Beast Tamer 3

In which we answer the question, “what if someone remade Dog Days as a light-hearted slave-harem comedy without the isekai element?”.

Also apparently without the MCSAs. In fact, it’s pretty much a fan-service-free zone; Our Skirted Haremettes even possess powerful anti-upskirt magic.

Anyway, after two episodes with the catgirl-waifu, we apparently get two with the dragon-waifu. Note that after worrying last week that acquiring her powers might burn out Our Tamer’s nervous system, Our Catgirl doesn’t seem the least bit concerned about him doubling the amperage by adding a dragon; He’s Just That Good.

Hoe Harem 1-3

More officially, Raising my farming skills somehow made me powerful.

And by powerful, they mean “godlike”, because his perfectly ordinary fantasy world has status screens that everyone can use, and that give clear numbers showing him to be off the scale, enough so that within minutes of getting his DLC upgrade, he rescues the local princess in a way guaranteed to set fire to her panties. To which he is of course oblivious.

Why did I watch this? Because there was a lot of dead time in the Confluence upgrade I ran on Saturday (dumping and reloading the DB to upgrade from Postgres 9.6 to 14, rsyncing the shared-home content, running the upgrade, reindexing, etc, etc).

Also, the haremettes are cute, particularly short-haired heroine-wannabe Ruri, who hasn’t shown up yet, sadly.

Note that the one who glomps him in the OP is not a haremette. At least I hope not; she’s his mom.

(there’s hardly even any inept porn for this show, much less decent fan-art; then again, in the first two episodes, they really only introduced the first haremette, and episode three ends on a cliffhangerpigsticker)

When the sun’s juuuuuust right…

…I can’t close my garage door. At this time of year, that happens to be right about 5 PM.

Fortunately, I saw this twenty years ago at the old house, so I knew why the same remote control that was able to open the garage at a distance of 75 feet suddenly couldn’t close it from 6 feet away: the sun is striking the do-not-crush-things sensor. The quick fix is to tape a piece of cardboard next to it as a sunshade.

Or not leave the house while the sun’s up. 😁

Okay, “thin veneer of isekai”, but…

Flatcat for the win!

Reincarnated as a sword book 11 is currently the #1 light novel on Amazon US. It comes out a month from now.

Renai Failure 1

Love Flops is worse than I thought it would be. I made it as far as the dog scene, but did not enjoy anything that happened before that point, either. Honestly, I wish they’d have licensed Futoku no Guild instead; it would be less painful to watch, and that’s really saying something.

Urusei Yatsura 1

No. Not even with earplugs to mute the screams (theirs).

(Vermeil would look good in Lum’s outfit…)

Reborn as a mimic with amazing legs

No, seriously, this is a thing that exists. I have to admit, a mimic makes more sense than a slime.

In which Our Catgirl Heroine makes it to town, joins the Adventurer’s Guild, and acquires enough money for a room. I’d say that we’re moving really slow, but if this were the light novel, Fran wouldn’t even be in the story yet.

Our Spunky Receptionist provides most of the exposition and non-combat action this week, having squeezed herself into a uniform several sizes too small.

Floors incoming!

They’re officially showing up Monday morning to start replacing my floors.

They’re officially showing up Friday morning to move everything out of the way for the first stage, including the washer and dryer.

Which means I’ll be spending tonight and Thursday night boxing things back up that I want to be able to find again in a hurry after the work is all done, carrying them all down to the basement, and then packing to spend a few days in a hotel so I can work while they work.

Tactical Bib!

Why, yes, I did buy an “executive shirt protector” to keep my PS90 from covering me with burned powder. I also bought the snap-on brass catcher (which is less intrusive than the ones for side-ejecting guns), but that doesn’t arrive until Friday.

And, no, I don’t intend to reload the brass (I sold my old single-stage press in California, and the PS90 magazine requires special handling), I just want to be able to let friends shoot it at the range without bringing along a spare shirt.

In which Our Plucky Heroine cleans house, meets the neighbors, duels her master, picks up a girl and envies her bustline, and finally opens shop just in time to deal with a crisis! (next episode)

(still pretty much no fan-art, so this is by the light novel artist)

Router woes

Looks like both of my old Shuttle DS61 firewall routers have failing memory. I swapped the original out a while back because the SSD was failing after 8 years, but on Sunday the second box failed while I was downloading a bunch of Windows patches and game updates, limped along for a while after I rebooted it, and then failed again.

Meanwhile, I’d rebuilt the original on a new SSD, so I swapped back, and it promptly failed after a few minutes. Since each crash involved me going down to the basement, I went ahead and built a brand new one on a Protectli Vault 6 Port firewall appliance that I bought earlier this year and had just never gotten around to setting up. So far it’s been rock solid.

