The Three Behemoths, episode 10

Let’s see what positive things I can say about this episode:

1. The character art did not disintegrate, even though most of the battles were barely animated and Our Catsexual Heroine’s first fight didn’t even show her moves hitting any monsters.

2. The trivially-defeated Cocky Demon Lady was stacked, naked, and bathing, until she transformed, anyway. Since it was the only bath scene this week, at least they put some effort into it.

3. Our Catsexual Party all got to do something in the big battle, mostly because the enemy stood around and politely waited for them to finish their conversations. Neither the Big Bad nor His Mighty Minions seemed to be particularly motivated.

4. They were joined by Those Two Bikini Adventurers again, and probably the guys from that party as well. Shame they didn’t make it into a bath scene.

5. No homo. It’s sad that I have to call that out.

Other than that, it was just the usual coincidence and catsexuality. Our Hidden Behemoth transformed in front of everyone, but of course he was mistaken for something else, and got to turn back into a kitten at the end.

Verdict: this is past where the light novels ran out, so I have no idea what they’ll do in the remaining two episodes. But I have lowered my expectations again.

(Demon Queen Leafa-chan is unrelated, overdressed, and understacked, but the only character I’d want to generate for this week is Nekkid Demon Lady, who’s not in a LoRA yet; sorry, Stella, but your Big Moment was long-winded, obvious, and completely devoid of drama)

Solo Leveling 2, episode 9

Okay, in Esil’s final scene, right before she attempts to confess her obvious crush, she’s in the same light as Jinwoo, and their skin tones match the shot I used in last week’s comments, so canon is that she’s got an olive cast to her skin. Not inhuman or orc-like, just a tint.

With Our Best Girl abandoned, it’s time to save Mom, which they give a proper emotional payoff, showing Our Leveling Hero’s core humanity contrasting with what he’s made himself to get there. Also showing off Hot Little Sister nicely (and what was Our Sidekick doing hanging out with Schoolgirl Hunter?). Then it’s time to bathe the camera in testosterone and plot coupons, as The Sinister Japanese Hunters show up to taunt and train against Our Korean All-Stars. Big fight next week.

Verdict: four more episodes, which should wrap up the ant arc and drop some teasers for what comes next. And I kinda want to know how they’re handling this in the domestic release, where all the Korean characters are Japanese; are they simply reversing it?

(hey, actual fan-art of anime Esil, and she isn’t pulling a train!)

And one from an updated-last-week LoRA (with the tag line “the best girl is here!”), with decent ears:

Sample image from the LoRA:

A-Rank Dungeon Harem, episode 8

Four important things happened this week:

1. Our Little Blonde Titty-Witch survived with nothing more than some almost-fatal sword wounds, which is a lot better than her fate the last time we saw her. Turning State’s Evidence also led to her getting off fairly lightly, although I wonder what sort of work she’ll be performing for the next year to afford her little brother’s expensive medicine…

2. The rest of The Dick Party is dead (Rapey Muscle Guy and Queen Bitch offscreen with no details), and Fat Bastard Merchant is never coming near Our Harem Gals again.

3. Our Legal-Loli Healer is so far in the lead for Head Waifu that all the others are left stunned.

4. Wait, this show is going to run another cour? Without any asshole antagonists? Honestly, this week felt like a season ender, but apparently this was just the first major arc.

(the translated light novels are way behind what’s been released in Japan, so I have no idea what comes next; book five came out in the US ~9 months ago, and it ended before Jamie’s rescue mission)

This week, we get to see Our OG Party meet up for the first time in the real world, where they’re revealed to be… exactly like their avatars. In other words, Actual Sunraku is just as hyper and shouty as in-game. This does not win over the other pro gamer in the party, who’s reluctantly putting up with their antics because she trusts her regular partner (with a faint hint of “silent crush”).

We only get to see brief moments of the new game, though, because 90% of the episode is a huge exposition dump.

Verdict: four episodes to go, and not only do we have private matches between teammates, we have the actual competition, and occasional dips back into the underwater boss arc, which makes me think maybe they should have worked all this week’s exposition into the actual action.

(bringing in this serious fighting gamer would take this show to the next (naughty) level…)

The good news is that only about half of the character art was done by the C-team this week. The bad news is that The Big Bad Dungeon Spiders were handled by the D-team. Honestly, the best part of the episode was Our Blue Furry-Boobed Catgirl narrating her jealousy.

Verdict: meh. I would be delighted if Our Shopping Hero gave up on the lame-ass chuuni incantations. They take up time that would be better spent on harem hijinks.

(Zabuton was so far above this week’s disposable puppets that I can’t even regard them as proper spiders)

Literal Dream Girl Elf Waifu, episode 9

Our Mighty Morphing Dragon MILF manipulates her way onto Our Cuddly Couple’s team, strengthens both members, and guarantees that they’ll be accepted on the New Dungeon Investigation Squad. If it weren’t for her obvious weaknesses and her willingness to let Our Heroes learn and grow, she’d be a real show-breaker. As it is, she just ensures that things don’t get dark and bloody, and we can continue to enjoy our Boy-Meets-Elf Sloooooooow-Burn Romance/Adventure/Comedy.

