#What’s kinda funny is that I had the idea for a Frankenstein’s monster design for Lydia since about last year

[i-really-like-phrogs]

Franken-Lyds I conjured up a bit back. I loved this look—Well— to peices! (Bwahahaha)

[mrultra100]

I know that I haven't talked about this show on here alot, but I feel like the original run/canon of Dr. Crafty, even after being canned, still has its own charm. And while his artistic work has been slower now due to him being a streamer, Crafty is still a pretty good artist and character designer. What I'm going for here is going over the main Dr. Crafty cast, sharing my thoughts about 'em. I have some personal thoughts on especially a few of these peeps, and it'll show as we go on. With that said, let's get Crafty.

(WARNING; Spoilers for Dr. Crafty are gonna be brought up alot. If you haven't seen this show, check it out)

Given how they were the main duo of the series, along with being at the center of its conflicts, I wanna start with Dr. Crafty and Nurse Worse. The chemistry (Pun not intended, I swear) between these two easily makes for some of the best character interactions in the show. Between the light banter they had in Season 1, and the more serious bits of personal trauma and flaws that the show in later seasons (Crafty and his past with Sasha and how it's negatively affected him after she left, and Nurse's trauma from Mindstein), they're some of its more fleshed-out characters. If there's anything that might be considered a flaw, the show ending so soon means that these characters aren't gonna have their arcs completed. As someone who stuck around in the show's early years, that kinda blows. And as much as I understand why the series ended the way that it did (The show being too expensive for more episodes to get made, along with the voice actors moving on to other projects), I feel like something could've been added for these peeps.

As for the main duo themselves, I feel like Crafty is a very good mix of funny and complex, and Nurse serves as a good co-host-type of character. As someone who's a big monster geek, I can really get behind the idea of a mad scientist and a cute Frankenstein girl running a web show together. Overall, Crafty and Nurse are a nice duo of protagonists.

Out of the show's roster of co-hosts, Pepper is the one that I have the most to say about. Between both of her designs (The one that was used for the show, along with the recently revamped one made by Blue-Paint-Sea, Pepper and Pickles' creator), they both do an amazing job showing off this gal's traits. A gentle giant, BBW octopus lady who's also a chef and has an air-breathing sea cucumber as a lil' buddy is a pretty out-of-the-box idea, but it works so well. Pepper is basically the biggest sweetheart of the cast, and her mannerisms, looks, and personality all help with that aspect. And while he's only one part of this duo, Pickles himself makes for a interesting character in his own right, with part of his charm due to how there's no other character in the main cast who's similar to him.

If there's any aspect that these two that I love the most, it's how even after Dr. Crafty as a show has ended, they're still around! Due to how Pepper and Pickles also fit in as characters made by the aforementioned Blue-Paint-Sea, they're still gonna be around as part of their own story. If you haven't seen Blue's work already, I highly recommend it, especially if you're a huge fan of Banjo-Kazooie.

Debuting alongside Pepper and Pickles in the same year, Messibelle was the third co-host to join the cast. While I don't have nearly as much to say about her as I've had for Pepper, Messi herself is still a fun character to talk about. Similar to other characters in this series, Messi's very concept is one that's rather unique. A lesbian slime maid who's thirsty as all hell is a fun character concept that the shows goes all-out on showing off. Her being the youngest out the bunch is another aspect to Messi's character that's shown off pretty well, as well as technically being Crafty's daughter due to how he himself was responsible for creating her after dumping a bunch of cleaning products down the sink.

Aside from how she's changed and matured as a character in the later seasons due to how some people had a problem with how she was written early on, my final note for Messi is how she was voiced by the incredibly talented Toxicsoul77, who appears to be one of my favorite online artists. The woman has plenty of talent when it comes to these sorts of things, and it definitely showed here.

For what I've got to say on Crystelle, I feel like she's a fun character that didn't get enough spotlight due to the show being canned. Don't get me wrong, she's had a good amount of moments ever since she was introduced in Season 3, but part of me feels like if there was a chance to fully flesh her story out alongside everyone else, it should've been taken advantage of. Aside from that, Crystelle's design is one of the best and most creative out of the entire cast. A fortune teller is one thing, but having their own head be a crystal ball is a very neat idea that I don't think I've seen elsewhere. Aside from that, the Questionable Qloest spinoff is my personal favorite of the main show and its various spinoffs. There's just something so chill and calm about it that I very much like, as Crystelle is not only the perfect host for a show like it, it plays a big part of this show by sharing out bits and pieces of lore about the greater Crafty universe as a whole. It's sweet, I like it.

I honestly feel like Stylene was the character that was done the dirtiest by the show's cancelation. I'm not saying that it was the show runners' fault for this, I'm just saying that they were cooking for this witch is gonna be banging. Even with how her story is gonna remain unfinished, Stylene herself was still a pretty dynamic character. And as someone who likes redesigns of characters, she basically speaks to me on a personal level, considering that's basically what her spin-off show was all 'bout.

As for what else I could say about Stylene? Well, it's my personal headcanon that she's definitely gay on some level. Probably bi, if we're honest. This woman is the pure definition of be gay, do crime.

Now that the Crafty Crew's taken care of, we can move on to essentially my favorite character of this entire show. Sasha is absolutely GREAT, y'all, and it kinda feels like she would’ve been the type of character to get popular onto her. Not only is this a very effective design for a cosmic horror, nor how she's adorable in both of her forms, how she's written very well as a character that plays in a huge part in Crafty's past, has gotten plenty of character development, or how she fits well with the other characters she's on screen with personally (Including a certain hunchback old lady(?) that we'll get to shortly)... she's just that versatile as a character in her own right. There's basically two sides of Sasha that perfectly capture what I'm trying to say here...

(Remember, these two designs are from the same exact character. One side is a terrifying eldritch abomination capable of permanently erasing you from existence if she wanted to, and the other is a goofy, lovable nerd)

If I can be real here, I honestly feel like gushing about Sasha on here is something that should happen more. This absolute goof of a lovecraftian horror is one of my personal favorite characters in fiction, and she deserves alot more love these days. The last thing that I wanna say about this woman for now is if there was some sort of way to easily deal with the whole conflict of who Crafty eventually falls in love with... Have him, Nurse, and Sasha be in a polycule together. Nurse has been hinted to be bisexual alot in the show, and she even blushed upon seeing Sasha in her human form for the first time, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to be into both Crafty and Sasha. And Sasha would feel like she would be absolutely bi. Again, alongside Messi being a lesbian and Pepper being grey-asexual, the other Dr. Crafty characters would certainly fit with the IGBTQ+ community.

What I'm trying to say here is this: let Sasha be gay, dammit.

Regarding my feelings about Mindstein.... Well, in my very humble opinion, Mindstein is kind of a mixed bag, if I'm really being honest. On one hand, she's got quite a bit going for her; Pretty good design that highlights her personality well, Oliva Steele doing a great job with her voice, as she's a horror buff, and being very horrifying as an irredeemable monster. On the other hand, however, I feel like she could've had more as a character. I'm not saying that she shouldn't be as much of a bloodthirsty, power-hungry psychopath that revels in the chaos and terror that she causes, as she was in the show whenever she showed up. All I'm saying is she should've been a bit more comedic, if that makes sense for this lady.

I get that this lady came about in the first place as a potshot towards White Diamond and how the show that she came from literally had no problem with redeeming a literal dictator, but I feel like Mindstein had a sort of weird silliness that could've been taken advantage of. With a name like DR. MINDSTEIN., that would definitely be the moniker of a villain who's both funny and threatening at the same time (Think something like Jack Horner, but a mad scientist lady). If it was possible, I feel like making this blue-brained bitch a complete nutcase and girlfailure who's absolutely petty as all hell would've been very fun. Have this woman be annoying the ever-living hell out of her victims as torture, getting into the most petty arguments imaginable on purpose, get herself into trouble when her plans blow up right in her face, and having Screw drag her out of it, much to her chagrin, go into mad fits of insane-induced laughter, taking the chance to toy with her victims personally for pranks while not working on her evil plans, and just being an absolute bratty gremlin to deal with, all while keeping her power-hungry motivations and sadistic tendencies. This would also fit in with being a sort of dark foil to Crafty. She's absolutely rotten to the core, she shouldn't be trusted anywhere near divine artifacts, she's in possession of far too many needles, she probably has rabies (and probably more than happy to bite you to get you infested), she knows she's the most insufferable bitch on the place...

And she's very proud of it.

Getting a legacy is only second to her biggest drive in life; Being an absolute troll.

To be honest, I don't have alot to say about either Screw or Metal Crafty. I like how Screw had a redemption arc planned for her after Season 4 (Sadly, due to how the show's canceled, we'll never see it happen), and it's been revealed she herself secretly planned the coordinates for UA High when punching Crafty off into the distance, ensuring that he'll find help in wherever she sent him to. Again, going back to the dark foil thing a bit, Screw would absolutely be tired of her master/mother's bullshit.

As for Metal? I'm really gonna be honest, outside of him being introduced in a few Sonic-based episode to highlight Mindstein fucking with the Crafty Crew, he really doesn't have alot going for him. Again, maybe that could've turned out differently for him had the show continued, but that's just how the ol' ball bounces. Also, the guy who voiced him was uncredited due to how he was caught being a transphobe, getting fired in the process. Thought that would be something to point out.

What was originally a running gag character, Disgustilda has gone to be hinted to be alot more important to the show's plot than she was letting on. Yeah, she's definitely a buffoon, but given what was planned for her later on if the show didn't end, you'd be very surprised.

See this? The suspiciously-looking Infinia-like abomination that briefly appeared at the end of Season 4's Sonic Month? The original plan, according to the show's What Could Have Been page on TV Tropes, was to not only reveal that Disgustilda was an Infinia. Get this.

DISGUSTILDA IS SASHA'S MOM

I have no idea what would've happened if the show fully revealed this twist, but whatever it could've been, it could've been a McFuckin' spectacle. Given how the castle that the Crafty Crew lived in was revealed to be hers, Disgustilda already had alot layer of plot brilliance to her. I can see her both helping Sasha with expressing her feelings and wanting to make up to Crafty for leaving him behind in the past (along with having her ask Nurse out), but also smacking the ever-living hell out of Mindstein when her full form was revealed.

