Not only was nothing about it interesting, but every """plotline""" was incredibly annoying and nonsensical. None of the characters felt remotely authentic and I never cared about any of them.

The end was done very well but I was pretty underwhelmed at the anime's explanation of the mysteries set up in S1

- The "bruh moments" are barely tolerable
- Quite a unique art style
- MC was still pretty "yikes" but not as bad as I expected
- Decent cover image

Not as good as Re:Zero S1 but still well-produced
The concept of a "10" is blurry

myanimelist.txt

(myanimelist.txt)

Easily better than the Re:Zero equivalents

(Without spoiling it)
One of the bigger plot developments didn't make much sense at all, but since it was introduced in Super Danganronpa 2.5: Komaeda Nagito to Sekai no Hakaimono and not this episode specifically, the reduction in score/enjoyment is reflected there and not here. I thought the reveals at the very end were fine; they made sense given some of the previous setups.

Its representation of certain themes was Re:Zero 10/10 level. Nagito's (Ogata Megumi's) voice on the "最高" in "最高のキミを魅せてよ もっと！" in "絶対希望バースデー" gets me every time. But a lot of the annoying anime tropes and deviations from the games brought the overall experience down.

Also, Izuru's thought processes sound pretty dumb if you consider the prospect of ASI. I guess it isn't fair to expect random anime writers to be familiar with that, though.

Not sure if people who have played/seen the game (which I have) are part of the target audience. The writing of the characters seemed faithful but my opinion of the pacing is obviously that it was terrible

I agree with the general notion that the second half is of noticeably lower quality. It was not entirely bad, though, and still had moments/ideas that surpassed the average quality of the first.

Rewatched ~2023-05-11

I don't remember Light ever expressing consideration of the idea that some people described as or accused of being criminals may actually be innocent. Would he kill two people that are certainly criminals if it also requires killing somebody that is certainly innocent (even from his POV, like a Kira supporter)?

Order notes:
- OVAs should probably be watched after
- The movie is probably a scam so don't worry about it

EP 3: 20:12: Bruh - don't just let him get away... Clearly even a fake stone has certain useful properties, so you should find out where he got it
EP 7: 20:33: Something that really bothered me that I still remember from the 2003 version is that Lt. Ross bowed down from the waist towards Edward and Alphonse, asking them not to risk themselves by visiting the site. They told her that they wouldn't but then slipped out later the same night nevertheless. The situation was understandable but very unpleasant to witness, so I'm glad that here, Armstrong basically just jokingly warned them

So far, I didn't really like the first opening and thought the first ending was decent, while I was a big fan of both the respective opening and ending in the 2003 version

Also, not sure if this is just a problem with my source, but around half way through every episode, there are two sort of "transition screens" that usually show some kind of recent character. On each screen, some kind of narrator enthusiastically speaks the words "Fullmetal Alchemist!" in English. It's extremely annoying, especially when it happens in the middle of a serious scene

EP 11:
10:40: Are you supposed to feel bad for her? Are we to forget what just happened?
15:37: It's especially hard to sympathize with people whose philosophies are opposite from mine. It's like, if a Windoze user complains about forced updating, I just laugh (I use arch btw)

EP 14:
11:28: This is starting to split from 2003, I think. Although, I'm pretty sure that the research laboratory was already an instance; didn't Edward get further down in 2003 and frolic around with more of the homuncili?
19:22: That's probably Edward and Alphonse's father, right? I don't really remember how he was introduced, though

EP 17:
14:51: I'm guessing that Mustang set something up so that it looks like that's Ross's dead body but actually got her to safety? It should be pretty obvious to him that she didn't actually kill Hughes, so there's no reason to kill her out of revenge. As for following orders, he clearly is not too attached to that idea considering his investigation of the Philosopher's stone. I don't remember him being explicitly told not to do that but it is at least an implied order.
16:31: What? So they're ruling the idea out? I also considered the possibility that that was Envy who killed her (well, Envy would have done so indirectly anyway, but I mean as Mustang), but I don't think Envy can replicate the morphed person's alchemy. Then, was Mustang serious? The interrogator's idea about Mustang bailing her out would make sense because that scene was shown soon after the one soldier read it on the newspaper and called Mustang about it.
17:41: I think I remember something about that from 2003, but it should be obvious that Mustang is implying that there is some sort of information to be obtained from going there. So, this makes it more likely that there is something important to the situation that is yet unknown

EP 18: 05:43: Okay, then what was that about the scar on her tooth or whatever? Did Mustang bribe the inspection doctor, as well as tell him to throw a few insults?

They keep showing how Alphonse suffers with his body, but what about Edward? Does he actually want to have human arms and legs again? I would think about replacing the other, existing human arm and leg with automail too

EP 24: 02:47: Don't negotiate with terrorists, Maruko-san
EP 27: 07:14: "Fragile beings, don't you think? They cower at the darkness and don't try to stand up to it. And instead, they try to forget it temporarily and try to escape from reality. Humans are such weak creatures. Well, let's have them be of some use to us as a precious resource." Is this a metaphor for Funimation making money by selling anime?
EP 37: 22:23: Guys, the solution is obvious. You just kill Winry yourselves, so that there's no longer a hostage, and then you can relax, right? But actually, that might be a good idea if it's implied that they will torture her and not just kill her, because death is obviously much better than torture
EP 57: 16:31: What? Wasn't Mustang also a candidate for human sacrifice? I don't remember anything about him opening the gate or losing any part of his body.

EP 59:
02:18: Bro? Why did they translate "wakatta" and "wakattayo, juui(?)" as "I'll do as you say"? It completely ruins the next line (for anime peasants who only read the English sub) and makes zero sense
13:08: What happened to Pride?
13:49: Alright
16:20: Guys, you know Neuralink just had another round of funding, right? By "never" you mean 5-10 years, right? Or are you refering to AGI?

EP 62:
02:45: Can someone make an anime where the other species actually beats humanity, where the author doesn't try to shill their own moral judgment?
03:35: That's just a random baby that happened to be in Xerxes at the time, right? Why are they trying to obtain a second body if Father just gave them one, though?
20:28: What? So you can just swap them whenever?
21:02: So how it works is that you have to pay a toll to visit the gate, but once you're there, you can do whatever you want? Then, Alphonse paid his soul, came there, and then dispensed out Edward's limbs? Why can't Edward pay with just his leg now, and get back both Alphonse and his body in one go? How come we aren't seeing Izumi's internal organs or Mustang's sight lying around anywhere? Couldn't you just get everything back?

EP 63:
05:17: I like how Greed faded out as he commented about how he was satisfied with the relationships he had, showing that the metaphorical idea of greed was dying along with his physical form.
06:31: Lmao, yeah, interfering with other people and ensuring that it is in their best interest to bind you is the best way to ensure you're not bound, good one buddy
07:35: Then you should have done 1000x more planning before setting anything off. The fact that Lust, who you attributed a nontrivial amount of trust to, died from one State Alchemist, should have been a warning sign. You should have been certain that Lust on her own could destroy the entire world before sending her out to perform any external, risky task. If you can't actually become God, then don't make risky attempts to do so. If you can, then wait patiently until you've formed the right circumstances.
08:59: I just told you, bro. Even at the end, you could have ran away while everybody was lying around on the ground and then restarted from scratch in Xing, or something. Maybe also read Atlas Shrugged
09:55: I'm pretty sure I remember something like that, but I thought the emphasis was on avoiding creating new stones with new lives rather than putting old lives to use. Are these guys deontologists or something?
10:09: Fine, then do what I said earlier - just repeat the same thing you did years ago when you were first getting his soul
10:20: Hhhhhhhhhhhh
11:14: Lmao, well now you kind of have to do it... If not, "Remember that time six months ago when Dad admitted his desire to commit suicide? Yeah, that was fun. Oh, hey Dad, yeah, I did hear that Apple is going to be adding JXL support to their ecosystem"
14:38: What? That's an issue? How did he drag his _soul_ out, then? Just use that same method
14:39: So it's just about that? If you need to trade something from _there_, then why did they make it seem like Alphonse could have gotten his body back earlier but had decided not to so that he could fight? He would have had to drag his body out, and the only thing he had to trade was his soul, which wouldn't have worked
15:15: "Oh, those orphans dying in that fire over there? Yeah, back in the old days, I could have used alchemy to save them. But, I got rid of my alchemy just so I wouldn't use any human that were already dead anyway, yeah. Those dead humans who are still dead must be real happy seeing those live orphans burning, so it was definitely worth it. Man, I'm a genius." ??? It's definitely possible that I'm misinterpreting multiple things that the show is trying to state, though
17:42: Impact instantly breaks his back due to severe osteoporosis, killing him instantly. Based
23:52: Welp, that makes Edward losing his alchemy even more silly. Add "Also, I didn't want my dad to die like one week earlier, when he has already lived for hundreds of years" to the consolation of orphans. I hope there is a bit more of a conclusion in the next episode, because I want to see Mustang coping with his blindness and Alphonse after he has a good meal and gets some surgery. I liked the compilation of Elric-related scenes played at the end, though

