Potato-kun’s Dungeon Chibis, episode 4

I think it’s important to note that when Our Exhausted Potato tripped and fell onto Our Hot Naginata Gal and friends, he did not touch boob. Not with his head or his hands. It doesn’t even qualify as a meet-cute, because when they get teamed up for the dungeon-crawl event, he doesn’t even remember them. Now, how he’ll handle bringing out the chibis in front of strangers, with other parties all exploring the same floor, is a question for next week.

Meanwhile, he’s lied himself into a corner with Our Gullible Crush-chan, committing himself to what he fails to realize is a date.

Verdict: honestly, the worst thing about this show is believing that Crush-chan is actually falling for the stories he makes up to convince her that he’s not visiting the dungeon. It would be refreshing if she were to reveal that she’s not completely fooled.

Pom-Pom Girls, episode 3

Apart from Parkour-chan’s casual relationship with gravity, the least-believable thing about this show is that Our Smoochy Brazilian Blonde Bombshell’s youtube channel wasn’t getting any views. She must have had the camera pointed the wrong way.

Speaking of Parkour-chan, we learn that her emotionless face hides a social-anxiety complex that differs from Komi only in that when she does speak in complete sentences, it always comes out brutally honest.

Her awkward relationship with Our Fairy Princess turns out to be composed of mutually embarrassing mutual admiration, in an I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-yuri way. In other news, Our Genki Gal’s worrying and untreatable PTSD was basically cheered away, and the episode ends with the gals practicing their new routine to a new song. By the way, they hired a professional cheer school for the show, and it shows.

Verdict: they’re doing a good job of developing the girls, but the only real setbacks were just demolished this week. PTSD? Gone! Bad singing? Gone! Parkour Gal’s reluctance? Gone! Hell, at this rate, Wheels will be back on her feet and join the squad in time for the last episode.

Red Cat Ramen, episode 3

Nice and mellow. Human-chan shows off her graphic-design skills, proving that she’s not just a pretty face. A well-known chef enjoys his meal, proving that Our Red Cat isn’t just a purrty face. And then Human-chan does something nice for Our Dishwasher Repairman, proving that he is a pretty face.

Verdict: first actual laugh-out-loud moment this week.

(they did briefly put Human-chan into a maid outfit last week, but mostly she’s wears sweats in the back room and her dish-ninja stagehand costume up front)

Cosplay Haremettes, episode 3

Our Manic Pixie Cosplay Girl is so excited to have a partner that she creates two new matching costumes overnight. In fairness, they have approximately a handkerchief’s worth of fabric between them, which is good for us (as is the changing scene), but bad for Our Potato-kun’s blood flow, as his determination to stay true to his 2D waifu is tested by a pair of mostly-naked hotties touching each other. Naturally their costumes get tangled together and he has to pop their tops to get them loose, nosebleeding him half to death.

Verdict: well-drawn cheesecake, unlikely to be fully upgraded for Bluray. Presence of $POTATO still the main drawback.

(their tops provided slightly more coverage than this, until they came off, but the rest is about right)

Furry Earth, episodes 1-2

I mentioned in the comments that I watched the first episode based on Mauser’s recommendation, and found the girl’s application to join the Dirty Pair worthy of interest. The thing that jarred me out of the story was the too-familiar voice of Cat Daddy, who’s been getting a lot of work recently, most visibly to me as Belgreive the Red Ogre. Our Fearless Furless Heroine was recently the nimble tsuntail in Kaiju 8, but that didn’t hit me the same way. It was just hearing him in the adoptive-father role again so soon that did it.

As for episode 2, I’m glad they made it clear that her giant sword is magically self-sheathing, so we don’t have to worry about her getting sliced to ribbons while cuddling it at night. Pity the bath scene was completely without service, although it at least establishes that she’s not flustered by discovering a male in her tub.

Verdict: Apparently the source non-light novels were released over 20 years ago, which explains why the show’s not saturated with trendy manga, game, or light-novel tropes. This also means that I have no idea where it might end up, or what stops it will make along the way. Refreshing, that.

