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Time of Eve (Film) A film based around the musings of humans and androids, with the latter becoming more sentient and less subservient. The story is mainly set in a café and focuses on the patrons and their interactions with a pair of students who end up investigating the place. It made for a solid watch overall. 3.5/5
I backed the Kickstarter and still not watched it 🤦‍♂️
 
Black Magic M-66

Re-watched these ahead of recording the Mecha March podcast at the end of this week, if you've got any questions or comments let me know.

Just a passing thought, but without knowing what role she plays in the manga (if she's actually in it), do you think Sybil was ever intended to be a male character? Maybe she just seems more ambiguous because none of the characters are developed very much during the runtime, but she has a very neutral style of dress and, in terms of the Hollywood films it's referencing, it feels like she's in the Michael Biehn role. She's also quite a contrast to the likes of Susan Sommers in Venus Wars, who I'm sure is modelled on Madonna.
 
Hortensia SAGA episode 10 Bridge battle.

Log Horizon: Destruction of the Round Table episode 9 Over-encouragement.

Re:Zero -Starting Life in Another World- 2nd Season Part 2 episode 48 Feast and flee.

Doctor Who: The Claws of Axos Some great effects for the Axon spaceship and its interior in this one.

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 episodes 1-11 (Complete. An anime focusing on a pair of siblings dealing with the aftermath of a deadly earthquake and trying to get home. I still don’t know how I feel about the twist near the end but otherwise this was a solid and often poignant watch.) 3.5/5
 
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Redo of Healer eps 7 & 8
Turning the tables & another recruit.

Kemono Jihen eps 8 & 9
Family reunion & love hurts.
In the 8th episode we meet a girl who's was the result of an experiment and has been locked in a basement for her whole life, 8 years we find out later. She, when not being forced to use her power, seems to spend her time wearing cute clothes and reading manga. After rescue she seems more than a little nervous at what's going on.
In episode 9 she turns up, just a week later, in a boob tube, mini skirt and open jacket declaring it's more her style and confidently that the MC is her boyfriend, bizarre in more than one way. It's mostly done for comedic effect with the reaction of other characters, but also to make another character jealous. Both the other girl and MC, no more than 12/13 themselves, have also had pretty sheltered lives and don't understand what is happening and it seems rather cruel, especially on the girl as the MC's personality is to be a bit distant and emotionless in most situations.

Re:ZERO s2 p2 eps 9 & 10
Present & future.
 
Thought I'd clear a small bit of physical backlog with the shorts I picked up from the AL Christmas sale.

Pigtails and Other Short Stories
Pigtails
Was nice to look at, but the messaging seemed a bit all over the place with either being obscure or some times the visuals clashing with the voice over as with the body parts bit where the visuals seemed to be saying look at this isn't it horrible, but the VO sounding like an ad for organ donation!
6/10

Kick-Heart

This was weird to look at, but at least the story made some sort of sense. Had some fun moments as well.
7/10

Li'l Spider Girl

Loved this one. I generally do like stuff with a supernatural theme set either in the past or modern day and this had a bit of both. As I was watching I thought this would be a cool show where the these 2 find yokai sealed in books and find ways of exorcising them or returning them to where they belong and then boom big twist! I guess they could still make a serious out of it: I'm a Spider Waifu, So What?
Art and animation were very good too.
8/10

Drawer Hobs

I liked this one. A SOL about an OL getting a little help from an unexpected source. The ending reminded a bit of Labyrinth where the MC has grown, but misses the ones who helped her and then they pop up with a last goodbye and a promise to be there for her in the future.
7/10

Oval Over

Another crazy one. A cross between Redline (which came after) and Dead Leaves, from the same director which came a year earlier. Art was a little crazier than Kick-Heart, but I liked it more. The story didn't have an end, but it was an ad for real life race series, so I guess that's why it was left open at the end.
7/10

So I'd say my order is: Spider Girl, Drawer, K-H, OO and Pigtails.

