Luna i need you to watch Overlord so I can watch you insult it. Idkw but i just want to read that for some reason.

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I am also curious what would happen if Luna read the synopsis of the HOTD ova episode. I’m guessing you haven’t yet for ... reasons.

I might, since I think just about anything would be better than Queen's Blade Rebellion, which I thought to watch but think I'm going to have to drop after just one episode. I thought it would be a nice guilty pleasure, but I want to label it an atrocity of animation1 with what seems to be a godawful dub2 and character designs that I wasn't ready for even after seeing the franchise mainly through hentai. I remember long ago I watched the first episode of what was probably the original Queen's Blade and in my head it looked a lot better than this.

Didn't mean to go on a tangent like that, but I thought I'd rant a little. I've been kind of sticking with older titles whenever I can, even when I haven't been feeling like I have lately, but I've also got a list dozens long of titles that I want to watch (or finish) eventually, so I'm always a bit slow to get to the things people talk about (or when I ask for recommendations). I also just don't watch things very fast -- I'll watch ~10 episodes a week if I'm going quickly through a series, and less than half that speed if I'm not particularly feeling it (like with Yu Yu Hakusho).

Point being, I'll consider it since my impulses always turn out to be ****, but I have so many other things I want to get to (and there's three seasons of Overlord besides 3) that it will likely be a while.

1This is probably grading on a curve, since if there's anything that Kenny Lauderdale has taught me, it's that I AM NOT PREPARED for the truly awful animation that passed for anime in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

2The first episode opens with a "laughing villainess" scene that is done equally awfully in both Japanese and English, but there is a CLEAR moment later on where the English line finishes, but there's a second or two of lip flaps that are just left in... silent...

3This is too confusing and hilarious not to share: on Funimaiton's site, season one is available subbed for free but the dub is behind a subscription (normal for a lot of their shows), season 2 is ENTIRELY behind their subscription, and season 3 is ONLY available in English (also behind their subscription)(and yes, all three seasons are available on Crunchyroll).


Oh, no, I've watched the OVA in both languages, too. HIDIVE is the one subscription service I actually pay for, and they're the only ones with the OVA available to stream, too. I actually kind of respect the OVA for just plainly putting out what it is and what it's trying to be, instead of the main series which tries to dress up its immaturity in a gown of implied depth.

The guy who made Death Note and HOTD is known for making his anime ridiculously over the top for no good reason. That’s just his style. So I highly doubt the show is trying to be all that subtle about anything.

The ova is probably a bit more explicit just bc it wasn’t televised iihtg.

Yups

It was, legitimately, my largest problem with the show as well.
Partly because it just felt so pointless besides. Everything was done and wrapped up, but we just decide to drop another pointless death in because death=drama=deep.

I'd REALLY like you to provide examples, because you keep mentioning the director, but the director of an anime =/= the writer of the manga. He is not responsible for 99% of the problems that HotD has. Just glancing through the manga, trying to find the worst scenes, makes me think that the show was toned down a ltitle bit, since I keep seeing nipples where there were none in the show.


I need to ask what you mean by "explicit" here, because I would say the OVA is less explicit than the show proper, because there aren't any nipples (except in the flashback which was composed of scenes from the show proper). There are just as many panty shots and breast presses as normal, and the only real difference is that they get high (though on hydrangeas, which is something I've never heard of).

If you just mean "it's not trying to hide the fact that it's trying to show T&A," then I agree; but if you mean it in the traditional sense of "it's showing material that would get it closer to an R rating," then I would very much disagree.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetsurō_Araki

Apparently he also worked on Attack on Titan and Guilty Crown. That explains some things....

Again, I'd really like you to provide examples of how this man is responsible for HotD. You only seem to keep repeating the same thing about the director without actually explaining how he affected HotD.

Based on this discussion, Luna, you might like Blassreiter

He has creative control over the anime iirc, so they all display his style. You can tell that the animes were directed by the same person, and i think they suffered bc of it; while the manga probably don’t have such glaring similarities. Dude is like a Japanese Michael Bay.

