Atelier Thighza, episode 1

Our Heroine is a slacker born to a pair of hard-working farmers, whose first mistake was letting her dress like a streetwalker instead of an actual farm-girl. Their second mistake was not beating her enough at an early age so she’d respect her parents and do at least a few chores.

But no, Our Bored Slacker Teen bullies Her Childhood Boy-toys into running off to play adventurer-for-a-day. Meanwhile, Our Merchant And His Wandering Poster Girl arrive in town accompanied by Mister Research Alchemist and Miss Paizuri (seriously, the outfit restraining her massive breasts has a pair of arrows that shout “insert cock here”). Then there’s an unrelated younger girl trying to sneak off, the town guards who catch her, the random guy who sees Our Slackers running around causing trouble, and holy fuck is this cast getting big and we’re only 16 minutes into a 48-minute double episode.

Worse, apart from the exposed skin that the camera zooms in on, I’m not finding Our Barely-Restrained Airhead very likeable. They keep giving her heroic camera shots as if she’s making profound statements and achieving great deeds, when the only thing she’d actually win if the writers weren’t on her side is a Darwin Award.

Verdict: I stopped watching less than halfway through. I don’t know if I’ll finish this mass of vomitous exposition and unfounded optimism, much less watch more episodes.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2, episodes 1-3

First up, everyone but the two leads gets to go on a comic-book side adventure, about half of which was spoiled in the trailer. I have no idea why the medical team shoots up and beats up; that’s not the fan-service I’m looking for.

Second, Our Lead Characters return for a courtroom drama that is heavy on the 21st-century race/lgbtqroflmao allegory and light on, well, anything else. Hopefully they can now stop writing about Illyrian Pride Month for the rest of the series.

Third, beings with superior genetics should sleep nude; is that too much to ask for, especially now that Paramount+ is merging with Showtime, the network that put boobs into Stargate? That aside, the brief La’angirie-service helped… distract from… her partner’s lack of… experience at playing James T. Kirk (his performance is fine if you just treat him as Some Guy Named Jim, and much better than he was in the previous season). I’d say this was the best of the three.

Verdict: other than the promised crossover with the animated Trek series, I’m looking forward to this show.

(Llenn-service is unrelated)

Tears Of The Kingdom, playthrough 2

Before I knew it, I’d run out of shrines and lightroots, and the only major thing left to do was go fight the Big Bad. Instead, I started over on a different user profile (“hi, Drew!”), and took advantage of things I’d learned, like how to quickly get the Hylian Shield and Master Sword, and most importantly, how to really use the new powers, which at first glance look less useful than the ones in BotW, but in fact are much subtler and synergistic. I also knew where to look for the Glide armor, although I ended up doing the challenges in reverse order.

I suspect that when I go back to the original save, the final battle will be fairly trivial with maxed-out stats, fully-upgraded armor, and an inventory full of combat goodies, so I’m going to try to get to it a lot sooner on the second save.

Unrelated, Nintendo announced two upcoming amiibo, but people who data-mined the source already figured out the serial numbers, so you can burn your own and use them today. The Gerudo King amiibo is seriously OP, frequently dropping 41-damage Gloom Swords. Fuse them to any Gerudo weapon and you add double damage, which will one-shot most enemies early on.

(amiibo drops progress more easily than in BotW; you just need to finish the first Robbie quest in the Depths to unlock good weapons, bows, and shields, as well as plenty of buff/cash foods; getting the shrine sensor is actually more difficult, since you need to finish at least one of the temples to unlock that quest chain)

Witcher 3: Endgame, episodes 1-5

They’ve promised to replace the lead actor next season, which really drives home how much this show depends on One Man Who Gets It. Expect season four to be canceled before it airs.

I may binge these over the weekend; it depends on how the on-again-off-again thunderstorm predictions pan out. I got enough wind Thursday night to take down tree branches and scatter the landscaper’s seed-protecting straw matting a good distance, but not much in the way of actual rain. Every time I look at the weather forecast it’s different, but at least we didn’t get choked with Canadian Climate Arson fallout on Friday, so that’s progress.

(unrelated patriot is setting off fireworks)

One of these things is not like the other…

Random much, Amazon?

(classical reference)

I Get To Be A Jerkass Hero Again! episodes 1-2

I gave Summoned to another world… again a try, so you don’t have to. Let me sum up: Our Hero is an overpowered arrogant prick who treats everyone like NPCs. I did not enjoy spending time with him.