All and all, Dr. Crafty was a crazy experience to someone like me, and I feel like it certainly fits the confines of this blog well. While Crafty himself has moved on to his V-tuber career (hope that goes very well for him), I wanted do justice to the original show's canon and characters by talking about them. If you haven't seen this show on Youtube, give it a watch.

Still tho, Crafty, Nurse, and Sasha should've been in a polycule. They deserve each other, dammit.

[maxwell-grant]

Having asked your thoughts on designing Frankenstein's daemon, might I now ask your thoughts on bringing Count Dracula from the written word into illustration? (I'm definitely in favour of the 'Hairy Old Mountain Man of Horror pretending he's people' look from the original novel; one of the small tests too many Draculas fail to pass is an absolutely tragic lack of the Evil Beard and/or Wicked Moustache explicitly described by Mr Stoker).

Unlike with Frankenstein, where I think the design needs to be painstakingly thought out in order to achieve the best balance of the creature's traits for horror and tragedy alike, I think with Dracula you can actually just take an approach of "whatever works". Because as I mentioned before, I think much of the appeal and longevity of Dracula is how the character's both a layered villain as well as a shapeshifting narrative force that can be tailored to whatever you want to do with. Granted, there are bad or dissappointing Dracula designs, of course there are, but in regards to the leeway you get for reinterpretation, you get a lot more of it with Dracula than with other literary icons.

Like with Frankenstein, I'm gonna bring up how I'd tackle a less grim, more comedy-centric Dracula first, one that's less a force of horror and more of a charismatic villain, and I think to that end I definitely agree that people are sleeping a lot on the hairy old man barely-passing-off-as-humanoid of the original story. Despite very much loving these performers, I'm actually not a fan of takes that mold Dracula too closely to people who've portrayed him, like Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, partially because I think it's a waste of an opportunity to create your own Dracula design. Since I can't draw (yet), I'll do what I usually do and make a board of images to try and convey some of my thoughts on one way I'd design Dracula.

(Pictured: Kiwi's design for Dracula, Hotel Transylvania concept art, Nandor, Castlevania Dracula, Charles Dance in Dracula Untold, Vladislav, a Transylvanian rug)

I used the images in my other Dracula post and I’ll post it here again because I absolutely adore @kiwibyrd's designs for Dracula and it's main heroes, in particular I love the way it strikes a good balance at making sure Dracula looks distinctly separate from the humans, but not too much that he couldn't conceivably operate in society as just a harmless old man. I also adore the mustache and bushy eyebrows and pointy ears and I think these three are wonderful features to keep on any Dracula design. I'm also very partial to the Hotel Transylvania concept art, even if it makes me incredibly depressed to look at all the great designs they had for Dracula that they threw in the trash because they somehow decided making him look like Adam Sandler was the idea to go with.

I deeply adore What We Do In The Shadows, both the movie and the show, and Jemaine Clement's Vladislav is one of my favorite (maybe even my actual favorite) on-screen Draculas. But I also enjoy Nandor just as much, and I think it's really great that as a character he's completely different from Vlad while also being ostensibly a take on Dracula, and in particular I bring up his Jersey look because "Dracula in common clothing" is a criminally underrated concept for a joke.

As a character, I'm very partial to comedy takes on Dracula that play him up as a decadent aristocratic supervillain, the kind that can get away with talking in third person. I also have this idea for a version of Dracula who dresses ostentatiously in finely-broidered Romanian or Transylvanian patterns, maybe even wearing a rug as a cape, claiming that he's carrying the legacy of his people on his back. And of course he's lying, he's not Vlad Tepes and he's not even Romanian, he is just a parasite pretending to have a history to be proud of, but good luck getting him to admit that. And finally, I'd like this version to be played by Charles Dance, and I consider it a tremendous crime against humanity that he has yet to play Dracula proper even despite being in a film with the character's name on the title.

So that's kinda how I would design a take on Dracula for something more comedic or more based around him as this guest character and personality on-set. Now, if we're talking a more serious version, I think the possibilities increase, and I won't be getting into all of them because I may prefer to keep them to myself, but I'll elaborate a few ideas.

For example, the edition of Dracula I personally own comes with these really scratchy, really creepy B&W illustrations related to the story, that I can't find scanned online so I'm uploading them here so you can look at. They don't necessarily depict the scenes but rather some of the story's moments, like Van Helsing staking Lucy, Renfield in a straightjacket, Dracula as a coachman, and they are more focused on conveying the horror of the concepts at play.

Dracula never looks the same way in any of the illustrations, in fact you kinda have to piece him out of them by trying to find teeth or capes or eyes or bat-features to see where he's hiding this time. In the first, it's the half-man half-bat, in the 2nd, he's the shrieking bat silhouette next to Renfield, and in the latter, he's the gaping jaws and eerily humanoid eyes in the wolf. The effect to me almost feels like if you were to look at a bunch of tv static and then see a humanoid shape form for a split second before everything went back to normal, something like you'd get from Slender Man or other modern creepypastas, and I’ve argued before that Dracula’s form of horror is a very modern one. 

In terms of illustrations of Dracula that keep up the original traits while still pulling off horror, I definitely have to hand it to the one at the left of the image above, drawn by regourso on Deviantart (account deleted at present). Going back to Castlevania’s many takes on Dracula, two in particular that stick out to me would be Castlevania: Judgment’s armored dress Dracula, who’s got this great twisted heart/rose motif going on in his outfit, and Dracula’s final form in SOTN where he just sits in his throne and his cape twists into all these monsters, particularly how it’s depicted by witnesstheabsurd’s depiction. 

I’m not particularly a fan of how Dracula’s “final form” in these games is usually just some big demon, and part of what I like about his final form in SOTN instead is that, while it’s not a particularly challenging final boss, I do find it interesting the idea of us never actually getting to see what Dracula’s true final form looks like, only an ever-shifting pitch-black torrent of teeth and claws and bloody veins pouring out because that’s ultimately what Dracula is and brings to the world.

On the flip-side of the rotten old monster, we have the charming seductor Dracula, and while I’m really not a fan of how various adaptations have convinced people that “the point” of Dracula is that he’s a seductive force and an allegory for Victorian xenophobia and I’m reeeally even less of a fan of adaptations that make Dracula some misunderstood tragic hero (and I think I’ve made rather violently clear my feelings on interpretations that play up a romance between him and Mina), that the seductive force part exists is impossible to deny, so conversely, while on one hand we can have Dracula as the gargantuan whirlwind of predatory violence, we can also go for Dracula as the tantalizing lover.

I’ve seen a lot of opinions proclaiming Frank Langella as the best Dracula because he was the best at actually being seductive while still playing Dracula, although I haven’t yet seen his performances. If I had to point at one picture I look at and do buy for a second the idea of Dracula as a romantic character, it would be that particular still of Raul Julia in the left of the above image. And it’s strange for me to think of Raul Julia as attractive because I mainly associate him with his brilliant comedy performance of M.Bison (I know it’s far from the highlight of his career but, look, I grew up with Street Fighter, I can’t help it) but those eyes are definitely looking pretty convincing to me, if nothing else. 

And I’ve included this still of Sebastian Stan in the right because, during a conversation between me, @krinsbez and @jcogginsa about who could be a good fit for Dracula, jcog suggested Sebastian Stan, partially because he’s Romanian, and I’ve learned recently that Stan was actually interested in playing the character in Blumhouse’s upcoming remake. And you’d think I’d hate this idea  considering how much I don’t care for tragic anti-hero Draculas, but who says that’s what he’d have to play? 

Do you have any idea how much actors, who are traditionally known for heroic or supporting roles, usually LOVE it when you give them a chance to cut loose as the main villain?

I’d want Sebastian Stan to put all of his charm, all of his talent, all of his good looks and etc, into playing the absolute most vicious, bloodthirsty and irredeemable Dracula put on screen. Someone who is exceedingly, eerily good at being a lovable protagonist, who’s all smiles and charming eyes and politeness mannerisms and maybe even a funny accent, and then it isn't as funny when he's flying through your window intent on kidnapping babies to feed to his brides, except he may take a moment or two to do so because he's feeling pretty hungry himself right now.

Now, admittedly this is kind of a lot to juggle in regards to a single character, which is why my answer for questions like these inevitably has to be “depends on what I’m going for”. That being said, if I was going to try and cast someone who I think could both look the part of Dracula, as well as respectively, play “cartoon aristocrat” Dracula, “mercurial embodiment of evil” Dracula, as well as realistically be an attractive, even seductive performer who can charm viewers even as the character descends into horrible villainy, and juggle these performances even?

I think I’d have to go with Mads Mikkelsen. Not specifically because of Hannibal (I actually haven’t watched it yet), although it’s definitely a factor, the thing that actually made me pick him specifically is, other than his looks, his voice, his reputation for playing sinister characters, the fact that he loves the role and wants to play it, or how many people are deeply in love with this man, or that people already joke that he looks like a vampire, was watching him in Another Round, and specifically that glorious final scene where he’s just dancing to his heart’s content and just, moving with such spring in his step and such joyful vitality even though he’s past his mid-fifties, and that was the moment where, in regards to how much you all love this man, I went

And now I am going to add “casting Mads Mikkelsen as a dancing Dracula” to The List of Reasons Why I Became a Filmmaker.

[loverboypercy]

Starline for the acrostic game? ~sunlight-ships

ACROSTIC F/O ASK GAME

thank uuu @sunlight-ships <33

S - Story - if you and them were in a fairytale, which story would you be and who would play which character?

tbh i already have an idea of sa/tbk red being morgan le fay - granted as much more of a "arthur/sonics silly wizard sibling that lives in the mountains" than their more traditional kind of personality.

i think it would be funny if we got to see eggs in that universe as some kinda evil king, w starline as his like advisor, trusted guard or smthin. then he gets seduced by a funny weirdo.

