Genre – Sci Fi Anime
Movie Total Runtime – 2 Hour 46 Minutes
Spoilers – Yes
A Rightstuf Blind Box acquisition, this is another fragment of a sequel anime to a series I know nothing about. Hopefully this won’t be as brain hurty as the Gunbuster 2 review. The box came with a bunch of physical schlock that is in another box somewhere, and didn’t make much of an impact, since I have no connection to the series.
So The challenge here will be to figure out what’s going on, who the characters are, and what the plot is. Lets see if I can put the pieces together.
We start with some elves and an animal person in a cabin on winter break from school. I assume they’re elves. They all have pointy ears but look otherwise human within the margin of error for anime characters. Can’t tell what type of animal the thing with ears on top of it’s head is supposed to be, but on the anime animal person spectrum this one is “mostly human but with odd ears” in appearance. After an inane conversation about the one identifiably male character being asleep, we get the opening credits. Now, I’m trying to stick with my “no research” approach as I hope this will produce more entertaining content. The opening credits spark something in my brain that went “didn’t ‘Sword Art Online’ have a plot about people stuck in a video game?” I don’t know how accurate that is, and I’m going to refrain from looking it up.
Throughout the opening credits I’m looking for signs of round ears, and the two closest are in the margin of error of “the camera angle is just making them look that way”. As the credits go on, the visuals more or less confirm a video game setting. Health bars and floating status indicators are a dead giveaway.
We return from the opening credits to an establishing shot with the futuristic date of… December 20th, 2025… Err… Well… I should have reviewed this before 2026 rolled around, shouldn’t I? Lets call it historical fiction then. Well, in 2025, we have humans with round ears at a… Well the architecture says ‘bar’, but the drinks are served in mugs and looks like coffee. But there are bottles that look like booze on the shelves. The bartender and the map of the US on the wall suggest an American setting, but the uniforms make me question. But the dialog with the bartender confirms that no, this bar that serves coffee to minors is not in the US, as his wife “used to live” there, and the following establishing shots are more East Asia.
Bartender dumps a lot of exposition about his backstory that confirms a lot of my previous surmises. He and his wife were only able to preorder one of the neurological links to interface with Swort Art Online, and he was trapped in there. All he wanted was to get back to “this place” meaning the bar, and since they are there, I have to surmise that the breakout was successful in the first series. I’m going to hazard a guess that the pointy eared scenes take place in-game, and the round-ear scenes take place in reality. Anyway, it seems that after the entrapment, whoever was left with the rights to Sword Art Online began standing up a less “permanent death trap” version that you were allowed to log out of. They’re rolling out new floors in this replacement version. I wonder if they’re reusing assets from the original and how deeply they’ve checked them for deathtraps.
Boy and Girl gamer’s motive is to acquire the same plot of in-game property they’d had during the first go round for sentimental reasons. This starts a montage of people assaulting a raid boss in-game, or at least with pointy-ears. Since we know this is a video game, and we don’t have the “in game death is real world death” trope, what’s the weight in the fight with this no-name rock golem? Anyway, they win and fly to the location of the cabin and make the in-game purchase for 500,000 in game monies, which probably cost real monies. But it makes girl gamer cry tears of happiness before getting woken up in the pre-credits scene. So I suppose it was all a flashback?
There’s some banter about in-game mechanics around some other player dueling all-comers. I got bogged down trying to parse game mechanics from the fictional MMO they’re playing. But hyping up the duelist filled the rest of the first episode of the set I have. The closing credits tell me this was made in 2014.
We start the second episode with girl gamer logging out and see she has a very sterile, highly automated room. Of note is the lack of decorations and the monotony of the color palette. Her life, as she views it, is very clearly in-game, and it’s looking like she’s starting to have health issues from the amount of time spent there. From the rest of the house, her family is rich, but from the domestic servant’s response, they don’t sound particularly close. The quiet, empty sound of the house makes this starkly clear even before the cold reception from her mother and their antagonistic meal. I’m going to be honest, I did not expect the argument between Gamer Girl and Tiger Mom, let alone to have any nuance in their positions.