EP 64:
00:33: Is that his son?
02:46: Never mind, that makes more sense
03:12: If Mustang pulls an Edward, I'm going to be upset. Now it's not just orphans but major geopolitical issues that will be affected by Mustang's inefficiency
03:22: EXACTLY
04:57: Lmao I heard the word "kisama" but they translated it as a kind "And so, I decided to take you along."
08:44: Wait, that was an option?
12:00: Oh, and that ties back into the promise of her crying from happiness the next time
13:28: "You really shouldn't have traded your gate"
15:37: "Ours is the era of inadequate homunculus alignment theory." but you could probably do good research if Selim actually forms his psychology based on his environment. At first, I thought that that obviously wouldn't happen because he didn't grow up properly the first time, but then I remembered that he mostly wasn't aging and actually grew up a very long time ago, in a likely completely different environment
17:23: They're eating a Japanese crab?
17:41: Overflowingly based
20:20: And then she tells him that he can't do equivalent exchange anymore now that he lost his alchemy

The post-climax conclusion was done very well, both in terms of the actual resolution and in terms of the presentation. It's interesting that they decided to go with the second opening for the final compilation. I liked the third opening quite a bit more, but I can see how it wouldn't fit in terms of the tone.

EP 1:
07:42: The statements I read online about whether or not these OVAs are canon were sort of vague and conflicting, but I think the general consensus was "yes". Then, does human transmutation work fine as long as it's somebody new? Where does their soul (yes, this is an actual concept in the series) come from? Was Edward able to transmutate Alphonse's soul only because it was taken along with his body as a toll? Then, couldn't anybody live forever by sacrificing themselves to God (or whatever that black/white child sitting in there is called) and then getting a friend to transmutate only their soul, to some sort of fixed object? The main series showed how the armour was starting to reject Alphonse's soul, but I don't remember if they denied affixing your soul to something else afterwards. Why didn't Father use Judou instead of Mustang, though?
10:35: LMAO
10:42: HOLY BASED
11:54: Uhh should she really have showed Alphonse this
12:58: Ohh so Judou actually thinks that Amy is Rosalie. That's cool in terms of the explaining the context, but it seems easier to just tell him and then stop paying for Amy

iToddlers BTFO

I was quite fond of the ending song, Hallelujah☆Essaim. The overall composition was well-produced and I appreciated how the angel/demon theme of the anime was represented in the melody and choice of instruments.

=================================================

If you decide to watch this, I would recommend just completely skipping episode 9. It's not worth it. The only relevant thing that happens is at the very end, but the introduced information is repeated at the start of episode 10, so you don't need it.

=================================================

I watched this around 5-6 years ago and still remember many of the major plot points, which may prevent me from giving it a particularly fair assessment in terms of score

It was interesting to see the foreshadowing (in e.g. EP 1) that I must have missed on the first watch, though. There's so much of it that I must have been pretty stupid to have not predicted anything. That makes sense, though, considering that I was still doing things like using Windows 10 instead of Arch Linux and writing "== true"

EP 4, 14:25:
I quite like the way the writers put events out of order and have you fill in gaps based on new information. Miki's relationship with Taroumaru, for example, was thought through well
The biggest problem so far is the lack of information on the capabilities of the zombies. Also, the information that /is/ provided seems to be contradictory. Judging from, for example, the expedition in EP 2, it seems like the zombies are extremely weak, mentally and physically. But if they were this harmless, how would they understand that investing large amounts of energy into pushing through doors could be a good idea? How would they have supposedly conquered Japan and the rest of the world? Maybe I would have seppuku-d as soon as I heard about the outbreak, but there's no way that e.g. Gwern would be dead, right? It's hard to put yourself into the shoes of the characters if you can't understand the threats and therefore don't know which options are available.

EP 7 15:10:
Now the writers are kind of portraying the zombies on the weak side and implying that there are other survivors, which should make sense just from the existence of these characters. None of them are especially skilled at or knowledgeable about "survival" so it stands to reason that there should be many other living pockets. Then, creating support should not be /that/ hard. Now that I think about it, how does it even spread to other countries if Japan is an island? Is it assumed that the zombies can operate boats and planes? I haven't seen much zombie-related media, so maybe the genre guarantees some unanswerable questions.
Also, the very meager Japanese vocabulary I've accumulated has definitely contributed to the viewership experience, even if I'm watching with English subtitles. In certain cases the translation is more detailed and expressive than the original line, but more often are cases where the original meaning is unnecessarily simplified. A very notable example in the previous episode was when Yuki was happy to hear Miki refer to her as 先輩, which would have seemed largely nonsensical if I was only looking at subtitles.

EP 11 4:45:
If the medicine isn't a scam (they get down there, open the box, and just see a note with ">imagine falling for the medicine meme"), it could be a good idea to go for it. It seems like you get a decent window of time between being bitten and completely converting, so even if they get mildly injured on the way down there, they can consume the medicine themselves and hopefully have a bit left over.
15:05:
Well, now it looks like the room that the anime kept showing clips of Megumi in is the evacuation center, which makes sense, considering the location of her zombie. However, that also means that the medicine /has/ to be a scam, right? Otherwise, Megumi could have just taken some while she was there. The only other possibility is that since she had not read the evacuation guide (RTFM Megumi), she didn't know of its existence. Maybe she didn't bother to look around much or it was hidden in such a way that you'd only find it by reading about it.
15:25:
Oh? So then she did find but was unable to open it?

End:

I think I would have enjoyed it more blind, but it's probably still a 10. I believe I rated it as a 10 the first time I watched this too. There we definitely some "eh" moments like the idea of a second dog (which you can clearly hear as Taroumaru runs to the basement) and the near-entirety of EP 9, but I don't think those were enough to bring down the overall experience.

The zombie capability problem I mentioned earlier was mostly resolved. From what I can tell, they are quite a bit stronger than I had initially assumed and it's just that Kurumi is especially athletic. You can probably extend the anime's idea of zombies loosely attempting to emulate their original lives to include them pushing through different kinds of doors.

One mildly unfortunate thing was that nobody ever mentioned the idea of suicide. I like to think of experience as quantifiable, where infinite happiness is positive infinity and infinite suffering is negative infinity. On that scale, the actual state of death would have to be exactly 0. If you were aware that you would be dead in the next five minutes, it would feel < 0, but that's only because your mind creates negative emotions at the prospect of death. Most causes of death, especially in the context of the anime, would definitely feel < 0 to actually go through (e.g. being stabbed to death by Rii) but as soon as you actually die, your experience gets permanently reset to 0.

The point of using this framework is to illustrate that in certain cases, a permanent 0 is preferable to the other alternatives. I think it'd be interesting to see some kind of media where the failure state isn't 0, but something far lower. Imagine characters being in a scenario where there is a large, incoming risk of eternal, undescribably painful torture. None of them expect or even hope for positive experience; the only thing they want to do is die and reach 0, avoiding arbitrarily large negative numers. Of course, the environment would be set up in a way that death is extremely difficult, extremely painful, or both. Re:Zero very lightly touches on this idea but I'd like to see further exploration.

Large variation in quality between episodes

I'd be pretty disappointed if this was actually the finale, although I can empathize with the staff that clearly were not in a favourable situation

Probably better than 1-201 on average

I'm glad the producers decided to do informal endings for each "section" (i.e. 1-201, 202-252, etc.), preserving actual conclusions for the very end

Overall ≤ 1-201, except for the "Courtesan of a Nation" arc which I especially liked (~9)

The situation surrounding Kouka (Kagura's mother) 's illness was either pretty dumb or insufficiently explained

The opening song was decent except that right at the end of it, they reuse the first line of the chorus. Why!? This completely ruins the conclusive nature of the previous よ syllable, which is on the tonic. The whole time throughout the first 11 episodes, I thought that the Gintama staff must have cut it at an awkward portion for the openings, but since it was played in full on episode 12, I got to see (hear) that no, that's actually how it ends. I still can't wrap my head around it.