With the new rack in the basement, I’m thinking of buying another one and finally setting up OpenBSD’s CARP failover system. Easier than constant trips to the basement. 😁

(and this is where I praise OpenBSD for making it so quick and easy to configure new machines; I was up and running again in about five minutes on brand new hardware, since all I had to do was install the OS from USB, copy /etc from the old machine, and edit the configs to reflect the different NIC type (s/re/em/g); everything else I could do later)

I’m always up for catgirls, but I didn’t put The beast tamer who was kicked out of the hero’s party and met a super cat girl on my watchlist because it sounded like a second-rate mashup of Pharmacist & Princess and Slime-killing Witch, complete with fight-happy red dragon girl.

I was, however, bored and sleepless due to a minor reaction to the bivalent booster and a flu shot, so I watched the first episode (“Dear Crunchyroll, buy some streaming bandwidth”), and Our Cheerful Loser gets one of the most contrived meet-cutes of recent years, jumping in to rescue a catgirl from a tiger, except he can’t fight it at all and she was capable of killing it with a single blow at any time. And then she begs him to tame her, without any explanation of why this is useful or beneficial to either of them, and goes on to praise his super-duper awesome taming power that he thought was nothing special.

Coming soon: Our Taming Hero collects a busty dragon-waifu, twin loli fairy-waifus, and a loli foxgirl-waifu, all extremely powerful and inexplicably susceptible to his super taming power. There’s also a lady knight who joins up to restore the reputation of her order, but it doesn’t sound like she’s on the taming list.

Voice notes: Catgirl = Senko-san, Dragon-girl = Lola from Hidden Dungeon (also the lead catgirl in Futoku no guild and the guild receptionist in Flatcat & Sword), Fairy#1 = Lily from Zombieland Saga, Foxgirl = Kaede Foxia from Realist Hero, Knight = Emilia & Megumin & Sagiri. Our Hero’s most notable role was as Yuito in Iroduku.

Reincarnated as a sword is definitely based more on the manga than the light novels, although it’s thankfully not a page-for-page adaptation. Not that I’ll object to seeing Our Guild Receptionist And Friends providing full-frontal nudity in the bath. Just keep the Fran-service to a minimum, please; she’s 12.

No idea how far they plan to go with the story in only 12 episodes, but there are plenty of long-winded RPG-mechanic discussions in the books that can be chopped. Sword-dad is really obsessed with the stuff, but you don’t really start to get any answers about his nature until around book 9 or 10.

I’m happy with the performances of Our Heroes, but I’m not sure how much of Amanda I’ll be able to take, based on the trailers.

(unrelated catgirl is waiting for better Fran-art)

Futoku No Streaming

The cheesy fan-service harem comedy Futoku No Guild (“Guild of Depravity”), whose first episode aired today, has not been picked up by any streaming service, and there don’t even seem to be any raws floating around yet. I’m not sure if that’s a good sign, given the crap that does get licensed.

I mean, I fully expect it to be absolutely terrible based on the trailer, but that doesn’t make it worse than, say, Dungeon Slave Harem.

Why refer to Management of a Novice Alchemist by this title? Because while it didn’t come up in this episode, once she makes friends with girls closer to her age (starting next episode), she develops a major case of a-cup angst.

This episode is all setup, as every element of Our DFC Prodigy’s backstory is touched on, so they can get on with the show in episode 2. Which, given they only have 12 episodes total, is going to have to move briskly. I’ve skimmed the fan-translation that’s available, and I have no idea what they’ve picked as a stopping point; it kinda just drifts along, with the occasional crisis that they never really have trouble resolving.

(there’s basically no fan-art of this show yet (this is from the cover artist), merchandise is limited to unlicensed shipped-from-China crap, and it doesn’t look like the source has been licensed)

Demon Girl Next Door 2.12

The big finish, with Our Demon Girl bringing everyone together to solve Our Other Magical Girl’s bad-luck problem once and for all.

Special bonus Crisis Management Form transformations included:

Komi 2.10

Valentine’s Day went so well that even the presence of Katai couldn’t ruin it.

Super Harem Version + OVA

Kadokawa’s solution to releasing a new isekai show where the whole point of the original story is Our Slavehumper banging his fantasy-race slave harem every chance he gets is to release it in three versions: broadcast, harem, and “super harem”. The Bluray/DVD box sets will contain the super harem version plus bonus I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-hentai OVAs.

(platonic not-a-slave-harem is unrelated)

Cast Off!

What cheat power hasn’t been given to an isekai hero yet? I was going to say the Most Common Special Attack, otherwise known as effortlessly stripping women like anime figurines, but then I remembered Those Who Hunt Elves…

Down to the wireACH…

I got a call from the title company that cleared up the current state of the house sale: the buyers simply didn’t understand how long it takes to get money out of a 401K, their loan officer didn’t explain it to them, and their explanation to the realtor (relayed to me) reflected this cluelessness. To put the cherry on top, the 401K provider didn’t wire the money to the title company’s escrow account this morning, they’re sending it via ACH, which adds at least another day… as we go into a three-day bank-holiday weekend.

So they asked me to extend the closing date until the 6th, while hoping to be able to do it on the 5th. Their loan is approved, all the paperwork is signed, and the deal is done… as soon as they hand over the money.

My mortgage payment on the old house is due today, but not considered late until the 15th, so we don’t have to redo all the numbers based on a change in the balance. Yet.