(Fran can relate to the struggles of a swordsgal in a racist world)

Dungeon People, episode 3

Girls just want to have fun. For Our Dungeon Boss Belle, that means hanging out with Our New Hire Clay. For Clay, it means getting in some training, this time as a monster fighting adventurers. For us, it means learning that this won’t be her first time.

Verdict: cute and relaxing. Just the thing for a day when half the Enterprise Windows boxes in the world went down. I gather that some employees at my current place have IT-controlled Windows laptops that were impacted, but they sent me a Mac, so I was fine, and it didn’t affect our VPN or LDAP servers at all.

Shy 2, episode 3

Our Hot Ninja Princess exposits on the story arc while Her Annoying Ninja Boyfriend insists on dragging her home, before just giving up and hanging around. Maybe he wanted to peep on her shower scene, which was protected from the viewers by the power of Buy The Bluray. Whose shower? Oh, she’s spending the night with Our Shy Hero Shy, which makes Our Best Girlfriend so jealous that she shows up to make it a threesome. Well, Uno-playing sleepover, anyway, although Princess did invite Teru to join her in the shower…

By the way, Princess is a manipulative little minx, coaxing Teru into holding her unsheathed sword before mentioning that it will reveal all her secrets. Including her secret identity. Which is good, because the plot depends on her contacting one of the heroes.

Verdict: contrived, but 90% of the episode is cute girls hanging out together and developing their characters. It’s only at the end that Dark Sword Princess and Dipshit Monologing Head Villain ruin the fun.

(she has Teru hold the sword by the blade, and doesn’t even wipe off the sweaty handprints after; I didn’t know this was going to be a horror series 😁)

Isekai Fail, episodes 1-2

The only thing I liked about this was the nameless busty catgirl. The joke about dragging him around in a coffin wore out really fast; someone needs to introduce these gals to the concept of the wheel.

(I kinda wonder how his real-life grandchildren feel about how he’s being portrayed, but not enough to look)

Hardware true random number generators

Years ago, my long-standing interest in promoting entropy led me down the path of little USB dongles that exploit an assortment of physical processes to generate high-quality real random numbers on demand (because I don’t have room for the Lava Lamps).

The first one I bought to play with is still available, but quite slow, delivering data at 400 Kbits/sec: TrueRNG3. It’s also the easiest to use on any platform, since it mounts as a USB serial port and you can use anything to read bytes from the device.

The ChaosKey delivers at ~5 Mbit/sec, and integrates into /dev/random on Linux and OpenBSD, but if you want to access it directly, you’ll need to build their tools. Problem: it’s no longer being produced. Other problem: the tools are pretty crude; you may need to use sudo, and you should always use --cooked to get quality output (ent reports that the default --raw output is 21% compressible, which is not good).

The best current production devices appear to be from TectroLabs, and are available on Amazon. Their cheapest product, the SwiftRNG LE, promises to deliver quality random bytes at 29 Mbits/sec, and their tools are more sophisticated and better-documented than the abandoned ChaosKey code. Their API code compiles on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and you can set up the Linux device driver to poll multiple units.

The files still generated daily by random.org are fun to play with, by the way, but you need to actually store them somewhere. The disk space isn’t a big deal any more, but any code that uses them directly has to ensure you never replay an old file.

Dear Gruber,

Stick to giving Apple execs rimjobs. Gun control is waaaay outside your core incompetency, and your severe TDS showcases your allegiance to the core Leftist values of hatred, intolerance, and bigotry. (no link)

Is this really new?

As the damning facts pile up about the Secret Service’s multiple kinds of failures that made it possible for a 20-year-old slacker to come within a literal inch of murdering Trump, I’m left wondering if they’ve been that incompetent for a long time, and as with other federal agencies, we’re only finding out about it now that it’s too big to completely cover up.

I can only hope that Trump’s first day back in office is a blizzard of executive orders, wholesale firings, and release of classified documents.

