55 candidates from that series, mainly from episodes 5 (beach) and 10 (track meet), but a few from 11, 12, and 13.
I still find the entire concept of the series to be a bit nauseating. The entire "idol" business in Japan is incredibly cynical. In terms of morality, idol producers are only about one step removed from pimps. The girls are used for a few years, and then discarded like yesterday's newspaper so that an entirely new batch of girls can be cycled through.
And sometimes they start them early. One of the groups begins recruiting the girls when they're in grade school, for a special loli-division of the organization.
These girls are having their childhood's stolen from them. You're only a kid once, only for these girls they aren't even a kid once. They're products, recruited, processed, used, and thrown away. What kind of life do they have after that? What kind of life even while it's going on?
I find the morality of it all completely repulsive.
Of course, IdolM@ster was a game, and the girls on the screen weren't real people. And likewise for the anime. But I'd find an anime about a pimp recruiting girls to be prostitutes to be revolting, even if no real girls are involved. And I find this revolting, too.
I got 55 frame grabs, but I'm not sure I'm going to use them. It would make me a pimp, too.
In response to him I say this: there's a difference between children and adults. If an adult voluntarily enters a profession with a short pipeline, well, it's his (or her) choice. Their life, their choosing, their problem.
Doing that to kids is a different matter. And it's the fact of them doing it to children -- the girls in this show are all fifteen -- that bothers me.
1
Have you watched any of AKB0048? At least they're more honest there: they're recruiting them for a war!
While I can't say I like the industrialized practice, given what happens here in the States with the "teen pop" genre, it's not terribly different. Though it's a bit more of an American take, certainly.
Posted by: sqa at June 06, 2012 08:58 PM (tmPk0)
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No, I haven't watched AKBetc. That one is cynical^2.
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It's got otaku/idol fans with character-decaled personal mechas that help the Idols fight the battles.
Yeah, the world premise is stupid, but Kawamori decided he could make it glorious in only the way he can. Which either makes him a fool or a genius, but I can say it's at least made him a good deal of money.
What's not to love about "Mic-Sabers"?
Posted by: sqa at June 06, 2012 09:23 PM (tmPk0)
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Oddly enough, discarded idols seem to end up better off than the typical former child star in the US. I'm sure a lot of things are hushed up, and the financial structure of the contracts discourages tell-all books even years later, but perhaps the sheer number of former idols makes it easier to slip back into an anonymous and relatively normal life.
And, yeah, for a lot of the agencies, "pimp" is pretty close to accurate. When I was shopping in Osaka's equivalent to Akihabara, DenDen Town, there was a video store where the centerpiece of the porn floor was a large-screen TV playing loli DVDs. Watching the camera zoom intimately around the body of a girl no older than 11 (in a barely-there thong bikini) was quite squicky. There were plenty of adult videos featuring adults, but the first thing you saw when you walked in was the new-loli-releases table. (and, yes, this was also the floor where they kept the bikini videos for AKB48, Morning Musume, etc)
-j
Posted by: J Greely at June 06, 2012 11:50 PM (2XtN5)
There are some online comics I occasionally follow, where the art is amazing but the update rate approaches the abysmal.
Dresden Codak has been updating pretty regularly recently.
On the other hand, Outsider hasn't updated since March 5. Sheesh.
I stopped reading Freefall. He's been good about his 3-times-per-week schedule, but since it's a 4-panel comic, the story is moving very, very slowly, and it's reached a point where
potential genocide imminent in just a few story hours, with Sam and Florence trying to prevent it I just can't read it any more. I think I'll wait a few months and then catch up all at once. With luck, by then the crisis will have passed.
(I still think it's going to turn out that without his mask, Sam looks like Cthulhu.)
The most recent strip from Real Life has a reference I don't get. I'm woefully uncool, I guess. "Why doesn't Ted just tell his damned kids how he met their mother?" Who's Ted?
