#limited animation budget... lol

[il-predestinato]

Special avatars for this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix kids broadcast:

MAX VERSTAPPEN - Max owns two cats called Jimmy and Sassy 🐈 CHARLES LECLERC - Charles is a talented piano player, and released his first song earlier this year! 🎹

[beldaroot]

remember what they took from you....

[ranger-kellyn]

rewatched the serpent's pass last night to take notes for my fic, and all night right up until waking up, i just. couldn't get over how unsatisfying the sukka reunion was. even with my silly shipper goggles on, i'm just like. it didn't sell me, and I don't know how much of that is me being in all likelihood demiromantic, and how much of that was just genuinely lackluster writing :T

like, right before their near kiss, her whole “I lost someone I cared about. He didn’t die. He just went away.  I only had a few days to get to know him, but he was smart, and brave, and funny.” just...........Doesn't do it for me. it's so tonally different from what sokka had just said, and also like!!!!! you knew him for like A DAY!!!!!! you did not have NEARLY enough time to care about him like that please be real dlkjfhdkj

[bmpmp3]

and you will listen to my halfway unmixed vocal synth covers. you will. my final message (dies in your arms)

all the virvox guys in voicevox humming! yume no tobira piano ver vsqx by leah ocarina and the instrumental is by 友紀!

[ihopesocomic]

Wait so you mean to tell me MP ISNT someone's indie creation passion project and actually a show with a buject and stuff??

Great, now I can finally say this without feeling bad: why does the animation look like THAT. It just looks so wonky??? Like the characters are about to fall appart at any second because they are made of paper that has been hastly glued togheter?

Because if its your passion project, yeah I get it, animating is hard. I animate too, and god making the characters move and look good is difficult. But if its a show and you're getting paid (or u have money to give someone else to animate it) why dont make it look better? And actually learn how ro use the engine you're using?

My Pride was not somebody's indie passion project, no. It had a budget and said budget was funded by "an agency of the provincial [Canadian] government" (Ontario Creates) via taxpayer money. You'll notice that they're credited at the end of each episode.

I'm sorry to hear you've been misled. You're not the first and you certainly won't be the last. oof

As for the animation, we know somebody who offered Tribble assistance on how to use Toon Boom more effectively and make the process easier for her. Their offer was turned down. To compound this, since Tribble opted for limited animation, and since a lot of the time the characters are standing while talking: re-drawing characters for every single scene was just a further waste of valuable time that could've been spent doing other things to make the show presentable.

I do feel there are some parts of the show that do look nicely animated, as we said in our analysis. It's just a shame that this wasn't a consistent thing. I don't know the reasoning behind that either. I can only assume that the most obvious culprit seems to be a lack of model sheets. I feel the animation team did their best with what limited direction they appear to have been given.

And it's also this inconsistent animation that has led people to believe that it wasn't a professional project. Even though professional = polished and nice looking/hobbyist = bad and amateurish is a very common misconception that needs to die already. lol - RJ

[henrioo]

°•*⁀➷ THE BIG CROCO BROTHER: CROCODILE

꒰ SYNOPSIS ꒱ : "Being a father was not easy, imposing limits was necessary and no matter how cute his face was, that of the Crocodile's only son, he couldn't allow you to do whatever you wanted... Especially when you're running around with three deadly wild animals."

꒰ WARNINGS ꒱ : PLATONIC RELATIONSHIP! NON ROMANCE, Father and Son! Male reader! Child reader! Soft dad Crocodile! Cross guild! Savage animals (bananawani), the reader has a powerful man in his control (his own dad)

꒰ WC ꒱ : 1k

꒰ NOTES ꒱ : And here I'm again, trying to post again and idk, nothing much to say today, my mood is horrible and my life sucks, but here some family fluffy to see if that motivates me to write again. Also the names of the wani are terrible because my discord friends choose them lol hahahah blank/no pronouns/fem=block

Crocodile was listening to Mihawk talking about the latest news he had gotten on his last trip, Buggy was looking at some maps that his henchmen had given him and the lizard himself was looking at the management papers of that entire alliance. At least now it was working a little better and giving more profit than headaches, but Crocodile still refused to accept that a circus really had so many needs and needed such a big budget just for those pathetic shows... that clown was probably deceiving.