The Gengai robot situation was overhyped and nonsensical

Overall, this one did not seem as polished or well-produced as "Gintama." or the last half of "Gintama°", even though it was similar to them in purpose/scope

There was a noticeable increase in quality compared to part one of this Silver Soul arc, and this 14-episode section was probably my favourite out of any in Gintama so far.

The very end was quite disappointing and definitely ruined the previous Gintoki-Shinpachi scene. I am now wondering how it will be salvaged. From what I understand, there are only two more episodes and then a final movie remaining - will that adapt the rest of the manga?

Many aspects were ≥ Shirogane no Tamashii-hen - Kouhan-sen, but there were also more points than usual that felt unclear or nonsensical. For example, the situation with the Altana Gate close to the end seemed like BS fanservice and not anything that builds on the rules outlined so far, even if they try to handwave it with "teacher protects student lamayo". It also disrespects the impact of the earlier, relevant scene. Overall, though, the movie is a sufficient conclusion to the anime.

One other strange note is that there seemed to be some major audio issues while I was watching. The voices of the voice actors seemed less clear than usual, as if they had cheap microphones, and the volume would constantly be either way too loud or way too quiet, forcing me to continuously adjust it for myself to be able to hear properly. There was also some periods where it seemed delayed or missing. I'm guessing that this is either an issue with my audio system, my headphones (I wore them while walking in the snow earlier), or the (definitely legal, trust me) streaming site I used. It's clear how much effort was put into the movie and if this was the actual audio experience, everyone should have caught it early.

Since this is the last piece of content, I will also mention some general thoughts about the Gintama series as a whole:

I thought the cast was decently polished; I liked most of them and could generally empathize with their viewpoints. The writers did a pretty good job in being able to include both serious and comedic elements without either of them trampling each other. Some characters almost entirely stuck to one side of the spectrum (e.g. Hasegawa, Takasugi) but others were able to exist in both spaces coherently (e.g. Gintoki, Shigeshige). Nobunobu was my favourite character in terms of development and Sougo was probably my favourite character in terms of personality/design. My favourite one-off (i.e. she appeared in more than one episode but wasn't critical to any of the overarching plot) character was Gedoumaru. There were not very many characters that I actually disliked, which is another positive note. The main ones that come to mind are Catherine, Sarutobi, and Toujou, but maybe they make more sense in Japan than they do from my Western perspective.

The music is arguably even more subjective, but in my opinion, it generally became less impressive as the series went on. Near the very start, my save (i.e. download to listen to outside of the context of Gintama) rate was close to 50%, but that number dropped to 0% by the end. The last song I thought favourably of was DESTINY by Negoto (youtu.be/oiOhiLmQURg), which was the 23rd out of 30, and the distance from the one before it is also nontrivial. My favourite song is still the first ending (youtu.be/JaeRo0ecqVw), but there are better ones if you are taking the visuals into account too, such as the third (youtu.be/Zv-d9oHXraM), which I think has the best ending video and one of the best tracks. I especially like the scene of Takasugi standing alone at the edge of his ship and expressionlessly staring off into the snowy abyss.

Gintama's overarching plot was pretty obsessively hyped for most of the show, but when it came in these ending seasons, most conclusions felt logical and satisfying. Even though the Gintama anime wasn't aware (as Ginpachi-sensei says) of where it was going, it seems like the manga author had some concrete plans for the later arcs, despite the situation at the end of Shirogane no Tamashii-hen - Kouhan-sen.

I enjoyed many of the comedy segments, but their quality was certainly less consistent than that of e.g. One Punch Man.

I'm still not really sure if there was any intention for any of the events to act as a metaphor for immigration to or Westernization of Japan. Many times, characters state their belief that the mere state of "Amanto coming to Earth" is ontologically negative, but on the other hand, they are clearly in support of certain individual Amanto, such as Kagura, one of the most prominent characters.

2023-03-01 Edit: I now remembered that I also "saved" the 25th ending, so I suppose my point on the music earlier is slightly diminished.

The first half of this section was in general < 1-201 [0], but there were still certain episodes that I particularly liked:
- Lottery
- Reaper arc
- Confession booth
- Shogun amnesia
- Mutsu and Tatsuma arc
- Saito Shimaru
- etc. (there are more)

[0]: Remember that an anime that lasts this long needs to improve and not simply maintain quality over time, since the audience grows more familiar with it and the novelty of the environment wears off by default.

The two arcs of the second half, Shogun Assassination and Farewell Shinsengumi, were probably the highest quality of the anime so far. Their explanations for some of the recurring plot points were decently satisfying and the production effort and thought overall seemed higher, even in terms of comedy, which was admittedly harder to fit in considering the more serious nature.

One quote (exchange) I found especially insightful/relevant, in episode 39, was
"1: You are plenty strong. After all, you pushed Gintoki that far, my little dojo challenger.
2: But I lost.
1: You did. And that's why you'll grow stronger. Victors only gain self-satisfaction and conceit, but you have gained something far more meaningful."

The biggest problem was that something that happened at the end of EP 50 was sort of nonsensical, but it doesn't ruin the arc or the episode. Also, I still did not completely understand Takasugi's decisions by the end of the former arc, although maybe you're not supposed to, or I just was not paying sufficient attention.

Decent cover image
Most anime just have all of the main characters standing around in a generic setting, which is boring and does not let you infer much

~= SS 1-5

1:05:27: Am I supposed to be feeling bad for these raccoons? They should be trying harder to cooperate with humans. One pack of raccoons could easily make enough money to buy a good plot of land and develop a self-sustaining ecosystem. Just demonstrate to humans how you're capable of shape-shifting and then offer services, such as allowing research (which could also help the raccoons), or producing shape-shifting that would be useful to humans. If humans knew that raccoons had minds as developed as is portrayed, I'd expect a sizable majority to believe that some form of humans rights should be granted to those raccoons.

If we're going to necessitate an incompatibility for co-existence, then I'm open to the idea of the raccoons winning. Why should the humans be worth more if they are weaker than the raccoons?

And are these raccoons only in Japan? I find myself feeling bad for Japan when I hear their plans of attacking people, but I don't have any doubt that the raccoons would lose if it turned serious. It's just that there would be unfortunate damage by that point.

1:22:08: "What's that? Raccoons? I don't care if it was penguins! I want them all working exclusively for me!" Holy based, exactly
1:22:50: Bro, negotiate up to one billion yen, and then take it. That will be enough.
1:25:26: Kitsune bros seem based. But if build a good business, you can operate it from inside your woods, or just have it run itself. Start taking cold showers and watching 3-hour Tim Ferriss podcasts for a few weeks and you should be good to go

Ok I'm going to try to take fewer notes now. You can guess what I'll say for future things

End:
In general, Ghibli failed to make me feel empathetic for any of the animals. Most of the philosophies I heard the raccoons expressing were completely nonsensical. In real life, animals are generally not intelligent enough to perform enough work to justify spending resources to keep them alive.

Based political propaganda

Why did the Aunt tell Setsuko?

bro ?

- Some good ideas, but still a lot of inconsistency and contrivance like usual
- Jolyne is a forced meme but decent
- I liked the Pucci + Dio situation. I don't tend to "take sides" in these kinds of stories but I'm more interested in seeing Pucci succeed, to see what heaven looks like. Also, I might add Pucci to the list of favourite characters if he doesn't decline
- Everything related to Miu Miu's stand was beyond stupid

EP 08: 12:34:
I'm more and more coming to the conclusion that the entire plot of Part 6 is just a result of a misunderstanding. Joutarou was like "Dio = bad => anything related to Dio = bad => heaven = bad", so our response should be "Wow Joutarou is cringe af" and not "Hmm, yeah, makes sense". Pucci should have told Jolyne that he will give back Joutarou's memory later, after he gets some information, or otherwise made a peaceful agreement. After achieving good terms with her, he could have been nice and worked to get her released.

Then, Jolyne would never have had any solid motive to go after him. Maybe Pucci could even have worked with her to investigate Dio's bone, unless stupid Joutarou interfered again.

In the past, I didn't understand why Pucci wanted Weather Report and Perla to break up. Just to avoid future surprises of incest? At their point in the relationship, they probably would have been fine with it already. Also, good luck making moral arguments against incest in their context.

However, after what happened, the natural response isn't to blame Weather and Perla meeting, but the investigator's crew. Maybe blame Pucci for not putting sufficient research into the person he was hiring beforehand. But don't start making arbitrary accusations. Weather should have understood that Pucci's intentions were to help Perla; why is there any reason for them to fight?

