animator, and a third an editor - but Demarco is listed as "senior writer" on the English side, so it stands to reason that he was behind more of the scriptwriting than Hongo and his team would make one think.

Another half hour down... 11:30 - Dr. Stone #24 - Voices Over Infinite Distance - TV-14L - SEASON FINALE 12:00 - Sword Art Online: Alicization: War of Underworld #6 - Battle of the Knights - TV-14V 12:30 - Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba #17 - You Must Master a Single Thing - TV-MAV 1:00 - Food Wars! The Second Plate #6 - Morning Shall Come Again - TV-MAS 1:30 - Black Clover #106 - Path of Revenge, Path of Atonement - TV-PGLV 2:00 - JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind #15 - The Grateful Dead Thankful Death, Part 1 - TV-MAV 2:30 - Naruto Shippuden #285 - User of the Scorch Style: Pakura of the Sand! - TV-PGV 3:00 - The Promised Neverland #8 - 021145 - TV-14LV 3:30 - Attack on Titan #15 - Special Operations Squad: Eve of the Counterattack, Part 2 - TV-14V

Sloppily written or no, it's still leagues better than Progressive. I do agree about the ending being weak, though.

In all fairness, the ending to Newhart is underappreciated genius, if only because of the laziness with which the trope is used nowadays.

I hate to admit it, but it was 4KidsTV that held my attention the most. (It was Fox Box for all of two weeks before it made the switch.) Even more weird, I was more into the magical girl shows than I was the action cartoons actually aimed towards my gender.

I never liked Naraku's baboon pelt, especially when I learned that's what he wore before I started watching IY in 2004. My associative image of Naraku was what he actually looked like (as a humanoid), so to find out that he was hiding behind a stupid-looking robe for so many episodes was such a disappointment. I'm over it now, but I'll never forget that initial disconnect.

The Qwaser of Stigmata 2

Demon Slayer's good, but it's not 10/10 material. Also, Zenitsu sucks and Nezuko is overrated.