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Death Billiards was intense! I had no idea that the guy worked with Hamasaki twice, that scene from S;G was really good. Glad you brought Death Billiards to my attention before it got lost in the sea of plan-to-watch/on-holds. A lot more excited for Death Parade now!

Kekkai Sensen's visuals are really nice but I can't really get behind much else. Danmachi is.. kinda generic and mediocre. I was kinda interested in Ore Monogatari but the staff being the same as Chihayafuru's--especially when I've got all of that downloaded for almost a year and a half now--makes me feel like I need to watch it first for some reason. Yeah, at least I can look forward to Arslan every week, and if Liden starts to fall on its face in production I can enjoy(?) them ruining something else again.

TF's 7th episode really was terrible. I recall there was a shot where a hideously deformed Asimov was talking about re-growing his arm and there's just a split second where his fucking nose disappears, and more generally, every time one of the characters moved it looked like their bodies were just horrifically jerking into motion. Really pissed at Liden for ruining Masanori Shino's character designs since I always enjoy how much detail he puts into them--seeing his great work with Shigurui and then what happened with TerraFormars was kinda heartbreaking. And yeah, no clue about that last episode with the sped up roaches, the last half of the thing already milked the crap out of whatever animation that was left from the OP, as well as the first OVA when it's just showing Komachi punching roaches again. Apart from the lighting being slightly different it's just completely re-used.

I was actually taken completely by surprise with how nice the second OVA looked, all it was missing were Thien's Bible quotes™. I'm guessing Liden had a lot of extra time to polish it up or something, which made the contrast with the TV series messiness so much starker. I'd though it was Hamasaki storyboarding the second OVA too but it ended up being his assistant director (who I think has worked with him since Texh), and Hamasaki wasn't even one of the episode directors for it. Still surprising and impressive though.

Dark Souls is cool! I think the Capra Demon was something I lucked out on. After flailing around and managing to get rid of the dogs, I think I just abused the stairs in that area and fucked with his AI enough for me to eventually muddle through. I was really fucking terrible at that when I started playing, and I still am. Even worse in DaSII where the keyboard+mouse controls are even more fucked since there's all those extra buttons/functionality they added and you can't remap things very extensively.

Right, I forgot to mention that Hamasaki's probably gonna be storyboarding/directing an Arslan episode at some point (images from his twitter here and here). Hope it's a good one though I doubt the visuals are gonna hold up since today's episode didn't exactly wow me and had a bunch of characters looking like they came out of the FKMT anime for some reason.

Still wonder why he settled with working at fucking Liden of all places, I can't imagine it's been good for him--he probably lost a few years of life trying to get TerraFormars done.

In fact, right after TF finished airing a guy started tweeting at him and (based on shitty moonrune knowledge and putting the individual sentences through Google translate) asked that he take care of himself since other directors who are around his age--and other people working in the anime industry--die really suddenly. Kinda morbid. I hope he's okay.

Okay okay!!

..I might add that yeah, holy shit this season is ridiculous. Might as well be the most anime I've ever watched at once.

I was hamstrung by consecutive university papers that drove me insane despite trying to get them done early -- getting the new season started didn't help with that either...

In regards to the OST, I always felt that the recording in Rome might have influenced some of their design of Lux (or vice versa). The little aqueduct-like structure around the Obelisk you can see clearly in the final episode (https://i.imgur.com/3jqjvEp.png) gives me that sense, and just the architecture in general. The liner notes seem to suggest that as well, something about a lot of tragic history that comes with an ancient city like Rome, which is quite fitting.

Bahamut really blew me away. I had high hopes for it since I'm looking forward to whatever MAPPA's pushing out (still haven't watched Zankyou no Terror or anything else they've done other than like, Teekyu, go figure) but seeing the PV, and later, the first episode really made me go "wow, isn't this just a shitty TCG promotion?" Seems like the staff are super competent as well, so I'm looking forward to what it'll offer apart from animation. Garo also looks nice but I've not seen it yet but again, super impressed that MAPPA's doing a lot this season that seems to be of really high production quality.