At this point right now,
- Pucci should be staying more careful and avoiding Weather + Anastasia.
- Weather should forgive Pucci and then focus on killing himself, or whatever else he wants.
- Anastasia should leave Pucci alone and go back to Jolyne.
- Jolyne should go deliver Joutarou's disc back to him herself, and leave Pucci alone.
- I don't even know what Ermes is trying to do. She should just finish serving her sentence, probably.
- Emporio should go watch some anime or something and stop meddling.
- Joutarou should realize that Dio and Pucci are actually based, if he gets his memory back. Then, we can all get to heaven.

The only reasonable ending here is for everyone to cooperate. When it comes time to actually reach heaven, they realize that they just receive a letter that comes down from God, which reads "Gather the following people: Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Trevor Blackwell, Vicki Cheung, Andrej Karpathy, Durk Kingma, Jessica Livingston, John Schulman, Pamela Vagata, Wojciech Zaremba, Sam Altman and Elon Musk".

By the way, is this all a psy-op? Why wasn't Dio working more actively on this back in Part 3? What was he even doing in Part 3 besides reading Philosophy 101 and drinking wine?

EP 10: 19:27: Pucci is literally the hero. Why are they trying to make it seem like Jolyne dying is sad? Of course, my natural inclination is often to root for the villain, but they're supposed to be acknowledged as such. It's being implied that Jolyne is the poor underdog who is innocently trying to protect herself.

End:
Welp
I am not impressed with the resolution to the Pucci heaven events. A lot of their logic related to time and metaphysics was annoyingly inconsistent. Surely Dio's idea of heaven wasn't for people to subconsciously predict 15s into the future while being unable to modify it. The regroup in the last scene made zero sense. I thought the Roundabout ending sequence was cute, though.

The music, art style, and character/costume design reminds me of some of the old Russian movies I would watch when I was little

34:18: Nausicaä's weapon, which looked like some sort of bronze wrench, was able to kill the soldiers without seeming to pierce their gear. Before Yupa said they were dead, I actually thought they had just fallen over in exhaustion
34:30: Kushana claimed they were here to talk, but by that point they had already came in and killed the village's king for no reason
35:33: Again, flying over, destroying windmills, possibly killing a few civilians as your ships land awkwardly, and then executing the village leader does not seem like the best method for "[establishing] a world of peace and prosperity in this region". I don't get the impression that it's supposed to be a lie, though
35:53: They're clearly fine with speaking out loud, then, so somebody should have protested at her intentions
37:13: Well, Baba, why can't we just figure out how to kill these Ohmus, or harvest them for energy?
37:33: Oh, so they didn't know; that makes it better
43:01: The character's emotional reactions to traumatic events haven't felt particularly realistic, but I guess that the genre was still in active development in 1984?

Also, I keep getting the impression that the video has been AI upscaled by ESRGAN or something. This was labeled as 2014 remux

46:50: Nobody thought to invent parachutes and passenger ejection systems after what happened last time?
1:05:26: She's not going to question him about the fact that he massacred an entire fleet?
1:21:40: The Pejite's leader's reasoning for their use of the insects didn't seem particularly logical. However, I liked Asbel's decision to rebel, even if it wasn't successful

Overall, the biggest problem was the contrivance of the actions and motivations of characters. Kurotawa, who seemed consistent from his own perspective, was the main exception

Kizu 2 > Bake > Kizu 1, so far
Would have been a 9 if a few scenes were rewritten

Would have been a 7 if they removed one scene

The last episode was interesting
I quite liked the exam arrival idea

EP 1: 09:26: The Russian they were speaking made me laugh. It was basically "No, I'm not having natto. Sushi is fine, though"
EP 2: Doesn't Taguchi seem a little bit uncreative? Even that condition was real, there are better management strategies than crouching all the time. I liked the way they set up and executed the resolution of the episode, though

EP 3:
7:13: Again? You just ripgrep through your text files... Or at least maintain a separate list of each character among your books to easily look through
14:11: Ok he got it
15:38: This is what all those girls at the convention were reading?

EP 11:
15:30: Nobody let this guy read Atlas Shrugged

Overall pretty well-produced
There were a couple of medium-minor issues that piled up to degrading the rating but I thought the way they portrayed different psychologies was effective

EP 2: I'm calling it now: Leader is going to die sooner or later

EP 7 08:00 -------------
Lmao Ouzen is dangerously based

Anyway, if she was under the impression that the vessel repels the curse but has nothing to do with revival when Riko was first born, why did she and Lyza still decide to carry it up? Or was it just to stay in possession of the vessel itself and nothing to do with Riko?

I'm also not clear on how the revival works. Maybe the translation is strange, the original dialogue is ambiguous, I'm stupid, or some combination of those.

"Yesterday, I got nostalgic, and I tried putting some of the meat I was going to cook for dinner in there, and the thing got loose and ran around."

Is it implied that she killed it before intending to cook it, and put the dead body in the vessel? So the dead meat was revived, then got loose? Or did she put it in while it was alive?

"After a while, it stopped moving."

If it was already alive, then this means that the vessel also kills things that are alive. If it was already dead, it means that it revives them but kills them shortly after. If that's the case, why wasn't Riko killed shortly after? If you are always going to be killed again but the offset changes based on e.g. the original lifespan, then it would make sense that a random animal would die faster than a human, but nobody is mentioning that as an explanation.

This makes me think about what Nat was saying earlier about children dying on their birthdays. Maybe the mirror idea was a meme but the deaths could make sense in the context of the vessel. There are age requirements for going down to certain depths, so maybe all of those children were going far down on their birthdays (as soon as they reach the requirement) and coming back up using the vessel. Then, if the offset is always the same (e.g. 3 years), they would all die on their birthdays 3 years later.

However, since Riko is already 12, the offset would have to be at least 12 years, right? If they are coming down there at e.g. age 15, that would mean that they're dying at age 27, which can't be described as "kids".

Anyway, it gets more confusing on the next line:

"I guess the half I didn't cook wasn't quite done moving yet." (With a clip of the animal that Riko saw in the previous episode)
"I wonder how long you'll last."

The best order of events I can come up with based on this line is
1. Ouzen killed an animal
2. She put the entire animal into the vessel
3. The animal was revived and ran around
4. The animal stopped moving and seemed to have died
5. Ouzen split the animal in half and then only cooked/ate one half
6. The uncooked half started moving again, meaning it was either not dead or it was revived again without being put into the vessel
7. That animal is now missing (and implied to be alive) but is heading towards the bottom of the abyss

How does that make sense, though? Why would it stop moving if it wasn't dead? And if it was dead, how did it revive itself again? Either way, isn't the end result that it's alive despite being in the vessel? Doesn't that mean that there's no reason for Riko to now die just because she was in the vessel too?

I don't know anyone who has seen this show besides ChatGPT. GPT-4 doesn't really understand what happens in anime episodes, so it would probably just give me false information or possibly spoil things that are revealed later. So, all I can do is document my confusion for my future self to laugh at and hope that it's reiterated later.

Also, I understand Reg trying to grab her arm if he's under the impression that Ouzen is about to strangle Riko or something, but why was her dialogue seen as aggressive? Maybe I'm just too far on the spectrum, but I think that if I was in the same situation (but before the "I despise you." line), my impression would be that Ouzen is being nice by explaining something interesting to me. I would just say "なるほど。ありがとう"

10:15
I've been thinking this for a while but what if Reg was originally human but just had a lot of his organs replaced with relics? It would make sense that his brain is mostly human or else it means that the OpenAI equivalent of the Abyss made AGI

12:03
I rarely can empathize with characters in media, which perhaps diminishes some of the dramatic tone that is supposed to be built up. I doubt Ouzen kills Reg or Riko, but I'm not averse to the prospect of that. Why should I root for one character and not another character? I feel like a lot of media tries to answer that question by making one character more relatable, at least in a moral sense, but that often fails in my case. What keeps me interested is the exploration of the abilities and intentions of the characters and not anticipation of any specific outcome.