“FUCK!” Buggy shouted, making the dark-haired man snap out of his reverie and try to figure out what the shouting was about.

It was then that he saw a peculiar scene that had curiously been repeated a lot in the last few days. One of the baby bananawani was biting Buggy's leg, another seemed to be eager to eat the clown's colorful papers and the third and last was trying... no, he was begging for a lap to the strongest swordsman in the world who simply stared at him without reaction.

You see, being a parent is extremely difficult. Being a father and being a pirate with a young son and with Crocodile's current situation is even more so, he wouldn't want that to be the case but he really managed to be quite absent, he tried to make up for it by spoiling you and the problem was that he spoiled you a bit too much. You weren't a bad or rude child, but you simply faithfully believed that you could have the world at your feet if you asked your father nicely. Of course you could, but it wasn't good for your ego to be completely sure of it.

So, in a way of trying to teach you some good values like responsibility and any other nonsense, he left you in charge of taking care of three bananawani babies. You needed to feed them, take them out of the water tank, clean the tank, all the normal activities of a normal pet. With the difference that your pets were deadly creatures even as babies and were more than ready to rip off some arms for your protection.

“(Y/n), what did we talk about getting them out of the tank?” Crocodile sighed, this wasn't the first time the babies had wandered around the ship instead of being safe in their water tanks. He can still hear the cries of the henchmen who received unexpected bites because their pets were out of control.

“I’m sorry daddy” you said entering the room, you quickly went to the baby in Mihawk and picked him up. Not completely up since that single bananawani baby must have been heavier than you, so you just held him the best you could with his entire lower part dragging on the floor.

Buggy whimpered trying to pull the baby off his leg which only made him bite harder, causing the clown to scream again. Crocodile sighed and got up to help you deal with the mess.

“They’re still too young to wander around alone, they’ll just create trouble” he tried to convince you again.

“But... Miss Banana Split was sad” you said worriedly as you looked at the lizard in your arms who was smiling happily like a baby in his parents arms. Crocodile could feel Mihawk's eyes on him from the animal's name but he decided to ignore it.

“They are sweet animals, they don’t get sad” he tried to convince you, ruffling your hair.

“Of course they stay! Mr. Banana even whines!” You said with a huge hurt pout, heavens you really loved those animals...

“Look at feelings, I don’t know, but this pest is really hungry and is about to swallow my leg, so if you can have a father-son moment another time, I’d appreciate it!” Buggy screamed desperately, shaking his leg again, trying to free the animal, but in vain.

“Sorry, Mr. Buggy… Drake is eating too much these days…” you said, releasing the one in your arms and going to take the other one off the clown’s leg. Luckily the animal was happy to be picked up by you and easily released its prey.

“Drake?” Buffy looked at you perplexed, was that the fucking name you chose?

“Don’t you dare” Crocodile growled at him as if he could read his thoughts. It was a clear message, make my son ashamed of the names he chose and you will become real bananawani food.

“They like being close to you daddy” you said petting Drake who was rubbing against you, the other two cubs at Crocodile’s feet.

“Of course they do, I was there when they were born, that doesn't mean you can let them loose like that” he crouched down to your height “They're still cubs and without training, you won't find it fun if they actually eat someone's leg would you?” Crocodile would find it hilarious, but you were a good-hearted child so you just shook your head “See? So for now let’s keep them in the tank and teach them some tricks, if they can behave you can spend more time with them, okay?”

"Okay!" You smiled happily at the possibility of continuing the walk with your animals, without waiting any longer you picked up Drake and dragged him out of the room, followed by the other two animals.

Crocodile sighed, satisfied that you would obey him for now, at least this way he would stop hearing the clown crying.

“Drake? Seriously? What the fuck is that name? For a bananawani!” Buffy said shocked once you were far enough away, he wasn't even paying attention to the ruined maps.

“Shut up…” your father would also love to know where you got that name from but that was an answer that not even you had.