Verdict: “we’ve secretly replaced their fairy godmother with a foodie dragon mama; let’s see if anyone notices.”

The Apothecary Diaries 2, episode 9

Mystery Managed! Maomao did her best to ignore information that would drag her deeper into Jinshi’s affairs, but in the end she just did her best. Most interesting was the surprise PoV change to the Emperor’s mother, who turned out to have more secrets than the one she set Maomao to solve. Sic Semper Pedo, as it were.

Hammer Of The Guild Gal, episode 9

If the show was always as light and fluffy as this episode, it would be 10 times better. Also, this is one of the rare filler shows this season where the character art hasn’t fallen off a cliff. Yet.

Verdict: finally getting all three of Our Cuddly Cuties into one room without any bloody deaths was a win. More revealing pajamas, like the ones in Our Mighty Heroine’s imaginary vacation, would have put the cherry on top. So to speak.

The Three Behemoths, episode 11

Wish I could say they left out “Anna” again this week, but at least it was brief, and they compensated with a mother-daughter melon bath and some symmetrical docking kitten-smothering.

Anyway, after an obviously-telegraphed betrayal by a character added for precisely that purpose, The Big Bad arrives with his army and immediately makes a mockery of the elves’ defenses (Maginot Line much?). Big fight next week.

Verdict: one more episode, which has to include The Biggest Battle Ever and a catsexual harem wrapup? Somebody’s ambition is bigger than Aria’s chest.

(printable Vulcan model might make a good side project, if you’re up to gluing all the parts together; I think I’ll stick to Stable Diffusion)

Solo Leveling 2, episode 10

The Japan/Korea duel sets up some important things, but fortunately it doesn’t take very long, leaving time to show most of Our Hero’s Friends And Family And Rescue Babes (and Schoolgirl Hunter seems to have settled on Earnest Sidekick as Backup Best Boy…). Then it’s off to Ant Island, where the raid goes as planned, until it doesn’t. Whoopsie.

Verdict: better paced than I expected, given how close we’re getting to the end.

(a Hero’s Reward moment that should have happened)

A-Rank Adventure Harem, episode 9

Our Eager Eavesdropping Catgirl’s a tad overdressed when she’s not kitted up for adventure, but Our Legendary Elf Receptionist makes up for it with a cleavage cuddle.

Then it’s Our Little Blonde Titty-Witch’s turn to overdress; pity, I’d been hoping her taste in street clothes matched her “professional” (coughcough) costume. Our Core Trio is in their usual civvies as well, hosting a party for the least surprising event of the season: permanently adding two new haremettes, exactly as promised in the episode title.

On the relationship front, Our Legal-Loli Healer is so far in the lead with Our Multi-Beloved Hero that she’s nearly unbeatable now; fortune favors the bold, indeed. Our Hot Dark Elf plays the ha-ha-only-serious card in an attempt to recover some ground. Hopefully these issues will be resolved in a shared bath scene soon.

Character art wasn’t consistent, but the show didn’t fall off the cliff, at least. Next week, it’s Party party time! Cleverly disguised as a clip episode.

Verdict: did we really need to show Dickhead’s End one last time (I hope) and then waste screen time talking about The Late Losers? Yeah, yeah, Yuke & Jamie needed closure, but we didn’t. I’m really looking forward to them never being mentioned again during the next cour.

(good luck catching up, Silk!)

Shangri-La Frontier 2, episode 22

I Do Not Care What Happens In This Other Game. And their version of Western comic-book art doesn’t do it for me. As for the real-world game, Gal Gamer’s crush on Pro Gamer K is now obvious enough to be seen from space, but not from the chair next to her.

Verdict: not thrilled with the pacing coming into this finale, especially since the undersea quest was built-up as much more interesting.

Unrelated,

I drove to Chicago to spend some time with my sister and help her out post-surgery, and thanks to some jackass cutting off a semi, the trip took 90 minutes longer than it should have. So much for carefully timing the trip to avoid bumper-to-bumper traffic on Lake Shore Drive. Anyway, I got to see her new place, and spent some time sitting on her enclosed balcony that you could fish in Lake Michigan from, if you had a 25-story reel. And you didn’t mind the snow being blown into your face.

Speaking of Stable Diffusion…

I was just cleaning my catgirls, when they suddenly went off:

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“Where’d that very specific fantasy come from?”

Well, well, Our Busty Noble Desperate Housewife wasn’t just putting her goods on the table to influence her negotiations with Our Shopping Hero, but offering to include them in his reward. And as he proves his value to her domain, she gets even more eager to offer up her hills and valleys. Looks like the Viscount has left the home fires burning for a very long time.

Meanwhile, Our Blue Furry-Boobed Catgirl’s rivalry with Our Orange Furry-Big-Boobed Catgirl escalates when Her Blue Pals show up and go ga-ga over Orange. This also clears up their relationship, since she complains that they’ve never acted that way around her. So, the shared color scheme doesn’t make them relatives, just friends-without-benefits.

Nominal plot this week is building a canal, which Our Backhoe Hero manages with a minimum of stupid incantations.

Verdict: a very horny, fun episode this week. Expansion of the bathing facilities offers some hope for the Bluray.