Update rate on Argon Zark is down to about a page per year. Just to show you how stale it is, Bill Gates is one of the villains in the current story line, and Gates retired from Microsoft in 2008.
UPDATE: Speaking of online comics, if you want a laugh (and a considerable helping of schadenfreude) check out this thread on Metafilter, about the Walker recall election in Wisconsin. They're trying to hold out hope that Barrett will come from behind and win it. As I write this, NBC, Fox, and the NYT have all called it for Walker. With 56% of the vote counted, Walker is 15 points ahead. It ain't even slightly close. This is a huge blow-out.
I stopped worrying when I started seeing columns written by left-wing pundits talking about how this didn't really matter, and how a Walker victory might actually be good for Obama. When your opponents start whistling loudly past the graveyard, it's time to invest in graveyard futures.
Expensive, what with shipping to another planet and all, but well worth it. For (a) it is awesome, and (b) as the store says: By buying this thing you are not only just getting something cool, you're also helping independent artists stay fed and protected from the elements. Over half of our artists now live indoors.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at June 06, 2012 06:51 AM (PiXy!)
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I was worried about Freefall back when Florence was
unconscious with her memory impaired, deep in the Ecosystems Unlimited complex. However, she survived that, and has already
demonstrated that the "robot-lobotomizing" program is reversible, so I'm not as worried this time. Besides, Sam is on the case - what can go wrong!
Posted by: Siergen at June 06, 2012 03:43 PM (PuIGa)
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That second one must have happened since I stopped reading, and indeed it is a relief to know about it.
10
I do not recall the second item being true at scale, just that
for the two known test subjects, the damage wasn't permanent because their day memory hadn't been made permanent; they could still be reset to a pre-wipe state..
-j
Posted by: J Greely at June 06, 2012 05:36 PM (fpXGN)
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The worst trend I've seen in webcomics lately is withholding the next strip until the donation's jar is filled (Typically somewhere around $20). This is terribly destructive, since first, if you don't have a regular schedule, that cost's you readers right there, but the second is that not all strips are created equal, and as your storyline winds down to an end, so do the donations.
Hopefully this trend will be self-curing.
Posted by: Mauser at June 06, 2012 10:46 PM (cZPoz)
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Some webcomics have been pulling in crazy money on Kickstarter for printed copies. There's OotS'es $1.2 million, of course. Erfworld was already in print but got $80k for a motion comic (i.e. partly animated). Almond Quest got $60k, Modest Medusa got $11k for book one and $8k so far for book two, and TwoKinds (which I've never read) is at $177k and still climbing.
Of course, most of those put their stuff out there free for years first, but that's a whole lot of $20 tip jars.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at June 07, 2012 06:56 AM (PiXy!)
Katie has been doing a great job of posting every Monday, not to mention updating Aikonia every Monday.
Considering she's holding down a full course load in college right now, that's pretty good. (At least I think she is. Maybe she's graduated by now. The years pass by so fast.)
Tautologies of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose!
I was just reading this, and ran into the old saw, "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."
I understand what that's trying to say, and in fact I'm sympathetic. You don't have to convince me.
But if you take it literally, it's a tautology. Only outlaws will have guns, because having guns would make them outlaws -- even if they aren't outlaws in any other way.
1
It makes sens to look at it as a tautology that way. Although I think the operative connection there is "Only" presuming that there are both lawful and "out"lawful owners at the beginning.
Oh, what am I doing. Of course you know this. Never mind.
What I'm waiting for is someone to take the "Asset Forfeiture" laws, whereby the police can determine that your money is criminal and take it away from you without trial (since the money is guilty, not you) and argue that if things can be guilty of a crime, that their gun should be charged with murder instead of them.
Posted by: Mauser at June 03, 2012 10:25 PM (cZPoz)
I find that I want to find more frame grabs before doing another update.
So the next candidate was To Love-ru. Or so I thought. Having gone through two episodes of it, not a chance. First off, all I have are DVD rips, and the quality is lousy. Second, the art isn't very good. And the story setup is already destroying brain cells. Not a chance.