Late Boomer episode 3

Okay, we’re done here. The overextended joke this week is about a lovestruck loserboy stalking the prettiest girl in town. This may sound familiar, since it’s continuing from last week, where it wasn’t any more interesting. The highlight of the episode was Megumin shooting rubber bands at a taunting spider. No reason for it, it just happened.

Verdict: plonk

Café Hooters episode 3

They reduced the amount of skin and underwear to make room for a bit of story. Not sure how I feel about that, especially since their storytelling method involves a lot of shouting. They did still manage to flash some premium panties by having Snidely Whiplash show up to trash-talk Grandma in a manner so over-the-top that the entire cast was ready to go medieval on his ass, with customers cheering them on. Also, literal meme.

Verdict: this will never be a heartwarming story, no matter how often they reference Our Dead Grandma. $10 says the big reveal is that she hand-picked the girls as Our Dickish Hero’s Bride Variety Pack.

Next season?

At least Ryza should be decorative. That is the most positive thing I can say about what’s been announced so far. The most negative thing would be Spy Classroom getting a second cour…

(the least-used element of the show…)

On the bright side…

Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom comes out May 12, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 comes out in June. And I’m sure eventually they’ll finish airing NieR…

A Spam email? In my inbox? Inconceivable!

I haven’t had spam make it all the way to my inbox in over a year, but this one somehow got through. The From header claimed it was from Intuit Quickbooks, the To header was to my kickstarter-specific email address (hacked or scraped from their site), the body was an invoice from Geek Squad, and the attached PDF was almost certainly infected with something. It looks like they’re exploiting a link-redirection feature in sendgrid to launder their links through an Intuit URL.

I’ve gotten three similar ones since then, but after marking the first, the rest ended up in the junk folder.

Konosuba Explosion episode 2

Well, somebody must have thought that was funny.

Verdict: more entertaining than watching paint dry, which is enough to make it one of the best shows of the season so far. Wish I were kidding.

Goddess Café Harem episode 2

This week’s message is: Buy the Bluray. I expect this to be every week’s message, because the primary and perhaps only draw here is the girls and the amount of underwear and skin they show. Our Jerkass Hero is lucky he hasn’t been killed yet by the free show; Our Evil Twintailed Vixen nearly did him in with a flash of premium panties while he was halfway down a flight of stone stairs.

Verdict: should have killed him when they had the chance.

(unrelated maid is sufficiently stacked for this show)

I finally got around to using up a bunch of visa/mastercard gift cards from my birthday and Christmas, as well as two other unexpired ones that were left over from the move (refunds from service providers). I’ve always hated these things, until I discovered that you can just add them to your Amazon account and use them to reload the built-in gift card.

Blueboard’s Ghost

Blueboard is “Groupon for spot bonuses lazy managers”, so they can reward employees with something other than money, without revealing a precise amount. The rewards are highly concentrated to a few popular urban areas, so outside that you get generic “experiences” or the chance to donate to some left-wing cause. I had two of these sitting around cluttering my inbox, both from 2021, and the “experiences” were worthless even when I was visiting my sister in Chicago.

So now I’m getting 4 pints of gourmet ice cream per month for three months. Twice.

Konosuba Explosion episode 1

They spent money on animating the first episode, including the big boobs that every girl has except for Our DFC Mage. With a triple scoop for the Macguffin who revealed the power of explosion magic to her.

Verdict: busty schoolgirls, and Megumin. And excessively self-conscious wackiness.

Goddess Café Harem episode 1

In which they waste no time announcing that you should Buy The Bluray, introducing five lusciously-shaped girls in carefully-detailed lingerie, with at least one of them giving Our Cranky Hero the Full Monty. Right before she knocks him out with a naked roundhouse kick where the glowing censorship bars track her every move. So, exactly what I expected from the trailers.

Verdict: pave paradise, put up a parking lot shave paradise, leave just a landing strip.

(unrelated melonpan goddess demonstrates the subtlety of the fan-service in this show)

R.I.P. Wonderduck

Well, shit.

Bad spam, no sex toy!

Someone manually posted a spam comment in the wee hours Friday morning. It didn’t accomplish anything, of course, since the comments here don’t get indexed by search engines, and I was able to delete it with a single click when I received the email notification. It was at least thematically appropriate, hawking toys-for-boys on one of my recent cheesecake posts. This is a refreshing change from my email spam, which is almost entirely in Arabic these days.

(fully-operational toys for boys are unrelated)

Speaking of unrelated,

Only one more week to get a $50-$100 rebate on new Smith & Wesson firearms. If you’re near a RangeUSA franchise, they’re doubling the savings with their own gift card through the 27th. Be sure to pick up something in the M&P line, so that you know you’re getting a certified weapon of war (according to an ignorant tool in the Illinois legislature).