(the only recognizable recent fan-art pic of Myaley has her taking it from behind, and I can make better with 10 seconds of Stable Diffusion)

LinkedIn, Then and Now

How it started:

LinkedIn sidebar: “use our AI to write your resume and cover letter”

How it’s going:

LinkedIn News: “AI cheating rocks tech interviews”

Girlboss horseshit

While my sister was recuperating from her surgery, she pretty much spent the day resting on the couch watching mystery shows and movies. Philip Marlowe, Miss Marple, Perry Mason, Ms. Fisher’s Modern Mysteries, etc, but the one that really stuck out for me was Frankie Drake Mysteries, a Prohibition-era team of Diverse Socially Conscious Female Detectives in an alternate-universe Toronto that was far less white than the one in our universe.

I could have put up with the background nonsense, but every member of The Squad was frequently overpowering men physically. And not just in bare-fisted brawling. One skinny little chick outperforms a very fit man in a police obstacle course. In another episode, a large man lunges forward in a rage, and two skinny little chicks each grab an arm and not only restrain him, but pull him back several feet. This wasn’t presented as the result of advanced martial arts training; they’re just Tough Gals. Feh.

Random garbage in AI

Continuing to explore the features of InvokeAI, I decided to use a LoRA to make a more detailed catgirl. Specifically, the only reason to try watching No Longer Allowed In Another World, but not enough to save the show:

(the fake signature is the LoRA trigger tag “tamais”; Illustrious seems to have been trained that the first tag is often the artist)

Naturally, the first attempt had a bit of WTF in it…

Literal Dream Girl Elf Waifu, episode 10

Our Adorkable Couple spends time together, with Our Foodie Dragon Mama gently pushing them to advance their relationship; good thing she’s immortal, eh? Eventually, they officially enter the dungeon they found. In the background, danger looms with mention of a scouting party that’s fallen out of contact. We also get a quick look at another hopeless not-a-couple-yet, adding some fresh eye candy; these two will matter soon (where soon is likely “next week”, given we only have two more weeks).

Verdict: character art seems to be stabilizing, and things are staying light and fluffy. Like in the deal.

The Apothecary Diaries 2, episode 10

This week, a scary midnight party forces Maomao into spending a hot night with another girl. Not that way, of course. Most of the ghost stories were filler-grade material and an excuse for a small mystery, but some sinister secrets were hinted at. Next week, the shit apparently hits the fan.

Hammer Of The Guild Gal, episode 10

My enthusiasm for this show is so high that I put off watching it for nearly a day. This week’s episode wasn’t bad, since they still put some effort into the character art, but the light and fluffy part was stained by the presence of the plot. Next week has been setup to spray dark nonsense all over the screen.

Verdict: best part was Alina realizing that you can’t be a tsundere without an excuse to tsun. Worst part was everything related to the plot.

Remote Echo

Amazon disables local Alexa processing, insists on keeping “accidental” recordings of anything that happens inside your home. Because offline processing conflicts with their pointless new AI voice-identification feature, part of their pointless new AI extra-cost feature set.

The Three Behemoths, fin

Wow, that was terrible. You might think they’d have put aside some budget for the big battle to defeat the demon army and save the world, but you would be wrong. You might think that Our Hidden Behemoth’s true nature might, y’know, come up when facing an overpowering enemy who Knows Things, but you would be wrong. You might hope that they’d have focused all their efforts on Our Heroic Hotties and not on the insane gay couple, but you would be spectacularly wrong.

You might even think they’d have rewarded the viewers with a fully animated nipplicious bath scene that took up more than a minute, or done something, anything with the incredibly valuable magic tree and magic pond in their yard, but you would be left scratching your head wondering why they were ever mentioned in the first place.

Verdict: what little potential it had at the start was gone by the end. Okay, “well before the end”. Bottom line, it’s hard to adapt a story that was never finished, and that abandoned its premise so early. It’s hard to care about Tama secretly being a Behemoth when everyone takes one look at his transformation and decides he’s holy.

(Duke of York is unrelated, but I just don’t feel like manufacturing more AI fan-art for this turkey)

Solo Leveling 2, episode 11

I’m sure everyone will be stunned to learn that The Big Battle doesn’t go as planned. Between J Random Spear-Carrier losing her head last week and the inevitable betrayal by the Japanese team, events have now escalated to the point that only Our Solo Hero can save the day. Next week.

Verdict: I’m willing to overlook the clumsy CGI integration for the army of ants, but less willing to forgive the frequent shortcuts taken with what should be one of the biggest set pieces of the series.

(some people know a Best Girl when they see one…)

A-Rank Adventure Harem, clip episode

I can only say two good things about this filler: there are clean pictures of the girls that should improve the available LoRAs, and they didn’t use any footage of the asshole party.

Verdict: it doesn’t count as episode 10, so the show has three weeks left.

(train gals are unrelated)

Classic Valley

Yes, yes it is.

(site NSFW, disable Javascript)

Our Unmasked Masked Hero sneaks out for a supply of Generic Red Bull and runs into Our Masked Foreign Princess, failing to recognize her despite her remarkably distinctive appearance and shoddy disguise. Restocked, he skips his homework to try out SLF with premium VR gear. Just for one hour, wink-wink. This gives us a reasonable dose of Classic Sunraku Adventure With A Small Side Of Emul.

