It occurred to me that I had never plundered the Senran Kagura OVA. Given how the girls are nude for a large part of it (welcome, but useless for the top rotation), I thought I might get twenty or thirty candidates.
71. (Good Grief!) Of course, part of that was 20 girls at a swimming pool and absolutely no men, and it's fundamentally a fan service show, but still...
Once in a while, a line of dialog goes by which is extremely profound. This is the latest example I've noticed. Because it's exactly right (if you treat services as a form of product). It's amazing how many people don't realize that it is true.
The JSDF have taken in a number of refugees and are taking care of them. But it's obvious to them (the refugees) that it can't continue like that forever, and that they will eventually need to become self-sufficient. Tuka is afraid she'll have to become a prostitute.
Lelei is also concerned about it, but it's not her way to sit around and mope. Instead, she looks for a solution, and finds one. During the two attempts by the natives to attack the JSDF at Arnus, a huge number of flying dragons were shot down and killed. It turns out that dragon scales are quite valuable (for who knows what reason) and Itami tells Lelei that the JSDF doesn't want them and the refugees can have them. So the plan is to collect scales off the corpses and sell them. Sage Cato tells Lelei about a merchant he knows in Italica, and after the refugees collect 200 scales Lelei convinces Itami to order Recon 3 to to take the three women (Lelei, Rory, and Tuka) along with their dragon scales to Italica.
Well, it's not that simple. Just before they arrived, Italica was attacked by a large group of brigands made up of stragglers from the armies which were defeated at Arnus. Which means they were well armed and disciplined. Italica's main military force was expended in the attempt to invade Tokyo through the Gate, and so they don't really have an adequate guard.
Princess Pina happens to show up there (with three of her subordinates) and since the reigning countess is only 11 years old, Pina decides to command the defense of the city. The brigands are beaten off in their first attack, and while they're preparing to come again, Recon 3 shows up.
Itami ends up helping defend the city, which includes calling in an air strike (air cavalry, about 15 helicopters of various kinds playing Wagner while they fight) and Rory ends up joining the fun. Between the choppers and Rory and Kuribayashi and Tomita and Itami himself the entire brigand force is annihilated.
After which, the commander of the Air Cav negotiates a treaty with Italica (Pina again, on behalf of Countess Myui) which begins what amounts to a beautiful friendship between Italica and Arnus, to the great benefit of both sides. But that's later.
The Air Cav leaves, and finally it's possible for the three women to do what they came there to do: visit Lloyd, the merchant Cato told Lelei about.
The nominal fair price for the 200 scales Lelei brought would be 200 gold pieces and 4,000 silver pieces. But despite his gratitude for having his city defended, he's a businessman and dickers Lelei down. So she gets 200 gold and 1000 silver immediately, and a warrant for an additional 2,000, and she knocks the last 1,000 off the price.
BUT... for doing that she tells him she wants information on product prices and general patterns of trade. It catches him a bit by surprise, but since she's effectively paying him 1,000 silver for it, then since it has a price, it's a product.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 05, 2015 07:34 PM (+rSRq)
The trade in dragon scales means that the refugees now have the means to provide for themselves. But they need help in establishing a lifeline to somewhere local, so the JSDF helps by setting up a relatively primitive PX in the refugee's village. Eventually the village becomes known as the "Arnus Collective" and that's how I'm going to refer to it from now on.
Some of the goods in the PX are from Japan. The Rose Knights are there to study the Japanese language (by Pina's orders) and they notice some of the awesome stuff in the PX, and word spreads. Native merchants show up and see the things, and with one thing and another, the amount of trade between the Arnus Collective and everywhere else explodes, because there is monstrous demand elsewhere for Japanese goods. Things like silk, satin, pearls, brandy, exotic spices, women's makeup, and a whole lot of other stuff; and part of the reason for the demand is snob appeal among the wealthy and powerful in the Empire. (The demand for Japanese silk and satin is driven pretty much exclusively by snob appeal.)
The eventual result is that Lelei trades local silver and gold to Yanagida in exchange for Yen, which she uses to purchase trade goods in Japan which are shipped to her through the Gate, for sale locally. The Arnus Collective ends up as a very thriving village of several hundred people who directly or indirectly support the trade going on. There are eventually 8 trade caravans which make regular trips to Italica. Merchants who come to Arnus, and buy goods from Lelei, can pay to have the stuff carried by the caravans, under guard, to Italica, from which existing trade mechanisms can be used to distribute the stuff all over. Italica is a regional trade hub already because it's on a navigable river and at the intersection of two major highways; it only gets better when the trade with Arnus is added.
