Lurker > Strife2

That was the match the night needed. Reminded me of Cody/Brock III.

Well, that certainly was a match. Not very good, but it was a match.

Gunther/Zayn and the main event better put their working shoes on. Tonight has been kinda bleh.

Andrade is the new Alberto. Doesn't matter what he does: he will only be cared about so much.

Some of those table spots were fucking dangerous. Worst thing was Ciampa jumping knees first. I mean, I know he has a bad neck and back, but good lord, that probably sucked.

That is kayfabe. It is what they came up with after Cody turning down the match for the Rock became a Daniel Bryan thing online. They are playing off reality and pivoting about as well as they can.

• Rock debuted in January, says the "Head of the Table" line to put people on the Roman/Rock train
• Cody Wins the Rumble and points at Roman
• Rock calls Cody and says, "All due respect, I want to face Roman. You can finish your story anytime," which Cody agrees to.
• Rock whispers in Cody's ear, "Let's make a great show and do it for Dusty (Rhodes) and Rocky (Johnson)." Claims everything went as they agreed until Cody didn't look back in a Bret/Hogan kinda way, but in a, "Rock ran over my goofy ass dog" kinda way.
• Rock hears the online backlash and coins the "Cody Crybabies" line on McAfee's show.
• Rock heads to Vegas, says Cody didn't call him, find him in the back, just walks up as Roman/Rock hype up the Bloodline tree.
• Cody calls bullshit and calls the Bloodline a bunch of thugs and goons. Says their grandparents would be ashamed of Roman/Rock.
• Rock slaps the shit out of his mouth, and goes on to lean into the reaction, joins the Bloodline (allegedly), and signs off by telling Cody, "Fuck your story."

Since then, we've had HHH come out and book Roman/Cody, throwing out Rock catchphrases, and Rock clapping back in what looks like an eventual HHH/Rock on air segment.

Why does Dave insist on being on camera, or even on social media? He's either an unintelligible crackpot on camera or audio, or a complete asshat on Twitter.

Raeliana was awesome.

I watched one episode of Concrete Revultio and wondered if its a cool zany idea I want to stick with or a confusing mess I can't follow and don't want to bother.

I am so confused.

Finished it, and it stayed pretty funny, despite not being great or anything. It was a different spin on D&D fantasy and isekai (stats) worlds, while poking fun at itself and doing enough weird real estate stuff to differentiate it.

Dragon Goes House-Hunting isn't amazing or anything, but they successful pulled off a Metal Gear Solid Cardboard Box reference...I'm on board.

God, just pay the right actors proper money. For fuck sake.

Otherside Picnic is pretty good. It's Mushi-shi with a side dish of yuri.

Snow White with Red Hair was pretty good.

Tried a show called Dragon Goes House-Hunting. The dragon is a bit insufferable at times, but the comedy, character banter, meta jokes, and monsters all feel weirdly charming. I think I'll stick with this.

Finally finished Last Exile: Fam, the Silver Wing. The overall show stayed consistently good, though focusing on each character's internal motivations and reasons for political intrigue reminded me of Space Battleship Yamato. It was worthy of the Last Exile moniker, which was good. Another 20 eps of the show seemed daunting, but it was worth doing.

It'll be nice to dig back into shorter shows though. I'm so used to 12 episode stuff nowadays, 40-50 ep things (Two full seasons of Exile) seem fucking daunting.

That looks pretty dumb

No D&D tonight, so I can catch up on some anime.

Goblins....

I finished My Love Story with Yamada Lv. 999. The gaming stuff is there, but about 25% and sort of an afterthought to the main romance, which I found got better as the show wore on. I didn't like Yamada at first. However, he grew on me, because there were quite a few times his very dry/boring way of speaking gave way to actual care for people and especially Akane. She was a bit boneheaded, but balanced out Yamada quite a bit. Endless enthusiasm without forgetting, "Hey, I'm kinda depressed some of the time." I'm glad the show ended right at 13 episodes. You just know this sort of thing would have been dragged out to 24-26 in the old days. Kinda glad it wasn't: just enough to get the point across without being insufferably slow.

goblins

Its entire premise is, "What if D&D but anime with Mando hunting goblins," but goes about it very matter of factly. Vox Machina was made by the Critical Role people with an American style which suited its comedic focus better.

Goblin Slayer doesn't really do anything really well other than expressing a lot of cheeky ways to plan, carry out, and murdering stuff. It is definitely carried by that. It isn't helped it is yet another unearned harem.

High Elf Archer best girl by the way, which obviously means Priestess will win...

Note: I am here in this topic BECAUSE I found this to actually be a rational place. Look at the anime, pro wrestling, or any game-specific board on GameFAQs and you'll see what "normal" internet is like.

