They've been telegraphing the final plot arc for most of the series, and with this episode it begins. It's about Lucifer and Olga.

I'm supposed to be sympathetic to Olga; he's supposed to be a tragic figure and I'm supposed to be rooting for him. The problem is that he's such an asshole that I don't care what happens to him. I don't care if he ever gets a partner; I don't care if he ever joins the team. The team would be better off if he walked out the door and they never saw him again.

And if I feel that way about him, how can I get into the story they're telling about him?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 01:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It's important to keep these things straight.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Cheesecake at 09:56 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The author is expressing resentment again, towards the press, the civilian government, and the rest of the world. There's nothing less interesting than watching someone ranting about resentment he's been nursing for 30 years. Which means this episode was full of caricatures.

Snore...

Next episode we get to see Japanese paratroops, though, which might be interesting. (I looked it up in Wikipedia, and the Japanese 1st Parachute Brigade is based at Narashino, which was where Itami served before the Ginza attack.)

UPDATE: "Those who look away from battle and choose humiliation will someday find themselves visited with both battle and humiliation."

Sheesh.

And I find it very difficult to believe that Mochizuki Noriko is acting as a civilian press liason. After what she went through (she's the one they rescued from the palace) it's hard to believe she's recovered in such a short time.

Meanwhile they didn't ignore Itami-tachi quite as much this time, but they still didn't get a lot of camera time. Though we did get to see Itami use a flash-bang.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 01:33 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It's too painful seeing her in all that strange makeup; we got to get her back to normal!

Ah, much better. And NSFW below the fold...

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Cheesecake at 05:21 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Look what they did to Mai!

If there's some sort of story here they better get busy and start telling it; they're running out of time. (Assuming it's one cour. Do we know that?)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 10:08 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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I would have posted about the latest episode of Musaigen no Phantom World but it was totally forgettable. There wasn't even any good fan service. (Except for Lulu waving a katana around.)

The HD in my main computer is getting full, so it's time to unload some stuff onto some other medium. I could buy an external USB HD (and in fact I have a couple I use for this) but it occurred to me a couple of days ago that USB flash thumbdrives might be a good way to go, so I visited NewEgg.

It's amazing just how cheap and plentiful flash memory has become. I remember back when I was still at Qualcomm that there was an industry-wide concern that demand for flash memory was exceeding supply, so prices were going up. But that appears to be long gone. Supply has exploded -- but demand is growing, too.

Anyway, I ended up ordering six 128GB flash drives, which are supposed to be delivered this afternoon.

Three quarters of a terabyte, and it cost me about $150. It could have been even cheaper but those were a supplier I had never heard of, and I didn't want to trust them.

It's typical for a product to initially be very expensive, and then as technology improves and volume increases, for it to get cheaper and eventually reach a price floor. Then, over time, it slowly becomes more and more expensive.

But when it comes to electronics, seems like we never seem to find the floor. The price just keeps falling. These days you can buy a computer for $500 which has more compute power than existed on the entire planet in 1960. And I'm buying more memory than existed back then, for $150.

We live in an age of miracles.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Computers at 12:04 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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In Gate there's something Itami says a few times that means variously "Move out!" "Fire!" or more generally "carry out your orders!" It sounds to me like mae and I assume it's the imperative form of some verb, but I can't figure out what it is. Anyone have any idea?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 01:14 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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Is it time for baseball yet? No? Well, we can at least get into the mood.

NSFW below the fold.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Cheesecake at 03:19 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Cheesecake at 12:46 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 The artist should be encouraged to hold a gun in those positions, to understand how much harm he'd inflict on his models when their poor trigger discipline resulted in an accidental discharge.

Actually, judging from their arms, it's already happened to a few of them...


-j

Posted by: J Greely at February 28, 2016 04:11 PM (ZlYZd)

2 I'm not sure a girl could be strong enough to hold some of those weapons in those positions, irrespective of trigger discipline. But it's good cheesecake...

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 28, 2016 05:28 PM (+rSRq)

3 I smirked at the M1934 but something about the MP-40's dumb expression made me laugh uproariously.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at February 28, 2016 06:01 PM (loq+1)

4 Oh god, J is so right. BTW MAC is the worst gun I've ever fired - you can't hit anything without holding it by the silencer.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at February 28, 2016 06:02 PM (loq+1)

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Star Wars as if imagined by Bill Waterson.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in linky at 10:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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