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So I just got around to watching OreGairu 9. Was that shot of Hikki tumbling down the waterfall not the greatest moment ever? Why is this show so good and why is everything else so bad?

It was suuuch a good moment. We are getting spoiled like hell by this season.

I dropped jojo part 3 at ep 10, but I heard recent eps are good and Dio is back. Can I skipped to the good ep, or is it worth it to power through all of the series?

I'd say it'd be pretty easy and likely worth it to just skip to the second half of Stardust Crusaders. The second half has been of an overall significantly higher quality than the first half. There are still a couple lousy episodes, but far more good ones.

What do you think about video games having an option to do something nice, without getting a reward? Where being evil would be more beneficial and being nice yields no benefit.

It's an awkward attempt to create some kind of parallel with the real world, where doing the right thing is often tough and thankless and you do it because it's the right thing. The problem is, in the real world, even if the right thing is tough and thankless, doing it is still right - helping other people is an inherent good, and you should rightly feel proud of giving of yourself because it's the right thing to do. In a videogame, we're talking about 0s and 1s, not actual people, which makes it much harder to create situations where doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do is an emotionally interesting choice.
Many games resolve this dilemma by making the choice "will you kill the puppy/harvest the little girl Y/N?", essentially banking on our inherent disgust for such all-caps Evil Acts to bridge the emotional disconnect. This is a clumsy solution, one that draws attention to itself because it possesses the opposite of nuance. A better solution would be to make the player legitimately invested in the "good" of some particular world, likely through giving you some stake in the people who would be negatively affected by you choosing the "bad" choice. But that's trickier to do in the context of mainstream, diversion-focused videogames. And even in that case, most games will not punish you for charity in ways that feel legitimately meaningful. To "solve" this, some other games simply /remove/ your ability to act charitably - they make you an inevitable participant in acts that will make you feel guilty (like Shadow of the Colossus, or Demon's Souls). This can definitely work, but it's a very specific and narrow solution.

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Honestly, the Sound episode was, for me, "welcome to adult life. Where younger prodigies make you feel worthless because they are better than you in every way."

I hadn't even considered it from that angle, but yeah, ouch. Adulthood is fun.

Do you think Hazuki was right about Kumiko liking her child-hood friend? Then there was also the whole insecure self-reflection scene. But I felt like each previous episode showed the opposite quite clearly, so it seems strange. Or is that the point, how she's only making a fuss out of it?

Kumiko's clearly never considered Shuichi that way at all, but seemed a little startled by the idea of it this episode. Up until now, the body language and framing have demonstrated no romantic feelings that way (in fact, it's been the opposite), whereas her body language towards Kousaka has been super charged. This episode was definitely a bit more ambiguous, since Kumiko specifically framed her feelings towards Kousaka as her being inspired by her in a musical sense, whereas she was feeling awkward around Shuichi for the first time. But she'd feel awkward around Shuichi either way, because Shuichi just rejected her friend and clearly likes her.
Before this episode, I'd have said there was absolutely no indication there might be any sort of romantic tension between Kumiko and Shuichi, but a couple moments this episode seemed like they might support that. On the other hand, there was also some pretty tense stuff between Kumiko and Kousaka. It's really up to the show to go where it will, I guess.
And no, this is not an invitation to deluge me with novel spoilers. I'd rather have the story tell itself.

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What two characters would make for the best stars of a Fate/ spin-off sitcom-esque show?

Kirei/Gil is the clear, easy, obvious answer - that sitcom writes itself, and really should exist. Kirei and Gil rambling about mongrels, Kirei and Gil arguing with Subway employees, Kirei and Gil shopping for window curtains.
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Liked by: M T BlueEyesWhitePrivilege Bob Sagget DIGITAL@MUGI Arjuna Chatrathi SpectrumDreamer Malcolm Loo Rose Bridges Abbott Veldhuizen Adam Wednesdays

Mind giving some more context about Ahmed?

He's a guy who made a lot of comments on the top shows list and really, really likes One Piece.

Fate/ ask. I think everyone saying you didn't "get" Caster are just having a difficult time separating *anime* Caster from *side material / sequel* Caster where she's a more nuanced character and also a moe newlywed housewife (with a Saber dress-up fetish). And to be fair, they're right! ;p

Yeah, people often seem to clarify their "there's a lot more depth there" statements by saying how, say, a certain sigh or unhappy glance is reflecting what was 20 pages of backstory in the VN. Seems like people are conflating nods to character development from the original material with actual character development within the anime.
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Liked by: Eelz Tiago Coutinho

How about fave bosses for Demon's and Bloodborne?