"As punishment for disobeying my orders, I'll string you up naked later, though."
As we saw earlier, people aren't joking when they say this. This isn't normal in Japan, right? I feel like I would have seen it mentioned before this anime by now

EP 10:
When Reg first climbed up and nothing was happening, I thought "Welp, the whole bleeding idea was a scam". But then, _that_ started
Damn, it was done pretty well. The mosquitoe-like creatures coming in was especially relatable

That orb piercer was really cool, though. We need to have an extra OVA that is just 20 minutes of the POV of the chad orb piercer

EP 11
09:45: Lmao Nanachi might be more based than Ouzen
22:00: Hey, what if Mitty is what Lyza turned into? That would explain this weird glancing behaviour that has been emphasized

EP 12
05:54: Welp, there goes that. I wasn't considering it a serious possibility since I couldn't see any way they could make the reveal satisfying
12:48: Well doesn't that mean you can just dig a nice Minecraft elevator out on one of the sides and get around that way? Someone tell Elon about this and we will get some plans going

End:
Welp, looks like Leader is still alive, but there is still a movie and a second season. If he dies but gets revived, it still counts

Nanachi was probably my favourite character, although I was pretty fond of almost all of them.

I disliked Riko, though, who seemed the least cautious despite being the least capable. I don't really know what Lyza was doing to become competent at that age, but whatever it is, it doesn't seem like Riko is doing it. The training that Ouzen gave them didn't seem particularly different from what they had already been doing at that point, which basically just consisted of relying on Reg.

31:15:
Bruh
This is why I dislike Riko
Yeah, I know she's supposed to be 12, but there's no way that e.g. Nat, Marulk, or Shiggy are this dumb, right?

36:55:
Based
I mean, if all he did was dismantle Reg, it's not that big of a deal. Mitty was begging to die when coming up, so he was basically tricking children to allow him to abduct them and then putting them through torture, which is way more serious than killing. Maybe Nanachi is more familiar with his behaviour or mindset than we are, but if I was her, I would think that he might randomly decide to torture me as part of an experiment as well, even if we had been previously working well as part of a research team.

40:27:
Uh, what? I thought Bondrewd was basically saying that not hurting Riko and Reg in exchange for Nanachi becoming a lab assistant was a good deal but that he unfortunately already started something with Reg. As they were having that conversation, though, Reg was still basically untouched, so it wasn't too late. Couldn't he just call the operation off by speaking into the PA system or something? Or at least come with Nanachi and tell the rest of his friends to relax? Also, what they were doing to Reg doesn't look close to as bad as the Mitty transformation.

1:21:05: So that one is Prushka? The release line was a lie?
1:21:15: Ok yeah. Gotta stay on that sigma grindset with the Papa Pole

EP 1
14:33: So far, the writers have made these new characters look very interesting. I assume that most of this will be resuming Reg, Riko, and Nanachi's adventure, but I hope that that we see a good resolution for these ones too.
16:08: So are both these characters and the tribe that they found not the first? Then, Bondrewd isn't the one who built the ruins? I guess that makes sense if a (golden) city already exists. I'd to be cool if that group makes it to and settles down at a depth which Lyza and Reg/Riko/Nanachi also eventually reach.

Notes on names
0000ff: Wazukyan
ffffff: Belaf
ff0000: Vueko

EP 2:
01:37: Ok so we will probably be seeing more of them
15:03: Average 4chan moderator behaviour... ripping off body hair, stuffing it inside a dead animal's butthole, and then sewing it up
17:40: Well, it's a stick figure, and they drew it over Riko, so maybe it's representing that Riko is fully human. Nanachi just has a line, which might represent a hollow. Then, maybe Reg being some kind of robot or relic means he doesn't have any humanity. If that sign has the human on it, maybe it means that Riko is supposed to climb through the hole it's covering? where it is and is not okay to climb up still isn't too clear, though.

I liked the behaviour of the hollow at the end. It had some database of "language" and initialized its interaction with one prompt based on some kind of probability selection and then queried its database based on the OpenAI whisper input it received. Once it identified 日本語, it could switch to it as a default in addition to making assumptions about the intruders

EP 3:
03:59: Never mind, he hasn't even heard of Postgres before
08:19: Looks like the based golden city has Atlas Shrugged lying around somewhere
12:04: What? So we also got Light Yagami in here automatically punishing people who damage the value of others? No wonder Elon hasn't been building those elevators, he must be launching a startup down here
14:28: Guys, I figured out an infinite money glitch. You get something very hard to notice and very fragile, like a sugar cube, and declare that it has an arbitrarily high number of value. Then, you place it on a public bench and wait for somebody to accidentally sit on it.
18:48: Okay, I've noticed the pattern: Miru (see) --> Mitai (want to see), Taberu (eat) --> Tabetai (want to eat). This was probably listed in Tae Kim but I last looked at that a while ago. Maybe English subtitles are sometimes useful...
20:28: This must be the native girl that the first group took in, right?
20:33: Okay, yeah. The artstyle on the eyes seemed to match

EP 4:
01:12: Wait, what? Apologies if this already came up in a previous flashback but how does she know his name if Riko only named him after he had already lost his memory?
04:16: Damn, they patched the infinite money glitch
04:51: Yo, the latest UI update accidentally revealed the glitch again
08:30: I see, good, that wasn't an oversight
12:28: Average gaijin on the train
15:00: Yagami bros? What's our response?
19:50: Average gaijin at the sushi bar
20:22: Nice, the name notes were worth it. Based Wazukyan took the redpill and became a hollow
20:34: Oh, and here must be Belaf
20:55: I think I remember seeing this guy when they were first panning around the city in the intro
22:00: Ah so Vueko is who Yagami must have hired after he got bored

EP 5:
07:30: Based
08:46: Average Duolingo fan who hasn't been enlightened by Matt yet
11:08: Those are the names she is writing down
21:45:
I knew Belaf was based... Isn't this a pretty good deal, then? Just tell him that you're probably good on the leg deal, then go back into the market and find someone who can get you some good prosthetic legs, trade whatever to do them, and then come back to Belaf for the legs deal, on the condition that he will also help install the legs as part of the transaction so you don't bleed out and die. Honestly, Belaf is getting scammed here.
However, the more important question is whether any trade needs to happen. If Belaf can confirm that Nanachi is basically dead but not going to be in pain, then do you really need to get her back? She made her choice, didn't she? Also, who is in possession of Mitty right now? She was sold to Nanachi, but if Nanachi ceases to have her own autonomy, are her possessions automatically passed on to Reg or Riko by default?

EP 6:
01:03: Whoa, Majijaka is a real bro. That was a complete rip off from Belaf's POV, though, so maybe he saved both of them. I still think it would be possible to amputate both legs and survive, though, but they can (kind of) explain that as the market not having the right equipment for humans
04:29: GDP chads rolling in as well? This place actually seems way better than the surface
08:13: I have a feeling that this Juroimoh guy is just a grifter

EP 7 22:00: Maybe he was making food out of the dead babies produced? Looks like an infinite chemical potential energy glitch. I think this might violate the law of conservation of energy

EP 8:
01:20: Bro, you may have wanted to make clear that you want to hear the promise and *possibly* *consider* it
01:29: Well, there you have it. How are you going to tell someone who just amputated their own arm in expectation that you'll do X that you have no interest in doing X?
06:12: And then r/vegan was born
07:07: Seriously? We're about to see some Riko-level logic right here. They can't pass it off as a symptom of abuse either because otherwise there would have already been instances already
07:15: Oh okay, that is more sensible
07:16: Bruh
13:15: Hey, doesn't this look like the entrance to the village, both in terms of the turquoise barrier and the tree-like outer shape?
22:00: Why was Vueko saying that it would be bad if Belaf found out that she was up there, then? Can't she stay up here and then work on the naming part-time?

EP 9:
06:50: Right, Wazukyan looks happy to see her
11:15: I watched the scene twice but still don't understand. is Reg saying that Wazukyan was buying time for Juroimoh? But what does Juroimoh taking Faputa's limb from Reg have to do with Riko using the cradles of desire? Why does Wazukyan care about the limb?
15:00: Doesn't that contradict what she said earlier? So Juroimoh doesn't care about the limb inherently but only used its existence as evidence for the classification of Reg as dangerous? So it's just "Village be dumb lol", considering Reg probably isn't dangerous?
17:10: Maybe Wazukyan's goal was just to have Reg create a hole so that he can also leave

End:
I think I started out liking it more than the first season but my opinion continuously decreased. My favourite episode was probably 01.