Unicorn Chaser

The Pom-Pom girls have a quite appealing OP animation (even with a little bit of gainaxing), although I think Girls Generation did it better…

Potato-kun’s Dungeon Chibi Adventure, episodes 1-3

This sucked far less than expected. I can’t explain why. Maybe it’s the way Our Hero has a healthy home and school life, complete with supportive friends, a cute girl-next-door whose crush he’s oblivious to, and parents who treat him well. Maybe it’s the professionalism of the fully-dressed busty guild receptionist dodging the stereotype. Maybe it’s the way he treats the chibi summonettes as (extremely powerful) little sisters without a hint of lolicon interest. Maybe it’s the slow reveal of why Crush-chan doesn’t want him going into the dungeon. Maybe it’s just the hope that Hot Naginata Gal and friends show up frequently, as promised in the OP.

It’s definitely not the music, production quality, or CGI integration. Or the oversized irises that are often drawn as lifeless circles. Or Kana Hanazawa snorting helium.

(Our Hero might not have a lolicon, but the ED animation does…)

Pom-Pom Girls, episode 2

Cute cheer girls facing cute cheer setbacks. Lead Gal has a touch of PTSD, Best Friend faces a bunch of PT, Fairy Princess sang so badly that Parkour Gal fell out of a tree, etc, etc.

Verdict: so far, Pom-Poms beat Pon-Pons, and I made it all the way through that show…

(Crunchyroll is not quite simulcasting this one; they release it several hours after it airs in Japan)

Trickle-Down Journalism

The Usual Suspects really don’t want an honest discussion about the attempt to assassinate Trump. Accountability and honest reporting are in short supply, which shouldn’t surprise anyone any more. I’m going to give it another 48 hours before accepting most of the fog-of-war “facts”; for now, it’s sufficient that someone came way too close to throwing the entire country into violent turmoil. And, sadly, that an innocent was murdered in the process.

Unrelated unicorn chaser:

Red Cat Ramen, episode 2

This week, Our Helpful Human gets to work the front of the house, and (some of) the cats agonize over how to make her fit in, until they realize that the customers don’t care that there’s a not-cat doing the dishes. If anything, one of them’s jealous that she doesn’t get to work there.

Verdict: It’s growing on me. It doesn’t hurt that Human-chan is cute and secretly stacked.

2 Outta 3 Ain’t Bad, episodes 1-2

(classical reference)

Our Otaku Potato-kun spent the first episode overcoming his fear of 3D-girl cooties, gradually warming up to the idea of having an actual friend with shared interests who just happens to be female, until he sees her perfect cosplay of his One True Waifu. And then his helping hand casts off her top and he gets a handful of S-rank titty. He may never wash that hand again.

In the second episode, Haremette #2 arrives in style as the perfect teen model, with half the bust and twice the legs of #1. After teasingly showing him everything but what’s under her lacy panties, we flash back to their playground past, discovering that she’s been madly in love with His Nerdly Majesty for ten years, to the point that her entire look, personality, and career have just been prep for this dere/tsun/dere reunion. Fortunately, Haremette #1 wants to recuit her for team cosplay, so the jealousy will only go one direction until she figures out that she’s hot for Potato-kun as well.

Note: he gets to see the goodies; we do not, and the covering looks like it would survive a Bluray upgrade.

Verdict: the only value Potato-kun brings to this is acting as a stripper pole for the girls to wrap themselves around. I’d prefer an actual stripper pole. Or an actual potato. Reviewers accusing him of misogyny are revealing more about themselves than about this thinly-written loser.

Side note: Model Gal is lucky her first photographer took rejection well; the lack of assistants in his studio strongly suggests that his motives for approaching her were at best half-honorable. Sure, some of Pompeo Posar’s famous centerfolds were girls he picked up on the street and photographed alone, but this poser was no Posar.

Dungeon People, episode 2

Our New Hire uses her Mad Skilz to help restock the dungeon, after making a save point and showing off not quite enough of her healthy young body. The light bars would normally suggest that you Buy The Bluray, but I don’t think this is the sort of show to go there. Now, if they were to start foreshadowing a Secret Dungeon Hot Springs episode, and revealed that Our Administrative Loli is (much) older than she looks…

Verdict: quite soothing after the shouty cosplay harem.

