If anyone doubted the sincerity of Lakan’s feelings about his daughter Maomao, this week’s events should blow that away. As for Jinshi’s feelings about her, well, he’s had a life-changing epiphany about just how far he’ll go. It doesn’t hurt that, at the same time, he’s growing more aware of the ongoing revelations about the former emperor that we’ve been seeing.

Fuck you, Broadcom

I can’t download the latest update for VMware Fusion because it requires “additional verification”. The form auto-fills in your profile information, but the Javascript verification does not accept single-letter names such as “J”, and does not allow you to edit the field. In fact, their entire customer-support system has had read-only profiles for a while now, complete with an FAQ. And their chatbot does not understand the problem or connect you to human beings.

Well, that’s one way to keep costs down while you destroy an acquisition.

Those are definitely not noodle arms…

The text reads “Father’s a man”. Transphobic before it was hip!

Eighties Viagra

There’s an old cartoon that I think was in Playboy. Can’t find it online at the moment, but a man was walking past a construction site for a brothel, and the sign read, “soon you too can be erected on this site”.

Amazon proposes…

… J disposes. Latest recommendation for a novel was something called Direct Descendant by Tanya Huff, which the blurb promises will be a cozy-but-eldritch mystery with a bit of romance. Oh, wait, it promises to be “Queer, cozy, and with a touch of eldritch horror mixed in just for fun”. With added boldfaced queer romance just in case you didn’t read the blurb to the end.

And to really make sure it appeals to a broad audience, the Kindle edition is $16.99. Yup, that’ll just fly off the virtual shelves. I liked the cover art, at least.

This isn’t the weird part…

spoiler

It’s the sniffing.

Things you never want to hear from the director who’s adapting a novel into a movie or series:

“I thought this work could be condensed to explore modern themes and social issues”

I’m not really seeing how that translates to “skip the first novel but constantly reference it”. When I watched the first episode, I liked that the characters were presented as a pre-existing partnership, rather than having to go through their Odd Couple meet-and-greet, but then we were expected to just accept an emotional connection that we were never shown or told about.

Now we find out that the director isn’t really even interested in adapting the novels, he’s pissing in the whiskey to make his own story. Blech.

Clueless Crafter, episode 6

Our Impenetrably-Clueless Cleaning Hero mops up the demon army and saves Our Hot-But-Evil Ex-Priestess while Our Crushing Bug-Eyed Princess uses Her Ridiculously OP Sword to take out the Big Bad and save Our Gal Who Wears The Pants In This Harem.

Perhaps next week Kurt will invent a way to animate barely-panned stills and add lip-flaps on a shoestring budget.

Verdict: really cheap, but extra-cheesy.

Robo-Ho, episode 5

Wow, this show gives new meaning to “one-trick pony”, with the humor continuing to be so centered around her easy-off leg that she can’t make it down the hallway at school without slipping on a banana peel. Twice.

That’s after Our Hapless Robo-Nerd wakes up wondering why he’s had yet another sex dream about his sexy naked clinging roommate and tries to reach the tissue box so he can jack off before she wakes up. Fortunately she wakes up before he starts, so we’re spared that sight. Although it would help correct her persistent misunderstanding about what little boys are made of.

It would be understating the case to say that my expectations for this show were low, but it’s getting hard to watch, and we’ve only reached the first day back at school. They’ve gotta do something to bring in the other two gals, and quick. At least they showed the little blue-haired one just before the end credits, but there haven’t been any sightings of merc/lab gal and her squad of robo-clones since the first episode.

Verdict: we’re nearly halfway through the show, and we’ve really only introduced Our Badly-Coupled Couple and Our Overprotective Misinformative Galpal. Not that I’m expecting major plotting in a show that’s only got nine minutes in between the credits…

(there’s basically no fan-art; this is the manga artist, showing off the weak joint that’s effectively a main character)

Slime-Killing Witch 2, episode 5

This week brings back Our Watery Tart Spirit Mama for, well, momma lessons. School, shopping, bedtime stories, reverse aging, a little light kidnapping; y’know, the usual.

Bumpkin & Harem, episode 5

Our Blue-Haired Young Pickpocket comes in from the cold, and she not only looks older than Our Legal-Loli Head Wizard, she dresses like she’s ready to graduate to adult crime. Seriously, where do these fantasy worlds come up with daisy dukes for hot gals to wear unbuttoned, when nobody else in the world seems to wear denim at all? Not that Our Hero’s Sword responds to either of them that way; he may be the only man in town who doesn’t wonder what it would be like to double-date the jailbait.

Anyway, since she’s in the ED animation with a sword, we know Blue is going to continue hanging out with Sword Daddy in some fashion. If he had the slightest inkling of exactly how Former Female Students feel about him, he’d think twice about training Yet Another Underage Treat.

