joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

Ai and Shioriko is a fun dynamic, bless

#love live #26.4.24

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

"There was never such a thing as magic."

In episode 4, we get what seems an awful lot like an after-the-fact rationalization of Kano's condition. A clear-headed, scientific explanation. But the show itself seems almost as desperate as Hijiri is to explain away her younger sister's "illness."

Surely, there must be some rational explanation, it pleads, as the theory turns to DID and a feather in a shrine as a psychological trigger. It can't truly be cursed, of course. No rational person, no doctor, could believe that.

"It was only a dream, it has nothing to do with you."

Until this episode's halfway point, this desperation feels like it might still point toward some kind of grounded explanation for all this, but that notion shatters into light when Yukito touches the shrine feather. In an instant, AiR becomes a different story entirely; a history of persecution, of a mother and her child cursed from birth, fleeing wars, storms, and death to find refuge in the village that once stood on the same spot that Yukito and the others stand on now. Even here, there was no real refuge, and the scene morphs into some distant echo of the binding of Isaac; a mother sacrificing herself to save her child. No story, it is worth remembering, is ever just one story.

"You don't have wings, be happy down there."

In episode 5, we turn to dreams of the ocean. Yukito's own, from when he was a child. Here, the show again takes a somewhat more grounded approach, but "grounded" is relative, and perhaps inappropriate, given that even the series' episodes that are more "grounded", "down-to-earth", an other such terms that conflate mundanity with the soil beneath our feet, are themselves preoccupied with the heavens above, as we learn when we're introduced to Tohno's "Astronomy Club" here, consisting of more or less just herself and a large portable telescope. Despite briefly meeting her mother, Yukito returns the next day to find the woman claiming she has no daughter, and Tohno herself is missing.

Elsewhere, we learn that Kamio suffers panic attacks when she gets close to people. This is a distinct yank back to reality from a show that has so far spent most of its time with its head in the clouds, but the loneliness Kamio's condition creates---typified by a quick cut to a shot of a lonesome cloud---works with what Air has previously done. A profound loneliness connects most of the show's characters, although they largely don't yet seem aware of this connection.

If there's an emerging theme here, it's that of lost or broken connections. Tohno is kicked out of her home because her mother has replaced one delusion with another and doesn't recognize her, Kamio feels unwelcome in her own house because her "mother" is actually her aunt whose care she was put in as a troubled, younger child, etc.

The cruel reality of the sky is that it can't truly be reached from the ground, and the show's color palette shifts drastically in the episode's final moments to reflect this line of thought, running red and black like a gaping wound. A strange, stark turn from a strange, stark show.

#air #hi jane #you joining this groupwatch was quite random but I'm glad you're enjoying it #26.4.24

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

New TailsTube got me all "the idea of a good Sonic and Shadow dynamic is so distant as to no longer even feel real"

#sonic #25.4.24 #prime was almost there if sonic wasn't such an idiot #otherwise the last time their dynamic was done well was what #06? #truly this is hell

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

since I'm camping this weekend I won't get to watch Knuckles straight away so I guess it's time to mute some keywords

#sonic #25.4.24

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I want to watch Yuru Camp now but I'm going camping this weekend and I've decided to watch the new episode then since that'll be my one chance to do something like that and yk hype cool whatever but also god I wanna watch it now you know?

#yuru camp #25.4.24

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Completely incidental piece of lore established in this episode is that the isekai our mains are reverse isekai'd from is an alternate timeline Japan caused by Oda Nobunaga which is kind of hilarious when presented so matter-of-factly as this show does.

#henjin salad #25.4.24

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

This episode went kinda hard actually

#tonari youkai #25.4.24

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Not that the last couple episodes haven't been alluding to the intense emotions associated with Key's visual novel properties, but we're definitely really starting to get into it here - with vague mental inhibitions blocking people from being able to be their true selves and resulting in lots of tears and whatnot. Neato.

#air #25.4.24

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

I tried out the SRB2 Kart fan project that spun into its own game Dr Robotnik's Ring Racers and it's definitely fun but that tutorial took like 40 minutes jesus

#sonic #25.4.24

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This is attention to details man

Ganon holds a bow straight while Link holds it at an angle.

Ganon also draws the bow like a samurai, (since this Ganon is more samurai like) he positions/aim the bow then draws.

(Not shown here) Even if Link uses a long bow like Ganon he will still aim at an angle since he is a soldier. He positions/aim the bow and draws at the same time.