The general criteria here is: fan service; lots of images of girls without any guys in the frame; Few or no lolis; 720p or 1080p (the result just looks better if the original is bigger); the girls are smiling.
Weapons are a plus. Bikinis are a big plus. Nudity is a nice thing in other circumstances, but of course I can't use it here.
I've been keeping a list of shows I think might be usable, and I've already run through and looted, or rejected, a hell of a lot of titles. Here are the ones on the list I haven't done yet:
IdolM@ster
Crescent Love
Mayoi Neko Overrun
Ninja Nonsense (480p)
Grenadier (480p)
Nyan-Koi
R-15
Yumeria (480p)
Horizon in the middle of nowhere
Otome Youkai Zakuro
Occult Academy
the World only God Knows
Sorano Otoshimono
Akikan
Inukami
11 Eyes
Sora Kake Girl
Moetan
Umisho
Kemeko
G-On Riders (480p)
Magipoka (480p)
Some of those (e.g. Magipoka) have been on that list for so long that they've gotten dusty and gray, and I probably won't use them. Some of those I suspect will get rejected once I look at them.
Akikan, for instance, is a fantastically stupid show. Me, the addict of fan service harem shows? I never watched it. But it does feature cute girls with nice figures, at least based on the teaser art. Can I struggle through two or three eps without suffering brain damage?
I think that's the next one to try.
UPDATE: Forget it; the art style is terrible. Folks, girls are drawn with curves, not straight lines!
UPDATE: To Love-Ru was useless, too. Man, that art is ugly.
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Occult Academy is not a good candidate. Virtually no fanservice that I recall, no onsen, no beach episodes.
Posted by: Doyen at June 04, 2012 12:48 AM (nV9J4)
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Oh, I dunno. Occult Academy's heroine had one of the nicer looking behinds I can remember. Not much fanservice, and she was really bossy, but she did have a nice behind.
BTW, take a word of advice from the translator of the show, and cross 11eyes off your list. It's about as dark and gloomy as you can get, and there's barely any fanservice to be found. Lots of blood, gore, angst, and all the things you hate.
Posted by: tellu541 at June 04, 2012 01:29 AM (IuWVQ)
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Much as I like the show, I'd probably cross The World Only God Knows off your list for perhaps being a little too chaste for top rotation material.
As far as iM@S and SoraKakeGirl go, episodes 5 and 13 respectively would probably give you the most mileage even if the rest of the show don't prove to your taste.
Posted by: DiGiKerot at June 04, 2012 04:06 AM (w2pnv)
Ninja Nonsense is pretty much a vehicle for Wakamoto-san to get his perv level over 9000, and the art style is pretty simple. Not sure it has much potential.
Yumeria looks like the sort of show I'd see in the top rotation here, but actually watching it may damage brain cells.
Occult Academy: Mikaze (the waitress) is cute, and she's more in line with what I see in the top rotation than the protagonist is (she's proud of her chest), but she doesn't go past low-cut necklines until some spoilery stuff near the end of the show. Maya (protagonist) does have a Psycho-shout-out shower scene in the 2nd episode.
Sora no Otoshimono: see Yumeria, but be doubly careful of those brain cells. (And something like 2/3 of the show is done with chibi artwork.)
(The others I haven't seen, or just agree with what's already been said.)
Posted by: Mikeski at June 04, 2012 07:14 AM (1bPWv)
I used Ninja Nonsense before. I own the show and have watched the whole thing. It's on the list, but I probably won't use it. That's one of the ones that have been on the list so long they've gotten dusty.
Yumeria was in the top rotation, too. Problem with that one is too many lolis.
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As a sad note, I was helping the group that subbed it originally, haha.
It was okay as a comedy. At least of the stuff that season.