Mainly, I was irritated by what seemed like insufficient explanation
- Faputa's psychology and how it is able to be influenced despite some kind of strict utility function that was inherited from Irumyuui
- The intentions of the Interference Units
- How you're supposed to feel sorry for Faputa - I rarely sympathize at all, though, so maybe most people would fine this effective
- Why Juroimoh attacked Reg if the villagers know that it's unproductive (even if it was successful) and will only cause Reg to destroy the village
- Why Reg promised Faputa that he would help her destroy the village if his psychology seems more or less the same as now
- Why Wazukyan didn't figure something out - he should have at least been able to predict that Reg fetching Faputa's limb would be bad idea and that my prosthetic legs idea was solid
- Why eating Irumyuui's children was supposed to be such a horrible thing to do

I also thought that Belaf's behaviour after becoming a hollow was inconsistent
Vueko's resolution was done pretty well, though

EP 2
>06:40:
What the hell is this? The last episode seemed like an interesting start but now I'm upset. You don't casually tell someone that they can wish for anything and then just kind of see them go "Oh, okay". The characters need to immediately ask
- What are the limits on the wish? Can I wish for infinite wishes? Can I wish for me to be able to make multiple contracts? Can I wish for me to be able to let anyone I choose make a contract (and then brainwash people into wishing on your behalf)?
- Why is fighting witches dangerous if you can just wish for yourself to never be harmed, or never killed, or to be infinitely powerful?
- Why do witches even exist if anybody could have wished for witches to all stop existing at once?
- Why was Homura attacking Kyubey in the last episode if Kyubey has such good intentions?
- What did Mami wish for, and did the wish work as she expected?
- If the Soul Gem thing is the source of your magic, what happens if you misplace it?
They also better hear Homura's perspective on the situation before committing to something.

I hope and expect that more conditions are stated later that reduce how creative you can get with your wishes. However, that doesn't redeem this scene. The characters don't know about this limits in advance, so they should not be failing to consider the most obvious of ideas.

>Competing
Okay, so one explanation for Homura's behaviour is that she wants to claim more of the rewards from killing witches, and would rather reduce the number of competitors. But in that case, why is Mami being supportive of them if she's going to gain additional competitors? Also, they should definitely confirm with Homura that this was her intentions instead of blindly accepting what Kyubey and Mami say. Still, nobody asked what the rewards for killing witches is.

>13:50
You now know of two people who have made wishes (Homura confirmed this is not a lie, since if she had never heard of that, she would probably say something like "Wish? What are you talking about?"), and neither of them seem like they are in particularly enviable circumstances. You should come to some conclusions on the efficacy of wishes based on this information...

Maybe reading HPMOR has increased my standards for fiction, but this just seems completely off. I'm continuously worried that the next time I rewatch Re:Zero, I'll think that all the plot devices are dumb and then not enjoy it anymore, which would be a little sad, since it's the most prominent Japanese media that comes to mind when I think of quality.

>22:10
Lol what? Some unknown entity is forcing you to fight witches, but you only have a limited supply of magic that only sometimes get replenished based on the loot crates you find in victories? Why did anyone take this deal, assuming that the wishes are a scam, which is what it's looking like?

Homura again adds credibility by responding in a way that seems to confirm what Mami says. I doubt this is a double psyop with a fake opponent, since they're supposed to be acting to convince the characters and not the viewer, outside the fourth wall.

EP 3
>03:48
So can't you breed some on purpose to get free seeds? If you can automate the farming of those (maybe I should play Factorio), you can have an effectively infinite supply of magic, right?
>04:05
Are we finally going to get new info?
>04:47
Well, that doesn't really explain anything, but at least it makes sense. I might not be able to think straight (not that I do at normal times, but still) if I was just injured in a car crash either. I'm assuming the fact that it was shown as a flashback means that the show is declaring it to be the truth; it's not just a representation of what Mami is saying. By the way, I'm assuming the implication is that she wished for something like "Heal all of the injuries inflicted on me in the past thirty minutes", rather than direct immortality.
>06:48
You're literally admitting that happiness is your terminal goal, rather than fashion, so why take such a weird risk?
>09:41
This is like the third time it's been brought up and Homura has yet to confirm or deny it. Whether or not she would correct someone saying false things about her would depend on her personality, so I can't tell what the answer is.
>11:00
So I'm guessing Mami's not going to get there in time, either accidentally or deliberately, and then Sayaka will make the contract after getting into danger, possibly with an underdeveloped decision of a wish? They (the writers) haven't given me any reason to empathize with Sayaka or Madoka so far, so I don't see how they will make wasting it seem significant...
>17:48
Okay, good. If her reaction to that was "Oh, yeah, that sounds cool!" I might have completely checked out
>18:54
Again, I'm guessing characters can't lie to themselves in monologues? I really get the impression that Kyubey and Mami are just setting up the equivalent of a crypto pump and dump here
>21:24
Hmm, so either Mami was completely braindead, or she agreed to be sacrificed in advance as part of a weird plan to make it slightly more likely for them to agree to contracts? They were already planning to do sooner later, but maybe Kyubey is in charge and is fine with disposing Mami?

I'll try making less comments from now on, or increasing my mental threshold for deciding to write. I think my opinion on most future events will be pretty clear.

EP 4
>00:58
So, the natural conclusion is that Elon needs to sell X and Tesla and SpaceX and everything to just focus on Neuralink.
>01:41
Well, I've already kind of violated my stated intention, but at least this is no longer plot-related, right? Anyway, a good idea here might be to disregard any actions that would involve him knowing that you were responsible for healing him. That would make it easy to think objectively.
>13:46
This is why this entire class of ideas are bad. He just said "Hey, Sayaka...", and now he's about to say "Would you mind leaving me alone for a while?"
>13:48
LOL Even worse
>13:55
Damn, my point was proven even harder than expected. You have to get all your life lessons from anime if you want to be successful. Since I watched Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka in Japanese on msk-imm, I've become a master of the social realm
>15:04
Uhhh it kind of backfired now, but I do like the way they set this up. The show has already established that Sayaka and Madoka (and I guess Mami, if that's all there was to that?) are in the bottom 10% of IQ, which I had a hard time accepting, but if I take that as a fact, Sayaka's actions seem consistent with her mindset

EP 5
>05:40
I just realized how absurd it is to try to limit somebody to one wish. If I wish for an antitrust lawsuit to successfully go through against Google, there are so many legal steps involved in that process that each end up being granted on their own. Is the arbitrary distinction here that humans have come to view lawsuits as "one" event but "fixing my friend's hands, making him like me more, making us both wealthy, making us both voluntarily immortal" as multiple? What happens when you start gradually changing language to support more concise description of the latter? Does the domain of wishes start to magically change?
>06:19
There's no way they will actually make him act according to Sayak's preferences, making Sayak not actually regret wasting her wish? Even ignoring the exploits I was trying to think of, it's painfully obvious that "Make it so humans are unable to neurologically lose motor function of their muscles" or "Create widespread, easily-accessible, safe, and effective BCI technology through the success of a non-profit Elon Musk startup" would have been so much better. Even if the show does that, all it would mean is that they made a dumb character commit to a dumb action and then make fun of them for being dumb afterwards. There's nothing satisfying about witnessing that. I'd rather see mostly reasonable characters commit to actions that are mostly reasonable from their perspective, which a lot of anime (especially, e.g. Death Note) seems to get right.
>06:54
This doesn't deny my prediction. Of course, the writers would make it look satisfying at first to keep Sayaka feeling like her wish was remotely sensible for a while. The broader decision to become a Mahou Shoujou was fine, though.
>07:40
A wheelchair? Slow violin music? A field of flowers under a dramatic sky? This looks familiar... better have finished with Kos before starting NG+...
>11:40
I guess that's the nail in the coffin for Mami just being dumb as well? What she said to Madoka about being glad to finally have someone around seemed like such a blatant lie back then, but maybe she also just watched too much anime and forgot how to talk properly
>18:03
What's that? I think I hear your phone ringing... Go on, take it... Oh?
You've received a call
from the Based Department
Ok good, sounds like there will be more diversity in characters
>19:47
まさか
She actually did wish for all paralysis to be removed??
>19:53
Welp, shouldn't have gotten my hopes up
If you wish for yourself to have X healing, do you end up getting 2X healing, then? But 2∞ isn't more useful than ∞? What about 2∞ IQ?
>21:15
Same side? Based and cringe are completely different sides, perhaps the only different sides, Madoka. Being with or against witches pales in comparison
>22:18
She has to become a Mahou Shoujou eventually, since the start of the first episode had her wearing her weird outfit, right? Although, wasn't Kyubey telling her that she has the power to do something, as if she could still make a contract and hadn't done so? Maybe she just hired Rem to sow the clothing from her drawings for fun?