“I actually found Miss Banana Split quite charming” Mihawk said with a cocky grin at Crocodile who just snorted, getting annoyed. He didn't mind having a son as his weakness, but having that weakness exposed and made fun of was something he hadn't gotten used to yet.

“Go back to work” he said irritably, just wanting to pretend that none of that had happened.

[liauditore]

new suicide squad anime got me thinking about the genderbend batman au i made when i was 16 again.

extra (nsfw??? body horror + shirtless doodle lol) art under the cut + drabble.

A mysterious actress appears in Gotham!

Production for the long-anticipated remake of the 1930s classic horror film, "The Clay", is saved in part thanks to the audition of one woman with no credits to her name, just a face and demeanor identical of the late leading actress of the original film.

However, the cast and crew have bigger worries than their limited budget and endless demands from their producers -- everyone involved seems to be disappearing one by one!

While the average gothammite worries that the cult classic's "cursed" reputation might be a little more than an urban legend, The Batman refuses to entertain such unfounded silliness and aims to get to the bottom of this crime against cinema!

presenting BATMAN '63 - THE RISE OF CLAYFACE coming not actually ever lmao

(her hair is brown now because I like the idea of her appearance never being fully consistent lol. shapeshifters gotta do their thing)

[turnaboutfix]

Good evening pals it's time for more "things I like about the Ace Attorney Anime despite the budget being less than what I have in my piggy bank". Tonight is one of my favorite adaption decisions from "Farewell, My Turnabout" (obvious Spoilers for that case, you have been warned).

To start, the art in the anime is often pretty funky and off model, but I wanted to highlight this frame when Phoenix is talking to Matt Engarde in the detention center with his reflection in the shot. It is genuinely well drawn and downright horrifying. Actually, the whole episode has pretty good draftsmen working on the character animation, considering.

I could honestly leave it as is, but this next scene is what I want to talk about the most. (I have to leave some stuff out because of the 30 image limit--I took like 50 screencaps of this scene in total lol--so bare with me.) Phoenix steps out of the Detention center to see a certain prosecutor waiting for him.

The following conversation takes place in the Criminal Affairs Department in the game, but in the anime, it takes place in Edgeworth's office! (RIP Eddy's Bratworth outfit which is just a 2D image on that wall lmao--again, there are some well drawn stuff but this is just silly.) Another note: the text is from the sub with the localized English names, and it's a bit different from the dub.

This shot lingers for a bit, and you hear traffic outside before the following happens. The rest is under the cut.

Brilliant, incredible, amazing, showstopping, spectacular, never the same... you get the idea haha. I love it very much.

[enpr-ss]

Wild Life Immortal Snails Episode 3 Liveblogging

Omg the snails are so cute. Wait did it happen before the wild card screen? WAIT THEY INSTAKILL THEM??? FROM LIKE 3 BLOCKS AWAY????? THE PUNNY NAMES HAHAHAHA Slimedarity, Ethostropod, Tangastropod, PearlescentSnail, Bdubsnail, eSCARgo, Snailman, Renthesnail, InTheLittleShell, Snumbo, Gary, BigbShell, iSnail Who made the skins? The names? The coding? No wonder all the budget went into this. No wonder everyone dropped like flies. These snails ARE ZOOMING WHAT. THEY CAN FLY??? WITH THE RAINBOW PROPELLER CAPS??? THE YAHOO? THE ANIMATIONS????

You know, I had my doubts about the wild life gimmicks, felt too random to be a good series, but this proved me SO wrong. Worth it. Grian bringing this bit from hermitcraft is SO GOOD.

THEY SPAWNCAMPED BDUBS LOL. Do they have rainbow parachutes if they are flying for longer? The horse / a ridable mob actually coming in useful for once. The giant grin on Bdubsnail is SO creepy and hilarious.

JIMMY JUST DIED TO A CREEPER IN FRONT OF EVERYONE??? HE WENT FROM 4 TO RED IN LIKE 20 MINUTES AT THE START?!!?!?? WHAT IS HAPPENING??

Of course Etho thinks about how to abuse this game mechanic. To make it worse for other people even. HOW DID MUMBO DROWN OF ALL THINGS??? THE TIMING???

