Retsam

I finally finished Parasyte this week; something I started probably about a year ago, got about 80% of the way through, then stalled out. Part of that, is because it drags a bit towards the center, but a lot of it is just that I got distracted by other things and was only recently reminded to go back and finish it. And it was a pretty solid show, overall. I semi-jokingly describe it as "if you read The Stranger and enjoyed the philosophy, but thought there just weren't enough head-eating aliens." It's first and foremost an action-thriller, but there's some strong philosophical elements to it. The premise is that one night alien insects take over a small portion of the population: they burrow into people and eat their brain, replacing their head; they look normal, the alien has some access to the person's memories, and they can blend into society, but their head can suddenly unfold into a killer alien thing. The main character is infected with one of these parasites, but stops it from getting to his head, and it only takes his right hand, leaving him in an uneasy alliance with his literal "alien hand syndrome" parasite. This premise turns out to be pretty fertile ground for the show's philosophical musings; it's actually a twist on Kakfa's Metamorphosis: a character who goes to sleep and wakes up to find that he's no longer entirely human and his normal life is derailed. There's a lot of discussion on what it means to be human, on environmentalism, on treatment of animals, on the value of life (human and otherwise), and it all feels like a natural extension of the premise more than being something shoehorned in. If nothing else, the climax of this show is probably going to stick with me. I also watched the Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale movie this week, and it turned out to be better than expected; I've got a bit of a love-hate relationship with SAO at times, but this was easily the best writing since Aincrad, (and possibly surpassing Aincrad in writing quality, if not in overall effect). It corrects for a lot of the usual SAO writing issues: It doesn't overly focus on either Kirito or Asuna, but balances the screen time between them, with actual focus on them as a couple rather than just continuing to add to Kirito's harem. It actually has decent villains with sympathetic motives and a plan that makes some sense; though they don't get quite as much development as they probably needed. "Kirito beats everyone with his massive OP-ness" actually works if it's the payoff to a two hour movie (that also featured other characters being awesome), rather than being something that happened about once every 30 minute television episode. It feels like the follow-up Aincrad deserved: the idea of Augmented Reality is a really natural fit for this world and a more interesting way to go than just "another VR MMO", the plot here actually ties back to Aincrad, and the focus on Kirito and Asuna's relationship all work better than what they actually did. (Even ignoring the trainwreck that was the Alfheim arc). And, per usual SAO, it's got exciting, flashy action sequence that are gorgeously animated (even more so than the original series), and great music, albeit it's got a bit of an "idol" thing going on, but it's Yuki Kaijura, so I'm not going to complain too much. Naturally, I am going to complain some, though: it's not all good. Some of the flaws are inherited, like Leafa, Silica, and Lisbeth still being flat characters who don't do much other than remind me how annoyingly harem-y SAO was at times. Also, the plot also goes off the rails a bit for the sake of its big climactic action sequence, and it's still a pretty high-style low-substance affair, but hey, if you enjoyed any part of SAO and are looking for a popcorn action film, you could do a lot worse than this one. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, I'm watching March Comes in Like a Lion, which is about a high-school prodigy Shogi (Japanese Chess) player. His parents died in an accident years ago, and his way of coping was to devote himself to mastering Shogi, and now years later he's on the cusp of becoming a professional player, but he still struggles with depression. It's currently airing, and I've been hearing pretty good things about it in general, and it seems like basically the closest I'll ever get to a chess anime, so I figured I needed to check it out. I'm only a few episodes into it, so I can't judge much, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit so far.

Yeah, the "Split Timeline" theory with two lines, (one for "Child" Link and one for "Adult" Link) was popular, but pretty much nobody had a "Ganon Wins" timeline. Frankly, I think people make a bigger deal of the timelines and chronology (and general continuity of the series) and stuff that it deserves. At best, I think each game's relation to other games is an afterthought to the developers, and I suspect that the whole timeline system was actually probably just retconned in. They made the games they wanted, then just retconned an explanation to fit them. (And actually, the interview cited as the source of the Split Timeline theory says that there were "two endings" to Ocarina of Time: so it seems like the third timeline was definitely a retcon)

