Lurker > pyresword

I never finished War of the Underworld, but I pretty much agree based on what I saw. Alicization was overall pretty solid, but I stopped watching War of the Underworld within like 5 or 6 episodes and have no desire to ever continue. I don't know if I'd quite call it the worst arc, but that might also just be because I bailed out early.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Also watched the 3rd Made in Abyss movie last night.

Definitely a good movie, though I feel I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the TV series itself. That probably depends a bit on why you're watching the series and what exactly you're expecting to get out of it though. I can't exactly point to any "problems" with the movie, other than maybe that Prushka could have had a bit more time for development. (Though actually typing this out made me think...a lot of her development happens retroactively in this long flashback at the very end of the movie which just felt weird and out of place. I don't know how else to do it but the timing of that scene definitely felt wrong.)

In any case, I guess if I were to summarize my thoughts as a whole...what's compelling to me about the Made in Abyss series is the Abyss itself--what it's nature is, what's inside it, and what about it captivates people. This arc of the story feels less like a story about the Abyss and more like a story about Bondrewd, which is probably why I'm not as engaged by it. Whereas I think most of the content I'm looking forward to in the series has likely been relegated to whatever comes next. Bondrewd himself is good though--both as a character and when we get to see him in action--and all the confrontations with him are definitely awesome. It was definitely neat to see the series take on more of an action aspect, even though admittedly they probably go a bit overboard with it in the finale. I also don't think I'd like that as a permanent thing, though the nature of the story requires that there be some high-action segments and I think that's fine.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Rewatching Made in Abyss right now. (well, the movies this time, but whatever...)

Boy that scene from episode 10 isn't any easier to watch the second time around huh
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

I watched season 1 of New Game recently. I wasn't particularly into the show at first, but somewhere along the way the characters grew on me and it did become mostly enjoyable. I don't really like Nenecchi much, but everyone else is solid. Also digging these yuri undertones because of course I would. Season 2 is also starting out much better, though going to heavily into the drama angle could also backfire so we'll see what happens.

Also the show has somewhat problematic views on workplace culture and glosses over the fact that these characters are having their passion exploited but let's not focus on that part.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

https://twitter.com/SentaiFilmworks/status/1298739504505851904

For anyone else that wants to see the Made in Abyss movie, this is a thing that's happening I guess. Not totally clear exactly what this means yet but more details should be coming. Won't be as good as actually going to a theater but at least I'll be able to finally watch it.

Come to think of it I never got refunded for my ticket to the original showing when it got canceled.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

The premise is not one that seems like it was designed to go on and on like you might expect from a battle shounen manga or something.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

I didn't but I also know literally nothing about Sket Dance beyond the title being something I've heard of before. I couldn't even tell you a premise or synopsis without looking it up.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Astra Episode 3 beated.

I should probably avoid speculating too much about this show, but I will say that one of the main things I've been worried about is that the show is going to attempt to go for the twist that one of the main characters--most likely pink-haired girl--is a super yandere (that term might not exactly be applicable here but whatever), and somehow deliberately brought about this situation because they thought being in a life-or-death situation could allow them to make friends with everybody. This could perhaps work if the character in question is the shy girl, but most likely this will be awful if it happens so I really hope the show isn't going in that direction. Please don't try and tell me whether or not this actually happens.

At least I will say that I don't think anybody on the ship is trying to kill each other, simply for the reason that it would have been trivially easy for them to do so already. If this assumption is correct then the show will have at least avoided many of the pitfalls I was worried about.

Anyway based on everything that's actually happened the show is pretty solid though.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Watched episode 1 of Astra Lost in Space.

Seems like a solid show so far but I'm also bit worried. I've heard this is more of a mystery show (I've seen it compared a bunch to Rokka no Yuusha), and that just feels like the wrong genre here? At least there's a ton of ways to incorporate mystery into this premise that will go horribly wrong, so we'll see. Admittedly I think I also had similar misgivings about Rokka, albeit not as strong, but that turned out to be pretty great.

I also may just have the totally wrong idea of the show is actually like.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

I watched most of Hyouka recently. Might or might not ever get around to the last few episodes, and as that would suggest I have somewhat mixed feelings. I'm conflicted because it's obvious from watching it that they put quite a bit of care into making the series, but unfortunately for me it just never amounts to anything compelling. Ultimately the best way to describe my feelings might just be "it's boring" which feels reductive, but I do feel it's legitimate to complain about the fact that neither the main conflicts of the show nor the character arcs managed to catch my interest, especially when this is supposed to be a character-driven drama. (I think? Unless people really love the mysteries?) The highlight was pretty easily the movie arc, but even then some things about the character direction in that felt a bit silly to me.

Or maybe I'm just getting too old to relate to high school drama shows now. I certainly hope not but who knows. I at least think it's possible I would have bitten a lot harder onto Oreki's character arc 6 or 7 years ago.

Also started watching Bofuri, which is a pretty fun and amusing show so far. I like both of the main characters so far, and also they're chemistry is fairly good. It's not the only show I've seen that does this, but is still nice to see a VRMMO show where it's just people playing the game and having fun, and not the grimdark "no one can logout and if you die in the game you die for real" plotline.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Finished watching Sakura Quest.