(rebate is in the form of a visa gift card, which takes 8-10 weeks to arrive; offer does not apply to Thorn Princess models)

Farm Harem episode 12 (fin)

In which They Never Went There. Ru has her baby, everyone celebrates, and despite all the hints (and the clear thrust of the source material), none of the other haremettes starts working on baby-making (modulo one ambitious but underaged wolf girl who tries to tap into the new village currency). It’s just a feel-good wrap-up to the series, with no hooks for another season.

Verdict: too many panned stills, but the vast oddly-platonic harem was certainly easy on the eyes.

Twin Peaks episode 12 (fin)

The resolution to the big fight was unnecessarily melodramatic, but it ended on the slow-life side, with the family intact. Where Lady Hero Lady’s Tank Girl found a new top in the middle of battle, I have no idea, but it meant that fan-service was muted until the reunion at the end, when Our Mighty Mama welcomed Her Heroic Hubby home with a titty rub and a cracked spine.

Verdict: I’d have been happier if it had stayed entirely on the slow-life side of the line, but at least all the flashy conflicts were resolved by Dariel being A Good Man.

(fan-artists never really embraced this show, so here’s the Actual Best Girl from Immoral Guild and her pre-teen daughter)

…and I’m all out of anime until April 5th, when I’ll give Megumin and Yunyun a chance.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss water policy…

1. Stop building power plants, for decades.
2. Don’t maintain the grid, for decades.
3. Mandate electric cars, Real Soon Now.
4. Ban gas furnaces and water heaters, Even Sooner.
5. “Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior”

Burying the lead lede

I happened to be perusing the manual for North American Arms’ popular 22-caliber mini-revolvers, and found the following statement:

Any .22 caliber Winchester Magnum RimFire (WMR) ammunition can be used in this Magnum mini-revolver – EXCEPT “PMC” & “ARMSCOR PRECISION” BRANDED .22 CALIBER AMMUNITION (Magnum and/or LR), WHICH HAS RESULTED IN OUT-OF-BATTERY DISCHARGES. WARNING! DO NOT USE ANY “PMC” or “ARMSCOR PRECISION” BRANDED AMMUNITION IN ANY NAA® Mini-Revolver!

That’s a surprisingly direct statement about the quality control of two well-known ammunition companies. As a general rule, red ink in product manuals is the direct result of a lawsuit, but to include one that could itself cause a lawsuit suggests that they’ve documented some serious problems.

(they also tell you to avoid using ammunition labeled as “varmint”, warning that it’s usually loaded hot and designed for rifles, but it’s not clear if they mean that varmint ammo exceeds SAAMI specs and is effectively +P)

Carnival Row season 2, fin

TL/DR: they threw the kitchen sink into a blender. For one brief shining moment they rose above the muck and stated quite clearly that socialism is built on equal parts tyranny and murder, but then they remembered that the show was set in a city-state run by racist colonizers, and the only thing that makes them better than socialists is that they’re more into strained allegory than mass slaughter.

The one thing that surprised me is that throughout both seasons, they managed to not call anyone a “filthy son of a critch”, even though Our Half-Blood PrinceInspector literally is one (seriously, they spend a lot of time covering Orlando Bloom with mud and blood). Speaking of which, I don’t think they ever explained how “critch” came to be the catchall term for all the races of the fae and anyone who had (coughcough) “one drop of blood”.

(picture is unrelated, but hey, how often do we get something new from Sukabu)?

Farm Harem episode 11

A Day In The Life With A Pregnant Wife. You know what this means, don’t you? Monologing! Our Hero literally walks us through his routine from waking to sleeping, with random village encounters and lots of panned stills of the cheesecake. Surprisingly, it’s implied that they’re not all taking turns riding the divine tool to put buns in ovens. Disappointing, that.

Verdict: really slow-playing the birds and bees, still; it’s like they’re pretending only Ru and Tia are getting any action, and Our Power-Tool Hero spends most nights alone. This is not the way the source material tells it.

Twin Peaks episode 11

In which I could’ve done without a giant fight episode, but at least everyone stayed in character, which made for some lighter moments, mostly delivered by Our Demon General Swimsuit Model, and a bit of mild fan-service delivered by Lady Hero Lady’s Tank Girl, who goes toe to toe with a dragon and only loses her outer layer of clothing.

Verdict: wrap it up quick, please, and get back to the slow life.

