efaardvark

I might as well still be on dialup. Even my phone is faster! Send some my way!! I definitely need them!

Someone already mentioned Aa! Megami-sama! and Sukitte Ii na yo , .. to which I'll add Ai Yori Aoishi (especially if you liked My Goddess) and Ao Haru Ride.

I wound up liking it a lot, but I almost didn't get past the first episode! That opening was depressing af!

That's pretty much the only type I watch. I like stories that have a beginning, middle, and end. I just can't stay with the ones that go on and on and on. Inevitably they become repetitive and/or boring and I lose interest and wander off. I think the last one I rewatched was Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya). Just kind of wacky and fun. I felt sorry for poor Kyon though!

Yeah, it qualifies. "Sushi" is just vinegared rice with a garnish of veggies, fish, egg, etc. Technically California rolls are "maki" sushi .. the kind where the rice is layered on a sheet of "nori" (seaweed), then the veggies (or whatever), then the whole sheet rolled up and sliced into the little round discs. Here in California the "whatever" is usually avacado, cucumber, and maybe carrot slivers for color, but there's a lot of variation too, including fish for the meat-eaters. (My favorite is spicy tuna.) The subject of sushi is a surprisingly deep rabbit hole. (And not to be confused with sashimi, which is raw fish with no rice.)

Oh man... so many come to mind. Kyoukai no kanata, Aldnoah Zero, Sidonia no Kishi, Owari no seraph, Clannad - After Story, .... could go on but I need sleep and if I get started I'll be streaming all night trying to find my favorite.

Yeah, see, that's my problem with "science fiction" these days. It is basically a dumping ground for anything not-real that has some sort of technology somewhere in it. Both of those shows are complete fantasy AFAIC. Nothing wrong with them per-sé, but they're NOT science fiction. To me science fiction has to have the science as a fundamental, driving element of the plot. Science fiction is (was?) about exploring what is actually possible in the real universe. Good science fiction was stories about men on the moon, written before Sputnik, or atomic weapons before WWII, or genetic engineering pre-CRISPR. Anything not possible in the real universe is by definition fantasy, not science fiction. Even if it has ray guns and rockets. And no, calling mana "midichlorians" or magic "psionics" doesn't do it either. Sorry for the mini-rant. For people like me who really like "hard" science fiction having to wade through all the pop-syfy and misclassified fantasy to find the occasional gem is .. well, "frustrating" is an understatement. (Nothing personal, you just pushed one of my buttons. )

Gin-iro no kami no Agito

Sorry, not much into cons myself. (I used to be interested in SF cons, but then the science got buried in fantasy like superheros and stormtroopers.) I do like anime, but typically not the "mainstream" stuff like Pokemon, Naruto, Inuyasha, Yu-Gi-Oh!, etc., which is what the cons I've seen seem to be mostly about. Maybe cons are just too commercial for my tastes? Anyway, I follow cons because they're a good focus for news and announcements, but I'm not really into attending.

Do you get to write it too? Because then there's things like stroke order to consider as well.

Realistically, it might already be happening. Disney is rumored to be thinking of taking the SW gaming franchise away from EA, and EA stockholders aren't liking what they see as a risky Battlefront II release after poor reviews and poor reception (read, "profits") from gamers to Battlefront I. But if people want to keep giving EA money that's not something I'm going to worry much about. Like I said, I don't buy EA games anymore.

I don't buy EA games anymore. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice.... If people stopped buying then they'd have to change their ways or go out of business.

Combining two of my favorite time-wasters.. listening to the soundtrack to The Third: The Girl With the Blue Eye while driving my rover at reckless speeds across the Münscape in Kerbal Space Program. If my rover had an AI I'd call it "Bogie" instead of the Bunny Hopper.