Absolutely fantastic slice of life show. Possibly my new favorite in the genre, though if it comes down to it I probably still go with Aria? But anyways, it's got a really well-rounded cast, with all of the major characters and many of the minor ones being entertaining while having distinct and well realized personalities and worldviews. It also feels like basically all of them go through some degree of meaningful change by the end of the series, and it's just great to watch. It's hard for me to pick a standout which really only speaks to how much I like all of them, but I guess my favorites were probably Yoshino and Maki.

I also like that despite how different the setting of rural Japan is to anything I've experienced, the show is framed in a way that the struggles of the main characters feels relatable, and it's really uplifting when their efforts actually manage to change the town for the better. It's just a great feel-good show. There's a lot more I could talk about, but really what it amounts to is just that I loved it nearly from start to finish. If I were to complain about anything, I wasn't super big on the arc about the mountain village in the middle of the series, but even then the way it ended did some amount to redeem the earlier parts of the arc I didn't like as much, and it was only like 3 or so episodes long in any case.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

I've been watching Sakura Quest lately and despite what the first episode would have had me believe this show is really good.

Characters are great, and it's had some solid explorations on the themes of passion and pursuing your dreams without coming across as thoughtlessly excited and optimistic like a lot of anime would. (I'm thinking of something like Pet Girl of Sakurasou here)
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Well it's pretty much that I don't like tactics RPG's in general, and especially not ones that incorporate perma-death as a mechanic (though I think the series has removed perma-death?) Battles take an extremely long time due to necessitating micromanaging, and it's not a system I find particularly engaging in the first place. The weapon triangle is also stupid but whatever I can get over that.

My impression is that also the series has trended towards heavily incorporating dating sim aspects starting with FE:A, though I don't really know if this impression is true or if Three Houses continues the trend if so. In any case this isn't probably something I'd be looking for in a game like this, and definitely is not what I'm looking for right at this exact moment in time.

Though this one would only apply to Three Houses, I'm not particularly keen on the multi-route structure for the type of story that I expect this is either, though that could maybe change if I try it and it turns out to be really engaging.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Does Byleth have an actual personality or is the point for them to be a self-insert/blank slate? If all his/her dialogue lines are chosen by the player than I am considering this as effectively the same thing as a silent protagonist in terms of the effects it would have on the game.

LeonhartFour posted...

Eh, I wouldn't let that be the reason you don't get the game.

It's more like the straw that broke the camel's back. I have other reasons not to play Fire Emblem games generally and was considering getting Three Houses despite those reasons.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Was actually considering buying Three Houses soon but now hearing Byleth is a silent protagonist basically kills any interest I had :(
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Finally am totally caught up on the Tower of God comic.

The most recent content is definitely the best that the series has had so far. There was a long stretch of "meh" in the middle of the series, but I finally feel like the series is turning into something great now. The most important change is probably the introduction of Jahad as an active presence in the story, which means that I now have a sense for where the story is actually going in a big-picture sense. It also ceertainly doesn't hurt that the stakes are way higher than anything we've seen previously.

Another great thing thing is that Bam is finally pulling his weight as a protagonist, and he's probably one of my top characters at this point. Tons of other characters that seemed dull at first have also turned out to be pretty great, most notably Karaka

Really excited to see where this goes from here, though it's going to be painful reverting to one chapter a week. Might have to wait for a stockpile of chapters to come and then marathon them in chunks.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Not sure how many people currently reading this topic are interested in visual novels or in yuri, but for anyone who shares both interests I recently read both Highway Blossoms and A Summer's End - Hong Kong 1986. Both I'd say were pretty good, and while not perfect were well worth the money I spent on them.

Highway Blossoms is just a sweet romance and I love the main character and I love their relationship.

A Summer's End is somewhat interesting because the relationship itself feels slightly underdeveloped/rushed, but it's more than made up for by the setting as well as the two characters as individuals being really well realized. The main character in particular had a character arc that at least resonated with me a lot. I also liked this one because it wasn't really a fairy tale romance--it was more about two people meeting within the restrictions imposed by society and their pre-existing lives and trying to make it work anyways.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

LeonhartFour posted...

turning the show into a shoujo anime at the end to the point that even the disembodied narrator was affected was excellent

I miss the version of Ishigami from this segment.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

I have also had Gintama listed as "watching" for like 5 years now and I will probably never finish it at this rate. Decent show though.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

So I've gotten back to reading the Tower of God webcomic.

It may have taken 400 chapters of buildup to get there but I really like this final arc of season 2.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Great - 1
Good - 7
Meh - 4
Bad - 3
Awful - 1

I guess it could be worse but man I am really not thrilled with this set of retirees.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Trails in the Sky SC endgame spoilers

Me right now:

https://i.imgur.com/ iMy2rNn.jpg

Remove space from link. Didn't want people accidentally clicking on it
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

I already nominated the pinnacle of Kirby music this year and it didn't get any support.

But yeah the stuff that made it is mostly good also.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Moonstruck Blossom
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Oh hey I like those results
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Partizans
Endeavour
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

xp1337 posted...