Yeah there's a lot of unreasonable shit being thrown at TF. I'm about to watch the third episode but I've already seen the MSPaint censoring--rather than Photoshop gradient censoring--of one of the scenes on /a/ and getting ready for it. I'm even seeing people complain from character designs, which I only agree with in regards to Liden being unable to keep it consistent. I actually enjoyed the second episode and was surprised at how decently it was animated (12 animation directors needed to keep it looking serviceable considered); I was reminded of a lot of the 2s animation in Shigurui at times. I was really expecting a lot more of the first episode and the OVA's less fluid and less movement-emphasized stuff which seems to be a Hamasaki staple as well. The anime-original stuff as a nice touch and the whole baseball scene will be good to call back to when it's needed later, considering the cutting of those back-stories, presumably! Also loved the great transition from the terrestrial roach being whacked to the club-wielding Johj and the dead Chinese girl.

Well, if it was my comment that got you on that then that's cool! I imagine the ridiculously unwarranted backlash on /a/ or any/everywhere else was pretty pivotal to that as well.

I did have a lot of problems trying to grind through F/SN -- I ended up watching it shortly after writing that comment and wasn't disappointed by the amount of infodumping! I especially loved the part where Archer starts praising Rin for being SUCH A SKILLED MAGUS FOR ONE SO YOUNG and barely five seconds later he starts 'reminding her' about the Grail War, mana, summoning and servants in GREAT DETAIL. I guess all of these exposition episodes are better alternative to not using a bunch of 40~min episodes and subjecting themselves to criticism about poor adaptations, NOT EXPLAINING IMPORTANT DETAILS and pacing. The fight scene was definitely cool though.

Well this is late as fuck. Apologies for that, I was struggling with walls of text that weren't of the MAL persuasion.

Yeah I've definitely seen that 'episode by episode reaction to the series', as well as the one where they guy just looks bored throughout the entire run of the series and just ends up slamming his face onto the table by the end or whatever. I'm honestly surprised at how much complaining you can see at times on /a/ when it comes to slower-moving series -- especially with anything that Hamasaki directs. It's not like it doesn't pick up, and I was also totally sucked in with the early episodes. I think the music and the sound design might have helped with that, it's really a wonderful piece of work; there were recently scans of the soundtrack booklets on BakaBT and I'd checked those out. Turns out it was a pretty elaborate and intense recording process that took place in Tokyo, NYC and Rome--in a studio beneath a cathedral, of all places!--with local musicians in each location.

Totally understand about the Vita. My friend recently got one and had some great trouble trying to play one of the un-localized Senran Kagura games without skinning himself alive for it. I think he still ended up getting skinned alive for it.

So how are you liking the new season so far? Terra Formars, despite a pretty rocky start and the constant production issues that seem to plaguing it, seems to be getting better! The censoring is a complete travesty though. Also noticing a lot of complaining about Hamasaki's directing and all his visual tics that come with it -- what are your thoughts on it? I'm guessing the opinion on anything he's got a lot of control over tends to be a bit divisive, especially these days. I honestly wonder how the reaction was back when Shigurui was airing, or the episodes of S;G that just oozed Hamasaki.

Was also really pleased with the first episode of Log Horizon II when I watched it early this morning, and definitely amused with all the people continuing to cry 'DEEEEN! DEEEEEEN!' when the art quality and character detail has mostly been a marked improvement for me.

I'm probably gonna get on the new F/SN series but I'm feeling a bit uneasy about stepping into two 1-hour long episodes which might just be filled with loads of talking heads and infodump exposition dialogue. I think I almost fell asleep with the first episode of Fate/Zero anyhow...

But yeah, sorry about the super late response again!

EDIT: Also need to mention that, much like your wordpress/blog, I enjoy reading your twitter as well!