Jimmy killed Ren???? What??? It’s gotta be a negotiated one right. No way it’s a trap or straight pvp. Also interesting limited life mechanic of gaining a life back when you kill someone of a different color.

Etho and Martyn’s adventures in the nether!! The snails are SUCH a good mechanic to keep up the pressure. MARTYN DIED TO AN ENDERMAN WHAT Oh the snails paraglide when they teleport. Nice.

The mocking of Tango’s wood house burning down. The meta knowledge of when a yellow mutes themselves, it’s about a murder plan. Hilarious that Etho left in Gem’s calling his insecurities out. Wait Skizz is on red after killing Tango? Which meant he went from yellow to red twice? Wait drowning the snails passes it onto the player? Why? Also in hindsight hearing Mumbo faintly being surprised about this when Etho was talking with Martyn makes a lot of sense now.

Everyone humoring Etho’s tuff guy wet kitten act…. If it was anyone else they would be mocking them to shreds. AND THEN HE GETS CREEPERED DESPITE BEING WARNED BY THE ENTIRE GROUP HE WAS JUST MENACING HAAHAHAHAH TANGO. THE TIMING. “Where is mine?” The snail lets out a war cry and goes for the kill and then rainbow parachutes down with a Wow! Absolutely perfect scene. The snails are the perfect observation test that so far only Gem and Joel are passing. Omg the snails do make random goblin noises even without stimulus. The propeller cap and helicopter noises are so good. I’m surprised it didn’t teleport to him.

Etho’s bullying the Parrots and Scar in particular LOL. And then his family bullying about what’s cool. Them trying to give Jimmy a life / kill but he fails so hard hat not only did no one take a tick of damage but he destroys the base instead.

Ah yes the tnt minecart death coaster that everyone saw coming except Skizz. Who’s back on red AGAIN. TANGO’S ON RED?!?!? THAT’S 5 TO 1!!!

Wait why is Grian’s Gary?

Also this is similar vibes to that time on secret or limited life when they were screaming for Grian to end the session. Etho really did influence Grian to end it lol. Does all the deaths keep happening in Etho’s peripheral vision?

What a chaotic session. I can’t wait to see everyone’s POVs. Truly a Halloween theme, what with the creeping horror of pursuit predator snails dressed up in costumes. I want to see all the skins and the names and the voices and animations.

[cacaitos]

tbh imo they should've gone evangelion route those people were exploiting those 8 frames they had in the damn mines.

anyway it's just a completely different feel.

[magnoliaroad]

4 Seasons Back Yard Remodel + Crystal Yard

My 4 seasons remodels of the Petz 5 Back Yard are now available for download! And because I went on a bit of a side-quest, I’ve also made a bonus version, a fantasy, crystal back yard!

You can read my creator's notes below:

I somewhat wonder if it's fair to criticize the original Petz 5 playscenes too harshly. It's possible that the development team faced tight deadlines or budget constraints, factors that may not have been entirely within their control. However, regardless of the circumstances, the end result was a disappointingly sloppy product, and it's difficult to ignore some of the glaring flaws. While I can understand that the developers were working with dated software, there are certain flaws that can't be attributed to software limitations. Rather, they seem to reflect a clear lack of attention to detail. Here's what I mean.

The more you look at it, the harder it is to decide which flaw is the worst. The blatant MS paint spray paint "touch-up" in the upper left, that there was no effort put into blending in the skybox, or that they neglected to add textures to the roof.

Alright, enough ranting there. None of this is to say my playscenes are perfect either, but they were a labor of love and I hope that this is evident in the final results.

SPRING

I smoothed out the grass texture to give it a more velvety, manicured lawn appearance. I brightened up the dingy looking fence to a more brighter white. The original playscene had a hole in the fence, and while it might add "character", I opted to cover over it for a more polished look. I added bushes behind the fence to cover up the skybox and to conceal the bottom of the houses.

Speaking of houses. Wow these needed a big work-up. The texture work (or lack of) on these is just bad. I'm no expert in house construction, but even mostly-brick houses will have some accents like trims to break up the monotony of a fully-brick façade.

