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That's assuming that G2 has an overabundance of flaws to begin with, when in all reality it's already better than 2004 in terms of content and support story wise and definitely set-wise. I'm not sure why you singled out 2004 in particular, and also, I take slight offense to the suggestion that the story content for 2015 is better than for that year. I wouldn't really count 2015's story thus far as being any better than...any year, actually? It's fairly unimpressive, and imo, fairly nonsensical. The sets certainly are great, though. As is the art. The art is pretty great.

Dreamworks isn't making it, though?

More power to you, honestly. I feel I'm slowly but surely turning into some kind of anime curmudgeon. My tastes seem to be getting less and less forgiving lately, it's kinda lame. Anyway, few more things ended... Arslan Senki was pretty alright. First arc or so was good enough, nice manageable cast of characters, straightforward but decent plot...kinda got trickier in the second half since a chunk of it was spent on what can at best be described as a total detour, when the quest to reclaim the kingdom was put on hold while they went off to meddle in some foreign affairs. It wasn't a bad detour, really, and delivered a couple of the series' strongest episodes, but with the limited time they had to work with I can't help but question the effect it ultimately had not only on the pacing but the narrative as a whole...ultimately when they got back to the main plot they only had so much time left, so the ending wasn't much of one. I appreciate that they didn't rush one out anything, but it also feels like it ended JUST when the climax was about to happen and it's...weird. The characters introduced in the second half (particularly Alfreed...) didn't have much time to do a whole lot either. Unlike the characters introduced earlier there was simply too much going on and too many characters to keep track of for new guys to really get much positive characterization. Alfreed just showed up in one sorta rushed episode and proceded to stay as a one note character for the rest of the series. Few newer characters fared any better. Putting Gieve on a bus towards the end also didn't help much...In the end, still a good enough anime, but the second half had some issues. I do hope it gets a second season, if only for the sake of actually seeing the story get some sort of conclusion. And, uh, Jitsu wa Watashi wa. I really liked this one. I mean, it's kind of a standard generic harem, but I think the performances really sold me on it. I could listen to Shiragami's voice for days. Aizawa and Asahi and other main characters were pretty good too. Even if the animation wasn't always up to snuff I still love the art style and the hilarious facial expressions they used...and it was just really fun in general. Liked the music a fair bit. I would have liked some more...substance, especially towards the end, but still, fun. I wouldn't mind a second season. (last time i said that about a generic but fun harem i got nisekoi: oh no) Second season or not though, I'm glad the anime at least made me aware of its existence. The manga is coming out next year here in the US, and it looks great. Love that art style, and the manga just looks like it was always meant to. Though "My Monster Secret" is still a positively awful title. If Seven Seas' manga releases weren't usually so great I would almost be irritated. But they are so mostly I'm just excited about it. Lastly (for now) Sore ga Seiyuu. This one was...fun? I'm not sure how to describe this one. I liked it. It was interesting, informative, amusing. Really can't say I liked or particularly cared for the characters or the plot in particular though. Especially the idol direction it went to later on. (I've been watching too much idol stuff...). Really very informative though, and all those voice actor cameos were pretty neat. Definitely something worth watching and very cool, but its actual content is kinda bland. Cool though. My absolute favorite part of the entire show, though, was the fact that Masumi Asano--the creator and writer of the manga--just popped up in the anime everywhere doing cameos in bit roles--taxi driver, audiobook director, receptionist, herself, etc.--throughout the whole thing. If you're a voice actor who writes a manga about voice actors and then that manga gets an anime adaptation, doing cameos as yourself in the randomest places is just about the most amusing thing I can think of. Fun stuff. Still got like three shows left over from summer waiting to end...and some six new ones starting in a bit. I think all but one of the series I'm watching in the fall are Sunday shows. That's gonna be...fun.

Now what? Now 29 days away? Yeah, pretty much.

I went with Battle for Power as my favorite, the art style was cool and I felt they told a pretty concise, complete story. For the most part. My least favorite is the Metru era, probably. Both of them, really, but I went with the Hordika because 2004 at least had the Morbuzakh stuff. The art style didn't impress me, I honestly disliked the color work, and they both suffered from the movie interfering with their ability to actually tell a story. It wasn't great.

That's correct. I wonder why they didn't do translucent brown or something other than orange. I'm not complaining or anything, but I'm curious... Probably because trans brown was already being used for Onua's. The color usually used as "trans black" is actually trans brown, and to my knowledge there's never been any trans color any browner than it. Orange was as close as they could get (and to be fair, orange already was part of the stone palette).