Tiger Mom is very pushy, but it’s also clear she’s doing what she thinks is best to help Gamer Girl regain progress lost in the two years spent stuck in the game the first time around. Gamer Girl doesn’t want to change schools to the high-intensity program required to get back on college track. When it leaves the topic of education and lands on that of marriage, the sinister music kicks in and the argument gets more heated. Tiger Mom disapproves of Gamer Boy. After the argument, Gamer Girl goes and has a cry in her room.
I often use the phrase “credit where credit is due” when something unexpectedly well done comes along. It seems insufficient. From my text summary, you’ve all seen the scene I laid out. It’s been done before, many, many times. But they managed with characters I’ve barely met, to successfully tug at the heartstrings. I am going to admit, I did not have very high expectations of the work going in. Sometimes it’s nice to be proven wrong. I hope they keep it up – exceeding my expectations I mean, not tormenting Gamer Girl. I also have to give credit to the sound design. During Gamer Girl’s walk to dinner, the only sound you heard were her footsteps. No music, no dialog, but a very effective conveyance of the emptiness and loneliness of the real world for her.
Back in-game, Gamer Girl fights the duelist, and I have to ask what the stakes are supposed to be in the fight. We’ve confirmed that the lethality was removed from this version. Maybe I’m thinking about it wrong. Treat it like a sports movie and things work better. It may take the visual form of a sword fight, but it’s not “life or death” but “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat”. It is just a game, and Gamer Girl just got a new quest from the duelist, but the request was dropped on us just before the credits.
So, I violated my “no research” rule to try to verify some details. I found out that my collection of episodes is the entire side story “Mother’s Rosario” (which I’d seen in the opening credits) and no random unconnected episodes. I’m sitting here at twelve hundred words looking at the five remaining episodes and asking whether I should shift to summation mode for the remainder or break it up into multiple articles remaining closer to the beat by beat approach I’ve been taking. Some of you Tulpae have been complaining about the statistical predominance of negative reviews in this series. And I’ve been positively surprised so far with this work.
So the quest the duelist has was to assist their undersized guild to defeat the level boss. Because real life was going to force them to disband come spring, they picked this overly ambitious goal to cement the memories. Gamer Girl points out that raid bosses usually take seven times as many players as they have. But the players who first defeat a level boss go on a monument in the starter town, and they really really want to earn that with their tiny team of friends. Well it’s not as neat as that, but close enough.
But… after Gamer Girl agrees to join this mission, Tiger Mom unplugs her connection. She was five minutes late for dinner, and is now losing her gaming privileges. So, she goes walkabout in the real world. While she’s having her sad moment in the snow unable to escape that part of her life she hates, I have to mention a flaw. The show suffers from modern volume mixing. Combat noises are significantly louder than dialog, so I end up going “Oww! My Ears!” before adjusting it. Then things go really quiet again after and I have to turn it back up. I’m glad I’m not wearing headphones.
After Gamer Girl gets her cable back, Hopeless Guild makes a run against the raid boss, and we learn that Rival Guild has been using other groups’ failed attempts as scouting opportunities to snipe the first victory. Hopeless Guild decides to go PvP against half of the Rival Guild when the other half shows up. At the cliffhanger, Gamer Boy shows up to help hold off Rival Guild. That would make it about 49 to 8 as the credits roll. Fair anime odds between named protagonists and unnamed characters.
This is also the end of Disc 1, so it sounds like a good place to split the review. I’m getting a bit wordy.
To be continued.
I stumbled onto the Demo of a (single-player) game set in the first person shooter MMO from this franchise. I didn’t immediately recognize Gamer Boy and Gamer Girl when they showed up in the demo until they introduced themselves. The sad part was that the gameplay wasn’t any fun.
From the Ded Thred – 3Door – “Wings are not food”
Makes me wonder how you’ve had them prepared. I seasoned mine with a mix of salt, black pepper, onion and garlic powders, and paprika, then roasted for 35 minutes. Got juicy, dark-meat chicken with and even higher ratio of crispy, delicious skin to meat than you get from dums or thighs. Maybe you’re thinking of the tiny scraps tossed in a deep fryer until all the moisture is gone then drowned in basic hot sauce and shovelled out the door at $1.50 per piece.
