A Girl And Her Boxxo, episode 2

Vending Machine is defiantly low-budget, with very little animation and a whole bunch of speedlines. As compensation, the character art is well-done and consistent, especially when it comes to cute girls, chief among them Our Boxing Heroine. They’re also wasting little time on lengthy explanations and status-screen updates, reserving Our Heroine’s Box’s internal narration for the important things, like mixing Diet Coke and Mentos. This episode added a lot of recurring characters, which helped round out the story; Lammis is finally able to contribute to the community, which is doing wonders for her self-esteem.

Verdict: the camera loves Lammis almost as much as I do.

Witcher 3, episodes 2-4

2 & 3

This is a highlight reel, not a story. Too much is going on at once and being handwaved away. It’s not like the first season where the stories were split up by space and time to introduce everyone at an appropriate time in their life, which actually worked. It’s more like they’re just jumping over and around all of the connecting bits.

4

More coherent, although there are quite a few balls in the air. Including Jaskier’s.

(unrelated ninjas at play)

Level 1 With a Bullet, episode 1

Er, My Unique Skill Makes Me OP Even at Level 1, that is, and his skill is “better loot drops”, which includes “loot drops from monsters that don’t drop loot” and “an entire dungeon full of stat-increasing loot drops, but only for me”. That’s not a spoiler for the season, since it’s pretty much covered in the first episode, but what I find really interesting is that Crunchyroll invested in a same-day English dub for this show.

In a slight twist from the usual formula, Our Worked-To-Death Hero doesn’t meet a goddess until after he’s resurrected in a fantasy world, and she’s of the Senko-san loli-perfect-wife variety (Our Busty Receptionist and Our Bunnysuited Bunnygirl come later). Emily really is The Perfect Wife, and (reading ahead…) there doesn’t seem to be any interest in lewding her up into a waifu; even receptionist Erza’s healthy bustline is fully covered, leaving lethal carrot-junkie Eve to provide most of the cheesecake and innuendo for now.

There’s a bit of isekai-freakout shouting at the beginning, but Naofumi Ryota quickly gets over it and embraces his new lifestyle.

Verdict: show me the bunny!

(unrelated fetish-object’s show is unwatchable)

The Return Of Shovelware

Just as there were once floppies and CDs chock full of random downloaded clip-art and fonts, now there are Etsy sellers peddling downloadable collections of hundreds of thousands of random STL files.

(people should really think about the possibility of layer separation before printing, to avoid that embarrassing trip to the emergency room…)

Speaking of which…

…Cults3D really needs a “not stolen IP” filter. And a “disable obnoxious animations” setting. And definitely a blocklist, or at least a “hide ridiculous tranny porn” filter.

Catch-P322

The Sig P322 has an ambidextrous slide-lock, something that I appreciate as a southpaw. But there’s a catch, and the catch is that it doesn’t always catch. If you manually lock back the slide right-handed, it’s extremely stable, but if you use your left thumb, it will drop the slide if jostled even slightly. Like gently inserting a magazine, bumping the gun against something, or simply setting it down on a table.

The real fun is that when it locks back on an empty magazine, it has about a 50/50 chance of engaging left-handed, resulting in the same spontaneous slide drops.

Frozen karma

Ben&Jerry’s celebrated the 4th of July by demanding that the US give back stolen Indian land, specifically Mt. Rushmore. A local Indian chief demanded B&J give back their headquarters, which, of course, sits on stolen Indian land.

(Sonia’s fertile lands were thoroughly colonized, laying the groundwork for Zelda’s future kingdom)

Reborn as a Vending Machine, episode 1

He’s a nerdy vending-machine otaku reborn as a vending machine equipped with status screens and skill points.

She’s a super-strong cutie wearing slightly more clothing than the Dirty Pair.

Together, they fight crime hunger!

Verdict: this is exactly what I signed up for.

(combat food-service provider is unrelated)

Zelda Without Zelda

Pixiv would like you to know that Purah has a lot of new fans…

(story-wise, I find it quite interesting that Link keeps getting told about the things that Zelda has been up to for the past several years, yet in almost all cases (setting aside the spoiler), he should have been by her side for all of it; that is his job, after all, and he even gave her his house and let her replace his weapon racks with horse pictures, although it’s not clear which one of them ordered the larger bed)

Honest Headlines

Crazy BLM-activist tranny murders five, demands gun control. He must have been pissed off that he missed out on the global-warming arson spree that recently set Canada ablaze.

(Riju has a solution for this problem… in each hand)

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.