Some halfway decent news.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 02:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Wow!
It was getting sappy there for a minute, but Girls und Panzer #9 was an astonishingly entertaining bit of mayhem. The climax was one of the best paced, most pitch perfect action sequences I've seen in a while, particularly because all the Ooarai girls, but especially Goosfish and Turtle teams, were smart and used their inferior equipment to its best advantage. Nicely done.


The bit of exposition at the beginning about the Student Council's motivation makes as much sense as anything else in the show.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 02:18 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test   Why so testy?Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test

^{"N..no...It's just tankers hair."}

  It was a dark and stormy night, but no shadowy figure lurked in a rambling old house. This wasn't some cheap dime novel, it was a high-budget ploy by Actas to pounce on the void left by Gonzo with Strike Witches.
  It had been a good run, but now they were behind schedule. They were on location(!?), it was a dark and stormy night and on top of it all, Turtle team's PanzerKamphwagen 38(t) had thrown a track again and was stuck in the mud. A Typhoon had stranded Tsutomu Mizushima in Okinawa and the company had sent in an Executive VP to act as relief director. This fellow had originally tried to get the series concept changed a late night live action show and almost been successful. He had been overruled, but his efforts had resulted in several props being bought, and contracts being signed that resulted in the show being produced using the unwieldy process of rotoscoping.

   The ersatz director ordered the Duck and Anglerfish teams to get out and help change the tread. The scriptwriter objected that this would destroy the pacing of the battle but the Relief Director was adamant, pointing out that the tread fix had been done off camera in episode 4 and that the audience demanded realism. The scriptwriter objected that the tread break wasn't in the script anyway and they should just fix it while they filmed the scene with Anzio  Maya Yoshioka had 6 minutes of dialog left to film as Anchovie and while quite professional, she was not experienced in location shooting.. The relief director screamed various expletives at him. He also ordered Anglerfish team to strip down to their skivvies...but he was adamant that Duck team keep their athletic outfits on as they all...wallowed...about in the...mud.  The scriptwriter at this point stormed off the set. What was said on set at that point is somewhat conjectural, but it is believed that the relief director then went on rambling about blue ray sales and ordered the girls to change the tank tread.

...but nothing happened.

At first...

The director had forgotten one very important thing. the young ladies may have been his employees, but they not only had their virtue they had between them 3 tank guns.  Mudwrestling in their skivvies was NOT in their contract and this asshole had been a perv from day one. After a quick consultation via cellphone they let loose on the director, Kana Ueda (who played  Kawashima) missed and demolished the food cart but the other two hit home, taking out both the director and the camera. While these props only fired beanbags a 57mm and a 75mm beanbag will ruin a perverts whole day. The directors chair, the camera and the food cart were no more.

Tsutomu Mizushima arrived from Okinawa to a nightmare. With only 3 days left till the air date it was still raining, all the film for episode six had been lost, an executive VP was in the hospital and there was no food cart at the film site. After quick consultation with the board of directors it was decided they'd just throw in the towel and make it a clips episode. They shot one scene with Maya Yoshioka (in studio) re-edited some cut scenes and two quick scenes with the main cast during a break in the rain. The episodes were quietly renumbered with 6 becoming 5.5. Even with all the cuts the rotoscoping was done with less than 7 hours to spare.
  Although the episode ended up significantly over budget (the vendor had to be compensated for the food cart), no action was taken against the actresses and the VP was ultimately fired. He has not been named and no one at Actas speaks of this incident any more.

 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:35 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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1 Why Last Order?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Fri Dec 14 22:10:21 2012 (+rSRq)

2 We're TESTING

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Fri Dec 14 22:13:02 2012 (vp6an)

3 That's a lot of "Test" you've got there.  Maybe 14 pounds of it...

Posted by: Siergen at Fri Dec 14 22:37:13 2012 (Ao4Kw)

4

So it's about testing clones?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sat Dec 15 09:39:44 2012 (+rSRq)

5 Sadly, I'm clone free but it looks like it's fixed now.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sat Dec 15 14:30:18 2012 (vp6an)

6 What is this new tag of which you speak?  (Worried that this will get me back into spending more time making caps than actually watching again).

Posted by: Mauser at Sat Dec 15 21:32:51 2012 (cZPoz)

7 The CAPTION tag lets you caption a picture. PIXY mentioned he was working on it. I kept trying to get it to work for a picture that was justified right or left of text so I filled the screen with ersatz text. It currently only works with centered pictures though and it seems to cause some wonkieness if used inside spoiler tags. However it dose reduce and italicize the caption automatically. For the picture and caption under the spoiler tag in this post, I used the 'justify center' from the post menu which gets basically the same results.  To make sure everything was working I posted additional ersatz text there too, though it's not as coherent as that above.  Like the CENTER tag the CAPTION tag also centers pictures nicely.

"Why would anyone want to?"

The CAPTION tag is like the other tags, ie:[KAPCHUN] snarky comment [/KAPTCHUN] but with caption spelled correctly and in lower case.

I gather that Pixy is aiming to eventually have them work on pics to either side of the page as well, which will greatly facilitate different page layouts.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Dec 16 01:58:41 2012 (vp6an)

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Everything's all mixed up and crazy.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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That's how much weight I lost Wednesday night and yesterday morning.
No, I did not have anything amputated, I got some bug and explosively expelled everything from my digestive track.
That was an exceedingly painful and exhausting experience.
I'm not sure what it was. I hadn't eaten anything for over 10 hours so food poisoning is unlikely. I note that something like this has happened every year in December or January for the last three years.
Perhaps I'm allergic to the solstice.
In any event, if the hippies are right about high colonics and purging then I'm  just all kinds of healthy now.
I hope to be walking without a cane soon.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:48 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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All hate these guys.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:54 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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According to this article, the anime industry in Japan just packed it in and quit.

