Top Gun

Are you people seriously still bitching about Bebop in 2020. Fucking hell.

...she's not a writer, she's a character designer. She designed Maromi, who's essentially a stand-in for Hello Kitty and other similar mascot characters. So yeah, I highly suggest that you rewatch this series, because there's a lot of it you're not remembering accurately.

Yeah, that's...not correct in the slightest. Spoilered for people who care I guess: There's certainly a lot about the series that's open to interpretation regarding just how "real" the events portrayed are, but at no point is it ever implied that all of it is just someone's dream. I feel like you're confusing things with the episode "Happy Family Planning," which does feature its three characters in a building that's being demolished.

...what the hell are you talking about with the "near-death experience" thing? That episode actually happened, as did the rest of the series. Lil' Slugger was an actual entity, albeit one born from Tsukiko Sagi's lies and desperation. All of the people in the series were actually attacked. A prevailing theme throughout all of Satoshi Kon's works is the very blurry line between fantasy and reality, and how the former can spill into the latter and become real. It's like you missed the entire point of the series. And how was Paranoia Agent's message "bleak"? As Jman put it, it's most definitely positive, albeit somewhat harsh. The overriding theme of the series is that you can't run away from your troubles, or count on some sort of outside intervention to magically solve them. You may get a temporary reprieve, but at the end of the day they'll still be there. The only way forward is to face them head-on, to confront them and deal with them once and for all. The characters who are able to do so are the ones able to stand up to Lil' Slugger, and eventually defeat them.

How the fuck does someone have taste this shitty.

...and nothing of value was lost?

I mean there was April Fools' from two years ago. We got freaking Mind Game of all things out of that.

Y'know the part that pisses me off the most about that whole storyline is how the entire family gets infected with HIV from...a blood transfusion. A blood transfusion that would have taken place somewhere in the mid-to-late 2000s based on the series' timeline, long after first-world countries had comprehensive screening of donated blood with an extremely low rate of false negatives (we're talking a literal one-in-a-million shot, if not even rarer). And I don't even remember what bullshit excuse they came up with as to why the HIV infection immediately escalated to superAIDS, when if the donor was recognized as being HIV-positive they could have easily traced past usages of the donated blood and had the family start antiretroviral treatments. The fact that Kawahara went with such a ridiculously-improbable premise completely destroyed any suspension of disbelief I might have had and made that arc feel like a farce...of course he's an expert at that, so I was hardly surprised. Oh, and that's not even getting into how massively fucking irresponsible it is to cast aspersions on the safety of blood transfusions when it's hard enough as-is to get people motivated to donate. Fuck off, Kawahara.

Tweet at DeMarco, maybe?

I forgot how much this folder sucks. I don't give a fuck if it fits, I don't give a fuck how many people watch it, it is one of the greatest motherfucking pieces of animated television ever created and I am goddamn thrilled to have the privilege of seeing it on my screen again.

Fucking yes.

"You're all in our crew, too!"

Well done.

If this wasn't such a dire situation you could probably come up with some hilarious captions for that pic.

Fire Force's "fanservice" is pretty fucking terrible and definitely somewhat brings down what would otherwise be a super-solid show. And SAO has been godawful in its treatment of female characters from the get-go.

Not really a surprise. There's presumably going to be no way for them to get any current premieres for some time now. And that's assuming that they can even keep airing MHA and Jojo without a break.

I know Pittsburgh well, and it doesn't surprise me at all that that clusterfuck of a city can't even manage a drive-up testing site. No one's going to be at risk of getting infected from sitting in line in their own car. And people who have been exposed to someone who tests positive are required to quarantine themselves until the test results come back, so unless they're being an absolute piece of shit and breaking that, they're not going to be exposed to another potential source of infection in the meantime.

Y'all have the worst fucking taste. This arc is awesome and High School Musical Dandy was goddamn magical.

So you're a complete and utter sociopath. Got it. Just because the place you live was stupid enough to plop the testing sites right next to hospitals doesn't mean every state was. No one said that people should just randomly drive up and flood testing sites right now, because we can't even fucking handle the people who have legitimate cause to think they're infected. Case in point: I have a close family member who works in a healthcare-related field and was exposed to someone who tested positive. He waited in line for 3 or 4 hours at one testing site before being told he'd have to come back the next day because they were swamped. He then had to come back the next day, and after another few-hour wait he finally got tested. It then took another week for him to finally get the (negative) test results. Our response has been fucking pathetic. But if we do ever manage to get our shit together, then yes, we absolutely need to institute large-scale testing. One of the most insidious things about COVID-19 is that a significant percentage of people who contract it are apparently asymptomatic, so to get an accurate idea of just how prevalent its spread is, there's going to need to be widespread testing of people who don't even think they were exposed.

I keep replying to you because you keep getting shit wrong, or woefully misinterpreting it, and in a time like this misinformation can be incredibly dangerous. As Daos already pointed out, you completely botched the reading of the one statistic you cited. As for the number of automobile fatalities every year, you're comparing the global death toll with the worst-case COVID-19 death toll in the US alone if no measures had been taken, so...you don't really have a point to make at all. (And that aside, the global automobile fatality rate is irrelevant in and of itself, given that it includes many countries whose vehicle safety standards are woefully inferior to those in the US.) Even if the COVID-19 fatality rate was in the realm of 1% (which various estimates have placed it at), you're talking about almost 80 million people worldwide. Still think this isn't serious? Oh, and shockingly enough, you completely misrepresented your point about people "overwhelming" the healthcare system. Those lines were at remote testing sites, not the goddamn hospital. The people crammed into every hallway in New York's ICUs aren't there on a whim...they're in dire need of critical medical care. Oh, and all the people at those testing sites SHOULD be getting tested, as should the populace as a whole, so we can get a good handle on just how widespread this virus is and where hotspots are. But because our government's initial response was a clusterfuck of massive proportions, we were woefully unprepared to initiate widespread testing, hence those long lines at the few sites just getting set up now. You didn't see that happen in a country like South Korea that was well-prepared from the get-go. Either stop being an idiot and properly educate yourself, or just shut the fuck up and let those who know what the hell they're talking about do so. That's all I want from you.

...1 in 77 odds of dying "every time you get in a car"? Where are you pulling this bullshit from? And the healthcare system is swamped because the 10-15% of infected people who develop serious complications are all being admitted at once, and ICUs aren't designed to handle an influx like that. It has abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with "healthy people" flooding the hospital. Get some actual goddamn sources, for fuck's sake.

Dude I'm loving the hell out of this arc.

Don't you play me like that.

Yeah, it makes no sense whatsoever. For reference, in the original Ocean dub he was played by Naraku's actor, someone with a much deeper voice and more gravitas. But yeah, Escaflowne is an all-time classic and features some of Yoko Kanno's absolute best work.

That was...unexpected.