I went to the butcher, bought them raw and cooked them to perfection. They are food, and they are delicious.
Our dinner was ribeye with homemade chimichurri and side of broccoli and cauliflower.
Sounds like a nice meal.
My perspective has skewed in terms of portion sizes. I’ve generally been eating less of late, so my first reaction was “Sounds like a lot of food”. But after thinking about it, I realized that would not be the assessment of most people.
High Skin/fat to meat ratio is awesome.
Mess, complexity, seasoning, difficulty of consuming them.
Not so much.
I’m sorry, but what are you even talking about? They’re dead simple to make and easy to eat.
My delicate fingers would get dirty and slop would get in my glorious beard.
Same reasons I avoid ribs. Also with ribs there isn’t enough meat on them for the expenditure of energy.
3d, I think you (and possibly Zwak) are still assuming sauce.
Meat vs. energy expended?
Leave crawfish tails alone then.
Ribs, you betcha!
Mrs F grew up with chickens and pork, we eat a lot of those critters, not so much cow meat in Viet Nam.
Have you eaten crawdads?!
The taste of mud.
Someone call Hesgeth over there to the Department of War.
Spicy food.
Wings.
Ribs.
A good crawfish boil.
Hates Rush.
Screw grainy photos. What we have here is incontrovertible evidence that an alien creature is walking among us.
Hegseth is a namby pamby little boi.
Needs to untuck his shirt and grow a beard.
Rush is bad, and Canadian.
I thought I knew you!
/writes 3Door off
Let me correct myself on Rush being bad.
Terrible
Awful
Grotesque
Trash
Fingernails on a chalk board
MikeS is that you?
I am with 3dr on this. The work/food ratio is way to far off.
SMH.
You’ll never be eating crabs in MD/VA if you won’t do the work for the meat.
I can only conclude he prefers structured meat and veggie puree.
I hope to go the rest of my life not getting crabs.
juris imprudent:
It’s not $20, same as downtown?
I love wings but I leave the making of them to others, 100%.
Wings are great.
Angel’s wings are the best.
How do you feel about red wings?
Solid work boots. I have a pair.
I have seen them a few times.
I was expecting a YouTube link to a techno band I didn’t know existed.
This is how to do wings. I agree that the fried/shriveled method barely qualifies as food.
I get the impression that a viewer might need a passing familiarity with the conventions of multiplayer online games in order to fully understand what is going on in the “game” setting of this anime. Is that a fair assessment?
… Not necessarily. The character-centric plot carries the show (at least this story.)
🦗🦗🦗
It sounds like everyone is off enjoying their weekend.
Working. But the weather is nice. Looks like it’s going to rain all next week here. Which sucks as the boy wants to go camping.
I was in the garden today, had my long sleeves turned up one notch. Almost short sleeve weather but I can’t work hard enough to get overheated. The next 10 days look warm and dry.
I’m ready …
How are the plants doing?
I haven’t got anything growing yet, my garden did poorly last year, over powered by weeds. I’m cutting it in half and started spraying the untilled
side, which is covered with weeds already. I do have half tilled one time, hope to get it tilled and some corn and cukes in this week. I took over one flower bed by the house, gonna put tomatoes in there.
The bees really got busy today, the first warm day and they got out early this morning, still working.
I just got back from the local libertarian meet-up.
One of the guys there followed the LNC convention. Drama. People fighting hard over something that doesn’t matter.
Oftentimes the smallest stakes lead to the most vicious conflict.
Working and slaving and toiling and laboring.
Tomorrow, however, is grill a six pound steelhead day
I am spoiled by the local I walk up to for away games. Their special on Sundays is $6 for a pound of wings and fries (it used to be $5/10 wings, but prices have spiked) or two chili cheese dogs. They have 30+ flavors of sauces and dry rubs. Out of the dozen or so flavors I’ve tried, there was one that I would say was a failure, and that was removed from the menu.