T - Teach - what skills of theirs would they teach you? what would you teach them?

uh, i mean. they had to start learning more hand-to-hand combat bcs thats what starline kinda does-

but in their like. actual relationship he'd try to get red into hacking and some of the more advanced robotic stuff but they either are Bad at it or just don't really care all that much.

however, i hc that he actually loves cooking/baking so thats something they get to do together and bond over ! he's also one of those Fancy mfers that have their tea like done in a specific way. buddy learns how to do that for him bcs sometimes he needs a lil pick-me-up

A - Art - do they draw or paint? what about any other kind of art? what’s their favorite style/subject/another artist who inspires them?

he admits to having a mild soft spot for aesthetics. he did design and paint his logo himself after all ! if he did end up making art it would probably be more the abstract kind. its a little pretentious but like. red thinks its cute.

he is not allowed to talk about his inspiration and why he wont stop drawing stylised cityscapes and theme parks.

R - Rainbow - what colors do you associate with them and why?

tbh that really nice magenta on his outfit and his eyes make me a lil <3 u kno. its a v pretty colour !

L - Language - what’s their love language? what’s yours?

being annoying /j

i think its pretty solidly set up from his canon appearances that he's an acts of service/gifts kinda guy ! red is also gifts but also quality time.

I - Image - show us a picture of them that gives you a lot of feelings. if they aren’t a visual character, describe your mental image of them!

i love everyones take on him but evans got a special little place in my heart. also his gay little earrings,, never forget what they took from us..

(i also really REALLY love his more monsterous/frankenstein-y concept art where he is Tall. but this post is already really LONG-)

N - Nostalgia - what’s your f/o’s favorite memory?

considering uh. how He Is and comments made off-handedly on ians podcast - i imagine his family wasnt. the best. there was always a disconnect there, and he never really felt like he fit in with them.

but theres one time. he built a little robot for his mother - a very simple and crude thing, something he'd be ashamed of now. but it made her smile and she ruffled his hair. its his most treasured memory, and he hates it.

a second is the first time red called him starlight unironically (it was a bit of a joke before they became actual friends/partners, red called it him once by accident and he got So Mad that they kept doing it). they were still just, very loosely, friends at that point. he was still figuring out what to do with himself, so red took him out to the chao garden with them that morning and had him help out a little. at one point they remarked:

"i don't know if you'll get it right, starlight. but i hope you do."

E - Emotion - is your f/o open with their feelings or do they keep them close to their chest?

starline is one of those people that just bottle and bottle and bottle until they explode - usually by having a breakdown and crying. sometimes he lets stuff slip but he tries so hard to desperately hold onto his cool and calculated persona that it just makes him slip more.

[mst3kproject]

The Face of Marble

This movie has a zombie dog.  It’s also got John Carradine from The Unearthly and Robert Shayne from Teenage Caveman, and was directed by William Beaudine, who brought us Design for Dreaming.  But honestly, who cares about that when there’s a zombie dog?

On a storm-wracked cliff somewhere live mad scientists Dr. Randolph and Dr. Cochrane, who are trying to raise the dead but aren’t very good at it.  Their first experimental subject, a drowned sailor, promptly dies all over again when lightning strikes the Frankenstein equipment.  This was probably a lucky escape, because subject two, Mrs. Randolph’s dog Brutus, comes back to life as a bulletproof zombie with a thirst for blood and the ability to walk through walls!  They get back to work on improving their technique, and when Mrs. Randolph herself later dies in a tragic matchmaking accident, the two scientists figure she may as well be subject three.  It kinda works, and kinda doesn’t… but not in the way anyone expected, especially me.

I guess I have to explain ‘tragic matchmaking accident’. Elaine Randolph’s ethnic stereotype maid, Maria, wants out of this place and has decided that the best way to bring it about is to have her mistress and Dr. Cochrane fall in love and run off together, taking her with them.  A combination of voodoo and persuasion seems to be on the verge of bringing this about when Dr. Cochrane’s pre-existing fiancée Linda shows up to surprise him on his birthday.  Maria therefore sets out to murder Linda by releasing toxic smoke into her bedroom, but doesn’t know that Linda and Elaine have switched rooms because Linda freaked out when the ghostly Brutus wandered through hers in the middle of the night. It was much shorter to just say ‘tragic matchmaking accident’.

That probably gave you a pretty good idea of just what a dumb and contrived movie this is.  The print is also pretty terrible, old and scratchy and with poor sound – and yet it’s actually kind of fun to watch.  The Face of Marble is a bit slower than it should be despite being only an hour and a quarter long, and the ending unfortunately makes no sense, but the plot twists managed to surprise me a couple of times.  Nobody here is a great actor but nobody’s really terrible, either. You can tell who’s who and what’s going on.  For something I would watch, it’s a decent film

What I really liked about it, though, was the treatment of the characters.  For all I’ve called them mad scientists, Randolph and Cochrane don’t really fall into that ‘type’.  They’re not trying to create an indestructible army or Show Those Fools or anything, they want to save lives: Randolph talks about people who’ve drowned or asphyxiated, people for whom rescue came just a few minutes too late. Nor do they display the mad scientist’s typical lack of conscience.  Randolph gets so caught up in his work that he euthanizes Brutus the dog, but he’s absolutely sure his process will bring the animal back as good as new.  When this doesn’t work, he feels terrible about it and hides it from Elaine, partly so she won’t be angry but partly because he’s deeply ashamed of himself.

The incident also destroys his confidence in the project. When Elaine dies, it’s Cochrane who talks him into trying to resurrect her, since he has been working on the formula and he now believes it will work.  Randolph almost refuses, saying he’d rather see Elaine actually dead than become some monster like the dog, and Cochrane has to do quite a bit of convincing.  What we see in these two men is a folie à deux – each would be quite reasonable on his own, but when they can play off and encourage each other they end up doing unbelievably awful things.  That’s kind of neat, and makes it more believable that they would try the experiment on Elaine even after their previous failures.

The two men’s relationships with the women in their lives also have some complexity.  The backstory tells us that Randolph saved Elaine’s life by removing a brain tumor, and subsequently fell in love with and married her.  Despite this, he doesn’t seem to spend much time with her, and she appears to be downright intimidated by him.  Elaine is shown to prefer confiding in Cochrane rather than confronting Randolph about her fears, despite the fact that Cochrane’s reaction is invariably condescending.  On the other hand, Cochrane is very tender with his own fiancée, Linda, and actually listens to her when she tells him she doesn’t like Randolph and thinks they both need to get away from this place!

Elaine and Linda are set up, both by the writers and by Maria the sorceress, as romantic rivals for Cochrane.  You’d think this would lead to a lot of petty hostility between them, but the movie avoids that, too.  They are fairly cool towards each other at first meeting, but quickly make peace after Linda’s sighting of the zombie dog.  By the time they’re about to part they’re still not best friends, but they clearly don’t dislike each other.  Linda has figured out that Elaine has a crush on Cochrane but as long as Cochrane isn’t going to act on it she won’t let it worry her.  She could have been a villain in this story, as could Randolph and Cochrane themselves, but the writers avoid taking the easy way out.

Instead, the villain of this story is Maria.  The situation would never have arisen if she hadn’t attempted to murder Linda, and later we see her use both the police and the zombies trying to get herself out of the mess she’s gotten into. Unfortunately, this is where the movie starts to fall apart.

A few days after the undead Brutus leaves the lab by leaping right through the wall, a detective shows up at the house to ask Dr. Randolph about a series of attacks on local livestock.  Randolph identifies the culprit as an animal suffering from ‘hemomania’, or a need to drink blood.  When Elaine comes back from the dead, then, we expect her to do so as a vampire. Everything we’ve seen so far seems to be leading up to that idea.  When she comes to and appears to be tired, but all right, we assume the condition will set in eventually.

It never does.  Instead, Maria is suddenly able to control the undead Elaine and Brutus! Dr. Randolph soon figures out that it was Maria who killed Elaine, and in his anger and grief he considers stabbing her to death until Cochrane talks him out of it.  In order to save herself, Maria has Elaine stab Randolph, then go back to bed and forget it happened.

Where did that come from?  We have never seen the slightest indication that Maria can do this.  Whenever she has been working magic, such as leaving effigies under people’s pillows or preparing potions, we’ve never seen any evidence that she actually has supernatural powers.  The love charms were suggestion and the poison was simple chemistry!  The film-makers had ample opportunity to set something up here, by having her take control of the zombiefied Brutus through similar actual magic, but they didn’t do that. We just see Maria sitting in front of a fire waving her arms… then Brutus comes into Elaine’s room, Elaine rises in a trance, and Maria just hands her a knife and orders her to stab away, as if she has the woman under hypnosis.  Did I miss something?

At the end, the cops get the real story from another servant (I’m tempted to insert a quip about how you can tell it’s fiction because the police listen to a black man, but we’re way beyond that being funny) and show up to arrest Maria, but she’s already committed suicide, and footprints in the sand show that Elaine and Brutus have just wandered off into the ocean. Okay.  Does that mean anything?  Are they gonna drown or just wander around on the bottom and fight sharks like in Zombie 2?  Did Maria make her do it or not?  Is Elaine even aware that there’s anything wrong with her?  Earlier she didn’t seem to be, and nobody told her what happened… she seems to think she was merely ‘taken ill’.

The feeling I get from all this is that the writers didn’t know what to do with Zombie-Elaine.  They were too chicken to have her go around tearing throats out because then she wouldn’t be attractive anymore.  They can’t kill her because they’ve already established that the zombies are bulletproof and they can’t think of any other way to do it.  So they just have her leave, mysteriously and unsatisfyingly, and completely squander several opportunities they’ve set up for themselves.

Elaine wondering what’s wrong with her, unable to help herself even as she’s horrified by her own actions, would easily have been the scariest thing in the movie.  Randolph and Cochrane realizing that what came back isn’t quite Elaine, and having to deal with what they’ve done, would have been the most heart-wrenching.  They could even have had the two of them, formerly unbelievers, go to Maria for magical help – only to have Maria refuse to do anything because she, as previously established in dialogue, really does love her mistress.  The ending could have been really cool, but they just ran out of ideas.

I did enjoy about the first two thirds of The Face of Marble.  By the time Elaine finally dies I was getting a little impatient to see some actual zombies, but the film then went in a totally different direction, in a bad way. The ending doesn’t feel like a plot twist, because a plot twist should be something that makes sense of things we’ve already seen.  It’s doubly disappointing, because the attention paid to the characters and their motivations and relationships really made it look like writers knew what they were doing.