Strangely with Viz's publication they had all the early stuff in the earliest issues -- if I recall correctly they seemed to kick YGO out of their monthly lineup (with a few chapters thrown in every so often) while continuing to publish the other volumes -- they came back to the tail end of that series with the Millennium World thing just as I was sort of moving out of anime and manga, so that was a very strange way to do things. I guess I should be watching the anime if some of the staff were that good!

That interview was honestly a bit disappointing for all the media coverage I've seen for TEXHNOLYZE even though it was very much appreciated. I was disappointed to see Ueda give some rather vague answers, especially near the end about what he was trying to communicate or whatever -- just to compare them, there was a translated NewType article on Texhnolyze and he gave some really passionate opinions about what he wanted to do with the series (http://texhnolyzeillumination.wordpress.com/opinions-and-discussions/abe-and-ueda-share-thoughts/ -- a pity the rest of that site isn't as good as that little article, though!). Now, I'm not sure which of those interviews came first -- though I'll wager that the DVD interview thingy was older -- but it's interesting that he seemed to have taken a step back in terms of specifically defining what he was trying to achieve there. The NewType article really reminded me of how upfront he was about lain -- I'd even go as far as to say that he felt aggressive in trying to provoke a distinct reaction from Japan and the West with all of the cultural differences that he believed were present -- though Texhnolyze comes across as a more universal story, which he seems to acknowledge in that interview. I'm thinking that the reception to lain maybe influenced the creative process on Texhnolyze, but I'm not too sure about that.

I still really enjoy those episodes, and I'm sad that Ueda felt he needed to defend his decision to focus so much on Ichise's situation -- I'm reminded of a lot of people who just drop the series because of the 'terrible pacing' and Ichise's whole deal. Even for a lot of positive stuff I read for the series tends to blast that sequence of episodes when I think a lot of what's shown reveals a lot of important information about the setting, and also bears a lot of thematic significance!

Man, I honestly haven't touched a console/handheld in a long while though I'd probably appreciate having a Vita while at uni or something. There are a lot of games on consoles that I regret not being able to play, and I would really like to 're-connect' with all the console-only stuff since I've not done any of that since like, a stupidly short-lived affair with the Wii all those years ago. It's hard to believe but I don't think I've ever played any of the GTA games -- I'm not sure why I haven't either.

I swear I'd be caught in the same pitfall of buying too many games if I didn't have easily accessible GOG (DRM free, so I can feel even worse about it!) torrents all over the place, as well as friends who are absurdly willing to buy me stuff on Steam even though I feel awful about accepting them and don't ask them to buy stuff for me 95% of the time.

I really wonder how Hamasaki will handle another adaptation -- with Shigurui I recall there were a few times where he adapted one chapter for one episode, and another where he'd go through a lot more content (almost a whole volume, I think) for others, so I'm interested to see how he'll do with that. I sincerely hope it's not as rushed through as that OVA was!

Man I haven't touched anything related to Yu-Gi-Oh! since reading the manga in Viz's Shonen Jump publication however many years ago when that was still relevant -- reading the early chapters that were unrelated to the card game was a bit shocking to my younger self since a lot of it got kinda brutal at times (especially considering how seriously Japan seems to take bullying and the like), though I believe this was the reaction that most people in the west had anyway! Would love to see how Konaka might do with that franchise, and what direction he might take it in.

It's really an odd thing with Konaka -- there seems to be interviews with every other core staff involved (Ueda, ABe, and Hamasaki to an extent) but nothing on Konaka. The longest interview you can get with ABe and Ueda that was on the DVD extras for Texhnolyze (transcript here: http://eyeresist.wordpress.com/2007/06/21/texhnolyze-interview/) definitely seems to suggest that this project was more Ueda than anybody else, though ABe does mention Konaka's (late) writing for the final few episodes and how impressed he was with them. In terms of a 'who-did-the-most' kind of ranking as far as Texhnolyze goes, I'd probably list it as Ueda > Hamasaki > Konaka > ABe. While the ABe character designs do end up pulling everything together I get the feeling that overall he wasn't nearly as involved as he was with Haibane, NieA_7 or even lain.