Remember that Bionicle was probably considered by many in its original run to be basically an "evergreen." It did last ten years. Will the new one achieve the same level of success or longetivity? It's impossible to say, probably not necessarily too much to hope for, though. Constraction is a bit different from other Lego themes, and to be a success it doesn't need to necessarily pull the same kinds of numbers or audience, since it's acknowledged that it's more of a niche thing. I mean, Hero Factory lasted around as much as Ninjago has and it definitely wasn't a success of the same magnitude. If Bionicle does better than HF did (thanks to whatever this turns out to be, or not) it may still last quite a while. Though I mean, HF also had sort of a tv show, so ymmv whether this is a good thing or not. If you're expecting that the new one will start at any point to reach the original's level of complexity I don't think you'll ever be satisfied though. The "detailed and consistent narrative" arguably played a bigger role in ending the line than in prolonging its length.

And a ton other stuff ended, wall of text incoming. Ore Monogatari!!...leaves me feeling mixed. The fact that the main couple got together in the first few episodes was pretty refreshing, and it was entertaining for a while, but it just eventually got kind of dull. Too safe, too samey. As obnoxious as it is, there's a reason that most romance anime beat around the bush for extended periods of time, and that's the fact that once they're together there's not really that much to be seen. In OreMono this ended up meaning that a lot of the episodes, especially in the second half, were of the "let's see what some characters who aren't Takeo and Yamato are up to" or "oh no, someone else likes Takeo/Yamato!" variety, which is, you know, the exact same kind of plot you'd see in any other romance anime, except in this one the only difference is they were already together. It's just...it's not bad, but it got bland. Himouto Umaru-chan leaves me much less mixed. I just didn't really like or care for it much. The main character was sort of obnoxious no matter what form she was in, and the supporting cast was hit (kirie, tsf sometimes) and miss (ebina, most everyone else). It just...was too generic a comedy, relied a whole lot on pop culture references, and simply...wasn't really fun. It tried to do quirky but it never really achieved it. Classroom Crisis is just garbage. The..."plot" is a weird combination of a generic "let's save the club/school/class" plot nested in a more "ambitious" and "intriguing" plot of, supposedly, company scandals and machinations and political shenanigans or something. Scare quotes because it's all useless tripe. The school side of the story is just incredibly dull. The class involved is a menagerie of side characters who exist for no reason but to fill up the time in between "relevant" stuff happening, none of them really matter, they get no development or fleshing out of any kind, and at the times when they do get any focus they squander it by being obnoxious. They don't do anything interesting. The more "interesting" plot for all it tries to do is hardly any less dull, since the characters involved still spend most of the anime involved in the school stuff. Eventually that plot thread just sort of peters out...and then gets a really jarring push, at which point it ditches the more ~sophisticated~ mind games or whatever clever thing it thought it was doing and just leads to a really unsatisfying life-or-death rescue mission...a mission that failed not only at creating the tension it wanted but especially at providing a proper climax. Worst of all are probably the main character, though. Ignoring the boring generic hot-blooded protagonist teacher, there's one other dude involved in the "company's dark side" plot. He's probably the best character in the series, but his was still just a boring "friendless guy...GETS FRIENDS" story, and it sucked. Then there were the two main girls, who were largely static characters for the entire thing, one of them was dull, the other was obnoxious, and together, they were really boring. The annoying one got involved in an incredibly forced romance with the dude, until the last episode when the dull one decided she wanted in on that (equally forced) action. So the two best friends end the series by fighting over the dude. And that's the point where my opinion of this show went from disapproving indifference to unbridled disgust. I was also unimpressed with the voice acting, art direction, music, and stiff attempts at humor. Just such a poor series. It seems my reluctance to name Castle Town Dandelion as the worst thing I watched was well founded, because this anime was just ######. Anyway. Wooser's Hand to Mouth Life: Phantasmagoric Arc. Not bad. I wasn't exactly a super big fan of the first two seasons of Wooser, and this third one was twice as long (a mighty increase from 4 minutes an episode to almost 8) so I was wary. But it really wasn't bad. Still didn't exactly impress me, but it wasn't boring either. They were able to do some interesting stuff (like the "beach house" episode or the one with the sketchy art style where Wooser became the universe) and develop gags a bit more. Not much. But a little. It was entertaining enough. The ed was a highlight of every week, as well. It was a good ed. Charlotte was a mess of a series. It's like. The posterboy for messes of a series. The first half of the show was essentially wasted on a bunch of plots and