Pressing Questions
There is this new show that , as near as I can tell, no one has gotten the rights to. It appears (despite having dubious art and being a shounen show) to be quite worthy.
Steven has been following The 7 Deadly Sins through his extensive network of underworld contacts and it does look like a hoot.
So, unable to watch it, I checked out the manga.
UPDATE:How can one screw up a manga review? One might have typos...people might disagree with one's conclusions...but to actually do the review WRONG is nigh impossible. Well, we here at Brickmuppet Blog pride ourselves in making the impossible happen....Responding to concerns expressed in the comments, I have flipped through the first volume and note that this online THING I blogged about bears very little resemblance to the dead tree edition of the manga, (which includes pigs, both talking and giant and seems to be much closer to what I've heard about the anime). I'm really not sure what the hell I reviewed here, but I SWEAR I read it..I've even got screencaps.
Perhaps it's a lost pilot episode issue...or something.
In any event, this thing exists and it might be of interest.
The questions at the end remain legitimate...well, actually there is probably debate on that too...
END UPDATE:
The premise is that some years ago in the Kingdom of Britannia (which is in or near the continent of faux-medieval-Europe), a group of 7 warrior adventurers consisting of swordsmen, wizards and even a fricking giant built a reputation of badass chivalry until they unexpectedly killed a whole bunch of innocents and began spreading seditious rumors such as "We was framed!" and "The Holy Knights are riddled with traitors who are trying to launch a coup d'etat and set themselves up as a Junta!" Well, the Holy Knights took care of this domestic terror group with extreme prejudice, reportedly killing them all (though there are rumors that one or more might have survived and fled to the wilderness). This band of nefarious villains passed into legend as the greatest most perfidious and terrifying criminals in the history of the kingdom. Now they are boogiemen used to scare children and are referred to as The 7 Deadly Sins.
That was years ago, our story begins in earnest when a disheveled, filthy and generally odd young lady staggers into a tavern on a dark and snowy night, asks for information on the 7 deadly sins and precipitates a bar fight which results in the bar being closed and the paying customers turned out into the snow.
After some initial confusion the non-paying customer confides to the barkeep the events that led to her being in such a state. It seems that, in a completely unexpected development, the order of The Holy Knights suddenly launched a coup d'etat and set themselves up as a Junta!
Furthermore, this filthy, somewhat odd street urchin is actually the only member of the royal family to escape their knightly wrath, Elizabeth Lioness, the third princess of the kingdom. She has set out on a quest to put together a force to liberate her people. Suspecting (due to recent events) that the 7 Deadly Sins might not have actually been, strictly speaking, evil, and taking the rumors that some of them survived in the wastes to heart, she decides to search for survivors of that extremely powerful group to help her in her quest. Her task has been complicated by the fact that, being the THIRD princess she has not been groomed for leadership and, having had a sheltered life, she is ill prepared for survival on the lamb. After getting cleaned up, she is mocked by the bartender, who insinuates that, being a bartender, and hearing things, he might be in possession of some of the information that she is looking for, but unless she can display that she has resolve he has no interest in giving her the time of day...
Well...It seems that our heroine is actually quite determined to save the kingdom and not in any way lacking in resolve.
Yes MAM! The time is 01:06!
The barkeep pledges to help her and provide her with the informat.....
...the Hell?
I'm with the government and I'm here to regulate!
It's the boss of the guys who lost the barfight! They were agents of the local EPA IRS NLRB Zoning Board ABC ATF EEOC Homeowners Association HOLY KNIGHT!
Well, the barkeep seems to be a bit more than an information broker. He is, in fact Meliodas, the leader of the Seven Deadly Sins...or at least he was before going into hiding. After the dust clears, the Holy Knight has been vanquished and Princess Elizabeth decides that this bartender is quite the useful ally. Due to her awkward circumstances, she takes the barkeep up on his offer of job as a waitress in his, ummm, traveling tavern, to pay for the damages she caused, build capital and network.
Hijinks ensue.
There are a couple of differences here between what I've read about the anime, most notably the lack of any talking pigs and it seems somewhat darker than the anime, based on descriptions. Still, it does look interesting and potentially fun.
The animated GIF of Elizabeth in Diane's cleavage isn't at their normal heights. The two of them were out in the woods looking for mushrooms and they found a big one which blew spores at them both and made them shrink. So Diane is now (temporarily) the size of Meliodas, and Elizabeth is the size of a doll. And (handwave) there's no guarantee that the mushroom-induced shrinkage affected them both identically.
I think the 35-foot estimate for Diane's height can't be right; I think she's taller than that normally (when not mushroomed).
Also in that GIF, the mushroom's spores didn't make their clothes shrink. So Diane's clothes are in a big pile out in the woods, and Diane is wearing Elizabeth's clothes. Elizabeth isn't wearing anything...
Man, the manga sure is different from the anime! Elizabeth doesn't stab herself in the anime, and Meliodas doesn't require her to prove herself. (She does prove herself, but not because he asks her to.)
4
Note that if one looks closely at the stabby bit, there are two hands. Meliodas inserted his hand at the last minute (with blinding speed....the first indication he was much more than he seemed). In so doing, he took the hit, though this was not immediately clear. The demonstration proves both that she's got sufficient guts and that Meliodas is not actually the sort of sadist who would stand by and watch that..
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sat Dec 20 16:33:40 2014 (DnAJl)
Usually when they make a manga into an anime they try to stay true to the character art, but they sure didn't in this case. The anime's Meliodas doesn't look anything like the one in your pictures. And Elizabeth is a lot different, too.