I know nothing about this franchise, but the lead Yoshitsugu Matsuoka had like a decade run where he was in every anime under the sun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshitsugu_Matsuoka
He is also very introverted, but played the lead in many harem anime. His female costars would tease him unmercifully.
Talk about typecast.
Update on ZWAK travel: After the Yankees game, went to a Ukrainian dinner and stuffed myself with Beef Stroganoff, while wife had stuffed cabbage (she is of Polish extraction).
This is turning out to be a very nice trip. Two nights ago we hit one of the big NY steak houses with my brother and his girl for ribeye and oysters, all the while drinking like fish (Neph: Manhattans, Old Fashions, Hendriks rocks [the wife’s favorite] and not sure what brothers girlfriend had, it was some house cocktail] followed with dessert (ice cream-sorbet mix that was quite delicious) with a Redbreast for me and a Basil Hayden for bro. Yesterday the wife went to a specialty spice shop in Manhattan, while I hung with my son and his friends as they got ready for the boy’s wedding last night. Which, while rain put a slight damper on things, went beautifully. Saw his mother, my ex, and her friends from when we were together and it was very nice. Met the daughter-in-laws family, all the men were NYPD or FDNY, while the women where all nice.
Been getting “postcards” from the dog boarding place, seem the little terrierist is doing good.
ZWAK out.
Glad you haven’t been mugged!
Which steak joint?
Gage and Tollner. Very good!
You left out the most important thing – did the Yankees lose?
Nah, they doubled in the ninth.
😒
lol
Since I am moving back downstate and I started watching some baseball lately, I decided to choose to follow the Mets. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Because fuck the Yankees.
Weirdly their farm team is near where I am now so I have seen a few of those too on TV.
Subscribes to rhyum’s news letter!
Neither the wife nor I are Yankee fans but they were playing when we were here, so we went.
The wife hates (? now) them but I am indifferent. It’s not like they are the Giants.
Sounds like a good selection of drinks there.
I made a pot of pressure cooker chicken curry to take back to the (216) tomorrow. And some tuna salad.
Ordered a calzone from a local pizza place for tonight.
We are going light for Memorial Day cook.
Grazing food is chips with salsa and guac.
Mini-sliders and scallops for appetizers.
Shrimp skewers, bbq corn on the cob, asparagus and grilled peppers wirh a cucumber salad.
To all those who sacraficed, we salute you
https://www.reddit.com/r/interesting/s/7gLrfgh0A9
That’s a brave chicken.
Something about how a cock can separate 2 pussys. Getting them both wet calms them down…..I got nuthin.
I could deal without that person kicking them. Bad person.
UCS: Glad you found some possible ‘treasure’ in the rubble. Interested to see how it’ll turn out.
Also, wings are absolute bullshit food. Yes, I’m sure I’ve only had the shitty version. No, I’ve never cooked ’em. I love ribs, but wings are just nonsensically messy. And let’s say ya wanna be clean and efficient, ya poke and pull the good bits off the bones, but ya’d look like a pretentiously French gay chef performing a culinary autopsy on the dish. And ya have to do that for every damn wing and ya only get a bite or two per.
I don’t even care about the sauces because the ones in that (vague) category are pretty bullshit to begin with. If the sauce happens to be good, I’d rather serve it on deboned meat and avoid the nonsense. *begins gay chef cosplay, channels Birdcage*
Disclosure: Chicken largely sucks. (It’s important, yes. But. *deadpans a sincere “Nigga, please” look at y’all*)
Today begins two weeks with the 5yo. We had much fun out, today. Oddly going to Chuck E Cheese just cuz they have simple games to play. (We didn’t eat there.) It’s his first day w/o family and we’re kinda spoiling him to take his mind off.
He had a long spell of Evan-mimicry, which was beyond cute, but, oh. That ‘copy everything I say’ bit gets old. (Silence became a necessary response for a bit.) He accidentally referred to me as “Dad” at dinner, which was sweet.