I finished Hyouka on Valentines Day: which is an odd coincidence as I had two episodes left, the first of which is a Valentine's Day episode, which I didn't realize. I enjoyed it overall, but was a bit disappointed that in the second half of the show, the focus really shifted from the mysteries (think "Encyclopedia Brown: the Anime") to being more "romance-bait slice-of-life", which just isn't particularly my cup of tea. I can see how someone whose more into that genre would love this show: it had a great aesthetic, a memorable main cast with entertaining character interactions, and the main female lead in particular is weapons-grade moe. But, while I wish the mysteries were a tiny bit more conclusive in the front half, and a bit more in focus in the back-half; like I said before, there just aren't very many shows that even try to have fair mysteries, so I have to appreciate it for that, disappointments aside. I've been recommended Gosick as another mystery anime, so perhaps I'll check that out. --- I started Konosuba: mostly because I've got a friend that I watch anime with, and I've found its a bit "dangerous" to just pick something that I've heard about but haven't actually watched. And it's funny, but it's also uncomfortable enough that I don't know if I'd want to watch it with someone else. Even before stuff like the "steal" scene, or Darkness's whole schtick, there's just a ton of boob jiggles, indulgent character designs, and gratuitous butt-shots. (Seriously, Aqua is going to have some severe lower-back issues with how much her butt sticks out whenever the camera is behind her) But, I guess Megumin is pretty cool.

I'm pretty skeptical about the Switch's chances: it seems likely to be just a repeat of the WiiU. Like the WiiU, there was a pretty impressive list of third-parties "pledging support" and a fairly small number of third-parties actually announcing titles for it, and a lot of the announced titles are ports of old games. And perhaps even more-so than the WiiU, the Switch is so different from everything else on the market (in terms of specs, peripherals, etc) that it's likely going to be fairly difficult to target the Switch when developing new games. Unless the Switch sells fantastically better than the WiiU, I suspect that third-party support for the Switch is going to continue to look like third-party support for the WiiU, i.e. awful. As usual for Nintendo, it's about a generation behind everyone else, in terms of online services; and pretty much everything they've announced about their online services sounds awful. You've got to use your smartphone if you want to talk to anyone else. There's no ethernet jack on the console. While PSN or Xbox Live give out free, relatively new, games each month (similar fare to what you might get in a Humble Bundle: AA or decent indie games), Nintendo will lets you play a decade or two old game... for a month. It feels more like a Virtual Console advertising stunt than an actual perk, for whatever subscription they're going to charge for this service. And speaking of prices, Nintendo is even losing their usual selling point of being the cheapest on the market, this time around. $300 + $60 game, while you can get a Slim PS4 bundle, including a game, for $300. --- To be entirely honest? I'm hoping the Switch fails: Nintendo has good IP and make some good games, but their consoles have been increasingly mishandled, and my impressions of the Switch are that the trend is going to continue. I'd rather they just focused on making games, and didn't basically hold their IPs hostage to sell their consoles.

If you didn't like the characters, I think that's your answer right there, and I'm not sure if a rewatch would change that. (Though, perhaps Okabe works better on rewatch, once you get what his deal is and you don't spend the first few episodes bewildered) I think the drama of the second half really only works if you've got an emotional attachment to the characters, built in the first half. So I prefer to call the first half "character-driven", not "slow", because I think the first half is laying some pretty important groundwork.

My guess is that having Leia take the plans was always the plan. They're attached to the command ship in order to transfer the plans, and barely escape in time because of it. As for why Leia was chosen; probably at least in part for the sake of the "diplomat" excuse. Sure, Vader knows the excuse is Bantha fodder (though they probably hoped that Vader wouldn't personally witness the Tantive IV escaping with the plans); but it's still pretty bad PR for the Empire, as far as the rest of the galaxy knows, the Empire really is just attacking a famous senator on a diplomatic mission. (And we know that the Empire still cares about PR, hence the conversation about keeping the Death Star a secret until its ready) It's not like the Empire could say "we're attacking her to reclaim the stolen plans for our super weapon, that one we've been insisting that we totally don't have".