[terminally-karkalicious]

allow me to rant about the only thing that has been in my brain for the past two months and that is doll customizing babeyyyyy

i know there’s a 90% chance that you wont give a Shit about any of this but here we go anyways

SO first you gotta choose a doll. preferably one with a high range of motion to avoid creating new joints or having annoying limitations like not having elbow joints for some fucking reason. what the fuck mattel. give monster high dolls back their ball jointed shoulders and elbow joints. smh

the most common dolls ive seen used as bases are monster high and ever after high. most customs ive seen are highly stylized so the stylized face molds work well for those types of dolls but dolls like barbies are good for when you want a more realistic face-ups.

once you’ve got your base picked out you gotta wipe that bitch’s face off with like. acetone or nail polish remover or something strong like that. you can also use acetone to shrink doll heads which is cool as hell imo. n e way once the face is wiped you gotta chop off the hair and remove the hair plugs from the inside. ive seen this done several ways but the easiest and most common way ive seen is to dunk the head into boiling water for ~30 seconds until it gets squishy and malleable. once you’ve got the head back, you can use pliers (i think tweezers would work in a pinch) to pull out the hair plugs which are kinda icky because theyre covered in glue and other gross shit. ew

now you must decapitate the doll. dunk em back in the boiling water to soften them back up then just tug the head off. the neck pegs look funky and are usually a different color than the body so thats cool ig

once the head’s off, you can start the face-up which is basically just giving the doll a new face using stuff like watercolor pencils, acrylic paint, gouache, and a whole lot of other stuff. hell ive seen people use person makeup on these dolls.

next,,,,, hair. there’s about twenty million ways to do hair from gluing yarn wefts to sewing to rerooting with purchased nylon doll hair or yarn wefts but i’m gonna talk about the most common one ive seen which is rerooting and gluing.

before you can reroot, you need doll hair. which, as i mentioned, can be bought at stores like the doll planet or made at home with yarn in literally any color. have fun with it! make rainbow hair or something idk

to make homemade wefts, you take some acrylic yarn, cut it twice as long as you want the hair to be (keep in mind you can cut and style the hair once it’s been rerooted), fold them in half, and tie it to something sturdy like a wire coat hanger for the next step.

once you’ve got your yarn tied to your hanger, use a pet brush and brush the yarn until it’s wispy and looks like hair. then take a straightening iron and iron the weft flat. then remove from the hanger and boom. hair wefts. ta-da

to reroot the wefts onto the head, use a rerooting tool (which can be as simple as a needle with the eye cut at angle) (just google it please i’m shit at descriptions)) to poke small sections of the hair into the head. you can use the pre-existing rooting holes for your own reroot as they’re usually pretty reliable. to reroot, take a small length of you doll hair (about 10-15 strands), loop it in half, and put the middle of the loop into the reroot tool. poke the end of the tool with the hair on it into the pre-existing hole and remove the tool. the hair *should* stay in and fill up that plug!! also remember to plug thickly at the hairline and part of the hair where it's most noticeable. it doesnt matter as much in the center of the head as that’s not usually visible on the doll. once you’ve rerooted, squeeze in strong glue through the neck hole and squish around the head to make sure it covers all the plugs and secures them in place. then pour hot water onto the head to make the hair lay flat for styling later.

also, you can reroot yarn directly into the head to make thicker, more textured hairstyles. and since the yarn is thicker, you dont need to glue the inside of the head for the hair to stay in place!!

if youre not doing body modifications (which are also cool as hell) then it’s time for clothes but clothes are boring and i like body mods more so i’m gonna rant about them instead

the material ive seen most doll artists use is apoxie sculpt, which is like play doh on steroids. it comes in two parts which you gotta mix together for some reason. why dont they sell it pre-mixed. what was the reason. also once it’s dry it’s super super strong and you can sand it, drill into it, paint it, and all kinds of stuff. very nice and i want some for myself.

you can use hand saws and drills and shit to whack off doll limbs to make stuff like digitigrade legs or new joints. also dont be afraid to use other mismatching doll parts when customizing like heads and bodies and forearms and hands and shit. it literally does not matter if youre gonna recolor the doll anyways so have fun with it. make frankenstein’s doll if youre feeling spicy

accessories my beloved. stuff like tiny beads and clay baubles and shit will literally transform the entire doll plus they’re adorable and multi-purpose

i suppose i must talk about clothes now. ah well. you can find great clothing patterns if youre new to customizing on other customizer’s etsy shops and probably google although those will probably be lower quality than paid pattern pieces. and keep in mind that if it exists as clothing irl, you can likely make it doll-sized. there are literally no limits to your clothing options as long as you can execute your idea.

the once all your components have been made, you can assemble the doll again!! and finally see what all the parts look like together!! very cool 10/10 stars.

ight that wraps up my doll rant. i could really go into more detail on certain parts but thats a whole other rant for a whole other day smh. sorry for fucking flooding your inbox ender ahaha……………. you asked for this

little did you know that dolls have been one of my favorite things since like ever. if i can read a 25 chapter long fanfic i can read this B)

mattel definitely fucked up by completely ruining MH doll designs and just stopping EAH, alot of their profits most likely came from people who collect and customize dolls and by changing MH doll designs/Stopping EAH dolls they 1. most likely lost a small (or big if we're not jus talking people who customize dolls) part of their profit and 2. made it harder for doll customizers to make dolls/get commissions out rather quickly because they probably have to waste more time making joints or learning how to make joints.

EAH/MH dolls (specifically MH dolls) had AMAZING MODELS because there was so much variety with height, face shapes, etc (my favorite molds had to be the short/tall dolls and the cat molds because of the tails) and doll customizers really went all out with enhancing a molds unique features. The only "downside" abt MH dolls is that they (or atleast most)(from what i remember)) had slimmer faces but wider eyes while EAH dolls have wider faces with slimmer smaller which left a canvas for the face and not the eyes (and vice versa for MH dolls)

I've never seen any videos where a barbie is customized (maybe because i absolutely despised barbies at the time) so I'll definitely have to check those out but they seem to be good for realistic makeovers. I've seen like like semi realistic makeovers for EAH/MH dolls that were pretty good too tho (pretty sure mostly EAH dolls since yk MH dolls were used for creature makeovers while most EAH dolls weren't)

yeah i was always amazed by the head shrinking with acetone. honestly i still am?? idunno i have no idea how that chemical bullshit works. Ive seen a few of uh makeovers that just pain over the face (in multiple layers ofcourse) but that's usually when they're painting the entire body a different colour (again usually when they're turning a doll into a funky little baby man). I've also seen a few that just chop the hair off and take out the hair plugs yk without uuh like softening the head or just go straight for the hair plugs after taking off the head (i used to do that it was funny to me??). i always really liked when they used watercolour pencils or just colour pencils in general to draw/sketch on the face cause like wow ur drawing on ur doll without ruining it?? kinda epic maybe even poggers and pogchamp?? oh god my brain is failing wjshsmsj.

Watching them putting the hair back on the doll was, other than the face stuff, was the BEST part for me. Favorite type of hair was iuuuuuh was either thick yarn or brushed out yarn. Literally worship the people that would reroot the hair, theyre the most patience people on this earth!! it's literally insane but i guess that's what happens when you've been doing that for years? you guess kinda get used to it. when they put glue into the head does it just become stiff?? like it's just a clump of dried glue or does it like..hollow out again??

dude you literally cannot convince me most of the supplies used for doll makeovers. APOXIE CLAY LOOKS SO FECKING GOOD. its edible and i will die on that hill. The body mods are literally so amazing!!!!! it's so impressive how theyre able to imagine certain features THEN LIKE ACTUALLY MAKE IT LOOK ACCURATE TO WHAT THEY WANTED TO LOOK LIKE AFTER LIKE ON TRY (or many yk trial and error is very necessary for..everything). Absolutely loved when doll customizers would saw off a dolls legs and use different ones or just completely get rid of the torso to use a different one. it's like uuh that one big guy that's mismatched and sewn together. very cool. The accessories are so fun!! just small little details you seen really need but can add because it's your feckin doll!! I used to be absolutely obsessed over the doll clothes i would find on etsy, so much so that i started sewing shitty shirts and dresses for my uh "customized" dolls (they were absolute HORRORS idk WHY my mom let me feck up my dolls like that).

Thank you for this!! i haven't been able to talk about any of my interests for a while and this just really made me happy!!

Question fer u my fellow MH/EAH enthusiast: what was your favorite MH/EAH movie/episode and doll series. Mine was The fusion dolls (MH obvi) and that MH movie "Haunted" cause we got to know more about Spectra :D

[kanyniablue]

headcanons for hws russia

long post, kinda depressing, bring snacks

-miss me with chubby-cute uwu woobie!twink!russia, dude’s built like an old-timey strongman.  just a solid wall of muscle & fat that looks like he could win a fistfight with a tank.  you look at him and go “that is a man who i would know is in the room instinctively”

-but you don’t.  he’s so frickin quiet & light on his feet.  you never know he’s there until he startles you or you get that tingling creeping feeling of something watching you and he’s RIGHT behind you

-he knows this.  he likes this.

-the way he talks either irritates people or makes them want to laugh; he’s so huge and gives off such an intimidating vibe but he talks like a mumbly old grandma, barely loud enough to hear and everything is -yusha and -yushenka and so saccharine sweet it makes you gag

-he’s mocking you with it

-despite the cutesy-ness he’s super blunt and will tell you to your face what he thinks about you, and not in flattering terms, but still dressed up in what should be terms of affection.  it’s kind of upsetting

-about the only time he talks honestly is when he’s too drunk to keep up the facade which isn’t easy to get to, he’s got to be a special sort of depressed and also have enough vodka, which also isn’t easy to get.  he’s still mumbly but it’s much more “god i hate this i hate you i hate myself fuck”

-that sappy little smile he does is only for the westerners during their meetings

-he’s mocking them with it

-the people at home know his face better with just absolutely no emotion, like he’s already decided you’re not worth his time.  the sweetie babushka voice with the cold dead eyes is not an endearing look

-the only thing he really fears, and the only people he ever shows respect for, are the people who have power over him.  he wasn’t like that as a child but after long enough, everything had been beaten out of him except “don’t fuck up when the boss gives you orders.”  he hates anyone having power over him & does everything to make sure there’s only a few people who do, but he also sees it as the natural order of the world--predators eat prey, big countries rule smaller countries, strong people rule weak people, bosses rule Nations.  he overthrew his czar and was communist and they were all supposed to be equal and it still turned out like that, so it must be true.

