Mahou Meido Meganekko

Oh. My. God.

There hasn’t been a cliffhanger like that in a while.

This is going to be messy. Very very messy, I think. Which way is she going to go? And what is the not-dead Cornelia going to do? Interesting that she’s Anti-Geass, thanks to Euphie’s fate. Then there’s the minor detail of “destroy the world?” I’d settled in to watch a very silly filler episode, and then they go and throw these crazy twists in. WTF is going on?

Hey, it’s Code Geas! Who cares, just enjoy the ride!

I have to wonder if Twitter-chan is going to put 2 and 2 together now. “Two Lelouches?” I’d always pegged her as the superior silent type, but no, she’s just crazy. Talk about a show full of crazy women; I’d say only Higurashi has it beat for that.

But what is this SP we kept seeing references to?

CG: the show you watch twice, not because you want to, but because you have to, to figure out all the WTF moments…

You know, if I hadn’t gotten so lazy, I’d do a write-up on this series. RPG to anime series conversions always suck right?

This one didn’t. It really didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s no Divergence Eve. During its first 2/3 it’s often silly, prone to making me groan with Jil’s idealism, and the first episode wasn’t serious at all, being a reasonably funny parody of fantasy RPG’s in general — as well as Druaga’s take on the much more famous SHnY first episode. There’s even a second sorta-parody episode later in which Jil becomes the main character of the original game for a bit. (The series is set 80 years after the time of the game). Many of the characters are from the Standard Book of Clichés (none moreso than Jil, unfortunately).

Jil: Idealistic wannabe hero. Very high con score; he becomes the tank.
Kaaya: Cute priestess. High charisma score, manipulative, has secrets. Healer and buffer.
Ahmey: Woman-at-arms, silent but big eater. Off-tank; reasonably high Dex for someone in armor.
Melt: Impoverished nobility; mage. Ingrate, grumpy. Definitely low Cha.
Coopa: Cute and feisty loli assistant to Melt. Impossibly high Str for such a small girl. Doesn’t fight.

We also follow a second party:
Neeba: Jil’s older half-brother. Famous, deadly with a bow, cold and somewhat calculating. Ranged DPS
Fatina: “Gun mage,” material girl, terribly attached to Neeba, who doesn’t seem to care. Ranged DPS.
Utu: Big tough fighter in armor. High Str and Con; tank. Running joke is we never see his face.
Kally: Wiry and fast, bit of a joker, knife fighter. High dex, Melee DPS.

Others:
Sir Kelb: leader of the army sent by King Gilgamesh to invade the tower.
Iriri (I think, might have this name wrong): Assistant to Sir Kelb.
Pazuz: evil sorcerer, planning something mysterious but very not good. Eliminating the competition as he goes.

But like a certain silly fanservice show involving 500 maids, at about the 2/3 point it turns serious. And once it turns serious, it does so quite well. I can’t say that it “develops” a plot as it had one all along; but the one it has suddenly starts getting a lot more convoluted. The mystery quotient goes up a few notches, but it doesn’t appear that they’re just making things up. Unlike a certain trainwreck of a mecha/high-school/intrigue/revolution/harem show, every time there’s a new revelation, it’s consistent with what went before. Note however, that you can’t count someone as dead until you see the body.

Another thing is that the 12th episode does not resolve the series — which is a good thing, as the second series has been announced for 2009 (or possibly a movie, not sure). I knew going into the last episode that it wasn’t likely to be resolved, owing to the announcement. But I really didn’t expect the twist ending. I expected something, and I got it, even from whom I expected it. I just didn’t expect the second half, nor the curlicues that came with it.

Three betrayals were prophesied. We’ve seen two of them…

I think I’ve found something even more disturbing than the Genderbending Haruhi Suzimya project.

The thread on AnimeSuki that popularized it (just this past February) is already over 10,000 posts.

Thankfully, the image thread hasn’t yet cracked 900….

So Dr.Heinous wanted to play Hellgate London tonight. I received it as a present long ago, but never installed it. No interest.

Well, for something to do, I figured I’d load it up. Then, during the installation, this intrusive little inquisitor popped up and started demanding information, like my name, my birthdate, my email, and so on.

Excuse me? I have to give you my name and date of birth to play a fucking game? How does this game know I plan to play online? I might be installing it for single player use. So why do this?