Because of how fuzzy the brick texture is in the original, I drew in the mortar lines of the bricks to enhance the texture. I added roof shingles, siding, and trim boards to the house to make it look more like a typical suburban house. Despite these edits, it's still not a "great" house - the way it looks through the windows, it looks like the house is one room lol. I wish I could put better houses in the backdrop but because Tinker doesn't allow me to edit the animated blinds, I'm constrained to keeping them the shape that they are. Oh well. We can use our imagination.

I added landscaping rocks to make the flower bed look nicer. I also added some landscaping details like bushes, garden lights, and string lights for ambiance.

[ Enlarged picture of the garden light I made ]

I also worked to improve the skyboxes in all 4 seasons of the of the Back Yard playscenes. It would be lengthy to get into the details of all that but here's a before and after of the night skybox. You got to love them high-quality MS paint stars in the original.

SUMMER

I had a hard time with the summer one because it was hard to come up with ways to make it look different from the spring version. I did make the grass, bushes, and tree leaves slightly more vibrant. Originally I had some flowers by the bushes but I just wasn't really happy with them. At the last minute, I made the decision to remove them entirely. This makes the playscene a little more "plain" but I think some people may want a more "plain", undecorated version so that they can dress it up how they want with toyz.

FALL

Fall is my favorite season, so this was a joy to make. I toned down the color of the grass and added fall landscaping motifs. Recoloring the tree's leaves was done by using Photoshop's gradient map feature. If time permits, I may do a tutorial on this in the future.

Gradient mapping is a powerful tool for recoloring almost anything. It can give way better results than methods such as hue/saturation, replace color, etc. And thanks to photoshop actions, applying this recolor to all the animation frames took just a couple of minutes.

Unfortunately, the fall leaves look "bright" in the nighttime version of the playscene. There does not seem to be a way to implement a darker version of these leaves for the nighttime playscene. If you look at the sprites in Tinker, you'll see that there are two sets of animations for Leaves A, B, and C and they're labeled "PropsAd" and "PropsAn", which would lead you to think that the developers originally intended for there to be a set of leaves for the day time, and a darker set for the night time. I guess the developers scrapped this idea because this does not work in the actual gameplay. When I experimented with this, the game appears to randomly display the nighttime sprite even during the day time, effectively ruining the intended affect. I'm not sure why the developers scrapped this. Either they had issues coding this properly or were just didn't want to put in the effort to make two sets of leaves.

WINTER

Instead of doing recolored leaves for this scene, I made all the leaves transparent and added holiday lighting to the tree. I know the lights aren't perfect - it was kind of hard to make out which direction a branch was going, so it has hard to maintain 'perfect' perspective.

CRYSTAL YARD

This is a bonus playscene that I made because I got a little side-tracked as I was working on the 4 seasons back yards. This is inspired by the Suramar zone from World of Warcraft, so it has a bit of that fantasy, night-elf feel and color scheme. It's been years since I've played WoW but I still appreciate the enchanting aesthetic of the elven zones.

I used gradient mapping again to recolor the leaves to give it this lavender, shimmery, iridescent look. I did a little bit of gaussian blurring and layer effects to make them look a little more "glowy" than the originals.

As before, Tinker won't let me edit the blinds, so it limited what edits I could do to the houses. I would love it if I could have done curtains instead or something. I did my best to make these houses look a little less suburban and more elven. It's not perfect but it was rough working with what I had.

KNOWN ISSUES / THINGS I COULDN'T EDIT

As far as I'm aware, there is no way to turn off the snow effect for seasons like summer where it wouldn't make sense. This probably involves some code-editing that is beyond my technical skillset.

The winter playscene still has the green grass footprint when your petz walk. The sprites for these are not housed within the .env itself but in the Petz 5 Rez.dll file. It would probably involve a bit of tweaking in the code to switch the sprites to something else.

The fall leaves are "bright" in the night time version because there is no way to implement a second, darker set of leaves.