I'm pretty sure The Force Awakens references a clone army at one point (though yes, clones were mentioned in Episode IV; though I'm pretty sure the Episode VII line was there to explain why Finn doesn't look like Jango Fett, so that might count in a meta-way). And I'm pretty sure Vader is hanging out on Mustafar in this movie. (I'm not sure why Vader would still be there, though. Inexpensive rent? Nostalgic attachment to that place where he got his arms and legs cut off and nearly burned to death? Big fan of roasted marshmallows? Who knows.) I heard people claim that VII was deliberately avoiding the prequels as well: I don't really think that's the case: I just think that generally there aren't a ton of reasons for characters to reference the Clone Wars. (And wishful thinking on the part of the prequel haters)

I also had the issue of "I really like these characters, but I couldn't name them for the life of me". Part of it is just that there are a lot of minor characters this time around (arguably, it's a whole cast of minor characters); and part of it is that the movie just moves too quickly to spend much time on properly introducing them. The main character arcs were probably the weakest part, for me. Both Jyn and Cassian feel like they're supposed to have arcs, but really don't; they both just sort of abruptly change their characterization halfway through the film. I don't know that they needed arcs, really; but it feels like the movie was trying to give them arcs, but just didn't do a great job of it. I really liked how well connected to A New Hope it is, and just how seamless the transition between the two seems to be. Little details like "Red Five" getting shot down (hence why that callsign is open for Luke in IV), or how they introduce a "Blue Squadron" (in addition to the Red and Gold squadron from IV) that gets wiped out. There's even a throwaway line from a stormtrooper explaining why the "Striker" fighters don't show up in any of the original trilogy. ("Did you hear that the [model name] is now obsolete?" "It's about time.") As others have said, the first half of the movie is a bit slow and meandering, but the second half is well worth the price of admission. Extreme nitpicking: minor plothole edition: R2D2 and C3PO's cameo doesn't make a ton of sense: they watch the fleet leaving and 3PO says something like "Nobody told us they were going to Scarif". But shouldn't they have been with that fleet, given that the Tantive IV (which R2 and 3PO are on in IV) detaches from a larger ship at the end of the battle, and it leads right into Episode IV?

I finished Blood Mirror a week or so ago, and I wanted to give it some time to "settle" in my mind, and on the whole, I really enjoyed it. The fact that this suddenly became its own book shows in that some of the plot lines simply stop rather than conclude; but on the whole I thought it was a a return to form after The Broken Eye, which I found to be just slightly inferior to the first two books in the series. I love all the Lightbringer plot twists, I honestly think they're one of the best parts of that story, and are just phenomenal in their own right: Weeks does a great job making his twists that aren't just shock value to the reader, but actually add layers of complexity and drama to the story itself (which is really helpful for rereads). The big twist from the first book isn't interesting because it's a surprise: it's interesting in its own right narratively. That being said, I do feel that more could be done to foreshadow the twists: one thing I appreciate about Sanderson's occasional twists is that whenever they happen a whole lot of things suddenly become obvious foreshadowing in retrospect. (e.g. "He will bear the weight of the world on his arms") Whereas that doesn't seem to be the case with the Lightbringer twists very often. It's one thing for the book 1 twists to be unforeshadowed, but when we're four books in, I think it would be nice if there was a bit more groundwork laid. In fact, with some of these latest twists, not only are they not hinted at by previous events, but the opposite is rather true: they're actually difficult to reconcile with the events of past books. I imagine that some of those seeming inconsistencies will be addressed next book: I highly doubt Brent Weeks is just making this up as he goes along, so I think there's probably good explanation for those seeming plot holes, but it's a pretty strong indicator of how unpredictable some of these twists are: even if someone had predicted them, they probably wouldn't have withstood scrutiny on the likes of this forum. --- Otherwise, I've started reading the web-serial Mother of Learning, which has been a touch less addictive than crack cocaine to me. It's a time-loop story set in a school for magic where, (naturally) the main character gets stronger over time: basically it's all of my favorite tropes in a single story. (And after being rather disappointed by the recent anime, RE:Zero, which had a similar premise; it's really nice to see this premise done so well) It's a bit over 2/3rds done, according to the author (and it's currently some 300K words?), so I'm dreading catching up; but as ever, it'll probably be a fun story to speculate on. It's the second web-serial I've really enjoyed, with Worm, which I read a couple years ago, being the first. In between, I tried Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, and hated it. All three are ostensibly "rationalist" fic: the protagonists all solve problems largely by clever thinking, not by sheer might: but HPMoR decided to beat the reader over the head with its views on rationality, violently and repeatedly.