Posted by: sqa at June 04, 2012 05:37 PM (tmPk0)
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Sqa, those features will not come as news to Our Host, although I'd add "broad parody" to your list; pretty much every scene spoofs something. FYI, the official manga adaptation adds lesbian foreplay, light bondage, tentacles, and frequent nudity, with the entire female cast nude for the final battle (lolis included).
-j
Posted by: J Greely at June 04, 2012 05:44 PM (fpXGN)
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Suddenly I see a lot more new images, but not from any new series: Hoshizora, for example.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at June 04, 2012 06:17 PM (5OBKC)
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I suspect IdolM@ster has some potential. At least if this image from Sankaku is representative. Image safe, but site NSFW, as always.
Posted by: David at June 04, 2012 06:34 PM (Kn54v)
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Oddly enough, it does feel like I'm seeing a lot of pictures that weren't coming up before, even though I know they've been in the rotation since the last update. For instance, I'd never seen Carnival Phantasm 9, Aika Zero 2, or Koihime Musou 10 until today.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at June 04, 2012 10:55 PM (2XtN5)
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What J and Pete said. I noticed it over the weekend.
It's not impossible. The last time I revamped the selection code, I tried to make it so that over the course of a year it would be able to deliver every single one of the images, even if it couldn't do so over the course of a day.
The primary "random" number is the number of milliseconds since midnight. What I don't know is what the granularity of that is. It almost certainly isn't updated every single millisecond; it's possible the granularity is 16.6 milliseconds, or maybe 33.3 milliseconds.
I do a bunch of math on that to eventually make a selection. But I also included an offset based on the calendar. Basically, after calculating an image number, I add another number which is the month number multiplied by 30 plus the day-in-the-month.
The sum of that plus the previous choice number is taken modulo the number of images, and that's how I make my choice.
So if the former calculation is grainy and can't actually pick every single one of the (currently 994) images, at least I can offset it gradually over the course of the year.
Check this out: it's a highway interchange built over water. I don't think I've ever heard of such a thing before.
UPDATE: While I'm posting strange stuff, this weekend is the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Midway. Midway was one of the three turning point battles of WWII, along with Stalingrad and the Second Battle of El Alamein.
It's been said that before Midway the Japanese never had a defeat and after Midway they never had a victory. That isn't true. Coral Sea was a strategic defeat for Japan, even though American naval losses were greater. And there were a couple of battles in Iron Bottom Sound (e.g. the Battle of Savo Island) which were Japanese victories.
What Midway represents is the transition from the early Japanese juggernaut to a period of stalemate that lasted until the American shipbuilding program started pouring out warships in the last half of 1943. Midway stabilized the war and gave America time to rebuild and repair.
And that's more than enough reason to celebrate it, and honor the brave men (on both sides!) who fought there.
UPDATE: Since I'm linking to random Google Maps stuff, here's another one. That's Battery Russell in Fort Stevens, near Astoria Oregon. You can't really tell from the sky, but there's a pretty big underground bunker there, below and to the left of those two half-hexagons.
The half-hexagons were were two disappearing guns were mounted. They would be lowered to load them, then they would elevate to fire.
In June 1942, Battery Russell engaged in a gun duel with I-25. Not much of a duel; no one hit anything important. The worst destruction at Fort Stevens was the backstop at the baseball field. A pillbox took a near miss, and one Japanese round broke a buried wiring cable.
It was the only time in the war when a military installation in CONUS was attacked by the Axis.
A couple of times when I was a kid, we went camping at Fort Stevens and visited Battery Russell. It was fun for a little kid to run around and explore the place. (It would have been better if we'd had flashlights.)
UPDATE: Here are a couple of ground-level pictures. They match my memory, which is pretty amazing since I was last there maybe 50 years ago.
I can't find anything online that says that Battery Russell fired on I-25. I think my brother told me that. I wonder if he made it up? Or maybe my memory is wrong, after all.
