A Black Falcon said:
Elastic didn't exist before the later 1800s. No modern-style underwear without it. You need stretchy rubber products to get elastic, and even that wasn't discovered (to make tires, etc.) until the 1840s.
See, it's just as I said.
A Black Falcon said:
El Cazador was good. It's not as good as Noir, sure, but it's good. Noir definitely is the best of their three "girls with guns" shows, and the only one of the three I'd consider calling a great show, but El Cazador's in a solid second. Madlax of course I didn't like as much.
I wish I could be as easy to please.
A Black Falcon said:
Hey, I write about shows I consider good as often as ones I don't, probably... it's not my fault if it's the ones I don't that get most of the replies. (Or if other people's tastes differ on what they consider good.)
Like, for shows so far this year I've written posts about IS (horrible but amusing in how bad it is), Rio (bad, fanservice-centric), Oniichan no koto... (horrible but often funny), and Gosick (decent to good show, depending on the episode. More often good than not. I like it). So one good one, but nobody wants to talk about that show since they dismissed it for having "not mysterious enough mysteries". Oh well.
But none of these shows are any good.
A Black Falcon said:
Of course though, we also discussed Escaflowne, which I at least think is great, and I wrote some about The Twelve Kingdoms too, did you forget that one? And I mentioned a few others too, here and there. I finished (and posted about) Speed Grapher and Pani Poni Dash in January, I thought both were pretty good and I believe you disagreed like usual. I rewatched and made some posts about Angelic Layer, which I still like for sure. I watched/wrote about my opinions on a couple of movies too, including Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society (quite good but confusing as always from the franchise) and The Sky Crawlers (unique, perhaps, and well made, but so boring...). Etc.
And most of these aren't any good except 12 Kingdoms, Ghost in the Shell and, I guess that's it. A few people talked about Speed Grapher's OP though after you posted, so people paid attention.
A Black Falcon said:
I guess I just don't hate enough shows, though there certainly are some I do, and don't use screencaps to get attention to things either.
That's definitely the issue, you're too easy to please.
A Black Falcon said:
No, it'd probably be less interesting that way. And did you really not disagree with my statement that the rest of the club members aren't any better than Haruhi, or did you just drop that point? (I'm guessing the latter)
Why would it be the latter? I've never really defended any of Haurhi's cast, Asahina's insufferable, Haruhi's a bitch, Nagato's a lifeless robot and Kyon's just a normal dude who's alright but nothing special, I figured the fact I often have to resort to calling Tsuruya the best character said all that needed to be said concerning the regular cast.
A Black Falcon said:
But both are partially true. It's mostly meaningless, but not entirely.
Uh huh.
A Black Falcon said:
As my list above shows, your opinions on which shows are bad are often wrong.
But as for things like that, sure, perhaps. You got the "ISes are actually spirits or something" thing too, apparently.
It's not that I'm a genius or the show telegraphed it but that, well, aside from genetics the only other reason why females would be the only ones normally capable of piloting one would be something like that so it was kinda a given.
A Black Falcon said:
One Piece aside, I just thought the fact that he went from calling them "my friends" to admitting he liked one showed a bit of character development, for pretty much the first time... of course it's in a traditional, very cliche harem-show interrupted scene, but it probably was better than going to the end with him maintaining his "they're just friends" thing to the end. It just needed more character building in between, as I said. It's a pretty basic thing, that IS failed at even that is kind of amusing.
Again, I really wouldn't nitpick that first part. I liken nakama to the word comrade which when used correctly isn't really a weak word, then again neither is friend when used correctly. I always bring up the One Piece crew when discussing nakama because I was involved in an argument where they don't think there's an English equivalent and that nakama is so powerful a word that any English translation does the word a disservice. I think that's bullshit, I think comrade fits just fine, the problem is not with the English vocabulary but the people of today, when used properly comrade has a very heavy meaning, it does place those people described as higher than friends or mere coworkers but then, depending on the person the word friend isn't exactly meaningless either. I guess it's this Myspace, Facebook generation where everyone has hundreds of friends that this generation no longer assigns any true value to a friend or comrade but they're not weak words at all.
So the first scene made perfect sense, there was actually nothing wrong with it at all, nothing worth examining further, it worked, was as realistic as could be considering he was talking to a robot while unconscious .
As for him and Houki, again so what? It really means nothing with the way the show's written. He could probably have been written to do that with any of the girls had he been alone with them at that point, that's how weak the writing is and how useless I think it is to give a shit.
A Black Falcon said:
Considering that if it continues it'll just keep going nowhere most of the time it doesn't really matter, and it was predictable that he'd end up with her on the "first girl" basis, but come on, IS is uncommonly bad at giving any kind of consistency between its episodes. I think that the way they did it does make the plot even stupider.
