Rate the last anime you watched out of 10

Lily C.A.T. (1987)

Rather like the anime equivalent of an Italian b-movie, this throws a lot of popular sci-fi tropes into a bag and gives it a hearty shake, for a story about space haulage workers who find themselves dealing with a deadly stowaway. It’s a little disappointing that, considering both Yasuomi Umetsu and Yoshiktaka Amano were involved with the designs, the actual production feels crude, outside a few impressive individual shots. It is still amusing hogwash that doesn’t outstay its welcome though, even if Gall Force arguably did the whole thing with a bit more feeling just a year earlier. I do kind of regret not watching the dub, it seems to have a lot of Streamline regulars and would probably fit the goofy material.
 
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Lily C.A.T. (1987)

Rather like the anime equivalent of an Italian b-movie, this throws a lot of popular sci-fi tropes into a bag and gives it a hearty shake, for a story about space haulage workers who find themselves dealing with a deadly stowaway. It’s a little disappointing that, considering both Yasuomi Umetsu and Yoshiktaka Amano were involved with the designs, the actual production feels crude, outside a few impressive individual shots. It is still amusing hogwash that doesn’t outstay its welcome though, even if Gall Force arguably did the whole thing with a bit more feeling just a year earlier. I do kind of regret not watching the dub, it seems to have a lot of Streamline regulars and would probably fit the goofy material.

Is rewatching with the dub not an option? Or is it more of a "time constraints/it wasn't enjoyable enough to watch twice" kinda thing? :)
 
Last night I was thinking it’s probably not something I’d be in a great hurry to revisit, but I actually feel a bit more positive about it today. I’ll likely leave it for a while anyway, but there are a few lines in the subtitle script that felt a bit unintentionally ambiguous and, given Streamline‘s tendency to rewrite things, I‘d be curious to see how they handled them in the dub. It only touches on it briefly, but I did also like that the film notes the effect that making decades long voyages in hypersleep is having on the crew’s mental health, and asks what kind of person is drawn to that sort of life.

Part of me feels like I might have enjoyed it more if they’d focused on that, but given that they seemed to be self-consciously making a genre film, perhaps it would have worked better if they’d gone full ham with it, and upped the gore and gooey monsters? I dunno.
 
I finally got around to watching World in Colours as well. Whilst the artwork was nice, the story wasn't that great, the characters weren't that great either. I think it was like a Shinkai-light with less meat to it, and dragged out for much longer than a single film :)

Scenery work in particular was excellent though!
I fully agree, it's worth a watch for the visuals alone and the use of grey with the colours seeping in melded beautifully with the story elements. Shame that I too couldn't find myself caring much for the characters, though there was one episode end I really liked, I think it was maybe 8 or 11? with the credits and music playing over the final scene involving a paper plane - that I liked a lot.
 
1001 Nights (Animerama).

I'm tempted to give it a 9. The plot is just a loose amalgam of stories from the 1001 Nights, but the way everything flows for the first two thirds of the movie has a real stream of consciousness vibe to it. And you can tell that unlike the later Belladonna of Sadness, they still had money when they did this one because the animation is staggering.

The way it so often mixes the use of models and live action sequences into it is inspired, and there's one bit on an island about halfway through that is among the most visually interesting scenes I've come across. And unlike Belladonna, the subject matter of it isn't so upsetting that I'd have to psyche myself up to watch it again.
 
Watched Cleopatra last night, the last animerama movie I hadn't seen. Ah well I guess one of them had to be terrible.

Has some brief flashes of brilliance in its art and/or animation just like the other two, but they're few and far between, Overall it was just tonally all over the place. The elements of baffling B-movie sci-fi weirdness only serve as bookends since for the main bulk of the film they are barely alluded to.

So yeah, not even close to being as compelling or experimental as the other two movies in this trilogy, just roundly disappointing. The liner notes kinda shed some light on this a bit since this was the movie Mushi did to try and change their fortunes after 1001 Nights flopped, but it came out before the writing was on the wall. This is why the final one Belladonna is so experimental, by that point they all knew it didn't matter either way.

Rating: 5/10, just barely. I was debating a 4 but there was just enough there that I wasn't bored stiff. Won't be watching it again though, unlike the other two this one is 100% just a historical curio, there's not much to it.
 