I'm not watching Dragon Ball Super (wasn't ever a huge DBZ fan); it seems like it got a lot of flak when it first started airing (due to quality issues, primarily), but it sounds like the newer episodes have been better, so starting with the new stuff sounds like a good decision. --- I'm actually not watching anything new this season, for the first time in the couple years that it's since I started watching new anime; just nothing particularly grabbed me. Yaoi Yuri on Ice is getting a lot of positive hype, but I've never really done sports anime. I was disappointed enough in Iron-Blooded Orphans to skip out on the second season, unless I hear that it's significantly better than S1. I'll watch Ajin S2 once the dub comes out on Netflix in December. If I pick anything up it'll probably be March Comes in like a Lion but we'll see. --- As for Re:Zero last season, I ended up being really disappointed in that. It takes a really interesting premise, and then proceeds to not do anything interesting with it. Early episodes suggested that they're going to avert the usual "power fantasy protagonist" tropes, but they just play them painfully straight the rest of the series. It even does the SAO thing where it introduces an interesting female character with her own goals and motivations and problems and then just turns her into a one-dimensional cheerleader for the main character. --- So, since I'm not watching anything presently airing, other than catching up on some reading, I'm watching Hyouka. It's sort of a mystery/slice-of-life anime. By "mystery", I don't mean the sort of story where there's a big crime that needs to be solved; it's more of a "mystery-of-the-week" and the single episode mysteries are pretty mundane things (e.g. why is this book getting checked out of the library in a particular pattern by different people), and the multi-episode arc mysteries are only slightly less mundane. Think "Encyclopedia Brown", not "Sherlock Holmes" or "Agatha Christie" (though the latter are referenced multiple times in the show). By "slice-of-life", I mostly just mean that sometimes there are episodes where there's no real mystery and it's just characters doing stuff and "slice-of-life" is really just my generic catchall genre label. There's a relationship between two characters, but I think calling it a romance would be overselling it, at this point. It's a lot better than it sounds, because, reading my own description of it, it sounds awful. So far it's good, not great, in my book, with the caveat that this is me stepping outside my usual genre tastes a bit, since SoL isn't my favorite thing. On the one hand, the mysteries are a bit hit-and-miss, they're all "fair" in the sense that they don't ever require information that the audience couldn't have (though a couple depend on Japanese knowledge that the non-Japanese speaker won't have), but at the same time, they usually lack the "Aha!" moment where you suddenly know you have the right answer. Instead, it feels like the show's answer to the mystery is just one out of many. On the other hand, it's really cool to have an anime with these sort of bite-sized mysteries in the first place, even if the execution isn't perfect. So, yeah, this one is probably going to go down in the "worth checking out, because there's really nothing like it" category, like Planetes did. Unless you guys know of other good mystery anime to recommend.

The scenes in the suitcase were probably my favorite part of the movie... but "a huge amount of time"? As I remember there were only two of them, and they were maybe 10-15 minutes out of the 2+ hour runtime of the film. Personally, it felt like there was maybe a 60%/40% split between the "beasts plot" and the "Graves plot". Like LeftVash, I'm not even sure which was meant to be the main plot. I feel like it should have been the "beasts plot", but the film's climax sure doesn't have much of anything to do with any "Fantastic Beasts", so either the "Graves plot" was intended to be the main plot all along, or else the subplot hijacked the story train in Act Three.

It's interesting how varied the response to this movie seems to be. It seems like the majority opinion is "okay not great", but I've seen wide diversity in the parts that people that people are identifying as the "not great" parts. Personally my preference would have been to slow things down: the original Harry Potter eventually got to "end of the world" stakes, but it did so only after four books or so of introducing characters and ramping up the tension. In terms of the tone and conflict, it's like this movie just starts in the middle of book six, with a bunch of characters that we're just being introduced to. I'd like to have seen the Graves plot line dialed way back (if not outright removed from this movie), and generally just lower the stakes. I was really hoping that a movie called "Fantastic Beasts" might recapture some of the lighthearted, whimsical nature of the early Harry Potter books, before the angst train pulled into the station, but instead even the fantastic beasts were just kindling in the angst train's boilers. ("We’re going to recapture my creatures before they get hurt. They’re currently in alien terrain surrounded by millions of the most vicious creatures on the planet; humans.") And slowing things down would have given the characters more time to interact and be developed: Newt seems like he could be a good character, but we don't see much of him except his ability to handle creatures in this movie. Tina could really have used more characterization other than the old "agent who was kicked off the force because they tried to do something good, against orders" trope. And Newt and Tina's apparent relationship at the end of the movie didn't really feel justified by the rest of the movie. Do they ever even talk in this movie, except about the creatures that are loose? It just seems like the movie was putting the cart before the horse: trying to lay the foundations for the next movie in this series, when it should have been more concerned about this movie.

