#we just combined our words with a hyphen to at least give them SOME individuality

[rainyamy]

i’m being held hostage in liz’s sweatshop. all i can see is a lack of hyphens and an excess of gay sex. send help.

“increasingly” and “desperate” are acting as a unit to express one cohesive thought here, thus they would be conjoined with a hyphen. ie: “increasingly-desperate.” bitch.

Listening to music. I'm starting to understand the Grimes hype as I respond to @rainyamy's increasingly desperate pleas for me to learn how to hyphenate properly.

[drink-n-watch]

It’s been a wild and crazy summer! We’ve laughed, we cried, we oogled girls in bikinis. We didn’t actually cry at all. Also we didn’t laugh all that much either…. Matt and I are back one last time to bring you our take of Harukana Receive. Although our takes on individual episodes may vary, generally we were left with the same impression. Hope you join us for this last discussion of the season and let us know if you watched Harukana, what did you think of it?

unfortunately, all vacations must end

OK – is this show going to pull a Pretty Derby on me and be 13 episodes long? It seems like a conclusion but so did the ep12 of Pretty Derby (to me at least).

I can assure you this is the finale, no false finishes here!

I noticed that color shift in the shadows that you mentioned last week, at the beginning and end of this episode. That was pretty cool.

They did it better in the previous episode, but glad you noticed!

I wanted more Grandma x Akari though. I feel like they cheaped out on that ship. I guess that age difference was a little problematic. And Grandma is married woman…But all that taboo is what made it exciting!

Not even a parting glance, such a shame! Though we did get to see Grandpa finally! Well part of him, guess he’s part-man part-turtle (it was a funny joke to keep the whole ‘female-only aesthetic alive).

this image is relevant to the text, it shows um…female-only aesthetic…

Seeing the hot one again makes me hope there’s another episode. They kept making a big deal about those two throughout the series but they were completely superfluous to the plot. Even as an incentive element, they fall completely short. I did really like the airport episode. However, these are dead weight characters.

I think it’s got more to do with the fact that they’ll play a big role in the non-existent second season. (Okay I don’t know that it won’t get a second season, I’m just assuming…) It probably makes more sense in the manga? That said, I do like it that they didn’t just have them miraculously show up for to watch them play and that they had their own shit to do, felt more realistic that way!

I’m not sure it will get a second season either. I’m notoriously uninformed about the anime world but I really haven’t gotten the impression that this was a runaway hit show.

I admire a show that has the husspaw to do a clip montage in it’s 12th episode! That  bit and the CG water were giving me a Grancrest flashback. I was surprise to note that I’m thinking back on Grancrest considerably more positively than I would have thought. Did you ever watch Grancrest Matt?

You really seem to hone in on that CG, I didn’t even notice, then again I was probably just distracted by other… things… ahem… What’s a Grancrest? Is that something I combine chocolate and marshmallow with?

I was watching the BBQ and thinking we finally get a beach episode….I’m not that smurt.

I mean doing things other than sport at the beach technically counts as ‘beach fun’ rather than ‘beach business’ so you could be forgiven for thinking that… maybe…

she really likes food…this seems familiar

Did you notice that Haruka was shorter than everyone expect Kana.. This really freaked me out. I realize it’s just a little artistic inconsistency (it happens in almost every show), but considering the first episodes, it was awesomely ironic! I’m not sure that’s what ironic means…

Again, can’t say I noticed, man, it’s almost like there’s something about this show that’s inherently distracting…

But you made a big deal about her height in the first episode….Isn’t it ironic that I’m the one noticing it now! Did I get it right this time?

I only made a big deal about it because the show did, literally the second she touches down in Okinawa random people are pointing at her and wondering if she’s a model. If it weren’t for the dialogue I wouldn’t really have noticed either to be honest!

The little fun in the sun bit was cute but for some reason I didn’t like it as much as previous random fun times episodes. I’m not sure why but they seem to have a bit less chemistry than usual. Maybe it’s the awkwardness of losing the match.

I thought it was fine personally, maybe it was because of all that food made them feel lethargic, although apparently not enough for Haruka and Claire to do a bit of practice afterward.

it’s the right characters at least!

I gotta say, if this is the final episode, it’s a bit of a let down for me. Part of it is most likely that the team I was kinda rooting for lost and this show went for the opposite message than what I like about sports anime. However, I also don’t think it showcased how fun and amusing the series can be at its best. Mind you it doesn’t invalidate the season as a whole. I just didn’t like this episode as much as last episode.

Gotta disagree with you on this one, easily my favourite episode of the whole season (yes, even better than bikini try-on episode) I never doubted that Haruka and Kanata would win–even if it was against all logic. It may not have been outright ‘amusing’ but I found it more cohesive and balanced than previous episodes. Like half sports/half socialising fun–that’s the ratio it should have been all season!

I’m pretty sure everyone knew the title characters would win. But predictable endings aren’t always the best. To me it was tonally at odds with most of the series and had no character defining moments. If I wanted to sell this show to someone I wouldn’t use this episode. It did have the best animation though. In my opinion.

Yeah, seems like they saved the majority of the animation budget for the final episode, it was pretty sports-y! (Is that a word? If it is it’s a terrible word…)

The hyphen makes it look fanc-y!

i thought the scrunchy was kind of fancy

I will write more about the entire series once Matt confirms that this was indeed the finale… Matt confirmed it – here I go with my brief overall thoughts. Objectively speaking it’s probably an average CGDCT show (Ed – Matt just sad it’s not a CGDCT show and I believe him – I’m gonna call it a show with cute girls instead…). There’s both worse and better on both technical and narrative merits. Subjectively, I thought it was mostly fun but a little uneven. And I personally would have prefered it without the sport and with more comedy instead. I would say, if you like the stills from the show, you should go ahead and watch it, you’ll probably enjoy it.