EP 6
>04:24
Bro absorbs eggs all day that are like 90% of the way to hatching witches and nobody is suspicious?
>10:35
???
You're worse than a killer if you watch a killer kill without intervening? This is some Sayaka logic if I've ever seen it
Really not sure what the viewer is supposed to make of this
>12:37
THAT IS NOT THE SITUATION THAT EITHER OF YOU ARE IN
YOU COULD HAVE JUST WISHED FOR HAPPINESS DIRECTLY
>15:04
LOLOLOL
The window's open because a witch came and he jumped out?
The witch system is kind of unfair in that humans have no way to predict or prevent it, but anything bad that happens to Sayaka, emotionally or otherwise, is 100% fair
>15:12
Welp, now that's what I call a swing and a miss
>16:02
Law of nonzero acceleration: the based get more based while the cringe get more cringe
>16:50
What? If he sees you breaking his hands after he felt so happy for having them back, he'd just resent you forever. That doesn't even come close to making sense from any perspective, so I'm guessing this was some sort of mistranslation and Kyouko actually meant that
1. You have the power to continually restore his hands whenever you need to
2. You should gradually break his hands without him noticing
3. You should make it clear to him, but not directly, that only you have the capability to keep his health up
That would work, assuming you've already made the mistake of your wish
>18:18
Lmao my job as a complainer is over now; just listen to whatever Kyouko says
>18:24
Also annoying ones, until she started taking neofetch screenshots on Arch
Now she just has some weird cat with a stupid face named Kyubey, who has absorbed the previous suspicions that Mami had
>19:01
HAHAHAHHA
>Sees complex system involving magic and souls that she doesn't understand
>Makes arbitrary assumption about how it works that is not justified, neither empirically nor rationally
>Just goes through with it
Based and checked
Kyouko's going to have a nice night playing DDR
>19:50
Wait, why isn't Kyouko thinking this is funny? Isn't this the second time she has tried her best to kill Sayaka herself? Or is she just interested in the mechanics of it
Either way, is Madoka going to wish for Sayaka to be revived while conveniently ignoring the option of reviving everyone else, including Mami?
>21:00
Okay, then shouldn't you be able to just get her back into her old body after you bring the gem into range, or find her new a body?
>21:35
Rip all the people wishing for immortality
You already get like 75% of the way there for free
>22:08
Okay yeah
How would Madoka feel if Sayaka just got hit by a car one day instead?
WAIT
Doesn't this imply an easy strat? When fighting witches, you just get one of your friends to keep your gem while standing around 50m away behind a wall or something

EP 7
>00:35
"You never asked" is usually a massive cope (cough Fukawa cough) from writers but here it obviously makes sense. Their reaction to further explanation of the Soul Gem should be "Oh, cool" and not "You tricked us"
>04:50
Cruel??
This show...
>05:00
I don't understand human values?? What human value would make you want to die for no reason when there is a great alternative?
>05:05
Why the hell would he describe it as a "payment"? You're not paying anything; you're just getting an upgrade
>07:15
Are you using those powers to steal those apples or something? What VC is funding you?
>09:18
Implementation error
Should have just joined Meta or OpenAI instead to work on LLMs
>12:00
That's not really the lesson to be drawn there, but sure
>12:17
Says whom? What if I'm Nagito and my wish is to change the balance of the world such that Hope eventually outcompetes Despair?
>12:34
Got em
>13:50
LOl they actually asked it
But I realized already that after seeing her father's mistake, she went and found some "evidence of exceptional ability" to start working on GPT-5
Then Sam just gave her the apples for free last weekend at a SF meetup
>18:55
Oh, as in, Hitomi is now a competitor that she doesn't want. I guess that shows that Sayaka doesn't actually care about Kyousuke, since otherwise, she would want him to be happy with Hitomi if he would have a happier relationship with Hitomi than with her. Maybe this will be explained in more detail later, and then she will end up acting more similar to Kyouko by the end
>19:20
Literally who cares
You're supposed to love someone because of their psychology, not because their body technically is composed of cells
And it's not even true that your body is no longer biological; you just kind of made that up to yourself when Kyubey said that your body didn't contain a soul anymore
Kyubey confirmed this when he said that you would never have noticed the difference if he didn't tell you, so there's no reason why your lips would be especially cold either
>21:33
The art here is really cool, with the different coloured outlines of their silhouettes
>22:22
Never mind? I was wrong? The cringe get more based and the based get more cringe?
I knew something was up as soon as Kyouko failed to come up with a good reason for her trip to the church. The least stupid wish was probably Mami's, it looks like, if you consider her particularly impaired judgement at the time

EP 8
>00:26
Why is sheet music appearing? Is this related to supposedly listening to a lot of classical music, influenced by Kyousuke?
>03:33
Why? The reason we avoid harm is because of... the harm... which can be split up into the short-term (pain) and the long-term (health problems --> more pain). If you don't feel the pain by "distancing yourself", then that solves the short term, and if she can just heal herself after by listening to some Touhou music or whatever, then that solves the long-term
>05:00
Japan has automatic doors for their BUS STOPS??
>05:42
I see, so the visual of you moving darkness from your soul to the witches' empty souls is accurate. Then, leaving the darkness behind makes you weaker physically, I guess, but also makes you less sociable
Physical ability aside, shouldn't there be a tipping point where you don't see any reason for draining the darkness?
>06:48
Oh so I just hallucinated that? This is completely separate?
>07:15
As in, she's going to become a Mahou Majo instead, as I guessed?
>09:22
I've never heard Hitomi or Kyousuke say anything particularly dumb; Sayaka just doesn't seem like she fits into the picture at all
>12:22
Are you sure you're not giving her too much credit? She probably literally thought that there was a trap right here and that using the seed wouldn't have worked, or something
>14:23
Interesting
>14:39
Um, you know that dogs are domesticated to generally love and try their best to protect humans, right? The problem with what they were saying wasn't that they were dunking on a specific person, but that they were inaccurately generalizing their experience to all women. We've already seen multiple good counterexamples, the best probably being Madoka's mom, who I'm sure makes way more than their combined salaries
>15:06
Cool how the sheet music is still there, except with white notes on black paper
>19:11
Didn't it cancel the contract and give you another chance to make Madoka reconsider? Still, that's kind of weird that Homura started crying. Does she really care about Madoka as a person, beyond just the risk of creating a god? Just take your own advice and give up on people who aren't promising
>19:38
Homura: Even though your grandfather, Joseph, told you the secret of The World, like an exam student scrambling to finish the problems on an exam until the last moments before the chime?
Kyubey: 近づかなきゃてめーをブチのめせないんでな
>19:54
Ok good, I was right, Kyubey was doing something funny
Just look at his face; you already know
>20:15
Aaaa, I get it
in kyuubei ta
>End
So then Homura doesn't necessarily care about Madoka intrinsically, but understands that her becoming a god would be useful for Kyubey, once she eventually becomes a witch? Didn't they say witches come from familiars, though, or are they saying it's both now? Is the idea that everyone eventually watches too much anime and becomes like Sayaka as a rule of nature, or is it simply that they will eventually mess up and deplete too much magic without being able to send the darkness to Grief Seeds?