Oddly enough, Gilthunder is readily recognizable. (That scene of him bursting through the wall of the tavern didn't happen in the anime, but I know who it is.)
I wonder how the other characters look? Especially manga Diane?
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Supposedly Netflix was going to be streaming the Seven Deadly Sins anime. Did that not actually happen? I don't see any actual announcements, now that I'm looking....
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Sun Dec 21 15:22:46 2014 (ZJVQ5)
Various Things of No ImportanceCrunchyroll is holding a sale this weekend and while I generally do not do fannish accouterments any more, I figured I'd peruse it and check out their DVDs and look for gifts to....
79 Dollars for a nendroid!!?
Well then.
It seems that my absence from the weaboo brickerbrack market will persist for the forseeable future.
Also regarding Crunchyroll, I seem to recall that they had announced that they'd be carrying that show about the Teenaged Twintailed Transylvanian superhero, yet it's nowhere to be seen as of the end of November.
Well, even with three of the shows on my watch list unavailable and RWBY finished, I still have Log Horizon and the Fate Stay Knight remake, both of which which I'm enjoying. The latter is, surprisingly engaging, even for those of us who saw the original, as it has managed to have numerous surprises.
When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace looks interesting but I haven't watched past the first episode. This is in part due to time constraints and in part to to a 'harem' vibe I got from it.
SAO 2, a horror show called Parasyte, the oddball looking Gugere! Kokkori-San, and possibly Wolf Girl and Black Prince all look look to have potential as well. While some of them will surely suck, this may be a red letter season. I normally can only find one or two shows to watch. This season there are 8 that I want to see in addition to the two I'm watching. My lack of time and the vagaries of licensing rather than a dearth of non-crepe seem to be the bigger issues this year, which is a welcome if frustrating development.
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Which one was $79? They're not NORMALLY that high.
(Japan typically only does one production run for models, and if you don't get one from that, you can expect to pay above MSRP from anyone who still has one for sale, so maybe it was a situation like that?)
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Sun Nov 30 14:38:49 2014 (ZeBdf)
Posted by: Wonderduck at Sun Nov 30 17:26:36 2014 (jGQR+)
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Your reasons for watching anime sound a lot like my reasons (and you're still younger than I am...)
Posted by: EdwardM at Sun Nov 30 21:53:20 2014 (0EhFY)
5
Crunchy has English rights to Twintails internationally except U.S., so that Hulu carries it here. At least such is the theory. We could ask Mr. Pixy to check down under if they actually stream it there.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Sun Nov 30 23:37:44 2014 (RqRa5)
6
"I found Dr. Who to be decidedly sub par"
I actually--mostly--liked the new doctor best of the new series so far. They've tamped down on the over-the-top camp and silliness, and been a little less "save the universe of the week".
Posted by: RickC at Mon Dec 1 11:09:58 2014 (ECH2/)
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I actually like Capaldi, and I enjoyed most of the season, but the bit with the unbridled hatred of servicemen being presented as virtue...well not so much. I thought the season was working up to a refutation of that notion, but the finale not only doubled down on it but threw in a dollop of America hating as well. The finale also pushed the idea that soldiers are tolerable mainly if they are dead.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Mon Dec 1 17:35:58 2014 (DnAJl)
Ah. Yeah, I agreed with that, but perversely, it annoys me less than a number of things that don't come to mind right at the moment. Oh, like the fundamental unseriousness of the new show in general, particularly 10 and 11s dilettantishness, and so on.
Yeah, yeah, Moffat hates guns and soldiers, blah blah blah, know what I mean?
Posted by: Rick C at Mon Dec 1 20:34:38 2014 (0a7VZ)
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So, it's a vehicle for Moffat's hates, just like before it was a vehicle for Davies' er, loves....
Posted by: Mauser at Tue Dec 2 05:29:30 2014 (TJ7ih)
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The season finale could have been amazing, but it failed to be audacious enough. Or at all, really. In the end, it was just okay.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tue Dec 2 07:42:05 2014 (2yngH)
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Pixy--which show, DW or RWBY? Either way, what you said is accurate.
Mauser: I find that with the exception of the almost frothingly-rabid soldier-hatred, I can cope with Moffat's hates better than Davies' loves, apparently.
Most of the rest of the stuff I tend to chalk up to "it's like that in all the handful of modern British TV I watch" and mostly ignore it.
Posted by: RickC at Tue Dec 2 16:38:54 2014 (ECH2/)
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If they hadn't promoted it so heavily as a Bold New Thing, this season would have passed as a baggage-clearing introduction to a new Doctor, with "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" character-building. The other big mistake was structuring it around Missy.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Tue Dec 2 16:54:16 2014 (fpXGN)
Ugh. I could completely have done without her, although tbh I thought she worked very well in the mold of the original-series Master. I never liked the new character--too much of a buffoon for my tastes.
Posted by: Rick C at Wed Dec 3 00:21:18 2014 (0a7VZ)
14
Well, I could have done without the "leaps tall buildings in a single bound super-cannibal" aspect of The End of Time, but otherwise I thought John Simm worked well against Tennant's Doctor. Admittedly, I was looking forward to seeing Derek Jacobi's take on the role until they pulled the surprise regeneration, but they clearly wanted someone with a more contemporary feel.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Wed Dec 3 12:04:24 2014 (1CisS)
SPACE FIDDLES!Suburbanbanshee is blogging again and amongst her recent posts she points to this gem fragment..