I cannot edit the blinds animation. Tinker gives you an error when you try to edit this sprite. This unfortunately limits what edits I can make to the house and the fence because of where the sprite is positioned.

If anyone does know of solutions to these, do let me know as I'd love to enhance these scenes further!

ICONS

Making the icons for these was also a fun little project. For some odd reason though, the game puts a stray pixel over them when I import them through LnzPro. I did my best to disguise them but there does not seem to be a way to fix that.

BEFORE / AFTER

With all that rambling out of the way, visit my main page over at Magnolia Road > Resources > Playscenes to download the goodies!

[ardentpoop]

what creature would u have liked to see in spn

will take this as an opportunity to ramble abt djinn (known in arab folklore as “jinn”) since they are one of my favorite creatures on the show conceptually despite the degradation in design from their first appearance in s2 to their later appearances. as always the writers are not big on imbuing the monsters with details from the cultural canons they are borrowing them from, which Is What It Is. like the show’s version of this creature strays wildly from the traditional concept and I like it anyway. however I think ppl might be interested in the prominent role jinn play in the quran and in arab & muslim culture.

in islam jinn are a lot more Complex than say demons (“shayateen”) are. they are another species that lives alongside humans; usually invisible, and their morality is comparable to that of humans. they’re most often invisible like ghosts, but they are also shapeshifters, and they can possess humans and animals and inanimate objects like christian demons can. of course the quran’s more nuanced concept of these beings is kind of entirely lost on young arab & muslim kids who love to terrify each other with urban legends abt malicious jinn (prompted/reinforced by our parents using the idea of them to scare us into behaving Right). when I was a kid I hated the thought that they were everywhere and I couldn’t see them but they could see me, and I used to picture them staring at me whenever I felt particularly vulnerable. in the shower for example. gazing into the abyss at the foot of my bed in the dead of night.

anyway, a bit more detail:

re: your ACTUAL question lol… I’m of two minds with the monsters on spn overall. part of me got so deeply frustrated with the laziness of them over time and craved special effects and Hair and Claws and Hooves so badly. the other part of me can’t not love that after a certain point in the show almost every single creature is Glowing-Eyes Humanoid Variant because it really emphasizes how fucked up the hunters are. I love that all these convos the show is having or attempting to have abt Us And Them/human vs not human are occurring while e.g. dean stabs an entirely ordinary-looking woman (amy) in the chest in front of her young son, and then threatens to do the same to the son if he steps out of line when he’s older. like you really would think the audience would be more put off by (or at least a tiny bit critical of) the hunters’ role in their world in light of the budgetary and creative limitations that were responsible for our heroes samndean et al punching holes in humanoids rather than capital-c Creatures for the majority of the show’s runtime. oh well! more for me.

with That said I would’ve liked to have seen a black dog since they were only ever alluded to through dialogue and they went the invisibility route with the hellhounds :3 alsooo forever dreaming of big-budget spn where they could’ve shown us glimpses (fleeting so as not to strangle our imaginations) of true forms. fuck your business-casual celestial conference room lmfao if you’re going to show us heaven at all give me a slice of eyes and white fire. or something.

[chaifootsteps]

""Limited budget" Maybe you could have kept at least some of the pilot voices rather than hiring expensive Broadway talent that blew the animation budget?" -Someone responding to Viv on Twitter

"The voices didn’t blow the budget, they were paid exactly what anyone else working in union VO is paid. Maybe don’t act like you know anything about this process lol." Viv's response

CHAI I AM SCREAMING

This woman is so fucking defensive over her precious Broadway stars

Everyone wants the OG cast back. And she knows it. It's why she's having them sound and act like the pilot crew. I also want to see what other ideas she steals from the pilot/fanfic internet stuff...

