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agl03 · 4 years ago

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By popular demand, LEAKED Promo Pic Breakdown: AOS Series Finale

If you sent in an ask specifically about any of the leaked promo pics consider it answered here. If I still did not answer your specific question go ahead and resend.

First up we have the staggering 3 Pictures the Press Site Originally intended and the 1 picture they gave to TV GUIDE which in true AOS fashion are all of the same scene just with close ups.

As I’ve said in previous asks I don’t think that is Fitz they are looking at, if so I think Deke would be more in the thank goodness Bobo is finally here face vs a wtf face. And now thanks to the Leak I can pretty much confirm that it was....

Kora.

Who looks to have a bone to pick with Daisy and really we are trying to escape here so if Sousa and Mack could just come and knock her out real quick or if Daisy can just get this over with fast we’ll be on our way. However, I am a bit on the fence if May was able to get through to her and nothing would set up Nathaniel killing her like Kora betraying him and helping his rival Daisy and his meal tickets to Fitz get away.

I shall pause for the collective aww of Jemma sleeping on her very protective grandson’s shoulder. They’ve been through a lot and I love how we’ve been able to see their relationship grow over the season. Its everything I’ve been wanting since the second we learned who he was.

Clearly they have been taken onto one of the Chronicoms ships, either for them to continue to interrogate, as bait for Fitz knowing that he will tear the Universe for Jemma Simmons, or as hostages to use against Shield. The second picture to me looks like almost a more candid photo that could have been taken between sets but it could just be some more lovely bonding.

Daisy to the rescue! However, I get some major bad vibes from this here. Jemma looks almost afraid of Daisy (who likely quaked her way in) and doesn’t seem to know who she is. Meaning Diana had to block a lot of other people when she blocked Fitz out. Hopefully I’m wrong here and Jemma is just upset because Daisy is freaking out about the whole “Who is Fitz?” thing too.

And we are making for the exits! Hazzah bearing in mind we run into Kora shortly after this.

TV Guide Pic Explained above.

Jemma is simmonsing, trying to explain something. Perhaps about Diana, perhaps what she remembers about the plan and something they have to do while on said Chronicom ship. Really these are shots in the dark. The blue lights could mean the Chronicom ships are about do do something or its an early state of oh look trespassers. We do see the lights red in the Promo with Mack.

HELLO MORE WE HAD TIME FLASHBACKS!

And we can add another theory hit to the list! Looks like Fitz is using the Framework and I could be in the minority but I’m glad to see it. It was so heartbreaking in Season 4 to see something he built to protect Jemma and his friends twisted into a hellish nightmare prison. I am more than thrilled that he looks to have been able to put it to good use here and is either using it to keep an eye on the Chronicoms, which him in “Framework Mode” would leave him absolutely exposed. Or he’s using it as a way to build the tech faster. My guess is here is where the realize they’ve found a way to spy on the Chronicoms, they are testing something, or had some other ah ha moment.

Also worth noting is a pregnant Jemma there in the background, complete with a baby bump.

Fitzsimmons in the cock pit of the Zephy. Jemma looks tired, man I feel you girl, but Fitz looks oh so hopeful.

I mean.

I’m just.

I know I said I would die on that hill and have been for over a year now. But to see it, actually see it coming is still super overwhelming in a way.

But there she is! SECRET CHILD CONFIRMED!!!!!!!

Working and playing alongside her parents as they continue to prep for the final mission. Also happy to see Jemma’s frown turn upside down by her little ray of sunshine there.

I don’t know what this thing is, I have my theory that I’ll go into below, but whatever it is gong to be insanely important. Not only that Jemma is the one who is going to have to assemble and activate the dang thing.

Hence the practicing, even while blindfolded, working it into her muscle memory. Because Jemma Simmons excels at preparation.

My guess is this is where Fitzsimmons explain how it works to us. I’m going with this sucker is how the frack we get Fitz back from wherever the crap he is. And you’ll see why below after he’s made his Grand Entrance.

And could explain her look of concern here. Concern she won’t get it right when the time comes. I also find it odd we have almost different variations of the same scene here or if its a Fitz wakes up and sees she’s concerned.

The we thought Inescapable was straight out of fan fic....well the finale leak says hold my beer. Jemma doing some light reading about the cosmos and taking notes even has mean leaning to them going with a more celestial name to speak to the “one of these days we’ll find something magnificent out in space” quote from Season 3 that came as they offically became cannon.

And then Fitz shows up with Tea, so this could be when we learn their daughters name or Jemma has figured something out to do with the Chronicoms and space and timey whimey stuff. I am rooting for option A.

I’ll take Fitz Kool Aid Manning in for $1000

And for like 10 seconds after he lands he runs the risk of being shot and/or quaked into next Tuesday. Also LOVE the parallel to Deke’s helmet and first appearance.

That glowy ball thing there looks very similar to the device that Jemma was working with in the earlier pics. So hence its the Fitz summoning device.

I’m calling this one with Jemma clinging to Deke here as confirmation that Diana is still in full force and she has no idea who Fitz is. May’s hand up there in the middle could be her warning him of Jemma’s fear or May letting Jemma know he means her no harm.

Also Enver wins the pose off for this pic.

Collective team surprise at Fitz once again appearing impossibly out of no where.

Based on the WTF looks on pretty much everyone’s faces I’m calling this Fitzsimmons Fitzsimmonsing what the heck the next step is how they they’ve unlocked Fitz as a playable character. And bonus shock that they had a Secret Kid all stashed away all this time too.

I also had a few asked about the helmet there on the table. If the Framework is how Fitzsimmons were able to hack into the Chronicoms systems (turn about is fair play) then I think that helmet on the table was how Fitz was hooked up to it. And it definitely looks different than the one he made his grand entrance in wearing. Jemma activating the device could be what pulled him out and to her. Jemma was literally the ONLY key to getting at Fitz.

And for the Dousy fans out there! Sousa is kinda digging the crazy plan Fitzsimmons just laid out and are they in the Playground or Koenig Bar? Either one I appreciate its not blown up.

Okay there you guys go. I left out just a few of the pics that were super close ups or seemed to be more of BTS than from the shot kind of thing. Have to say it was a very nice surprise to get to do this one more time and on a theory that has been so near and dear to my heart.

#aos spoilers #aos finale spoilers #secret child is real #fitzsimmons #dousy #i'm so happy #and tired #and oh so happy #but also really tired #I think I've earned a bath and retail therapy

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princess-of-riviaa · 5 years ago

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The Tonight Show

Request 1 by anonymous: Hi hi my darling! How are you? I hope you're ok and I hope you have a great weekend. So, I've never requested anything before, and it's ok if you don't appreciate what I'm about to ask, but I've never seen anyone writing about a hot night with Henry in Brazil. You know what I mean? Summer, samba, the sea, caipirinha, that mystic moonlight (he loves Brazil, and Brazil LOVES him). Thanks for reading 💙

Request 2 by @lunedelorient: Reader writes a fantasy book. Henry discovers the story and convince Charlie, they have to produce a movie. Both met Reader, and Henry falls madly in love for her, (because she is as awesome as her book). And filming just made them closer and closer. Charlie, who knows his bro likes her (but is too scared that this doesn’t work like his other relationships) starts to give her clues, and since she likes him back, decided to let him know he can ask her out. On a very sexy way. The movie is a hit, so they have a very busy promo tour. One of the stops is Lipsync Battle. Henry doesn’t know she is the queen of Lipsync, so she used it for her plan.

Pairing: Henry Cavill x OFC (Melanie)

Author’s Note: i’m so sorry if I didn’t get your requests down just right. I allowed the story to flow how it wanted to and this was what happened! So I hope you both still enjoy!

Summary: Henry finds himself falling for the writer of the latest film he’s working on. One night in Brazil, those feelings are finally acted on.

Warning(s): mentions of alcohol, fluff (surprisingly)

Word Count: 1,568

HENRY

She circles her hips, and I swear I’m hypnotized. The way she moves… it’s like the music is a part of her, flowing from her swaying hips and shaking arms. She’s a fucking goddess.

I move in my seat, hoping my hard on isn’t obvious under these low streetlights. Brazil was a bad idea. This girl is full of bad ideas, yet for some reason I seem to go along with every single one.

It started with that stupid interview. I should have known she was up to no good when I first saw her in that tight cocktail dress that did nothing to hide the teasing shape of her ass and the luscious bounce of her tits. I’d ignored my feelings up until then; but on the night, she was irresistible.

I guess if I’m going to explain myself, I should start at the beginning. Ten months before the interview. The day the script for A Hunted Crown landed in front of me and my casting agent convinced me to go for the lead role. It was a brilliant script, full of twists and heart-wrenching scenes, as well as characters that jumped off the page and became real, fleshed-out people. According to my agent, the book this movie was based on was even better. So, obviously, I had to audition. There was no way I would give up a chance to be a part of something like this. Not only could it make my career, but as a fantasy lover I know that finding a genuine story these days is harder than finding a needle in a haystack.

The only problem: she was at the audition. Her pseudonym was Little Lady, but I learned that day that her real name was Melanie. I was a few years her senior, but damn if she didn’t make me feel like I knew nothing about the world. Not in a condescending way--she was so sweet and genuine, it was adorable--but in a way that she knew so much about everything and I knew so little compared to her. I spent most of our brief, five-minute conversation trying not to gape in awe at her brilliance. I was glad she wasn’t in the actual audition room, otherwise I would have been too distracted to do my audition any good.

But five days later I got the call; I’d been casted as the main character. Cue three months of training and six months of filming. Melanie was on set everyday. She became a familiar face I enjoyed seeing all the time. We bonded through our love of fantasy and other nerdy things. Though I quickly began to memorize trivial things like how she ate a green apple with her lunch everyday, or how she giggled uncontrollably when she was tired after a tedious day of reshoots, or how her clumsiness made me yearn to look out for and protect her, I forced myself to stay focused on the film. Just get through filming, then I can let my mind wander.

Filming ended too soon. I found myself grateful that she was going to Brazil with the main cast to promote the movie (we’d shot ninety percent of the film in the mountains of Serra do Mar, just outside Rio, and the director had roots there, so we were doing half our promoting there and the rest of it back in the states) and even happier when they paired me with her for almost every interview we did.

Until The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallen. He had us do a lip sync battle. On his show, it was a tradition that he battled against his guest for the night, but since he had both me and Melanie, we were put against each other. And of course she had to choose songs that weren’t even discreet about all their sexual innuendos, and of course it had to be right then and there that I learned she knew how to move her body. It took everything in me not to drag her backstage and take her right then. Somehow, though, I managed to contain myself. I lost the battle, but for once in my life I had been too preoccupied with other things to care about winning.

I won’t be able to contain myself tonight. Not with how she’s dancing. Not with the way she’s looking directly at me, like she’s doing all of this for me. Not with how hard I already am.

… MELANIE

My pulse races, though I know it’s not from all the dancing. It’s from Henry. It’s from the way he’s looking at me right now--like he wants to devour me. The look makes adrenaline pump through my veins, mixed with just the right amount of nerves, and I force all of that into the dance. One thing most people don’t know about me is I dance as well as I write. Henry is completely entranced by my movements and something in the air--maybe it’s the amount of beer we’ve already had, or all the couples grinding and making out around us, or just the romantic atmosphere of Brazil itself--tells me that tonight I’m finally going to get what I’ve been waiting for.

I reach out for his hand and drag him from his seat before he can protest or I can think logically about what I’m about to do. I lead him to the middle of the dancing crowd before starting to dance again. He hesitantly begins to dance along with me. Before my mind can halt me in my tracks, I turn my back to him and begin to dance in front of him, swaying my hips like I’m dangling a treat in front of his nose. I gasp when I feel his hands slide around my hips and pull me against him. We fall into a steady rhythm, swaying our hips together, and with every movement my heart beats harder in my chest.

Henry nudges my ear with his nose, sending a shiver down my spine as he tells me, “I never knew you could dance like this.”

I throw my head back until it rests on his shoulder, his thick muscles flexing and unflexing with each of his movements. “You never asked,” I reply. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me, Henry.”

His right hand lets go of my hip and moves to rest on my stomach. My back is now flush with his chest. It’s an intimate gesture, one that sends heat straight to my face and my core. Butterflies dance just under my skin where his hand rests. I want to know how it will feel when he moves his hand lower.

“I want to know those things. I want to know you inside and out, Melanie,” he whispers in my ear, and I become a puddle of desperate want.

I spin around to face him, my lips parting when I see how dark his gaze has become--and how he can’t look anywhere but at my lips. He closes the distance between us until we share one breath.

“Tell me to stop,” he breathes. “Tell me you don’t want this.”

“I can’t,” I reply, my voice shaking. “I’m not a liar.”

And then he closes that last half-inch of space between us and brushes his mouth against mine. It’s a hesitant kiss, a mere brush of two nervous mouths, but my heart is still in my throat and my hands are still shaking at my sides. Henry finally closes his mouth over mine and deepens the kiss, applying much needed pressure to my mouth. An embarrassing moan claws its way from the back of my throat. Henry can no doubt hear it. But instead of laughing or pulling away, he wraps an arm around my back and pulls me as tight against him as I can possibly be. My hands reach up to cling onto his dark curls. He whispers a soft fuck and I swallow the noise greedily. Our tongues collide and make a dance of their own--a dance of giving and taking, of claiming and exploring.

Henry pulls back, albeit reluctantly, and rests his forehead against mine. We both stand in silence for a minute, attempting to catch our breath. “We should go back to the hotel,” Henry sighs.

I nod. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.”

How the hell can one kiss be that mind-blowing? I can barely think, barely stand without my legs shaking, barely breathe. I never want him to stop kissing me.

He gives me a soft smile as his fingers loop through mine and he guides me out of the crowd and back onto emptier streets. The hotel is only two blocks away so we walk back in tense silence. Everyone--the director, the three main actors of the movie, and me--all have our own rooms, but tonight I stay in Henry’s. It’s the same as mine--single bed, bedside table, bathroom--but it’s so much more appealing than my room. Maybe it’s because, after a week of staying here, the smell of Henry is in the sheets.

“Do you want to stay?” he asks as we make our way inside.

I nod a simple yes at him. That’s all he needs before he kisses me again, slowly moving towards the bed.

Neither one of us get any sleep that night. I couldn’t be happier about it.

***

Tag Squad:

@agniavateira @hnryycvll @littlefreya @celestial-vomit @lestersglitterglue @watermeloncavill @honeychicana @penwieldingdreamer @mary-ann84 @elixasays @buckysgoldenheart @noz4a2 @trippedmetaldetector @omgkatinka @lunedelorient @aphrodites-punch @yespolkadotkitty @sweetybuzz25 @iloveyouyen @deathonyourtongue @utterlyhopeful @wondersofdreaming @tsukuyomi011 @the-soot-sprite @desperate-and-broken @jayismz @emelinelovesjc @palaiasaurus64 @wolvesandhoundshowltogether @henrythickcavill @secretlyactivated @madbaddic7ed

Let me know if you want to be added/removed from my taglist!

#henry cavill #henry cavill smut

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thestylesindependent · 5 years ago

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Inside Eroda, the fictional Harry Styles island that’s baffled the internet

Full Text from The Telegraph 4/12/2019

It all started on November 20. A Twitter account opened in October released its first post: “The Isle of Eroda’s rich history is embedded in daily life as the ruins of many structures from the past remain standing across the land. #VisitEroda”

It looked like a new marketing campaign for a little-visited, off-beat beauty spot. But a quick search would show it didn’t actually exist. Yet, Eroda had a website. Advertisements for the place were popping up on Facebook and Google. People interested in all manner of nerdy subcultures were foxed – it had the whiff of a clever marketing campaign about it, but what was it for?

Within hours, an Eroda subreddit had been created to discuss it. People dived deep into web hosting details, and only became more baffled as they seemed legitimate: “it ain't no kid doing a school project”. Was it a scam, a game, an elaborate prank? Some were convinced it was the beginning of a new Cloverfield film, World of Warcraft, a new Channel 4 series or even a means of human trafficking.

Meanwhile, scores of “Harries”, the sub-group of Directioners dedicated to Harry Styles, were piecing bits of evidence together. The pop star was due to release Adore You, the second single off his forthcoming sophomore album. “Adore” backwards was “Eroda”, and the video, released on November 23, looked like it had been shot in St Abbs, the Berwickshire fishing village where Styles had been spotted shooting in August. As Eroda claimed more of the internet, Harries – some of the most forensic fans in the world – were sent into a flurry of investigation.

The goliath churn of a pop star marketing campaign is fairly familiar by now: cryptic social media teaser, excitable release date news, lyric video, full video, rinse, repeat.

Styles, who will release sophomore album Fine Line on December 13 and Adore You on Friday, satisfied many speculating fans on Monday with a near-three-minute-long trailer for the single, along with an illustration of the star standing in the ocean, surrounded by fish.

To those who had been studying Eroda for the past 10 days it was the confirmation they had been hankering for: Eroda was a Harry Styles project, and it confirmed what they had always known – that he is an artist beyond the normal realms of pop frippery (by contrast, former bandmate Louis Tomlinson spent the same afternoon releasing a video in which he sings in a bunker wearing a Stone Island parka).

Styles’ trailer introduced Eroda, showing it to be an island in the middle of the Irish Sea “shaped unmistakably like a frown, it is home to an all-but-forgotten fishing village that has had perpetual cloud cover for as long as anyone can remember”. Scenes appear of a typical coastal village, with crashing waves and brave little houses facing them. It gets increasingly weird: we learn that it is bad luck to “mention a pig in a fisherman’s pub” and to “whistle in the wind, in case you turn a gust into a gale”; the island mustn’t be left on odd-numbered days.