When the caravans return from Italica, they bring back local food to feed the people in the Arnus Collective. Lelei also buys foodstuffs from Japan, like beer, but the staples are local sourced. (Unless you consider beer a staple.)
As part of the peace treaty negotiated by the CO of the Air Cav, Arnus Collective doesn't pay taxes on trade goods sent to Italica. (Almost certainly it was Lelei who got the JSDF to insert that clause in the treaty.) But Countess Myui surely can tax goods leaving Italica, and in any case there are secondary effects from all that trade which must result economic benefits for the city, and taxes for Myui. Members of the JSDF visit regularly and are always welcome, and everyone benefits. Italica becomes very, very prosperous, even more than it was already. (And though there is no mutual-defense clause in that treaty, as a practical matter if Italica ends up in peril again, the JSDF almost certainly will respond to defend it. They can have air assets there in minutes, and ground forces there in a couple of hours.)
As to the local currency which Yanagida is buying from Lelei, that is very valuable to the JSDF. I'm sure he's giving Lelei a favorable exchange rate. He wants the Arnus Collective to be a success, so that it can be a regular and reliable source of local currency for the JSDF, who have many things they can do with it. Like bribery. And paying locals to become spies. And renting buildings in the capital of the Empire. Lots of things; currency has always been a formidable weapon in war.
Meanwhile, the original handful of refugees who haven't found other jobs are still working to collect dragon scales, which they send to Italica on the caravans. The vast quantity they are producing is probably depressing the price, but since they are very cheap for the refugees to produce (small amounts of labor, mostly by kids, since the scales are there waiting to be collected), that ultimately doesn't matter. The scales will eventually run out but it's going to be a while; there were dozens of dead dragons and each one may be good for 50 or 100.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 05, 2015 08:14 PM (+rSRq)
Ani Tore EX -- aka Isshoni Training without Hinako
So let's catch up on our exercise girls, shall we?
This is the girl who taught us pushups in the first episode.
Ep 2; she's middle school (from the uniform) and blonde with twintails. She's also a tsundere. And she's pettanko, but she has dreams.
It's a variant form of pushups, and she emphasizes how it helps make breasts grow. (Which it doesn't. It can make the pectoral muscles larger, but that's not the same thing.
Also a reverse pushup, or something.
Lesson 14 in the tsundere handbook.
That's her dream. But exercise won't get it for her; only genetics can do it.
And in episode 3, we have a girl who has no such worries.
She must be Hinako's kid sister. I can tell because... um... er... Moving right along now.
There's a tournament, and Our Hero has to win it or he'll be expelled from the school and have no chance of proving his worth to his family. Besides which, if he loses then global warming will destroy the planet. And then there will be an alien invasion. And once the aliens leave, then the zombie apocalypse. After which the sun will go supernova. So it's REAL important that he win!
So it's the first round of the tournament and his opponent is a real caricature of a bully. I swear, it was hard to keep up with him, what with spending so much time twirling his handlebar mustache. They couldn't have made him more evil (and cowardly) if they had put a black hat on him. For most of the fight he was gloating about how he was going to kill Our Hero, and then inevitably Our Hero turned things around -- and the opponent started crying (literally) and begged for mercy. "I don't want to die", just minutes after he talked about how he was going to kill Our Hero.
Of course, Our Hero doesn't kill him. He's too noble and kind; all he wants is to prove himself to his family -- and stop global warming, and prevent the alien invasion, and stop the sun from going supernova. (Zombies are alright, though.)
1
This show and Gakusen Toshi Asterisk are turning out to be the exact same show. The heroes are nigh on indistinguishable, so much so that I'm beginning to suspect that both the authors have certain performance issues...you know...lasting beyond a couple of minutes...*wink* *wink*.
On the other hand, Giant Mecha Testicle Wars is somewhat better than I thought it would be. One Punch Man is one joke show.
Posted by: wahsatchmo at October 27, 2015 11:33 AM (VFkGH)
Wow...Talk about different people watching the same show and seeing different things. I thought Episode 4 was pretty good, and actually what the series needed. And more importantly, our main characters did not beat around the bush and play the usual will-they-or-won't-they routine.
