Based on this week’s dénouement, the people responsible for this show have never watched a detective show. The staging, the music, the dialogue, the posing, the voice acting, it’s all trying to build up a dramatic scene by replacing detective work with two people competing to as-you-know-Bob each other in front of Our Motionless Cyberdiving Inspector. I mean, nothing says “tense standoff” like a panned still of the hallway outside while random riffs compete with the voices for your attention. And where’s Our Insightful Robo-Assistant? Out cold in a tank; he’s just evidence this week, not a character.

I didn’t finish this episode.

Parsed this wrong at first…

Reborn As A Vending Machine 2 in July

Okay, now I’ve got a third show to watch next season, alongside Call Of The Night 2 and Kaiju No. 8 2.

(I used up all the good fan-art from this show last time, so I’ll be downloading LoRAs to try out)

(classical reference)

Clueless Crafter, episode 4

We’re holding at two haremettes (Thirsty Princess and Miss Adventure), with Adventurous SideTail being deeply suspicious of what’s going on, even after the explanation. It takes seeing the results of his construction efforts for her to grasp just how over-powered and innocent Our Clueless Hero is, and she’s too boggled to fall for him like the other two.

Which is refreshing, because SideTail is also the most attractive of the bunch. She’s giving off a kind of grown-up-Misty-dressed-like-Ruby-Roundhouse vibe, and her reactions to the insanity around her are sensible.

The Mysterious Bandana And Her All-Knowing Bandana show up to pull some strings and take care of the louse who betrayed SideTail’s party, only to be surprised that Our Gym Leader Oddly-Dressed Court Mage has some strings of her own. We’re left with an ominous look at The Hot-But-Evil Priestess from Kurt’s original party, who’s apparently in a bit of a pinch.

Verdict: you really have to be in the mood for this show, since the OP hits just keep coming.

(Atelier Thighza is unrelated)

Robo-Ho, episode 3

This week, Our Ignorant Robo-Slut escalates the situation by tackling Our Reluctant Hero in the bath, giving him a close-up view of Silicon(e) Heaven (classical reference). In exchange, she gets her first look at uncensored boyhood, reveals that her AI is just as prone to hallucination as an LLM, and begins working his crank in wrong and painful ways. She loses her head as he attempts to flee her increasingly dangerous stress-testing, and then loses her head. And a leg; seems he needs more practice putting Humpy back together again.

Looks like I jumped the gun by expecting a lingerie and school-uniform parade this week. I guess she conveniently got blown up on a Friday night, and they have all weekend before their classmates find out.

(study-buddy is unrelated)

Simulcasts were late again, so I attempted to watch Moonrise. Wow, what a mistake that was. They spent a lot of money on the visuals without managing to seamlessly integrate the CGI, the tech is just there to look cool without any thought behind it, AI solved all of Earth’s problems by deporting them to the Moon and strip-mining it of all resources except the ones necessary to build a high-tech revolutionary army, and if you take a drink every time someone in this show shouts out the scenery-chewing terrorist leader’s full name, binge-watching will take on new meaning.

I will not continue to watch That Time My Family Got Killed By Bob Skylum! And I Had To Stop Being Mega-Rich Playboy Industrialist Jack Shadow And Go Cyber-Commando On The Moon With My Rich-Kid Posse While Searching For My Apparently-Not-Dead Childhood Friend.

(picture is unrelated, as I have no desire to go looking for anything that reminds me of this show…)

Slime-Killing Witch 2, episode 3

[Crunchyroll overlaid text promising “Drug/Alcohol Use, Nudity”; we did not get the promised nudity, or even alcohol. Also, they put the wrong episode’s subs up at first.]

Following up on last week’s cute busty undead catgirl, she’s now happily settled into a new life of running a game shop in the Demon capitol, and has invented the trading-card game. Next up, Our Sneaky Witch decides to go invisible to watch Best Girl Beelzebub at work, which doesn’t go quite as planned, but leads to the whole family making a visit to Bub’s lush mansion and uncovering her shameful secret. An exploration of her severely-overgrown garden (where pest control would require a boar spear) leads Azusa to a fateful encounter with… a cliffhanger.

Verdict: extra-shouty this week, but full of Beelzebub.