Demon's is... well, it'd have to be Flamelurker, right? I'm pretty sure Flamelurker was the specific encounter that formally created the "Dark Souls genre." Up until that point, you could sorta muddle your way through the game, but Flamelurker demanded you understand the give and take of the mechanics, that you understood what kind of game you were actually playing. I'm very happy Demon's Souls allowed you to try all of the worlds from the beginning, because that allowed me to get stuck on Flamelurker for a long time without getting truly frustrated, and when I finally beat that thing, it was more satisfying than any other game. That jerk was the hard sell.
For Bloodborne, I'm guessing it was just Father Gascoigne? I feel like Bloodborne underused the fact that the most compelling fights were generally against other hunters, and really should have included more dramatic, climactic battles in the style of Gascoigne and Gehrman. Though for just "rhythm of battle" points, I also came to really enjoy fighting the Blood-Starved Beast throughout the chalices. Souls games can sort of be reduced to a kind of rhythm game, and the rhythm of some fights is more enjoyable than others.

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Favourite boss in Darksouls (I'm greedy, so 1 and 2)

The original is the easy one - Ornstein and Smough. Probably the best boss in any of these games so far.
For 2, I'd say... maybe the Looking Glass Knight? It's not the most inventive fight gameplay-wise (not that many of the 2 bosses are), but it's an aesthetically gorgeous encounter.
If we're including DLC, then both Fume Knight and Sir Allone are up there, too. Those two are a joy to fight.

It'll be a long time before those failings are overcome. An American was arguing very angrily with me that people still live in the Ghettoes because they ignore opportunities to leave, and so if they get involved in crime it's their choice

Yeah, American culture is madness from the root up. The desire to think our capitalism actually works, and that there's class mobility, and that people "deserve" their wealth, is very deeply ingrained.
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Liked by: Bob Sagget

Would you agree that prison is a broken system and there should be way more focus on rehabilitation of criminals? (If you have a different take on it I'd gladly hear it)

Of course, but I think framing the prison system issue as an issue that's actually related to crime as a given is a bad assumption to make. There are more fundamental societal failings going on here, from ones that are specifically racism-based to ones that are woven into our form of capitalism and views on public resources.
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Liked by: Arjuna Chatrathi Eelz Rose Bridges

Let us know when you watch Sound! so we can ask stuff!

'kay. You'll probably know, I assume I'll be around twitter when I get to it. I have work on Tuesdays, so I generally don't start watching Euph until 6 PM or so.

given his character development, how well would hachiman fair in as a stay at home dad?

Brother Gallagher
He's like seventeen, and still a bit of a misanthrope. Thinking about him as a dad seems pretty ambitious.

Do you have any thoughts on the conclusion of the fight from the past few episodes of FSN? I can understand that having its final outcome a week after episode 20 lessened may have its impact, but do you think it at least answered some character-related questions, considering its title of "answer"?

Not really. This episode didn't really say anything the last episode didn't already, and the episode before that, and... well, basically every conversation between Archer and Shirou so far. They just repeated stuff for a while and then the scene was finally over.

Reading any SNAFU discussion on MAL/Reddit? Anything people write about it in blogs?

I've read some of the pieces Guy's been doing, and I read the comments for my ANN pieces and on the blog. That's about it.

On a less-discussed (at least where I've looked) Fate note, how do you feel about Kirei's death here, narratively?

I mentioned it in my notes for last week, but it was a pretty anticlimactic death, which kinda reflects how most of the cast has exited from this story. The structure just doesn't really work as a self-contained narrative - many characters have simply disappeared from the story altogether, having never really served much purpose. The show's composition is kind of a mess.

Have you ever written Stream of Consciousness/what is it like?

Yeah - it's a trick I like a lot, actually, but it's really easy to overdo. It's really important to try and keep the audience's perspective in mind when pulling a style trick like that, and to make sure the writing flows well and the pacing works.

Do you think part of the difficulty of online discussion is how difficult it can be to decipher tone? Sarcasm and the like are not always immediately obvious if you can't hear or see the person

That is /an/ issue, but I wouldn't consider it a really central one. The main problem is that you can currently send outright threats and hate messages to people without any consequences, and until that's dealt with, issues of tonal nuance are a bit of a side bar.

Do you find online anonymity to be a naturally good thing with some bad tendencies, a naturally bad thing with some benefits, or something of a double-edged sword with an about equal amount of positives and negatives to it? Also, can you elaborate on why you think as such?

Naturally bad thing with some benefits. There are some people who really need anonymity to be able to express themselves or find support, but most often, I see anonymity used as a weapon to empower violence and hatred. I wish there were a way for anonymity to help the people who need it without providing a weapon for the people who abuse it.
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Liked by: Student no.0

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