Posted by: cxt217 at October 27, 2015 12:44 PM (xm3KK)
3
The entire concept of having a cray cray as a much worshiped mainstay in an academy that allows mortal combat leaves me with a sad opinion of the state of anime scholastic affairs.
It also would have been nice if
either they made clear that nothing happened to this nutjob after his incitement of our hero at the behest of the former dean/family tool or that he was punished alone. I suspect the latter, of course, but if you are taking us there, take us all the way there.
And I know everyone is comparing the two, but I think that asterisk seems to be doing more with less.
Posted by: topmaker at October 27, 2015 02:16 PM (6stZH)
I'm way over in the other column; I thought the Cavalry did many of the same things as Asterisk in the same episode, but did them right. Were they both cliché? Yes. Was someone in trouble, and rescued by the, er, cavalry? Yes. But Asterisk was a predictable fight, with a predictable progression of challenges, which were no problem at all from the point the guy showed up. Because we know he's a badass.
In Cavalry,the cavalry can't show up physically to save Our Hero, or he'd be disqualified. And he has serious handicaps. Even though he has a plan, he's actually scared. And then the plan goes wrong, and he's being ridiculed by the entire school. So how does the cavalry ride in the save the day? Verbally. By shouting down the entire school and giving the hero a well-deserved tongue-lashing. At which point, despite the fact that he ought to be dead, he stands up, pulls a new power out of his ass (so to speak), and curb stomps the bully. Maybe I have a thing for that sort of fight, but I was into it in a way that I wasn't for Asterisk.
I also think they did good stage-setting before the match, in the discussion how all the fights before high-school are mock battles, and no one can be hurt. Now it's different, and a lot of students lose their nerve (Witness the first match at the beginning of the episode). The bully thought he was invulnerable, invisible, and untouchable. So, finding that he was none of those was a huge shock, and he couldn't handle it.
Posted by: ubu at October 29, 2015 12:56 PM (SlLGE)
Welcome to unique game about legendary anime, "Fairy Tail", on EspritGames.com!
Fior Kingdom is a peaceful realm with 17 millions of habitats. It's a world of magic, great wizards and best friends. But competitions are waiting for you here as well!
Take part in amazing events of wonderful manga and anime "Fairy Tail"! Meet Lucy, Happy, Natsu and other famous characters and start your adventures among them!
Play with your friends and be sure - they will be with you together! After all, fans' army of Fairy tail around the world counts over 200 000 000 million people and it is still growing!
1
Looks more like a translation or proofreading error much more than a math error. The rest of the text is (also) clearly not written by a native English speaker.
Posted by: Hypozeuxis at October 25, 2015 06:53 AM (KR/O2)
2
Little did we know that Fairy Tail's ratings were going to be proof of extraterrestrial life!
Posted by: Wonderduck at October 25, 2015 07:09 AM (a12rG)
When that one fan with the 199-trillion-some personalities kicks the bucket, their numbers are really going to take a dive.
Also, wow. They're planning an MMO for that many people? I need to go buy stock in... um... everyone who makes storage stuff. And networking stuff. And probably some Japanese power companies...
Posted by: Mikeski at October 25, 2015 05:32 PM (TuMIP)
Hurricane Patricia is cat-5 and just made landfall in Mexico. And the long range computer models have it heading right for Duckburg Duckford. Usually they hook to the east, but this one is predicted (as much as one can predict weather a couple of weeks ahead, which ain't much) to go pretty straight.
Apparently God wants to punish the Cub fans. (Even more than they've already been punished.)
Texas will get pasted, too. (I'm not sure what they've done recently to deserve it, though.)
UPDATE: I just realized: it's going to dump lots and lots and lots of water into the Mississippi, directly or indirectly. I wonder whether New Orleans is going to survive it?
UPDATE: Wonderduck just reminded me that this weekend was supposed to be the US Grand Prix, in Austin. It's already doing cats and dogs and ducks in Austin, and a couple of the practice sessions were cancelled as a result -- and it's only going to get worse. If the storm proceeds as it has been, it'll be over Texas on Sunday and there will be torrential rains all day.