-he was never the kind to just roll over and accept someone else as leader if they couldn’t prove themselves, he was always pretty self-sufficient and able to survive in a harsh environment.  but as a child he was a lot more friendly and open--even if he also had such poor social skills that it usually came across as creepy.  nowadays he’s so dissociated from that part of himself he couldn’t tell you if he really felt lonely or any sort of sympathy at all.

-he is actually super lonely, it’s just not in a way he can think about.  he’s got this drive to be around people, wants to keep them near him, but doesn’t connect it to the idea he wants companionship (not a euphemism).  and because he doesn’t feel positive emotions or respect for others and thinks in terms of strong-controlling-weak, he instead tries to force people to stay with him and punish them for disobeying him.  he likes to live in close proximity to his neighboring Nations or to visit often, whether he’s welcome or not.

-he doesn’t generally get along well with humans.  with his bosses, he defers to them and then tries mostly to stay out of their way.  with his citizens nowadays he might share a drink or a cigarette but he doesn’t stick around or try to get to know them personally; he claims it’s because he doesn’t care about short-lived little humans but it’s at least partially because he can’t relate to human lives and wants and fears and dreams and he finds it easier to avoid them than to think about it.  with most other countries’ citizens he feels like they have nothing in common so he doesn’t bother.  he’s usually spending time with former eastern block Nations and has a bad habit of falling back into the same patterns of behavior he had back then.

-when he does get attached to someone, human (mostly in the past) or Nation, it’s an overattachment. he can’t leave them alone because they’re all he thinks about and the focus of all the emotions that well up when he’s finally found a ~friend~ and he’ll usually end up scaring them away with how intense and obsessive he is, which to him just proves that he shouldn’t get attached in the first place.

-he’s vaguely aware that he’s doing it “wrong” but doesn’t know how to fix it.  with humans he eventually just decided it’s not worth trying to have a good relationship, they just die in a few years anyway.  with Nations he generally feels like ‘if you think i’m the bad guy, fine then, i’m the bad guy’ and either becomes overbearing and manipulative to keep them with him or throws them out before they can reject him.

-he’s got a way of thinking that isn’t stupid but is so straightforward it misses a lot.  if you can build him a jet engine in 5 hours, then if he makes you work 100 hours straight, you should’ve built him 20 perfect jet engines.  on the one hand, it cuts through a lot of bullshit (”we need to stop this tank.”  “but we have no antitank guns!”  “then we will hit it with what we do have.”)  on the other hand he’s not good at understanding nuance or fixing something that’s not exactly broken but could be a lot better.

-he’s not all big-picture, though--actually he can get lost in details.  it’s a control thing, partially.  if he knows exactly what he’s got and what you’ve got and where you are and what you’re doing and saying and thinking, he won’t be surprised by what comes next (or, so he hopes. somehow things always get worse).

-partially, though, and not a small part, it’s what’s left of the person he was originally, that he would’ve been with a different history.  he used to love studying snowflakes and constellations, painting the delicate designs you see on matryoshkas and folk art like lace or flowers or geometric patterns, even computer coding--especially when it took hours & a whole room of processors to run something simple, he loved creating the most complex and exact programs just as a way to test his skills (aka for fun, but don’t call it that in soviet russia).  all the stuff that to an untrained eye either looks like a mess or is so fiddly you wouldn’t know where to start.  he loves when a thousand tiny pieces all come together into a perfect unified whole.  it got trained into him over the centuries that anything enjoyable is a waste of time though, so he rarely bothers anymore unless he’s got another reason for it.

-he’s blunt and bad at nuance but he does have a sense of humor.  it’s just not usually a nice one.  he likes tricking people, making them mad while he stands there calmly--especially if it makes them do something stupid, saying things that go back and forth between being threatening and “why are you so scared? i just meant (something innocent)” especially with really dark jokes that don’t sound like jokes so much as what he plans to do to his enemies, basically anything that puts him in control of the situation.

-if the joke backfires on him you can bet the people around him get out of his way real quick; he’s not someone you can safely laugh at whether he deserves it or not

-sometimes he laughs at really stupid so-unfunny-it’s-funny jokes, nerd humor, cat memes and bad puns but he’ll never admit it

-he’s good at getting by on almost nothing, to the point where he almost enjoys it.  his car isn’t one car, it’s a frankenstein’s monster of half a dozen different cars’ parts patched together into a moving vehicle.  he can survive on sunflower seeds, vodka, cigarettes and spite, and the first three of those are really only creature comforts.  he once stayed awake for a solid month to keep working and he says that like it’s something to brag about.  it’s control, again--if you can’t make his life any worse by taking away what he’s got, you don’t control him.  he’s got nothing and his life can’t get any worse.  he wins.

-basically he needs therapy but he’ll never get therapy

[starlitskvader]

Slow day at work and I have Lufia on the brain, so I’m gonna rate the original Rise Of The Sinistrals designs against the remake Curse Of The Sinistrals redesigns.

Maxim

vs

I honestly don’t have strong feelings about either Maxim design. They’re both good Main Character Designs, one for a strongly medieval flavored world and one for an anachronistic world. I will say the redesign has a little more character; I like the waist wrap in particular.

Winner: Curse of the Sinistrals

Tia

vs

Honestly... this is one where they changed her personality enough that she might as well be a different character. I like the weapon suitcase - it makes sense considering RotS!Tia owned a weapon shop - but I also like the idea of her beating up monsters with a ribbon.

Verdict: A tie; given my way I’d frankenstein them together. I’d also kinda like to see boisterous new Tia with old Tia’s design, OR milder old Tia with new Tia’s design.

Guy

vs

I’ll be honest: I didn’t like Guy’s new look at first. But it did grow on me - especially when you take his rivalry with Dekar into account (see below). Still, I feel like the original look suits his personality a bit better.

Verdict: Rise of the Sinistrals by a very slim margin.

Selan

vs

Oh I LOVE the new one. The old Selan is beautiful and elegant, but the new one is both while looking more like the military commander she is. Very nice. The pigeon-toed stance is a little odd, but I’ll let it slide. This time.

Verdict: Curse of the Sinistrals. She’s so cool!

Dekar

vs

BOTH VERY GOOD. About the only problem with the old version is that is doesn’t really get Dekar’s outgoing, silly personality across - otherwise, very cool! Meanwhile the new Dekar makes his rivalry with Guy ten times funnier - the two of them competing to see who’s stronger and Dekar winning every time is amusing enough with the old designs, but Huge Guy constantly being outdone by a man half his size who doesn’t even seem to bother with armor or weapons is hilarious.

Verdict: ALL DEKARS ARE VALID. (it’s be neat if New Dekar had a baby blue streak in his hair to echo old Dekar’s red, though.)

Lexis

vs

Eeeeengh. The Doc Brown reference is all well and good, but I like the scrappy Lexis who actively participated better. I could jive to the Doc Brown wannabe being the mentor to Lexis, but... he doesn’t feel like Lexis.

Verdict: Rise of the Sinistrals stands on his own better, I think.

Artea

vs

....eh. Admittedly this is another case where the original art doesn’t get the personality across - in-game, it’s much clearer that Arty is for all intents and purposes a teenager - but the new version feels more generic. It doesn’t help that they traded Artea’s vibrant, sometimes-contentious personality for a stereotypical Aloof Elf in the remake, which... DOES come across in the art. Credit where it’s due though, giving him a gun is incredibly funny.

Verdict: Rise of the Sinistrals has more personality in design, even if his character doesn’t quite come across.

Iris

vs

VERY NICE. Iris’ new design has a perfect mystical vibe! I have no idea what they were going for in the old one and to be honest she looks too much like Artea.

Verdict: Curse of the Sinistrals. No contest.

IN CONCLUSION both have gorgeous art with pros and cons to most of the designs! It’s unfortunate that CotS cut and changed so much of the original’s world and quests and rewrote Artea and Lexis to such detriment (Tia is much closer to her original self, just louder); its to the point where it feels more like an AU than a remake. 

But I like both! There’s a lot to love in both games, and while RotS is a fuller experience there are plot changes in CotS that I DO like, so... I dunno, a rewrite where I just cobble what I like about both together has its temptations.

[petty-crush]

An open letter/retort to the “honest trailer” for “Alien Covenant”

Of course people can disagree and of course this is a sarcastic video. But since this contains a lot of knee jerk, being negative for views comments, (and because people may get fooled by just watching this video)I think this is a good place to dissect frogs.

My bias; I think “Covenant” is a truly great film. Spectacular in ideas, behaviors, visuals, and pure fun. I loved it. I am clearly willing to die on a hill for it

The main gap is that it’s really a different series, under the mask of the “Alien” series. It actually veers closer to the 1932 film “Island of lost Souls”. Ship of survivors representing normal veer into uncharted territory; a mad scientist bending the rules of biology encounters and clashes with them; the monsters he creates go to war with the ship. And in this film evil wins.

It also contains genuinely great performance(s) from Fassbender, grand sketches of gods wrecking the cosmos, humanity abandoning its children to go after unanswerable questions, and more that harken back to Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” sandbox of sci fi.

To me, this film is all about David. The humans are cannon fodder for them. Which justifies their characterization. Also, he’s clearly a stand in for Ridley Scott and the work + wonder of being an artist, film director in particular.

I love this. I can see others liking it less, but is beautifully realized, staged, and executed.

So what are people looking for? Well…

[quotes around their words, mine by themselves]

“From Ridley Scott, one of the best directors… And one of the worst”

-first off, I think an artist is judged by their best work, not overall average

Scott can be quite varied. I personally favor going to cosmos than staying in your lane. Sometimes that make mistakes, but interesting ones.

Make no mistake though: “The Counselor” is a first rate film, acidic in the extreme, but so totally gonzo that it makes you breathe a different air. It’s the kissing cousin to “Covenant”, and both show a director willing to try new ideas and tones, and pulls it off spectacularly. Both have no interest in making the viewer feel good or flatter them, which definitely pushes some people away

“There are now more bad alien films than good ones”

-first off, where is “Prometheus”? Isn’t it an alien film? If not, and “covenant” is clearly a sequel to it, then maybe this film should be judged apart from the Ripley saga.