NieR episode 8

Okay, so Our Chipper Hacker In Short Pants is walking into a trap while Our Floral-Breasted Battle Maiden is being out-serviced by Our Bikini-clad Jackass Jackass, and Our Dominant Beefcake Robot has disappeared while His Effiminate Brother finally does what he’s told, and it doesn’t matter anyway because we’ll forget all this shit by the time the rest of the season finally airs, after the sweatshop spread Covid and delayed production. Again.

Verdict: thank goodness for less robot-voice.

[this late update brought to you by a took-longer-than-intended Artifactory upgrade, and I’m including the most entertaining error message from one of the problems we ran into, for anyone else who runs into it. TL/DR: pause federation for the affected repos on both sides, turn it back on, then push the config from A to B]

School Live! Letters

What do you do after saving the human race from a zombie apocalypse? There’s now a final volume of the School Live! manga, following the lives of Our Survivor Schoolgirls, growing up and getting closure in the slowly-recovering world. Very well done.

Metaphor alert!

Illegal aliens kill bald eagle for food.

Illustrated Manual

Well, that’s one way of telling people what the gloves are good for.

Carnival Row season 2

The best news about the two episodes that were released this week is that they’re pruning side-plots by pruning characters. Having Our Half-breed Hallucinating Hero turn into a completely different character as the bodies pile up doesn’t really improve the situation, though, and the words “desperate flailing” pretty much sum up the overall tone of the writing.

Farm Harem episode 10

In which finally!

The bulk of the episode revolves around three conniving schoolgirls and a neglected princess, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we also add some dark elves to the harem, a new dungeon to the map, a fertility drug for the elf cheerleaders, and Our Voluptuous Vampire Vixen discovers that biting isn’t the only way to breed.

Verdict: okay, that’s one baby on the way.

Twin Peaks episode 10

This week, Our Two Dads abandon The Avengers to join My Three Grandpas, followed by The Attack Of The Insanely Jealous Second Son.

Verdict: still on the right side of the slow-life line.

(Clara’s apples just can’t compete (classical reference))

Nier episode 7

I’m really sick of the robot village, because far too much of the narrative is delivered in heavily-distorted mechanical voices that give me a literal headache. And then a wild A2 appears, but Our Heroes forgot to pack their pokéballs.

Verdict: this is not the hot girl-on-girl action I was looking for.

The upcoming 20th anniversary Pretty Cure All Stars movie will feature all 77 of them. None of whom I could put a name to.

Panty-Fighter Goddess Maid Café Harem

Based on the fan-service-heavy trailer, The Café Terrace And Its Goddesses will be filled with eye candy, but the guy at the center of the harem will spend half the season being an annoying prick. Or maybe we’ll get lucky and Truck-kun will send him off to another world and the girls will just run the place themselves.

(this is a day for mostly-unrelated pictures)

Why you should carry a Fluffy Bunny Burglar Pillow in .45 Safety Cuddle:

Illinois state rep claims putting “M&P” on the slide makes a gun a weapon of war. Someone should buy this assclown a box of Grape Nuts.

Farm Harem episode 9

In which Our Senior Wolfgirl defends an oppressed minority, a well-fed harem is a happy harem, a merchant lines his pockets after finding dry trousers, Our Topless Snake Girls establish relations-but-not-the-naughty-kind, Our Outplayed Mayor loses his pants, Our Drunken Dragon’s ploy is revealed, and the latest haremette is Our Spinster Dragon Lady. Not necessarily in that order.

Verdict: our one chance to see boobs, and the mayor orders the snake girls to cover up? And this is not a buy-the-bluray-tease sort of show. Related, why the shortage of redheads in this harem? I cry foul!

Twin Peaks episode 9

A Very Special Episode: Dariel’s Daddy Issues. Also, Our Demon General Swimsuit Model nearly gets herself killed by being a total airhead, but fortunately only ends up wetting herself in terror again. Our Lady Hero Lady can sympathize, after discovering what it’s like to get on the wrong side of Our Former Hero. Now, as long as they don’t reveal that Our Mighty Waifu is secretly Our Un-Orphaned Mayor’s half-sister, things should turn out okay. In other news, the demon lord has hidden depths.

Verdict: they’re walking a fine line with the serious bits, but managing to stay on the slow-life-with-giant-boobs side.

(running out of relevant pics for this show, so here’s a good-sized pair… of glasses)

Nier episode 6

In which The Resistance goes viral.

Verdict: they really need to crank out some more copies of those older models. And I like the way they spiced up some of 9S’ exposition by framing it with a closeup of 2B’s boob.