1
Yeah, I don't like that blue line at all. That one looks like it'll come straight through Pond Central's balcony doors. Of course by then it'll just be a mess, as opposed to a disaster.
Posted by: Wonderduck at October 24, 2015 12:35 AM (a12rG)
2
The worst part, I think, will be all the noise about how it's due to global warming.
I'm off the storm track here in S.C., unless it takes a sudden turn East, all I'm going to see is a week or two of mildly rainy weather. Probably have a rainy Halloween.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore at October 24, 2015 02:41 AM (L5yWw)
Looks like Illinois is safe. Patricia was very powerful but also very concentrated, and once off the water it burned out really fast. It's already a "tropical depression" and is expected to vanish entirely by this afternoon.
I was wondering why all the "three day" and "five day" maps didn't predict anything past today, and I guess that's the reason why.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 24, 2015 07:49 AM (+rSRq)
4
Looks like we're not in for heavy rain here, but our sunny weekend, which was predicted just yesterday, has changed to cloudy with a moderate chance of rain. That wasn't supposed to kick in for a couple of days.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore at October 24, 2015 11:14 AM (L5yWw)
5
Houston got about ten inches of rain, but it was slow, and the bayous could handle it, mostly. A few came out of their banks, but not for long, or much.
Posted by: ubu at October 25, 2015 09:33 AM (GfCSm)
Fapservice just gave me a clue that Classroom Crisis might be worth plundering. And it wasn't bad, but it wasn't as fruitful as some shows have been. In 13 episodes I got about 50 candidates.
The underlying story is complex, but also rather stupid in a lot of ways. But the art is decent, and the good guys win in the end, and it wasn't painful to go through it. And ep 5 was a beach episode.
This was more typical:
The girls spend about half the series in those coveralls.
This was fun:
"Never tell me the odds!"
The story is placed on a terraformed Mars. This is "Tokyo Four":
And there are a lot of colonies like that, built by various countries:
That's quite a rogue's gallery of international flags, isn't it? I see Canada, Australia, Italy, Turkey, Switzerland, and even Luxembourg, not to mention a meatball. But there's one that's conspicuous by its absence.
As to the actual plot, as mentioned it isn't very noteworthy. A bad guy does a heel-face turn, but I guessed that would happen long before it did.
You're right. My apologies. But that makes it even stranger; how in hell does NZ afford a colony on Mars when the United States didn't manage it?
And how did Luxembourg pull it off?
Also, no Russia, no China.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 22, 2015 07:06 PM (+rSRq)
3
I watched three or four episodes before I let it go. I seem to remember watching the beach episode as well. Really, the only reason I kept watching as long as I did was Iris, and in this case that wasn't enough reason.
Posted by: Wonderduck at October 22, 2015 09:56 PM (a12rG)
4
That is New Zealand in the bottom right.
Some of the more interesting ones:
Top Left: Chile, Columbia, San Marino. (Seriously, San Marino)
Bottom Left: Netherlands, Argentina and... Haiti? (It looks like the center decal was moved to the top left)
Top Right: Mexico, Portugal and ... Palau.
Bottom Right: Benin (really!), Greece, Singapore and India.
Someone had some fun with random flags.
Posted by: sqa at October 23, 2015 03:31 AM (u1LFZ)
5
The US has a colony - it's just the other hemisphere of Mars.
I joke, but it is interesting that the map only shows colonies on a single hemisphere, which doesn't make a lot of sense - Mars isn't tidally locked or anything like that.
Posted by: renpytom at October 23, 2015 05:22 PM (QnF7e)
6
My theory on there being colonies with the flags of poor or tiny nations- those are "flags of convenience" in the nautical sense. For legal reasons each colony has to "belong" to an existing Earth nation, so when a pool of investors want to set up their own colony, they passed a big check to the government of Haiti or San Marino or whatever and received a very nice colonial charter on fancy vellum that they also paid for.
Just like a ship at sea, the home nation might not have much influence anyway. Unless it's a universe with FTL, Mars is a long way away.
Posted by: Boviate at October 23, 2015 09:00 PM (XRvFv)
Several decades ago, Joe Haldeman wrote an SF novel called The Forever War about a interstellar war with an alien race fought without FTL drives. As a result, the ships spend a lot of time at relativistic velocities. The protagonist is part of the first military unit which makes a counter-attack against the aliens. The whole story represents 3 or 4 years of his life time, but since he spends so much time at relativistic speeds, something like a thousand years passes on Earth.