Maria Watches Over Us
In this catholic school GL romance, girls in the higher years each 'adopt' a girl from a lower year as their soeur, their sister. The greatest prestige comes from being made the little sister of a member of the student council, since that's seen as a fast-track to membership in the council and grants access to the mansion on school grounds that acts as the student council room. There are a lot of strong personalities on the council when Yumi starts as a first year, and she soon gets caught up in a whirlwind of conflicting agendas and jealousy when Sachiko, one of the student council members, offers to be her big sister on the day they meet.

This show came from the tail end of the Class S era of GL, when it often wasn't made explicit whether the feelings the girls have for each other are sisterly affection or romantic love. It sways back and forth on that line, leaning more in one direction or the other for the various trios of sisters the show focuses on. Yes, I said trios, and that's the main source of conflict in this series. Given that there are three years in Japanese high school, that makes a chain of three sisters in most cases. As a first year, Yumi is thrown in the deep end of this situation, and has to figure out the dynamics at play between Sachiko and herself, between Sachiko and her big sister, and between all the other council members. Combine this with the fact that council members are variously referred to by their first or last name by different people, their titles (based on types of roses), or the French names for those roses, and you have a recipe for confusion until you get a handle for who all these girls are and who is whose sister.

That last point is what made me bounce off the show after a couple of episodes the first time I tried it, but I recently started it again and I'm glad I persisted. The first season can be quite messy with how many characters it throws at the viewer, but it finds its feet more as it progresses. The show's four seasons cover Yumi's first two years at high school. The first three of those split their time between all the girls on the student council, but with a particular emphasis on Yumi growing closer to Sachiko as her little sister. The final season shows Yumi starting to mature as a second year, as she begins to look for a little sister of her own. Interestingly, the more Yumi matures the more the show locks us out of her internal monologue, making her a closed book and shifting the emphasis to the girl who is the prime candidate to be her little sister. Perhaps the idea here is that the maturity of the big sisters (who are still high schoolers themselves) is something of an illusion that can only be maintained when viewed from the outside.

It's an enjoyable show once you get past that first hurdle of remembering who everyone is, and only gets better as it goes along. Those looking for explicitly stated romance or a sense of how these girls' lives will progress after high school may be a little frustrated though, since the focus here is on Yumi first learning what it means to be a little sister, and then slowly maturing into a big sister herself, even if there are many times when it seems that there's something else between her and Sachiko.

Season 1: 7/10
Season 2: 7/10
Season 3: 8/10
Season 4: 8/10
 
(I lost the the first couple paragraphs of this long Cowboy Bebop review...but it was mostly waffle)

BIG SPOILERS OF EVERYTHING IN THIS COWBOY BEBOP ANIME REVIEW. ONLY READ IF YOU'VE WATCHED

...hill melancholia it really was!), my first watch was too perfect, too moving and gave me too many chills to risk spoiling the memory of with a rewatch!

But at age 32 and after being fired from my first ever job after 3 months, I finally saw fit to rewatch it. After so long really I'd forgotten most of the details, only the general shape of the show and the characters remained in my heart, the rest I enjoyed filling in once more. And thankfully, what this watch through drove home was just what a masterpiece the show is, and it still gave me chills.

Watching Bebop one is tempted to groan "what the hell happened to anime man, what the hell happened to it..." But then you realise there never really was anything quite like this show, with the exception of Samurai Champloo of course. Even Watanabe's later day shows are nothing like it in style or quality. I recently tried to rewatch Terror in Resonance and was struck by just how dated and dull it already seems. Well I only watched 2 episodes of my TiR rewatch before I gave up so maybe I'm being unfair, and I'll try to watch it in full, but man where had the style and swagger gone?

Anyway, Bebop has aged like fine wine and its structure and approach to storytelling shines bright. I'm not usually such a fan of shows that have a weekly adventure type format, I generally prefer intricate overarching plot structures, but Bebop absolutely nails it. It's story telling approach is as laid back and cool as its characters are, it's pretty subtle and appears to effortlessly do a lot with little.

