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I really like the Necro-Machine.

The Groundskeeper is a clear winner, though I will say the candy goblin has a lot of charm. I liked that a lot too. But yeah, 8.

I went with 9. That horse is nice.

Fly Man got my vote. It pulls off its look very effectively, especially the eyes.

I love that chair a lot, but the witch just really impressed me. This is the first time I've seen it and I love everything about it. It's not as unique or eerie as the dentist chair, but it's so good. I wish I could vote for both, but I had to go with the witch.

Wait, so the "special" mask set to come with the activity book is... the same gold and blue mask we've already got? What a letdown.

Not really, activity books never have anything new.

Plus we've known about this for months. Several of them.

Rey's figure looks surprisingly good. Finn's on the other hand...it's a figure.

Phasma looks cool, but she also looks to be identical to the Stormtrooper, down to the weapon. Kinda. Boring. It makes sense, but...yeah. A somewhat different weapon at least would have been nice. At least she has a cape.

Also, a wave of constraction figures in which 2/3 are female. Pretty cool.

I'm kinda wondering how Kylo Ren's lightsaber works. Are the ones on the sides minifig lightsabers? They kinda look like it...

Hm so, over the last few weeks...

I finished the Gargantia ovas. I don't like Gargantia in general, but it's mostly indifference. The first of the (long) ovas was just so terribly written it disgusted me a little, though. I hated it so much I honestly just played with some figuarts while watching the second one, so I do not remember that at all.

And I am fine with this.

I finished El Cazador de la Bruja. It was pretty nice! Definitely something of a slow burner...I have no idea when exactly I started enjoying it, but at some point I started getting really into the characters. It was pretty good.

The Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls finally ended, it was ok. I really liked a bunch of episodes of the second season, especially the ones with Uzuki. All in all this series wasn't anything special, but it was alright.

The second Kyoukai no Kanata movie finally got subbed, so I watched both of them. The first is a decent enough refresher I guess but it was a pretty dang recap and an even worse movie. The sequel was eh-kay I guess. Mostly mediocre, kinda pretty, blehrg ending? Kyoukai no Kanata, basically.

Started reading Tokyo Ghoul, roughly halfway through. I can see why the first season was so disliked, now. I expect reading the second half will only show me new ways to hate Root A, though.

Started watching Hidamari Sketch, almost done with the first season. I was surprised by how enjoyable it is. It's a lot of fun, it's very Shaft-y, voice acting's good, humor is nice, ending theme is great...I'm having way more fun with it than I expected. It's nice.

RGZ+ ended, I don't really have much to say about it.

I watched Gokicha. I don't know what I was expecting, and I still don't...know.

Anyway I finished reading Elfen Lied yesterday. It was certainly better than the anime. Had some pretty good characters (Nana and Arakawa are the beeeest) and was just kinda decent. A lot of stuff in the last part was kind of haphazard, though, I feel. Antagonists and characters just started coming out of the woodwork with little buildup or purpose... And really just in general I think the series was a couple of non-creepy relationships and a non- protagonist short of being good. Kouta is just a boring, sucky, whiny dude with little real relation to the "plot." The entire Inn stuff could have been cut down on considerably. Nozomi, was just, so useless. And completely unnecessary. Wannabe harem stuff just...bleh.

Art did improve considerably by the end though...

Woo, it's back.

I vote Great Furnace as well.

I bought the Protectors of Ice and Jungle at the same time, and I believe I opened PoI first, so him, I guess.

Does anyone know when the next episode of One Punch Man is coming out?

Sunday. It comes out on Sundays.

Nobody was expecting a stunning piece of English literature to come out of 2015. Especially considering that this was the first third of the story. Patience, people. We got a good storyline for this year. Not fantastic, not horrible. Interesting, giving us a better 'young Toa' vibe than the Inika or Metru ever did. The Masters at this point are basically the earnest young kids (*cough*target audience*cough*) to G1's saviours of the universe. We have two more years before the Masters and G2 have to retire.

Good seems like an exaggeration. I'd at most grant the first half being "passable." The second half mostly just sucked...pacing, interactions, story cohesiveness or lack thereof...it disappointed me on every front.

Which is sad, since I was so strongly in favor of giving these animations a chance. I haven't been so disappointed in a new theme's story since Chima, and at least that got decent-ish towards the end of its first year. Bionicle offered no real positive qualities for me to care about.

But then, I suppose that I can not fully blame them for the lacking result. The format meant they were doomed from the start. If there's something I've learned well over this year, it's that 90 second shows suck as a rule.

But whatever the reason or however I want to rationalize it, they were still pretty bad. Meh.

Yes, Pohatu has been shown to be able to fly around on his sand tornadoes. I mean, it's on his box art.

I've been reading Elfen Lied recently.

The art truly is laughably atrocious. Quite possibly the worst manga art I've seen in an officially published work, if not completely. So bad.

I thought Gokukoku no Brynhildr was just decent art-wise, but after seeing, this, I have to say Okamoto Lynn improved by a factor of about ten thousand percent...probably.

In more anime news, the Nihon Animator Mihonichi shorts seemingly finally came to a close. I wouldn't have minded if they went on indefinitely for a while longer, but it's as good a time to cut it as any I guess. I'm glad that at least it went long enough for I'm a Girl to come out, since it was great. All in all an eclectic mix of shorts ranging from fantastic to forgettable. Fun, though.

And Ninja Slayer ended. Yippee.

Holy christ, it's alive. Kizu is alive.

Part 1, though? It takes them four, five years to announce a release date, and they're gonna stretch it out? Come on Shaft. And not just two parts, but three. Just terrible. Not to even mention that waiting for it to be subtitled is going to add even more time to the waiting period...