As for whether he loves all of them, he's the ultra-caring protagonist guy, so he's got to, right? But he knew Houki first so he loves her a little more than the others, maybe. (repeat "what in the world anime, why do you care so much about childhood friends" criticism here)
See, these set-ups are fucking garbage.
A Black Falcon said:
Perhaps, if something alien or magic-like or spiritual is involved... I'm not sure she was telling the truth there though, her statements were evasive. If she is telling the truth, then yeah, it could well be that.
Pretty sure she was telling the truth because she said so little.
A Black Falcon said:
future speculation stuff...
Frankly though, since the show is done I think I'm done, no real sense in trying to figure out the world when it's over and not going to be revealed and neither, well I believe neither, of us are going to check up on the novels. I sure as fuck aren't.
A Black Falcon said:
Last Exile
It's like your Escaflowne complaints, sort of, minor complaints about things that either are explained or aren't too important...
Lol, since when is plot, character motivations, story and their execution unimportant?
A Black Falcon said:
I mean, talking about Last Exile without even mentioning the great ship designs, the interesting and unique take on the world that the series has, the original world design, and more? Yes, I like the story and characters too, but the outstanding presentation and world design, and the solid CG work too for the flying and fight scenes, are some of the show's stronger points. The "flying ships in a world of sky" concept isn't often done nearly that well. And as a huge fan of Skies of Arcadia, I like such settings.
Well I did mention "the world" but seriously, you're not really selling why it deserves to be a show instead of an artbook from an artists.
A Black Falcon said:
And on the note of the characters, the motivations for the countries were strong -- the world has very limited resources, people are fighting over what's there. Disith is facing environmental collapse, pushing them even harder to win. Anatoray is trying to resist them. The characters have fine motivations and backstories too, I thought. I have no complaints there that I can remember.
No, the motivation for the war between those two sides is fine, it's everything else.
A Black Falcon said:
As for your plot criticisms though, first, on the point of the failed mission, the attempt was a miserable failure. Someone died, and they did not get through. Afterwards isn't it entirely reasonable to say 'it can't be done, you'll just fail and maybe die too'? I'd say that's an understandable reaction.
No, it's not. How do they fight? Hmm... How? Granted the other side had better routes to attack but you can't tell me that there was no other way. For starters they sent the treaty over on their equivalent of a bicycle. Absurd.
Further, by the end of the show they had a shitload of ships that were doing just fine up there, how many years now have thy had ships that could cross the stream? Who knows but I can tell you they never again tried to deliver the message. Of course you could say that that was because of new leadership on their part that didn't want peace, but, fuck it.
A Black Falcon said:
For how Alvis escaped the Guild, I forget if they explain how that happened or not, but what matters for the plot is that she did, not how. I've seen the series twice, and never cared about that point. And yeah, you don't really learn what exactly she is, except that she has some strange tie to Exile. I did wonder, but oh well, it works as it is.
It's actually not really a big issue just standard Gonzo fucking around.
A Black Falcon said:
As for the Guild, Alex hated her partially for what she'd said, but also because he knew enough about the Guild's system to know that he thought it was wrong and needed to be fought against, yes? And in the end he gets his revenge and the Guild is defeated, and the world has a chance to progress.
But did he know about Guild before that part? I think not. His whole motivation was silly.
A Black Falcon said:
And as for the plot and the ending, yes it is confusing. However, you can make sense of it with time. The thing they are finding is the world-ship that brought people to this very strangely shaped planet (on that note I do wish the show had made it clearer in the show somewhere how odd the planet looks, to explain why you have to go through the sky to reach the other nation...). Once they activated it it'll release resources badly needed, I believe, or something like that; perhaps it instead takes them (and others) inside, where they travel to another world with more resources (the latter is the explanation Wikipedia goes for). Remember that the Guild's excuse for why they oppressed everyone was that because of the world's scarce resources the nations could not be allowed to advance beyond what the land could sustain. In addition to defeating the Guild, finding the Exile is vital for breaking that system. Despite its hard to understand nature, I like the ending; sure, it's not clear exactly where they went at the end, the villains were defeated, and at least we do know that the characters will be happier now and in the future and there won't be suffering and war over scarce resources. Maybe they'll fight over other things, but not that. And Mullen isn't dead either, the ending reveals that he survived somehow. So yeah, it was a decent if confusing ending for a pretty good show.
The ending was garbage man. Garbage.
Seriously, nothing was pulled off well in the show, nothing, it was almost exclusively mediocre.
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Oh yeah, watched Nichijou, was thoroughly bored, giving the show a fail rating.