The individual stories of the episodes are varied, fun and breezy but more often than not poignantly bookended with some note of melancholy, and the 'see you space cowboy' always makes it hurt a little more for some strange reason. And it only hurts more where it's rarely replaced with some other line (the 'do you have a comrade?' one brought me to fully fledged tears!). We slowly learn many (but far from all) of the secrets of the protagonists pasts, but even the episodes that tell stories other than their own usually seem to reflect something of their own loss and loneliness and tell us something about the Bebop' crew.

The structure gives you a sense of the vastness of Bebop's world/solar system, and yet it's one that is never big enough to escape from your past in. It's world building is done brilliantly, crushed up into granules and casually but carefully sprinkled throughout the 26 episodes, it feels like a world that just exists, with people who exist in it, not some story being told at us.

At first the protagonists all ostensibly seem to be pretty self absorbed and to merely tolerate each other, but over the course of their adventures and bounties the cast come to resemble a family. A family in that they didn't really seem to have chosen each others company but just accepted the fate that lumped them together as a bunch of pariahs, and over time we see respect, fondness, and even love for one another shine through the chinks in their armour. Of course it's not even true that they didn't choose each others company, as we see them constantly choosing to stay together, just too proud say as much. Of course Ed is the outlier here, having seemed to have cheerfully seeked the Bebop out in her search for a future rather than an escape from a past. And Ed is great, one of the only truly great cute anime child characters I would even go as far as to say. Her hyperactive childish cheer offsets the rest of the crews total lack all such things, but she's sweet and funny rather cringey and annoying.

But it's Faye who is by far the least aloof out of the crew and who wants to be missed when she runs away but also is the most concerned and afraid for Spikes life. Initially hiding it under the veneer of nonchalance and flippancy that she attempts to hide all her more tender feelings with, but badly enough for it to be increasingly clear as day. She's also the member I found to have the most truly tragic and touching backstory (some definite tears were shed by me when she draws the little bed in the earth of her ruined home with a twig and lies in it) and is easily the best written character of the show, her tough and sexy shell cracking to give us little glimpses of her warmth and brokeness which to me was more relatable than that of the other members. She's lost in a sea of debt, she was used and conned, she's a hopeless gambler and loser despite her prodigious talents, and really above all she just seems to want some people who will give a damn about her.

Of course all the cast's mask of selfishness and self sufficience is constantly slipping. We see Jet having a fatherly instinct to protect and look after the other three no matter how much trouble they cause him. He wants the old guy in one episode left alone so that Ed has a Chess partner, andh he's the one who takes in Ein, and he chases after Faye to rescue her when she "runs away with the money in the safe", both of them acknowledging this tacitly to one another when mentioning how little money was actually is in the safe. And he'll go to the end of the earth to find out what was on Faye's Beta Max, only making the merest gesture at toughness by asking her not to watch if she can't pay the price of postage, and her playing along but both knowing she'll watch from the corner, until of course they all realise what heartbreaking footage is on it and we see them all quietly moved.


Spike is the most aloof of the group, the most truly lost to his past. And the risky missions don't prove Spike's bravery to us as a hero, but rather paint a picture of a lugubrious thrill seeker who only feels alive on the threshold of his demise, and probably longs for it. But we see, somehow just from his expression, that he senses when the others are going through something and he feels for them. He even seems to warn Faye not to become like him.

The climax of all these undercurrents of loneliness and unspoken neediness and co-dependece and companionship fully and brilliantly comes off in that scene of the last episode, where Faye, all coolness evaporated, seems to say all the things we would want to say, fire the impotent shots we would want to. The pay off of that hot burst of honest sincere emotion after so long is brilliant but so bittersweet. We want Spike to stay, to find new meaning and hope with these two comrades who care about him and love him enough to have risked their lives for him multiple times, but he won't or can't see this, forget his eye, his mind has always been stuck in the past, his fate was sealed from the start.

Of course I haven't even mentioned the sublime soundtrack, the fluid animation and gorgeous art, the interesting and stylish camera angles (with only a couple of cringe ones between Faye's breasts!), Even the awesome ad indent thingies!
.
This show is honestly as fresh now, if not fresher than it ever was.

10/10
 
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A momentous occasion - I finally finished Naruto (just the first part, not Shippuden).

It only took me 15 years to get through it all. I read the whole manga series years ago, so I knew what to expect - but nothing could have prepared me for that solid block of 80+ filler episodes at the end.