His energy level, as usual, is jacked, causing his brain to not fully connect thoughts as they normally would. He’s going to crash fairly soon, if he gets a moment. Dad’s convinced we can exhaust him for the next two weeks, but his parents are highly, highly doubtful.
I’m excited for this, though I’m aware much of it will be rather annoying. ‘Twould be silly to skimp on this opportunity. Going down to finish the day w him before his sleep takes him away.
Chuck E. Cheese is pretty fun.
I miss the tokens though, they are just about all gone.
Collecting them for my slot machines may have been partly to do with that change.
I hated the idea of as a kid, but for 3-8yo’s, it was rather nice. Silly, simple games and an indoor play place that had included slides and small trampolines. Went well.
He just read me a book before bed and I helped make him a fort for bedtime. A childish urge overcame me as a fart brewed inside me, and I expelled it at him and partly into his keep. He didn’t love that, but he’ll sleep it off.
(In my defense, outstanding timbre.)
Neighbors are reporting bear activity but I haven’t seen any indication. I put a game cam out by the bees. Hope the electric fence will keep them out.
I didn’t know Tonio ranged that far north.
Last night I was watching Bananaball. Dude was on a unicycle, at bat, and hit.
Its insane.
That’s bad ass.
I can’t even with that. Just too silly.
Thats what gets my attention- these guys are athletes doing back flips, hitting from stilts, etc.
But it to entertain the crowd. They sold out 110,000 seats in Knoxville, TN last night. People want to watch it.
I’m leaning Tres. I think it’s silly. But it’s all straight-up fun. Not even trying to hide it. ‘Knight’s Tale’ is a good comparison. It *knows* it’s silly entertainment.
Biggest selling point: “Woah! This is FUN!! .. I wonder what it’s like when the dudes who *really* can play play?..”
Good way, certainly better than nothing, to expose people to the idea of it. Even better is getting people to want to get in a batting machine to test their mettle.
I actively thought it’d be fun to take the Boys to a game here in Indy. Good way to expose ’em to it, small stakes. (Family told me I was on the JumboTron when we took ’em to a Indy Fuel game (minor league team for Chicago Blackhawks). I’d normally hate that but I didn’t notice it happen at the time, nor see it afterward.
I presume the camera zoomed in cuz it liked what it saw.
Right there with you
Never heard of it and it sounds insane. Any video link to it?
They stream all of the games on YouTube live, with no commercials. Schedule is here. Games are generally 1900 local except Sundays when they’re at 1300 local. Six teams, with a full league going this year. The girlfriend decided to pick the Coconuts as her team, and I went with the Clowns, who resurrected a Negro League team.
Thanks Neph. Here’s a sample for anyone else who never heard of it. It looks like a lot of fun. https://youtube.com/shorts/BTnAOHVlJPs?si=7M742AicAcM_Poiq
Chafed:
Not a problem at all. The girlfriend wanted to follow it, so we each chose a franchise when they expanded last year and have been watching. She went with the Loco Beach Coconuts, and I went with the Indianapolis Clowns. She has walked into the other room to watch a game. By herself. With no reminding from me.
One of my newer pet peeves is people thinking it’s fake like the Globetrotters. It’s a twist on baseball, and these are still real athletes. When you have pitchers back flipping before throwing a pitch, or people catching a fly while they are flipping, it’s damned impressive.
Was dude a righty? The Phillies could use one who can hit.
Boondocks Saints is on! 😁🇮🇪
Eh, drop the one s
Boondocks Aints.
I’ve owned it on DVD since Blockbuster Video was still a thing, as did everyone else in m friend group. I mean, it was $5!
How many Ron Jeremy films do you have?
Just that one.
Although there was several times the Ron Jeremy documentary was on in the background at parties I was at.
You likely have Ghost Busters too.
I think anyone doing the “fingers” thing in photos should be punished by having them chopped off.
I first saw the “fingers thing” (holding up a peace sign) in Korea, where *every* photo outside a wedding, mugshot, or something professional, pretty much ‘requires’ it. I thought it was an Asian thing but now I see it all over. (In Korea/Asia, the fingers are usually held up to the face, near the cheek or temple.)