If i can find it again ill post an article about his influence on Hotd. I have to find it first tho.

That might help for a start, because I stand by my stance that 90+% of my problems with HotD aren't problems that the director could have introduced to the show, but are more foundational to the story itself.

Like, for the sake of me putting my foot in my mouth, let's assume the director added a bunch more panty shots, or enlarged the cast's cup sizes. That doesn't change the fact that gratuitous, often mood-ruining panty shots and impossible clothing still existed in the story before it was put to animation.

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Meanwhile, Ghost Stories has been surprisingly more engaging than I was initially expecting. I expected the dub to be pretty much throw-away funny business, and while there are some funny ad-libbed lines, a lot more of the original intent is leaking through than I thought, and what's there is really capturing my attention. Japanese mythological creatures have always been really varied and interesting (when they weren't being silly-looking), and I'm passingly familiar already with a number of ghosts/spirits/whatever that the show is using, so it's been cool seeing them put to animation.

I'll probably re-watch it in Japanese after reaching the end, because I hadn't expected the base show to be this good, and I'm curious what a more serious take on the story looks like. The dub is fun at times, but like half the ad-libbed jokes are pop culture references that go over my head or just really tasteless.

guilty crown is a masterpiece

I wasn't a fan of Guilty Crown overall. It came close but stumbled too many times in too many critical places as I'd reckon it. It was very close to being watchable and the animation is pretty, but for me it fell short.

This is not what I was (still am but having trouble) looking for but you might find it interesting anyway?

I couldn't form a coherent reply at the time, but I've had your words on your mind this last week, and I wanted to bring it back up because I don't want to make it seem like my silence is disagreement. You're right, of course: Alfie's problem isn't her sexual promiscuity (though I might say it's the clash between her emotions and her colder desires [e.g. wanting to not be vilified like her mother was]), but regardless my response would still be the same. Not that I haven't felt the pressure of expectations, but the circle of people that have had expectations for me has been exceedingly low -- having never went to public school, the number of my "peers" never rose into the double digits at any one time.

I still say she is, as a character, exceedingly well-written, but her struggles aren't the ones I'm most interested in.


A point I'll give you, after watching that, is that the director is what makes AoT, HotD, and probably the rest of his work watchable for someone outside of their "I'm 14 and this is deep" phase.

I'm also going to bring up again how I specifically said that I don't feel like I can judge HotD for things it may be doing well, such as cinematography, because I don't speak those languages, and that is exactly the languages that directors speak; so, if anything, whatever you're saying Tetsuo Araki is responsible for are the things that I'm not commenting on and am not counting against the show, rather than the things I'm criticizing.

Watching that video also makes it clear that this director is clearly the reason I've been able to ridicule individual screenshots of AoT and its mix of art styles. Not that I don't think AoT's main failings are in its writing (constantly trying to get you to feel something for redshirts), but I have variously fumed and laughed at many screenshots I've taken as I've hate-watched the show. With the disclaimer that I was the perfect age for Death Note, so I can't judge that one without rose-tinted glasses, I think a lot of the same overly-dramatic scenes from that that became memes might also be his work, but I'd have to compare the equivalent scenes from the manga, and I'm a long way off from reading that yet.

Some MC days you get major progress done; and some you just build a giant Pikachu.

I would call that major progress.
We're talking Minecraft right?

Yes we are.

I’m currently experiencing a problem where sugar cane takes an average of 36 minutes to grow two blocks in height (literally just how mc is); and there is no way to legitimately (non exploit) speed it up at all. So I’m going stir crazy building automated sugar cane farms while i wait for sugar cane to grow in my automatic farms. This is literally always the worst resource to gather in every one of my playthroughs

I built the pikachu in the downtime involved.

I've never had much problem with sugar cane. Maybe just because I keep it by my base so it's always loaded in and growing, but I don't feel like it takes me that long.

When was the last time you needed several 1000s of it?