There's not much that can be said about Naruto that hasn't been send a million times. It was enjoyable in general, but I think it suffers from the same main issues as most of its peers (DBZ/Bleach/etc.) - it all could have been done in a LOT less episodes and that filler mostly stinks.

Obviously these shows go on for as long as possible because there's a demand for more episodes and whatever, but this was stretched out more than Reed Richards on a torture rack.

The story was pretty good in general (excluding the filler). Compared to something like One Piece, there wasn't much variety in settings or situations (episodes are generally a combination of A) talking in villages; B) chasing people in forests; C) fighting on a bridge or by a waterfall) - but it does what it does well. It still looks alright for its age too.

It's got some absolutely excellent OP and ED themes. Seriously, Naruto has some of the best music of any anime I've ever seen. The sound in general is brilliant - voices (the dub cast is perfect!), music in episodes and sound effects in general are all pretty much flawless.

There's a varied cast of supporting characters and they're all easy to tell apart. There were some I wasn't a fan of at first (mostly Lee and Gaara), but I ended up liking all the "good guys" eventually. The Shikamaru/Ino/Choji team was probably my favourite. Jiraiya is great too.

An enjoyable show in general, but it really didn't need to be 220 episodes. It could have easily been done in about 100 without losing anything significant - 7/10
 
Obviously these shows go on for as long as possible because there's a demand for more episodes and whatever, but this was stretched out more than Reed Richards on a torture rack.

🤣

I gave up on stuff like Naruto and Bleach ages ago sadly, as there was so much filler I just lost interest, I generally struggle with anything that goes on for too long and isn't good enough to make me want to watch it, I think the longest shows I've seen in the last year or two are Monogatari and SAO, both about 100 episodes give or take.
 
Yuki Yuna is a Hero: The Great Mankai Chapter (season 3)
What a disappointment. Yuki Yuna had two stellar seasons, with the second seeming to end the overall story in a conclusive way. So where does the story go from there? It backpedals and retcons in some side-stories. Rather than describe the plot in detail, I'll cover the structure of the season so you can get an idea of how jumbled it is.

This was a really confusing season to follow because it was hard to grasp when certain events were taking place at first. I was a bit suspicious that the opening recap only covered season 1, but it wasn't until episode 4 that I realised these events were happening parallel to the Hero Chapter in season 2.

After spending some care-free downtime with the regular cast in episode 1 (probably the most entertaining episode of the season), we suddenly switch to a new set of characters for episodes 2-4. If the Heroes (ie. magical girls) from the first two seasons are like special forces, then the Sentinels from these episodes are the rank-and-file. They're sent out en masse against overwhelming odds, armed with weapons that only give them a fraction of a Hero's power. Their missions were tense affairs because it looked like it could turn into a bloodbath at any moment (I won't say if it does or not). While this could have been a good arc, it ultimately goes nowhere because it's happening alongside the established events of season 2 that the Sentinels can't change.

Just as we're getting used to the new cast, episode 5 cuts back to the original cast (again set during season 2). This just acts as a framing device though, because we then jump back 300 years to another new cast of characters, this time the first ever team of Heroes led by Wakaba Nogi. This next prequel arc is, by far, the weakest part of the franchise to date. Earlier seasons of Yuki Yuna expertly rode the line of the tragical girl subgenre without turning into grimdark murder-fests, but the Wakaba arc tumbles off that line in the wrong direction. The problem is that it's trying to cover too much ground, too quickly, ends up using some ineffective shortcuts in its rush to brute-force us into caring. A brief montage skips through the apocalyptic events that set up the main conflict of the whole franchise, wasting the chance to show us these new characters bonding while the world falls apart around them. Instead we meet them once the new status quo has been established, in the aftermath of a disastrous battle that left half their team dead. It tries to make us care about these strangers after the fact by flashing back even further (yes, that's a flashback within a flashback within a flashback (flashbackception)), but it's all so abrupt and jumbled that it doesn't work. Meanwhile it uses laughably over-the-top visual shorthand to show the effect the girls' armour has on their bodies. There has always been a cost when a Hero powers up in this series, but without taking the time to show how those side-effects impact their lives like previous seasons we're instead shown a graphic display of blood squirting out of the girls from all angles as they fight. It's basically this:

It gets worse. One of the girls has a complete psychotic breakdown for reasons that the story can't decide upon. There were two or three different causes, and it all ends up a jumble. The show stops just short of her actually going on a killing spree, but it rides right up to the edge. After another big battle, this attention-deficit season loses interest in Wakaba and co. and switches back to the Sentinels plotline in episode 9. Since we have only spent three episodes with the Sentinels so far, and were introduced to a whole other cast in the intervening four episodes, I'd forgotten who most of the Sentinels were by this point. We rejoin them for another couple of episodes in a plotline again running parallel to season 2, which again doesn't feel like it adds much to the overall canon.