-I have wondered at times if calling it “Prometheus: Covenant” would have cut down on the confusion

-“Alien 3” is a spectacular film. It fully commits to the idea of Ripley having courage and purpose to her life as she knows she will die. It is completely different to “Aliens”(which may have been its problem concerning reception,as we will see) and “Alien”, it forms a perfect trilogy. Fincher may hate how fucked he got by the system, but it is a beautiful and wonderful film

“Alien resurrection” less so. But it is an odd, French splatter cartoon; certainly worth watching, not at all bad.

The “vs predator” films are largely minor, and I have no qualms with considering them less successful films.

-What makes the alien series great is that with each film the xenomorph changes to be what the film needs it to be. It’s flexibility storytelling wise is impressive. The problem comes when a audience only wants one type of story done

“When Ridley Scott wanted to talk about the meaning of life, he wanked for two hours”

-“Prometheus” has nothing to do with life, and everything to do with death. The characters in the film want to know about life (particularly Shaw since she can’t give birth) but they are punished at every turn, showing the universe to be uncaring.

Disagree with that statement or not, that is the rule that “Prometheus” and “Covenant” is abiding by.

Hell the first shot of “Prometheus” is an engineer killing himself. “Covenant” starts with life and realizing how the creator will die. There is consistency in this film universe.

And it also totally vibes with “Alien”.

“Save the philosophical stuff for ‘Blade Runner’, I want a short haired girl, in a tank top, fighting a xenomorph, who kills it by sucking it into the vacuum of space”

-and now we come to the real discussion/thorn in the side; this film isn’t a damn thing like “Aliens”

One thing that makes the alien series so fascinating is how it allowed two totally different filmmakers to make their masterpiece.

Also, it’s the rare series where the sequel brought in a bigger and wider audience.

I bet money that most people really only like “Aliens”. And that’s no shame, it’s a brilliant film. It’s strengths are the set pieces, the use of xenomorph as locusts, and characters that are simple but snappy and endearing.

In comparison to “Alien” which is cold, weird and slow moving (and brilliant) “Aliens” charm is more warm and dynamic. It doesn’t ask you to wait, it asks you to hold on. It gets kids in the door with Newt, it sets up a deep chord with Ripley giving her mother like affection , and it also makes Ripley more feminine and kick ass (she was wonderfully butch and joyfully selfish in “Alien”)

Cameron said it best in his critique of “Covenant”; “ I don’t like films where you invest in a character and they get destroyed at the end.”

Some people share that opinion. Ridley Scott does not. (Nether do I)His films generally have had the protagonist go through hell and often destroyed them. I admire that in him.

But that point of view explains why “Aliens” is so successful; it makes us love the characters and be sad when their friends die. Cameron is a genius, and is warm with his characters. Scott is also a genius, and picks their wings off like a cruel child.

Every alien film post “Aliens” has had to bear that cross, of creating such lovable stock characters. “Alien 3” didn’t give a shit, and made a impressive gathering of detached male prisoners. “Resurrection” came close with goofy space pirates, but were weird as shit.

In my opinion, if “Alien” came out after “Aliens” it would have not been as warmly received, because, got damn, is it cold and weird and hurts its people. It’s suppose to. The reaction to “Prometheus” and “Covenant” shows that all too clear.

Finally, Scott clearly does not give a shit about any alien film after his. I don’t think the Prometheus saga will show the queen alien because it came after Scott and he considers it invalid.

With this in mind, I can see how people are upset. Cold, hateful, sadistic are what “Covenant” are. And I love it for that.

I love mean films with a purpose and artistic flourish. And the Prometheus saga does it so well.

If you came to “Covenant” to root for its human characters, you are fucked (and kinda an idiot). Scott is making big budget sci fi epics about the mass murder of nature and survival of artists.

You can hate that, but call a spade a spade.

“In a franchise full of unforgettable characters”

(Shows only “Aliens” characters)

What about Dallas? Ash? Clemens? Golic? Call? Elgyn? Gediman?

There exists good characters other than the second film, guys

Once again, this love for “Aliens” blinds people to everything else

“Forget the humans”

Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

-but also, that slipping on blood part was (intentionally) hilarious

“Freshman philosophy class…two versions of same pretentious professor..flute”

-why do I get the feelings that the people who say stuff like this never study philosophy and just consider anything even slightest bit about talking about feelings and ideas just stoner shit, because they are the only people that talk about those subjects they let in their social circle?

I dunno, the idea about humanity killing its children for vague reasons, someone trying to better himself against cruelty and going mad himself, and finally having the courage to create something even when everyone else tells him to stand down sounds pretty universally relatable and human to me.

And even if it was pretentious, that is what art is, to subtract the distractions, and focus on what you want the world to be

-to me, David is sad Walter cannot create, like Scott is upset younger directors don’t get to make original universes and material. But David is also a fucking maniac who will stop at nothing, to whom other lives means nothing. That kind of grand vainness is perfectly at home in the world and its what art leisure to create out of whole cloth

But all of this gets in the way of watching strong men blow things away with guns, doesn’t it? (“aliens” did this to show how ineffective the marines were, not to worship them)

-the flute adds to the fantasy element, of the pied piper trying to lure others away, to their doom

Plus, it’s just fucking funny

“Snickers at 'I’ll take care of the fingering’”

See? This film is just so much fun

“I was not expecting this much flute playing”

I love it when films surprise me. I adore it when filmmakers follow their strange urges and give us scenes I never saw coming.

I love the scene of David tempting Walter with the flute.

I marveled at the scene where David drops his black plague on the engineers(who look totally different).

I looked around as David played the fucking theme to “Prometheus” on his flute. I starred at the other audience members, as if to ask “is this the real life?”

I laughed uproariously as just when you think it’s safe the xenomorph tracks the two pilots shower sexing, like it’s 1982 slasher time.

As soon as the humans delver us to David, I could see who this film was about. And really, the humans are just for showing his gentle and different Walter is.

Ridley Scott delivered a new horror classic, with a eye towards the 70’s and 30’s, but both feet in the present, with the score and design to make it work.

The first victim convulsing and back blood shooting. David acting as satan. Terror of trapped in the sick bay. The aforementioned shower scene. The cross bearing xenomorph rejects. The puppet master pulling the strings of the first post face hugger.

This is a brilliantly conceived, written, directed, and persevered treat for horror fans. I loved every second of it.

“Thrill of seeing the xenomorph move. In full daylight. Which just looks…wrong”

This is the best point of the video, though I disagree with the conclusion.

It is weird and against the vibe of the Ripley saga for the xenomorph to be a servant. But clearly these creatures are the hounds to mr burns. Satan. Evil mad dr Moreau.

It definitely gave the the film a totally new vibe. As did all the green life. But isn’t that what films are about, showing new images?

It just looks so damn different. I like different. Different and great-even better.

“Cgi Ripley?”

That would be pretty weird. But since I more or less wash my hands of any continuity, why not?

It’s probably just a spur of the moment statement. But also incredibly funny

“It asks [x] questions but leaves you wondering [y]”

Mac, the real question is, do you like to create? That’s all this film is about. The joy of creation. Of weaving something new out of something old.

Like, Ridley is literally exploiting his own creation. It’s surreal and the best.

“Compares terminator series to Alien series”

This is more apt, but in a different way.

For both series, The first film is a stand alone classic. A low key masterpiece. The second is an expansive blockbuster which really really skewed expectations for future films.

The comparison ends there though. Sigourney Weaver has way way more character to work with. Poor Schwarzenegger had so so directors to work with, while the Alien series put down the work of real filmmakers making challenging art.

I enjoy the terminator series, but it’s clear that it’s so much the work of one man (James Cameron) so no one else can make it work. But the fluidity of the xenomorph makes every single film worth watching and honestly essential.

The second film in both series cast a long shadow. But while the following films in the terminator series really don’t hold up if stand alone, the following xenomorph films all showcase a different side to hubris and death

Which is honestly the best way to approach this film. Something new, vibrant, and bizarrely personal

Respecting and knowing horror and monsters films for what they do helps too

“Me at the idea of six more alien films”

I love it. I usually get tuned out after a few films, but this Prometheus saga just works. The possibilities are endless.

Ridley Scott deserves the highest kudos for turning this series into greatness

In a certain way, “Alien” is “Halloween”, perfect in its execution and of its singularity.

Prometheus saga is Friday the 13th series. Messier, off to an odd start, but a snowball of its own delights that fosters an utterly nihilistic universe. Like Jason, David is too good for just one film, and we need those eight films of him. It may indeed prove to be the essentials space monster-mad scientist series, just like Jason is the essential slasher killer.

Is this pizza to a steak? Yes, but each have their own pure delights, and like a certain pie, it just gets better and beautifully blurrier with each dizzying bite

Long live Prometheus saga; may it rule in hell for an eternity. Just as “Covenant” does in my heart.

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Reflection 12 (FINAL) | Netjuu no Susume 1 | Mahoutsukai no Yome 1 | Code:Realise 1 | Kino’s Journey (2017) 1 | Dynamic Chord 1 | Houseki no Kuni 1 | Anime-Gataris 1 | Idolmaster Side M 1

Kekkai Sensen seems to be off limits, even when I try to comprehend the relevant JavaScript after dodging region lock. Grr…I spent and hour and 30 mins just trying to figure out that code!!! Oh well (dejected tone), at least I have Classicaloid…

Reflection 12 (FINAL)

Oh please, X-On. Fighting fire with fire is the worst thing you can do. Haven’t you learnt that over the course of this show?

Gahhhh! Finally, the magical girls have arrived! Thank you, Stan Lee!

Wowee, that was some concentrated sound, so to speak.

Well, that’s just original, y‘know? Pyramid. In the desert. Whoop-de-doo.

Rule number 14138008 of crime-fighting: Always make sure you have a backup in case someone uses yorur kryptonite against you. Or in this case, a superpower-stripping technique.

I don’t think X-On’s become one with the Darkness yet. He has some flippin’ plot armour on his side, after all. Why haven’t any of these guys succumbed to the ageing process yet?