Verdict: this one’s got some sass, at least; a nice contrast with the others. No redhead this week, though.

A-Rank Adventure Harem, episode 16

They blew half the episode on wrapping up the Rain-stealing-bozo B-story, so that when they finally got around to getting everyone into the bath together, they’d handed over the character art to a group of fourth-graders. They did airdrop Our New Magic Loli into the tub with them, but they forgot to bring Jamie. It’s not like she didn’t have time to travel to join them, since they made Our Hapless Harem Hero take two weeks to get home from last week’s big fight.

Verdict: it’s nice that the prince who was after Rain turned out to be a decent guy who wanted her adventuring talents, but not being able to draw the haremettes well in their moment of wet naked triumph is inexcusable. And they can’t excuse the lack of Jamie by pointing at the source material; it’s an actual trope to rearrange events in a harem comedy to get a gal onscreen early.

(proper bath scene is unrelated, dammit)

It’s father/daughter detective week, with Luomen and Maomao finding puzzle pieces in different places. Which puzzle? The big spoilery one that’s been building up since early in season one. They held back one last secret for next week, but once that cat’s out of the bag, it’s showtime.

…and if you’re not current on the show, beware major, major spoilers anywhere it might be discussed. Including new fan-art.

Unrelated, Gate manga volumes 20-21

Released together last week: 20, 21. I still think it’s a shame the light novels were never officially translated (and for a long time, the most complete English fan-translation was based on the Chinese translation), but at least the manga is now well past where the anime ended. Story-wise, it’s moving into the endgame.

Matsuri Kiritani, running on a beach, naked, in slow motion. It’s like a masterclass in Gainaxing. The Bluray is basically an animated photoshoot with terrible lighting, auto-white-balance, and cheaply-licensed music, but her personality shines through, and you occasionally get to hear her voice.

And, yes, I know, video or it didn’t happen (NSFW). The Bluray is no longer available on Amazon Japan, but the title is “Matsuri5 らぶりー☆とらべるらばーず” (“Lovely Travel Lovers”), and a quick search turned up a streaming site (set pop-up ad-blocker to stun).

(plenty of pics here and here, with the usual warnings about NSFW and disabling Javascript)

The gold standard for this sort of nekkid cheesecake video was Playboy Video Centerfolds, which were usually stuffed with personality. And since I met most of the women who were featured in these, I can confirm that they were really like that. A lot of Playboy’s other videos were more contrived, with little regard for the women as more than posing dummies, but the video centerfolds really humanized them. Matsuri would have made a terrific Playmate if she’d been born twenty years earlier.

(most of the video centerfolds were never released on DVD, and could only be seen by buying VHS tapes directly from Playboy; some of them were also aired on Playboy’s cable/satellite channel, back in the days when it had something to do with Playboy)

Update: just noticed that Robo-Ho's last name is "Agatsuma" = 我妻 = "My Wife". Subtle!

Clueless Crafter, episode 5

You know the drill: something amazing happens that turns out to be Our Clueless Hero’s work, and when asked about it, he says, “oh, that used to happen all the time in my home town”. Other than that, there are three things of note about this episode:

First, Our Hot-But-Evil Priestess meets up with Cardinal Goldfinger and gets handed over to a demon to participate in the latest assassination attempt against Princess Goofy Eyeballs. Second, Kurt forges a shortsword for Princess that you just know is going to go off next week and do something ridiculous. Third, there’s no sign of Our Mysterious Bandana And Her Watchful Bandana; guess she really did leave town to go report to his home village at a “what could go wrong” dramatic moment.

Verdict: I’m guessing the skeleton army came out of the Princess-face-drawing budget, because she looked really horrific in the close-ups.

(unrelated princess is unrelated, not deformed)

Robo-Ho, episode 4

“Normally I wear protection. But then I thought, when am I going to make it back to Haiti?” (classical reference)

This week, after Our Observant Hero wakes up with an obvious stiffy, Our Loosely-Coupled Robo Gal asks to take a peek. Rejected, she heads out to pick up a loaner school uniform from a friend, dragging him along. She initially plans to go out in just her “body paint”, until he manages to talk her into actual clothing. His, which inexplicably fit, although they’re much more flattering on her.

Convinced that it would be too suspicious for him to be seen in public with her, he tries to disguise himself and ends up looking and acting like a stalker. Compounding his bad idea, she decides that while waiting for her friend to show up, she’ll test how well her repairs are holding up. They don’t, and just as the friend arrives, he carries her off to the nearest private place to make repairs, which of course results in dialogue written to be misinterpreted as she comes to the rescue. We even get a “wrong hole” joke, despite the clear evidence that there’s only one place to stick the leg joint.

Given the fact that Gal’s Pal is running around with a stun-gun in the credits, this is clearly not the last time there will be such a “misunderstanding”.

Verdict: trash and proud of it.