I think it's because the Spren are imitating the Honorblades, which seem to be actual blades that are physically made of metal. (We don't have a ton of information on them, but this seems to be the case, and certainly the apparent similarities to Nightblood would suggest it) Shardblades, on the other hand, are cognitive realm native entities that are choosing to manifest in the physical realm in the appearance of metal blades, but I don't think they're actually metal, really. Certainly, live shardblades are able to glow in ways that metal doesn't. And I think the spren can transform into other materials other than metal: is the entire Shardblade, including the hilt, metal (or metal appearing)? What about when Syl becomes a spear?

Sure, the major Knights Radiant we've seen have been good people who generally try to make the world a better place and help others, etc. But I don't think we've seen anything that says that's a necessary quality for Knights Radiant. Those are more qualities that are necessary for a good protagonist; but nothing in-universe suggests that all Radiants are like that. Knight Radiants are people who are dedicated to various particular ideals; and there are plenty of ideals you can be dedicated to, while still being a generally selfish and unpleasant person; and that's ignoring the very human ability for people to pay lip-service to a particular idea while failing to live it out in practice. It seems likely to me that the orders that bond spren that derive from Honor (which includes more than honorspren like Syl) will generally only bond heroic individuals; but the same doesn't seem to be true of the spren that derive from Cultivation: neither Pattern nor Wyndle seem particularly concerned with their partners morality: Wyndle doesn't encourage Lift to go save Gawx as Syl would have, and Pattern seems wholly ignorant of human morality. --- And, beyond that, sure, Elhokar might still get some character development: I don't think he's fundamentally meant to be seen as a bad person; he's someone whose been molded by his circumstances: put a young kid in charge of an entire country after his dad got killed by an assassin, and... well, you get Elhokar. Put him in some different circumstances and you may see an entirely different sort of character.

I don't see why not: certainly he doesn't have the temperament to be, say, a Windrunner; but I don't think all the Radiant Orders really require you to be paragons of virtue. (And even among the ones with the more "heroic" ideals; I suspect as the series goes on we'll see individuals that find less honorable interpretations of those ideals) The Cyptic/Honorspren feud and lack of Lightweaver Ideals, (other than the first Ideal) seems to suggest that Lightweavers in particular held to any standard of Honor.

I really feel like I should be enjoying Re:ZERO a lot more than I am. Mostly, I've just never cared for (or cared about) the main character. His background is generic and handwavey ("Good thing I lifted enough weights as a shut-in to be able to wield this giant club!"); no one seemed to react appropriately to his occasionally ridiculous behavior, and his main character motivation revolvs around a relationship/crush that's both abruptly started, and oddly possessive and once again, goes back to the "nobody reacts appropriately to his ridiculous behavior" thing; Emilia should be way more weirded out by this guys who, from her perspective, she just met, declaring his undying love for her. Recent episodes have started to call him out for his behavior, which I've appreciated... but then recent episodes have been essentially a nonstop procession of Subaru, in my view, behaving like an idiot (and occasionally, like a child), which hasn't been the most enjoyable thing to watch, either.

Huh, coincidentally, I was watching Daicon IV last night for absolutely no reason. (I think something vaguely reminded me of the music?) Though I did watch a video on it by the YouTube channel "Mother's Basement" a few months ago; it's a pretty good video, it covers a lot of references and actually points out a lot of the bits that were actually really technically impressive for their time, which I (as a spoiled modern anime fan) didn't really appreciate watching it on my own.