Well, I got my answer to my previous question, but how did vision!Eleanor appear, anyway?

Wait…wait. I knew he had plot armour! Argh! X-On! What the heck did you do to deserve plot armour???

Oh, the magical girls are part sentai and part actual magical girl. Notice they have kanji across their chests for their associated element.

“Why won’t you accept Darkness’s darkness?” – Okay, “Darkness’s darkness” is a bit too redundant, y’hear?

Wait…wait. Ninth Wonder only had 4 members??? Wat. Then Ian goes and undoes all their hard naming work by calling them by their real group name, dangit. You ruined a perfectly good magical girl show, Ian.

They didn’t even put in the crack on X-On’s helmet…head…thingy.

Okay, I am so confused…Guh. Thank goodness it’s over.

Netjuu no Susume 1

I like the rare stories where a girl transforms into a boy for non-hentai reasons. This is the closest anime I’ve gotten so far to that concept, so…yay, me?

“Recommendation of the Wonderful Virtual Life” and “Recovery of an MMO Junkie” mean two very different things on the same topic. What was happening in the localiser’s mind when they created this title for the English-speaking audience???

That scene where Moriko collapses on her bed…for some reason, someone was watching a show with the Moonlight Sonata in the background, so now I think MMO Junkie is sad. (Which is probably wrong.)

Oh, by the way. The –juu in Netjuu gives the word a special kind of connotation. A riajuu is what’s known as a normie, or a non-otaku, non-gamer sort of person. A netjuu must therefore be a net addict. Kiznaiver taught me that.

“I chose the NEET life.” - I know that feel, Moriko.

Oh, they even gave Moriko’s character Saiyan hair for a moment, LOL.

Okay, here’s a pun. Mori (forest) is 3x ki (tree) and hayashi (grove) is 2x ki. That’s using the kanji, though.

The guy with the glasses looks like a dude from Occultic;Nine. I have bad memories of that show because of Ryouka…er, big knockers girl.

Owee. I once joined an RPG because of some IRL friends but I forgot to ask them what group they were in, and so I was a solo quester…so I know that feel, Moriko.

This is based on a Comico manga, so the designs are simple to draw and they were originally in colour, so they just needed to be reworked for animation. See? Backing Comico in my Superstar wa Nemurenai days wasn’t such a bad idea, now, huh?

Himeralda? For a guy character? Well, that broke the gender barrier.

Christmas is a holiday for lovers in Japan, so I suspect it’s something to do with that.

Lawson -> Cowson, LOL.

Despite all the obviously still motion shots, I’m really enjoying this. Why does it have to be 10 eps??? (By the way, why didn’t I get Kekkai Sensen??? Dangit, Funi!!!)

Oh, this is so adorable! Lily even dressed up and Moriko got her chicken! It’s such a heartwarming Christmas for these guys.

These transitions, while not original, I find are really cool. Not Disney-level, but still inventive. Also, that green dot is definitely Hayashi and the pink one Lily.

LOL, Lawson was a sponsor this ep, it seems. Had I paused a little later, I would’ve missed its credit!

This is a keeper for sure. I’m just disappointed about the short ep count (due to the nature of Comico)…and Kekkai Sensen, uwu…

Mahoutsukai no Yome 1

Le hype. That’s all. I’ve been watching 1 – 2 eps per day (for these first eps of the fall season) and since the weekend is so full of good shows, I don’t know how people can watch entire seasons like this…As for my take on this show, it’s pretty and well-received after the OVA and advance screening, so hopefully this will deliver. I’m not an AMB manga fan by the way.

It’s normally a bad sign to start with an OP, but it shows off the animation, so I’m not complaining.

The English title shows how interconnected the world is these days…it’s kinda scary, actually.

Chise looks lke a bride here, or she’s on her deathbed. Both symbolic meanings are applicable.

I never thought Japanese people would be able to capture Western elegance so well.

The chibi-ish style doesn’t suit such a serious show. Are these chibi-ish sections also part of the manga?

I thought the woman with the bonnet was called Silky? Not Silver? The promo materials all say “Silky”, and the OVA did too IIRC.

I think the biggest descriptor of this show is “whimsical”.

Historically, fairies lure people into Fairyland like the stereotypical portrayal of sirens, and they’re not as benign as my portrayal of them in One Wish They Never Wanted.

The irony of a dog-face skull calling you his puppy. It really brings an odd sense of humour to this show.

Welp, that’s another safe keeper. I’ve being quite definite about my choices, as you might have noticed, since the weekend is positively overloaded with shows (as I mentioned earlier).

Code:Realise 1

It’s an otome game adaption. They don’t always go down well, but it’s worth a shot.

Isn’t it “London Bridge is falling down”?

CR seems to have forgotten to title this ep “London Steam” on their site.

Well, they’re guards. Y’think lowering their guard would’ve been a funny pun, at least if this were dubbed in English (which this will be…eventually).

Ooh, so this plain bishie is Arsene Lupin? Me likey.

Like, seriously, Where are this tiny spark-star-thingies coming from?

Impey…who? Update: Google (plus previous spoilers) tell me that Impey is Impey Barbicane, accomplice to Lupin.

LOL, I’ve watched me too many Kaito Kid heists. Me likey, once again. However, the thing I don’t get is the voiceover. Couldn’t Lupin have actually said these lines instead of putting them on voiceover???

Gahhhhhhh! This eyecatch’s bishie has such horrible eyes that they burn mine! Get me out of here!

How does Impey know Cardia’s name??? Update: You’ll get the answer later…

It’s a few generations too early for a man to go to the moon, LOL. Poor Impey.

Victor…well, I never. Anime really does cover everything. Plus, Frankenstein ain’t his monster in this one, which would make Mary Shelley proud.

Hey, Kaitou (Phantom Thief) Lupin is one thing but using your real name as your kaitou identity is taking it a bit far. Sure, there was Kaito Kuroba, but at least he was Kaito Kid as well.

Sheesh, the Horologium sounded like nuclear power before Lupin explained it was Cardia’s heart…that would’ve been tonnes scarier, had Cardia been a nuclear monster.

LOL, Lupin’s so tsundere! Hahaha…

Oh please. Don’t let the vampires steal away Cardia (LOL)!

Victor being pegged as a terrorist has something to do with Isaac, right?

Lupin’s so effin’ short. No wonder he stands in high places when he lords over the British Army, haha.

Smol corgi with cyborg leg is probably my new dog aesthetic, haha. Plus top hat. I like top hats.

Shouldn’t the corgi have died when Cardia grabbed it though, or was that because of its leg?

The rainbow transition was a bit much, but okay. I can live with it.

So smol corgi is called Sisi? What a weird name.

It’s…not bad, I could probably watch until the end. However, the colour scheme seems to be “bright” with these recent female games (see Sengoku Night Blood for another example of what I mean). Well, since I said that, it’s a keeper. (I think the random James Bond-esque scene involving shooting guns then being in front of an explosion in the ED sealed the deal though, LOL.)

Kino’s Journey 1

I’m a noob to the world of Kino, so please don’t spoil me on anything you’ve seen in the previous adaptations! All I really know is the shtick: Kino is neither a guy nor a girl. They stick around in a country for 3 days then leave. They have a talking motorbike named Hermes…that’s pretty much it.

Lerche? On Kino? Y’think someone else could’ve done it better? I feel like a washed-out, subdued feeling would suit this show best. However, these words are coming from a Kino’s Journey noob, as I just said, so disregard me if you want.

Mori no naka de…b? What’s the “b” for?

A few times when they say “country”, I imagine a sea. That makes sense, considering it’s the sea that separates a lot of us.

How does Hermes talk???

Hermes is CGI. Trust my eyes, they’ve seen a lot of CGI for their time.

The gun is called Cannon? Wuh? The other gun is called the Woodsman? Wuh wuh???

A motorrad appears to be a motorbike, but…okay. It’s a BMW make of motorbike. Like a Ford Gran Torino.

*Kino points the gun* Whoa! What a fakeout!

Kino is CGI sometimes, too, it seems.

Those cows seem to be angry at Kino for some reason…

Why does no one question the talking motorbike???

Oh, I see. That was what I suspected from the moment the rifle was shown in the store. Public order is good here because people simply turn a blind eye.

I think Kino hopping behind Hermes should’ve been 2D. It’s not fluid enough in 3D…not quite yet to convey a proper sense of action, but enough to create a sense of disquiet. (Which is what I believe the show wants, so I’ll take my words back for the moment.)

“Ow!” is an understatement, considering it (the arrow) must’ve severed a muscle or two.

Ah, loophole. I didn’t see that coming.

Whoa. What dramatic irony.

I swear they recycle parts of this footage over and over again. I’m getting dejavu.

Hahaha, that crepe ending was funny. It wasn’t an ideal way to finish such an unsettling episode, but it was a good punchline.

Well, I think this is going to be really repetitive, so I’ll put it on hold and roll the next show up.

Dynamic Chord 1

More Ume. As an Ume fan, I’m spoilt for choice this season.

Cherry blossom opening is probably a bad omen. It’s probably the most cliched opening you could go for.

Holy eye colours, Batman! “That yellow should not exist as an eye colour,” is all I’m saying.

Honestly, this is the least gripping band/idol anime I’ve tackled all season. If they’re just going to be angsty in the rain, they should’ve been one season earlier because I would’ve taken this over The Reflection or In Another World With my Smartphone, laser eye boy be damned.

Wait, is pinkhead in the car or out of it? Update: He’s in a convertible. So it’s a yes and a no.

That metronome transition was pretty bad. Really hamfisted.

That transition away from the metronome, I couldn’t even tell that was a transition!

Aw gawsh, spare me. This looks like one of those ads you see play between shows on TV channels without company sponsorship. Or an only-half-decent MV.

I think they’re trying to be Dark and Edgy (TM) in comparison to, say, TsukiPro, but that was better than this.

Extended Pans for No Reason Whatsoever (TM)! Also, Bumblebee car. I’m having fun ripping this show apart, man. Now I see the real quality of Hatewatches (with a capital H), but it’s only been 5 minutes...

Dual eye colour boy (Reon), oi. You really didn’t do anything. Don’t give yourself unnecessary credit.