(actual relevant fan-art; this is unlikely to happen again)

(haven’t watched Spice Of Waifu yet; I’m just not in the mood for it)

Pom-Pom Girls, episode 1

Parkour Does Not Work That Way. Also, how exactly do all the girls dye just the underside of their hair? Anyway, if you can suspend disbelief about schoolgirls whose jumping (and, more importantly, landing) abilities make Chell look flat-footed, this looks like a straightforward underdog sports story where six girls come together to try really hard and overcome all obstacles. So, cute cheer girls doing cute cheer things on the way to a cute cheer competition, while managing to keep their cute cheer school uniforms from showing off their cute cheer panties.

Verdict: I can’t decide if using magical parkour and weird hair to distract attention from the story is a good thing or a bad thing.

Meanwhile, here are six cute train girls doing cute train things:

Shy 2, episode 2

First half is a standalone school-mystery story, with Our Shy Gal hanging out with a new girl we’ll probably never see again. Second half introduces another new girl, but this one’s a keeper, since she’s in the credits. Teru and Iko lead her through a montage of fun things to do, until the foreshadowed petty crime spree breaks the spell and leads Our Slashy Runaway Rich Girl to make a few confessions. And then A Wild Ninja Appears.

By the way, when they hang out together in street clothes, Teru’s definitely the butch in this Obvious Oblivious Yuri Couple.

Verdict: more non-super time like this, please; they need to build up enough goodwill to make it past the Kufufu that is sure to infest the plot soon.

Robo-Waifu, episode 2

So, Our Domesticated Waifu is too short to reach the sink without a footstool, has high-powered solar-panel hair and a built-in mini-fridge/heater, all of which suggest she’s not originally designed for household use. And yet, mere moments after it starts raining, she’s down to 15% battery life and collapses on the ground. If it weren’t for the magic hair, she wouldn’t even have been able to walk to the park and back in the first place, and yet claims that carrying a heavy backpack full of cooking supplies would not affect her range at all.

In other words, her capabilities are completely plot-driven, and make no sense whatsoever.

Verdict: I stopped watching after the collapse. Dunno if I’ll pick it back up.

(…and I’m outta here!)

Pom-Pom Girls

Delay of cheer. Two hours late for the “simulcast”, Crunchyroll just put the stub page up.

I’ll use the pon-pon girls as a placeholder…

Meanwhile, confirmed for the fall season…

• Shangri-La Frontier 2
• Gun Gale Online 2
• Isekai Loner: teaser says “super shouty”, source says “Incomprehensible OP Hero”, site says lots of cute girls, J says “fan-service screenshots with sound muted, maybe”.

(Apothecary Diaries 2 is “sometime in 2025”)

Red Cat Ramen, episode 1

Our Human Girl gets hired as back-room support staff at a cross between a ramen shop and a cat café. That is, the cats run the place, and the customers are there as much to see them as to eat the food. The human’s primary job is grooming the cats to reduce the amount of hair that gets into the food.

Not much to it, really, but it’s not angsty or shouty, and they’ve hired some familiar voices for the cats. Boss cat sounds exactly like gruff detective Kei Matoba from Cop Craft, which may be too distracting for me. The waitress is voiced by Rie Kugimiya, and the shy tiger by Saori Hayami, but neither performance does much to make the characters interesting, which I blame on the writing. Surprisingly, Our Human Girl’s voice is brand new to anime, and does a good job of making her appealing.

Verdict: I wasn’t expecting much, and it didn’t deliver much, but I made it all the way to the end.

Dungeon People, episode 1

Simplified Cute Girls Doing Simplified Cute Things In A Simplified Cute Dungeon. The minimal art style is straight from the manga, with the dungeon’s CG nature mostly being revealed by the camera movements. In a twist from the usual formula, Our Thief-Class Heroine is the emotionless one, while Our Legal-Loli Dungeon Boss is ultra-perky. Their voice actresses are also subverting expectations, with their most recent visible roles being Shuna/Marcille/Animalia and Lavine/Romantica/Lady Black, respectively. M.A.O will be along soon, along with some very familiar male voices (1, 2, 3, 4).

Verdict: off to a good start.