The sad fact that KP and I are both saying this is the best and most rational discussion on the subject should be very telling and an indictment. Admittedly, I do sound VERY bitter, but it doesn't come from nothing.

I would, if it was actually available. Baccano, Darker than Black, and Hell Girl are in streamer/Aniplex jail or some weird ass limbo. I'm not spending $130-$350 on Amazon on a show, no matter what.

God I miss Darker than Black so much.

Ah yes. Black Lagoon. Good choice. I go back to the videos of them saying "fuck" and I think the count was 250-260 for the show and 100-110 for the movie...I think

"FUCKING MOTHERFUCKING FUCKS!"

I think the nicest thing anyone said until this topic (that I recall anyway) was exactly what Bane described. "It's evened out: there isn't as much weird variety, the floor is definitely higher, even if the ceiling is lower."

I mean, I love Bebop as much as the next guy, but there have been plenty of shows as good as that since. I just wonder if people bothered to look.

The shitty Youtuber line is pretty hilarious. AmaLee and JubyPhonic have a million subs each for being cover artists, leading to (in AmaLee's case) the lead role in Dress Up Darling. The dub actresses of Ana and Yor also did Youtube before their breaks, and YongYea is going to be Kazuma fucking Kiryu going forward...so

Yeah, fuck whoever that guy was and his opinions.

If more people were reacting like that, then a lot of 25 years of angsty gatekeeping would probably be avoided. God, it's refreshing.

I think more often than not, they vocalize those in comedies just because. Anime is definitely becoming more meta, so they probably just get away with whatever they want to say now. They do make weird sound effects here and there, but I recall Greg Ayres (Ghost Stories FTW; he legit signed it that way) telling us that they try to stay conversational or matter of fact while dubbing. I do definitely think there's emphasis in not trying to go for "Saturday Morning Cartoon" in a lot of voice acting whenever possible. It comes off as flat I suppose, but the inverse of that would be, "Oh god, that is such a put on, I'd rather not."

Screams and other stuff is usually different. I remember Tony Oliver (Lupin Part 2) telling me he did a Gungrave scream that blew out his voice each time he did it. You can probably guess what scene he's referring to.

So who knows. It could be skill related, ease of use, the type of show involved, and other things.

KamikazePotato posted...

I think the issue is that unless you're a native Japanese speaker - as in you grew up in Japan - people aren't going to be good at judging how good a voice is.

It's very telling is that I've never seen a pure sub watcher ever admit that Japanese VA for any show is bad. That would imply that all Japanese VA is good, which is fundamentally impossible. It's far more likely that western people just can't tell the difference.

That's exactly it. I've never seen the inverse ever being discussed as a counterpoint. Sure. I'd imagine a native speaker in their own language and own writing is going to have a better time expressing things, but that doesn't mean it is a 1:1 "for it is automatically good" reason. The most I've heard is, "Well, they get trained in it at a school or job specifically for it." Again, being trained at a school doesn't guarantee you're good at something. Otherwise, I'd be a sports coach or occupational therapist right now, rather than working retail.

To be fair to my own point, I bring up stuff like River City Girls. I'm currently playing now. Though it is based on a Japanese franchise, it is totally made by an English developer with English actors first, and you can tell by the writing. I'd assume the same is true for stuff like Vox Machina and RWBY and the like. They are aping a look, but you cannot understate the difference in culture and look and feel.

Ghost Stories and Shin Chan (and Panty/Stocking, though I don't know if that was ever confirmed) were stripped out and completely retooled for and English audience and just complete weirdness between the dub actors just fucking around and having fun. I would wonder what a Japanese dub of an English show would be in comparison.

WhiteLens posted...

I've learned that more often than not, the English voice actors themselves know what's the proper pronunciation (because c'mon a lot of them are weebs as well) but they're forced to comply with the request of their client and thus "mispronounce" words. I recall Persona 5 was a big case of this.

And some voice actors have alluded that if they try to contest it, they get marked as someone who can't follow directions. So it's a lost cause if they're trying to get paid.

I'm pretty sure Mortal Kombat is another example of this, since I highly doubt most of the VAs think that Shirai Ryu should be said as "shuh-rye rye-yu" but they have obey Ed Boon and say it that way in-game.

I remember a story John Swasey (Shinigami from Soul Eater, and pick a cop/mob old dude, he's probably done it) said about Arcana Famiglia. He said he was brought in as the last set of recordings. He went to start his lines, going "Fah-me-li-a," and gets stopped. The director (who he didn't name) said, "Isn't it Fah-mig-li-a?" Swasey's going, "Um...what? Fuck no!" The director looks up after a second and says, "Fuck...well, uh, we've recorded all the others saying it the second way and don't have time to bring them all back in, so could you just do it too?"

I would bet this sort of thing happens all the time. What's funny was it wasn't even Asian based words this time.