Verdict: still not caring about the fighting-game tournament, so any SLF action is a distinct improvement.

(They’ve got one week to figure out the special quest, and what does Cuddles McNinja do with her time? Decorate their base)

End of an era

Mrs. Toia, my kindergarten teacher, has passed away. It would be difficult to estimate how many children’s lives she impacted, but the simplest metric is this: every kid who passed through her classroom in ~40 years remembers her name.

Teams sucks, reason #UTC-5

After I got back from Chicago, I noticed that the Mac version of Microsoft Teams refused to notice the timezone change until I restarted it.

Now that’s just crazy talk!

I am not making this up: it’s Neurodiversity Celebration Week.

Only 60%? Those are rookie numbers.

Generative AI fakes 60% of citations.

Best Girl Mania

There are now 23 Esil LoRAs. There are characters with quite a few more, like Asuna from Sword Art Online (I counted 75 before giving up), but most of those are lead characters who showed up in a lot more episodes and manga volumes…

(IllusionBreed with this LoRA produced excellent ears, without the weird artifacts some other combinations have created; it does have a tendency to go NSFW without prompting, not that there’s anything wrong with that)

Kids today just don’t know…

New LoRA titled “natural breasts Illustrious”. Almost every sample picture supplied by the creator shows really obvious cheap boob jobs.

nsfb

You can lead AI to writing…

Driving back from Chicago, I was thinking about the quality of prose I’ve seen from AI, both the pricy pay models and the home game, and came up with a good example of what’s wrong. As we know, LLMs are basically just weighted-random sentence generators loaded up with massive amounts of data and trained in specific query-response patterns. There is pre and post-processing to hide some of the artifacts and try to separate the false hallucinations from the accidentally-true ones, as well as add censorship and bias.

Something I played with a bit with ChatGPT was asking it to write scenes from novels. By default, the prose is completely bland and colorless, representing the statistical average prose fiction, but you can customize your queries with phrases like “in the style of Roger Zelazny”, and that’s the specific example I thought about in the car.

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Just for fun, I decided to make some L’il Esils. This is mostly a matter of adding “child height, child face, child body, flat chest” to the prompt, but the way people train models, you’re likely to find yourself rapidly filling the negative prompt with things like “nsfw, nude, naked, topless, nipples, crotch, upskirt, sideboob”, etc; if they can go NSFW, they will, often in ways that you don’t want stored on your computer. Even mentioning skin color can be enough to trigger nudity.

Dear Amazon,

A clear plastic bag is not a shipping container for a breakable item. TL/DR: it broke.

Programming jobs: still safe

I asked ChatGPT to write a Bash script that toggles the blocking status of a Pihole, using the REST API. It wrote (broken) code that used the API that was valid from version 3.x through version 5.x. However, a completely different API was introduced for version 6.x, and there’s no backwards compatibility. I didn’t know this. ChatGPT didn’t know this. Even pointing ChatGPT at the updated API page, which it dutifully pretended to retrieve and analyze, did not change its answer.

So I asked again, this time specifying “v6 api”. It immediately rewrote the script to use the correct authentication method and API calls, but it didn’t work. After editing the script to dump debug data, I informed it that the call to get the current blocking status returned “enabled” or “disabled”, but the call to set the status required true or false, while still returning enabled/disabled. This is kinda dumb, but pretty typical of cheesy REST APIs.

It took several more passes to produce working code, but ChatGPT was absolutely confident that it was Right every time, insisting that the latest-but-still-broken version was “corrected and fully tested”. Despite having no ability to, y’know, test.

All this for a single page of code that does something that’s completely fucking trivial. Tell me again how this horseshit is replacing 90% of Real Software Engineers at Big Tech companies. And then pull the other one, it’s got bells on.

Dear Pihole devs…

On the other hand, there’s a special level of Hell reserved for devs who write update code that fails to check if the new version will still be supported on the current OS before breaking the existing install. Spoiler: it wasn’t.

So now I have a new Pihole running as a Docker container on my Synology NAS, and a Raspberry Pi to reinstall from scratch, with whatever the current release of the GPS-hat NTP stratum 0 package is.

But wait, there’s more!

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Isekai Prime, episode 11

I’m gonna need a program to keep all these busty blonde hot chicks straight. Also, why does Loli Princess have burned shoulders? The burned cheeks seem to be a poor rendition of blushing, but the shoulders are weird.

Speaking of lolis, Our Magical Daughter suddenly got her first period, and after getting everything explained by Our Busty Blonde Merchant Waifu, announces her intention to have Our Shopping Hero’s baby. Yeah, that comes as a surprise to exactly nobody. As does his rejection of Our Furry-Big-Boobed Orange Catgirl’s advances with the usual “you’re too young” excuse that has never stopped a girl before. And he doesn’t actually reject Daughter except to say that she needs about five years before she’s really ripe for baby-making…

Character art is frequently off, and there’s no explanation for why they have the three big tubs side-by-side indoors but still have the barrel bathtubs outside, and the only thing I’ll say about The Big Battle is that it was stupid and poorly done. Seriously, why?

Speaking of “why?”, is this really the time for another dramatic plot shift? With only two episodes left to go?