I’ll save my more detailed thoughts for a seperate post but my general opinion of this series is strikingly similar to Irina’s, sport is what held this show back, but unlike Irina that’s just because I generally don’t care for sports anime–I thought this show would be enough to change my mind but apparently it doesn’t matter how many and how much cute girls in skimpy bikinis you throw at me I’m still going to caught at that hurdle. Much like Uma Musume last season, I didn’t really connect with any of the girls on this show but still found them pleasant and endearing enough to be around. I’d stop short of calling this a CGDCT show though as it never really felt like one, even when they were just out doing shopping. If anything it’s more akin to those shows about school clubs with a bit of actual tournament action thrown in. I liked the show, I liked the characters, I liked the setting, I liked the vibe–but I didn’t love it.

Do you guys want any more pictures? I’ll give you a few, for old time sakes!

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Harukana Receive Episode 12 with Matt & Irina – Chance Ball It's been a wild and crazy summer! We've laughed, we cried, we oogled girls in bikinis. We didn't actually cry at all.

[dedalvs]

Hey David! Have you read Arthur Clarke's Rama series? How feasable do you think the octospiders' language is?

I’ve never read anything by Arthur C. Clarke, but I found someone who collected everything they could find about the language here. Regarding your question, is it feasible for there to be a language for beings like this? Certainly. Would it work like the description? lol I hope not. Any conlanger worth their salt could create something better than what’s described here. For example, with the units listed here, we run into two common (and obvious to conlangers) problems:

This language doesn’t take advantage of the medium.

The morphology isn’t self-segrating, and there’s no obvious way to break up units.

So, my first question would be about the colored bands. Can they change from one color to another instantaneously, no matter what the two colors are? If not, there should be phonology happening, and we should see the result of that with the words/phrases listed. For example, in English, this is a fine word:

slacks

This is not a fine word:

aszsgtb

We can say each of those sounds individually, but a human can’t simply transition from [g] to [t] to [b] with no vowels in between. Even if there were a word of English that was phonologically “aszsgtb”, we’d find a way to pronounce it that fit English phonotactic patterns.

So back to our color language, transitioning from lemon yellow to saffron quickly? Piece of cake. Transitioning from lemon yellow to burnt sienna? Probably can’t happen as quickly, if this is a natural being. If this language were to naturally evolve, I’d expect that type of transition to happen less likely, or to not happen at all—or at least not in the same word.

Also, what do they look like when these things are “off”? Is there a neutral color, or are they always in some color? And if there is a neutral color, how quickly can they get back there? Will they do it between words (basically a space)? Because if there is no neutral color, and they can’t stop between words, how would you know that a word that’s Crimson-Aquamarine-Mauve is what’s intended if there’s also a word that’s Saffron-Crimson-Aquamarine and maybe another that’s Aquamarine-Mauve-Vermillion? Sure, there’s context, but in any language with lots of homophones there’s still pauses between words and phrases and sentences, and intonation to help you tell what’s what. There’s no information about how things break down into phrases in this language. Also, can they move the rest of their bodies in a particular way? Can they change the patterns the colors appear in, or how vibrantly they appear? Can they use their appendage for gesture that would serve as intonation? Too many questions! I mean, there’s a word that’s supposed to be Burnt Sienna-Mauve-Mauve. How?! If can you tell if it’s two mauves in a row?!

Also, the clarifier system just doesn’t make sense. Previously I talked about how ASL incorporate numerals in some of its signs, but that’s because it’s easy to do, on account of the medium. In this language, they’re voluntarily giving up some of their phonemes and turning them into grammatical bits. It’d be like if in English, all our sounds were just sounds, but fricatives were numbers, for some reason (so we wouldn’t use “f, v, s, z, sh, zh or h” as anything but intensifiers on certain words). That’s almost the opposite of what ASL is doing. In ASL, there are certain signs where the shape the hand is in isn’t particularly important (the way the hands move and where they’re placed is more important), so since a hand can be made it into a numeral, you use that and combine it with the meaning of the sign to get, e.g. 2 WEEKS, 3 WEEKS, 7 WEEKS, etc. It makes sense. It works with the system. This works against the system. It makes it a worse system for a seemingly arbitrary reason.

It’s also not clear exactly how these colors work. Are they presented one at a time? If so, for how long? If not, how does it work? Are they projected on their body in an order so it’s basically like reading a typewritten line, but with color rather than letters? If so, how many colors can they cram into a line? How well can the aliens “read” these colors (how big does a color have to be to be recognized)? How long does it take to do? How long does it take to read? How much of this can they hold in working memory? Do they have to plan out what they want to say because there’s only so much room on their foreheads? I mean, that’s not something that humans really do, because we can just breathe. There’s not usually a point where we say, “Well, I could say ‘incapacitated’, but I’ve only got like four letters worth of breath left, so I’ll just say ‘dead’.” Yet that seems like a real problem here! Like, “I’ve only got three colors worth of forehead room left here. Do I really want to use one of those colors as a hyphen…?”

Anyway, the short answer here is that there are a lot of unanswered questions I have, but provided the information on the page I linked to is accurate, there’s evidence that this was not done by a conlanger (which, of course, it wasn’t). I mean, if you’re creating a language, it’s got to make sense, given the medium and the beings. That’s rule #1—even before you get to the setting, the culture, the grammar, etc. This one seems like it needs to be taken back to the drawing board.