I was prepared to not like that one, but it turned out to be decent. I did spend a lot of the time wanting to knock some sense into both Kyoya and Erika though. Maoyuu Maou Yuusha

Hanbun no Tsuki ga Noboru Sora (aka hantsuki)

Years and years (and years) ago science fiction was viewed the same way. If you were interested in "science fiction" then it was assumed that you were mainly after the large-breasted women of Venus. Even Star Trek TOS was considered scandalous. My god.. just having Uhura on the bridge was bad enough, but when she and Kirk kissed on-screen that one time I thought people were really going to lose it. (It didn't help that the morality-play aspect of the show actively tried to push the envelope.. and not incidentally push peoples' buttons in so doing.) It really wasn't until "serious" movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey made a splash that people started to tolerate SF, and it wasn't until Star Wars that it became anything approaching mainstream. Why? I don't know. Part of it is that most people like staying in their comfort zones. Part of it is that the first thing that people usually hear about something is the extreme examples, and often those are negative. From there they generalize that the whole subject must be tainted and start to erect barriers. Very few people get to know the medium well enough to discover the good parts as well as the bad. Often other politics like nationalism or religion reinforce the barriers to understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment. People should keep an open mind and learn everything they can about a topic before deciding to blacklist it, but that all too often doesn't happen.

Sorry.. had to.

The problems come when other groups - such as advertisers - insert themselves between the fans and the creators and start distorting the story. In the worst case (a lot of network TV for example) the shows are pretty much created for the advertisers as a means of pushing their products. As a result a lot of situations and characters are off-limits because they would alienate the advertisers. Even if they might make for good stories or be popular with the fans, the prospect of advertisers not buying the show means they don't happen. You can also get things inserted or manipulated for artificial reasons. Think Jar-Jar or ewoks in SW just to appeal to a certain demographic and sell more tickets. There will always be sellouts. The thing I like about anime is that it is one of the few media where it is still possible for there to be a relatively small separation between the producers and the fans. Books are also like this. Small-scale cinema is getting back to it now that equipment and other costs of production are falling. The author of a book still (mostly) has control over what goes into the finished product. In fact, in the case of books a single person can even still make a living writing, producing, and distributing a story all by themselves. Sometimes that's not a good thing if the writer is crap. But it does mean that the overall vision can be delivered more or less intact to the reader, for better or worse. The bigger the production the more "executive producers", beancounters, and other non-creatives get a say. More meddling means more distortion, and the worse the outcome tends to be. This is true of all media. Anime is no exception. Like (sf writer) Theodore Sturgeon once said, "90% of everything is crap". The trick is to find the other 10%, and judge the industry/media/genre on that. On that basis I think anime is still doing just fine.

"Shipping" (as in relationshipping.. not that that's a word) is the activity or desire to create relationships between characters, usually romantic, and usually where there is no such relationship in the original work. (Or works.. nothing says the matchups have to be from the same show.) 'Shipping has been going on forever (at least one wiki cites Kirk/Spock from Star Trek as being an example of an early "ship", or paired couple), but it seems especially common in anime, and especially in fanfiction, where the author(s) of the original work have even been known to incorporate fan-created 'ships into the mainstream/canon work. So, in the original post for example, "shipping diakko" would be imagining Diana and Akko from LWA as a couple. That's the "what", at least as I understand it. As for the "why".. you'll have to get someone else to help with that question.

YT actually does a decent job of finding good stuff if you just let it run. I often let it do that in the background while I'm "working" () on my computer, then post social links when it comes up with something noteworthy. If you right-click on the video it'll even give you a "copy video URL" link to simplify transferring the url. (Spotify too, but they/their suppliers are still locked into the oldschool "sharing is bad for business" pattern of thought so it isn't as easy to share links.)

Love this stuff. Been a fan since Animusic 1. For those unfamiliar with Animusic, every note in the audio is keyed to a visual in the animation. You'll want to watch this as well as listen to it... I think I still prefer the first album though...

I don't think I'll ever understand the "shipping" phenomenon. Then again I didn't get pet rocks or pokemon go either. As long as you're having fun it's all good.