(at least we’ll always have Myaley…)

Location, location, location

Since setting up my new Pihole, it’s blocked over 64% of DNS queries. That’s… a lot higher than the old one. I did add some new filters when I updated, but it shouldn’t be that different. But it turns out that one of the new filters included inference.location.live.net, which is responsible for fully 71% of the blocked requests.

And I don’t even keep the gaming PC running 24x7. Thanks, Microsoft Spyware. I’m sure it would only be a few percent if it weren’t blocked, but it’s really upset that it can’t get through, and refuses to back off.

(#2 on the block list (at 6%) is diag.meethue.com, and I could have sworn I told my Hue smartbulb controller not to send in “anonymous diagnostics”…)

Upcoming Anime

Based entirely on the blurbs and videos at LiveChart.me…

First off, things that are continuing:

• The Apothecary Diaries 2 YES
• A-Rank Adventure Harem Yes

Second, sequels:

• Bye, Bye Earth 2 NOT A CHANCE
• Loser Ranger 2 No; season 1 got stuck in a tournament arc.
• Slime-Killing Witch 2 Yes; the novels eventually fell apart, but probably not this season. I wish they’d animate the Beelzebub spinoff, though.

🎶 …And The Rest… 🎶

(by claimed start date)

• Twins HinaHima: almost no info about this “weird shit happens to two schoolgirls” show. Trailer doesn’t impress. No

• The Unaware Atelier Master: “kicked out of the hero’s party, it turns out I have cheat-level skills in everything except combat”. Snore. Highly Unlikely

• Sword Of The Demon Hunter: something something Highlander something protecting sister and step-sister across time from heart-eating demons something. Runs for two cours, decent art. Maybe?

• Once Upon A Witch’s Death: forget that 100 friends trope; this time, Shouty Loli Witch is going to make 1,000 people so happy they cry, or die trying. Highly unlikely

• Catch Me at the Ballpark!: romancing the beer girl. No

• Please Put Them On, Takamine-san: schoolgirl panties time machine fan-service. Not making that up. Unlikely

• The Beginning After The End Season 1: “reincarnated from one fantasy world to another, this former king develops awesome cheat powers as a child and…”. Highly unlikely

• Your Forma: Cyber Cop Gal goes memory-diving with android partner. Light-novel adaptation that’s explicitly skipping book one. They’re putting some money into the trailer animation, at least. Maybe

• The Too-Perfect Saint: Tossed Aside By My Fiancé And Sold To Another Kingdom: the trailers put me to sleep, so I don’t know what this is about. No

• MIRU: Paths To My Future: five-episode anthology series that looks like Quantum Leap with a robot lead. No

• The Brilliant Healer’s New Life In The Shadows: “kicked out of the hero’s party, I opened a clinic in the slums to use my cheat-level healing powers”. Yeah, whatever. No

• Rock Is A Lady’s Modesty: misfit gals at private princess school form rock band, shout. No

• Raccoon Team Calcal: well, it’s no Red Cat Ramen, that’s for sure. No

• Can A Boy-Girl Friendship Survive?: childhood friendship turns to wacky love hijinks as the hormones kick in. No

• The Dinner Table Detective: oh, god, no, she’s a screamer. That’s like twice as funny as shouting, said no one ever. Anyway, rookie cop by day, rich society gal by night, teamed up with her genius butler. Hell, No

• Everyday HOST CLUB: boywhores. Not a chance

• YAIBA: Samurai Legend: this looks like a mashup of every “funny” shounen fighting story ever. No

• Anne Shirley: the latest iteration of the Japanese fascination with Anne of Green Gables. No

• Gag Manga Biyori GO: with a title like that, what could go wrong? No

• GUILTY GEAR STRIVE: DUAL RULERS: note that the all-caps English is the actual Japanese title, and the trailer just reinforces that sense of self-conscious “coolness”. The plot description reads like insane troll logic to justify a fighting game, and that’s exactly what it is. Not a chance

• Kowloon Generic Romance: boy meets girl meets weird shit. No

• From Old Country Bumpkin To Master Swordsman: trailer suggests it’s somewhere between A-Rank Adventure Harem and S-Rank Daddy’s Girl. Maybe?

• I’m The Evil Lord Of An Intergalactic Empire!: the key element of this ridiculously-chaste isekai power fantasy is that the hero is wrong-genre-savvy. He was betrayed by everyone in his first life, and believes that everything about his new SF/magic isekai life is a blessing from Reincarnation Dude to help him achieve his “selfish” “evil” goals. The female characters are easy on the eyes, but the most he ever does with them (over decades) is grope his robot maid’s clothed chest occasionally. Maybe?