characters who immediately stopped being relevant after the halfway point, and after that point, things get interesting for a few episodes (though it all got invalidated soon enough), but by the end stretch they just start piling new thing after new thing after new thing in. The last 3 or 4 episodes are just extremely dense in content, full of twists and developments, but it just...doesn't work. Nothing is given its proper time, it all comes across as rushed and lacking buildup, and SO MUCH happens that it makes the starting episodes feel that much more like fleeting, pointless distraction. The last episode itself had enough stuff to fill probably an entire season, but because it was just one dang episode, all the new things and development just feel jarring and...weird. One scene the main character is himself and the next he just...it's weird. So many wasted one off characters too. I still like...liked it. I guess. But jesus. What a mess. DRRR!!x2 Ten was pretty alright. I didn't really like it as much as Shou. Instead of a lot of plot threads coming together for one big thing, Ten had like...a few smaller plots, with just the stuff with Mikado and the Blue Squares in the background. There was no big payoff and no real intermingling of plots too much...mainly it was set up. But it was pretty good set up, and the conclusion should be pretty cool. Gatchaman Crowds insight was awesome. For a superhero show, Gatcha has always been more preoccupied with what it has to say than with flashy action sequences. insight itself has action scenes in less than half of its episodes. And it's pretty great. Instead it spends just, inordinate amounts of time doing social commentary about politics, public opinion, modern tendencies to just go with the flow, passive citizenship, media...it spends a lot of time developing its message, and I think it works wonders. Very nice, thought-provoking, topical plot and themes. And just pretty fun to watch in general. Berg-Katze, who I didn't care for in season 1, was even pretty enjoyable in insight. If there's anything to criticize about insight, it's probably that it was so focused on its plot (and the two new characters that were central to the plot) that the characters just really fell by the wayside. Most of the Gatchaman (with the partial exception of Rui) didn't have anything to do for the entire season...even previous protagonist Hajime. She still got a fair bit of focus and got the chance to shine at the end, but like everyone else she didn't actually do much. Oddly enough, Jou, who was the one with the least focus in season 1, actually was featured a bit in insight, which worked well. I would have liked to have seen some more focus on Paiman, though, since leadership was such an important theme in this season. Putting simulcasts aside for a bit, I also finished a couple of series recently. I watched Suisei no Gargantia. I did not like it. Art style was pretty bad imo, I especially hated how the girls (and bebel i guess) were drawn. Didn't really care for the voice acting and Amy's voice irritated me. Amy irritated me. I really do not like Amy; not only was her appearance and voice grating, her character was a huge drag. Generic morality pet and boring romantic interest...meh. My favorite part of the series was how she was basically entirely absent from the last 4 episodes or so. My least favorite part was when she flew back in in the last episode. such a mood killer. Other than Ledo and to some extent Pinion no character was really utilized that well. The plot itself was nothing particularly interesting, and the more action/conflict oriented climax sort of seemed to go against the themes of the show a bit. Didn't do much for me at all, honestly. The soylent squid is people stuff was kind of interesting, but it didn't really like...go anywhere. Seemed like a move done mainly for shock, with little actual pay off. Anyway yeah, meh. Still got the ovas to watch, doubt I'll enjoy them a whole lot though. Anyway I also finished Selector Spread WIXOSS. I didn't like it as much as Infected. The explanation for the plot still doesn't really make any sense. Some characters just ended up dropped (aki lucky...) and the twists and turns didn't seem to have the same impact. Also wasn't super thrilled with Iona's development and her backstory just sort of came out of nowhere; meanwhile, Hitoe and Yuzuki were sorta just there. The latter was sort of annoying. (and i really wish her brother had taken the hanayo route instead...). Also, the op had Midoriko and Piruruk in it despite the fact that neither actually appeared, and it appeared to bill Futase as a major character despite the fact that she was in like, one episode. It's got nothing much to do with the actual anime, I guess, but dishonest ops are sort of annoying. On the other hand, Spread had way more Chorizo and Eldora than Infected, and ultimately, isn't that what matters most? I'd argue that no, but I love those two, so it was definitely a nice bonus. I still rather liked Spread, but it definitely didn't hold my attention like Infected did. Or perhaps more accurately, it did hold it (especially the stuff with akira and ulith was pretty nice old fashioned f'd up) but ended up sort of losing it towards the end when characters dropped off the map, stuff wasn't explained, and that whole deal with Hanayo that seemed to only work to push the series to a climax instead of naturally working up to it. I'm looking forward to Destructed.

It's Decepticon-insignia-face! I have his toy, it's pretty rad.