The inhabitants of Eroda’s village always frown, calling it “resting fish face”. Until, that is, a beaming baby appears amidst the gloom. Deemed “peculiar” (a word that pops up a lot), the boy – who grows up to become Harry Style – was outcast, leading him to deal with his angst by screaming into jars. “He had lost his smile, and without it, the world grew darker, the wind colder, and the ocean more violent” the pan-European narrator explains. “Loneliness is an ocean full of travellers trying to find their place in the world”, she continues, as Harry finds himself bonding with a stubborn fish, before the film ends “to be continued…”

So far, so intriguing. But delve a little deeper into Eroda and you may find yourself wanting to visit. The island’s website – beautiful island views and a template dating back to the late Noughties – looks remarkably similar to those for any other charming coastal holiday destination, say Bute or Oban. “No Land Quite Like It”, reads Eroda’s strapline, before offering a familiar-enough menu: Accommodations, Attractions, Guide, Home and About Eroda. The video is similarly convincing: “Make memories for your senses at VisitEroda.com”, a dulcet-voiced woman encourages over shots of crabmeat and speedboats.

It didn’t take long for the Harries to take over the Eroda subreddit, moderators becoming increasingly rigid in ruling nuggets of unrelated Eroda flotsam irrelevant to the cause of discovery (such as the user who wanted to discuss Eroda, but without any intervention from the Harries). Tumblr users were similarly invested: “What do the ominous references to Him portend? What are they serving at those town dinners? You think it’s a cute little coastal AU [alternative universe] but upon closer examination it’s full-on Wicker Man meets Hotel California meets Nightvale in the afterlife (which is what most of those places are anyway so sure why not),” posted 1D Discourse of the Day.

The whole thing is littered with wordplay. Eroda, for one, is Adore backwards (Harry’s next single is called Adore You). But, as Directioners have pointed out, the copy throughout the website nods to forthcoming Styles songs: The Fisherman’s Pub is located on the corner of Cherry Street and Golden Way (Cherry is one new song, Golden is another); the album will be released on Friday, 13 December and Eroda recommends avoiding a departure on an odd-numbered day. Eroda’s fishermen wear a single gold earring for good fortune – a look historically sported by Styles.

Directioners went further still: the hosting for VisitEroda.com and Styles’ website, doyouknowwhoyouare.com, were owned by the same company, MarkMonitor.inc. Social media pixels linked pages about Styles with Eroda. Fans became suspicious over Visit Eroda adverts appearing not on their social channels or YouTube, but, of all places, on Wikipedia. “I'M FROM FRICKING PORTUGAL,” a baffled Reddit user posted. “NOTHING EVER HAPPENS HERE. WHY IS THIS HERE”.

Eroda had analog presence, too. A4 pamphlets – the kind of thing one could make on MS Publisher circa 1998 – appeared in the freesheet boxes on the pavements of Manhattan. At a promo event in Paris, Harry was asked about Eroda by a fan. He remained silent, but those who were there claim he “made a face”.

By November 29, more evidence arrived. A short film “advert”, which used footage from the trailer released on Monday, was screened by a new Harry Styles fan account from “Eroda”. They said the film appeared in a cinema in Kinlochbervie, on Scotland’s northern coast; the Eroda account then started to tweet about cinema screening times. Eagle-eyed fans were swift to post screengrabs, showing similar island formations in the background of both the Eroda advert and that featuring Styles. The two were linked.

Kinlochbervie was, fittingly, a bit of a red herring: the footage shown in both the advert and the video trailer was actually taken in St Abbs, a picturesque fishing village in Berwickshire that’s no stranger to a rolling camera – it was “twinned” with New Asgard after being used as a location for Thor’s new home in Avengers Endgame.

Styles was there in August, shooting, it appears, a few things for the forthcoming album campaign. He and his crew used Angela Morris’s cottage, in St Abbs’ Sea View Terrace, as a green room during the three days of filming in the village, after Morris had responded to a note being popped through the door from a filming company. “One Thursday I was just coming home from work and there was Harry walking into the house,” she tells me. “All of the costumes were in the living room, make-up was going on in the kitchen.

“I asked if I could wait in the garden before my husband and I went out for the evening, so I just sat there when Harry came out,” Morris said. “I think he was having a coffee, and he sat down and chatted, asked me about bits and pieces about the village. I was talking to him about his Gucci clothes and we had a bit of a laugh. I wasn’t too starstruck, really, and I think he appreciated that.” Later on in the shoot, Styles invited Morris and her husband to share a glass of champagne with him and the crew.

While the shoot interrupted the sleepy pace of life on St Abbs for a few days – Morris says that visitor numbers had already been boosted by Avengers Endgame but small crowds of teenage girls began to crop up after word spread of Harry’s location – most villagers, she reckons, are pleased to see the place put on the map: “Most people I saw were embracing it and interested to see what was going on.”

A German artist named Mario Klingemann was, however, more incensed when his holiday collided with the shoot: “I didn't know who Harry Styles was until today when I learned that he's the guy who blocked off the entire St Abbs harbour and prevented us from enjoying our fresh crab rolls," he posted on Twitter, aggrieved.

But Morris found out about Eroda much like everybody else – through Facebook. “It’s really odd,” she assess. “Lovely footage of beautiful St Abbs, though.”

Long-lens pap shots from that shoot certainly seem to match up with what we’ve seen of Eroda so far. Styles gangles around in Seventies suits, befitting the aesthetic of his trailer. The smoking gun, though, is the presence of a young woman with hair that brings to mind a Dr Seuss illustration, or the hat Princess Beatrice wore at the Cambridges’ wedding. VisitEroda’s “about” page explains: “The primary occupation in Eroda is fishing, however, the island’s art scene has recently started to develop. In particular, Erodean hairstyles have become a rather bold expression of self amongst the island’s youth”. Clearly, these are scenes of Eroda that are being filmed.

There’s an unmistakably ominous air to Eroda, and some believe the video for Adore You will see some misfortune befall Styles – there were reports of a (fake) gunshot being filmed in St Abbs while he was there.

But what happens next is arguably less intriguing than what we’ve been given with Eroda so far. We are well-used to being nudged and prodded by pop stars ahead of a new release. Major albums aren’t so much brought out as “dropped” or “leaked”, arriving online in the middle of the night before their fans disseminate them through the internet. Fans, rather than critics, are given early listens – and under tight NDAs. Artists will clear their channels to mark a new direction, only to give us elaborate photoshoots and contrived poetry to create a “concept”.

Eroda is undeniably a “concept” – themes of loneliness, peculiarity, conformity and happiness have been woven into the fictional island from the off. But it’s been artfully done; look deep enough into the Reddit forums and you’ll see non-Styles fans begrudgingly accepting that this is the work of a former boy band frontman, rather than that of a somehow more “serious” game creator, filmmaker or even musician. Furthermore, it’s fun – and that’s all too rare in a pop world where things have become obsessed with authenticity, and a rogue comment can result in “cancellation”. One Directioner popped up on a thread only to add, “As someone who works in marketing/promotion... This is fucking genius. Harry Styles' team is tops”, and it’s difficult to disagree.

After a decade in which stars have had to up their social media presence to survive, tweaking and teasing their listenership in ever-increasing desperation to retain shrinking attention spans, Styles is closing out the 2010s with the greatest album campaign we’ve seen so far. As an artistic statement, it suggests the 2020s will be his to claim.

#harry styles #eroda #press #the telegraph #dec2019 #long post

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courage-a-word-of-justice · 4 years ago

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After much watching...I cut it down to 5 anime and 1 short.

Suppose a Kid… 1

I am not writing out that full title every time! Anyways, here’s the first “real” debut of winter 2021.

For some reason…this series reminds me of Pokemon. Probably how at the start, Ash tries to get along with Pikachu by doing all sorts of things like what Lloyd is doing here. (<- learnt protag’s name through synopses)

The name “Shouma” rang a bell and I was right – Shouma is voiced by Souma…Saito.

The Japanese title has “monogatari” on the end there…so it probably doesn’t fully translate into the English title.

These orange flecks in Lloyd’s eyes are kinda distracting…

Isn’t Kunlun in China, though…?

If this is just going to be Marie yelling…I don’t see why I should stay. (<- turned volume on for everything so far)

*facepalms* Lloyd is so dense…

That fight scene’s not very good…

…oh great. Selen’s fallen in love with Lloyd already…*sigh*

The missing princess is certainly going to be a plot point later.

Wow, that tiger looks impressive! If only they could’ve done that for the fight scene…

…oh great, Selen is a low-key yandere…

Didn’t Lloyd say he sucked at combat…? Anyways, I’m not keeping this. The designs are colourful and the tiger was good, but it’s meant to be a comedy and it’s not funny.

Hortensia Saga 1

Here for Ume! He’s voicing a guy called Defloitte Danois.

I-Is that CGI? So early on into the anime???

*a dude gets bitten into by the werewolf*…welp, at least this series isn’t afraid of its own gore.

I had a sinking feeling our real protag was Alfred…and I was right, according to the OP.

Huh? The song goes silent for a second near the end…what the heck?

The book appears to use English, albeit English so faintly inked in you can’t quite tell what language it is.

Alfred, governing Albert…? Isn’t that a bit redundant?

I swear all the female voices in this anime are squeaky as all get out…

All these high fantasy anime – or heck, any high fantasy series full stop – ever justify why the country is worth fighting for. It’s why I find war stories pointless and senseless.

You can tell from the voice and short stature “Marius” is Mariel…but she uses boku, which is why Alfred can’t really tell the difference. (Also, he wasn’t privy to the fact Mariel cut her hair.)

This almost smacks of a game tutorial. The CGI is still there…it’s not as bad as other examples I’ve seen, but you can tell it’s CGI when you look at it.

Roy’s kind of pretty, in a generic way.

A close-range archer! Ho, you’re kinda impressive yourself, Roy. (The feeling of a game tutorial has disappeared by this point.)

Hortense…of Hortensia…how confusing.

The scruffy guy you keep seeing with the dark hair is Defloitte. Keep an eye out for him for me, would you?

The ED seems to consist mostly of…anguished pop screams. *cringes slightly*

Anyways, this anime isn’t bad. It’s quite average though and its CGI could easily get worse.

Kumo Desu ga 1

…you know I don’t like 1st person cam, yeah?

…this is just Kumoko (as I’ve heard her being called) yelling so far…plus there’s quite a bit of CGI.

I like how the ED has an English overlay and the style they’ve used for it. The music, though…? Nah.

Wait a second? Millepensee? Shin Itagaki? That would explain the CGI!

“…a spider that just happens to have my memories.” – A butterfly dream, huh?

…well, at least this anime is well aware of the genre space it inhabits. Maybe you could say…it’s an isekai light novel, so what? *groans from the audience*

…well, you didn’t really “bring” your “brother’s” (?) corpse in case of an emergency, now, did you?

…welp, to have guts, you must eat guts. I guess that’s how it goes.

What’s a “skanda”?

This anime’s quite monologue-y (as expected of an LN). I can live with it, but I don’t know if it can carry the entire thing through the season.

…humans? Haven’t seen them almost all episode. What are they up to?

These designs sort of look like SAO’s. They’re not a dealbreaker yet, but they could be down the line…

This ED seems to take cues from Cop Craft’s OP (same studio). It also has some…“Aggretsuko rage”, I guess you could call it.

2.43 1

…Another confusing title, I see. I normally don’t do sports anime, but I’m here for Ume.

*sees the colour of the volleyball* - Basically anything volleyball has to collaborate with volleyball maker Mikasa, doesn’t it?

This anime seems to like putting characters’ thoughts on the screen for dramatic impact. The CGI is sort of visible, but not a dealbreaker.

I’d thought I’d heard of this OP artist before, but it turns out I haven’t.

This series has a nice sense of force. You see those moments where the ball squishes, or when Yuni presses against the wall without thinking? Those.

LOL, way to burn Yuni, Chika…

These transitions are a bit hard to detect. I think I like Akudama’s more overt ones more.

LOL, Dr Popper (sic).

The serves are nothing special. Haikyuu does the same thing from the episode I saw of it. (You know I don’t like Haikyuu, yeah? Dropped it after 1 episode because everything I heard the fans talking about caused me to connect the dots.)

The way Yuni blushes…it’s more than someone usually would, even if it is out of embarrassment. It may just be the entertainment I consume, but I could swear that’s going somewhere in more of a BL manner.

I get the feeling Chika has a bit of Virgo or Taurus in him somewhere. The sort of guy who nags at everyone to do stuff his way is probably like that.

Pocari Sweat (unaltered).

I gave myself dimples by puffing up my cheeks and poking them until they became permanent. I guess you can do the same thing with ambidexterity…?

For some reason, I can detect Chika’s jealousy when he discusses blocks and natural talent.

…wow, this anime is pretty serious for a volleyball anime.

The ED scene where the face is replaced with flowers is pretty creepy. Like Jigokuraku or something.

Cells at Work!! 1

What are these blob creatures you see in the OP, anyway…?

I think I remember reading something that the numbers assigned to the cells aren’t arbitrary – they’re hexadecimal colors, e.g. RBCs get shades of red as their numbers.

D’aww, Platelets warm the heart. They really do.

Platelets have a master…? I thought they were all just lil’ kids.

“What the cell’s going on?!” – Oh, I remember seeing a tweet about this. I love that pun! Kudos to whoever was responsible for that.

LOL, no. 4989 dancing in the background.

Hmm…those nets look like CGI.

…uh, I did not need that shot of the Megakaryocyte’s camel toe…that’s distubring.

Wait, Backward Cap is a she?!

Aw, lookit WBC being a dad. That’s cute.

Backward Cap = Ushiromae-chan.

Is that…a construction worker holding a giant pudding?!

Cells at Work Code Black 1

This anime is called “black” due to black companies. It’s Code Black to avoid being racist, I guess. I’m looking forward to it because it’s undoubtedly going to show a dark side to the main series…

…and there it is, the RBC complaining.

I assume OJT = on the job training.

I knew “pespin” (sic) was a typo. It’s pepsin.

Now that I’ve been working at customer service for two years (give or take COVID), I can see where the senpai RBC is smoothing over the relations.

…that also means I know where to suppress my emotions. I’m not a person who opens up to people easily without getting used to them, so people never see me as suitable for customer service anyway, but it’s the only experience I have so *shrugs*.

…oh gosh. I haven’t seen these words since…the time I was still learning biology.

…*sigh* Rookie RBC is worried about boobs.

The fact Senpai lost his iconic hat…is kinda sad, actually.

“Don’t let his resolve be for nothing.”

Hmm…does the male WBC from the main series wear black fingerless gloves?

I thought I’d heard of this artist before…but turns out I just can’t distinguish really autotuned artists from each other…(lel)

…and stuff goes ka-blam. It’s the spiritual successor to HypMic, even if I wasn’t asking for it. (LOL)

Back Arrow 1

…I heard you said “hot guys”? (Yes, I am predictable as all get out.)

What’s with that episode title…?

Stereotypes, eh? I kind of expected as much from the promo, but where’s the title character…?

…was that yuri fanservice? I can’t quite tell because it was the aftermath of an action scene, but I can see the shippers gearing up in my head.

…after a bit of waiting, there he is. Back Arrow himself. He kind looks like Takuto (Star Driver).

“I’m not trying to hide anything!” – Well, that’s…true.

…*sigh* Why do girls always have more feminine-looking mechs? (Plus this one has boobs…*sighhhhhhhhhhhh*)

So it seems mechs in this anime are the form of one’s conviction and they have skills along those lines, eh? An interesting concept.

…you do realise I abandoned an entire anime based on a joke about lucky underwear? However, this anime is so absurd and just keeps running with the joke that I just can’t say no to it. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from volunteering at a charity store, it’s that when it comes to selling stuff, you can’t say no to a lot of stuff…including selling potentially used underwear, so long as it’s not dirty or stinky.

Whoa! Those things break?!

Why does the title card mention the wall...?

Anyways, I…like it, surprisingly enough. Let’s keep going.

Back Arrow 2

…eh? Didn’t expect inflatable clothing, LOL.

I suspect Shu Bi is scheming something.

What’s the long thing…?

“…tomorrow might not come.” – A good reminder to have in these times of COVID.

Peath = Peace. (Heh. What a stupid name…*thinks about the name “Quattro Bajeena” suddenly* Okay, “Peath” pales in comparison to that.)

What is that creature that circles in the sky…?

I know this is meant to be a serious fight, but…that attacking guy’s hat seriously looks like a bamboo stalk and so I keep seeing it and trying not to laugh.

I only just now realised there’s CGI. CGI these days is getting much better than it used to be.

Tomozaki 1

LOL, Yontendo. It’s clearly Smash Bros + Nintendo Switch and the character designer was also around for Iroduku, so that’s why this style looks familiar.

…lemme guess, since this is a romance, it’s likely NONAME is Aoi. Or some other girl.

I would pay for a romance where it’s the girl building the guy up to be presentable, instead of a girl building other girls up to be presentable a la Ageha 100%.

Didn’t the anime show us Tomozaki reflecting to himself, though…?

“…rules working in combination.” - Well, there’s social norms (e.g. knock before entering a room), laws, contracts, societal standards (e.g. in Japanese society, you bow to others as a greeting or apology)…(continues to blabber on for a bit)

I think Aoi said something like “onitadaku”, but I’m not sure what the joke is there. Oni is in there, sure, but what’s the original phrase she’s playing off?

…LOL, it’s a good time to remind people to wear a mask.

LOL, Krout.

Anyways, this seems decent. I like how it’s going the way I want it to.

Tomozaki 2

“…make sure I’m nearby…” – Okay, that’s just being pushy, Aoi.

Minami and Hinami…so confusing…

*Minami chomps on Natsubayashi’s ear* - …okay, that’s not a thing girls do in real life unless they’re lesbians. This is likely trying to take the fanservice route.

They didn’t even show why the “kiss” was broken up…meaning they were doing it to make potential girl-on-girl look hot. Just great.

*Aoi touches Tomozaki’s butt* - Dude, that’s groping…

I didn’t think we’d get the story on Aoi’s “hexactly” so soon.

…well, that episode just made me feel mildly bitter. I’m dropping it here.

Praeter 1

…aw s***. Only a few seconds in and this looks like a terrible game…

It’s like someone barfed paint across Durarara…

The only time the background buildings look any good are when there’s a fight scene…

These Seals (or whatever those designs are called) seem to act like mini shields. Update: They’re called tattoos.