Genius Party
Genius Party
A wild ride with some nice art and design and very good animation. Not sure what, if anything, it's trying to say. Something about the circle of life I think.
7/10

Shanghai Dragon
The power of imagination. Another fun ride with some funny moments in this sci-fi about finding the saviour of the future, only for it to be a snotty kid. The CG may look a little dated now, but still pretty good. Characters remind me of Tekkonkinkreet, same studio so no surprise.
8/10

Deathtic 4
Erm, WTF! And was that Russian or a made up language? The art was quite striking, it rings a bell but I'm not sure where from, but the character designs were creepy. It was also well animated, but the story was too weird for my liking.
6/10

Doorbell
Umm, was that about paranoid schizophrenia maybe? We got no answers as what was going on. The art wasn't the best either, the eyes especially seemed wrong in a creepy way!
5/10

Limit Cycle
Oh dear it gets worse. A load of philosophical nonsense spouted over random pictures with barely any animation at all. Rubbish.
2/10

Happy Machine
Yet more random weirdness. Art and animation are the typical Yuasa style which can be seen as good or bad depending on how out there he goes and this was pretty out there. I liked the music though.
5/10

Baby Blue
Watanabe (and Yoko Kanno) to the rescue! A bit like a more delinquent version of the first part of 5cm p/s!
7/10

Ranking: SD, BB, GP, D4, HM, DB, LC

Overall pretty disappointing collection. Seems the brief was be as weird as you want and the directors of the 2 best ones didn't get the memo! Says something that the short OP like opener was the best of the rest!
Seeing as all the shorts are lumped together on MAL (which ruins my intention of reaching 600 complete anime this week!) it's hard to give an overall score. The average is 5.7, so I'll be generous and round it up to:
6/10

Genius Party Beyond

Gala
The music of life. A nice musical piece with a fun twist at the end. My only gripe is that the number seemed to be performed by a modern orchestra rather than using the traditional instruments the characters were playing!
7/10

Moondrive
Quite random, reminded me a bit of Ren and Stimpy, but didn't stray too far into the plain weird territory like some of the shorts in the earlier collection and had quite a funny twist. The only part that was disturbing was the way they "bought" stuff!
7/10

Wanwa the Puppy
Like a drug fuelled trip through a child's nightmare and seemingly drawn in a way to suggest said child was the one doing the animation. Again weird, but not the weirdest.
6/10

Tojin Kit
Impressive 3D art and animation, seems almost contemporary and reminded me of Dorohedoro, especially the environment work. Story wise it was OK, I mean at least it had one, but left far too many questions for a short to answer. Would be interesting if it were to be expanded on.
7/10

Dimension Bomb
Everything on the technical side was fantastic, but again the story is a little obtuse. As far as I could work out an alien is beaten badly/dies, remembers a friend and then the badly injured alien/corpse tries to get back to the place it remembered, then turns human, but the friend is gone?
Was going to say that the music was very Matrix-esque then saw that Juno Reactor were responsible for it and their music is indeed used a lot in The Matrix.
7/10

Ranking: DB, G, TK, M, WtP

Overall a better collection than the first lot, I'll give it a:
7/10

Full ranking of both
here

I think the only short I've watched all day that I would definitely want more of is Li'l Spider Girl.

Talking of shorts and The Matrix, I haven't seen The Animatrix in ages, so I'm off to watch it. Will post thoughts later.
 
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The Animatrix
Final Flight of the Osiris

A short piece set just before The Matrix Reloaded, IIRC. Dispite its age and the fact I'm watching on DVD (was there ever a Blu-ray released here) it still holds up fairly well in terms of the technical aspect, I wonder why there haven't been more films done this way (and like FF: Spirits Within), probably very expensive, but the way technology has gone some films nowadays are virtually all animation in the form of CGI bar the actors, so why not go that one step further.
Story wise you wouldn't have a clue what was going on if you hadn't seen The Matrix (I'm not sure why you would watch these if you hadn't seen The Matrix, but I thought I'd mention it) and even if you had it's fairly basic.
7/10

The Second Renaissance Part 1 & 2
The cg on these 2 have definitely dated though and as interesting as the story is, I definitely think that there are some plot holes in the second part.
7/10

Kid's Story
Rotoscoping always looks a bit weird and same applies here. The chase sequence is quite good though. Again the story would need knowledge of the film, but was added an interesting twist to what happened there.
6/10

Program
Some cool art and action animation and again another fairly basic story needing knowledge of the film.
7/10

World Record
Another interesting take on the world of The Matrix, but I didn't like the art that much. Too much of a dark palette.
6/10

Beyond
Another link between Dimension Bomb and The Matrix is that this segment of The Animatrix is directed by the same person, Kouji Morimoto. Indeed the female MC of this bares a resemblance to the girl in DB.
I like this one the most, along with Second Renaissance, as it's quite a fun take on world within the Matrix as a glitch leads to an excellent playground. Also probably one you could watch without knowing too much about the franchise.
8/10

A Detective Story
A noir take on the world in which a detective has to track down one of the characters from the film. Quite stylish, but again a bit too dark a palette.
7/10

Matriculated
The most trippiest and least straight forward story. Makes it my least favourite. The designs are interesting, but the cg has aged badly.
5/10

Ranking: B, TSR (1&2), FFotO, P, ADS, WR, KS, M

Overall score: 7/10
 
Dr. STONE: Stone Wars (Japanese audio) - Episode 9
Higurashi: When They Cry Gou (Japanese audio) - Episode 23
The Promised Neverland Season 2 (Japanese audio) - Episodes 8-9
The Quintessential Quintuplets 2 (Japanese audio) - Episode 10
 
March 10th & 11th.