I'm not sure how true or at least relevant the "but they would have gotten less money!" angle is. I mean, by that logic, wouldn't it have then been better to have eight Toa? Or ten? Or whatever? I don't think it's that simple, honestly (I assume that the number of six is something Lego arrived at through careful thinking and testing, but this being the era of haphazard business practices for the company, who can really say). Things would have definitely been different from a marketing and sales perspective if they had stuck with four, but I don't think it'd be as simplistic as to say they would have just lost a third of the money they made. Especially considering that brown never really sold that well. Definitely would have been pretty interesting, though.

There can be little doubt that whoever wears this mask would be almost as strong as they would be fashionable.

His weapon is the Mango Punisher. This mask is quite dapper, but has no wearer, kind of a waste. Wait, no, someone's wearing a mask now.

It's a volcano. Looks. Pretty hot.

That's a very round Hau.

Very bulbous head. With like. Is that a nose?

That minifigure seems quite peeved. And wrinkled. Though it lacks skin, so it's weird.

I have switched from a spooky ghost, to a noble baron. Armored with the mighty power of mango. ~fight of hammer~

How the hat stays on is a perpetual mystery. Maybe glue.

Quite a fancy Pakari, that.

Makes just as much sense as the actual plot does...

Yeah...that's what happens when you have to tell a story in less than 14 minutes. I've more or less stopped giving a hoot, honestly.

No, she said "comparatively, year by year." Meaning, no matter which year of HF you compare it to (just one), then Bionicle is on the losing side. Which is still perhaps an unfair comparison with the latter years, but comparing 2010 HF to 2015 Bionicle seems perfectly fair, if you ask me. It's also not a comparison I can make very well, since I haven't read the book. Or the yet unreleased ones. But I'd definitely say there's some truth to this. I've found the animations and the story found in them mostly underwhelming. HF certainly had flaws, but I know I enjoyed its story media in just the half year it got in 2010 far more than I've enjoyed Bionicle this time around.

You must perish for your transgressions. In all seriousness, though, does anyone actually like that mask? I like it a fair bit, and I really have never been able to understand the hate it gets. It's a nice mask. Certainly a way better looking one than the original Kaukau Nuva. That thing sucked.

I've always really loved the great Huna and especially the Komau. Those are great masks.

Things are ending a whole lot lately. Or I guess, more like this week. But some stuff has already finished, so here are some final thoughts. Shimoseka was definitely the highlight of the season and pretty close to being the highlight of the year so far. I'm not usually that big a fan of raunchy comedies, but this was exceptionally well done. The characters were great, their interactions were always fun, the jokes were funny, the censorship hilariously appropriate, the music perfectly fitting, the art and animation great, the voice acting superb...most importantly of all, I feel that it really took its subject matter and themes seriously, which seems counterintuitive for such a crazy show, but really isn't. Its themes and message were solid, even if wrapped in endless layers of redacted zany dirty antics. The characters and their interactions and the entire setting were completely able to carry the show with their comedic qualities, so the fact that the show as a whole was sorta serious only added to the experience. It was all really good. And despite the disproportionate amount of female to male characters, it wasn't a harem, so that was great. Last episode was a bit underwhelming, and there is much that felt unresolved. Sort of hoping for something more eventually. Or at least that the novels get translated sometime. Show as a whole was great anyway. Wakako-zake was...Hm. Short anime seem to be a tricky business to get right. I mean anime and all media really is tricky, but short anime has been really hit and miss in my experience. The shorter it is the trickier it gets as well. My first experience with a 2 minute show (ameiro cocoa) was pretty awful. It aimed too high, trying to have characters, interactions, a sliver of a plot and even a bit of a message to tell. It failed in every respect. Wakako-zake doesn't really get caught up in much. It's twelve episodes of Sawashiro Miyuki making pshuu noises for a minute and a half. It never aims to be anything more and succeeds at not being anything less. It is what it is, and I guess I can't fault it for that. It's sort of a pointless distraction, though at 2 minutes it's really not like it matters. Castle Town Dandelion was just boring. Bland art style, passable animation, sub par character design, pointless superpowers attached to a menagerie of borderline-subtextually-incestous cliches trying to pass as characters...the story was boring, the focus on the huge cast was uneven, and it was just a generic slice of life with not a single original idea or thought to claim as its own....and I am just so tired of this wannabe coquettish "they're siblings but maybe they...like each other???" bull by this point. Japan's interest in incest has long since stopped being offensive and just started being mildly irritating and boring. Anyway yeah, this show was pretty much garbage. Classroom Crisis isn't over yet, but I'm almost ready to call this one as the worst anime I watched this season. (and then i remember ninja slayer, never mind).