I just wish the default wasn't "Wow, dubs suck, you're a fucking weirdo." I forget who it was, but someone in this topic last year "joked" to me, "Wow, I feel sorry that you watch dubs." Without knowing I was actually legally blind first...like wow.

Anyway, the default stance should be, "like what you like: don't be a dick." I just wish Dubs didn't have 25-30 years of "Wow, they suck, and you suck for watching them, dorkface" as the usual stance of "admittedly" weirdos on the internet. As someone who watched dubs first because that was the available thing on channels, then two out of necessity, there's only been about 5% of the time I dump a show because I think something is bad enough its the dubbing's fault. Probably even lower at this stage. The one time I DID watch sub over dub was Love Hina, just cause I remember watching subbed in college on some weird Winamp thing on a loop. When I watched the dub version a few years later, the actors they chose were all...miscast and doing weird prononciations.

Anyway, I think dubs get a bad rap even now, and you'd think the default reaction to dub discussion (like VA reveals) would be more, "Awesome, can't wait," and less, "OH wait, the dub is actually...good now?" Still happens with stuff like SpyxFamily. Like, what a slap in the face to the actors to just dismiss it out of some ingrained spite you have. That or still touting the "sub > dub and you're a weirdo if you're wrong" reflex. The standards for dubs have been pretty good since 2000-2005, but you wouldn't really know it dealing with people still.

Hence why I'm surprised there's actual nuance around here for once.

HIT THE LEVER!

caps

Thank god I don't watch Shonen or sports titles. It sounds like they go on way too long and are usually exhausting to deal with.

I finished Last Exile. Stayed pretty good from beginning to end. It felt really weird that many of the characters were kinda off doing their own major missions and subplots, while the ending just...did its own thing? Sort of. Delphine fit in that terrible box of "mastermind villains that sit in chairs all day," though the last few episodes at least gave her some weird ass elitist vibes. Still though, the airship combat and especially the soundtrack were pretty damn impressive. The show was 20 years old, but held up well enough.

I mean, Ascendance at least spends the first season doing all the bookmaking shit before adding in the lore and political intrigue.

So, Ascendance of a Bookworm mixed in with Snow White with Red Hair.

That sounds...very boring. It doesn't help that "starting off a kid" is the most basic an uninteresting thing you could do. I already had Parallel World Pharmacy, so I doubt I need this.

Episode 2 rundowns of the stuff I'm watching this season.

Spy Family: Need more Bond and Loid hjinx. Borf!

Shield Hero: Oh boy. Another woman to add to the cast, and she's not Kizuna. Well fuck.

Magus Bride: Kind of an filler drama ep, but she white haired girl's dreadface is kinda nightmare inducing.

Goblin Slayer: More Goblins...

SxF > Bride > Goblin > Shield

Will probably catch other stuff once I'm done with Last Exile.

I mean, CR works fine on PS5, so, meh

It's more that the show is designed so that Yor and Loid will probably never separate, so Fiona's superfluous advances don't do anything for me. It doesn't help she rarely showed any character other than "Loid, but female." It's "fine," but has a shelf life. If the Yor thing wasn't established right from episode 2, or if Fiona showed up way sooner, I could actually get into it more.

It's nice to have SpyxFamily back. Even better was a Yor-centric episode that wasn't about Fiona, and actually showed off some of the assassin stuff.

Of the three premieres I watched tonight. (dubs finally dropped)

1. Magus Bride S2 P2 (though that has an unfair advantage, being the best outright)
2. Goblin Slayer S2 (It's just nice seeing these characters again)
3. Shield Hero S3 (This show has some work to dig out of that trench S2 put it in)

I'm pretty sure SpyxFamily will beat all of them, but again, totally unfair. It is my favorite show. I just wish I had the episode tonight, rather than later.

It's been quite a while since I got to say.

"Goblins..."

Ouch. Kinda like my reaction to Shield Hero and especially Part Timer seasons 2. Should drop those, but keep hanging on for some false hope or something.

Twitter is not a thing I've ever want to spend any substantial time investment.

fuck

Trying out Last Exile. The visuals and music are pretty damn good, and the old school military guns and planes give it a unique feel for an anime. The kid characters are a touch annoying (mostly Lavie), but something tells me these two are going to get their shit kicked in and the show is probably going to be pretty grim and serious. I'm liking it a lot so far.

TV channel? What are those? Is that the same thing as those compact discs we used to have?

Seriously, I have the subscription already. I'm not paying cable prices to get my anime fix.

I watch everything dubbed, because I am legally blind. To be fair, I haven't watched either show in probably a decade. I usually give shows 2-3 chances to grab me until I just dump them completely. I think Chrono Crusade is the show I've tried the most and always dropped. So who knows.

I don't really get Cromartie. It might be one of those things I have to try again (like Daioh, which, aside from the quirky OP, I also didn't stick with).