(hey, if they’re not gonna deliver the nudity…)

Bumpkin & Harem, episode 3

🎶 🎶 🎶
Backcountry bumpkin, what’s your function?
  Hooking up with my favorite students.
Backcountry bumpkin, how’s that function?
  I got four haremettes wanna polish my sword now.
Backcountry bumpkin, what’s their function?
  They’re just fan-service to keep horny fans watching.
🎶 🎶 🎶
(classical reference)

This week, the promised duel against the Legal Loli Head Wizard, an offer Our Teaching Hero-Daddy can’t refuse, and a duel against Super-Busty Redhead-With-Abs Third Waifu, with a special bonus flashback to her secret origin. The apparently-mandatory cliffhanger is a monster fight that, as usual, he’s going to be convinced is out of his league until he manages to defeat it and further impress Third Waifu.

First Waifu is all business this week, and there’s no sign of Second Waifu, but Magical Swordsgal Fourth Waifu shows up to apologize for accidentally siccing her boss on him. I have no idea where either of them stored that bottle.

The ED shows a fifth waifu, conveniently color-coded. Maybe I should just start calling them Super Sword Waifu Sentai by their hair color. Respectively, that would be White, Yellow, Red, Black, and Blue. I will give the show credit for making them adults. Yellow and Black seem to be the youngest, but Red is at least 25, and White’s an established career woman.

Verdict: despite my doggerel above, the fan-service shots of the mostly-underdressed harem are actually quite mild; it’s pretty much just quick flashes of T&A to remind us that they’re adult human females with the fashion sense of social-media thots trolling for likes. Unrelated, dodging Legal Loli’s fireballs and cutting giant iceballs in half is not taught in most sword schools. Also, she had loads of time to react to that charge from 40+ feet away.

(chibi GATE harem is unrelated)

A-Rank Adventure Harem, episode 14

Okay, the first half of this episode is a complete write-off, filled with world-saving exposition, blah-blah-blah. After that, however, they pick up the arranged-marriage side-plot again, leading Our Legal Loli Healer to come right out and invite Our Red-Faced Hero to join her in the hot springs bath. When that doesn’t work, she teams up with Our Hot Dark Elf Maiden and they both drag him into the tub, escalating to a double titty-rub.

All of the budget was spent on the bath scene, so I can’t complain about the indifferent character art this week. I can and will complain about the author’s need to insert another asshole party into the story to escalate the world-saving plot. And another waifu-hungry asshole trying to acquire the girls of Clover, sigh.

Verdict: y’know, the landlady looks like she’d be open to a hot-springs frolic with the gals, just sayin’. It would compensate for having to sit through the plot.

(I ordered one of each, but got an extra; I’m not sending her back (this model doesn’t have the catgirl, I’ll have to find a new one))

Advantage: anime

I am not yet bored or desperate enough to read it and find out if the flaws were in the adaptation or the source material.

I tried to borrow Sarah’s shocked face…

…but it was busy reacting to a Minnesota state employee vandalizing Teslas, just like his boss Tim Walz suggested.

Anyway, OpenAI is pretending to be surprised that their latest models make shit up even more often than the old ones. Next headline: “water, is it still wet?”

Maomao invokes the power of fruit sherbet to rescue Xiaolan from the trouble she got into, crossing her fingers that it will be enough to placate the one concubine she’s had no direct contact with. Shisui once again appears out of nowhere just in time to swipe the leftovers and hang out with her pals. Lots of fun, and a good character-building moment for Maomao as Jinshi forces her to confront her reason for helping.

Later, Gyokuyou once again demonstrates what a lucky guy the emperor is, as she makes a tough call for the sake of her unborn child. Meanwhile, things continue to stir in the background.

Unrelated, Last Bite

Thursday night, for his mere-days-away birthday, I took my brother to see Alton Brown, who was in Cincinnati for his Last Bite tour. As the name implies, this is his final national tour. As far as we know.

It was very funny, and just a little bit naughty. If one of the remaining shows is near you, go; you won’t regret it. Don’t worry if you don’t get one of the hotdogs; despite the buildup, they were nothing special.

Even more unrelated, school funding

I was carefully discussing current events with a friend, when he went off on the proposed Ohio budget that was estimated to cut $105 million from education, with $95 million of it coming out of special education. His son is autistic, and he had been informed that this will cancel all sorts of programs that benefit him.