Yeah my terrible not-watching-anime habits don't really make much sense to me either -- moments after I typed up that last wall of text I realized that I should've followed up with a short message acknowledging that what I didn't think was a motivation problem probably WAS a motivation problem. One of these days I'll attack that mountain of stuff so I'm not just acting like I know anything.

As for vidya, I play a lot of Dota2 despite that community being pretty horrendous -- it's kind of a matter of tradition for me since I've been playing the original for so long and many of my ancient e-friends have also been along for the ride. Quite fun though, when the shit-flinging between friends and the other team is limited.

I've gotten back into the Total War series now that a year and 15 patches later, Rome 2 is starting to be playable despite still requiring half a dozen mods to rid myself of the disgusting aftertaste from CA's terrible design decisions and shekel-hoarding DLC practices. There is the issue that my toaster is barely able to run that game on minimal settings though! The older games in the franchise like Rome 1 and Medieval 2 are great since I'm a sucker for those time periods and they've also got vibrant modding communities with some great stuff in terms of autistic historical accuracy mods or just full conversions into Warhammer Fantasy or something.

Apart from that I still do have a certain fondness for looking for a lot of older games -- CRPGs and the like -- and just sampling stuff and seeing how much I like them. I've always had an affinity for the old Infinity Engine CRPGs (never finished Planescape or any of the Icewind Dale games though...), the Wizardry series, Darklands -- which is difficult for me to get in to but enjoyable nonetheless -- and a lot of 3DO's Might&Magic catalog. Any kind of old RTS game with interesting mechanics gets me a bit excited too since I'm missing a good solid RTS that's not Stacraft 2 these days.

Yeah I suppose people with a good grip on the language would probably be translating stuff that people want, or just doing something better with their time. I remember a few DJTs I went to were very much filled with snobbery and moonrune greentexting.

Man, if TF really is gonna be one-cour that'll really suck -- I wonder how far it will go, and if it does go far enough, I wonder how they'll handle the transition from fighting JOHJs to crafty Chinese assholes. I'm already having reservations about Liden Films' lack of a track record and any possible QUALITY moments that Hamasaki and the character designer can't save the show from...

With the new anniversary series thingy I didn't consider the possibility of bringing Konaka along, it's a compelling idea! All the characters being a bit more grown up might work well with a darker storyline -- assuming that this new project isn't just filled with feel-good content rather than something like Tamers, which I still need to re-watch without all of the omissions and crap done by the dub (but it's still remarkable to me that even watching it as a kid with really blurry memories of it, that it definitely felt darker). The same goes for Adventure and the related movies.

Yeah I mean, with Hamasaki, Ueda and ABe all having twitter accounts (good on the nips for liking twitter so much I guess) it was bizarre to me that Konaka didn't bother, considering his English seems to be the best out of all of them.

I think the last I heard of Konaka being in contact with English fans/speakers was on some cyberpunk forum in 2011, where some of the users wanted to ask him about Texhnolyze: he responded in English and let them know that they should credit Texhnolyze more to Yasuyuki Ueda than himself -- much like it was with lain, though I feel that Texhnolyze was far more personal to Ueda just based on the interviews with him that I've seen/read -- and also that they'd need a translator. I don't think anything else came from that short exchange though, which is a shame.

I doubt it's a motivation problem per se but it's more of a stupid paradox where I don't think I can just bolt myself down, sit still and just finish or catch up with something, be it something that's airing now or an older series I've heard great things about -- I think to myself that I could probably be doing something better with my time but I don't realize that I don't do anything better (vidya games or whatever) with my time regardless, so it's a bit of a terrible cycle! Tons of close-to-finished-but-not-finished anime on the On-Hold list and tons of things that I've downloaded off of AB that haven't been touched either. It's a bit frustrating that I finished LoGH within like two months during a decently packed school semester and I've not done anything close to that in the recent months, though that might just be a testament to how much I enjoyed the series and the piss-yellow arial subs. At the very least I'll finish at least one series a season (this is sounding iffy to me now)!

