....except that sometime in 2014 there will be a new Yamato movie.

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...this is probably how they looked.

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  This weeks episode of RWBY was apparently preempted by an after-school special focusing on the heartbreak of bullying.
...
...
Yeah...pretty much nothing happened except well, this...

I assume that the gratuitous bunny girl who was onscreen for 7 seconds  is a continuing character because she gets a silhouette in the closing credits and a new name appears in the cast list.

Next week , I predict...


VIOLENCE

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Stella Women's Academy  High School Division Class C3 episode twelve scared me for a moment.

I was afraid there was going to be much angsty dialog, but instead the episode is a very long, frequently escalating and occasionally quite cartoonish airsoft duel...where everybody has a grand old time.

At one point bat thevend of the battle Yura alters reality again, this time for everybody. Everyone except Kirishima is weirded out. After a moment of confusion and fear Sonora looks at Yura and says "YOU did this>" Well OK then." as if that makes it all completely understandable...and they proceed to have the time of their lives until, exhausted, they find themselves back in reality.  It seems that Sonora is aware of what is going on and that it involves the shrine.


There's nothing deep here. Yura has gone from one extreme to another and found them both unpleasant. Now she's stopped being an asshat and is enjoying a hobby she has become quite good at....a hobby she now wants to share with other people.



To my utter astonishment this was a perfectly pleasant episode.

It did nothing to explain the metaphysical weirdness we've seen from time to time in the show, but it did establish that Yura has found her path and is happy as she learns where it leads her.

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The viewers who resisted the urge to get all cutty with a straight razor after last weeks episode are rewarded with a look at what the well adjusted characters are doing.



They've received some bad news...but they are determined to make the best of the situation.

Then we go to Yura...who is putting on a brave face, despite being beset by guilt, despair and zombies...



...shortly after this things begin to get weird.

Kirishima has a perfectly reasonable,  fleeting moment of bitchiness which ultimately leads to this unexpected visual...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:34 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Blake's bow...

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The Message behind Stella Women's Acadamy High School Division...I'm sorry...where was I?
Oh yes. I think I've figured out the theme behind this show.

We at Gainax hate you.
Our childhoods were miserable because we were a bunch of geeky, socially inept otaku who grew to hate our hobby (which we blame for all our lost opportunities).  Nothing makes us sicker than seeing those who watch and enjoy anime for they remind us of our selves and our many personal failures. We hereby dedicate our lives to making you hate the medium as much as us, for we are transgressive and enlightened hipsters who understand the nihilistic futility of everything...Well...everything except the cruel pleasure we derive from getting you gullible fools to first enjoy something we create and then watch helplessly and despair as we dismember it without anesthesia before you. That is the greatest joy in all creation.That we are paid to do this is icing on the cake. It's an ephemeral joy though. Your innocence thus defiled, you can bring us little amusement from this point on, but there are always others that follow the likes of you. Now get thee along, Aokigahara beckons you.

I could be a bit off there, but there's a better than even case to be made for that theory at this point.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:33 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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..is one of those songs where it's important to know know what the lyrics actually mean, because having this just pop up on ones playlist in earshot of a native Japanese speaker could be awkward...

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An exceedingly epic example of a Ruby Rose cosplay by Adellexe. Photographed/edited by Lee Hong Zhu.




more...

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She has abilities other than stalking!

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In my review of episode 8, I said the following...

I expect that the NEXT episode will be the nadir (emotionally...dramatically it might be quite compelling)

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"I've started watching Attack on Titan again. Watching a giant bite the head off somebody, then pull them apart and eat them is so much less disturbing than watching that poor girl in Watamote humiliate herself. "

^{Full disclosure: Actual monsters in Attack on Titan are considerably less cute than this .gif implies.}

In other news: We can now re-size .gifs in Minx. Wo0t!

All hail the lathe of the maker!

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..as events currently suck.

Instead here are two of the Yuru Yuri girls and an air guitar.

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This polysyllabically titled show airs on Crunchyroll a week late, so despite my judicious attempt at avoiding spoilers I'd heard considerable chatter about this episode being just wretched and 'worse than the last one'.