I'm skeptical. I don't think Hoid causing a major cataclysm really fits with what we know about him; his modus operandi seems to be mostly observation with subtle meddling here and there, not large scale workings of power, like the Reod would have had to been. If he's really a character of such outright power, why does he bother with subtle manipulation most of the time? And saying he caused the Reod doesn't really answer the question of why he hangs around as a beggar for 10 years; if anything, it raises more. If he had a goal - cause the Reod - and he accomplished it, then why hang around? And if causing the Reod was his goal, why does he not oppose the attempts of Raoden to reverse it? Though it's likely not coincidence that Hoid's time in Elantris corresponds with the timeline of the Reod. Hoid's thing is using some sort of magic to know where something "interesting" is going to happen, then going there, so it's not surprising that he would show up in time for the Reod, and probably equally unsurprising that he would hang around while it lasted, as his mysterious "interesting-ness detecting magic" would have pointed him to the events of the book. Perhaps he simply didn't have anything more important to do for those 10 years than witness the Reod. It's not impossible that he was stuck, perhaps the Reod disrupted his ability to travel (Secret History Spoiler) but I don't think we even need that much explanation for why he'd stick around.

Regarding Bleach, I watched up until a bit into the Hueco Mundo arc (up until the first filler within that arc starts, I believe). I enjoyed it while I was watching it, but then I just stopped and looking back realize that very little actually happens in that show other than cool fights. (But they were really cool fights) Soul Society Arc had the best fights, but the plot still boils down to "main character fights through a bunch of people to save female friend". (And, actually, that equally well describes the Hueco Mundo arc, to my memory) The only place I really remember much interesting story happening was the Bount Arc filler, and perhaps some character side-stories. So if you want an anime with a lot of cool fights, you could do worse than Bleach; but it's not my thing, so I've very little interest in going back. --- On the other hand, I've slowly been rewatching Naruto, and have generally found that it holds up; it's got some good action scenes, too, but it's actually stronger on the characters. If anything, it goes too far that direction and descends into melodrama. But if you can put up with a bit of melodrama it's not as bad as its haters might have you believe. -- Even if you do draw a moral distinction between "piracy" and "giving ad revenue to the people doing the piracy so that you can read the pirated material", it's probably against forum policy to be directing people to sites where they can read pirated materials. I certainly wouldn't post a link to a site where you could read pirated copies of Sanderson's books.

Yeah, that's a problem for the idea that "of his kind" means that Felt is a kandra. If Elend doesn't think that Felt is a kandra (and the above quotes certainly seem to indicate that this is the case), then it doesn't make sense for a line from Elend's POV to be an indicator of Felt being Kandra. It's obviously not impossible that Felt is a Kandra anyway, but "the litheness of his kind" probably just means "the litheness of a spy".

I'm watching Iron-Blooded Orphans, too, (a few episodes behind) though I don't think I'd go so far as to say "loving" it. Not hating it either; it's just a case where it, for me at least, comes maddeningly close to being a really good show, but consistently falls short. The characters all end up being a bit flat and undeveloped, and the big dramatic moments are telegraphed to the point of removing almost any surprise. But the biggest thing is that it just feels sluggishly paced to me. 25 episodes was *far* too long for a plot that boils down to "bring princess to Earth". Another thing that's slightly bothered me, (something I totally admit is pretty unfair to really hold against a mecha anime, but bothers me nonetheless) is the general disinterest in actual physics and lack of realism overall. The most obvious, for me, is when a bunch of children born and raised on Mars or in space land on Earth and not a single one remarks on Earth gravity being over two and a half times as strong as Martian gravity. --- That last point wasn't helped by watching Planetes halfway through this show. It's an older show (early 2000s), but it's pretty unique in it's realism and setting. It's set in the nearish future of space travel (late 21st century) and centers around a group of people whose job it is is to remove debris from orbit around the Earth, which is a very real potential problem. It's some of the hardest sci-fi I've seen; (I'd rank it somewhere between The Martian book and The Martian film), which is nice, but just being set in the near future makes it one of the only shows that I've ever seen which really have anything to say about the social and societal ramifications of the near future of space exploration, which is something I find fascinating. (I'm currently reading the Red Mars trilogy which is scratching the same itch) It's not perfect; the early episodes are a fairly self-contained and a bit hit-and-miss, and the tone of the series is a bit all over the place, even before the later episodes where Cerberus Syndrome kicks in: it does both comedy and drama well at times, but sometimes the shift between the two is jarring. Also, some people really hate the main characters, particularly the main female lead in the early episodes where she has a tendency to shout her ideals at people. But regardless of flaws there just aren't enough shows like this, so if you're a fan of harder sci-fi or near the future space age it's definitely worth checking out.