I started reading through the crap and yes, if I want to play online, I have to register with Ping0. Then I read their disclaimers and non-privacy policy. Bad as I thought. I don’t own the game, I so kindly purchased a license to play the game. Then I got to this….

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Translation: Bend over, we’re gonna fuck you however we want.

Edit: Fledge has it right.

Update: And just to really make things worse, I have to have the disc available to uninstall it? So if I ever lost the disc, I couldn’t get this piece of crap off my system? How truly wonderful this crap smells.

One of the things about John Ringo as an author, is that he knows how to pander. Take the Ghost series; as he calls it, “James Bond with the good bits left in.” That’s not true; Mike Harmon would cap Bond’s ass from a half-klick away while the latter was tossing off a one-liner. On the other hand, 007 probably wouldn’t cross Ghost in the first place, seeing as they have different jobs. Beautiful babes and a fair amount of sex; a hero with an honest-to-god harem for crying out loud.

But Ringo’s latest novel, which is available as an advance copy in electronic format, is made of different stuff. Fourth in the Looking Glass series with Travis Taylor, it mixes hard science with more pop cultural references than a month’s worth of MTV. The cast and crew of the Vorpal Blade II, former Ohio-class submarine converted to spaceship, shot up by the Dreen, and then rebuilt by friendly aliens, is on the prowl again, but this time dealing with “less than optimal” replacements in key positions, while getting into its usual grapped-up situations. Have to improvise a mirror to concentrate lasers for ersatz asteroid mining? Of course someone makes a “The Death Star has cleared the planet!” joke when it’s launched. Find an alien artifact that responds to music? Of course an eclectic mix of 70’s rock and 21st century death metal makes it into the play list. And just as “of course,” the Dreen, that hideous race that just happens to produce combat units that look just like the ones from a popular 90’s computer game (hint: origin of the verb “zerg”), are back for another heroic pasting by our, well, heroes.

But this time, Ringo outdoes himself as he establishes that the artifact at the heart of the Blade’s engine can have strange effects when mixed with different aliens’ technology — and just when you think it was merely typical weirdness of the type the Blade constantly gets into (and a plot device to “rehabilitate” one character unjustly in the doghouse), it turns out that was just to establish the principle before using it again with another, even more bizarre interaction with another alien technology. As the Vorpal Blade goes to dock inside an alien artifact…

(more…)

Ok, yes, Nozomu finally transforms. Show ▼

Something else happens that confirms what we’ve been suspecting a while… Show ▼

I’d say that there’s at least an outline of a plot ticking away under the silliness, but I’ve been disappointed (read: fooled) too many times before. Show ▼

More likely, the author’s just tossing in crap with no real plan.

Wonder how long until Media Blasters licenses this?

Go give J. Greely your heartfelt thanks. He read up on the latest Rosario to Vampire manga chapter so we don’t have to, nor do we have to watch the seacond season series.

This is one of the shows that I’ve watched almost to the end, only to walk away from, because it was so damn disappointing. The ED was better than the series.

Y’know, one day maybe I ought to do a list of all the shows I bailed from because I just didn’t given a damn about the ending anymore. Let’s see, just off the top of my head, here’s the list with how many episodes were left that I didn’t watch…

Rosario to Vampire (2)
Shakugan no Shana II (1)
Karin (1)

Hey, am I detecting a trend here? All include horror, and arguably, all three are vampire shows; it’s just that in SnS, the “vampires” don’t drink their victim’s blood, but their very existance. I remember liking Vampire Hunter D and the original Blade movie, but it seems a vampire series is the kiss of death.

What else?

Busou Renkin (1 or 2)

Uh-oh, the pattern continues…

Coyote Ragtime Show (2)

Finally, something not horror! Well, a horror, maybe, but not in horror…

I’ll have to give it some more thought to see if I can remember any others, but we may have a heuristic worth thinking about here - I also notice I was turned off by this season’s vampire shows even before trying them out. Possibly my subconcious is already applying it as a rule. I know that when I think of vampires in terms of modern day society, the first thing that occurs to me is “emo-goth-wannabe chicks.” Too many conventions, back in the day….

Edit: How appropriate, considering that last…

And I should have congratulated J.Greely for storming the beach, given the date…