And I'm sorry, much like with Kesha and Norman Reedus, I highly doubt they were paid a normal rate. Maybe Viv spent money out of her own pocket but will never tell a soul

💀

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

[stackslip]

augh yeah as much as i do love the parts of COS that are very obviously trying to do something competent and genuine, the amestris parts are just so ????

ill be honest, im pretty sure i blocked those scenes out, so remembering that what happened on the amestris side is. yikes

definitely wish the movie was more focused and didnt try to add as much as it did. especially roy -- i dont mind the beginning, hell i think him exiling himself to the north is a good concept, but the fact that he takes back his position (iirc) is just. so are we throwing away the character development and him realizing that he CANT change the military from the inside or what.

in general i honestly wanted to see less of the military cast. they frankly dont have much reason to be there other than the fact people wanted to see them (esp armstrong... just. WHY). im sure there are still ways to work in roy if the creators really wanted him to be there but like. idk! they sure didnt have to do it like that! we couldve spent more time on exploring noah as a character. or let izumi die on screen. sigh

been a while since i rewatched COS but thanks for pointing out all the weird stuff, i'd almost forgotten it and i honestly shouldn't.

(and of course i have to say i love your posts on the series proper. i will never be normal about scar. ever)

the second i saw roy in there i was like why is roy still in the military at all. wasn't his whole arc about realizing that he can't do shit within the military because it is an institution built on atrocities and exploitation? why is he still in it then. why is he talking about serving his country. why's he talking about waiting for ED that makes no fucking SENSE. (why is he alive. someone said they thought roy was supposed to die by the end of 03 but they kept him alive bc he's a fan fave and i wholly believe this frankly). why is the country's military still seemingly intact with a whole surveillance network, when 03 ended on the military being severely crippled and amestris's neighbours getting ready to invade it and bring it to its knees? why are we literally seeing *the fucking weimar republic* in cos only for amestris to not parallel it in any way and instead be the brotherhood-type funland where once you've taken out the mean führer, everything is fine and there's nothing to fix?

and like. this is a short movie right! i know that they were denied a season, maybe even a season and a half to finish off the show and that some elements of cos were meant to be in the og show's ending. and it shows! bc again munich is fucking reasonably competent considering how much is crammed in on hour thirty. and i know that cos's production was also rushed as hell and that as an Anime Movie they were contractually obligated to 1) put as many recurring fan faves in as possible 2) have at least a third of the movie be a big action scene. so like. i can understand the limits. you have no time, you're told you have to put all this shit in, you want to finish off the brothers' story at the very least. but my gd! you're telling me you had an izumi death scene and it doesn't happen??? you could cut roy out ENTIRELY from this. you could not put ARMSTRONG IN LIORE. you could..... i know they had no time at all, i know once again it was 03 being shafted by production committees and time and budget but it's legit insane how the very stupid and seemingly innocuous choice of having armstrong "rebuild" liore comedically completely slapped me out of whatever headspace cos had managed to slip me in before. i was enjoying it a lot until we got to amestris. and this armstrong thing, followed by rose's line here:

it's just. it's almost comedic. i'm almost wondering if the writer is fucking with me here and acknowledging just how stupid it is to put armstrong doing alchemy in liore is. probably not but gd this is bad. this is brotherhood levels of obliviousness to the themes.

anyhow i'm not finishing cos tonight bc i'm too pissed about it lol. it's funny bc for years i was told it was bad but for the opposite reasons that it's actually bad. like folks kept saying the munich parts were bad/stupid/wrong and made no sense when to me they're by far the most thematically coherent and interesting/emotional bits of it. i LOVE the relationship between noah and ed. and like, i know the bar is is in hell when it comes to depicting roma on screen, but i can't help but appreciate the little and big ways both noah and her people get humanized, how they feel like the most real and concrete part of this world ed insists is a dream or hell. but really, genuinely noah is so good, alfons's weird crush on ed is hysterical, the general atmosphere and research around 1923 munich seems genuinely thoughtful (and it also tells me that the writers had been thinking about this long, long before even 03 ended). i genuinely believe that making munich! hugues a nazi sympathizer and a racist is a really inspired and brave choice that makes the audience reflects THEIR hugues and how the amestrian military behaved. so anyhow these parts are good, genuinely. it's sad that that's the first third and then you get thrown into this mess, and there's still a whole stupid nazi battle to come. it's stupid. it's stupid especially bc there's a genuine part of the movie that IS smart and thoughtful. it'd be so much easier if all of it were bad, or if the difference between the writing in each part weren't so obvious. anyhow. i wanna finish cos bc i wanna see wrath's arc end and envy eating hoheinheim and ed/al reunion and more of noah. but also i think i'm gonna be writing off large chunks of it lol.