Bumblebee boy has way too long eyelashes, by the by. Did I ever mention that?

At least they justified the previous shots. That one there, at about the 6 minute mark, was not justified.

Based on Dai Murase (Ume’s role in TsukiPro), I thought the Kyohso doppleganger was gonna be Ume, but he thankfully got someone more attractive (Kuro of apple polisher). I still don’t like the name apple polisher though, how the heck did that name “get popular overseas”???

The camera shakes sometimes for no reason at all.

Reon seems constantly grumpy for some reason…

C’mon…this production is visually quite junky. Admit it.

Please don’t make this another ad fakeout. Only play your cards once for a certain trick…

Pink and blue eyed boy looks like a villian, but he’s probably a “hero” in this story.

This is probably a music video, but if I wanted a music video, I’d go to YouTube. Not an anime, unless it were an anime musiv video (a proper one, not an amateur effort YouTube Poop).

Wait, they spent 5 minutes just showing us a music video? It was pretty bad, so of course I noticed it in a bad way.

What is up with black and blue guy’s hair? I thought bumblebee guy was bad enough.

Sometimes removing the volume is all you need to figure out if an anime is good, since if they cared about their visuals and plot enough, then they wouldn’t be relying on shots of dudes rocking backwards and forward so much.

I get not all band people are singers, but still…bumblebee boy, if you’re so willing, why not you take Reon’s place?

Wait, so pink-haired convertible boy is the famed Yorito??? Dorito, more like it!

If the animators for this show were any good, they’d animate the fingers when the guitarists play. I’ve seen people play the guitar before. I used to take music classes. Geez, Pierrot. Stop skimping.

Another Skimping Technique (TM) – Speedlines in Replacement of Actual Motion (sic).

Too bad Dorito’s skipping practice, eh, Reon?

C’mon, Dorito. First it’s an angsty rain scene, now it’s an angsty shower scene? You don’t even look half hot here. Or half wet, for that matter.

I know anime is meant to look flat, but these sections I’ve been calling “music videos” are…superflat, to give them a name. They look like paper overlaid on the anime background, with little to no real animation being done, and that’s why I’m giving this show such a bad rap.

All that angst…for this? It seems a little anticlimatic, is all I’m saying.

Well, I made it through one episode. It’s probably not as bad as I made it out to be, but I do hatewatch picks for my own pleasure and this just became one of them. Onto the drop pile it goes…

Houseki no Kuni 1

This is the last debut of the fall season, at least until someone hands me Kekkai Sensen. Okay, here’s the story about why I’m here: I heard good things about Steven Universe in my home country, so I went on a trip and tried some Cartoon Network there. Thing is, Steven Universe didn’t resonate with me as much as I thought it would. Therefore, to take the concept and turn it into a real anime – would that do it for me? Let’s find out.

Hmph, I had the sound on this time and I had the feeling all the gems were voiced by women. Like Steven Universe.

When they said “sunspots”, they…uh, kinda meant it.

I feel like Master Kongo’s VA is a bit too soft. Otherwise, this show is pretty good.

Whoa. Seeing Phos shattered like this and still conscious must be freaky. Makes for some good body horror, eh?

Well, this show has some excellent worldbuilding. That’s something I haven’t said in a few seasons…in this simulcast commentary, that is. Made in Abyss has good worldbuilding too. The only problem with this is…where did Phos’s gloves come from?

The eyecatch seems to be in English. Like Princess Principal last season.

The echo, I think, had a worse effect this time than when Kongo destroyed Phos.

“Don’t use that hand!” - LOL.

So Cinnabar’s poison creates amnesia and (an indirect need for) amputation, eh? What a duo of afflictions.

Well, it’s…actually pretty good. Let’s press on.

Anime-Gataris 1

I actually wanted to pass on this, but after seeing Karandi pass judgement on its second episode and seeing a Haruhi reference, I decided I would pass a judgement on it too. Well, it’s an anime about anime. What do you expect, really?

Hahaha…Oarai is known for being popularised by Girls und Panzer, so Galtan is short for Girls with Tanks.

Haritaro = Hamtaro, Dezumon = Digimon, PreFae = PreCure. Haha, it’s an anime watcher’s paradise of parody anime!

“Double riding is illegal.” - I think that’s a reference to the first episode of Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun and the tandem bike.

Fish??? Wuh???

Aw. That fakeout, I was hoping for it to be A Certain Magical Index or something.

Geez, typical School Council Pres with optional Ethereal Glow. Now available in Blonde too, it seems.

Sebastian Michaelis right there.

The teacher just did the flippin’ Ringo (from UtaPri) intro! Holy gender-barriers, Roppongi is a man??? Why I don’t react like that to Ringo, I’ll never know.

The “I should go by myself” bit is also from UtaPri, IIRC. The bit where one of the boys reveals he’s actually the star Haruka likes.

Obvious Chuunibyou with extra Fake Magic. Geesh, if it weren’t for the anime references…I really wouldn’t be covering this…

That’s my face when people talk about anime, LOL. Hero School = Boku no Hero Academia while R:Zero is Re:Zero.

Shika = deer, hence the weird deer. I don’t know what the references around the Shikabari one are, though, including the fence jump.

You picked a fight with the wrong anime lover, Anime-Gataris (I specialise in recent anime, for obvious reasons)! Tamukeda = Tanakeda (Tanaka-kun wa Itsumo Kedaruge) and Toramiko = Kumamiko. Clearly someone doesn’t remember that Kumamiko was a controversial flop, anime-wise.

Bakusou = Bakuon. Therefore, Shikabari is probably…Kiznaiver? No, it’s Kabaneri. That’s the best match, considering we’re talking about spring 2016. Time Travel Shonen = Time Travel Shoujo. Still don’t get the fence jump though.

Kyou Kara Sessha Wa!! = Kyou Kara Ore Wa!!, where “sessha” is an pronoun for…I think it’s older males. Angel Story = Angel Legend (Angel Densetsu).

The OVA references went over my head again…

Gachiemon = Doraemon, naturally. Nobue = Nobita and Karashi = Takeshi (Gouda). Well, while looking for the Gachiemon movie, I found Reddit spoiling it all for me. Refer to it if you don’t want me doing it for you, because I’m going to...ignore it! Haha, you thought I was going to use it as a crutch now, didn’t you? I like this challenge.

The dog one is A Dog of Flanders, Everstrike is Evangelion. I thought the Cinnamon Roll one would be the not-often-mentioned Powerpuff Girls anime  but Reddit says it’s Dragon Ball??? Autumn Wars = Summer Wars.

Light music club = K-On, classical literature club = Hyouka, NJ club = GJ Club.

The cover of this magazine appears to be Newtype or Animage, which I think both started around the 70s or 80s. That’s definitely Urusei Yatsura on the front, though.

The Girl who Slept Through Time = The Girl who Leapt Through Time and Replica…Paprika, perhaps? (Think I was recalling Reddit there.)

Is that…a Boueibu reference?! Or is that just a cliché…? (If it’s a cliché, I’d feel sad, man.)

I feel like the video quality seems to warp a little at infrequent moments. It’s quite disappointing for a 2017 anime to be suffering from strange visual problems like that.

There’s a KonoSuba poster…sort of.

Maria Clara doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen although it does kind of look like Hatsune Miku or Elsword.

Dang that fakeout, I thought she meant the beret.

I feel like this is best binged to get at all the references, so onto the on hold pile it goes. I think its plot will be cliché but its references are the best thing about it.

Idolmaster 1

Time to thin out the herd! This’ll be tough, since all the contenders I’ve kept have the potential to be great.

The pun here is that 315 (saikou) can mean “the highest”, or in this case, “the best”.

The eyeless producer (and Saito, by the by) was probably a bad idea.

Hey, it’s a 315 business card!

The cardboard boxes say “Bear Mark Moving Company” (Kuma no Ma-ku no Hikkoshi Kaisha).

Ooh! I like ponytail boy. I have a thing for bishies with ponytails.

“Handwriting” is probably the wrong word for a typed contract, CR subbers.

An odd juxtaposition between lawyer (or any other job) and an idol. That’s what piqued my interest about this idol anime specifically – because there is clearly going to be some dirty stuff that comes to light once characters have debuted as idols, and the more disconnect between the past and the present, the more the paps are gonna eat it up. At least, that’s my thoughts, having written Half-Paid Heroes. (I’m currently not sure if I should continue on HPH though, since I had a fight with fellow Honeyfeed writer Aura…).

Nice shirt, Teru (LOL).

When Kaoru broke the cheery atmosphere, Teru’s shirt suddenly said roiya (“lawyer” in katakana, transposed to hiragana).

Dandou literally translates to “male way”. It’s actually hilarious since it sounds really macho…in a bishie show intended to capture a female audience.

“I want us to work together…”

Does this producer have a name? I get the feeling he doesn’t. Maybe, instead of that woman producer they were hinting at at the end of Side Jupiter (was that a woman?), it was this guy.

Sakuraba’s being kind of awkward on the side with his fistpump. I like him.

“Then from now on, the three of you…”

If you know me from Boueibu, you’ll know the line Saito says should actually be “Boys be ambitious”.

The board up the back of the Dramatic Stars’ party says “Celebrate! Dramatic Stars’ Formation”…or something like that, anyway…(Happoro beer, LOL.)

Oh, it’s Hokuto, Shouta and Touma from Jupiter.

It’s this shot from last episode. Oh, okay. It’s kinda like Death Parade in that there are two backstories leading to the same ending shown in ep 1.

What’s with those 17 badges, guys???

This frog mascot looks kinda funny in a (LOL) sort of way. I think Ume’s character will be in a unit with the shota that likes this frog mascot, so…good on me.

At least “Drive a live” doesn’t sound as bad as “Burny!!” or “Crazy Baby Show”, namewise. It does, however, sound like a slogan for a drink-driving government prevention scheme.

I think Ume’s character is the guy behind the counter, although I’m a bit sketchy on that. We’ll see in a few eps.

I think I’ve probably been missing out on something by not listening to the trio with the music. Even though I threw the others out based on visuals and plot, an idol/band show is nothing without its music, so I’ll put Idolmaster on hold so that I don’t become too attached to any of the trio and maybe someday I can evaluate TsukiPro vs Idolmaster better.