That transition was a bit fast for my liking…

Seems like the series is mildly peppered with Greek terms.

“To Infinity and Beyond” by…some author I can’t really read the name of.

Suddenly, they throw in more characters…?

Where does Eiji keep those bullet cases of his…? In his jacket?

Having a guy die in the 1st episode is cheap. I mean, we don’t quite care for him yet – it’s too early in the anime for that.

Now there’s Norse terms on top of the Greek ones…

Even more characters? You kidding me?

Lemme guess, Eiji gave up his tattoo because Yamato inspired him and now he’s a goner.

Welp, the weight of the world is in your hands, Yamato. Including that dead dude on your back. (<- sarcastic)

Sk8 1

I’ve been hearing good things about this anime! Let’s go! (<- about a week late to the debut)

That politician is probably relevant…probably someone’s dad, if HypMic taught me anything.

LOL, a beef. They call this stuff “beef”? Where’s the chicken? (<- joke from HypMic)

Haemanthus…apparently a flowering plant from S. Africa.

That’s rare, you don’t see Canadians in anime all that much. I was just thinking as I came home from volunteering how you know British people all have fancy names like William and Australians are Johnno, Danno etc., but Canadians? No clue. Update: Apparently you’d call one Arnold or something just as generic…?

Why are all foreigners in anime half-Japanese with the mother being the Japanese side, anyway?...Because people can make their character speak Japanese while looking foreign. Right. Moving right along.

Ahh…I understand your plight all too well, Reki.

…Hmm. It seems Reki’s surname is written kiya, but read “Kyan”. His name literally translates to “history (calendar/age) of bravery (military might)” Update: Turns out his surname is 3 characters (read “kiyan”, although I’ve never seen that final character ever being read as “n”) and his first name is one, so his first name is just “history (calendar/age)”.

Even I suck at balancing on bikes and stuff (…yeah, I still can’t ride a bike even though I’ve done so many other things in my life) and I know you have to support yourself with one foot on the ground before you do things like trick flips. I may not have observed Tony Hawk all that much, but he was on the periphery of my knowledge.

“What’s your hourly wage?” – Ouch, I feel ya, Langa.

Koko ni netete actually means “Lie down here”, but…okay.

These eyecatches are cute.

That’s a cute fox.

Yikes! 60 mph = approx. 97 km/h!!!

Random umeboshi, LOL.

Aghhhhhhhhhhh! Cherry Blossom’s so pretty~! I love him already!

Thank you, based Bones!

Something that can be enjoyed, even without sound: this is why I enjoy both action and comedy anime!

Okinawa? We’re in Okinawa?

Well, that was cool! I didn’t even ask where the location was until the end. Update: Why is this anime sometimes called Sk8 the Infinity anyway…?

Horimiya 1

Horimiya…I’ve been aware of this series for a while. There’s even a Chinese volume of it at a library close to me, although due to contact tracing I haven’t bothered to check it out.

Oh, I bet Hori is the otaku!

Ooh, Marketing Script!

Because I’ve been behind on the premieres, I’ve seen enough to know this boy with the chain is Miyamura.

…argh! Miyamura is cute! Y’all were right!!! (<- likes blushing bois)

I bet there’s going to be an emergency meeting!

“Sorry, it’s egg time!” – Oh, I’m laughing so hard! So that’s the context behind the Wonder Egg Priority meme!

“…see these?!” – Well, it’s not like you have a tattoo or some-*Miyamura shows his tattoos* Never mind…

Oh, I just realised they even animate the minute movements of the eyes Miyamura does…cool.

Notice how Miyamura is blocked from the other guy due to the window.

Miyamura goes “Ishikawa-kun” but “Hori-san”…hmm. No wonder he’s letting Ishikawa get Hori.

The problem I find with romance series is that they’re generally tied to heteronormativity. Hori is coded with red silhouettes and Miyamura with blue…*sigh* Whatever happened to gender ambiguity?

Good heavens, what is up with this ED?! It looks like Pocoyo! (…Does anyone else know that cartoon…?) Aside from that quibble, this anime is great though.

Mushoku Tensei 1

Apparently this is the grandad of all isekai. Why it took so long for an anime of this…who knows?

…and of course this guy’s a loser virgin. Go figure.

*sighhhhhhhhh* He’s just ogling this woman’s boobs…

…oh, sorry. I was so distracted by the man candy, I didn’t care about Rudy.

I-It’s actually quite refreshing to not have an OP protagonist from the get-go for once. (Or maybe I’ve developed such a disdain for isekai since SAO rolled around that everything here suddenly feels fresh.)

You can see the birthplace of isekai without having watched any of the others right here, it looks like.

“…what’s the point of incantations?” – To make it easier for you to cast spells, I gue-spoke too soon.

…wow, they shamelessly showed off Rudy’s privates. I know he’s still young at this stage, but that reminds me of how I dropped Dragon Ball around the time Goku was shown the same way (which is…very early on, by my own admission).

I believe, based on the name of the spinoff I see in the 7 Seas emails, the magic tutor is called Roxy.

You’re thinking about marriage?! At your (reincarnated) age?!

Oh no! The tree again!

LOL, Rudy’s acting like a kid who’s been in COVID lockdown for a while.

I think what most of the isekai that spun off from here missed is that the loser is job age. Losers at life at job age are relatable and high school geniuses are relatable (albeit sometimes insufferable), but losers who become NEETs for no reason whatsoever and then get banged up by Truck-kun are not.

Anyways, this was good, but a risky kind of good, since it seems like this male gaze will continue to be around as Rudy gets older.

Update: Dropped after learning Rudy was a paedophile in his past life.

Update 2: Apparently the anime toned down this paedophilic tendency of Rudy’s, so...now the verdict is that I move on while I let other people tell me if this is true of the anime or not.

Kemono Jihen 1

“Kemono Jihen” means something like “creature incidents”. I wonder why Funimation didn’t change the name…?

Kabane means “summer wing”.

Kanoko Villa, I’d assume, is named after the deer (the name means “deer’s child”).

My experience with Sho Aimoto (creator of this manga) is reading a bit of Hokenshitsu no Shinigami. (That, by the way, reminds me of Nube, but it’s nothing spectacular.) However, Hokenshitsu no Shinigami has a very detailed artstyle…That’s why I’m pretty shocked Kemono Jihen has such a scratchy one…

Ooh, edamame!

Oh, I see…this is like Furuba or a werewolf story, huh? Rather than a Natsume Yuujincho sort of thing.

…I thought Inugami and Dorotabo had seen everything of each other because of bathing together…I guess not, then.

…is Yataro going to die?

It seems the “immortal demons” are oni, so…why subtitle them as “immortal demons” and not just “demons”?

Ohhhhhhhh…this shite’s good. It seems to have a throwback feeling to it, moreso than even Yashahime or a lot of the sequels I’ve seen recently.

Cells at Work!! 2

I was going to move right along to Wonder Egg Priority because I’m really behind on the debuts right now, but I accidentally opened this up while I was cleaning up so I might as well watch another episode or two before setting it aside.

He’s dead, Jim. (<-joking)

…gosh, these walls look like Hover all over again and that’s from 1995…

LOL, these background cells don’t even have any details. They’re basically stick figures with fat bodies…

I think that phrase that appeared, “Take good care of B Cell!”, may be a pun on Give My Regards to Black Jack (written with similar Japanese, “B Cell wo Yoroshiku!” vs. “Black Jack ni Yoroshiku!”).

LOL, “you sure have the guts”…while they’re in the guts.

The certificate says something about it being presented to someone in the face of bravery, I think (<- just looked at it briefly).

“You have a good head on your shoulders,” says the T cell as WBC struggles with the disguise…stuck on his head.

Wonder Egg Priority 1

I’ve been hearing this series is surreal, but no more surreal than Flip Flappers. So…I don’t know if I’ll like it or not.

What’s this K?(?96…?

There’s a sunflower on her raincoat…so that’s why I saw a post called “You’re the sunflower”. Personally, that just reminds me of Post Malone.

Those Seeno Evils…they’re CGI, aren’t they?

As Boueibu once said (but I may be paraphrasing here), “nothing is more scary than free”.

…to be honest with you, I haven’t had a best friend for at least 2 years now. I only really feel close to people who are like me and who I have sustained contact with over many years, so I end up cutting contact with people after we part ways and never trying to fix it.

I always find it slightly absurd when anime girls get a little pudgy and go, “I’m so fat!” (See, for instance, the Dumbbell series.) Or, in this case, Ai’s going, “I’m so ugly!” when there’s nothing wrong with her. She’s only a bit different from everyone else due to her heterochromia - she doesn't have any physical or mental difficulties.

IChu 1

Here for Ume and, of course, dem bois. Bring it!

I seem to remember one of the magazines called an “Ichu” “an idol egg” (i.e. a fledgling idol)…More egg puns for me, then.

I found him! Ume! He’s Akira Mitsurugi! Update: Turns out that’s Toshiyuki Toyonaga…Oops. (Ume is actually Lucas from I*B.)

Huh? For a second, I imagined Akira with a dubbed voice. Of course, I could only be dreaming, because idol anime normally don’t get dubs, but…it was interesting to think about.

LOL, “Onsta”.

This Akio-type character is popular lately. The sort who’s timid but has an outstanding talent they themselves might not see.

…uh, but Kocho means “Principal”…?

An idol bear?!

Torahiko is crazy…(Note the tigers. Tora = tiger.)

Specifically, that’s black coffee with no sugar.

As much as I want to keep watching this, I’ll hit pause on it here. There’s much better offerings this season.

YuruCamp s2 1

…grandpa’s writing is so…neat.

*glares at CGI car…*

This OP just doesn’t compare to Shiny Days, y’know…?

OOPArts.

Talking pine cones! They’re back!

Curry rice! Literally had some of the Japanese-style stuff the other day. It was great.

All this talk about jobs…I personally don’t like jobs because I like to work at my own pace (hence one reason why I’m working on being a translator), but…money…I’m jealous, girls.

I’m trying not to rely on the subs for those texts that appear on the screen so that I can keep my reading skills up…I kept up with them for the most part…but then I got distracted by the croquette sign at one point…

“…buy you some local food?” – That’s omiyage, normally translated “souvenirs”. “Local food” actually does make more sense in that gap, though.

…man, I’m jealous that the girls all got jobs suitable for their personalities and everything. Lil’ ol’ antisocial me sucks at retail, even after 2 years.

Design-bu 1

LOL, that man and his bunny. Update: That’s Unabara-san.

…geez, these utaite are everywhere now. I’ve seen 96neko, USSS, Eve and more being more central to anime song creation…

Thise characters in the OP seal (<-the stamp, not the animal) are saiyou, meaning “recruited”, or in this case, “accepted”.

OEM = original equipment manufacturer.

Hrm…you can tell it’s a giraffe by description, but…that “base everything on the horse” is interesting as you could count several things as horse derivatives. Also, the angels’ names are all standard Japanese names with natural components to them (Ueda = upright rice field, Shimoda = frost rice field etc).

Is this pink-themed guy…a guy? Or a crossdresser? Update: That’s Kanamori-san.

I like how the suits have little wing-like flaps. Also the wings on Shimoda’s back.

…I never thought an anime episode would make me so concerned about giraffes.

That guy in the green I remember from the Wave x Tendebu (Heaven’s Design Team) collab, his name is Kimura.

Oh, so there is a bird like that!

The random wiggling the chibis do in these short segments…it’s a bit disorienting. (<-Just a small quibble of mine.)

Oh! Galapagos effect!

Agonistic: “polemical; combative.” I thought they meant “antagonistic”.

Oh man, that punch line was great! It took me a while to get into the spirit of it, but this anime is great!

Update: Oh, that’s where those nature names come from! They’re actually meant to be gods! (Or…named after gods…?) Also, Ueda vs. Shimoda (the “shimo” could be the kanji for “below”).

Ex-Arm 1

I’ve heard this anime looks bad…even well before its debut. How bad? Let’s find out.

*stifles laughter* From the first pan, I know this anime is doomed on my list. Even Praeter was better than this!

*stifles laughter again* This OP really does look as bad as the stuff I was seeing prior to winter 2021! Like a game I shouldn’t take out of my archives! (It’s not as bad as Hover’s graphics, but still…that’s from 1995. Cut it some slack.)

That’s the 2nd Kimura this season…

Yugg is just…ugly. Never try to render elaborate eyelashes in CGI again, people.

Dimension High School was better than this because at least that had puzzles. This is even jankier than that!

Wait, why is Akira 3D when his dad is 2D? It’s not that obvious, but I notice these things. Update: That’s not his dad…but close enough. (That’s his brother.)

…and here comes Truck-kun! (LOL)

This would be good…if it weren’t rendered in the jankiest CGI known to man…

Alma’s gun strike doesn’t have a lot of force to it.

The fire is rendered so terribly…*stifles laughter*

This part with a disembodied Akira is what I assume I got up at 6 am for…but I can’t hear it, due to background noise. Remind me to confirm this later. (Minami’s mouth is rendered so terribly…augh.)

No force to any of these recent motions, either.

LOL, this censorship.

Wave 1

Ever since this project was announced, I’ve been watching developments unfold on Anime News Network. I knew it would get an anime or something similar I could follow…and now here I am. I mentioned in the Sk8 comments I have basically zero knowledge of surfing, so…this is very unexpected, in one sense.

Was that a drone…?

“Wizard of the Waifu Board”?! Are you kidding me?! (LOL)

There seem to be shots where I can see the CGI here, but…anything’s better than Ex-Arm. Let’s say that.

Actually…yappe is a derivative of yabai, meaning “cool” or “crap” (in an ironic sense). So it would probably be better to translate it as “Surfing’s the greatest!” or “Surfing’s the coolest!” Anyways, what I was thinking before I was going to say this was that the waves are so enticingly animated, it feels like a summer anime. Basically the only other anime I’ve ever said that for is Grand Blue.

If I’m understanding where Isokichi’s name comes from right, “iso” is the character for seashore or a rocky beach (磯).

LOL, the teacher just wrote “Show must go on.”

Hayama, Kanagawa. Kanagawa’s capital is Yokohama, so it’s not quite Tokyo, but somewhat close.

“Murphy”? I have zero clue what that means.

Oh, I see. The title is translated that way due to context. Now that I can accept.

I just burst out into laughter when I realised Nalu hasn’t dropped or put down his ukulele once.

BSD Wan! 1

Here comes my past to haunt me…aside from me being a fan of BSD, I’m here because I influenced this series. How so? Once upon a time in the now-distant year of 2016, I was a scanlator for a brief period. Most of the work I’ve done hasn’t influenced the world at large, but this is the most influential manga I had a hand in working on.

Oh no! They’re starting with the dog AU?! (That comes from pretty far into the manga, IIRC. Further than my work was on it, at least.)

It’s Rashomon, but Rashoken (that last bit means “dog”). Hence Ruffshomon.

Basically, they just insert dog-related words everywhere…don’t make me explain every one!

Ouch, I can only imagine how much pain it was to translate Inu Shikkaku. Literally, it’s “No Longer a Dog”, but how would anyone make it in line with the other puns…?

I wasn’t fully aware of how the dog AU was connected to the main Wan series because I haven’t really looked at it after I quit due to aggregators, but…that was a nice fakeout. Also, I was concerned as to whether this was going to be a full-length ep or a short…seems like it’s a 10 minute short, so I have more chances of taking it.

…oh gosh, that pose! I remember it! I worked on this one! (Now that I know it’s a TV short, I won’t cover future episodes, but I want to at least finish this one because I started it.)

I think they added a bit there. I remember Kunikida’s and Yosano’s were in the manga, but not the other members or Fukuzawa going “the wind is smiling” + Kenji working on the roof at the start.

Oh yeahhhhhhhhhhhhh, I remember Rampo. I think I had to approximate how he would say stuff with Pocky in his mouth, but Slug (current scanlator) went the extra mile and stuck food in his mouth to do the same panel.

It seems to make a short ep., they strung a bunch of the chapters together. Also, I don’t think we ever found out what Yosano’s puddle was and that was…probably for the better.

Oh yeah…I think I remember this one.

Now I remember it! I remember having fun explaining what a youkan was.

Whoa, Higuchi scrapped the SFX! That wasn’t in the original…

The ED seems to be an Atsushi cover of Namae wo Yobu yo.

Oh noooooooooooo! The flower gazing episode! That’s the one I remember most, because I was trying to figure out how to translate 移動 while making it smooth-sounding English…(I remember the final result was something like, “Move! Move~!”

Dr Stone: Stone Wars 1

Final debut! Let’s go~!

The last time this series was on the air was about 1 year ago. I can remember that far back…

I like how that recap is framed as Gen talking to the kids.

Senku overcomes every problem with science.

…not much to comment on here.

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ultraclops · 4 years ago

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Semi-live Blogging: Return of the Mao Mao Episodes

Before we start, is it just me or is the animation like 10x smoother than it usually is? Also like I said with Nakey, there’s a lot more good expressions too!

Lucky Ducky Mug

Adorabat drinks from sippy cup like baby

"What, Mao Mao's ridiculous mug?" says Badgerclops, holding a cheap plastic big gulp cup he probably got from the grocery store.

How did Adorabat not notice the Lucky Ducky sticker on the Aerocycle

"Don't touch it" (Badgerclops proceeds to slam the table to move it) Ah Badgerclops, ever the contrarian

I'M SORRY DID MAO MAO BLOW THE ROOF OFF OF HQ BY SCREAMING

I love the way Mao says "PROFESSIONAAAL SILENCEEE"

Badgerclops trying to make his mouth disappear and failing made me scream with laughter

Are they seriously reducing Ratarang to 'the funny lil Italian guy'? C’mon guys you’re better than this

Wait why do they think Kevin is Adorabat?? They've seen Adorabat multiple times?? "But they're both blue!" You FOOL Kevin is TEAL there's a difference

Everybody gangsta til Mao Mao's ears start speaking morse code

They're doing surprisingly good silent but it's probably not gonna be that way very long.

