Next season’s anime?

Frieren? Potion Loli? Jailbait Witch and Loli-mom? S-rank Daddy’s Girl? Shy Supergirl? Shut-in Vampire General and Her Lesbian Maid?

Decisions, decisions…

ST:SNW, episode 10

Triple whiplash! With a season-ending cliffhanger on top! Guest starring…

Verdict: I like the OG fan-service.

(Purah’s an engineer; close enough)

Across The Spider-Verse, part 1

The spider has landed on Amazon. It lacks the magic of the first one, in part because it leaves the main story unfinished until sometime next year when the Hollywood strike is over and they have actors again. There are about half a dozen story arcs running in parallel, and only one of them has a real payoff in this movie (Gwen’s).

So maybe by next Christmas there will be a trilogy worth marathoning. Hopefully with a lot more Peni in the third part. Or Miles’ hot mom in a bikini, I’m easy.

(what do you mean, “that’s not the spider-woman I was thinking of”?; in related news, finally there’s some fan-art coming out for this show…)

Dungeon Drops, episode 6

I was doubly traumatized right away, first as Crunchyroll decided to play the dub, second as the animators loaded a revolver wrong. I don’t even want to talk about muzzle control, which Our Pistol-Packing S-Drop Hero has no concept of. Speaking of trauma, Our Perfect Loli Wife has started talking to herself as the true scope of Ryota’s logic-defying powers starts to sink in, with him developing new magic bullets and two-gun combos that cement his OP status.

Meanwhile, Our Carrot-Crazed Bunnygirl has been demoted from fan-service to comic relief, as we introduce Our Fiery Beauty, just in time for… another cliffhanger. Did I miss a memo about this week?

Verdict: in case you were wondering if there would ever be any significant fan-service, the fact that Our Busty Gourmet responded to the taste of Ryota’s watermelons by imagining herself at the beach fully dressed should give you your answer. On a final trauma note, as soon as the episode finished, Crunchyroll started playing it again in English. Sigh.

(…but not for this one, so here’s some Rory Mercury)

Good Omens fallback plan

Neil Gaiman, possibly reading the Amazon-original-budget-cut writing on the wall, has announced that he’ll finish the story in print if Amazon doesn’t buy the other half of season 2. Not sure that would help.

Another subreddit returns

r/functionalprint is back under new management, after someone petitioned the admins due to it being abandoned by the previous mods. It was immediately flooded with decent content.

(TIL that chicken shredders are A Thing, and all I could think of when I saw it was a thousand stoners upgrading their “herb grinders”. duuuude)

Apple iRony

Gruber at Daring Fireball linked to this article about designers living in a bubble.

Weak grip

Altamont Company is the officially recommended third-party grip maker for Smith & Wesson revolvers. I ordered a set of custom-made grips for my 25-2. Four weeks later, they arrived and didn’t fit the frame. They mounted correctly, but didn’t follow the curve of the exposed backstrap.

I sent them a picture, and they sent out a replacement set, along with a shipping label to return the old ones. Four weeks later, those arrived, and were exactly the same wrong shape. I sent back both sets, and got a full refund Friday.

Apparently they’ve never made grips for a vintage 25-2 before, and the frame is not quite the same shape as current production N-frame revolvers. Sigh; guess I’m stuck with the rubber Pachmayr grips it has now, until I find someone who can do the job properly.

A year ago, I spotted the trailer for a Japanese live-action adaptation of the Heinlein novel The Door Into Summer. Today, I discovered that it’s on Netflix, so I just watched it.

It hasn’t been that long since I read the book, so I think I can fairly say that they did a surprisingly good job of keeping the bones of the story intact. Perhaps the most interesting change was that they removed the whiff of “grooming a 12-year-old girl into becoming your future wife” that was in the original, and made Our Heroine Riko a 17-year-old who inherited a full set of brains from her inventor father, Our Hero’s mentor. Honestly, I figured they’d have kept that bit, because Japan.

Heavily streamlined, of course, and updated with self-aware humanoid robots. They couldn’t have Dan Soichiro spend months figuring out what had happened and how to fix it, and modern technology has long since passed the point where the novel’s inventions would look impressive on screen. In a nice touch, however, Our Hero does use a very nice drafting board to put the final touches on the patent drawings for his inventions.

Spoiler: while there are robo-girls, they do not look like this, at least not while they’re working:

Unrelated, Dear Dominos,

I think you intended this to be reassuring, but it has the opposite effect on me:

Two layers of pepperoni sandwiched between provolone, Parmesan-Asiago and cheese made with 100% real mozzarella then sprinkled with oregano.

This is one of those ambiguous phrases that leaves you wondering precisely what legal landmines they’re navigating around.

…or did anyone else see the links for “Final Star Wars Trailer” and think, “oh thank goodness it’s over”.

One of the side effects of having the power go out Saturday night was checking the Amazon app on my iPad to see what I had downloaded, and suddenly remembering that I hadn’t watched Alita yet.

I have only a very vague acquaintance with the source material, and while I could see a few seams and obvious cuts, I found the result quite entertaining. In particular, the Big Eyes that seemed off-putting in early publicity shots quickly faded into the background as Just Part Of The Character, helped by the fact that no one ever called attention to it. Honestly, the only thing I disliked is that Jennifer Connelly is in desperate need of some calories. The severe look worked for the character, but oh, what has been lost.

The usual discrepancy between media reviewers (61%) and movie-watchers (91%) once again demonstrates how irrelevant they’ve become to the whole process. (not that every movie I like gets high audience ratings; I may be the only person in the world who thinks the Sam Rockwell/Anna Kendrick flick Mr. Right is a fun romp with high rewatch value)

Around 9.5 years ago, I bought the Japanese DVD release of Otoko-tachi no Yamato, ripped it, and added a set of soft-subs I found online. There were a few minor rough spots in the translation, but it was good enough.

I recently bought the Bluray release of the film and ripped it, only to discover that there are just enough differences to render my existing subs unusable. Applying a constant offset in VLC wasn’t sufficient; it seems there are some subtle differences between the releases that will require real cleanup. For more fun, the three different subs I found on subtitledb.org just now were all missing the last third of the movie.

I’m not going to get around to it any time soon, sadly.

For anyone who really, really wants a legitimage copy and can handle Region B discs, there’s a German import on Amazon Canada with English subtitles.

Please make the next Spiderverse movie 90% Peni.

…and 60% Gwen.

Also, please make the next Spiderverse movie.

Live-action Gakkou Gurashi movie:

(via)

I, um, kind of want to watch this version.

(via)