• Princession Orchestra: this generic-looking magical-girl show is getting four cours in a row. No

• To Be Hero X: Chinese-made pure-CGI Western-style superhero tournament show. Not a chance

• Lazarus: someone’s putting some money into this race-for-a-cure near-future self-consciously cool thriller. The trailer looks like Cowboy Bebop seduced The White Plague and abandoned their kid. Maybe

• Witch Watch: wacky school magical romance hijinks, extra shouty. Two cours in a row. No

• Maebashi Witches: another magical-girl show, heavy on the CGI, where they are both florists and idol singers. No

• Yandere Dark Elf: She Chased Me All the Way From Another World!: The word “yandere” does not appear in the original title, and the trailer just shows her being dere-dere and mostly naked, with a whole collection of isekai babes hanging out with our schoolboy former hero. Unexpectedly, main girl shares her name with this season’s isekai elf. Maybe for the eye candy

• Makina-san’s A Love Bot?!: most popular girl in class seeks robot otaku for repairs, romance. Trailer is covered with steam and shouting. Unlikely

• The Mononoke Lecture Logs Of Chuzenji-sensei: He Just Solves All the Mysteries: post-war Tokyo exorcist/detective/teacher partners up with schoolgirl. This is apparently a prequel to some other show I never watched. No

• ZatsuTabi -That’s Journey-: cute college girl and failed manga artist goes traveling with cute friends. Appears to be sponsored by local tourist associations. Unlikely

• My Hero Academia: Vigilantes: spinoff series. Unlikely

• Summer Pockets: the trailer looks exactly like a visual-novel adaptation, and the caption for it name-drops Clannad, Little Busters, and Angel Beats, so, yeah, guy moves to new town, meets a bunch of quirky girls, and uncovers his hidden memories. No

• #Compass2.0 Animation Project: honestly, the name was enough to put me off, and the blurb made it worse. By the time I reached the trailer with the heavily-autotuned robo-doll, I gave up. No

• The Shiunji Family Children: “I wish I didn’t have five sisters.” “They’re not biological sisters.” “Ooh, harem hijinks!” No

• Apocalypse Hotel: loli robo-doll runs hotel in a post-human Tokyo. There’s an artist on Pixiv who draws really cool post-human Tokyo scenes; the backgrounds look just like that. Unlikely

• Me And The Alien MuuMuu: cat-shaped alien sneaks into a college girl’s dorm to learn technology and create wacky hijinks. No

• Moonrise: high-concept action series pitting an AI-run Earth utopia against scrappy terrorist moon-rebels. Teaser trailer contains dick-all about any actual story, and just name-drops people who’ve done other things. Netflix is putting serious money into this, so there’s a good chance it will suck like most of the other original shows they’ve funded and meddled with. Unlikely

• A Ninja And An Assassin Under One Roof: cute ninja gal on the run moves in with busty assassin gal for wacky yuri hijinks. The trailer includes a scene where ninja tracks assassin to her high school… by the smell of her panties. No

• Teogonia: “it wasn’t until most of my friends were dead that I suddenly realized I was an OP isekai hero with memories of my old life”. No

• Mono: cute girls taking cute photos, and shouting. No

• Food For the Soul: cute college girls eating cute food. No

That’s 3 yes, 6 maybe, 8 unlikely, 3 highly unlikely, and a whole bunch of nope. Not the most promising of seasons, to put it mildly.

Literal Dream Girl Elf Waifu, episode 11

Our Slow-Moving Couple spends this week in the real world, taking a trip to Our Hero’s hometown, smuggling Our Foodie Dragon Mama along in the form of a cat. Cheaper than trying to buy an extra shinkansen ticket and explain her presence to Grandpa, although I’m sure he’d have been impressed to have Kazuhiro bring two hot gals home. Next week will likely be spent dungeon-crawling.

Verdict: Cat-Wridra needs to be more aggressive at helping out with matchmaking duties, but hey, at least they’re holding hands more often now.

The Apothecary Diaries 2, episode 11

Jinshi suffers through half an hour of teasing by Gyokuyou in order to “borrow” Maomao for a hunting trip, with the intention of revealing his true identity and status. Her well-practiced density allows her to avoid figuring it out, until gun-toting assassins leave the two of them truly alone together. Finally. Next week’s episode title reveals all.

Hammer Of The Guild Gal, episode 11

Monologing. Not a great way to spend your next-to-last episode. Blech.

Solo Leveling 2, episode 12

After the obligatory “Thank God The Hero Has Arrived” reaction shots by everyone who’s had a speaking role this season, it’s time to go mano-a-hormiga in a… fistfight? Yeah, let’s have Jinwoo and Badass Ant punch each other for a while. Fortunately this isn’t an old issue of Marvel Team-Up, so they eventually get down to the serious business of killing each other.

Lots of CGI ant-movement that sticks out badly, and some weirdly bad animations of the spear-carriers (for a moment I thought TV Guy had jello arms as a superpower), but the actual fight was pretty good. Naturally they had to end it on a Second-Best-Girl cliffhanger, with Our Mangled Blonde Hunter Gal at that very specific level of too hurt to cure but too tough to have died ten minutes ago.

Verdict: no, she doesn’t die next week.

(fan-artist headcanon I can get behind)

A-Rank Adventure Harem, episode 10

Aside from the lengthy travel montage and walk-and-talk exposition scenes, this was fun, as the show casts aside the Asshole Party baggage and leans into harem/adventure goodness. Our Little Blonde Titty-Witch had to sit out this adventure, but she did at least make it into the OP animation as an official haremette. Pity she didn’t make it into the hot-springs bath scenes with the rest, although they were shorter than the travel montage and showed no signs of Buy-The-Bluray advertising.

Unrelated, they went seriously old-school for the new-town guildmaster’s look.