After the eighth episode of Girls und Panzer aired late Monday, anime studios around Japan have collectively announced the end of the anime industry and discontinued operation. "I would like to thank the fans throughout the years for their continued support,” Shinbou Akiyuki said as he addressed a crowd of reporters at SHAFT headquarters. "But after the last episode of Girls und Panzer, we all know that there is nothing more to accomplish in anime.”

...The episode featured the team of protagonists engaging a Russian tankery school in the snow. Around midway through the episode, to utter disbelief of the television audience, the Russian team burst into a rendition of the traditional Russian war anthem "Katyusha”. Voice actresses Kanemoto Hisako (Squid Girl, Cure Peace) and Uesaka Sumire (Sanae Dekomori) performed the duet. The episode concluded with a dramatic fight scene and ended on a cliffhanger after the Oorai High School team were surrounded by the enemy...

"Try using a Zoopraxiscope!"

  Girls und Panzer‘s eighth episode is missing about a minute in its Crunchyroll version. Unless you download a fansub, you are going to miss this 1938 song, the highlight of the episode.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:08 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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We has them.
All should be fixed by tomorrow though.

I the meantime...Bunny Girls!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 03:00 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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There are some things that strain credulity.
I was able to look beyond the premise of SAO and the implausibility of the technology. I could look beyond he occasional writers hand-wave.

But this is too much...
See that thar nebbish, the one who goes by the handle of Recon? In real life Leaf Sugu his Kendo senpai. He pines for her but is shorter than Sugu, physically weak, socially awkward, and has a stammer. In the online world however, he's shorter than Leaf, physically weak, socially awkward and has a stammer, plus he's got a bowl cut and walks with an Egor style hunch. I just don't see him picking that avatar. I just don't.

Wait, where was I?
Oh yeah, Sword Art Online  episode 23:


When last we left Sugu, she was smelling her knees and burbling, having had something of a mental breakdown upon learning that her brother was actually her partner in the game.


Kazuto, is somewhat taken aback as well, and really doesn't know what to say. I lieu of any sage wisdom, Kazuto  informs her that he will wait for her at the south gate of Arun.

Sugu Leaf re-enters the game and is shocked to find that Recon, over the course of the last 4 episodes, (and quite off camera) has managed to escape from his imprisonment, poison his captors and track her down. As one can imagine, he's feeling pretty buff right now...so buff that he actually builds up the courage to confess his love to Leaf.

You may recall that Recon is shorter than Leaf, physically weak, socially awkward and has a stammer, plus he's got a bowl cut and walks with an Egor style hunch. Recall too that Leaf is not in any sort of mood to take this affront to her dignity gracefully, so she punches him and throws him down the stairs.

Leaf then laughs a rather worrisome laugh and announces that Recon has given her a splendid idea! She then flies off to meet Kazuto Kirito, who is, as promised, at the south gate.



...and so they fight....inconclusively, although she does demonstrate that tactics and pure essence of yandere can counter even the highest sword skill.


After the fight Kirito explains that:
A: HE DIDN'T KNOW!
B: He won't be fully returned from Sword Art Online until he rescues his beloved.

For the first time Leaf actually groks the stakes of Kirito's quest. She realizes that his is quite possibly NOT a game and a life may be at stake. She and Recon follow Kirito and Y.U.I. to the entrance to the world tree where both agree to help him (Recon because he's still carrying a torch for Leaf).


Y.U.I. has analyzed the guardians of the gate from the recent battle (last episode) and is perplexed. She thinks that given the guardian's spawn rate, the gate may actually be unclear-able. In other words Y.U.I. thinks it's possible that this entrance is not actually intended to be cleared by players.

Of course, that would be crazy as clearing this entrance and entering the tree is, ostensibly, the whole point of the game, thus, it is decided that their best bet is to try to rush to the gate before  the guardians become too numerous. the plan is to have Leaf and Recon (who have the ability to heal at range) heal Kirito as he rushes the gate.



Well....
That doesn't work.

^{The gate as seen from below near the entrance.}

^{There are Catgirl princesses  on on fire breathing dragons. This is the best show ever.}

^{"Funny...It doesn't LOOK like cake."}

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 03:29 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Steven Den Beste suffered a stroke recently, but he has recovered sufficiently that he has been discharged and is now home!

Go on over there and welcome him home.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 03:50 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Yeah...THAT kind of week.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 12:35 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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It all turns to worms.
Asuna throws away her trump card. Now this does, in fact convince Kirito and Y.U.I. that she's up there, but she's lost her one ace in the hole and Kirito and Y.U.I. are no closer than they were to getting into the World Tree. Arguably they are now rather farther from their goal that they were, because, well...


Sughu figures out who her partner is...and does not react well.

^{"Oh... God...Did you just say Asuna Yuki?"}

No indeed she does not react well at all...

^{"Burbleburbleburble....}"

Interesting in that there are really only 3 scenes in the episode proper.
*A fight sequence as Kirito rashly tries to rush the gate of the world tree...and discovers why no one has succeeded.
*A brief interregnum where Leaf saves his ass, resurrects him and then learns who Kirito is.
*An extended scene in the real world where Sughu confronts her brother cousin and proceeds to have a complete nervous breakdown.  This was actually pretty scary to watch.

 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:09 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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