Then we come to season 3's greatest sin: episode 11. This is literally just a re-edited version of the final episode from season 2 with a couple of new scenes from the perspective of different characters and some new music. Reusing climactic scenes like this robs them of the impact they had the first time around. Season 2 built to this moment through a desperate and emotional arc of several episodes that slowly ratcheted up the tension. Without any of that, simply replaying the last few scenes of it and expecting the same effect just doesn't work.

At least the season ends on a high note with an episode-long epilogue that clears up what happens to everyone after the paradigm-shifting events that ended season 2. It makes for a satisfying capstone to the story as a whole, but I don't think it was worth the messy season of chopped up side-stories it took to get there. The most frustrating thing is that this season could have worked much better if they had just copied the format they used for season 2, giving us two six-episode arcs instead of splicing everything together in a haphazard order.

6/10
 
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it all could have been done in a LOT less episodes and that filler mostly stinks.
Sounds like a candidate for some compilation movies!
🤣

I gave up on stuff like Naruto and Bleach ages ago sadly, as there was so much filler I just lost interest, I generally struggle with anything that goes on for too long and isn't good enough to make me want to watch it, I think the longest shows I've seen in the last year or two are Monogatari and SAO, both about 100 episodes give or take.
Likewise, I really struggle with series that seem too daunting to even start, especially if half or more full of fillers. I'm very, very slowly working through the often hilarious Gintama (will still be my fifteen years at this rate...) and from what I hear should really try MonsterXhunter. I'm saving One Piece for the afterlife. And Monogatari had a hundred episodes, really?? If so, it certainly didn't feel like it at all heh.
 
I gave up on stuff like Naruto and Bleach ages ago sadly, as there was so much filler I just lost interest, I generally struggle with anything that goes on for too long and isn't good enough to make me want to watch it, I think the longest shows I've seen in the last year or two are Monogatari and SAO, both about 100 episodes give or take.
Sounds like a candidate for some compilation movies!

Honestly I'm really hoping that eventually they do what they did with DBZ Kai for some of these series - just create a new cut with all the filler edited out :)
 
And Monogatari had a hundred episodes, really?? If so, it certainly didn't feel like it at all heh.

I'd watch 100 more of it easily with the same quality :)

I gave the movies 3 episodes each, and the half episodes 0.5 episodes each, I think this is roughly right, as there are so many side things to watch on top of the main series.

Bakemonogatari - 15 episodes
Kizumonogatari - 3 films, each film is about 3 episodes in length so call it 9 episodes equivalent
Nisemonogatari - 11 episodes
Nekomonogatari Kuru - 4 episodes
Monogatari 2nd season - 26 episodes (3 of these might be recaps? if so can remove 3 from my total at the end).
Hanamonogatari - 5 episodes
Tsukimonogatari - 4 episodes
Owarimonogatari - 13 episodes
Koyomimonogatari - 12 half-episodes so call it 6 episodes equivalent
Owarimonogatari 2nd season - 7 episodes
Zoku Owarimonogatari - 6 episodes

So all in all I make it to be roughly 106 episodes or thereabouts in raw runtime. Might be a bit ambitious calling the movies 3 episodes each, but they will certainly run for as long as 2-3 normal ones would.

Honestly I'm really hoping that eventually they do what they did with DBZ Kai for some of these series - just create a new cut with all the filler edited out :)

Tbh if you get a watch order guide you can probably skip the filler episodes at least, but not the filler within the non-filler episodes. I'd be surprised if they bothered to re-release a cut down version of it though.
 