Really makes me wonder if I should read Kizu in the meantime, though. Novel's coming out next month. If it was just going to be the movie coming out early next year and say a bunch of months later I can see it, meh, I'd just wait to experience it fresh. Do not know if I can hold off on reading it for however long it takes all three parts to come out. Jeez. Quite the predicament. Even worse, Bake doesn't have a release date yet even though Kizu is already close to coming out, so I can't even count on that to hold me over.

Anyway.

World Trigger "ended," as it were. The part I cared (kinda) about, anyway. They're jumping straight to the filler and I couldn't care less, though the new opening looks really good. But eh, it was an anime all right.

And all the new shows I'm watching this season with one exception have started. Some thoughts, from worst to best:

Komori-san Can't Decline wasn't awful, but it also wasn't good, and more importantly, it was 2 minutes. Two minute anime are the worst; you can't do anything with them, and this was no different. Just kinda unremarkable.

Attack on Titan: Junior High had a cool op and was generally sort of amusing but it's going to take more to get me to care.

Comet Lucifer was pretty decent, putting the "eeek a lizard i as a woman am frightened and must cuddle up to you, the male lead, and then become embarrassed; is this stupid and formulaic forced sexual tension interesting yet?????????????????????????????????????" scene aside. (The Biggest Sigh Of All). Fight scene was pretty neat though.

One Punch Man didn't wow me, to my great sadness. I think that's mostly because I have read this part of the manga several times already and the magic is gone a little bit (and i like manga over anime in general so that doesn't help) though. It was cool, well done, and the action scenes were pretty rad. Decent start, hope it gets me more excited when it gets to the stuff I haven't read.

Owarimonogatari was pretty great. It's one of the smallest Monogatari series we've had, in pure terms of the scope and number of characters involved, and I think it definitely worked in its favor. Seeing more Ougi was very interesting and I'm all down for this character searching for Koyomi. If I have any complaints (and I don't) it's probably just that the twist was pretty obvious from the second you know who was mentioned. Though I also get the feeling it wasn't really meant to be much of a twist, I dunno. Really good stuff though.

I get the feeling I'm going to be skipping Owari next week though. Kinda feel like just waiting until each of the stories is over to watch them all at once. It probably helps that Riddle and Lost are very short...may just watch Mail as it airs, though, because who even has the patience for that.

Fall season so far: kinda ok.

Well would you look at that, Ekimu's eyes are still yellow even after putting on the MoCr, that solves that mystery that no one thought was a mystery.

Cool.

Well, an underwhelming end to an underwhelming year of episodes. Here's to hoping next year is better.

 

I'm pretty sure it will eventually be bootlegged. 

 

 

 

What I'm going to do is wait for all four episodes to be released and sign up for a free trial of Netflix for a month, then cancel it after I've seen the show. Yes, I will have to wait forever and it will suck, but better than missing the show entirely or having a subscription service going on that bleeds money. 

 

Most Netflix shows just release all the episodes at once. That's how it worked pretty much always until recently...I guess Bionicle could be in the group that releases over an extended period of time.

 

 

House of Cards has all episodes of a season go up at once, and I think Daredevil did as well. No reason to think this will be any different.

 

Yes, only a couple of Netflix shows have been released weekly, it's a pretty new and special thing from what little I know. And yes, there is no reason to think Bionicle will be any different, but I mean, these 4 are quite likely to have to cover the entire first half year of 2016 (if not the entire year), Lego may request that they be released periodically instead of all at once simply to fill the time.

Or they may not. I dunno!

 

 

New netflix show for bionicle

https://www.netflix.com/at-en/title/80062112

Is there any way to find it on YouTube ?..., i'm very interested to see what this is about but sadly i live in a country in Europe where Netflix refuses to shine.

 

The series won't be available until next year. It's a Netflix Original, meaning that when it is released, it won't be available for viewing anywhere besides Netflix.

 

I'm pretty sure it will eventually be bootlegged. 

 

What I'm going to do is wait for all four episodes to be released and sign up for a free trial of Netflix for a month, then cancel it after I've seen the show. Yes, I will have to wait forever and it will suck, but better than missing the show entirely or having a subscription service going on that bleeds money. 

 

Most Netflix shows just release all the episodes at once. That's how it worked pretty much always until recently...I guess Bionicle could be in the group that releases over an extended period of time.

More metallics is all I want.

 

For all its flaws, Bionicle G2 cannot be faulted for poor artwork. 

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.

Not sure how I feel about a Bionicle show delivered by the people who brought us Dinotrux...

 

I really hope this isn't treated as another obligatory kid's show.

Dreamworks isn't making it, though?

I really liked Castle Town Dandelion... It really improved itself as it went on. With such a large cast I'm surprised it got me to care about all of them.

...And Gargantia is nothing sort of my favorite anime...

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.

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.

 

To my knowledge,for whatever reason,all the Mata Kaukaus aside from Gali's gold and silver were made in translucent colors,and the orange one was Pohatu's. 

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).

Ninjago got a TV show and now it is so successful that LEGO talk about it "becoming an evergreen theme".

Is it too much to hope for that BIONICLE could do the same?

 

Both themes have the elemental heroes thing going on (right down to the "Master of Water" being the only female in both teams), so there are similar pull factors. But I worry that Ninjago succeeds because its storyline resists gaining depth (the show's writers don't seem to care about viewers having watched prior episodes, seeing how much core mechanics like the elements have been retconned since the beginning), whereas BIONICLE G1 succeeded precisely because of its detailed and consistent narrative...

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.