Verdict: new waifu-focused ED animation to celebrate a new asshole-free era. I’m not counting the brief encounter with some foreign chauvinists, since that led Yuke to accidentally proclaim that he’s a proper harem lord, thrilling the educated haremette who spoke the language.

(I didn’t even have to ask the LoRA to give me some special costumes for Silk…)

Shangri-La Frontier 2, episode 24

Fish fight! Our Bird-Brained Hero spends pretty much the entire episode figuring out how to defeat the giant electric whale, and then executes the plan (and the whale) with the help of Our Friendly Fishman NPC. While all the other NPCs sleep and the other players are off living their real lives.

Verdict: …which means that all the character interaction is getting crammed into the final episode of the season next week. …which means that they’d better announce another season already in production, since we’ve got two cliffhangers.

Mistakes Were Made™

They’re pushing an accelerated rollout schedule for the Veterans Administration’s New Thing, despite its poor track record in current deployments, delays, cost overruns, near-universal negative reaction from health-care professionals and IT staff, proven risks to patients, and lack of trained staff to handle the transition even before the push to RIF thousands of employees.

Based on what I’ve heard from insiders, the correct response should be to have Team Elon dispatch an anal-probe software forensics team to thoroughly investigate New Thing before it kills more veterans, with major penalties to the vendors for their failures.

Transdependency

I have a lot of open-source packages installed on my Mac through Homebrew. 16 of them are now cannot be upgraded because I pinned Perl at a specific release. Most of them are stuck just because someone once wrote an optional Perl script that’s included in the repo, and it’s still there years or decades later.

(I originally pinned Perl because the person who maintains the recipe didn’t understand how to set it up to preserve installed modules across minor releases, and Perlbrew simply didn’t work on my M2 Macbook Air when I bought it)

Back in black…

Glen Cook’s original Black Company trilogy was really good. Several of the later books were interesting, but never recaptured the magic. So I wasn’t terribly interested when a new book came out seven years ago that was set between the first two, especially since it seemed to incorporate Cook’s interest in anime that made the final Garrett book such a disaster. And they still want $13 for the Kindle edition seven years after release, so I’m still not interested.

And now he’s got another one coming out in November. What’s it about? No idea, but apparently he signed a contract to write a whole new BC sequel series, since it’s titled “Lies Weeping: Volume 1 of the Black Company Saga: A Pitiless Rain”. I doubt I’ll pick it up.

(loli dragon gal is very loosely related, since she’s from a show called Dungeon of Black Company…)

I liked the L’il Esils so much that I decided to make more, adding the challenge of putting them to bed without the model turning it into loli porn. Careful use of negative prompts managed to produce usually innocent pictures of L’il Esil with innocent sleepwear, stuffed animals, and non-sexy poses, but the attempt exposed another common problem with generative AI: it doesn’t understand how rooms work or how people fit inside them.

The basic prompt was: “<lora-trigger> wearing black and red frilly pajamas and fuzzy slippers. sfw, happy, flat chest, child height, child body, child face. indoors, girl’s bedroom at night, evil stuffed animals in background” (and, yes, despite the lack of nudity and sex keywords, I had to add “cum” to the negative prompt; in one pic, the teddy bear had a puddle of white stuff leaking from its crotch, sigh).

A human being would interpret “child height” in relationship to the typical sizes of common bedroom objects, like doors, chairs, dressers, and beds. Generative AI sometimes seems to get it right, but it’s really the user deciding between equally-likely alternatives.

So for fun, here’s a whole bunch of L’il Esils, and the challenge is to notice how many things are not-quite-right about the images.

more...

“Hey, Princess, you shouldn’t take candy from strangers. I might run off with you.”

“Cool!”

(bonus mental picture…)

This week, Loli Princess is a force of nature, and if Her Busty Step-Mom’s typical for the King’s tastes, she’s sure to grow up to be a full-figured heartbreaker. Speaking of busts, Her Head Maid is lush enough to catch Our Shopping Hero’s ever-wandering eye, despite the presence of His Current And Future Wives and Their Hair-Trigger Jealousy.

Speaking of which: “Dude, you realize your catgirls are going to smell that maid on you, right? And realize that Our Surprisingly Sophisticated Princess was watching the whole time? Also, did you actually buy sex toys as Princess suggested? Asking for a friend.”

Verdict: character art was off about half the time, but it was still a lot of fun. One more week of silliness to go.

(“Daddy, the new sex toys are here!”)

OpenAI finally has a killer app!

…and it turns out to be “draw me like one of your Ghibli girls”. 😁

Fucks given? None.

For the dozens of people around the world who might still care, there’s a trailer for a new Doctor Who season. Spoiler: no writers or actors were involved, just CGI artists and a Phil Collins song.

Apart from Isekai Prime, the only shows I’m watching that aren’t ending this weekend are the ones that continue into next season. Next week will be stuffed with new shows, most of which I won’t bother with.

Literal Dream Girl Elf Waifu, fin

Lips! Houston, we have lip-lock!

Honestly, I figured that’d be at least two seasons away. Anyway, all that setup for a dungeon crawl in the other world will have to wait for a future season, if any, because the big finish is Our Confirmed Couple holding hands as they walk off into the Tokyo sunset.