Adachi and Shimamura (English Dub) Episode 4

Cells at Work! CODE BLACK (English Dub) Episode 1

Diary of Our Days at the Breakwater (English Dub) Episode 1-12 (Complete)

Dr. STONE: Stone Wars (English Dub) Episode 3

Kaguya-sama: Love is War Season 1 (English Dub) Episode 1-12 (Complete)

Cells at Work! CODE BLACK Episode 12 A dire situation.

Dr. STONE: Stone Wars Episode 9 Final battle and a truce.

LBX Girls Episode 10 Report.

Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- 2nd Season Part 2 Episode 48

Redo of Healer (Uncensored) Episode 9 Negotiations.

The Promised Neverland Season 2 Episode 9 Traitor?

The Quintessential Quintuplets II Episode 10 A worthy rival.

Yuru Camp△ Season 2 Episode 10 Sightseeing and detours.
 
Cells at Work! CODE BLACK episode 12 Heart.

Dr. Stone: Stone Wars episode 9 Dynamite.

Heaven's Design Team episode 10 Queendom come.

Higurashi: When They Cry - NEW episode 23 Redeemable?

The Promised Neverland 2nd Season episode 21 Talk no jutsu.

Yuru Camp△ 2nd Season episode 10 To the top.

Doctor Who: Colony in Space A very solid Malcolm Hulke script with poignant themes and an engaging central conflict.

I also delved further into the new special features for Season 8 in the new The Collection boxset.
 
@D1tchd1gger it's interesting to see your views on Genius Party. For the first collection I have close to opposite order than you for which ones I enjoyed and I also rank the collection as a whole higher.

Heres my list from when I watched it:

  1. Toujin Kit
  2. Dimension Bomb
  3. Deathtic 4
  4. Genius Party
  5. Happy Machine
  6. Gala
  7. Limit Cycle
  8. Moon Drive
  9. Baby Blue
  10. Doorbell
  11. Shanghai Dragon
  12. Wanwa the Doggy
 
The Irregular At Magic High School-I finally finished all 3 seasons and the movie. Overall it was good show but Tatsuya and Miyuki come accross as superman and supergirl and can blow any and every enemy they encounter out of the water with hardly any opposition. That kinda kills any suspense if you know in advance what the outcome of any fights will be. Still I liked the supporting characters better than the lead ones. Overall I'd give the series a 7 out of a possible 10 points.
 
Dr. Stone s2 e9
Bargaining chip.

The Quintessential Quintuplets s2 e10
Present tense!

Jujutsu Kaisen ep 22
New investigation.

Heaven's Design Team ep 10
Perfect society and rejuvenation.

Yuru Camp△ ep 10
Izu trip begins. The ending was rather abrupt!
 
Back Arrow episode 10 Depravity.

Jujutsu Kaisen (TV) episode 22 Ding-Ding.

So I'm a Spider, So What? episode 10 Move on up.

Doctor Who: The Dæmons Chap with the wings there...

Towanoquon Films 1-6 (Complete. A solidly entertaining series of films for the most part - I found the second film to be the least enjoyable however. The characters and their abilities were fairly interesting though I felt the central antagonist was lacklustre, letting the story down a bit towards the end.) 3.5/5, 2.5/5, 3.5/5, 3.5/5, 3,5/5, 3/5
 
Rewatched most of the older cel-animated Ghibli films I just bought again, all English dubbed (Kiki, Whisper and Porco, haven't rewatched Totoro again yet but I will very soon) and also rewatched Lupin: Cagliostro with the Streamline dub (the only one included on the Studio Canal Blu-ray release) - I have also kept my old Manga Entertainment DVD to have access to their dub of the film, but the Streamline dub is very good :) I am also working my way through Hidamari Sketch on Blu-ray - have finished the first disc containing episodes 1-8 of the first season :) As I just bought Laputa and Nausicaa will be rewatching those soon as well!
 
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