Likewise, I really struggle with series that seem too daunting to even start, especially if half or more full of fillers. I'm very, very slowly working through the often hilarious Gintama (will still be my fifteen years at this rate...) and from what I hear should really try MonsterXhunter. I'm saving One Piece for the afterlife. And Monogatari had a hundred episodes, really?? If so, it certainly didn't feel like it at all heh.
Same here. The furthest I've gone with a series is Legend of the Galactic Heroes at 110 episodes and I think that'll be my limit.

When it comes to series like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure or Monogatari series I do find them easier to watch than the usual suspects like One Piece or Naruto. Much prefer it when a series is divided into distinct narrative parts/seasons.
 
@Geriatric hedgehog you definitely need to try HunterxHunter. It is incredible and operates on a different logic than other shonens. It's really outstanding.

The Chimera Ant arc loses a bit too much time with secondary characters in my opinion and suffers for it, but the highs there are unforgettable. Scratch that, they're unforgettable all throughout.

The fact that it it's beautifully animated for the entire duration of the series is remarkable. The narrator works. The power system is interesting and nuanced. Today's protagonist can be put aside tomorrow for a more interesting story concerning another character. It's so good!
 
The biggest thing for me is the dauntingly long list of episodes ahead of me, and the opportunity cost of trying them all out, because you could watch a good 50-100 shows instead of doing just One Piece for example.

Consuming such a huge number of episodes I think might be easier if you've been watching it religiously since release, but trying to catch up later with some of the really long running shows is definitely a mammoth effort.

Stuff like Monogatari is good because you tend to watch in arcs, and if you feel like it you can just pause and come back to the next arc later, the fact each arc is a different story but how it all intertwines kept it interesting.

After I saw how well Owarimonogatari pulled the ending together, I wasn't sure if Zoku Owarimonogatari would be worth watching, but once again SHAFT and Nisio Isin proved me wrong. It totally was worth it! :)

@Geriatric hedgehog you definitely need to try HunterxHunter. It is incredible and operates on a different logic than other shonens. It's really outstanding.

One day I need to come back to this one, there's two things putting me off, one is that I know the anime doesn't really end as the manga is doing a Berserk and will likely never end. The second is that the episodes drag along a bit, I think I got to about episode 70 odd and lost the will to carry on at the time.

I said I might come back to it sometime though, same as MHA, I got about 3 seasons into that and lost interest, but maybe a break on both will do me some good and I can return to them refreshed a bit.

Both are on the back burner though as I have other stuff on my list to check out ahead of returning to these :)
 
One day I need to come back to this one, there's two things putting me off, one is that I know the anime doesn't really end as the manga is doing a Berserk and will likely never end. The second is that the episodes drag along a bit, I think I got to about episode 70 odd and lost the will to carry on at the time.

I said I might come back to it sometime though, same as MHA, I got about 3 seasons into that and lost interest, but maybe a break on both will do me some good and I can return to them refreshed a bit.

Both are on the back burner though as I have other stuff on my list to check out ahead of returning to these :)

Regarding your first point, the anime actually ends at a fitting point for Gon's character. It's satisfying, considering all that has transpired up to that point.

I understand that knowing the manga goes on will always make you feel like you're still missing out, but I view the anime as a complete experience, so to speak!

Who knows if Togashi will finish the current arc, much less the entire series lol

70 something puts you where, Greed Island? I myself struggled every time the anime dedicated entire episodes to secondary chimera ants when I was eager to watch the conclusion or beginning of an important battle. But when they came, oh my lord. This happened both times I've watched the anime.

I've also started and eventually fell of MHA but I view that as mostly standard shonen. The hype moments are very hype, but I didn't find the characters interesting.
 
70 something puts you where, Greed Island

I think just before, it's on my may revisit list though, I feel like I should at least finish it once in my lifetime! :D

I've also started and eventually fell of MHA but I view that as mostly standard shonen. The hype moments are very hype, but I didn't find the characters interesting.

Yeah the origin stuff was good, the music/OST was great too, I think it suffered a little from having too many characters doing too much at once, some of the side ones in particular aren't that interesting.

Bakugo yelling like a lunatic and being permanently angry got a little tiresome as well. Same as with Demon Slayer, on the whole it's good, but when pringle guy goes around and starts screaming it's a bit too much. I watched the Mugen Train episodes recently and enjoyed them, but damn that can take some points away for me sometimes.
 
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