ERASED ended tonight; and while it definitely ended weaker than it started, I wouldn't go as far as to call it bad. It's less a case where the ending was bad, but simply just not as good as what came before. I think the issue is that the Kayo subplot of ERASED was a lot more engaging than the overall "stop the murderer" plot, and it went on long enough that you practically forget that the subplot wasn't the main plot, and then it ends, and the show never quite recaptures that "magic". It's not that the ending does anything super wrong (though the last episode in particular is a bit odd in places), it's just less good by comparison.

As a Chicagoan, O'Hare is ORD: I believe it was originally called "orchard"?

In honor of Groundhogs Day, I watched the Steins;Gate movie (Fuka Ryōiki no Déjà vu) last night. (Because, obviously, I celebrate the holiday in which a rodent looks for its shadow in order to predict the weather by watching movies about time travel.) I'm a huge fan of the original series and I'd argue that the movie succeeds, largely on the strength of the characters from the original series. It's pretty strong on characters, and much less strong, say, on being a story about time travel. So, if you watched Steins;Gate and weren't particularly attached to the characters, you should probably give this one a pass. If you didn't watch the series, don't even consider watching this. (Also, go fix that ) It's not that the plot is bad, per se. I'd argue the explanation for the main premise for this one doesn't make a ton of sense in the context of the series' established mechanics, though, "doesn't make sense" by the standards of Steins;Gate is leagues better than most time travel stories. And if it doesn't work perfectly mechanically, it works quite well dramatically and serves as a vehicle for some solid character moments. If anything, the film's plot is simply too ambitious; it attempts to tell a story on similar scale as the original series, but a movie doesn't really have enough time for that. Usually when you have too much plot for a movie, you end up with a film that just consists of plot points strung one after another without time to breathe, but oddly, this one is the opposite: it retains the emotional skeleton of the plot, but with the connective tissue that should take us from one dramatic moment to another largely missing. There's definitely things to criticize, but at the end of the day, it's still more Steins;Gate: what more can you ask for? ... oh, yeah, an English release. You can definitely ask for that. It's not been released in NA at all as far as I can tell, and as a dub fan, it took some getting used to the sub here. For the most part it's not that the Japanese version is bad - though I missed J Michael Tatum's Okabe, and really didn't like Daru's voice; (honestly the only thing I can compare it to is that at times he sounded like Tristan's voice in Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged) - it was just a something I had to get used to. --- From this season, Boku Dake ga inai Machi (lit. "The Town Without Me"; the English title is ERASED) is really good so far. It's also, actually, a time travel story; instead of a time machine, the main character has an unexplained ability where, when something bad is about to happen around him, he involuntarily mentally time travels back a couple minutes and has the opportunity to prevent it. At the end of the first episode, though, something bad happens and he travels back 18 years to when he was ten years old, in order to change the future. (The similarities between this and Steins;Gate are half of why I was reminded to watch the Steins;Gate movie) It's only 4 episodes in, and it's been great so far. If you're the sort who doesn't mind watching things as they come out, this is definitely one to look at. Also, I love ; it's an song by Asian Kung Fu Generation that I've been a fan of for years... AKFG being the first time I really had any interest in a band, when I realized that my favorite openings from , Naruto, and Bleach were all by the same band.

I think people are a bit too quick to read the end of Warbreaker as a "romance ending" between Vivenna and Vasher. They go off together at the end; but I don't think it's romantically motivated for either of them. Vivenna is, as Sanderson puts it in the annotation, "running away from responsibility", and Vasher claims (I think honestly) that he doesn't really care if Vivenna comes with him or not. There's certainly the possibility that romance develops between the two, but then it's certainly not a given, so I definitely don't think the presence of Vasher in Words of Radiance means that Vivenna needs to be around somewhere. I rather doubt we'll get anything definitive about Vivenna, for the sake of not spoiling Nightblood, if nothing else.