The bow Ganon uses will recoil meaning this is a heavy bow. (They didnt need to add that detail in, but they did man)

#zelda #absolutely fascinating #24.4.24

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

they tackled racism in this episode

#bartender #24.4.24

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This was definitely one of the more unusual resolutions to a supernatural conflict I've come across in anime but I had fun so

#air #24.4.24

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

"I had a dream. A strange dream about the sky."

So yeah, I started watching this today, because my buddy @joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh is watching it, and I am easily influenced by outside forces I suppose.

This is Air, a 2005 Kyoto Animation production from just before their legendary run that began with The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It's adapted from a KEY visual novel, and my first impression is that it is very visibly "VN-y" indeed.

The main feeling I get is one of overwhelming "summer energy." There are near constant cicada sounds in the backdrop, the skies are a clear crystal blue with huge, billowing white clouds which flip to creamy streaks of the Milky Way across an inky black at night. Everyone, especially our main character, is sweating all the time because it's so goddamn hot, and the whole thing takes place by the shore. The vibes are absolutely on-point.

In addition to this impeccable sense of place---a deliberate artistic vision---there is also a decidedly non-intentional sense of time. This show absolutely radiates 2005, most obviously from the character designs which are of a highly sexually dimorphic kind that was common in VNs and adjacent work at the time. The main guy is tall, lanky, and angular. Almost all of the women are comparatively short, round, and have the massive headlamp bug-eyes inextricably associated with the period.

The plot, such that it is, is simple but also rather odd. Essentially, our main character, Yukito, who we are given no backstory for at this point, simply arrives in town one day, nebulously "looking for" something, and attempting to earn money by plying his trade as a puppeteer---it is very much worth noting that he appears to control his puppets with no strings or other tricks---but has little success. When he meets an odd, clumsy girl named Kamio Misuzu, who trips a lot and says "gao!" when upset or frustrated, he ends up following her home, and improbably, the girl's drunkard mother drafts him as a live-in babysitter.

Some of this is probably a remnant of the show's origins as a VN---an eroge, at that, although this particular pipeline of H-game -> clean visual novel -> anime or manga adaptation was not rare back in the day---where a man randomly shoehorning himself into the lives of various women about town is the norm.

About the "gao" thing; Kamio's mother disapproves, and this dynamic can't help but remind me of Rosa's disapproval of her own daughter Maria's verbal tic from Umineko, itself a visual novel that later got a (particularly poorly-regarded in that case) anime adaptation. So far, the dynamic here seems far less fraught and abuse-laden, but it's an interesting parallel, and given that Umineko postdates Air, I wonder if it was an intentional reference. (Ryukishi07 surely would've been aware of Key at the time.)

The second girl our protagonist meets seems to style herself an alien, from a planet where everyone is "free." Freedom. Air. 'Free as a bird'? There's something here, especially when she rebuffs the idea later and makes fun of Yukito for believing her in the first place.

I cannot shake a strong feeling that this show is keeping its cards close to its chest. Given how crazy the visual novels of this period could get, I really have no idea what to expect. Although, to sell the show more on what it's doing *now* than what it might do *later*, the comedic aspects are very well done. It's a nice mix of slapstick and conversational comedy. Also, as mentioned, the show's atmosphere is just absolutely immaculate; you can practically taste the salt of the sea on the wind as you're watching this.

At the end of the episode, at around sunset, Kamio gives a little speech as she's standing, arms stretched out, with her head tilted toward the sky. I don't normally just include a bunch of screencaps in these little writeups because I like to keep them short, but what she says here just struck me as so…profoundly odd, strangely beautiful, a little reminiscent of my own experiences with mania and spiritual fervor, that I just kind of need to include it.

In a much more serious sense than usual; what DOES she mean by this? This is the most taken I've been with the first episode of an older anime in quite a while, and I really feel like I need to know more.

Sadly I probably shouldn't watch more right now, so I suppose I'll save my next batch of episodes for tomorrow or Wednesday....but gah, the temptation to just stay up until 6am and try to marathon this all at once is SO present.

#air #hi jane #24.4.24

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

We're following on from last week's theme of establishing Anthy herself as a character more, although I definitely don't think this is the direction I expected lol? Super duper funny though so not complaining. An observation - the snail got a border, the octopus got a border, but the snake did not get a border. Interesting bias, Utena.

#utena #23.4.24

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#23.4.24

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fart the animation has been dropped

#wind breaker #23.4.24

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dab

#spice and wolf #23.4.24