Thank you, Lucky Ducky Mug, for catering to my niche interest in characters with neon outlines on black backgrounds.

Mao Mao thinking: Normal thoughts

Badgerclops thinking: Musical-esque singing

Adorabat thinking: Literally just heavy metal

The Sweetypies seriously think they're just playing a really intense game of charades huh,,,

(Mao jabs BC in the stomach with the fire net) HAHA GET REKT

The scene with Badgerclops trying to give Mao Mao Penny's mug is the funniest shit in the world I couldn't stop laughing...or maybe I'm just sleep-deprived

So the Sky Pirates are so similar compared to the Sheriff's Dept. that they can think perfectly in sync? That's cool

SKY PIRATES SONG SKY PIRATES SONG

Why is Snugglemagne throwing a random tea party & why did he only invite the Sheriff's Dept.

Yep there goes the plan. Both of their plans.

Am I going crazy or did the skin on Mao Mao's mouth tear apart like it was sewn shut?! Also yay they're talking again

"It's not gonna stop charging, so I'm just gonna let it explooode..." Mood

"What about the mega laser tube made by mega Losers?" Fsfhkfh

Hey, everyone learned something new from this experience! Are the Sky Pirates gonna try that Hive Mind tactic from now on?

Awww, they fixed his mug with gold - GOD DAMN IT I KNEW THERE WAS A CATCH!!

Lonely Kid

(Sighs) ...I said (SIGHS)

"I literally can't relate to that problem at all." says Badgerclops, who joined a gang because he wanted people to like him.

Shin just dropped off Mao Mao at a summer camp and expected him to make friends? Why does this feel like the plot of Camp Camp

I'm sorry the Mao clan has a freaking PARTY AERO-BUS??

NOO GERALDINE

That BGM is DEFINITELY an extended version of "I Love You, Mao Mao" and I want the lyrics NOW

So Bao was literally just a stray that Mao took home?? Would make sense as to why he wasn't trained

I have a feeling the Flimborg is some sort of sacred being the townspeople worship for some reason

How in the hell did Mao tie that guy up and why didn't he bother to untie him

HOW'D HE SET THE ROCKS ON FIRE USING PAINT

"And then you become frien-" "BEES. IN THE EYES."

"Everyone knows bees are our friends!" "Uh, actually, they were wasps." "Friends to no-one!" Usually I'd agree with BC, but I read an article about someone befriending a wasp and her babies so.

So the Mao clan's just known as the "Golden Cat Family Up The Hill?" Huh. I thought they’d have more recognition, especially since Shin says he went to that same summer camp at the beginning.

Man those kids are jackasses

"Say hi to your mommy!" "I would if she was here..." Excuse me wHAT

Noo don't cry baby boi - tHEN BAO JUST TACKLES HIM ASFHDKDL

"Go away! I don't feel like laughing right now!"

Look. You can see the EXACT point Mao developed his adult personality

I know Mao Mao means well but that is gonna go terribly wrong.

"I AM A HERO! I WILL BE LOVED!!" Okay first of all OUCH, second of all THAT IS PAIN

This monster empty, YEET

Awww it was just a sweet little puppy-ish monster...and it was his BIRTHDAY

"Hi, Aunt Gloria!" (Pulls out pitchfork) BETRAYAL

He didn't feel bad about ruining the festival because he made a friend doing it I 💞💞💝💝💗💗

Thanks for that 'different times' comment cuz I don't want kids thinking being beat is normal.

"Just like you found me...and I'm your best friend!" Tbh I thought she was gonna say 'Me and Badgerclops' & that would make a lot more sense

Why are they fighting over who's his best friend they're obviously BOTH his best friends

I'm sorry did Badgerclops just call Adorabat a "little mutant"?? ARE THE SWEETYPIES MUTANTS??

Awww his friends love him sm...and he feels so loved too...💓💓💗💗💕💕

Try Hard

No one gives a shit about Pinky being kidnapped lol

"K for Copyright Infringement"

"You'll never be like me!" Oof a little harsh maybe?

"You've gotta learn to be your own kind of hero, in your own special way!" So THAT'S where it's from

"You just gotta...try hard." Hey, title drop!

Ngl the moment Mao Mao said "Badgerclops take the shot" I immediately thought of The Confession 3 by TomSka

"Up in a tree, little old me, about to do something...UGLY..." 7-year-old me sniping people on Halo 3 like

Why is he shooting them with gelatin tho? ...oh. Oh THAT'S why.

Tbh if I didn't have subtitles on I would've thought BC was saying "beep boop"

This badger and cat empty, YEET

Adorabat walking into the Skyship with only a walkie-talkie is giving me some sort of vibes...OH, Silent Hill! Or Tattletail

WHOOP HIS ASS SWEETIE

"Mao Mao would hide the body!" Very unsubtle there, wonder how it got past censors

"Ratarang, say something!" "Pasketti?" "THAT'S THE BRAT!"

Wait a sec, they can just use Badgerclops' arm to power the ship? Why didn't they try that in CapturedClops?

"Good thing my head is in here cuz I'm a-scared of heights!" Ramaraffe. Whose whole schtick is making herself taller. Is acrophobic?

"Because she's Sheriff's Department, that's how! >:3" "Also y'all tend to be pretty incompetent >X/"

Why does she keep trying to use the elevator when she can fly? Nvm she climbed up Badgerclops' arm

"Ooooh I'm also hereeee"

"JERK BUTT"

Why is the Omega Field just a bunch of broken glass? And why doesn't she just step around it?

"I can fly!" "She can fly!" "SHE FORGOT?!" Ooh that's why

"You're the best thing to ever happen to a bat like me." 💝💝💕💕💓💓

Wait she's talking through the walkie-talkie and her molts are there but she isn't there where is she?

Oh she was freeing the other two from the gelatin. No wonder Mao Mao almost threw up, it was bug flavored.

GET HIS ASS, HONEY!! ADORASLAP!!

I hope that 'Nah' means Adorabat's realized she needs to be herself instead of her just rejecting her individuality like I think it is.

Scared Of Puppets

Oh, so this takes place after Sleeper Sofa! Praying it's a fix-it episode...

"DISCARD ANYTHING THAT DOESN'T BRING YOU JOY!!" Fuckin Marie Kondo up in here

Oh no PTSD flashbacks. He's scared of them cuz one's head landed on his lap as a kid? Understandable have a nice day.

Who tf collapsed into a sobbing heap on the floor then leaps back up and insists they're fine? Mao Mao, apparently.

Hairless ape? Is that what they call humans or are they something different in general?

"TAKE ALL MY MONEY!!" What did BC want an antique puppet for if he had no idea Mao was scared of them...

Mr. Din Dandalib!

"I...(eye twitch) love him too..."

IM SORRY DID HE FUCKING THROW UP OUT OF FEAR...holy SHIT

If I scared my friend and they threw up I would simply never do that again. RIP to Badgerclops but I'm different

(Badgerclops makes concrete blocks around the pothole) "Why didn't you just fill in the pothole??" "I AM TRYING MY BEST!!"

"I SIGNED YOUR DUMB CAST, NOW LEAVE!!"

...Illegal house plants? ...like marijua-

That was literally just that one video where a guy knocked out another guy in a mask jumping out of a trash can...

So it's a CPR class...AND a hair-styling class? How

I stg the moment Badgerclops walked in the door I knew he was carrying Mr. Din Danalin I SWEAR

"You're 10." "BUT I'M 6??" JFC Shin doesn't know his own son's age AND is partially responsible for his pupaphobia. And I called it on Mao Mao being six in the flashbacks

OH WIG

Can someone take the footage of the Annex exploding and add the ReviewTechUSA intro over it please

"How many Adult Learning Annexes have to be destroyed before you admit you're scared of puppets?!" is extremely funny without context

(Mao punches the wall cuz hes mad at himself for being scared) Kinkinkinkinki

How does one forget to drink milk

Oh shit the scene from the promo...

Yay he's starting to feel less scared - wait NVM it JUST STARTED TALKING??

OG SGUTVKC FGCJ OG SHKR OF DJCN JKKKKK

Oh it was just a dream - er, nightmare. FIRST NIGHTMARE SEQUENCE OF THE SERIES!

"I just gotta get my socks on...wait, I wear socks, right?" Dud e you wear NOTHING BUT A BELT...

"I KNEW SELLING THOSE HAIRLESS APE DOLLS WOULD ATTRACT DARK FORCES"

"There’s a lot of pu-" "PUBLIC DANGER"

Those puppets are alive I stg

"I'M A BIG BOI..."

Awwww she said what he told her at the beginning of the episode!

"I'M AFRAID OF PUPPETS" TITLE DROP YET AGAIN

Adorabat takes after Badgerclops sometimes I swear

Oooh shit sequel hook - oh NVM it was Badgerclops voice acting - NVM Mao Mao passed out. Dang

The Perfect Couple

Watermelon time babyyy

TRANSFORMATION TIME BABYYYY

Ah so he wanted to perfectly cut a watermelon in half, that's why he got so many?

"I need (counts on fingers) 600 more watermelons!" glad to see I'm not the only one who counts on my fingers

Why would Penny and Benny need 600 watermelons for their wedding? Also I called it on Penny & Benny being the couple

Mao Mao has to officiate the wedding? I thought priests did that

Please don’t throw up again Mao Mao

"I WILL BUY YOU A BAG TO HOLD YOUR STUFF..."

"A nondescript sack!!" Dude he just taking out the trash...

Nvm its just laundry

"I WILL TURN THIS BUSH AROUND"

Oh so THAT'S what Ramaraffe thought Kevin was Adorabat

"Why don't you buy me cake and do my laundry?" Are you implying you wanna marry Mao Mao, Badgerclops 👀

I lov Mao Mao's faces in this scene he legit looks like a bishouen anime protagonist

Nvm no transformation it's just his wedding outfit

Why did they invite Orangusnake and Boss Hosstritch to the wedding tho? What about when they hid in their moving truck and used their electricity - wait Badgerclops technically did that last one, nvm

Wait THEY DIDN'T TALK TO EACH OTHER BEFORE THE WEDDING?? What a perfect couple huh

Is Mao Mao having hallucinations just gonna be a regular thing now....

IS PENNY SERIOUSLY GONNA MARRY ORANGUSNAKE OUT OF SPITE ASFSDGFUK

Why did Mao Mao say "melons" in a Spanish accent I'm scared

"They're both terrible, so what does it matter if they get hitched or not?" They're definitely gonna change their minds now

"She lied because she wanted to protect his feelings! And he lied because he couldn't bear to hurt her!" Isn't that just the plot of The Truth Stinks?

OH SHIT HE CUT ORANGUSNAKE IN HALF HOLY FUCK

He made Orangusnake officiate the wedding as punishment lol

Why are they,,,stepping on the watermelons?? Damn right Badgerclops I'd cry over that too

"What's, uh, your credit score like?" "850. Why, is that good?" "It's perfect..." HE WANTS TO MARRY MAO MAO NOW ASDFHKL

#semi live blogging #semi-live blogging #//long post #// long post

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seeksstaronmewni · 5 years ago

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Samurai Jack Season 5 in Review: EPISODE XCIV

If you can take the heat, kids, this episode will be worth it.

On the last episode of Samurai Jack--SPOILER ALERT--Jack, on the run for his life, exchanged swords with a daughter of Aku... and it’s pretty much why this season is rated TV-14-V. Like I read, though, if 6-year-old children can see Avengers: Age of Ultron and other PG-13 rated films, surely they could stand a bloody injury. Is it more about imitating the violence, or about the grisly results of that violence, that makes parents strongly cautioned?

After airing Wonder Woman (2017), which was TV-14-DLV with a viewer advisory, in December 2020, and with all of the edgy movies that debuted on ACME Night (transitioning to the “movies every night” block in 2022) that are TV-14-DLV, TV-14-DLS and even TV-14-DLSV... which is somewhat blown up while others are more lewd... what’s holding Cartoon Network back from rerunning Samurai Jack at this point?!

BTW, to promote the episode, I did a fan art sketch of Ice Bear from We Bare Bears pwning one of the daughters of Aku... aside from my other promo tweet.

Parental discretion is advised! This is the most violent episode of Samurai Jack yet! This episode has good “[content to follow]”, but talk to your parents about if you can handle violence maturely or may be too sensitive to bloody images, because this one is the bloodiest. Ironic that this bump appeared after the March 22, 2020 rerun of this episode. Also, while Samurai Jack Season 5 and thus the “complete” series set is rated “M” in Australia for “animated violence and mature themes” (Sym-Bionic Titan bears almost the same rating/reason), which is like a low PG-13, like BBFC’s 12 rating... and while the US DVD of Samurai Jack Season 5 shows not the Canadian Home Video Rating (it mentions TV-14 on the back, and commercials for the “complete” series said TV-14-LV)... the US blu-ray of the “complete series”, due to Season 5, is rated 14A in Canada (Oh, so A+E’s Bonnie and Clyde series gets a PG in Canada regardless of “Gory Scenes” and “Extreme Violence”, but Samurai Jack Season 5 got a 14A?), so... that’s pretty strong. Not as strong as 18A, though, which is what the TV-MA-V episodes of Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal earned for its Season 1 release. Seasons 1, 3 and 4 of Samurai Jack are only PG in Canada. Equally important: DON’T SPOIL THE EPISODE!

/!\ SAMURAI JACK This Program is Rated TV-14-V. Intense Violence X

We start with a peaceful flow of the river. Calm and quiet.

Then comes an unusual amount of blood.

That comes from Jack and the sword stuck in him. (I warned you.)

The storyboard artists/writers are listed: Genndy Tartakovsky as always and, instead of Bryan Andrews, a new storyboard artist.

That storyboard artist is David Krentz (Hotel Transylvania 2, Guardians of the Galaxy). Krentz also boarded and wrote the Primal episode “A Cold Death”.

Despite the bloody injury; this sequence has plenty of pretty landscapes. Just the locations and the sound--no music--make for a usually calm, relaxing atmosphere.

This episode opens up with a sonic landscape that is very much aural, and the sounds of nature are handled by sound designer / “Sound Editing” guy Joel Valentine. He is absolutely the next best thing to Skywalker Sound & Warner Bros. Post Production Creative Services (AKA Warner Bros. Sound) when it comes to sound post-production for animation. I mean just one guy (save for the uncredited foley team and any other FX recordist, editor or whomever else involved), and no longer the company name “Twenty-First Century Entertainment, Inc.” I grew up listening to his work, knowing what a Craig McCracken or Genndy Tartakovsky cartoon usually sounded like because of Joel’s style, but the realism of the sound design is a big part of why I began to highlight Joel even more for his amazing work.

One noteworthy thing about this episode’s sound is that, when Jack was briefly underwater (though the shot isn’t completely underwater and Jack is unconscious), we only hear the river underwater. This is either a point-of-view (POV) or “teaching the camera to listen” approach to the sound: an important, immersive part of storytelling that sound designer Randy Thom often emphasizes, which was pioneered by Dr. Walter Murch; both worked on Apocalypse Now.

Anyway, Jack was floating unconsciously toward a big waterfall, and he falls into the river below. The sound really plays with flange whooshes, which, though unnecessary, sound pretty cool.

Underwater, Jack is awakened by the pain of his wound.

He rises back to the surface, finding a log to keep him afloat. The day comes to an end, and Jack continues floating through the night. A quiet ambiance of crickets and wind flow gently along.

The next day, Jack passes under a futuristic-looking bridge, lit with blue and green neon lights (my favorite colors too). Miles past the bridge, a frog jumps onto the log. Jack notices.

“THEY’RE COMING!”

Just spoke that frog?! or is Jack hearing things? or seeing things?

Jack tries paddling as fast as he can, but, with the knife still in him, he hasn’t the strength and grows unconscious again.

Suddenly, Jack awakens and is quickly up on his feet. Another day, completely spent flowing, is passed, and Jack is lost.

The pain of Jack’s wound strikes again, and the knife is still stuck in him. The music stings with intense and gritty, electronic percussion. A loon trills distantly in the forest--and not exactly a more familiar (or should I say cliche) recording either.

That is the amazing thing about the sound design: it’s very realistic. Even if the animals sound types could be considered cliche, most of the sounds are not cliche recordings like some stock sound effect from a Sound Ideas or Hollywood Edge SFX library. Most cartoons, with sound services like Hacienda Post or Advantage Audio, will go for more familiar sounds, like with crowds, babies and animals, which’re all vocal sounds. Joel used cliche SFX for such before, but this season of Samurai Jack showcases some of Joel’s most outstanding work. I thank God that Hacienda Post/Sabre Media didn’t the sound design as they might go for something more familiar/cliche.

Jack looks for shelter as he slowly and weakly walks through the forest, apparently now all scratched up too. I wonder: Are the scratches of continuity?

I love this scene because Tyler Bates’ somber score reminds me of Philip Glass’ score for Naqoyqatsi, and the score is the principle audio, among Jack and the foley, not concentrating on animal sounds (which would be cliche).

Fun fact: this episode reran on [as] the evening that Star vs. the Forces of Evil’s season 3 opener, “The Battle for Mewni”, premiered on Disney XD. I watched neither that night, but I loved these shows so much that I drew of Star in Jack’s place. Ironically, the final act of “The Battle for Mewni”, Act 7 - “Toffee”, involved Star in a grave situation of her own (and I wrote an important post about that).

Wherever Jack goes, the shadow warrior continues popping up... somehow.

Luckily, Jack finds shelter: a big, open, rocky cave in which to rest his wounded body. Briefly, at its opening, he appears bloodier than usual for, I guess, stylistic art, though he’s covered in much more blood later.

Now time for the hard part.

Not exactly violent since the knife being stabbed into him was the violence, but...

for a more sensitive viewer, this is probably the hardest scene to watch. If you ever went through pain like this or are sensitive to even the idea of how it feels, you might want to scroll past this moment.

“Ohhhh...”

All right, Jack. Pull it out nice and slow. Gently, now. Easy does it.