I-25 later proceeded to a station off the American West Coast
where, on the night of June 21, 1942, it shelled Fort Stevens, a coastal
defense base in northwest Oregon. During this bombardment, I-25 fired 17 rounds, most of which exploded harmlessly on the shore.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at June 03, 2012 06:14 PM (5OBKC)
The Coast Artillery batteries at Fort Stevens were under orders to hold fire and avoid giving away their positions, which worked. It would not helped the Japanese very much even if the batteries had been authorized to return fire, though the I-25 might have learned the hard way why dueling it out with coast defenses who have more range and greater firepower is a bad idea, especially for a submarine.
C.T.
Posted by: cxt217 at June 03, 2012 06:41 PM (N+/w4)
I guess that makes sense. The batteries at Fort Russell were there to prevent the Japanese from crossing the Columbia bar and heading up river towards Portland and Vancouver.
Letting I-25 map them through reconnaisance-by-fire wouldn't have been a good thing, and I-25's shelling wasn't a significant threat in-and-of itself.
Not that the Columbia bar needed all that much defending. Those waters are known as "The Graveyard of the Pacific" because of treacherous currents and moving sand bars. Over the last hundred and fifty years, an astounding number of ships have been lost there.
More than 2000 vessels and 700 lives have been lost near the Columbia Bar alone.
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I wonder if
the pirate-hunter powering down briefly was just her way of "playing with her food". Her grin (which I think is all we saw of her face) had a sadistic shape, if you know what I mean.
I'm also wondering what Marika's "trick" is. They mentioned it several times, but I saw nothing unusual so far. Unless...is it merely getting pirate ships to fight together as a group?
I think you're dead-on with your assumptions about the identity of the new player on the battlefield. It also explains why they spent screen time on the Ghost Ship earlier talking about how cyborgs don't need spacesuits. Finally, Kane's expression at the end suggests o me that he expected this sudden appearance.
Posted by: Siergen at June 02, 2012 09:45 AM (PuIGa)
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Marika's trick:
Once I watched the show again, I realized that her "trick" was to get Show to hire her to guard another pirate ship.
It's interesting to note that most of the pirates operate by fleets, and with foreward recon. So while some fleets were wiped out, I'd guess not all of the "pirate captains" were in the process. Still, it's interesting to see.
On our new adversary:
That fighting style was pretty similar to something the aliens did in Stellvia. They really liked to work by high-speed tactics. I kind of saw that one coming when it powered down.
Now, the interesting thing is that the new enemy ship would appear to be experimental military tech. So I guess the suggestion is that the pirates being attacked is more likely to just an easy set of testing targets, plus gets rid of an old issue. (No one will really complain about killing pirates, after all) It'll be quite interesting to see what factions of what groups are behind who in this situation.
Last bit on the new ship: It would appear to be a High Speed Battleship in attack pattern. We didn't get any "missile lasers" from it, just an excessive wall of weapons fire at fairly close ranges. It didn't seem excessively dangerous, compared to other capital ships, until it switched into high-speed mode. So the Gravity Manipulation would appear to be its huge Ace in the Hole.
On something Kane said in the shuttle:
Some of the AnimeSuki followers were speculating that "Coach" was actually not Kane but the guy in the cloak. Like Kane's brother or something. It might have been Gozaemon directly, just in an interesting disguise. I assume we'll know more after he finishes posing on top of a Space Ship. (Which was pretty cool)
I assume we'll know more after he finishes posing on top of a Space Ship. (Which was pretty cool)
Unless he scrabbled out of a hatch very quickly, he's not just posing dramatically in the vacuum of space - he also just rode through subspace on the outside of his spaceship! Major style and bad-ass points for that...
Posted by: Siergen at June 02, 2012 12:29 PM (PuIGa)
5
In the previews, the masked narrator seems to be a projection...but the cyborg explanation works too.
The Pirate hunter is SO far advanced that I wonder if it's alien or from the Galactic Empire...which begs the question: are those mutually exclusive? .
I wonder what Kane is hiding.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at June 02, 2012 04:49 PM (EJaOX)
The thing that bothers me about the way this is developing is
there doesn't seem to be anything in this part of the story for Marika to do. We maybe are going to see a huge battle between two huge ships, and Marika's job is to watch it and be amazed.