When I was back at a computer, I looked into it. Spending and budget numbers are highly obfuscated, and I found half a dozen contradictory claims for the total funding from federal, state, and local governments. More importantly, I found nothing about how much of the money actually ends up in classrooms helping special-needs kids.

But what I did find was a lower bound for the totals in both categories, as well as the easily-missed fact that the claimed cuts were for two years, not one.

TL/DR: the cut for special-ed was ~4%, and ~0.5% for the total budget. That looks like the standard bullshit “if you don’t pass this levy, we’ll have to cut football” trick that school districts have been pulling for decades, but even with that, 4% sounds quite modest when there’s been steadily-declining enrollment for years. Especially if it’s as badly run and grift-y as most public-union-associated programs; how did we get to the point that over 16% of students are considered disabled?

“I wish I could dive into you.”

“I wish I could dive into you, too.”

I wish you’d move things a bit faster, like not starting the episode off by having the camera linger on two spear-carriers, and then cutting from Hero to Heroine with a really long scene transition. There’s letting the story breathe, and then there’s padding out the runtime.

Also the bad CGI explanation of “The Laws Of Respect” is going to be a regular intro? That’s 20 seconds of nonsense added to the credits that we could do without.

This week, Our Cyber Cops chase down an escaped villain into Retro Country, where everyone lives offline to the point of having dial telephones, providing some convenient isolation to make the plot work. The resulting confrontation is painfully awkward; have Our Heroes ever watched a police drama?

After that, everyone arrives at the correct place with precise timing, which is pretty impressive since Our Girl Detective was choked out, tied up, and left behind with a severely damaged car, and didn’t even contact anyone once she was back online. It took the power of sheer coincidence for her to show up just in time for the final confrontation (next week).

Verdict: this takes itself more seriously than the material deserves. I’ll give it another week, but I’m not really feeling it.

(Great Detective Chika is unrelated)

Don’t think I’ve told this story before…

During our 2022 Japan trip, my sister and I ate at Kyoto’s Hanaroku teppanyaki restaurant several times. Their amazing A5 wagyu is served with a tiny dish of sea salt, just right for sprinkling on top.

It’s really good salt, with a distinctive texture. My sister asked the waiter about it, and he came back from the kitchen with the words “tango salt”. Some quick googling revealed this to be sea salt harvested on the Tango Peninsula north of Kyoto.

I texted her the kanji and the search began. Grocery stores, gift shops, gourmet shops, Amazon Japan, etc. By the time we made it back to her place in Chicago, she’d bought at least half a dozen different types of salt, looking for that distinctive texture (which the restaurant had helpfully supplied a sample of…).

As I was packing up to drive back to Ohio, she gave me one of the bags from Amazon, and said “I think this one is the closest.” I immediately pointed at the sticker in the upper-left corner that read, in English, “TangoGoodGoods”; she’d found it without realizing it.

I’m reminded of this because the last time she was in Japan for work, she picked up more for both of us. And now the weather is right for grilling steaks.

I’m not springing for wagyu, though. That’s a post-lottery retirement thing.

Speaking of Japan,

A while back my sister was chatting with two friends who were planning a trip to Japan, and they asked her for advice. She pulled up the Trello board we use as a trip planner and emailed them a long list of possibilities: hotels, shopping, restaurants, sights, random fun things, etc.

Fast-forward to their return, and they called her to rave about the country and her recommendations. When she asked what they’d done, their answer was “everything; everything on your list”.

[not sure why this disappeared for a while; some sort of glitch in the Hugo run when I added a sidebar link]

This takes a while to show up, because torrents.

“They say it’s better the second time,
they say you get to do the weird stuff.”

Chorus: “We do the weird stuff!”
(classical reference)

First, we meet a female classmate who likes to draw Boy’s Love porn. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of her, if not all of her. Then Our Socially-Inept Sexbot attempts to bully Our Socially-Inept Otaku into mounting her, before revealing that she doesn’t know any more about sex than he does. Not only are the details not covered in her programming, she’s got a built-in obscenity filter on her eyeballs, so the best she can do is talk about it… with the girl who’s into BL. This has led to some confusion.

Frustrated in her attempts to fill in the gaps in her knowledge as well as the ones in her fleshlike covering, she bullies him into keeping her secret, letting her move in, and accepting the position as her “owner”. She doesn’t have a place of her own any more because of the mysterious explosion that damaged her last week, which is also the reason she doesn’t have any clothes. Pretty sure there will be a lingerie-and-school-uniform delivery service showing up next week, accompanied by long, lingering shots of her body. Admittedly, most of the show is already long, lingering shots of her body.