During that time things change, a lot. Every time he gets assigned to a new military unit in preparation for a new battle, he's dealing with people from the current Earth. So it's interesting to see what kinds of things happen.
In a sense it's a prediction, though Haldeman clearly wasn't thinking in those kinds of terms. But there were two things which I remember: First, there's a huge cultural change on Earth relating to sexual matters. To put it bluntly, homosexuality is considered normal, and heterosexuality is considered perversion, or a psychiatric disorder to be treated. The protagonist happens to be heterosexual but he soon learns to keep it to himself.
Second, by the end of the book the human race has developed a group mind. Everyone thinks exactly the same, and individuality is completely gone.
What made me think about this was this post at Instapundit. Because it occurred to me that the primary target of "Yes means Yes" laws seems to be heterosexual sex.
Activists have managed over the last 50 years to bring us from homosexuality being considered a perversion and a crime to being something which is legal and tolerated and even not considered particularly unusual.
But that doesn't seem to be enough. Some of the stuff I hear from out there in the real world makes it seem like those same activists want to go the rest of the way -- to not only make homosexuality be considered acceptable, but to make heterosexuality be considered unacceptable.
Consider that site which provided something like 50 choices when describing a person's sex (instead of the traditional two). The traditional two have been renamed as "cis-male" and "cis-female" and you just aren't cool unless you are at least "bi-curious".
It makes me wonder whether a person who declares themself to be strictly heterosexual is viewed as being old fashioned, and brainwashed by traditional culture. Every generation of young people revolts against the norms of the previous generation, and this (and tattooing) seem to be how this generation is doing it.
Of course, one problem with it is that if this attitude prevails, there won't be another generation to revolt against this one.
Anyway, as to group minds, that seems to be coming too. The symptom is "microaggression". On college campuses now any expression of a controversial idea or thought is punished. You will toe the line; you will never disagree with the prevailing attitudes. Colleges now seem to be in the business of political indoctrination.
This isn't intellectual freedom; it's intellectual slavery. And since most of the kids leave college now with crippling debt, it is actual slavery too.
All of this is beginning to frighten me. Am I really going to be considered a pervert just because I like looking at girls? Is this country actually going to become a bastion of enforced uniformity of opinion?
Sorry for the long delay between posts; I haven't had anything to say.
In this episode we add not one but two more members of the harem, which completes the collection. They're the ones on the left.
First is Lapis, who looks like a loli but is actually the anthromorphized manifestation of a top-bracket magical weapon who has chosen Takeru to be her master. This is not exactly an original idea, I might mention... Because she's going to be around a lot, the headmaster has faked ID and enrollment papers for her so she can pretend to be a student. Her official name, then, is Kusanagi Lapis, supposedly the younger sister of Our Hero Kusanai Takeru. (She starts calling him "onii-chan".)
The other is a witch that was captured at the very end of ep 2. She wears a band around her neck which will explode if she uses magic, and she's been assigned to the 35th Test Squad. She is actually in training to become an inquisitor, because she wants to set an example to show that not all Magic Users are evil or dangerous.
The fact that she's a witch is secret; the members of 35th squad know but they're not supposed to reveal it to anyone else. However, Stella... no, that's not her name; (consult ANN) Oh yeah, it was "Ouka". Anyway, Ouka and Mari instantly hate one another and fight at the drop of a hat. (Reminds me of Natsu and Gray.)
And because their job is to protect Mari, she's been assigned to share living quarters with Our Hero.
That is rapidly becoming a trope in harem shows, you know that? Where Our Hero shares his room with a girl? When Ouka finds out, she insists on sleeping in that room as well, so now Our Hero has two girls in his bedroom at nights.
This show isn't breaking any rules or pushing any boundaries; they're piling up the tropes like mad. (For instance, Mari has "A-cup Angst".) It's not the worst show of this season (by a long shot) but unless they've got some surprises in store for me it won't turn out to be memorable, either.
UPDATE: Another trope that's rapidly becoming mandatory is "always wears a great big muffler, in order to hide something on her neck." Rei from Vividred Operation is one, and there was another recently that I can visualize but can't place. She was using it to cover up a scar on her neck that indicated some sort of magic done to her, or by her, or something. It'll come to me.