Well, THAT'S on my 'to get' list.
There's more at the link.
The first two Yamato series were absolutely excellent and I consider Yamato 2199 one of the best series of the last decade. One of the bigger disappointments in recent years was that the big international release (Star Blazers in the US and some Commonwealth countries, Space Patrol in Brazil) was cancelled. This is a show that deserved a good dub. It probably could have been a success on TV here.
In 13 days a new Yamato film will be released. It does not seem to be a remake or even imagining of any other Yamato project, though it does have some interesting elements from the second season.
It's unclear if there are to be any more after this, but given the general excellence of the series, it will certainly bear watching.
Log Horizon 8
In this episode, there was no cake whatsoever.
I think this lends some credence to 'the cake rule'.
The two previous episodes were quiet, one being a study in the psychological aspects of going to "Church"....the other was a training montage. Both were intelligently done and moved the story quite a bit.
This episode was less subtle. Akatsuki and Princess Lenessia being the keystones to the salvation of the city. However, they've changed the power dynamics of the city in the process, all while the very laws of nature are changing around them.
Despite its dumb as rocks premise and poor to mediocre production values, I'm really liking this show. The writing is really top notch and the silly premise is intelligently handled. Furthermore there are few shows that have really managed to integrate concepts like community and civics into an adventure yarn.
Integrate is the crucial difference here. Lots of shows will have an episode or two where a band of adventurers teach a town an important lesson about societal affairs...before leaving them to their dull lives while said adventurers head off to do great, exciting, and non-domestic deeds far removed from such matters as the 4-H Club. In this show, building and keeping a cohesive society is the raison d'être for the action and adventure.
The teamwork and tactics are well thought out too. These characters are SMART as well as determined, and that's pretty refreshing.
Next week it looks like we will revisit Shiro and company, though there is still no word on Crusty
who seems to have been eaten by his guild lieutenant's scythe in episode 6 (along with her arm)
1
TWOK would make an awesome opera. And this skit was totally in my wheelhouse. The unusual feature would be that there's really not much emotion in the soprano part (the logical soprano part would be Saavik), but the alto or mezzo Dottora Carolina Marcus would make up for it.
Of course, they left out the super-awesome bagpipe/opera chorus, "Incredibile Grazia," because its sheer awesome would have destroyed the screen.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Mon Nov 24 17:22:01 2014 (ZJVQ5)
After the spectacular home run that was episode 11, the Finale of RWBY season 2 fell rather flat. The animation was off, and despite a several moments of awesomeness there was a rather perfunctory feel to the big climactic fight, which seemed disjointed and not entirely consistent. Basically everyone got a moment to shine though there was very little of the spectacular Monty Oum choreography that had been so impressive in previous fights and in fact the fight was so by the numbers and below the standards of the rest of the season that I suspect they ran out of money, time or both in this episode. On the non-technical side, there were some things that just didn't quite work.
Coco's minigun was just plain silly. All the other weapons that aren't super-tech (Penny) have had a logic to their operation, a mechanical consistency and a sense that they were, if not practical, at least compatible with Newtonian physics...This thing on the other hand just did not belong in her purse....
Of course the other problem had to do with a general lack of answers, though this is not nearly as egregious as it would normally be, since it's pointed out by Ruby herself while our heroines recover from the day.
"Wait.We helped arrest a bunch of very bad people but we didn't really solve anything!"
Like the fist season finale, this one did not feel like a climax at all, but rather seemed to be just another episode, steadily moving the plot along, with the rather sedate last half of the episode being in a lot of ways better than the nonstop action of the first half.
It's not a bad episode, but is also not up to the high standards the show had set for itself.
That being said though, this season overall has been quite enjoyable. While the first season of RWBY amused me quite a bit. The second season has (overall) been even better.
This is despite the fact that, in sharp contrast to the carefree whimsy of the season opener, the overall tone of RWBY season 2 is quite a bit darker than the first. Fortunately, the show avoids descending into something grimm depressing, thanks in part to its oddball, upbeat quirkiness.
Also: The super heroines get a corgi
While it is still obviously a very low budget show, the animation, art, pacing and voice-work are all much improved over season one. I've heard griping about what at first seemed to be an awkward subplot (involving side characters) that suddenly metastasized out of nowhere. However, unlike a similar digression in the first season, its resolution was both unexpected and satisfying. Plus, it ended up advancing the larger plot quite nicely.
The protagonists remain likable and have gained a bit more depth. Crucially, teams RWBY and JNPR consist of people that one actually enjoys rooting for. They are flawed human beings, sometimes wrestling with dark secrets, despair and self doubt, but they are not anti-heroes or cynics. These are an idealistic bunch who want to make the world a better place, want to do the right thing and are willing to pick themselves up and struggle on even if they get knocked down…hard. This is important because our heroes are punching well above their weight…rather more than they seem to realize.
The villains really came into their own in this season and are actually a pretty interesting lot…. Exactly WHAT their ultimate goal is remains unclear, but they are not incompetent and can think on their feet. They are, overall, quite worthy and occasionally terrifying antagonists.
These 12 short episodes were 144 minutes of my time that I do not regret. Despite the non-finale that was #12, I find that I’m eagerly looking forward to the third season.
1
Re: the dog. This must be the year of the Corgi or something, because the tenth anniversary of WoW, going on now, gives every character who logs in[1] a Molten Corgi battle pet[2].
[1] that was possibly a bit excessive. I have about 6 characters I play semi-regularly, and you can only have 3 of each unique type of pet, so I can't even use all of those Corgis.
