Saya Kataoka (片岡沙耶) announces her new video in a most appealing way:

NSFW

Today’s weather conditions…

Sadly, the smoke from the Napa/Sonoma fires does not smell like wine, at least not at this distance.

The answer is “not much, really”. I bounced hard off of The Orville (which one of my friends actually thinks is great, proving that he’s taken one too many shots to the head (“Hi, Rory!”)), and there really doesn’t seem to be anything else on cable that sounds even vaguely interesting.

Restaurant To Another World

For the most part, nothing really happens in this well-drawn, slow-paced series about why a little hole-in-the-wall Tokyo restaurant really shuts down one day a week. Relationships between the owner/chef and his fantasy-world customers develop slowly, and it looks like there are even a few honest-to-gosh spoilers coming, but for the most part it just drifts along with diner-of-the-week stories and some rare mild fan-service. Next up: the restaurant gets a clothing-challenged second waitress.

Legends Of Tomorrow, season 2

Finally catching up on this show, and wondering why I bothered. I already knew most of what happens, the writers have a pretty shaky grasp of the historical eras the team visits, the main villain was more interesting when played by the other actor, Nate is dull even with powers, Vixen’s WWII-era attitudes appear only when convenient to the plot, etc, etc. I think I’m pretty much done with the Flarrowverse.

Magi?Poka

Mauser reminded me this existed and I never watched it. Short, fun, mostly stand-alone episodes, with cute character designs familiar to anyone who’s seen Hand Maid May et al. It’s a pleasant diversion.

Coming Soon

Kino’s Journey

The only new anime series that I have any interest in right now.

Alice & Zoroku

I really liked the first few episodes, but got sidetracked and haven’t gotten back to it yet. Definitely one worth finishing.

Preacher

Sometime I’ll get around to marathoning the first season, and quite possibly the second. What little I’ve seen of it has been a decent reimagining of the comic, but I just haven’t been in the mood for it yet.

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A nice example of the common use of the 吾唯足知 expression. There used to be a shop in SF Japantown who sold these basins, but not in such a nice stone.

Honestly, I’m not sure I’d want to put 5 bucks into this machine. エロ過ぎる = ero-sugiru = “too sexy”.

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Now, if it dispensed pokemon balls containing horny monster girls… oh, wait, that’s an anime plot.

“You’ve got no alternative Seymour old boy
though it means you’ll be broke again and unemployed
it’s the only solution it can’t be avoided
THE VEGETABLE MUST BE DESTROYED.”

(nonsensical, counterfactual, hate-filled) Eulogy via bongbong:

This year’s Hugo Award winners have been announced, and the prizes overwhelmingly went to brilliant women like NK Jemisin and Seanan McGuire, to the eminent satisfaction of all those who saw the right-wing, misogynist, racist campaign to make science fiction inhospitable to brown people and women, took countermeasures, and for two years in a row, demonstrated the field’s inclusiveness and commitment to quality, rather than pandering to reactionary panic over the prospect of a future that breaks with the shameful past.