I want Marika to do cool stuff. I want to see her thinking her way out of jams. That's what she did in the Hakuoh Pirates arc, which is why it was so cool. Sure, she had help. It was Grunhilde that suggested going after Junior Coolph. Hyakume and Courier dug up the data Marika used to give Robert Dolittle a heart attack. But Marika put all the pieces together, and led the operation, and was the main hero of the piece.
How can that happen this time? If this plot arc gets resolved without Marika being a piece of the solution, it's going to feel really empty.
While the combat was pretty cool this episode, I don't know if we'll get that much more between those two ships. I get the feeling they're pretty evenly matched. The only tech it really showed that was new was the Gravity Control. The rest is just high-spec versions of stuff we've seen. So, it might not be as much of a "story threat" as it is just a tactical problem for the current Bentenmaru.
I think it's a matter of getting out of this engagement alive, then using her ability to negotiate & plan to mount a counter-offensive. Considering this probably goes all the way up into the Galactic Union, that also might be the Second 2 hook (as I think the next storyline has them dealing with the GU directly for 3 books?)
So, I think there's a lot for Marika to do, it's just she has to figure out the entire situation first. It's going to be complicated once all of the chips are on the table.
Thoughts on the first half of the series:
Gozaemon giving Gruier the control Ring seems a whole lot more logical, as a way to get it to Marika, without getting stolen, at this point, if that's really Gozaemon that's showing up. Doesn't it? Gruier never did give us a time-line for her encounters with Gozaemon, after all.
Posted by: sqa at June 02, 2012 11:32 PM (TCkUS)
8
It occurs to me that
if the Pirate Hunter does have to power-down momentarily before it uses its Zig-Zag Attack, that might provide a window of opportunity for the Bentenmaru to make a difference -- especially if it's being supplied with critical targeting information by the Silent Whisper.
Posted by: Dave Young at June 03, 2012 09:06 PM (ZAk0Z)
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It seems evident to me that the pirate hunter/mystery ship are
what we all thought was happening at the beginning, the beginning of a proxy war of independence. The voice-over of the intro re-iterated the whole conflict of colonies/empire, and then it was re-stated at the end. Now, which side is which is a bit questionable. Is the pirate hunter associated with the GE, and is out to clear the pirates off the field before the war begins? Or is the pirate hunter a rebel, and views the pirates as part of the regime that must be removed? Or maybe both sides view the pirates as wild cards and want them removed?
On the next episode, and Marika's role therein:
the preview seems to imply that she's going to be instrumental in forming (or reforging) a pirate coalition of some sort. I suspect the mystery ship will cover her escape, but then disappear itself, leaving Marika in a position where she feels the pirates need to organize to protect themselves.
Posted by: David at June 04, 2012 09:09 AM (+yn5x)
A few guesses:
First, that old cook at the spaceport is a retired pirate. I've entertained the idea that he's Marika's paternal grandfather, who once held the Letter of Marque but passed it on to his son, Gonzaemon. Anyway, he's going to enter the story now and become important.
Second, Marika has to be important somehow in the final arc, and my guess is that she's going to fly the Silent Whisper somewhere and learn something critical with it. No one else in Pirate-dom has that ability, and that plus her guts and her skill as a pilot are one way she's going to shine.
A wildass possibility is that Lynn Lambretta is her guy-in-back. The mission will be to get Lynn to some place where she can do some critical hacking which can't be done from a distance, and anyway will require the Silent Whisper's electronics.
This episode can be summarized in three words: Rick gets angsty.
He spends the entire episode brooding about his past, and wondering whether he really even wants to know what it is. If that knowledge comes to him, will it make things better or worse?
We're introduced to another new character. Her name is Flora and she runs a bar. And she's yet another castaway who can't remember her past.