“Hrrrrrrrrr!”

It’s almost out, Jack; it’s almost out!

Take it like a MAN, Jack!

”GAAAAAAAAAH!”

Oooh... I felt that.

There. See? It’s out!

Glad that that’s over; right?

Nice, dark, and quiet outside. A soft wind rustles some leaves around. A cricket chirps. The moon sets down over the mountains. Fade to black.

Very simple but effective contrast between scenes.

The next scene begins, fading in and out with closeups of Jack. The fading feels very cinematic and like a filmed master, as the brightest colors fade in first and out last. Jack is uncomfortable and trying to sleep. A voice beckons to him: “Look at you.”

“You survived worse!”

Jack indeed survived in some nearly fatal situations, but this injury is a biggie for Jack. His dark side--now rather “off-model” and looking kind of like Dracula (coincidentally, Craig Kellman designed him for Hotel Transylvania, and Genndy directed it)--was actually talking about the girl that he killed, though, and not the “pathetic little cut” from which Jack was struggling to survive.

Apparently Jack never killed an organic being before. ”Sure, mountains of robot corpses”, his dark side reminds him. I still wonder if everyone Jack cut with his sword, even if they blew not up, were still organic--just not human.

His dark side continued to mess with Jack’s consciousness as he expects that he’d have the obligation to kill the remaining daughters of Aku if they found him. “Will you be able to when the time comes? May be they will kill you!”

“...or is that what you WANT?!”

“No”, Jack groans in defense. The scene fades to black.

That was pretty jarring of even madder Jack, to turn to Jack (at the camera) like that.

Another day begins, nice and sunny.

Jack is in the dark, now covered stylistically in the excess blood from his wound. Quite an artist; huh?

More important: Jack is rested enough for the moment to be ready to defend himself.

He hears feet approaching.

It turns out that the wolf (or whatever breed he is) survived and was covered in his own blood... just like Jack.

Jack lowers his weapon and soon begins to rest.

A past memory returns to Jack’s consciousness. He is a kid again, playing with his wooden samurai and ninja toys in a carriage. His parents glance back at each other with a smile.

These past events of Jack’s childhood are reflected in few episodes of the series, bringing the more familiar scenarios back. This sequence is mostly in scope.

Suddenly, arrows hit the carriage. The guards defend them against the assassins... only briefly.

A bandit speaks: “Emperor, your guards are dead, and you are next!”

“I will give you a new choice: Leave now and live, or stay and face your destiny.”

Jack’s father, the emperor, may be the last line of defense. He kindly offers an option to the bandits: they can either leave in peace and cease from their evil plans, or instead risk their own lives in an attempt for selfish profit.

“Your destiny is DEATH!”

The bandits openly reject this wisdom. The emperor attacks swiftly.

He aimed not for the swords.

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!

A streak of blood on Jack’s face!

His father slaughtered the bandits, and Jack saw it. All of it; I think.

Well... certainly the one his father split in half before Jack’s eyes.

For the more sensitive viewer: the violence here is stylized only such that there is a fair amount bloodshed, but their bodies’ cuts are not graphic. This would be too violent, still, to be considered “moderate” violence, which much of Cartoon Network’s programming from, like, 2007-2017 occasionally contained.

Jack wakes up quickly, now in a pile of leaves. He looks around. He sees that his wound is more healed with little blood. Jack spots a sharp little pick (a bone maybe?) and some wood.

Time for a little bit of sewing.

Later, Jack wakes up and sees that the beast returned with a dead, dot-eyed bird of some sort. Jack sees him as a possible ally in his time of need.

The two, a man and his “best friend”, share dinner. Probably not a chicken, but sure looks likes a drumstick. I can only imagine how good it probably tastes...

The beast walks in circles and lays to rest.

He burps.

That burp is the 7th belch in Hollywood Edge’s Premiere Edition Volume 1 -PE138601: “Long, disgusting... [and] close perspective”. An obvious stock sound effect that Joel used in the show before, but also a funny one, and it fits. Afterward, Jack does his own burp.

Sometime later, Jack uses mud for his wound. The beast licks the mud off. Jack is all :O

Jack then sees a skull filled with water. He douses the beast to help cleanse the wound, and the beast is provoked. An uneasy alliance, but it works.

At this point, I wonder if Dee Bradley Baker, claimed to be the wolf’s uncredited voice, actually did all of the wolf vocals, since they all sound like that of a real dog to me. I would assume that Joel recorded these or picked any other recording appropriate, though. I personally detest the cliches of wolves known for howling, but this wolf howls not at all in his screen time for these episodes (certainly no use of Disney’s horrible “single, classic” wolf howl here, then). This goes for the wild dogs in Primal: “A Cold Death” as well. I admire that Joel executed this differently than usual cartoon sound designers.

Later, the fire is died out, and Jack is cold. The light sound of probably Phil LaMarr clashing his own teeth together is quietly audible (unlike Jack making either the original H-B spoon rattle or usually Joel Valentine’s castanet sound in seasons 1-4). The beast is asleep, curled up with a cute little snore. Jack groans in his pain. Probably jealous that his front scrub and mane aren’t the same as that furry white coat. Fade to black.

Pop! Somehow Jack awakes huddled with the furry beast.

Kind of reminds me of a big, white fox. It’s way in the future, though.

After sometime, Jack and the beast are healed, and the beast heads off on his own way, while Jack continues reflecting on his childhood.

Blood is still on the sword, but also on a robe that... perhaps became Jack’s? I wonder from where that robe came...

”The decisions you make and the actions that follow are a reflection of who you are.”

“You can not hide from yourself”, his father proclaims. On his father’s wisdom, Jack finds the strength to defend himself against the daughters of Aku. The camera pans back into the forest. Fade out for commercial break.

Meanwhile, the 6 remaining daughters of Aku are in pursuit of Jack, exploring the same path on which Jack went.

One of the assassins finds some blood near the river they were exploring, so they continue following the river.

Their journey takes a day or so as well. One of them keeps watch at night.

The assassins continued by river until they heard a branch snapping; from there they searched through the forest, until...

“Ahwhehhh-aughhhh-EHHHhhh!”

The assassins come to a stop as they hear the call of some creature. and turn around. They hide behind the trees.

“Mother told us there would be other creatures.”

“What.. is that?” one of the assassins asked. They see a deer--this one’s a fawn. I never heard the sound of deer until this scene, with thanks to Joel again. The fawn walks about and nuzzles her nose into the ground.

A rustle is heard nearby.

Another deer--a stag--comes about. One of the assassins noticed the stag’s antlers: “Aku--it is surely one of his minions.”

The deer and stag nuzzle their noses together. This Disney magic lasts not long.

“What madness is this?” one of the assassins asked. “I don’t like it!” another said anxiously, setting foot into the open and scaring the deer away.

A bloody hand print is then spotted, suggesting that the samurai is near.

The daughters of Aku pull their weapons out (from their... suit? Have they even pockets?), and the electronic percussion kicks the music up as the assassins draw closer and closer to Jack. This sequence is boarded by first Genndy Tartakovsky and then by an uncredited, new board layout/artist, @jpolgar1 (here’s some proof), who boarded on Teen Titans & Teen Titans Go! and directed on Thundercats Roar; coincidentally the 10th episode of that series, “The Horror of Hook Mountain”, which premiered the day before EPISODE XCIV reran, was directed by Jeremy Polgar--and also an episode of snowy peril, as is this episode is about to become...

“Life works in strange ways.”

That line is a mystery to me. Should it be a meme?

Slowly, snow begins to fall.

Jack has a lesson to teach them, and his words echo the wisdom that his father taught him: “Leave here now and live, or stay and face your destiny.”

“OUR DESTINY IS YOUR DEATH!!!”

“So I guess you’re staying?”

Jack is fearless, but he instructs the daughters of Aku to reflect on their actions: “The decisions you make and the actions that follow are a reflection of... who you really are.”

By now, the snow and wind have this area so blanketed that the background becomes as white as an animation layout on which to draw cartoon characters.

The camera moves by the assassins...

singularly...

slowly...

one...

by one...

SURPRISE *shink*

Jack kills another daughter of Aku by spear... and then another.

From where got Jack these spears anyway?

Jack runs through the wholly white forest, almost invisible when behind a tree. The ominous, percussive music drives this thrilling chase and fight scene that is the one of the most violent but also epic of fight sequences in the series.

This sequence was boarded roughly by Genndy and then @stephendestefano, who worked with Genndy on Sym-Bionic Titan and the Popeye movie for Sony (which was postponed due to creative differences but resumed production later in May 2020). This’s DeStefano’s first episode, serving the role of Storyboard Layout and maybe storyboard clean-up. “Storyboard Layout” makes sense here as this sequence was probably storyboarded by Genndy Tartakovsky in the form of thumbnail sketches (as Jeremy Polgar pointed out on his storyboard layouts), and DeStefano “plussed” the thumbnail sketches into more solid (but not too solid) drawings of the respective characters.

This is just one of the best action scenes in this sequence with all of these weapons going on and stuff. I want not to spoil all of the action, though. I captured 27 frames from this scene alone on the rerun. This shot also felt fitting for the brief “Snowmageddon” of December 2017, A.D.

From this March 2020 rerun, I got 660+ shots of this episode, and 321 of them involve this major sequence of Genndy Tartakovsky action at its finest. Such fine compositing as motion blurs and camera shakes help to bring it to life.

Jack is a pro at dodging weapons... and in style. It’d be kind of hard for me to write every move that he and the daughters of Aku are making.

4 scenes (in storyboard terms) later, another complex action scene is on fantastic display ( I got 49 from this scene), in which the background/camera moves even more than the last complex scene. So many moves to note, which could serve as great defense (don’t attempt all of this stuff, kids).

As another assassin leaps back from Jack, Jack makes the last of the 3 bloody kills in this episode, nailing her to a tree with one of their knives. Definitely bloody, but not as gory as it could be.

The remaining 3 daughters of Aku line up in such a way that it’s like they can combine as 1, and charge rapidly at the camera toward Jack.

Jack deflects their fierce slashes with one of their weapons in a frenetic display of intense violence.

*scratch scratch scratch scratch*

That’s some attention to detail in the action when you focus on every scratch possible with all of the slashes he’s trying to deflect. (These’re the 4 respective shots combined in a way that they’d usually do; the actual sequence cuts to each of the following 3 shots.)

One quick stop, and Jack is lassoed by one of their chains, propelled into the air (Jack’s pained yell from pulling the sword out is recycled here). He just spins over to a tree, leaps from it, and whacks the 3 assassins apart!

Jack and the daughters are back on their feet in a 3rd scene of complex actiony moves. This one’s in scope, and the animation timing is paced a bit slower (more on 2′s) than the other 2 complex action scenes (might not be Genndy but rather Robert Alvarez and/or Randy Myers for this scene). I got 45 pics from this scene alone.

One of Jack’s moves in this scene is spinning while jumping, which is typically a Bryan Andrews thing in action boards, according to Genndy Tartakovsky on the Star Wars: Clone Wars Volume One DVD commentary. However, David Krentz was in place of Bryan Andrews on this episode.

Jack continues swiping, becoming more and more fierce as the camera eases on him, until he lays the weapon down. He stops to breathe, and the music stops respectively. Why are the daughters of Aku giving him a moment, though?

Jack starts running again, and the assassins follow. The camera focus on the 2 running. First both, then the assassins, then Jack. The music quietly but ominously resumes.

As Jack runs up a big, long tree, the ratio grows from “scope” (like 2.40:1)...

...to 1.78:1, as if it were a pan-and-scan widescreen or IMAX widescreen format. I prefer such cartoons in “scope” widescreen (including the logos, which are only in scope on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but not on Tigtone or Primal) since it feels more cinematic, and the later H-B Tom and Jerry shorts were originally made in “CinemaScope”, though CN aired them in 1.33:1 pan-and-scan. Anyway, this complex shot has 9 main camera poses, as shown in Lou Romano’s layout keys/BG layout design for the scene.

As Jack comes to the end of the tree over a great height, the score grows more ominous in the “orchestral” part. Here, it resembles some of James L. Venable’s music styling.

Jack glares epicly at the assassins (at the camera, again in scope). The music then becomes equally epic and heroic-sounding...

...and Jack drops the weapon, which proceeds to fall in a way that falling objects tend to appear in the digital-era works of Genndy & Craig McCracken: smoothly and digitally growing smaller.

The camera cuts to Jack’s right fist. Then a shot of his left fist slides in.

Both shots of Jack’s clenched fists slide away...

...opening back into a full “scope” shot. Jack stopped killing and is ready to fight them with only his cold, bare hands.

The first assassin up to this challenge charges toward Jack with her spear or something like that. Jack jumps. An anime-like accent is heard. He dodges the blade and kicks her face in slow-motion. Resuming to normal playback, Jack continues dodging every swipe of the blade. He leaps over her and her blade, grabs her, and...

THOT

He just threw her off of the tree. This “thot” became a popular meme for this season of Samurai Jack.

The next assassin charges over with her knives. Accented with big sound and percussion, Jack shut his eyes, trusting his instincts for the right moment to

PUNCH

Just one. He knocked her off with just one punch!

Now for the last one. Jack can take the pain well, though...

Very well indeed.

Jack grabs the chain of the scythe. The assassin jumps off of the tree and swings around back to Jack to knock him off.

The two duel in air below the tree, suspended by the chain...

...and Jack easily manages to knock the assassin with his own feet...

which in turn knocked the mask off.

She almost fell, but she still clung to the chain of her scythe.

“You worthless scum! *huhhh* I will kill you.”

Turns out that the remaining daughter of Aku is the un-weakest one, Ashi... voice of Tara Strong (you know... Bubbles from The Powerpuff Girls? Though I came to respect her strongly for voicing Ilana Lunis as well)

All Ashi does is speaking all manner of hatred for the samurai. I guess that her training was very rough on her because her mother really believed in Aku...

or perhaps Tara Strong was letting a lot of steam out from being replaced by Kristin Li during the recording session for a Season 7 PPG episode (the “reboot” you know).

Jack heard “enough words” for today. Let’s drop it.

Oop. There she goes.

Even gladder that that’s over; huh?

What’s next?

Oh snap

THAT was a branch?! It looked too... “thicc” to be!

Talk about cliffhangers... or should I say cliff-breakers?

I just hope that that log becomes something useful (like a toy), wherever it lands.

This episode is the first to credit “Storyboard Layout” creatives. Only Stephen DeStefano is credited here, but Jeremy Polgar was also part of that, although “Additional Storyboard by” or “additional board artist” would be a more fitting role for Polgar... but, then again, he plussed the thumbnail sketches Genndy did as storyboards, so it was like doing animation/character layout but on the storyboard level. They should go back and credit Polgar for his work! They did that with prop designer Chris Battle on the 2017 print of EPISODE XXV, “Jack and the Spartans”.

The sheet timing on this episode is by both Robert Alvarez and Randy Myers, Cartoon Network’s long-running animation-directing duo, but also Genndy Tartakovsky himself again for the really good action pieces.

This episode’s backgrounds are also painted by @rdaskas (The Ren & Stimpy Show, Spirit, Animaniacs), another former Spümcø artist who was a background stylist for season 3 of Tartakovsky’s Star Wars: Clone Wars micro series. The color stylist of this episode is Chris Hacker (Tangled: The Series, Wander Over Yonder, Mickey Mouse, G.I. Joe: Renegades), responsible for the white, bright and dark color schemes on this episode.

Keone Young is back on the show, voicing the bad guys. As for 3 of the 4 daughters of Aku who speak, I can’t tell which was is which with Ami, Aki and Avi. Phil LaMarr is the voice of talking frog too.

This is the first Season 5 episode copyrighted 2017, as the other/first 2 episodes were finished in 2016. Regular Show ended early in 2017 BTW.

What learned we from the third episode of the 5th season? I hope that the violence was worth it.

How to survive in the forest, like patching a wound up... naturally

Making friends with the animals

The decisions we make and the actions following reflect who we ultimately are, and we can not hide from that.

All of that action can be good to study if you can learn defense from it... or how to draw/animate action scenes.

David Krentz and Jeremy Polgar like snowy action toon stories; I guess.

In a fight, better to kick and punch than to use deadly weapons.

Joel Valentine’s sound design can be very realistic. Much more solid than typical Advantage Audio sound design; that’s for sure.

Essentially 5 years later, on the same airdate, The Patrick Star Show episode “Survivoring” debuted. Survival was coincidentally subject matter for both that and Samurai Jack EPISODE XCIV. Someone replied to me: “Upon a few hours of thought, this shall forever be known as: The Day of Survival.” I now also refer to this particular day, March 25th, as The Day of Survival.

Previous Episode’s Review | Next Episode’s Review

Tweet version here.

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prettylittleliarsxxxx · 6 years ago

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This is the shot: A slim, twentysomething white man, pale and dark-haired, waits in the center of the frame, head tilted fractionally to catch a glimpse of something (someone?) the viewer can’t see. He is wearing a dark jacket with a high collar, and a dark ball cap, even though he is inside, even though it is night. The collar is pulled up to obscure his too-romantic silhouette; the cap is pulled down to obscure his too-soulful eyes. This is the kind of man who literary heroines—or at least literary-minded ones—swoon over, but with so much of his face obscured, it is only his cheekbones, high and almost too pronounced, that signal such classic desirability.

Such a signal is important. Because everything else about this shot shouts that this man is a stalker: From the blurring of important details in the background, to the juuuust too-closeness of it, to the shadows cast from odder angles than seem natural, every aspect makes us want to scream at the heroine, RUN AWAY, LEAVE, HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE WHO THIS PSYCHO IS???. And so we need something, some small thing, to remind us, when this man is not actually dressed to kill, when he’s not staring at the device he’s got tracking her every digital step, why she can’t see what we see. And that small thing is: He is attractive.

Duh.

This, of course, is why this man’s story works. The fight-or-flight reflex his behavior should provoke in the object of his obsessions is counteracted by his charming physical appeal—lust, at least initially, wins out over fear, and as it does, provides the tension necessary to drive the narrative we keep tuning in for.