[2] Basically, it's Pokemon-very-lite.
Posted by: RickC at Mon Dec 1 11:07:45 2014 (ECH2/)
2
Also--I can see in retrospect how that was a season-ender, but I did not know that until I read this post, which I missed somehow the first time around, until you referenced it with in a more-recent one.
Posted by: RickC at Mon Dec 1 11:11:21 2014 (ECH2/)
3
You didn't actually miss it. It languished in draft form for 2 weeks.
There is no "bump" function and cutting and pasting it into a new post has caused formatting strangeness of late.
I think the blog is actually haunted.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Mon Dec 1 17:41:27 2014 (DnAJl)
4
They draw a dog much like Ein on Cowboy Bebop, and they name him Zwei? What, is Ruby an anime fan?
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Dec 2 22:42:31 2014 (ZJVQ5)
5
Unlikely, but I'll go way out on a limb and speculate that Monty Oum is.
Canonically, I suspect that he is simply their second dog.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Dec 3 19:40:21 2014 (DnAJl)
This Week, On a Very Special Episode of Log Horizon: Nothing Happened
Well almost nothing.
Akatsuki, the awesome, badass kunoichi spent the most of the episode being mopey and neurotic. This 27 year old woman who in her previous life was in graduate school, and in this world has established herself as one of the guild's most trusted and effective members is convinced that ...
A: She's been assigned royal escort duty because she's....weak.
B: She's being out competed in romance by a 13 year old.
Both of these fail the logic test. Regards A: It is blindingly obvious that Shiro gave her the (extremely vital) guard duty because he has confidence in her and trusts her utterly. If B were in fact correct then Shiro would, by definition, not be worth any of her time beyond that necessary to vivisect him for the good of humanity and therefore B should not be a problem one way or the other. Yet this generally awesome character spends the episode having some sort of midlife crisis, while the women around her eat cake and carry on conversations that for the most part fail the Bechdel test.
This near fiasco of an episode has actually given me a possible insight into the show. I shall call it the 'Cake Rule'.
Of course, like the last cake episode, inserted between the banality and the failure was what may well be a rather important development.
One of the lieutenants from the Harem Comedy Guild West Wind Brigade encounters someone who is able to initiate combat in the town (which has heretofore not been possible). She is defeated...but not in the usual way... That is, in fact, BLOOD on that sword.That stuff leaking out of our heroine isn't hit points...it's hemoglobin. This is the first time we've seen anyone bleed...she bleeds quite a bit and it doesn't appear that she is being reincarnated at the church. It looks like life here just got very real. ..and for her, I fear, tragically short.
Now, in fairness, not everything in the episode was disappointing or grim. One bit was not at all unpleasant, though it must be said that from a character perspective it also made little sense. However, I'm willing to cut them a bit of slack for it.
1
One other possible source of her insecurity: She has mentioned several times that she has never completed a "raid" in the game. That means that she does not have access to the most powerful weapons and armor, and also lacks other items such as the flying griffin mounts that her friends have.
In many MMOs, raid-level equipment can allow a player to dominate a higher-skilled player who lacks the raid-level gear. With no raid-level gear of her own, she will always be "second rate" in the world.
Posted by: Siergen at Mon Oct 27 10:50:41 2014 (r3+4f)
2
Ken, I lost your e-mail (if I ever had it), but have a look at the Antares launch visibility map. Norfolk is within the 20 degree inclination zone.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Mon Oct 27 12:15:25 2014 (RqRa5)
3
Yeah, she's having a professional crisis, more than a personal one. (We're not used to thinking of "am I any good at this game" as a professional crisis, but that's what it is.)
Akatsuki is a classic RP player. She's more interested in her characterization than her character stats. Because of her particular role, she doesn't join up with others easily. A bit of plot contrivance and a sense of obligation that dovetailed perfectly with her RPing got her a spot in the Shiroe-party, and she's established a comfort zone there, and she's REALLY not comfortable outside of it.
To be blunt, aside from a bit of PVP, Shiroe did not get up to any great shakes in combat in the first season. They cleared a relatively low-level dungeon without a healer, they killed some mook goblins low-level enough that the Newbie Party could fight 'em, and... that's it, more or less.
Akatsuki has gotten the impression that raiding is the epitome of character advancement, and in a few ways that's true. She does not have the best equipment. She's got a serviceable set of weapons. But in another sense, she's completely wrong; the best players are NOT raid players. Anyone who's ever run a raid will tell you, you're going to have some really good and dedicated players along, and you're going to have some Demi-demi types who have the skills but not the brains, and... you've got a few slots filled with people who are just skilled enough to Not Stand In The Fire, if you're lucky. (Oh, sure, there's a handful of guilds who can field a good-sized raid full of "pro" players. But most everyone else makes do with what they can get!)
The biggest raid skill is to follow instructions properly and not get yourself killed. Don't Stand In The Fire. It's not topping the DPS chart (in fact, that's kind of a newbie mistake - it's more important to stay within the limits of aggro and, if you're lucky, sustain. The better your gear is, the easier the latter can be.)
It's in a small party that you have to know your stuff, because there's just fewer people to carry you. If there's twenty-five people and one of them Stands In The Fire, oh well, you can probably soldier on (especially if they're one of your newbies, contributing less than the average for their role anyway.) If there's only five and you lose one, it takes a GOOD set of four to keep things up.