(also thank you very much, i'm trying to preach 03 to whoever i can whenever i can. appreciate the love)

[noisytenant]

finished onimai.

overall a "cute" show that surprised me in a few ways and, barring the moments i'll complain about in a second, generally "feel-good"/"wholesome". very little meaningful conflict, which appeals to some. has a certain magnetism (my partner ended up transfixed watching it over my shoulder at one point).

however, i really wish the scene with sleepwalking momiji were Not There in the final episode... it sunk my feelings about the story as a whole.

throughout, there were some uncomfortable nonconsensual/dubiously-consensual interactions, but they're mostly framed in that kind of lighthearted way that's common with more ecchi anime. on a meta level i do take issue with this kind of humor, but i guess when you're used to it, it doesn't tank the mood. it limited my ability to rank it above a certain threshold, but it's kind of what i expected.

and i guess overall, lots of times these scenes come across as "baby seal afraid of water" situations--mahiro is interested in makeup but too shy/stubborn to ask about it, so kaede takes the lead, etc. i think those forceful but framed-as-harmless moments contribute to the fantasy of being surrounded by supportive people who give you the resources to live your ideal Girl Life. The "force" in "forcefem".

but when there's groping, peering, etc... the sleepwalking thing... genuinely just kind of harrowing and unnecessary when it's played for laughs. and i don't like that scene being one of the last big interactions between mahiro and momiji, who are kind of the main "couple".

i guess ultimately i'm not deeply into hyper-fluff stories. i feel like there's points of interest that i wish were further explored or played with (like mihari's feelings of responsibility for mahiro, momiji's gender, etc.) i don't mind these kind of "fanservice" violation moments when it feels like there are actual emotional consequences. i would not have minded more conflict LOL! but i think i'm just not the target audience.

i can't really recommend it at this time, unless gender bender stories are your niche, and you're fine with loli fanservice. that being said, the level of detail and beauty in the animation continues to tickle me (mahiro foot animation budget 1million). would like to see more in this style, probably wouldn't jump at a chance to see season 2, and probably won't pick up the manga. Peace

[infinitelilith]

Nine people I'd like to get to know better

Because sure I might as well do one of these too. @angelosearch tagged me for this and I'm honoured

Last song: The Time Flyer remix for the Final Horizon DLC because oh my god this pushes every button in my brain in alllll the right ways. I've been the number 1 Tomoya Ohtani fan for years now but I'm starting to like Kanon Oguri more and more with every song I hear from him. Hope he sticks around

Favourite color: It's been purple for years but recently I do find myself going for pink a little more often (god it's so over for me) but that's also because pink+black is the BEST combo

Last movie/TV show: Recently rewatched the first Eva Rebuild movie for the first time in years and yeah it is just the first few episodes of the anime with a higher budget but guess what? The first episodes of Eva fucking rule! It's before the show got bad (that's a joke)(kinda)! I've also been watching the recent anime adaptation of Pluto and while I have some issues with it so far, I'm sure Naoki Urasawa will deliver with another ending that'll stay with me for a lifetime

Sweet/Spicy/Savory: Spicy because I'm a masochist and I got shit to prove!!

Relationship status: Yeah wouldn’t you like to know...I'll say "single" to keep things simple

Last thing you googled: This image because me and @cecelovesrats have determined that it's actually about Sisyphus

Current obsession: TAKE A GUESS NOW AND FOREVER

Alright I'll tag some people but oh my god please don't feel obligated to make one of these if you don't want to

(I'll also limit the tags to people I've actually interacted with before because there are some other KH fan accounts on here I really like but I don't want to tag someone who might have never even noticed me lol)

@cecelovesrats @purple-beans (we're already friends but hey I'm curious)

@fangirling-heart @otakunerd03 @donitkitt @naarwhall @gayruledge @feralcringeman @oliviawonderfulcat19 (we've never really talked but yall seem chill)