I wouldn't be surprised if the DJT people were that difficult -- I'd imagine some seasoned /a/-goer fluent in Japanese might be even more insufferable than usual. I should really get back into getting a handle on the language though (the DJTs reading lists were pretty good from what I remember!), if only to attempt to translate more of the un-translated Texhnolyze stuff I've found.

It's nice to hear that KC responds to that kind of stuff on Twitter, and at the very least it seems more involved than how ABe's account seems to be run, or any other account that's just like 'follow people that follow me instantly!'

Holy shit this got too long god damn.

Sorry for the late reply!

Konaka was pretty far down the NEET deep end when Despera was drifting about in limbo due to Nakamura's sickness, and now that he's ded he seems to have fully embraced NEETdom. I wonder if he's still reachable by email -- I know ain, who was translating all the extra lain and Despera media, said a while ago that she'd mail him in 2014 inquiring about Despera, in addition to including any questions that people had for him. However,that was basically a year ago and ain herself is apparently having some personal problems as well, and hasn't really said anything on /a/ or her blog since a few months now. Apparently it's not good on the psyche or the health to be involved with anything ABe/Konaka/Nakamura these days.

I'm thinking that Konaka might be writing books or something since he's a Lovecraft guy, or at least translating stuff over into Japanese -- but that's just pure speculation on my part. Maybe he's working on his doll collection or something. As for other works from him I've yet to get started on Ghost Hound or Mononoke, which are really high on my list -- but that doesn't mean much when it comes to me.

I'm afraid I don't really have anything to suggest for runes -- I haven't gone back to working on my own (lack of) understanding of the language for a while now, and I doubt I'm better at the language than you are. It's not really a suggestion, but I've always thought of flocking to the daily Japanese threads on /a/ (not sure if they're actually daily these days but I still see them around) since there seem to be a lot of good resources there. I get a feeling you've probably already looked around there though.

EDIT: I was also wondering how you got KC to follow you on twitter. That's pretty cool!

Yeah I ended up watching a bit of that episode after a friend informed me that he was directing that one a week before. The slightly sterile-looking desert environment seemed to make a bit of a return in Terra Formars too! It's cool that he ended up doing the creature/alien design as well -- I think he'd make a great horror anime director (another team-up with Konaka, where-ever he is these days, might be nice).

I'd love to dive into the older projects he's worked on (that Ai Monogatari anthology series looks interesting, and the same goes for anything he was a key animator on) but I'm pretty sluggish with watching anime in general as you might have guessed from the awful watching/on-hold/PTW lists.

As for moonrunes, I'm pathetically basic with it -- lots of problems with kanji, though stuff like rikaichan and anki have sorta helped with that when reading tweets and stuff.

EDIT: By the way I ended up reading a lot of your wordpress entries, I really like the insight you've provided on a lot of subjects. You're a much better writer than I am!

Yeah that that was definitely me as I tend to flock to any Texhnolyze threads or mentions of Hamasaki in general on /a/ (the tweet in question: https://twitter.com/hamasakina/status/452855697487577089). If I did cause that news to spread like wildfire then that's good too, I guess.

I use ratings to keep track of things I like, since I have a bad memory. If I dislike something, whether it's subpar or atrocious, the level of badness doesn't really matter.

Amüsanter Schlichtungsversuch von dir, auch wenn das einer heftigen Beleidigung gleichkommt. Hälst du mich wirklich für so dumm? Wie auch immer, du kommst viel zu spät, Zaku. Außerdem: Wenn du schon was erreichen willst, dann solltest du logischerweise auch selbst was anbieten. Also, welcher aniPodium-User versteckt sich hinter Hibari aus dem Sakuga-IRC? Patchou / Lilo ist Kaito Hasegawa, das weiß ich schon lange. Hätte aber auch nicht erwartet, dass diese Spinner mir tatsächlich sogar ins IRC folgen; erst 4chan, dann BBS und nun noch IRC.

Wenn du mir das verrätst, reden wir vielleicht weiter - auch über den Rest.