The thing is, is Akatsuki worried about being good as a player? Not really - she's worried about not being good at her -character-, which is another thing entirely. And I'd be shocked if this arc doesn't hammer home the difference in a way that gets her over her funk. She's someone who spends a lot of time being a shinobi... which, recall, is not actually her character class, just her conception on how to play her mix of job and subjob. She's definitely using her skills in non-combat situations more than the rest of the cast combined. And if the script calls for someone who can hunt down and slay a crazed swordsman in the shadows of a snowy town, well... that should make for a good dose of self-actualization.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Tue Oct 28 00:42:28 2014 (ZeBdf)
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1. Given the importance of Shiroe and his guild to Akiba, given Akatsuki's personal and professional importance to Shiroe, and given Shiroe's notoriously encyclopedic knowledge of game mechanics, one must ask why the heck Shiroe wasn't making sure that Akatsuki got some raid experience/goodies (maybe partied up with some of their Crescent Moon or other guild friends). I mean, yeah, they're busy and it's only been a few months, but sheesh. Also, yes, money is tight, but they could have lent/paid Akatsuki money for a new sword. Sheesh. It's a lord's duty to equip his bodyguard, right?
2. Shiroe is apparently not talking to Akatsuki much while away, and actually he seems to have spent a lot less time talking to her ever since he finally realized she was interested in him. This coincided closely with his taking Minori as an apprentice and spending a lot more time talking with her. So yeah, rationally you could say, "Shiroe is just being a little shy with Akatsuki while he works out his own feelings, and he's busy with Minori but may not even notice that Minori has a crush on him, and certainly doesn't take it seriously if he does." But lack of talking and contact would make Akatsuki bound to be a prey to paranoia, romantic depression, and overthinking, unless she were an extremely secure and cheerful person. Which she's not.
3. Actually, in Japan it's historically been pretty rational to worry about a nearly-middle-aged man deciding to romance a teenager (and of course many fannish Japanese guys at least say they want a schoolgirl). That used to be one of the main marriage patterns, for those who could afford it. Akatsuki has probably read ALL of the first Japanese novel, The Tale of Genji (where Prince Genji's true love is a girl he raised from childhood and marries at puberty, IIRC) , and she knows that there are way too many men and women drooling over her own schoolgirl-age appearance in the game. So while she is probably sure that Shiroe isn't after an underage girl, she can't be absolutely sure; and Minori's mind is as good as anybody's. (And rationally, there are a lot of underage girls who have been known to try seduction in moments of puberty madness, which is the other reason why chaperones are a thing.)
4. Akatsuki is a loner, and therefore probably has either little romantic experience or too much of the bad kind. Akatsuki is also a woman, and frankly, most of us are experts at being insecure and territorial. You can grow out of one and get more graceful at the other, but Akatsuki doesn't have any female friends or relatives in this world who are close enough to her to be able to talk her down at the moment. (I hope Lenessia takes on this role.)
5. If Akatsuki is almost out of college, she's almost on the verge of becoming "day-old Christmas cake," too old to marry according to society. The way Japanese marriage patterns go, she has a few more years yet, but it's more like three or five, rather than ten. Of course, any friend would tell her that her ageless looks will make age not so important, but it is a rational consideration. Depending on her family, she may have to deal with arranged dates/marriage mixers if she doesn't find a husband herself, and a sensitive soul like Akatsuki would probably die of the embarrassment.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Wed Oct 29 09:53:01 2014 (ZJVQ5)
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In Shiroe's defense, he's clearly working on the gear thing, just as a surprise (and a top-quality, raid-class katana with unique flavor text is obviously the perfect gift for her right now!) Just bad timing that he has to be out of town, etc.
Also, it looks like Shiroe and Naotsugu are in kind of a "been there and done that" situation for raiding, if Naotsugu slots into the main tank role when he's a visiting member for the raid. (In a lot of ways, that's an enormous professional compliment. Main tank is the one job you absolutely cannot finesse or carry - that guy has to have the best possible gear and absolutely has to have the skills too. You don't let someone you don't know main tank unless they're completely, obviously the better option; for a raid guild to let Naotsugu take that role means he is either geared within an inch of the best possible gear, or that he has a near-legendary reputation. Or we found a plot hole...)
And Shiroe's running strategy, not just as "okay, here's what we need to do to bust this boss", but as if he's run progression content before. It's one thing to say "okay, we have installed Deadly Boss Mods and it will show us where the fire will be so we can avoid standing in it" and another thing to say "okay, we need to learn where the fire will be so we can avoid standing in it, and also to get that info to the guys who make Deadly Boss Mods." MOST raiding guilds aren't the kind to soak up the casualties to learn that stuff.
All this might indicate a hole in Shiroe's thinking, though. If he's an ex-raider, he probably has very different opinions on raiding compared to Akatsuki, who's a non-raider. And, well... it's not beyond expectation that the topic just never came up, given that they're both quiet and somewhat unsociable. But if Shiroe thinks "she's already very awesome at what she does," it might not have even occurred to him that she has anything to be insecure about, much less that she actually might be insecure about it.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Wed Oct 29 15:54:37 2014 (zJsIy)
They can vastly improve a show, particularly a superhero show.
Season two of RWBY has taken that lesson to heart and run with it. The villains are genuinely frightening, with style, amazing choreography and snappy one liners...
"Pick any two."
Yeah...This show is not high art, but it is definitely a keeper.
First season was amusing, but occasionally painful to watch. However, the people making this have really honed their craft.
RWBY has been pretty good all season, but now, just over two thirds of the way into this season this show has really hit its stride.
My only complaint is that NEXT WEEK IS A WHOLE WEEK AWAY!
