Lion Man, Lion Man, Does Whatever a Lion-No, That's Not Right

Then there was that time somebody made a tokusatsu series about a guy who was basically just a samurai wearing a lion mask.



Did I say "that time?" I probably shouldn't have, because that implies it only happened once. And it did not happen once, it happened at least twice (almost certainly more than that, though I'm not hunting down any more openings).



Have to love that... rather disturbingly animated cartoon lion man there.

-Signing off.

Technically This Series' Premise Is Offensive

Anime/manga's sense of the appropriate knows few boundaries; how often do you see a series that's about a bunch of students trying to kill their teacher?

If you can get past the premise, though, Assassination Classroom is, well, a very funny series, even if the comedy's often fairly black*.

And a lot of the time, it's just kinda zany.

And so here's fifteen screenshots I've taken for their comedy value, grouped irregularly.

Group one: It's hard to deal with somebody who has superspeed.

Group two: Even if you're in a jet.

Group three: Having superspeed means you always have free time on your hands.

Group four: Lots of free time.

It's also rather charming, because even though the teacher is a threat to the entire world, he seems to love both teaching and his students deeply. (He's also darned good at teaching, oddly enough.)

*Episode 4 gets a little sketchy at one point (it plays a rather violating act for laughs), and also has the most (annoying) fanservice of any of the ten episodes I've watched thus far. Though thankfully, nearly all of the fanservice in the series is linked to an adult character rather than the underage students.

-Signing off.

Don't Bother Watching Argevollen

I figured I'd get that out of the way with the title-don't bother watching this anime. It's not really very good, despite supposedly being "dueling shows" with Aldnoah.Zero, a thing I mentioned liking pretty well. (Certainly, never ever bother spending money on it, although if you're part of the English-speaking market I'm not currently sure how you'd spend money on it. I've been watching it on Crunchyroll and/or Hulu, depending on which site's working better at the time.)

Which isn't to say I've gotten no enjoyment out of the show; there's a couple of characters who are kind of adorable, the titular mecha is pretty and a few of the other mecha are charming, there are aspects to the plot/worldbuilding that are interesting even if the writing's not good*, and there's this scene, where a couple of characters are discussing the fact that the titular mecha causes its pilot to go very, very berserk sometimes.

(Creepy Glasses Man**: Argevollen has pilot safety functions.)

(Creepy Glasses Man: NR Syndrome [which killed the person it was named for***] won't happen.)

(Cute Blond Girl: But Private [designated main character] Susumu is already...)

(Creepy Glasses Man [over the phone]: You're saying he's physically and psychologically unstable, right?)

(Creepy Glasses Man [over the phone]: That's a normal reaction.)

(Cute Blond Girl: It didn't look like a normal reaction to me!)

(Creepy Glasses Man [over the phone]: Because you don't know what "abnormal" looks like.)

For context, the "normal" reaction to piloting Argevollen is apparently lots of screaming, attacking anyone who's too close to the target, having severe fits of nausea (outside the cockpit, hours afterwards), and long bouts of unconsciousness. Bad symptoms may include being pointlessly aggressive and violent outside the cockpit plus permanent memory loss and destruction of one's personality (these are listed in an appendix in Argevollen's user's manual, which is actually pretty amazing and possibly my favorite thing about this stupid show-at least the people who are making the soul-eating robot aren't grotesquely irresponsible; they're at least responsible enough that the warning in the manual probably would cover their butts in the real world... even if they're still pretty vile and depraved moneygrubbing greedmonsters otherwise).

*I'd say it's worse writing-wise than Heroic Age, but better than Linebarrels of Iron (mentioned in the Aldnoah.Zero post linked above), if you need fine gradations of badness or something.

**He might look pretty mild here, but trust me, he's pretty danged creepy.

***Said person being the older sister of the ostensible main character, i.e. the person suffering the effects of the veryveryberserk system.

-Signing off.

Apologies

My internet went out for a week, which is why there was a sudden bunch of silence. (It turned out to be a stupid problem; apparently some of the wiring was loose or something and my sister jimmied it back into place. Or something.)

Regular posts probably will resume Monday.

-Signing off.

[Title Commenting Vaguely On How Often I Post Embeds of Megalovania Remixes And Such]

[Comment alluding to the fact that I'll never feel the need to stop doing so.]



[Affirmation of previous comment.]

-Signing off.

Found This While Looking For A Different Thing

I remember watching this back in the day, but not posting it.



And even if I had, it's been ages and ages since I would have, so it's kinda like new.

-Signing off.

When Will I Stop Embedding Undertale Music?

Never, I say.



Never.

-Signing off.

Random Anime Music Time

From the soundtrack of the Heat Guy J anime comes this, the most mafioso-sounding mafioso music ever composed (Tribe).



Much as I appreciate this piece, I think that the song with the bagpipes (Bay Side Slider) is more emblematic of the show as a whole, though.



This one's the one that generally starts playing when the robot that looks like an old man starts punching things.

-Signing off.

In This Cartoon, A Character Gets Trapped In His Own Thought Bubble

You know what has a certain strange charm?

Those weird old cartoons where one person provided all the voices and wasn't trying very hard to sound different. (In this case, as in many similar cases, a character is narrating and providing the other voices.)



Although this cartoon is pretty amusingly weird, the weirdest thing about it for me was something that had nothing to do with the cartoon itself, but a copyright notice at the end:

I mean, I know that corporate characters are a thing, but it's still... really odd to me. Maybe it's just a more old-fashioned sort of copyright notice than I'm used to; these days, a cartoon like this probably wouldn't have a notification like that because it'd almost certainly entirely belong to the corporation that funded it, whereas back then (and maybe to some degree still in the UK, I know copyright laws are different there) the cartoon and the character might belong to different groups.

-Signing off.

Dude Has Quite The Fiscal Acumen

A couple months ago, I watched a playthrough of an arcade game called Black Tiger.



Easily the single thing about it that stuck out to me the most was the way that the old men you "rescue" act, giving you money, extending the time limit, and... opening up shop.

It's really pretty amazing.

-Signing off.