The trick is, how the show wants to resolve that tension is a question of cultural time. As in, when the handsome stalker was Ezra Fitz (Ian Harding) in Freeform’s teen thriller, Pretty Little Liars, just four short (long) years ago, the romantic hero vs. predator tension was invoked only as a means of creating a temporary road block to eventual nuptial bliss between A Good Man and his (high-schooler) sweetheart. Now, when the handsome stalker is Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) in Lifetime’s adult thriller You, here in the year of Goddammit Are We Collectively Still Not Taking #MeToo Seriously (a.k.a. 2018), the tension is very clearly meant to resolve not only in Joe’s psychopathy being found out, but in his sweetheart’s (and our) delusions of obsession-as-romance shattering completely.

Understanding that this is You’s endgame is helped, of course, by the fact that (spoilers) Joe straight-up whacks a romantic rival in the skull with a book mallet in the series’ pilot, then kills him with peanut oil after holding him hostage for all of episode two. But even if he didn’t go that far, that early, series creators Greg Berlanti (of the Arrowverse) and Sera Gamble (of The Magicians) make no effort to suggest that we in the audience should be ambivalent about Joe’s character, who addresses the narration of nearly every sequence to an idealized fantasy of Beck (Elizabeth Lail), the “you”-object of his affections, whom he spies from the other side of the book shop he manages in the series’ opening scene and immediately starts scheming to own. In fact, if Berlanti and Gamble make any effort in any direction, it is to keep reminding us that Joe is bad: Take centuries of art romanticizing the unwavering fixation of a handsome man on a single woman and add to it the sea of mundanely callous dudes in the modern dating scene, and you get an audience that’s been trained out of any ability to keep an attentive, clever, present guy, who likes books and making jokes and who is, on top of it all, moppily handsome, at any kind of wait-and-see remove. Like cognitive behavioral therapy, but for the propagation of violent loopholes in rape culture—without intervention from the puppeteers behind Joe’s dark adventures, we might trip over those loopholes and fall to our Joe-shaped doom.

It’s tempting to think that they aren’t doing this, as so much of You is staged as the exact kind of dreamy romance Joe imagines himself to be facilitating and Beck believes herself to be living. Each episode opens on a series of slow, bird’s-eye pans of New York City in early autumn, set to some kind of unobtrusively sweet indie-ish acoustic background music. Scenes with Joe and Beck together are filmed with a warm, golden filter, the background details and even the edges of the foreground taking on a comfortable kind of soft-focus that seems to snuggle them together like a big, metaphorical duvet. If they are outside, the melody of bird song is prominent. If they’re inside, the shush of pages turning and life being lived together is turned high. But when juxtaposed with the brittle, hard-focus, doom-soundtracked reality of the scenes of Joe’s life outside of his and Beck’s “romance,” the delusionally fantastic nature of those softer scenes is made obvious: They are all in Joe’s head, and while Beck may be living in the same fantasy at the moment, Joe’s head is a bad, dangerous place.

“Yeah, but he loves her, but he’s sweet, but it’s a love story!” Badgley imagined eventual fans arguing when he and Lail sat down for an interview with E! News earlier this summer. “In what world?! I don’t believe that’s love. I don’t think that love equals this, so I think we have to question, what is love, and if we think this is love, where are we mistaken?”

Where is throughout all of hetero-romantic pop culture. More acutely, where, I would (and already started to) argue, is in Pretty Little Liars, which not only features Joe’s stalker ancestor in the form of Ezra “I’ll Be Watching You” Fitz, but is in actuality one of the two other shows about attractive young people swept up in cyberstalking that every elevator pitch of You invokes. (The other, of course, is Gossip Girl. ) I spent the better part of three years and many hundreds of thousands of words arguing exactly how many rape culture/toxic masculinity balls Pretty Little Liars and the creator-blessed endgame of #Ezria dropped, so I neither need nor want to retread rageful ground here. But I do need to point out that none of those elevator pitches invoking Pretty Little Liars are doing so for the fact that You is finally juggling all the poisonous balls PLL, and, in its earlier way, GG, let fall—they’re doing so because stalking is a superficial thread throughout all three, and because You’s stars include PLL’s Shay Mitchell and GG’s Badgley. That’s it.

The thing is, the fact that You is treating the subject of violent masculine entitlement and obsessive, possessive “love” with more deadly gravity than either of its teen predecessors isn’t subtle; watch the first five minutes of the pilot and you’ll get that. But that’s the point I’m trying to make: You have to watch the first five minutes of the pilot to see it. If you just look to the promo interviews and red carpet soundbites and fluffy entertainment news tweets and headlines, our collective inability to accept the violent potential of the bad men in our midst is laid bare: Joe’s psychopathic character is translated as him being a mere “creepazoid,” according to the photo caption in Vulture’s review, while You itself is cheerfully summed up as a “messy, murderous romp.” According to a teaser interview with Entertainment Tonight last fall, Mitchell declared the show to be “juicy… It still has all those elements that PLL had with it being sort of a mystery, there’s a romance part to it and it’s just exciting.” Back on E! News, while the article anchoring Badgley and Lail’s interview sports the title, “Penn Badgley Is ‘Really Troubled’ By Anyone Thinking You Is a Love Story,” it eventually can’t help but suggest that, “What Joe does is not really harassment from what Beck can see, but from the viewer’s perspective, it’s not quite not harassment and also not quite not [sic] love.”

!!!!!!!

It’s true, as Kathryn VanArendonk argues in that Vulture review above, that the tone of You isn’t steady, but I’d argue in response that this is less an indicator of the show not being serious enough to be more than a romp, and more a reminder that we are not, as a species, that great at metabolizing the idea that multiple, contradictory things can be true about a person or a situation at the same time. Especially if that person is a man, and especially if the contradictions involve a woman. I am filing this piece on the weekend before the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to hear testimony in the alleged violent attempted rape of a 15-year-old girl by then-17-year-old Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and likely no one reading these words is unaware that “boys with be boys,” “that was just horseplay,” and “what is harassment anyway???” have resurfaced, in response, as an apparently reasonable foundation for the debate between men’s ability to gain fame and fortune and women’s basic humanity. “Two things can be true at the same time” has become a kind of clarion call across justice-minded social media, but that doesn’t mean it has been absorbed by everyone, on every level.

And so we get: Romp. Juicy. Romance. Not quite harassment. We get Ezra Fitz as pop culture’s most recently successful romantic stalker model. We get the urge to make excuses and carve a path for a bad man’s not-all-badness, even being inside Joe’s head in a way we could never be in Fitz’s, even knowing how he thinks, how he watches, how he transgresses Beck’s digital and physical privacy—even knowing how he murders people to get closer to her. We get that urge because we are also getting Joe swinging from murderously delusional to relatably jokey (his inner monologue as he disposes of his romantic rival’s body in episode three, and later as he picks up jogging to better follow Mitchell’s Peach, is particularly funny) to empathetically invested in making the daily life of his neglected kid neighbor just a bit richer and safer and less sad in a way that isn’t inconsistent so much as it is human, and in its humanity is challenging for us to accept.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the most emphatically unequivocating take I’ve found on the non-romance of You comes from Badgley himself, whose every interview has centered his utter rejection of anything positive one might try to shake out of Joe, or Beck, or Joe and Beck’s “relationship.” One of the most illuminating is the one he did with Devon Ivie at Vulture. It is worth reading in its entirety, but his response to why he took on a stalker role now, in 2018, stands out:

“Now that we’ve made the first season and I’ve been gauging reactions with critics and friends and viewers, I can say there’s a certain accountability—an emotional and psychological responsibility—that we hold the viewers and Joe to. It’s not this wildly irresponsible, escapist fantasy at the perfectly wrong time. I think the show came out at the right time, because any other time, we wouldn’t have had the courage at a social level and have conversations about why we’re drawn to it, but also why we know we shouldn’t reward it. We don’t want to reward Joe more than how he’s already being rewarded.

And as to whether or not he thinks that “viewers will cheer on this depraved man for being a self-described ‘fool in love’,” Badgley responded, “To me, a conversation I hope it starts is, What is it about the show that’s compelling? Why am I watching it? Am I enjoying it? Am I agreeing with Joe? What about all of this do I enjoy most? […] The degrees of which you’re enticed and excited by a show, there’s a lot more scrutiny in terms of the stories we’re interested in telling and consuming—the things we’re still charmed by and attracted to. Because Joe shouldn’t be allowed to behave the way he does. But only the viewer can decide.”

Shortly before Pretty Little Liars was set to air the last half of its seventh and final season, I flew out to Los Angeles to join my co-recappers at the show’s final PaleyFest panel. There were still ten episodes to go before the finale, and we held out hope that the series that had, in its bravest moments, been the most subversively anti-rape culture on television, might be about to burn the whole of Rosewood’s toxic patriarchy to the ground. The viewers who congregated in our comments section every week had certainly decided that that was the only way Pretty Little Liarscould end with integrity. Ten episodes! Ezra could STILL be A! His stalking could be revealed as the toxic danger it always was! But then we got to PaleyFest, and the entire theater was filled with fans whose only interests were the romantic lives of the cast, both onscreen and off, with the #Ezria endgame front and center.

Reader: #Ezria was endgame. And after giving fans like me a single fever dream of the show’s best character beating the daylights out of a jailed Ezra before letting his high-school sweetheart forgive him, the show was so proud of its own cleverness.

It’s 2018 now. #MeToo is only growing stronger as it complexifies, and as more projects like You get made by people who, like Badgley, Berlanti and Gamble, are entirely disinterested in giving bad men a path to not-all-badness. Joe is an outlier, but our willingness to soften the evil of his—fictional, patently obvious, easily condemned—violent obsession is the water we’ve been swimming in for too long. We can decide, as viewers and as people, to start demanding cleaner pools.

You airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on Lifetime.

#anti ezria #you #you series #lifetime's you #lifetimes you #rape tw #rape culture

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youremyonlyhope · 6 years ago

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Flesh and Stone

AKA: The Angels regret everything.

Oh how did I not mention Amy rubbing the stone sand out of her eyes in the last episode. That freaked me out the first time.

How is an arm so freaky. “We’re being attacked by Angels in a crashed ship there isn’t a manual for this!” I love the way he screamed “manual!” So is Amy’s Angel countdown only happening when someone else says a number? Never mind, not only when other people say numbers. “A forest in a bottle on a spaceship in a maze.” Love it. The Angel named itself Angel Bob. Angels can name themselves. Ok. And the Doctor goes along with its chosen name. “The Angels are laughing.” My eyebrows SHOT up. And there, we saw one move slightly.

While seeing the Angels move is cool, I liked that a HUGE part of Blink was that the Angels didn’t move on camera because WE as the audience were watching them. Like when one moved after Sally stood up and blocked our view for a second. Yeah. I’m just a little disappointed that the whole “the audience counts” thing stopped.

“Nothing, you’re fine.” “Everything, you’re dying.” Harsh truth. “There’s an Angel in her mind!” I love how the excitement immediately turns to terror as he covers his mouth. I love the Doctor coming back and holding her hands. Ok... I’ve said it before... but I take Eleven a little more seriously without that beige tweed jacket. Matt’s tall, and the jacket’s cut makes him look shorter, and now that it’s off you can see he’s pretty tall next to River. Maybe that’s it? The purple coat was better on him because the cut fit his height? I don’t know. All I know is that when the Doctor was asking River what she meant by engaged, I had a feeling of “this looks a little more right.” while looking at him. Stormcage mention. I hadn’t caught it in Rosa when Thirteen told Whats-His-Racist-Face she recognized his number as a Stormcage number. Oh Octavian. You think something like prison will make the Doctor stop loving trusting River? 26-06-2010. Hmm... What was I doing on that day... I had just made my facebook account exactly a week earlier so it’s pretty likely that I posted something... Never mind, apparently I didn’t post between the 24th and the 29th soo.... we’ll never know what 14 year old Hope was up to on the day the crack was created. Amy, girl, that was more than a second. I love whichever soldier it was who forced her eyes closed. “She killed a man.” OH. This early on we’re hinting at this. And yeah... being in prison because she’s gonna kill the Doctor could make him stop trusting her... I’ll give that much to Octavian. But I know that even that doesn’t stop the Doctor from loving her. Oh poor Marco and the others. “Like what, for instance?” “LIKE ME, FOR INSTANCE.” Eleven hasn’t gotten that mad before now. I never understood Amy not being able to find the communicator since she can still hear the beeping, so she should just pat at the ground in the direction of the beeping. Aaaaand there’s the shot of the Angels turning their heads. Super creepy, but like I said, I miss when us looking at them kept them frozen. That kind of sucks that they fell into the crack. But they’re gone. “A good man.” OH MY GOD. I’m dumb but I’ll rant in just a second when this episode finishes. The Pandorica! When he leaned in to whisper, I literally thought he was going to kiss her. But then I was like “No that’s a big moment since it was his first with her and her last so it’s not now.” That whole scene of them flirting about seeing each other soon, looking forward to it, remembering it, SO ADORABLE. “Oh the good looking one” you mean my knight baby, Sir Percival. OH IT’S THEIR WEDDING DATE. How did I forget that?

That promo for Vampires in Venice lasted more than a minute. Why? Do they want to give everything away?

Ok so what I wanted to rant about was that rewatching this made me realize that APPARENTLY the “Am I a good man?” theme of Twelve’s run, one of my favorite ongoing themes, STEMS FROM THIS ARC. River killed a good man, a good man goes to war. Here I am thinking Twelve’s worried about being a good man in general, but he’s really worried he can’t live up to the good man that everyone saw him as. When he was being called a good man all the time.

Also, of course, the whole “John Frobisher was a good man” thing too.

But yeah, literally at the moment when Eleven asked River if she killed a good man, my jaw dropped because my brain went “A Good Man Goes to War! They really call Eleven a good man a lot - OH MY GOD TWELVE.” So I had 2 epiphanies within a split second.

OK. So. I enjoyed that episode. I always enjoy the angels. Well... Blink is not enjoyable because it’s too scary... and Angels Take Manhattan hurts... but this one is enjoyable! I’m almost disappointed that the next episode is Vampires in Venice, which I don’t remember liking very much. I’m excited to see Narcissa Malfoy. Excited to have more Rory since I love Rory. Excited to have the main non-companion characters be black. But other than that... not that excited...

Hmm... the Angels begged the Doctor to help not only them but also his friends... and he let the Angels be erased from existence... worse than death... he used their death to save himself and River and Amy. Hmm... he rarely uses death like that...

Foreshadowing: Crack in the wall. People erased by the crack. River killed a good man. 26-06-2010 The Pandorica opens. River’s existence in general. “Am I a good man?” 3 seasons too early?

#hope rewatches doctor who #ignore me if you want

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babygirl06301 · 7 years ago

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I wanna talk about That Scene™

in 13x03, and I’m gonna do it line by line, so are you with me? (using this video posted by @lostboycas for reference) It’s gonna be long.

TL;DR: Just read the emboldened bits

By the way, this post is gonna endorse the hell out of Destiel, so if you don’t ship it, please don’t tarnish this post with hatred. Live and let love, dudes.

I’m going through the whole shebang and sheboozle, so we’re starting with:

D: [giving a reason as to why he said he’d kill Jack] I told him the truth. See, you think you can use this freak, but I know how this ends, and it ends bad.

S: I didn’t.

D: What?

S: I didn’t end bad... when I was the “freak,” when I was drinking demon blood.

D: Come on, man, that’s totally different.

S: Was it? Because you could’ve put a bullet in me. Dad told you to put a bullet in me, but you didn’t. You saved me. So, help me save him.

So, this piece of the conversation kind of hurt me a little bit because I feel like Dean regressed back to the Dean he used to be, which is sad. Not that Dean’s old self was bad, it’s just that he’s grown so much since then. He’s a lot more accepting of monsters and demons and “freaks” if he can be convinced they’re not evil.

Now, of course, I understand why he’s harboring such hostile opinions toward Jack (and if I didn’t understand, I got it loud and clear with this episode), but it’s sort of disheartening that he’d use the work “freak” in front of Sam after everything they’ve been through.

However, I do appreciate that Sam stuck up for Jack here without hesitation. Especially since I’m sure he understands more than anybody else what Dean’s going through, whether you liken that to how Sam felt when he lost Jess and/or Sam just simply observing the connection that Cas and Dean have built over the years. I’m liking that Sam is connecting the most with Jack right now, despite S12 setting it up for Cas having that connection (which will come later, of course). I’m so glad that Sam has his own path/storyline again. I feel like it’s long overdue.

I’m gonna put the rest under the cut so I don’t spam you guys with a wall of post.

D: You deserved to be saved. He doesn’t.

S: Yes, he does, Dean. Of course he does.

So, I know we’re all talking about this scene/line mirroring this one:

(Shameless self-promo: this photo is from my side-blog, check it out here)

and a lot of people have been talking about this parallel. @chocolatedeathwarrior made a post about it that you can see here. I kind of want to talk about something in the same vain which is that Dean blames himself for Castiel’s death--not Jack.

I think the first place we see that this season is during this scene where the angel Dean is fighting tells him that Castiel is “all the way dead” because of him.

Knowing Dean, this was kind of what I expected to see as a reaction to Cas’s death. It’s still sad, though. I do think that he’s projecting his self-hatred onto Jack because he can’t handle his true thoughts, which are that he got Castiel killed. And as much as I wish he wouldn’t take it out on my little pumpkin, I can’t blame him. Losing somebody with whom you had that kind of connection with... Well, I’m just surprised he’s still standing. Long story short, that line of dialogue in 4x01 is most likely mirrored here because Dean didn’t think he deserved to be saved back then. And, in my head, he feels guilty that Cas saved him in the first place because then Cas wouldn’t be dead today. (i.e. “If I hadn’t broken the first seal in Hell, Cas could’ve left Earth the second he sprung me, and none of the rest would’ve happened) Just... Dean’s got demons, ya know?