Verdict: best fluff of the season.

(I prompted Stable Diffusion to draw something that would give Our Sleepy Hero a nosebleed)

The Apothecary Diaries 2, episode 12

WARNING: the payoff is a true ROFLMAO moment; okay, several of them. Next week, bathing beauties.

Next week also officially starts the second cour, and the preview trailer confirms that the OP/ED music continues its downhill slide. Also, that the Shisui is about to hit the fan.

(not Shisui, obviously, but she is in next week's bath scene)

Hammer Of The Guild Gal, fin

After 15 minutes of talk-fighting the big boss, ass-pulling new abilities, and pretending that having their internal organs pulverized is just a flesh wound, Our Heroic Receptionist And Friends win the day and switch back to wacky hijinks, whipping that lash one last time.

Fully aware that they’re never getting another season, the writers wrap everything up while hoping you forget about things like Junior Receptionist dropping an ominous line implying she Knows Things She Shouldn’t. (spoiler: she knows pretty much everything)

Verdict: calling this show “uneven” really really understates what a mess it was. They even went so far as to give us the show’s one-and-only panty shot during the final battle, with Legal-Loli Healer flipping her skirt while being punched into the air so hard she should have been a thin smear on the wall.

Delusional Space Virgin, episodes 1-2

(aka “I’m The Evil Lord Of An Intergalactic Empire”)

Turns out Crunchyroll quietly streamed the first two episodes on Tuesday, with the third coming out Saturday. I guess they want to get it over with quickly.

Episode one flashes forward to show some of our never-gonna-be-a-harem gals chatting with our hero while he casually slaughters a space armada, pretending that he’s an evil warlord attacking innocents. Then it cuts to a flashback of his life going to shit, with him losing his wife, kid, job, money, health, and eventually life before meeting up with a reincarnation guide who offers him a better life in another world.

Naturally The Guide is lying, something that’s immediately obvious to the viewer even without casting Koyasu for his voice. Speaking of high-budget voices, also in the cast are Solo Leveling’s Second-Best-Girl as Robomaid, Bodacious Space Pirates’ Captain Marika as Lovestruck Blonde Mech Knight, and SAO’s Double-Lovestruck Sister/Cousin as Red-Underrim-Wearing Sales Engineer.

Episode 2 continues his origin story, expositing its way through a crapton of setup. Note that Blondie’s attack on a pirate fleet is either contemporary with L’il Villain’s new-world origin or a flashback, completely separate from the first episode’s flashforward where she looks the same age. Way to keep the timeline clear, eh?

(maid is unrelated, organic)

Unrelated, Grubhub sucks

You can get a nice discount if you have Amazon Prime (they’re part-owner these days), but it always defaults to non-contact delivery like it’s permanent Covid season, and drivers don’t even notice when you change it to “deliver like a normal person”. As a test, I added a delivery note: “additional tip for delivering to me directly”. I watched through the door as the driver set my food on the ground; that cost him $5.

Also, the restaurant sent the wrong dessert, so I won’t order from them again anyway. Also also, in theory I had a 35% discount, but the clear instructions in the email were rejected by the web site. Pretty sure they only tested clicking the link from smartphone email and opening the app, despite claiming other methods would work.

Solo Leveling 2, fin

Not only is it Our Solo Hero’s finest moment (saving Second-Best-Girl from certain death, that is), but Our OG Shoulda-Been-A-Waifu from the first season reveals her secret Gainaxing power. Related, Schoolgirl Hunter manages to walk rack-first into a video phone call, but needs to learn the secret art of bouncing to up her game. Assorted plot coupons are dropped for a future season (which has not been announced), and they didn’t forget about Missing Dad.

Verdict: overall a pretty good adaptation, but it needed more Esil.

A-Rank Adventure Harem, episode 11

While traipsing through the new dungeon, Our Hareming Hero has a brief moment of PTSD related to That Asshole. We didn’t need the reminder, but at least it led to a lap-pillow nap and a group cuddle. The dungeon itself seems to be stuffed with plot coupons, and as if that weren’t enough, Our Legal-Loli Healer And Head Waifu receives an ominous letter that threatens to ruin her life but ends up with her living the dream. Hopefully we get a time-skip soon or some other excuse to get Our Little Blonde Titty-Witch out of detention and back to work.

Verdict: pity the all-girl party dropped out of the dungeon-crawl; they’d have added some nice eye candy to the show. Anyway, this will be a welcome fluffy refuge next season if the lineup is really as dismal as it seems.

(I thought it was time to put a Marina LoRA to work and give her a few drinks to loosen up…)

Shangri-La Frontier 2, fin

Nothing happens. It’s setup for the just-announced season 3, dumping exposition so they can go right into the fighting tournament whenever they get the show made and scheduled.

Verdict: sadly, this messed-up pacing and other-game whiplash is faithful to the source material.

New stuff this week

I’ll watch Slime-Killing Witch 2, and try the first episodes of Sword Of The Demon Hunter, Your Forma, and From Old Country Bumpkin To Master Swordsman. The middle-aged grumpy guy in Bumpkin doesn’t have a voice that feels right for the part, but at least two of the platonic haremettes have very experienced actresses (1, 2).

The other two were Aria and Stella in Three Behemoths.