I see no reason to object to it whatsoever. (Those guys are trying for more gang sign, I admit.) Forced smiles, I object to, largely cuz I can’t summon one on command.
To me it’s always forced and fake every time I see it.
You’re not wrong. Thinking on those lines, especially by making a goofy face for *every* pic, as inspired by my absolutely lovely SiL, minus politics, is to just “believe” in everything and you can get away with it cuz it seems ‘natural.’ I believe in the goofy face FAR more than the fake face I try to put on and then have to hold for ten seconds while I await a snap.
In my head I say this, much like when Costanza was correct for doing The Opposite at all times. Which further leads me to another, similar mantra:
“It’s not a lie, if *you* believe it.”
Back in the day (c.1970) guys would hold the peace sign level to indicate they’d boffed the girl in the photo with them. Or so my brother told me.
Correct. I can’t stand the forced “coolness.”
I’ll show them a finger.
We ( girlfriend’s son and I) built 5 raised bed gardens today.
The fucking bunnies shouldn’t be able to jump 40″ high. Maybe they can, but I want to make it challenging to them.
5 more to be built this week and next weekend.
But can they climb the exterior wall?
Depending on the bunny, he may need the Holy Hand Grenade
I got dragged out today to see Baby Yoda: The Movie.
It’s basically 2-3 episodes of the TV show smashed together. Or maybe a season of the show minus a bunch of fluff. I have no idea why this was a movie. I could tell even before looking it up that the cinematographer does TV shows, because it looks like a TV show on a larger screen, nothing at all “cinematic” about it.
No real spoilers, but there’s one scene I have to mention:
Mando goes to rescue Jabba’s son*, who is working as a gladiator to pay off some debt. Due to reasons Mando gets thrown into the arena with him.
Then the camera pans to an overhead shot, and the floor of the arena has the same pattern as the round chessboard on the Millennium Falcon.
Then they have to fight all the monsters that were on the chessboard when Chewbacca and R2D2 played chess in the first movie. And the long-necked guy picks up the no-neck guy with the hammer and smashes him to the ground just like R2D2’s piece did to Chewbacca’s piece in the first movie. You guys remember the first movie, right? And you liked the first movie, right? So please like this too.
Anyways, on the bright side it doesn’t have Starbuck girlbossing her way through everything.
* unfortunately not Jabba’s nephew who was voiced by the same guy who voiced Master Shake, because that would have been hilarious.
Every online review I have seen has savaged that movie.
It exists due to every kid loving baby yoga. It is just a cash grab.
People have stopped asking me to see a modern movie. I’m not watching that shit.
I’ve released my inner Teds’.
Project Hail Mary was pretty great.
Mario movies are decent.
Top gun II was good.
What I’ve seen in the last five years at the theatre.
I am just watching ‘70s American and’50s French movies mostly.
And Blade Runner, repeatedly.
They made it a movie because it was the only thing they had after it turned out to be a bad idea to hire a Pakistani feminist film maker with no directing experience to make a movie about a non-character character.
She enjoys making men feel uncomfortable. It’s laughable and peurile.
dammit editor! *puerile*
White men must not be allowed to have anything of their own.
Happy Memorial Day, Glibs.
🇺🇸🫡🪦
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z71df68qLp0
🎶🎶
Memorial Day is not a happy day but rather a day to contemplate all the lives lost. A day to remember that the perceived enemy also had lives of loved ones destroyed by their governments as well.
Good morning, Sean, 4(20), Ted’S., (((Jarf, and somewhere upthread, ZWAK.
Mornin’
My condolences to Sensei
LOL, I was watching the last season of SAO while this was up. My review: The first run of the first season is very good and has a moderately interesting premise, they are players in a VRMMO, whose developer booby trapped the game and headsets so that removing the headset, or dying in game kills the player. The focus of season 1 part one is on how the various people in the game develop under those strictures. Then they beat the game and emerge. After that it becomes a fairly ordinary power fantasy with increasingly bizarre and hard to believe circumstances creating tension.