Another thing I kind of want to focus on here is Sam’s response to Dean saying that Jack doesn’t deserve to be saved. To me, his response tells me he sees Jack as an innocent, and I’m assuming that’s the case because he saw himself as an innocent victim as well. But I find the differences between them even more compelling than their similarities. Sam was chosen, but Jack was born into his power. Sam was given power specifically to do evil, Jack’s powers are just assumed to be evil because of their volume and their origins. Sam embraced his powers (eventually), and Jack seems to be afraid of his powers. So, by and large, Jack seems to be even more of an innocent than Sam was. Which is why Dean needs to back the fuck up off my baby.

Moving on:

D: Look, I know you think that you can use him as some sort of an interdimensional can opener, and that’s fine. But don’t act like you care about him, because you only care about what he can do for you. So, if you want to pretend, that’s fine. But me? I can hardly look at the kid. ‘Cause when I do, all I see is everybody we’ve lost.

First of all, can we just take a look at Sam’s face here when Dean says that Sam just wants to use Jack for his own personal gain?

Like, why would you say that about his little moose? Mamma Moose is gonna fuck you up.

But, honestly, that face is both amazing (because you can tell Sam really does care about Jack) and sad (because Sam’s wondering if his big brother really thinks that he’s that selfish). I mean, of course Sam would like for Jack to bring Mary back, but I also believe he really does want to fulfill Kelly and Cas’s wishes for him. Not to mention, he can connect with Jack on a level he hasn’t been able to with anybody else.

Which brings up an interesting tangent that I’m going to go on now:

Why is it that Sam, of all people, is doing what Castiel would’ve wanted? Not that it’s out of character for Sam, but don’t you think that it’d be more in character for Dean to do so because of the bond he and Cas shared? No. Because Dean not only blames Jack and blames himself, but he blames Cas. He’s furious that Cas put himself in a situation that got him killed. He’s pissed at Cas for being dead. And I don’t think Dean knows what to do with that.

Back on track:

S: Mom chose to take that shot at Lucifer. That is not on Jack.

D: And what about Cas?

S: What about Cas?

D: He manipulated him. He made him promises. Said “Paradise on Earth,” and Cas bought it. And you know what that got him? It got him dead! Now, you might be able to forget about that, but I can’t!

This is it. This is the moment everybody is talking about. Including me.

Okay, for one thing, he totally disregards Mary. “Fuck her, we’re talking about Cas. Keep up, Moose Man.” Like? Both of them were killed by Lucifer (he thinks), both of them chose to protect everything they were leaving behind, so? Maybe Dean reacted differently to Cas’s death because, oh, I don’t know, their bond isn’t familial? I mean, I’m just throwing that out there, but I dunno, maybe it could be a very fucking likely possibility?

Sidebar: I was discussing this with @tobythewise, and has Dean ever called Jack by name? Because I don’t think he has, and I imagine that’s in an effort to not humanize Jack in his mind. I assume he’d rather see Jack as a thing instead of as a person.

So, now, we’re gonna talk about a thing. A thing that the anti-Destiel fans may not enjoy. I’m gonna make a statement. And it’s gonna be pretty matter-of-fact. My conviction is pretty strong here. Are you prepared?

Literally, Dean has never reacted to a loved one’s death like this.

Look at the pain, the near panic in his eyes (and, no, that is not a Hercules reference).

Honestly, make a list. Make a list of the behaviors Dean exhibited immediately following each of these people’s deaths.

John (shuts it down, doesn’t talk about it until he’s dealt with most of it on his own, privately bashes in the Impala)

Sam (immediately takes action to bring him back to life after a very short, and still private, grieving period, essentially bypassing the opportunity to feel the loss of his brother)

Bobby (ignores the pain, denies the existence of Bobby’s spirit for a long period of time)

Ellen, Jo, and Ash (ignores the pain again, accepts their deaths as his fault as well as part of the job)

Kevin (same thing, blocks out the pain, privately trashes the bunker)

Charlie (same thing, puts up a wall, only briefly berates Sam for involving her in their dangerous lives)

Mom (assumes she’s dead, won’t talk about it, accepts the loss)

Crowley (accepts the loss again)

Castiel (prays to Chuck to bring him back, openly implies to a random angel that he wants to use Jack’s powers to get Cas back, publicly screams out his pain of losing Cas to Sam, knowing full well that Jack could potentially hear)

This isn’t to say that he isn’t trying to block out Cas’s death like he does with everybody else’s, but it isn’t fuckin’ workin’, is it, mate?

And, I know. Dean has blocked out the pain of Castiel’s deaths or disappearances before, but that was because: their relationship wasn’t as developed as it is now, they just came out of a falling out, or he didn’t fucking block it out, and instead, he had dreams and nightmares about losing Cas.

So, basically, the point I’m trying to make here is that Dean is having a blown out reaction to losing Castiel, and I think it’s because he never got to say the things he needed to say to him. Things like “Thank you for everything you’ve done to save me” or “You don’t have to prove yourself to me” or “We need you here more than you realize” or “I love you.” You know, just... whatever.

Of course, it isn’t to say that Dean cares about Cas more than anybody else, because we know that’s not true. Sammy is #1, always. But it is to say that A, Castiel’s bond with Dean is significantly different than a friendship, family, or frenemy bond. B, because of that, he doesn’t know how to cope with the loss and C, the matter of the unrequited feelings and unsaid words is taking its toll.

Phew, that was a lot. I’ve only got one more thing to discuss here: Jack.

J: [whispers] Castiel.

One thing I found kind of interesting/strange was Jack’s facial expression throughout this whole scene.

It’s very neutral, almost, right? I mean, it’s puzzled, sure, but given the context of the conversation between Sam and Dean, shouldn’t he be sad or mad or something? Seeing as how this dumpling is just like his dad, I get it . I mean, he’s new to the world, he doesn’t quite understand the “ebb and flow of human emotion” (Castiel, 2013), but he didn’t even react when Sam was defending him, which I found interesting.

I made a post about this, but I’ll say it again here that Jack seems to value Dean’s opinion more than he does Sam’s. Just like Cas did. Not that Sam’s opinion is worthless, but still, Jack seems to want Dean’s approval more than he wants Sam’s. Maybe that’s because negative words reach people quicker than positive words? Maybe because Sam readily gave his approval, Jack feels he needs to focus on getting Dean’s? Maybe Jack’s connection to Cas bonded him to Dean in the same way Cas was bonded to Dean? (like how Amara used their connection to reach Dean in S11 *idea courtesy of @tobythewise.*)

The latter answer is my favorite because it reminds me that Cas learned how to be human from Dean, and what’s Jack been doing since hittin’ this green earth?

Exactly. Anyway, I find it really cute that Jack is looking up to Dean, but I also find it really sad that Dean is shutting him down like he is, and I also find it sad that Dean is in so much pain that it’s literally shooting out of him and hitting everything in sight.

So, then we see Cas.

Here’s the thing: Jack needs Cas, yes. Jack could’ve subconsciously woken Castiel up because he wanted him back. But it’s pretty coincidental that Jack did so right after hearing Dean’s literal screams of pain for Cas. I hope Jack’s not thinking that bringing/having Cas back will make Dean accept him. I know that will probably be what happens, but I want Jack to bring Cas back just because he knows it’ll make Dean happy. Ya know? Hell, maybe both of those things are his motivation. Although, I don’t think he woke Cas up consciously. But! He did say earlier that using his powers were like breathing, so waking Cas up for Dean must of felt pretty natural to him, huh?

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. I love, love, love this season so far. I love the Dabb era. I love that Castiel is getting the screen time and love that he deserves. I love that Jack is one of the best characters to ever join the show (which is impressive after 13 seasons). I love that Sam is a little Mamma Moose. I love that Dean is finally grieving Cas. I love it all. After a particularity grueling hellatus, I’m looking forward to more. Let me know your thoughts!

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sharethisgemwithme · 7 years ago

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“Sadie Killer” instant reaction

I watched tonight’s pair of episodes when they were released on the app in November, and these logs are from that first watch, but I never got around to posting them at the time. Eventually, I decided I'd just post them along with the TV airing.

Time to see more from the townspeople in the aftermath of Lars's disappearance (and given that the Cool Kids are involved, Mayor Dewey's defeat).

My predictions: From the promo, we know Sadie's gonna sing a song that certainly sounded like it had the tune of "WATCG", but was all spooky. She probably hasn't been sleeping. Alright, let's do this.

I'm watching via on-demand, and will start the clock with "We!" As always, first time I'm watching straight through with no pauses or rewinds.

0:00 - I'm not sure if "Sadie Killer" is a specific reference I don't get, btw 0:22 - Lamar and Jeff again. 0:33 - Yeah, she is fucking exhausted 0:54 - Oh god the Dognut. 1:00 - Why the fuck are you such a terrible customer, Steven? 1:17 - Jam session... without your jam bud. 1:33 - We're not gonna see Lars at all in this block, are we? 1:55 - Join the band, Sadie! 2:19 - Were those real bands or mocks of real bands or what? 2:43 - Rapabilly? 2:52 - That's a decent start. 3:08 - Umm. 3:14 - Someone's a little bit bitter about the government now. 3:24 - Meanwhile, Jenny will take no criticism of the government. 3:43 - I hate all of these music choices. 4:08 - Harsh. 4:25 - I was about to say, yeah that's weird, but at least you realize it. 4:49 - Gonna need to look to see what she just covered up. 5:03 - Oh, ok, that's what it was. 5:21 - I feel like this is a metaphor saying not to keep your interests hidden. 5:52 - Yeah it's starting to come together. 6:10 - Sadie's got some expressive faces. 6:23 - Rhyming "mourning" with "morning" is a solid move. And I'm not joking. 7:02 - This is a great song, and the Cool Kids did not see this coming. 7:40 - Oh. Oh yeah that is a pretty obvious meaning for that episode name. 8:03 - They really do need to hire someone new. 8:33 - Oh god, this is completely depressing. 9:00 - I've got a lot to say about this whole normal / chance at escaping the normal. 9:33 - "Do I really sound like that?" Abso-fuckin'-lutely. And you have every right. 10:15 - You are not intimidating, Steven. 10:45 - Hey, she made it! 10:59 - But they don't know where it is. 11:08 - SHE QUIT! HOT DAMN! 11:16 - Now that's a move that will have lasting repercussions. Is the Big Donut, one of the most common settings outside the beach house, gonna have to close now?

IMMEDIATE THOUGHTS: So there are two bits to this episode that speak to me in a personal way. First was Sadie hiding her cheesy interests because she's embarrassed of them. I can relate to that, even in the context of this show. I'm a high school teacher, and while I don't hide all my interests from my students, I don't advertise them. There's a fine line between relating with the kids and trying to be Mr. Kewl Teacher. That said, a few weeks ago, I forgot to silence my phone, and as the last kid was leaving from one class, I got a text message. The student immediately recognized the ring tone as the riff from "Full Disclosure". Another one of my big interests, related to the other bit that spoke to me, is karaoke. About 2 years ago, I started doing karaoke at a local bar, and met a group of friends that I sorely needed. And while I've got an established full-time job, a number of other people in the group are very much in Sadie's position, of working part-time jobs in food service, trying to make ends meet, either living with parents or sharing apartments. Having that outlet to go out once in a while and have fun, whether it be singing or acting or whatever, is very important to keeping their calm. And it totally sucks even worse when they have to work late (or they're just exhausted) and can't make it to social gatherings. So while I can't say for sure Sadie's made the right decision, I can understand it.

Second watch notes: The refrain of "The Working Dead" shares its chord progression (I think that's the accurate term) with that of "We Are the Crystal Gems", but I think that's mostly coincidence. In the final scene, the shot of Sadie, shaded eyes, making a sudden, potentially rash, decision to say "Fuck this shit I'm out"... gee, I wonder why that looks familiar...

Credits: "The Working Dead", music by Jeff Liu and Ben Levin, lyrics by Rebecca Sugar and Ben Levin. In the larger credits shown on TV the last two weeks, a few other songs were shown, but "Working Dead" was, too, so contrary to what some may have posted, other song titles listed were not "alternate titles" for this one. Zombies credited to Zach, Lamar, Reagan Gomez-Preston, and Brian Posehn (alongside their regular roles of Steven, Buck, Jenny, and SC respectively)

#steven universe #instant reaction #su liveblog #su spoilers #sadie killer #credits

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thegaymerist · 7 years ago

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Caryl Throughout the Seasons

Season 2

Daryl stepped up in the group and helped Carol by looking for Sophia

Daryl found a Cherokee Rose, thought to himself, Carol might like this and it might help her, and gave it to her and with it, the lovely message that came with it

Risked his life finding a lead on Sophia, with Carol kissing him and telling him he did more for Sophia that day than her father did his whole life. Oh... and she KISSES HIM.

If Sophia was found alive, you bet your ass Daryl would have been a surrogate father to Sophia and helped protect and teach her how to survive.

Daryl and Carol had a fight but Daryl brought Carol to a field of Cherokee Roses to apologize.

Daryl was there for Carol and held her tight and close when Sophia came out of that barn and Rick had to shoot her.

After Sophia’s death, Daryl went to Carol in the RV and sat in silence, knowing she needed someone but would let her talk if she wanted too.

During the meeting about Randall, Daryl came inside the house and was staring at Carol.

DELETED SCENE: After Daryl tortured Randall, Carol came to Daryl to remind him that he’s not like that, that he’s a good person just as much as Rick.

When the entire group left Carol behind, Daryl stuck around the farm and rescued Carol from the herd.

When Rick chose for the group to stay in the camp, Carol thought Daryl should be leading and asked what he thought about all of it.

Season 3

Rick Grimes, the King of Ships, sent Carol and Daryl together in one of the watchtowers to fight the herd.

That SCENE where Carol brought Daryl dinner in the bus and talked about how romantic it was, with Carol wanting to “screw around” and checked out Daryl’s ass.

When the gang found T-Dog’s body and Carol’s scarf next to it, he grasped it and thought the WORST.

DELETED SCENE: WHERE THE HELL IS THAT SCENE OF DARYL TALKING TO MAGGIE ABOUT CAROL AND WHAT SHE MEANT TO HIM.

After that whole day, Daryl put a CHEROKEE ROSE on her grave and held her cross.

When Daryl killed that walker, he found Carol’s knife in its throat, knew it was hers, and was TEARING UP and FEARING THE WORST.

Daryl sitting in front of that jail cell with Carol’s knife, banging it against the wall, and ready to face Carol’s reanimated body only to find her alive. He CARESSES her face and does a damn gallivant knight-in-shining-armor walk, carrying his damsel back to C-block.

Telling Rick, super excited, that their Carol is back.

When Daryl wants to leave the group with Merle, Rick and Glenn’s first response is “What about Carol? What do we tell her?” And surprise-surprise, Carol is distraught when she learns from Rick that Daryl left.

And when Daryl returns, Carol comes to his cell and tells him she’s glad he’s back.

DELETED SCENE: Carol goes to Merle, and while understanding he’s Daryl’s brother and means a lot to him, Carol warns Merle not to turn Daryl into something he’s not, or to hurt Daryl and the group, or else she will kill him. And Daryl WATCHES. P.S. Merle can’t help but appreciate being threatened by Carol.

After Merle’s death, Carol tells Daryl it’s going to be okay and she holds Daryl’s hand.

Season 4

Daryl and Carol outside the courtyard at breakfast, when Daryl’s adoring fan comes, Carol says, “Just so you remember, I loved you first.”

Carol and Daryl make rounds outside together, and initiating, “Sorry, Pookie.”

P.S. - Definition of Pookie: A term used for someone you go with or are married to.

Daryl and Carol going to each other asking if they were okay after the infection in the prison hit.

Daryl throwing a tantrum when he finds Rick banished her, and defends her honor, “That ain’t her.”

The fire that Daryl starts is a central image to Carol during the episode, “The Grove.”

Season 5

Carol goes Rambo when she discovers Daryl and gang are going to be butchered by Terminus.

Carol notices Daryl’s crossbow in the storeroom of Terminus right away and takes it.

THAT. DAMN. REUNITED. SCENE. WITH. CAROL. AND. DARYL. He hugs her, picks her up, twirls her, cries, puts his head on her.

Carol and Daryl guard the camp at night, and Daryl knows something happened with Carol and the girls, and tells her he is there for her.

When Daryl *tries to be a gentlemen about carrying the water and ends up dropping it. He’s flustered and Carol is like, this man...

Daryl catches her trying to leave with the car and doesn’t want her to go.

The WHOLE DAMN EPISODE of CONSUMED

P.S. It was originally called HEART DRIFT so jot that down

When Beth dies and Daryl kills Dawn, Daryl breaks. And who is the first to hold and comfort him? CAROL PELETIER.

When Daryl is mourning Beth, who goes into the woods with him, comforts him, and KISSES him on the forehead? CAROL PELETIER.

When Carol goes all Suzy-Homemaker, who is slacked-jaw staring at laughing? DARYL “YOU LOOK RIDICULOUS” DIXON

Who threatens Daryl with a shower in his sleep? CAROL “TAKE A SHOWER” PELETIER.

Season 6

When Daryl is out with Dwight, what flower does Daryl see in a mossy-walker? A flower that is not native to Virginia? A CHEROKEE ROSE.

“That was kind of a nice little Easter egg for me and Carol.” “Even the walker that I shot trying to get the crossbow out of that bag has a Cherokee Rose sticking on its back; it’s a little Easter egg. Every single little thing comes back. I wouldn’t be surprised if Scott knew that walker was going to have a Cherokee Rose way back when. He’s kind of a mad genius like that.” “Every little thing in this show plays later. There’s never wasted screen time on this show.” - Norman Reedus

When Jesus gives his compliments to the chef for the cookie, Daryl goes MAD DEFENSIVE.

When Daryl and gang find Carol and Maggie, Glenn goes to Maggie, his wife, and Daryl GOES TO CAROL. Hugs her, asks Carol if she is okay, and hugs her again when she says no.

When Carol and Daryl are burying Denise’s body together, she stares at him and realizes she loves him, but she is not able to protect him.