Given that the last episode was about our poorly socialized protagonist getting tunnel vision and missing the point of her hobby, I fully expected this episode to be a bit of a downer with Yura's Ahab complex causing issues.

Boy howdy.

One of the overriding themes of this show is sportsmanship. This episode also focuses on the importance of not becoming what one despises and how easy it is to fall into that trap, especially if one feels strongly that one's cause is noble.

The other major point of the show is that the raison d'etre' of a hobby is to enjoy oneself. This is not to say that winning is not important, but the enjoyment is the goal. If lives are not at stake and what you are doing  is unpleasant and wearying without an enjoyable payoff...then one needs to stop doing it or start collecting a paycheck for it.

  As expected, Yura drives her team hard to the point of misery, at one point disregarding a fairly severe leg injury incurred by Kirishima. The kicker is that at the last minute Yura fires the winning shot....a split second after being hit.
By the rules this means Yuras winning shot was illegal but it's undetected by anyone except her opponent, the malevolent Haruna.....who smiles knowingly, informs Yura that she now respects her because she'll do anything to win and walks away.

The episode ends a tad ambiguously. Yura has the opportunity to make this right, but she's feeling a profound obligation to her teammates who she ran into the ground to get this victory....what does she do? Well we'll know for sure next week.

Of course most people reading this know that there is only one correct answer, but Yura doesn't. Her backstory is that she's never had friends. She hasn't learned about sportsmanship and she's carrying the shock of the earlier lesson about fighting to the end...for which she is seriously overcompensating.

I expect that the NEXT episode will be the nadir (emotionally...dramatically it might be quite compelling)



This is the antithesis of a shonen manga. Japanese society puts a VERY high value on giving your all and going all out whatever the cost. Shonen manga and sports manga tend to do the same with the former focusing on crushing the villain utterly.

This show, is about remembering to step back, breathe, and keep things in perspective...and how easy it is to fail to do that.

Yura is not an idiot, she's young and ignorant. She's learning, like we all do, as she goes and she's making mistakes. There is actual character development here. I'm still liking this show quite a bit though I think I may actually be the only one now.


So...for those of you who've been watching...any bets on whether or not she just flat out shaves her head this time?

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:56 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Well after dwelling on dark matters for a bit I was damned happy to see Tuesday roll around because that means StellaWALLOFTEXTc³ is finally up on Crunchyroll.

In this episode we learn that the KGB club is even more co-ed than we thought.

^{This despite the fact that one of their members today has chosen to be strapping and not trapping.}

Oh my... 


The series takes a surprisingly dark turn in the first 45 seconds.

Someone, quite likely a competitor, is playing for keeps. They're using an illegally overpressurised air-gun and start sniping at the girls.
Now Sonora is in the hospital with a concussion and Yura blames herself.

Although the other teamates decide to sit out the much anticipated 24 hour tournament, Yura somewhat rashly decides to sign them up, to honor Sonora with a win.
And the wallflower takes control...

As an aside, I think this is the first episode where Yura hasn't had a vision.

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There's not much to add except that having watched it again, Crunchyroll can handle the load in the exact same way that that RoosterTeeth's server's can't. (I tried to show it to a friend last night and it was all out of synch). It stays in sych at high rez too.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:54 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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...but she would. She's in it. By the way, what DOES she see in that guy?

The latest installment of RWBY is only four minutes long. Well acted and nicely paced with even better music than previous episodes it...well it ends after four minutes which SUCKS cause I've gotta wait a whole WEEK to see what happens!

It's a cute show, plus it's always nice to see people who genuinely enjoy their work.

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...that while this banner does make for admirable honesty on their part,  such a high visibility release of this information is potentially counterproductive from a marketing standpoint.

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It's the school festival episode of Stella [REDACTED] Club C Cubed and I learned all sorts of stuff today.

The survival club is out of money. They're going to be hard pressed to pay the entry fee to get into a much anticipated '24 hour tournament'. They decide to go for broke and try to raise enough money at the festival.

I learned a new Japanese word.
In Japan a commercial shooting stall with electric target retriever is called a "massine'.



It may SOUND like they're saying 'machine' but it's a brand new and distinct word meaning 'shooting stall with electric target retriever'. I know this because the subtitle-ers spell it that way. Every. Single. Time.

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