There's a feeling of unreality about all of this, and I can see why some people have speculated that the island is a form of Purgatory. For the castaways it's a place to start over, to become something new, unburdened by whatever past they might have had. In that vein, it might be that Rick died in battle or something.
I doubt that's really what's going on, though.
Kaguya is awake now, and she's acting a bit odd. She claims she doesn't remember her past, but she is also acting in a way that suggests she knows more than she's revealing. No idea yet what that may mean.
Next ep we're back to action. The longtailed thief is going to hit the castle again, and this time she'll get something important. The story is moving towards resolving the story about the thing hanging in Hank's workshop.
And there's also the looming menace of that immense battleship.
UPDATE: I have an intuition about where the series is going.
To be the best possible baker, Rick has to have a peaceful heart. He has to be a man of peace. If he chooses to be a swordsman, he may still be able to bake bread, but it won't be good bread. His heart won't be pure; the bread will be affected.
That's why Amil has been worrying about him. She senses this deep truth, and fears he will return to being a swordsman.
The series crisis will, I think, require Rick to make that choice. He'll be put in a situation where he must fight to protect the island. But if he does, and saves them all, he will also give up his own future as a man of peace, a master baker of bread. Perhaps he will even have to leave the island.
Sheep, wolves, and sheep dogs. Everyone is one of those three. The sheep are peaceful; they want to live, work, have babies, and grow old. The wolves prey on the sheep, kill and destroy and loot. And the sheepdogs? They are men of violence who work to protect the sheep. They fight in a good cause. They're soldiers, police.
A sheep dog may know the sheep, live amongst them, but can never be a sheep himself. He is always apart. That is the choice Rick will be forced to make, the sacrifice it will cost him.
That's where I think this is going. How will it manifest? My guess is that the thing in Hank's shop is a superweapon of some kind. The battleship will come, and Hank's figure will be the only thing that can stop it. But Rick will have to be involved in that, likely because of his (presumably magic) sword, which is still at the castle. It will be him that orders the attack against the battleship. Perhaps it will be him that carries it out.
And when that happens, he becomes forever a sheep dog. He can never be a sheep.
1
I do agree that the chained Sword from ep 7 is likely going to be important. The Sheep/Wolf/SheepDog option definitely seems on the table. For being a non-romance/RPG story, there's still a level of dark undercurrent to the story. So going there wouldn't be out of character.
I believe the Purgatory Story suggestion is almost wholly mine, haha. At least I haven't seen anyone else put it forward. But, as some level, it doesn't matter too much. Which will likely end up being the final lesson to Rick.
I still find it funny that this seemingly sedate series just happens to have Super Weapons with Nuclear Launcher capability. It's just one of those funny contrasts.
One argument in favor of the Purgatory idea is that there seems to be a lot of stuff on that island that doesn't make sense for a place so small, with such a tiny population. How do they have regular supplies of such esoteric things as sugar, honey, paper bags, chocolate? How does a place like that make steel weapons and steel armor?
Yeah, you could claim that it's all brought in by ship from elsewhere. But what does an island like that produce which is valuable enough in trade? That town only has a population of maybe 500, if even that. There's no way that such a population could finance a castle like that one, let alone build it. And where did the stone come from? Not to mention the town wall, which is really long, and has tremendous gates.
In European history, castles like that with attached walled towns were financed and built by large, wealthy kingdoms. England did a lot of that in Wales, during the period after the conquest of Wales when England was trying to pacify the place. Such towns were citadels, strong points in which occupation armies could stay, and from which they could sally if necessary to deal with revolts. But building such a castle, along with a walled city, was tremendously expensive and it took a long time and a huge force of skilled workmen. 50 years in some cases, or even longer.
I don't believe a huge kingdom exists somewhere else which mobilized such an effort on our island.
It's all vaguely surreal. Of course, there are multiple explanations for that. Like "Shut up and look at all the pretty girls." But it's also possible that it's a plot point.
4
Actually, where are they getting Garlic & Onions? They've got some wonderfully efficient shipping companies if they have a ready supply of so many things.