Season 7

When Daryl is reflecting on his life and his happiest moments, over HALF are with Carol.

The WHOLE DAMN EPISODE OF NEW BEST FRIENDS

Season 8

Carol sees a Cherokee Rose drawn next to her on the overpass.

95% of the promotional material, and the very first promo, for Season 8 is of Carol and Daryl, with official TWD accounds referring to them as a power couple.

Notice Something Here?

#twd #carol peletier #daryl dixon #caryl #the walking dead

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animesavior · 7 years ago

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“There was something about the folks at Anteku. Everyone was full of life, you know. Always smiling. And you fit right in with them. You finally found a place where you belonged. You were happy, I wanted to do what i could to keep you that way. I tried to protect you guys, i really did. But who would've thought it would end up like this? I wanted to help so you wouldn't take the burden all by yourself. You see, you don't always have to be the hero, Kaneki.“

- Hideyoshi Nagachika, Tokyo Ghoul √A (Ep. 12)

The Toonami Trending Rundown for September 30-October 1, 2017. The times are a-changin’ for several shows as Tokyo Ghoul showcases the finale of √A, while Zenigata manages to lock up Lupin, but has difficulty in throwing away the key, and Naruto wraps up the Pains Assault arc as Nagato stands down to Naruto, among other great moments.

On Twitter, Toonami as well as every show would successfully trend in the US during their respective East Coast airings. Meanwhile on Tumblr, Toonami would trend as well as JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Hunter x Hunter.

Unfortunately, Dragon Ball Super would come up short this week, failing to trend in some capacity this week or getting on Nielsen Social’s top 5 list, ending a streak that has lasted (holiday marathon nights aside) since June 17.

Huge news for Sword Art Online this week for those that haven’t heard. Just as Toonami was beginning in the East Coast, Aniplex had announced that a season 3 of the series is indeed in the works. And after a 3 year hiatus from television (2 since it last aired on Toonami), SAO is coming back in a big way.

Season 3 will be fully focused on one story arc, titled “Project Alicization”, which takes place shortly after the events of Mother’s Rosario that ended season 2 as well as the events of the Ordinal Scale film (which takes place in between). Alicization runs from Volume 9-19 of the original light novels, and considering that the previous 2 seasons covered the first 8 volumes in total (with roughly 2 volumes max per story arc), this will be the longest story arc in the franchise to date. It is presently unknown how many episodes there will be or if Alicization will required to be split into several cours (as was seen with Durarara x2, Gundam IBO, and My Hero Academia for instance) due to its length.

This new story arc will take place in a new fictional video game titled “Underworld” and will feature two new characters to the story, Eugeo, and Alice. For obvious spoiler reasons, I can’t say much story-wise until the time comes, but you’ll likely be hearing much more about those two and this upcoming story during the show’s run-up in the months to come.

There’s more to it. Aniplex has also announced that a side story to the series, “Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online” is also in the works. Based off the light novel originally published in 2014 and written by Keiichi Sigsawa of Kino’s Journey fame, as the title suggests, this new series is directly related to the Phantom Bullet story arc seen during the first part of season 2. However, instead of following Kirito and Sinon in their mission to stop Death Gun, this side story will introduce a new crew in GGO.

You can see the promos for season 3 by clicking here and Alternative GGO by clicking here.

No word yet on when these two new additions to the franchise will premiere, but given the success of Sword Art Online seasons 1 and 2 previously on the better cartoon show, no doubt these new additions to the franchise will be ones to watch for to Toonami to potentially air at some point ahead. We’ll keep you posted on the developments ahead, but as with all potential shows, if you do wish to see Sword Art Online return to the block for Project Alicization, Alternative GGO, and perhaps even Ordinal Scale as well, continue supporting the show and the block overall as always and let Toonami and Aniplex know (ex. Toonami's Facebook and Tumblr message boxes, among other places).

In terms of trending, SAO 3 would trend worldwide as a result of the announcement.

Ever since the original manga made its debut on Weekly Young Jump back in 2011, Sui Ishida’s Tokyo Ghoul would go on to make a big impact on the anime and manga scene, becoming a regular best seller on both sides of the Pacific, with 25 volumes combined and counting. Tokyo Ghoul would be adapted into a anime series by Studio Pierrot, with part 1 airing in Japan from July 4 to September 19, 2014, and part 2: √A or Root A airing from January 9 to March 27, 2015, which also helped the series reach new heights in terms of popularity.

Given the show’s success, it came at no surprise that Tokyo Ghoul would regularly be among the most requested shows for Toonami to eventually acquire. Despite this, it would take several more years before it would get its shot on the better cartoon show, and on March 10th, 2017, Toonami announced that it finally would beginning on March 25th. However, this airing would come with a catch. The catch that One Piece’s Toonami run would have to be canceled to make way.

Of course, Tokyo Ghoul isn’t the reason One Piece was booted, as I mentioned during the OP retrospective 26 weeks ago, declining ratings combined with the high costs of airing the show and fans wanting a shakeup to the block made its continuation on the better cartoon show unsustainable, and Tokyo, Ghoul was just merely next in line to air, so to speak. Understandably, One Piece fans were very upset at this move, and some have questioned Tokyo Ghoul’s presence on the better cartoon show, with critics arguing that the anime’s quality being not up to par to the manga, among other things. Nonetheless, One Piece’s downfall and Tokyo Ghoul’s rise as Toonami shows, combined with Sword Art Online’s continued success, and Naruto’s resilience, may well be defining examples (Toonami-wise) that acclaim doesn't mean much if you don't have the ratings to back it up, and perhaps vindicates something Toonami head Jason DeMarco has said: “television is a democracy and people vote with their eyeballs”. We always hate it when something like this happens, but the moral of the story is to support your favorite shows, or watch them leave as well.

During the show’s 24 episode run, the show would successfully trend on Twitter in some capacity during all 12 weeks of part 1’s run, including in the US during 11 weeks as well as worldwide during week 1. Things were a little slower during Root A on the other hand, with the show trending in the US for 6 out of 12 weeks. The show would also trend on tumblr for 9 weeks of its run (8 of them during Part 1), including during the week before its run as the show was being promoted.

As those that have read the manga would tell you, the anime has made quite a few notable changes from the original material, with Tokyo Ghoul Root A diverging from the manga by around Volume 6. The manga continues on to this day with 12 volumes total of Tokyo Ghoul, as well as its sequel series in Tokyo Ghoul:re with 13 volumes/143 chapters and counting. For those interested, Viz Media has translated and released part 1 in US shores and is currently working on releasing Tokyo Ghoul:re, with the first volume set for release on October 17.

In addition, there’s a brand new live action film adaptation, which premiered during Anime Expo and released in Japan on July 29th. Funimation will be showcasing the new Tokyo Ghoul live action film from October 16-22 in select theaters. Click here for more information.

But that’s not all. There has been some developing news released this week regarding a continuation or reboot of the anime, with the announcement of an adaptation of Tokyo Ghoul:re in the works, set to premiere sometime next year. Before this announcement was made on Thursday, publisher Young Jump has announced that they will have plans to reveal new information regarding what is next for Tokyo Ghoul on October 12, and assuming that this wasn't the announcement released in advance, we may hear more regarding this new series then.

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It is currently unknown how the creators will address the previously mentioned diverging of the story from the manga, whether the show will just start off from the Root A ending and work their way back to following the manga, much like a Shonen Jump long runner returns to canon, or follow a similar path several other Toonami shows took when they were continued, such as restarting from the beginning much like FMA Brotherhood, or have Root A “retconed”, similar to Blue Exorcist when episodes 18-24 of the original series were ignored from the canon when the Kyoto Saga began. Of course, this is all just speculation at the moment, but it will be interesting to see how the story continues with this in mind.

Nonetheless, as I mentioned with Attack on Titan, One Punch Man, and Sword Art Onilne among potentially many others, given the show’s success, I think it is safe to say that Tokyo Ghoul will be a potential candidate to make a return to the better cartoon show for this new series. Assuming Funimation and Toonami can successfully negotiate and pull off a broadcast dub, Tokyo Ghoul may likely make a return as early as next year. Of course, it’s too early to say anything on this matter, but as with all potential shows, if you do wish to see Tokyo Ghoul:re on the better cartoon show, continue supporting the show and the block as always, and let Toonami and Funimation know.

Regardless of what happens, Tokyo Ghoul was a pretty interesting ride, for better or for worse, and given recent news and its continued support, I doubt we will be hearing the last from Kaneki, Touka, Hide, and the Anteku. What happens next should be an interesting one, and we’ll keep you posted.

Of course, we haven’t heard the last from Mikazuki and the Tekkadan, as Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans makes its return to the better cartoon show for Season 2 tonight at 12:30am Eastern, while Naruto Shippuden will begin the Past Arc: The Locus of Konoha story arc, and Lupin the Third continues the 2nd half of Part 4, among other great moments.

We’ll see you again then as always, but we do wish a Happy 25th anniversary to Cartoon Network. From all the good times and despite the bad times, From the Cartoon Cartoons and later the Cartoon Network originals, to [adult swim], Boomerang, and Toonami, CN has brought fans both young and old many great shows and allowing us to enjoy the great medium that is animation. Thanks for the memories, and here’s to many more.

Legend: The shows listed are ordered based on their appearance on the schedule. Show trends are listed in bold. The number next to the listed trend represents the highest it trended on the list (not counting the promoted trend), judging only by the images placed in the rundown. For the Twitter tweet counts, the listed number of tweets are also sorely based on the highest number shown based on the images on the rundown.

United States Trends:

Toonami/#Toonami [#7]

#DBZKai [#24]

#JoJosBizarreAdventure [#7]

#TokyoGhoul [#4]

#HunterXHunter [#8]

#LupinThe3rd [#5]

#Shippuden [#6]

#OutlawStar [#6]

#CowboyBebop [#6]

#AttackOnTitan [#7]

Worldwide Trends:

SAO3 [#9]

Tweet Counts:

Toonami [6,219 tweets]

#Toonami [3,246 tweets]

#DBZKai [1,226 tweets]

#JoJosBizarreAdventure [2,625 tweets]

#TokyoGhoul [2,275 tweets]

#HunterXHunter [1,989 tweets]

#LupinThe3rd [1,491 tweets]

#Shippuden [1,063 tweets]

#OutlawStar [1,013 tweets]

Tumblr Trends:

#toonami

#jojos bizarre adventure

#hunter x hunter

Notes and Other Statistics:

#HunterXHunter: @WhoTrendedIT reported that @Mike_Daniels76 started the trend in the US.

#CowboyBebop: @WhoTrendedIT reported that @XavierWoodsPhD started the trend in the US.

Special thanks to @coreymbarnes, @jmb70056, and others I forgot to mention for spotting some of the trends on this list.

Only Toonami on [adult swim] on Cartoon Network.

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kingsofchaos · 8 years ago

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Outside the relevant video footage there are a few particular photos of the FAHC that the media likes to use whenever they are discussing one of the crew's attacks on the news; between citizen’s snapshots and professional photojournalists there’s certainly no shortage of available images but a select handful have become somewhat iconic. There are favourites for each individual, at least of the main public-facing portion of the crew, even ideal shots of near every little combination of members, but it’s the big group photos that really bring in the money. The favoured images are all action shots including all the key members of the crew, rare and hard to capture but spectacular when managed, the candid photos looking more like promo stills for a Hollywood blockbuster than anything based in reality. Tales of the crew’s latest acts of bloody ruthlessness are often accompanied by a snap taken by a long-focus lens through a chain-link fence of the Fake’s waiting for pickup outside a warehouse. Pattillo’s on the phone, Ramsey has his head in one hand as he gestures towards where Jones is tipping off balance with Dooley in a headlock, who in turn has one hand fisted in the Vagabond’s jacket as Free looks on, apparently cleaning his nails with a knife. The group ranges from a light smattering to utterly drenched but not one has entirely escaped the spray of blood, and every single one of them is laughing. When instead the topic of discussion is the FAHC’s opulent irreverence the image of choice is one showing the key six in various stages of undress, swimmers and cocktails all around as they lounge about the spa and deck of the mayor��s yacht. Then there’s the photo that never fails to come up whenever the media is focussing on the FAHC’s ability to do the unbelievable, taken during one of the Fake’s more ludicrous heists. An overbearing titan dwarfs the scene right outside Maze Bank, cartoonishly large magnet swinging heavily below it at the aircraft absconds with an entire safe. Two figures are standing atop the safe as it is lifted, one in a suit and the other in a skull mask, both clinging to the chain as they lean out to shoot towards those still on the ground. Below a hotly pursued chrome car is fishtailing around the corner even as two bikes are caught mid-flight, launching through the air over a police barricade, the drivers – one decked out in all gold and the other a mess of purple and orange – reaching out to bump gloved fists. A grainy mobile camera shot that is largely ignored by mainstream media nonetheless makes the rounds on the internet, quickly going viral as people express their fascination with the image of Los Santos’ most infamous villains after a night at the bar. Walking down a quiet street Ramsey and Pattillo are out in front, the boss laughing and gesticulating wildly while the second shoves him away, grin mostly hidden as she looks back at the others following behind. Free’s arm is hooked around Jones’ neck, a careless piggyback that matches the sloppy edge of their grins, his other arm thrust forward like he’s directing a charge despite the way the Vagabond is clearly towing them both with one hand. The other hand is busy keeping Dooley from slumping to the ground, limp body slung over the Vagabonds shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and even masked its clear the mercenary is looking skyward in exasperation. It’s an oddly humanising image, the familiarity of drunken camaraderie regardless of the nature of the people involved, and, feeling safe and brazen behind the anonymity of the internet, the picture is quickly utilised in a dozen different ridiculous memes. Despite all that, the most commonly used image of the crew by far, and easily the most obnoxiously arrogant of the lot, comes from the memorable day the FAHC decided to make a show of finally wiping out their key rivals, an example to the city and a huge payday all rolled into one extravagant affair. While there are still plenty missing the imagine contains nearly every identifiable member of the FAHC, including a sizable chunk of support, all dressed in matching suits - visibly expensive, personally tailored and entirely unnecessary, each with their own little flairs of green; a tie, a handkerchief, a necklace, a vest. The crew is walking in a V-formation, with Ramsey front and centre and the rest flared back around him, loose limbed and laughing like they’re not all armed to the teeth. Like there isn’t a burnt out plane behind them or a building pouring smoke and flame. Like this photo didn’t catch them moments after securing the most horrifically high body-count the crew has to their name. It’s used because of how many members are visible, because of how clearly it displays the callous cruelty of the crew, the violent destruction at the heart of their existence. The Fake’s just love how insufferably grandiose it is, from the accidental formation of their walk to the silly last second decision to suit up and wreck shop like caricature gangsters, all picked apart and interpreted as intention, calculated self-importance and immaculate organisation. There is however, a single photo in circulation that the Fake’s draw no pleasure from no matter how many times its shown. It’s the kind of image prime time news always precedes with a warning; disturbing, graphic, might offend some viewers, proceed at your own risk. It was taken by a particularly reckless journalist in the middle of a shootout that stayed in the headlines for weeks, the stormy night that almost spelled the end of the FAHC and cost many officers their lives in the process. The image embodies every inch of that grim reality, almost washed out by the red and blue lights reflecting back off every surface from pale faces to the wet shine of the road, and the whole photo couldn’t have been framed better if it had been staged. There are lumps scattered across the scene; rubble, cartridges, crashed vehicles and indistinguishable bodies in blue and black Kevlar. In the foreground there is a shock of green hair against the pavement, Dooley's prone form blocked almost entirely by Ramsey crouching over him, usual jacket abandoned to reveal a tattered shirt, stark and ghostly white against the harsh black metal of the machine gun braced against his shoulder. Slightly further back, ducked low and braced against a wall Pattillo and the Vagabond press together, bodies inadvertently angled towards the photographer. The Vagabond is caught mid-reload, skull askew as his head twists back to look behind even as Pattillo keeps him pinned, gun slung across her back and her own shirt ripping between her teeth as she ties it around the masked man's thigh. Furthest away and almost perfectly centred Jones has his back to the camera, the distinctive snarl of the wolf stamped across his spine just visible as he stands square between his crew and the advancing line of officers, outline lit by the bright flare of his muzzle flash. Nearby a slighter figure echoes his position, taking aim from the hood of an abandoned police car, though one of Free's arms hangs wet and useless to his side, face turned just far enough to reveal blood streaked skin and bared teeth. Out of focus but distinct even in the background the LSPD advances, a solid mass interspaced by flashing lights and flaring weapons. The photo even captured a glimpse of the Firebird’s chopper arriving, the deciding factor that finally swung the fight back into the FAHC's favour, just visible emerging around the hulking silhouette of a building. The photo is, in all objectivity, an artistic masterpiece. The Fake’s hate it. Any media loop of a job gone bad is a pretty miserable time, and there is certainly enough footage of that night to go around, but something about that image is particularly grating. It’s hardly the worst photo of them out there, isn’t embarrassing or overly revealing, the few visible faces not even reflecting the desperate terror they’d all felt by the end, but it’s still too much. Too painful, too human, far too close, so each and every time it surfaces again it never fails to tip somebody into a bad mood. The annoyance is aimed at the media really, not the individual who’d snapped the shot; no matter how many claimed the man should have his identity protected for safety the Fake’s simply weren’t interested. Which isn’t to say they didn’t notice when that damned image won a prestigious award, oh no. For all their collective indifference there’s just no way the photographer was ever going to keep that prize long, his apartment broken into within a week without any obvious signs of forced entry, the culprits only identifiable by the message they left behind in their wake, bright green paint splashed across the wall where the shiny new plaque had hung in pride of place; Get our good side next time, xoxo FAHC

#FAHC #good grief #this all came from me laughing at a particular photo #that the news keeps using every night #+there just has to be so many photos #someone was going to be pulling Gavin from the car #because honestly kid way to make yourself a target #but Lad rage over hurt J won out #i default Jeremy to green hair #Legal and Illegal Have Nothing To Do With Right or Wrong #Loaded Guns and Sharp Teeth

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