It’s still kind of sad, but at the same time, long overdue. Gainax had been a shell of its former self for quite a while, with basically all the people who made it what it was having gone elsewhere (Khara, Trigger) a long time ago and what was left being a miserable pile of debt, tax evasion and dubious IP management.

Speaking of IP, I wonder what’s going to happen to the Daicon Film IP. It’s impossible to make money out of, so I guess it’ll end up at Khara, given Anno is there?

I think there’s a 50% chance we went to the same theater, because I also went to see The Colors Within yesterday. I agree, great film. It’s interesting to me how Japanese entertainment tends to do a better job at telling a story where Christianity plays a role without being utterly obnoxious about it. Or maybe I’m just less suspicious about a Japanese creator’s intentions when it comes to this. Anyway, I did notice a slight plot hole, maybe?

But well, it’s not that big of an issue.

I already went to see Chainsaw Man a couple of weeks ago, which was great fun. I did like the first season quite a lot, but I enjoyed this different approach as well. Still a weird experience to go to the mainstream cinema and see an anime film in a packed house, though. That would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

I think I’ve solved the main conundrum of this show. Hinako wants Shiori to eat her, but Shiori first wants Hinako to want to live, so that she’s more delicious. But if that happens, Hinako won’t want to be eaten anymore. Also, she’s worried about leaving Miko behind without a friend. Then the solution is simple: all Hinako has to do once she wants to live again is eat Shiori so that she becomes immortal (because of eating mermaid flesh). After that, she’s pretty much a youkai herself, so Miko probably won’t want to eat her anymore (at least not in that way).

MikoHina lives on forever, Shiori has become a beautiful martyr for the cause, it all works out!

If you go to the official Japanese website of a show and look up where you can watch it, almost every time you’re presented with a list of close to two dozen streaming services. The exception is when one particular service (always an American one like Netflix or Amazon Prime) has exclusivity rights to it, but they’re the minority.

Exclusivity deals aside, this seems to me like a much better setup, at least from a consumer perspective. Shows are for the most part not dotted across different services, but there’s no market consolidation. And even if something isn’t on the service you’re subscribed to, it will probably be available on a service where you can just rent an individual show or episode instead of having yet another subscription. And I imagine that if they’re not competing on hostage-taking, that would mean they’re competing more on price and quality of service instead.

Studios don’t have that power, they don’t usually own the distribution rights of the shows they animated.

Most animation studios do contract work; they get hired by a production company to do a job, and get paid for it irrespective of whether the product does well on the market. The problems here are more structural, which are actually explained in the article.

Interesting how they used the lighthearted side-story to prevent complete tonal whiplash with the practically denpa song ED.
Also, Fairouz Ai can really draw, wow.

I imagine it’s also because the werewolves in this version of the game appear to be demons (which actually makes a lot of sense), so it also depicts the two sides in the game.

Steins;Gate gets quite dark and serious, but it starts out pretty goofy, so if you’re trying to avoid comedy it would leave a pretty bad first impression. I don’t think I would recommend pushing yourself through the earlier parts to get to the later parts either, because you do need a certain attachment to the characters to appreciate the latter.

Vinland Saga, from what you’ve written, seems more up your alley. In a similar vein (bloody serious historical fiction) I also recommend Orb.

Other than that, Pluto and Monster, both thrillers based on manga by Urasawa Naoki, are very straight-laced.

Actually, I wonder how light would interact with something that is infinitesimal in width, but does have a significant amount of depth. Have any experiments of this kind been done with graphene or something?

It’s weird, it feels kind of like watching a Japanese dub of an English-language show, which I haven’t felt even with other adaptations of works originally in English. I guess it’s because it also uses the visual language of the comic? Pretty luxurious cast, though.

Anyway, the writing isn’t very good. A bunch of things just don’t seem to make any sense; the dumb incident at the office it sends half the episode or so on, the whole deal with the rating of the protagonist’s game by the streamer. Still not sure what the show is about, either, but I don’t think I have the motivation to find out.