"We can wait!"
Which, when one thinks about it, is not a damning complaint at all.
For those who want an overview of the currently active plot thread, click here:
Over the last several episodes our heroines in team RWBY have been doing a bit of extracurricular work, investigating a criminal enterprise that Ruby stumbled onto way, way back in the series premier. Blake had discovered that this outfit is tied to the terrorist group she was associated with during her misspent youth, (when she was trying to kill Weiss's entire family). Weiss discovered (via Blake over-sharing in a moment of pique) that.... well, see point 2. Yang? Yang likes to punch things and is nigh invincible, so she is very happy to tag along. The girls discover that the villains are doing a recruiting drive for White Fang, a racial supremacist organization for "faunus" (the people like Blake who have animal features) and said terrorist outfit has pilfered a bunch of top of the line GIANT WARBOTS, one of which gives our heroines considerable trouble despite the fact that they wore much more rational and stylish outfits to that particular fight. They learn that the villains have a base in the abandoned town of Mountain Glen, but are unable to act on this since they aren't supposed to be doing the vigilante thing in the first place. Fast forwarding past the subplots about team JNPR involving dancing, awesome sparring matches, cross-dressing and true love, (as well as the one about Yang looking for her mom) finally brings team RWBY to Mountain Glen accompanied by DOCTOR Ooblek ostensibly on a class trip...though they are pretty sure that Ooblek knows that they know more than they are letting on.There they encounter, not crooks, but monsters that tend to sneak up behind them, and over the course of two days they find no indication of the base they were looking for until Ruby has the ground collapse underneath her and falls weaponless into the clutches of Roman Torchwick. Our heroes subsequently rescue her with the help of DOCTOR Oobleck's awesome thermos and pursue the neer-do-wells onto a (very wide gauge) train. The villains respond by blowing up the train cars as our heroes move forward, which DOCTOR Oobleck realizes is not actually about them, but a plan to draw in the many GRIMM monsters in and above the caves with the goal of having said GRIMM then pursue the train which will lead the monsters into the city of Vale....adding to the mayhem as the terrorists attempt to use their captured heavy weapons in an assault on the city. Our heroes are somewhat outmatched by the villains and after half of them get curb-stomped a series of awesome fights are unable to stop the train, which crashes through a blast door sealing off the abandoned rail line and well....mayhem ensues.
I do have a few questions for those who watch the show.
What is with the flaming corgi? Also: What is the villain's long term plan? Generally taking over the world involves having a world to rule...This episode seems to indicate there has been an oversight in the villains planning committee. Am I missing something?
1
Also, just who is that bad-ass looking
woman who saved Yang? After sputtering "Who the hell is that?" several times, my gut instinct says Yang & Ruby's missing mom, but I'm fighting a bug this week (not Ebola), and might not be thinking clearly...
I agree that it is better than last season, and eagerly await the next episode!
Posted by: Siergen at Fri Oct 24 17:50:49 2014 (r3+4f)
2
That person almost certainly is or is associated with Yang's mom. ( ISTR that Ruby's mom is pretty much confirmed dead. ) I note too that the individual in question is wearing an outfit and weaponry very reminiscent of Adam (Blake's mentor from the BLACK trailer. ) Neopolitan seemed to know who she was and appeared just as confused by her actions as she was unenthusiastic about sparring with the individual.
I didn't think last season was all that bad, but it drug in places and the animation was wildly uneven. This season has been consistently decent, though some of the backstory digressions were understandably off-putting to some people. This last couple of episodes have been really good. The fights in this one carried a genuine sense of danger. It was particularly interesting to see that
The villains are smart. Yang was established as pretty much invincible earlier in the series and yet Neo brings comes within a hairs breadth of actually killing her by refusing to play to her strengths. All were outmatched except Blake, who had gotten an unexpected power up from Weiss that the villains had not accounted for. Yang and Weiss, arguably the teams heavy hitters got defeated and were both seconds away from death at one point...now they're all exhausted and must deal with the pandemonium they failed to prevent.
This was at best a draw tactically and much a rout for the good guys strategically .
I also found it interesting that when Ruby tried to call for help, she was calling JNPR. I suspect that Jaune is actually doing a decent job despite his "issues".
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Fri Oct 24 22:13:46 2014 (DnAJl)
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sat Oct 25 00:38:20 2014 (DnAJl)
5
Haven't watched the latest yet, but at a wild guess:
Faunus don't normally live in the human cities, they must have settlements (Ghettos) of their own, so killing the human population and destroying their cities won't necessarily hurt them, it might even leave the cities habitable and the Faunus could take them over.
Posted by: Mauser at Sat Oct 25 04:22:01 2014 (TJ7ih)
6
The Flaming Corgi? I'm really surprised you didn't recognize The Corgi-mite Maneuver.
Posted by: Mauser at Mon Oct 27 04:07:15 2014 (TJ7ih)
..at the end of the first decade of the 20th century that the war that would soon engulf the world was even possible. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. Then, not halfway through the second decade of the 20th century, came the great disillusionment.
Here is some recently restored film footage of that terrible, perilous time.
1
This footage is from a BBC production called "The Great Martian War" that I found to be nigh-on brilliant. It was on BBCAmerica a month or two ago, and I watched it in one sitting, it got me so hard.
Though it has some elements familiar to fans of the old show , this looks vastly different from any of the original series or films. However, Yamato 2199 was one of the best space shows of the last 10 years or more so this new project (due out in December) certainly bears watching.