Posted by: sqa at June 01, 2012 03:20 PM (TCkUS)
5
I like the final explanation. Unfortunately, I do not like the art enough, and the animation is even worse. The only pretty girl who I could stand was the elfish princess.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at June 01, 2012 03:28 PM (5OBKC)
8
It is a very small island. I think you've seen every major part of it.
And I would estimate that it's got a population of less than 100.
Posted by: tellu541 at June 01, 2012 09:46 PM (IuWVQ)
9
With the emphasis on getting materials (in the game, Rick goes on a quest to get ingredients for Melty's "extreme ice cream"), I assume the island does trade in magic foodstuffs. BTW, is there a name for games like this where quests for materials for different effects is a major part? Magic Knight Rayearth tried to include it.
That's from episode 3. Most of the girls in the harem in this show are bizarre, but this one may be the worst. She's got this little stylized toy horse which can speak. Not just to her, as far as I can tell; everyone can hear it. (I'm not totally sure about that. I'm going through it without subtitles and with the sound turned off.)
Anyway, in episode 3 she spends fully six and a half minutes of air time in the bath (naked, of course), alone except for the toy horse, talking to the horse and being angsty about the male lead. She's got a very nice bod.
The horse is floating on the back of the rubber duck.
But they all have nice bods; every one of them is at least a C-cup. In ep 2 there was a bath scene with all five of them, so there isn't any mystery about it. (And that nude scene ran two minutes.) They're all way above normal for Japan, even though all but one of them is supposedly Japanese.
This show should have been named "Please take your clothes off for me." Good Lord.
UPDATE: Or maybe "Please take a bath for me." Ep 4 begins with the blonde German taking a bath. That scene runs six minutes.
Damnit, I can't find pictures I can use in nude sequences!
UPDATE: OK, it looks like episodes 3 and 4 are "girl of the week" episodes, except that they're two-girls-each-week. Ep 3 was the archer girl and the katana girl. Ep 4 is the German girl (she fights with a saber) and the one who uses the naginata. And her half isn't bath scenes. That takes care of everyone except the battle-axe childhood friend, and I bet she doesn't get one.
UPDATE: The show teaser before the OP each time has been about the archer girl trying to seduce the male lead. It's an old joke and getting older by the episode.
For crying out loud, this show really is trash. If I don't hit a beach episode soon, I'm gonna give up on it. I've already got 39 candidates; I could stop any time.
UPDATE:
Left to right: archer, naginata, saber, katana.
UPDATE: Ep 5 is yet another girl-of-the-week. Whole episode, and she's not part of the harem, as such. Apparently there's an inner harem (who live in the same dorm as him and do nude scenes) and an outer harem (with this girl, and who knows how many more).
The lead in this is a classic Marty Stu. All the girls want him; all the guys admire him. But what else do you expect from the player avatar in an eroge? (Which is where this began.)
Well, all the girls except one (the battleaxe) and she's the one he wants. Sheesh.
UPDATE: Ep 6 was a festival episode, but nearly useless for my purposes. Ep 7 is another angst-of-the-week episode, and this time it is the battleaxe.
UPDATE: End of ep 10. The show finally got serious about two episodes back, and there's been a lot of fighting. I'm getting shots from it; 60 candidates now.
One thing that's kind of a twist: Our Hero is easily the worst fighter among the characters in the show, and he keeps getting captured by the bad guys, let alone nearly dying once. "Doofus in distress"; it's a change from "damsel in distress". Not necessarily a pleasant change, mind...
The battleaxe is up into DBZ territory in terms of power and combat skill, including super speed, ki blasts, and several other things. She could probably beat Yamucha as he was when the Saiyajins landed on Earth. (Admittedly a low standard.)
UPDATE: OK, I think they aren't being totally serious. In the final battle, Our Hero ends up piloting a mech, and he's controlling it with a game pad.
Five more minutes to go in the last episode, and I have 76 candidates now.