I mean the rules explicitly forbid tallies because knowledge of the current margins can influence votes.

What I'm saying is that the message being communicated right now is "This is not ok but literally anything else is totally fine." I don't think I'm alone in this either as I am probably more cautious than many when it comes to talking about ongoing matches.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

If this is something that is seen as a problem at all then there needs to be a hard rule about any sort of ongoing match discussion and the updating tally needs to be taken out of the Google Sheet. Right now the impression given off both by the rules and by the people in the contest as a collective is that it's not a problem as long as you aren't deliberately being obnoxious about it.

Personally I don't see it as a problem and think things are fine as-is.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Well I guess you could argue FF7 is a musical introduction also, but I think it's reasonable to distinguish that from my nominations, all but one of which are basically anime OP's.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

I thought about FF7 but it barely missed my cut.

I think I like theme song style intros too much even if they can be cheesy and are often more teasers than anything.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

I'm assuming that list is only considering original nominations right? Because I have 2 or 3 songs left that I supported during noms I'm pretty sure, although all the songs for which I was the first nomination are out.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Merciless Savior retiring might be the only thing that can save this VGMC so I vote that match.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

An Endless Desert
-[Deoxyribose]-
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Not too thrilled with what I ended up going with but

Tales of Vesperia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiQh0DrCSF0

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCKUR_XBNYk

Chaos;Child
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqTaDjCy_pQ
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Though actually there is no world in which I don't nominate this game, so I'll throw this out now and figure out the other 3 later.

Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvbhbZ83Emo
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Tag

I'll try not to nominate all VN's but I probably will sorry.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

The thing is that based on the information I have now, even if the administration lies by fabricating the data they now control, it will hardly do anything to protect them. And there are obvious benefits to this data being better streamlined. (And also I have read that this change now requires 100% of hospitals to report this data, which was not the case before, though I suppose this also could have been done without switching the reporting destination probably.)

This could easily be because the information I have now is wrong, but this is what my current understanding is at any rate.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

So I've been seeing a lot of fear-mongering on Twitter about the fact that Trump appears to have (partially) cut the CDC out of reporting COVID data. Have people been able to figure out how justified this is?

It obviously makes for a bad headline, but the CDC themselves seem to be saying that the motion makes sense. And the particulars that I've found seem to suggest that this is a legitimate attempt to increase the efficiency of the nation's healthcare response, and would not even be effective at surpressing broader information on virus spread from the public if that were the goal:

However, if hospitals are already directly reporting to state health departments, they can get a written release from the state to keep doing that. The information includes bed occupancy, staffing levels, the severity level of coronavirus patients, ventilators on hand, and supplies of masks, gowns, and other personal protective equipment. The CDC will continue to collect other data, like information about cases and deaths, from state health departments.

Quote from this news article: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/coronavirus-data-funneled-cdc-sparking-worries-71805842

Does anyone who is more informed on what this change actually does have a different understanding than mine?
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Watched Gabriel Dropout at the recommendation of a friend.

It was a fine show I guess. It felt like it was losing steam at the end a bit, but it never got to the point that I wasn't enjoying it. I think the concept was probably better than the execution here, but it was a nice show with fun characters regardless. Satania bullying is good stuff.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Scars of FAUNA
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Probably won't have time to vote in match 2 tomorrow and don't really care about either song anyways.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

NISA continuing the Trails tradition of casually throwing spoilers in promotional art I see.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

P-R-O-G-R-A-M
Rave On
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Aw ya go my SSS. Aw ya go my Brights.

Who needs Class VII anyway
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

YO-KAI Disco (Hell's Entrance World)
HYMN
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

BK_Sheikah00 posted...

Cold Steel 2. Umm. Who is Loewe or whatever that McBurn seems to have the hots for? From which game?

Loewe is one of the Ouroboros members in Trails in the Sky SC. If you need a more detailed answer I can give it but there would be Trails in the Sky spoilers.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Second Dark Matter Battle
Pressure Cooker
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Utawarerumono

From what I remember I think you've pretty much got the timeline right. Though I don't think exactly understanding the details is critical in any case.

Also something worth mentioning is that I think the first game was originally intended as a standalone game, which I bring up to say that everything needed to understand the backstory of the first game should exist within the first game. The later games are technically sequels, but will mostly address a new story rather than plot points from the first game--think Trails in the Sky vs. Trails of Cold Steel. (However Mask of Truth is a direct sequel to Mask of Deception, more analogous to say Cold Steel 1-->Cold Steel 2)

I never cared much about Kurou or Oboro. (Or the archers but lol.) My clear favorites from the first game are Hakuowlo/Eruruu/Aruruu/Benawi, but other than the ones I just mentioned I think I like pretty much everyone.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

xp1337 posted...

Utawarerumono beated. Thoughts later probably I'm kinda tired now. started tearing up when Aruruu begged Hakuowlo to stay tho.

Pretty sure I did to, though actually the part that got me the most in the anime is when Eruruu/Aruruu learn about their village's destruction.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Burning Force Medley
Massive X
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

-(Isoleucine)-
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.