The credits show that her bullying is just the tip of the iceberg, with BL-Loving Gal going after him with a stun-gun and Loli roughly going after her. Science Gal And Her Amazing Friends had a brief appearance last week as someone who might end up hiring Our Hero for his tech-nerd potential, but for some reason she’s dressed up like a cosplay merc in the credits.

Verdict: I have no idea where this is going to end up, but at only 12 minutes per episode (minus standard-length credits), it’s at least not wearing out its welcome. Boy Wonder needs to adjust to his new life soon, though, so the freakouts can be replaced by more fan-service and wacky hijinks. There have been too many shows where the freakouts never end, and I’ve been deeply scarred.

Side note: the Japanese title is “Kakushite! Makina-san!!”, in kana with no kanji. There are two possible interpretations of the first word: “thus” or “hide (something)”. The episode titles so far are of the form “Kakushite, Makina-san wa …”, suggesting the “thus” usage, but the plot, such as it is, is about keeping her non-organic nature hidden.

(I don’t expect any competent fan-art for this one, so here’s some Mina)

“Please don’t tell my fans I have a Patreon”

Author Richard Roberts, whose Young Adult novels are quite entertaining, abandoned his Twitter account, stopped updating his blog, rarely updates his Tumblr, and left the dead-site links on his Amazon author page. However, he turns out to be mildly active on Bluesky, and recently mentioned the Patreon account he set up in February, which he’s posting story updates on (including his horny new sf/magic barely-legal space cadets novel).

I’m currently the only patron.

Related, I just opened Apple Books for the first time

Accidentally, since I clicked on a .epub file expecting Calibre to open, but now that I’ve seen it, I’ll never open it again. Holy jumping trouser frogs, what a terrible reading experience. First it insists on two-column mode (hiding single-column view under “accessibility”), then it dynamically reflows lines based on window width with no regard for sensible line length or spacing, and it doesn’t support a flowing, non-paginated mode. Not that Calibre’s built-in viewer is anything to read home about, but Apple actually sells books through this crap.

I haven’t found a good epub reader for Mac yet, but I’ve found a number of bad ones!

This week, Our “Powerless” OP Hero goes looking for work and picks up two men. Literally. Meanwhile, First and Second Waifu gather with Our Oddly-Dressed Mage and Our Well-Displayed Atelier to exposit about the nominal plot and come up with an excuse for the waifus to spend all their time with him.

Kurt’s new temp job is hauling loot for a small adventuring party that gets in way over their heads, and he breaks the cutie by taking out three massive iron golems, treating it as a mining problem instead of combat. Having seen too much, they swiftly get recruited into the exclusive club of Defenders Of Kurt’s Delusions.

Bonus points for a brief but timely appearance by The Mysterious Bandana And Her Faithful Bandana.

Verdict: I don’t think we’ve even come close to Peak OP yet. In fact, I’m sure we haven’t. Will this become a complete trainwreck? Stay tuned!

(no fan-art to speak of yet, so I’ll just put a loving waifu here)

Unhappy with this season? Bad news…

What’s been announced for summer so far is worse. The only things I’m willing to watch on this list are Call Of The Night 2 and Kaiju No. 8 2. Even the trashy harem shows are weak, with Private Tutor To The Duke’s Daughter exceeding the statutory limit for loli haremettes, with a ridiculously OP lead who constantly insists he’s weak before busting out never-before-seen magics.

There appears to be only one obvious kicked-out-of-the-hero-party show so far, where the biggest departure from the usual format is that the shy busty mage gal with underrim glasses is fully dressed. Real curveball there. The trailer wastes no time recruiting Our Underconfident Hero into a new party through the power of a manic pixie half-dressed twintail S-rank adventure gal. I’m heartily sick of this genre, but I kind of fear the thought of what will replace it.

Advantage: Trump

So, right after Apple spends a fortune flying planeloads of iDevices into the country to beat the new tariffs, Trump announces that they’re exempt from the new tariffs.

Meanwhile, every “market expert” explanation for what the stock market did last week has been contradicted by the next day’s explanation.

Tomorrow Never Dies:

Admiral: “What the hell is he doing?”

M: “His job.”