Log Horizon 2: First ImpressionsLog Horizon was huge surprise to me last year and a pleasant one. This season hardly feels like a break at all as the series starts pretty much where the last episode left off (actually a bit before that). It takes a somewhat different tack almost immediately and the looks like it will continue to be interesting.
It was successful enough to warrant a second season but not enough to get a bigger budget, or even a new theme song. However, this reinforces the feeling that the show is simply continuing. Marielle is one of a few characters off model, possibly in an attempt to add some detail, though like the first season, it continues to have mediocre art and animation at best. It has been the intriguing story and the characters that have really carried it and made this one special.
This is starting out slow, but it remains clever.
Oh Noes! Without usury, the economy is screwed!
1
You actually compose your posts on the live website? I had expected that you were doing the bulk of the writing on your local PC, and only doing final edits and formatting on the site itself...
Posted by: Siergen at Sun Oct 5 10:05:21 2014 (r3+4f)
2
I tried to write my posts in Word for a while and then copy/paste and add pics and links but that led to formatting peculiarities as well as youtube videos that didn't work. Instead I try to save as often as possible, but in this case I utterly derped.
Instead of switching from DRAFT to PUBLISH and hitting SAVE, when I edited the post it was already published so I switched it from PUBLISH to DELETE and hit SAVE, after which I experienced a period of regret.
I believe the technical term is PEBKAC.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Oct 5 13:40:38 2014 (DnAJl)
3
Huh.
Paragraph breaks don't exist in comments anymore?
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Oct 5 13:42:15 2014 (DnAJl)
4
Oh...
Double-spacing doesn't exist in comments anymore.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Oct 5 13:43:22 2014 (DnAJl)
6
I'm using Epic, which is a Chrome based browser. It's been pretty good, but the last two updates have made it a tad twitchy with Minx. This paragraph thing is very new.
Thanks for pointing that out. I really need to once again check Opera, Safari, and on my Windows partition Midori and IE for Minx compatibility as upgrades have changed things.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Oct 5 14:50:43 2014 (DnAJl)
IE compatibility is really pretty poor. If you try to use the "link" gizmo to add a link to your comment, it puts the URL right at the beginning of the comment.
Or at least it does for me when I try to add links to my comments here and at Wonderduck's place. Oddly enough it works fine for me in comments on my own blog.
Anyway, it's been like this for a couple of years. So when I need to write a comment with a link in it, I compose it using FrontPage and copy/paste -- which works.
8
The editor in general has always been a little, shall we say, non-standard. Pasting over a selection, for example, inserts the pasted text but does not delete the selection. (And for me, it also scrolls the page up to home.)
Posted by: Mauser at Sun Oct 5 19:46:59 2014 (TJ7ih)
9
So I tend to watch this on Sundays (I put the RoosterTeeth link in my Weekly Comics bookmark folder.)
After watching the fight against the "wolves" I came to the startling conclusion - all of the girls are Bisect-uals.
Posted by: Mauser at Mon Oct 6 04:32:17 2014 (TJ7ih)
An Epiphany
For some time I've noted the existence of Nightcore, which has become the bane of my existence whenever I browse for AMVs. I'll come across an AMV of a song thinking "That has has potential."only to discover that it is the Nightcore cover.
I guess this is what Vocaloid sounds like to native speakers of Japanese?
This genre is not without its merits though. It's perky, you can dance to it and after listening to that for an hour and a half, I find myself so disillusioned with humanity that I'm not really all that concerned about Ebola anymore.
"That's why I like Nightcore almost as much as negligence and stupidity!"
1
I can stand "God is a Girl" and "Angel with a Shotgun" and not much else from that genre.
Posted by: Clayton Barnett at Sun Oct 5 11:50:23 2014 (lU4ZJ)
2
If you think Vocaloid sounds odd, you should try UTAU. Took me some 30 runs of Uta-hime and Tripple Baka to realize suddenly that there are words... and they make complete sense!
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Mon Oct 6 13:16:10 2014 (RqRa5)
In an earlier post, I linked to this piece which, using Medieval Europe as a template, discussed the probable economic ramifications of an adventuring party in the D&D universe.
My friend BOB!1! disagreed with the premise and attempted to comment but was thwarted by a comments glitch. He has an interesting take which I'll attempt to relay and expand upon here.
Emily Dresner makes the case that bands of adventurers gaining large rewards for services rendered\ and then spending their gains in small towns disrupts the social and economic order. Furthermore this activity risks a sharp inflationary cycle that will further wreak havoc on the society.
BOB!1! points out that the Middle Ages (and the D&D world) were characterized by a severe deflationary cycle associated with a civilizational collapse. Money was tightly locked up in savings and held largely by feudal lords. It was not in circulation except to pay for rotating debts and wars. Travel and trade were hindered by roving bands of orcs (or Vikings, bandits, wolves and occasionally Arabs) and there was little pressure to invest in infrastructure or mercantile projects.
Into this come our adventures who as Ms. Dresner points out. shake things up mightily and put gold that has been squirreled away into circulation. This does indeed shake things up and it will eventually cause considerable upheaval in the social order....
...BUT THE SOCIAL ORDER SUCKS!
Feudalism boasts impressive stability and a certainty of ones place in the world....because one's place in the world is almost certain to never ever ever change. Like the Subcontinent's caste system and myriad other systems considered exotic or 'indigenous' it has certain undeniable merits if one is a nobleman or a passing hipster tourist, but is rather less appealing to those who sustain it.
However, given the premise put forth in D&D, the adventurers and the craftsmen they trade with are a blossoming middle class, which is a good thing.
Note too that the corollary between Medieval Europe and D&D is not precise. Dragons are a deflationary pressure not present historically. (The inflationary potential they represent if slain might be analogous to the Aztecs however.)
Likewise. the dungeons themselves are vast, incredibly numerous, and indicate a far more advanced precursor civilization than Rome. Once cleared of monsters, traps and megalomaniacal necromancers they represent vast tracts of useable (though probably not arable) real estate. The release of such infrastructure to settlement and the introduction of the monetary hoards within into the economy would mirror on a smaller scale the effect of the black death on land availability and money per person in circulation, but without the near total disruption of what trade there was. On the contrary, by reducing the threat of orks and bugbears the 'murder hoboes' would greatly facilitate trade even as the huge injection of gold into the economies would cause an inflationary spiral that would encourage investment in various enterprises. No longer could wealth be best managed by hoarding it. Rather, with the value of gold dropping, one must use it or loose it. Investment would be the key to riches. Ms. Dresner uses the example of 1500s Spain to suggest that this would be a disaster. However, Spain encountered difficulties due to micromanagement and regulation of the economy in an attempt to keep the feudal order in place rather than the more trade oriented one Spain's gold had made possible. It's worth noting that other countries embraced the change and ushered in a rising standard of living and ultimately the enlightenment.
Finally, since the adventurers in D&D tend to be polyglot associations, and demonstrated the advantages of various races working in consort, and since financial success comes from appealing to the largest demographic possible, prosperity would tend to favor kingdoms that take a tolerant view of racial equality and miscegenation and a dim view of provincialism. This could conceivably even be extended to some of the orks if the analogy of the Vikings is used. This means that the kingdoms that emerge from this time would be well on their way to an equivalent to the Renaissance and/or Enlightenment that might well outstrip the historical one.
Dresner is correct that the adventurers make the feudal D&D world they start out in unsustainable in a few years if they are at all successful, but far from being unwitting agents of chaotic evil, the adventurers are likely to end up being forces for chaotic or lawful good...whatever their alignment.
It's true that the middle ages suffered from a lack of liquidity, but that's because they used silver and gold as money, so the money supply was limited by available metal.
But then there was a huge silver strike in Joachimsthal, Bohemia, resulting in flooding Europe with "Thalers", 1 ounce silver coins minted in Joachimsthal.
At about the same time, the Spanish began bringing in huge amounts of gold and silver looted from the New World.
The effect overall was inflation, because now there was too much money.
2
Some people have argued that the D&D universe is already in the grip of runaway inflation, considering that some magic items sell for upwards of 100,000 gold pieces. If you figure each gold piece at one troy ounce (which would make them really small, given how dense gold is) and with a troy ounce at 31.1 grams, then that would be 3.1 metric tonnes of gold.
-Spell components take a tremendous amount of value directly out of the economy. Resurrecting requires what, 5k gold pieces' worth of diamond dust? Even a lot of lesser spells take 10 or 20 or 100 GP worth of materials. Some of these effects can create economic value worth the price, but not nearly all of them do.
-Brain drain. What do people with high INT scores do? They become wizards, because why swing a sword or make shoes for a living when phenomenal cosmic power awaits? But like the current educational system in the US, this means that you end up with a lot of people who have got their Wizard Degree but find that their school isn't in high demand (especially the illusionists and necromancers...) They've got enough education to be unemployable in the regular labor market but not necessarily useful skills.
-Rolling from the same idea, this means that by and large, "fix it with magic" is going to be the go-to answer for any problems you run into. Crop failures? Forget introducing the three-field system, just bless those fields! You don't need firearms to arm your militia against encroaching bugbears, apply fireballs until well done! Epidemic make you wish you'd invented the germ theory of disease? Nah, just get the divine casters on the job. Basically, since your educated class is heavily invested in being able to Fix Things With Magic, that's going to be what they do when they run into a problem. This means you don't get a lot of social progression, as wizards don't have an incentive to provide scaling solutions (and in fact have lots of good reasons to prevent things like the spread of firearm technology - they actually did a Forgotten Realms story about that, if I recall correctly.)
-Want to be a blacksmith? Better pray a wizard doesn't set up with the Fabricate spell and drive you out of business...
-Of course, a lot of the Bad Things in the world are there precisely because some wizard created them back in the day. Or because some wizard opened a portal and they came through it.
-They have a nasty habit of not dying, not only meaning that their wealth doesn't go back into the economy, but then you get things like liches making life worse for everyone else.
-On top of that, there's a lot of direct wealth destruction going on. Dragons don't just hoard gold, they raze villages. Necromantic hordes roll over the border areas, leaving nothing alive behind them, and even if they lose the pivotal battle, the land is still fallow for lack of farmers and livestock. Eventually demihumans take advantage of the open space and civilization retreats just a little further...
Of course, if you have to live in a world with magic, you want magic on your side too - otherwise you have to live with most of the downsides of living in a magic world but without any of the good stuff that results. So it's not like one side is going to unilaterally fire all its wizards and clerics... not if it doesn't want to become a "former side" anyway.
But you're not likely to find a Renaissance in D&D, simply because the wizards have massive incentives to wizard, not to spread the power they've accumulated through the populace as a whole... and anyone smart enough to advance society will benefit personally much more from being a wizard, when the other choice is being a philosopher. (And even if you get a few altruistic ones, they get murdered by other wizards who don't want their rice bowl overturned...)
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Tue Sep 23 03:53:34 2014 (ZeBdf)
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