EP 9
>05:15
Is this confirmation of the balance principle? That seems as dumb as it it did in FMA, when people would use equivalent exchange as a metaphor for things outside of alchemy
>05:59
The trend continues. I've still yet to ever see the word "human" used as a compliment. It's always along the lines of "humans are weak and stupid for XYZ reasons, so if you're not weak and stupid, you must not be human, and that's bad because... it just is, okay?!"
By the way, can't Homura just kill Madoka to avoid her turning into a Mahou Shoujou and then Mahou Majo? I don't know Homura's exact circumstances, but I feel like there must be a simpler solution that doesn't involve all of this hard work of going around and arguing with randos
>06:53
"Madoka, do you know the term 'entropy'"?
WHAT
Did not think this was going to show up
>Are Ya Winning, Son?
𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝑜𝓃𝓁𝓎 𝓂𝑜𝓇𝒶𝓁 𝒶𝒸𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃 𝒾𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓂𝒾𝓃𝒾𝓂𝒾𝓏𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃 𝑜𝒻 𝑒𝓃𝓉𝓇𝑜𝓅𝓎
The physics is funny but using it as a justification for anything is kind of nonsensical
>07:10
Sure... but to answer it seriously, the heat death will only happen 10^n years later, far past the point of the singularity. If humans reach a state of superintelligence, "can entropy ever be decreased?" is not The Last Question, Mr. Asimov.
>07:20
Oh, they took it in a slightly different direction from what I expected
This is better, then, but still, AI alignment research is going to be more valuable. Can't really expect random writers to be familiar with the field if most governments aren't, though
>07:37
Is this banking on the idea that consciousness has unknown properties? If it's not very different from physical matter, then emotions would only be represented biochemically, which wouldn't contain any new energy
>08:02
Oh, they're just going to tie in souls as a base
I mean, fine, that's sufficiently reasonable based on what was established before
>09:03
You still haven't explained why you were able to grant wishes
I'm guessing that the domain of wishes was actually really limited. The double digits chose double digit wishes which could easily be granted through the Incubators' superior technology (if you can move light years across the universe, you should be able to mend a spinal cord). The triple digits received an explanation of the limit and then either settled for a double digit wish or just went "lol no thanks", but we never saw that on screen
>09:28
Depends on the circumstances
If you outright lie to them and say that they will never become a witch, would you see the problem with that?
Otherwise, it indeed is their fault for not asking the most basic of questions about Mahou Shoujou
>09:50
Do you see why someone would value the lives of someone useful to them more than someone they haven't heard about, or isn't useful to them? Being friends with Sayaka brought her joy, so Sayaka dying would remove that joy, making it a loss in happiness. Seems pretty straightforward
Also, in this case you're asking Madoka, who herself is included in that "few people", so she's going to value her own life
If the "few people" were random double digits chosen randomly, then yeah, should be fine in exchange for reversal of entropy
>10:22
Wait, but it's not just a few people, since this also involves all the people dying from the witches afterward. What scale are we talking, here?
>10:38
I also thought about creating synthetic biological organisms where you would select to maximize emotion, exploring on mutations and exploiting on a subset for witches
That, as well as cloning biologically cloning Madoka 100 times to get 100 witches, might not work because they'd argue that those new organisms wouldn't have the required souls
However, now that I think about it, it doesn't even need to be synthetic. Just kidnap Madoka as well as all of her living relatives and then force them to reproduce all day, every day, to start the breeding from there, if she supposedly has the most potential of all. Unless the energy you release isn't just your potential for emotion? Kyubey did say that he doesn't know why Madoka has so much power, but at least kidnapping her parents to breed would be a good start of figuring that out
Ideally you'd reach a point where you can just have a farm of humans at max capacity for generating energy from witches, and then you can just leave Earth alone
>15:23
If Homura shows up, I'm going to wonder what will happen to the bag she left in class
>15:56
Doesn't it seem like Homura just has imperfect information of the future? She is right that there will be a strong witch, but maybe that witch is just going to be Madoka, who doesn't "come" from outside but just appears?
>19:57
Is each swipe with her spear a usage of magic? So if she just keeps going forever, her darkness bar will fill up and then she'll also become a witch in here?

EP 10
>02:27
???
In Japan you can do (what seems to me as) complicated number theory proofs just by looking at some NOTES?
Also why are math questions using ください
>05:17
Yeah this looks like the scene from the EP 1 opening
>06:39
So she really does care about Madoka? I guess that makes her psychology more common, but it's still disappointing
>07:56
Bro? So I was wrong about the scope being limited? There's no way they can just casually invent time travel such that it conveniently can't be used to reverse entropy directly
>08:54
I thought her personality would still be a bit of a stretch at that point, but that maybe she just consciously decided to be more assertive. It would explain why she's supposedly better at math than her classmates if she actually already learned it before in the same class. Never mind, I guess
>10:06
How do repeated uses work? Can you just read books 2x as fast if you stop time for 5 minutes every 10 minutes?
>11:43
So why did she get multiple chances to go back? You just spawned the Witch of Envy, who took a liking to Homura, and then to a random NEET in a tracksuit?
Is it because she said "I want to become strong enough to protect her", which means that she will keep going back until she IS strong enough to protect her, which would complete the wish? Sounds like immortality to me as long as you decide to ignore her and move to San Francisco or something instead. Imagine how fast you can start scaling things if you just memorize the top 10 research papers at the end of the period each time and continue bringing them back. Might take a few weeks of publishing at the start, but then you're getting AGI for free. Get the lottery numbers too while you're at it
>12:22
Sure, this seems fine. Kyubey would just deny it and say there's no evidence since he doesn't want it revealed yet, right? Not sure why he didn't try to lie to Madoka earlier, though. He could have said that Sayaka turning into a witch was a special, bizarre case and that this is the first time it has happened
In general, if something is reasonable, I'd like to just not comment on it, since I would hope that things are reasonable by default
Maybe that explains why I don't have much comments for R:Z, Erased, DN, or S;G, but I guess I was also just not in the habit of writing this back when I watched them
>18:45
Actually, you kind of have a time limit. If your brain basically survives each time, if you fail forever, your brain will deteriorate eventually. Before that, you'll hit a point where you're healthy enough to understand your peril, but too senile to be capable of fixing it. Maybe if you do research into psychology and neuroscience and then accelerate that each time, though?
Also, the opening makes sense too, I think. At that point where Homura looked like she was dying, Madoka must have indeed accepted the contract. Homura might have died at the same time, but then was returned from death when Madoka eventually became a witch
>19:14
Okay yeah here it is again
So she was wearing her school clothes
>21:25
Wait so she can trigger it whenever? Can she go back in time to arbitrary points or just that one? Then was it deliberate even the first time? So, if she ever dies, she would actually be dead, although I guess she would usually be able to react in 200 ms or something and go back in time. Oh, then there's basically no risk. Just forget about Madoka and make an OpenAI competitor

EP 11
>00:56
Yeah, that's basically what I was thinking. Homura making so many decisions across timelines based on Madoka's state would add that potential
It also explains why she wasn't particularly strong in the first, original Homura timeline we saw
>04:05
Did she just sprinkle salt on Madoka's shoulder? Is this some kind of tradition I'm unaware of?
>04:56
Very funny, and I agree with no caring about Sayaka and Kyouko's deaths, but that's not an argument. You could say that arbitrarily killing humans is far more wrong than arbitrarily killing livestock, since humans are capable of participating in social contracts, while livestock cannot. You could say that e.g. a dog falls in between, but dogs are still much closer to livestock. Instead, you just have to concede that you've already asserted enough dominance over the universe that there's no risk from you messing with less powerful species
>05:03
>Hears argument she doesn't know how to address
>Just says "Stop it!"
Based
>05:27
That's also not an argument
FWUI in automated farms, the conditions are cramped and bare and generally painful, such that it'd be more comfortable for them to die, if they could understand the concept of self-preservation over inclusive genetic fitness
Come to the based side and embrace Normative Static Egoism
>05:44
That's also not an argument
You might negotiate with Madoka but you're placing her words on behalf of the rest of humanity who will die from her becoming a witch
Eliezer might want to avoid that
>13:59
Don't cry too hard
Save some of your tears for this same conversation in the next timeline
>10:30
This reminds me of One Punch Man
Has there ever been an anime where an evacuation shelter has worked?
>19:56
No, that's wrong!
I remember seeing Madoka shoot Mami once, since she was going to kill Sayaka, or something like that
There Mami just died normally; there was no witch created
>22:40
Why isn't this laptop unlocking no matter how many times I punch the monitor? It's because what you're doing is dumb
Stop punching the monitor, get a USB flashed with an Arch ISO, boot into the live medium, mount the hard drive's filesystem, and then change the root password
Homura has many better options, even if she doesn't have the hindsight of AGI scaling
>23:54
Bro
This isn't even a good goal
After like the third try you should have just decided to find some new friends in a different prefecture or something
The only quality in Madoka that caused you to care about her, which was her kindness towards you, isn't even commendable, as you said

EP 12
>01:14
NOW he's saying that not all wishes are grantable, if you don't have enough "karmic destiny"?
>01:38
From context, I feel like this is supposed to be a slam dunk, but it should have been one of your first questions
>02:12
Wouldn't this cancel out a lot of the emotional energy that Kyubey has been harvesting? Shouldn't he just not grant the wish, if it's a net loss?
>02:20
Yeah she literally made like 5 different conscious conditions
This god damn wish system
>03:08
THEN JUST DON'T SPECIFY "BY MY OWN HANDS"
HOW IS THIS A PLOT DEVICE
>05:51
How the hell is she making that expression of gratitude or relief in those last few seconds? She should be dead the instant her soul gem disappears if that's her entire life force
Remember what happened to Sayaka the moment that her gem went out of range? And going out of range is less severe than literally disappearing
Hhhhhhhh I'm upset
>08:22
Yeah
sure
Whatever you say man
>09:22
Was that supposed to test the audience's BS detection? Did some people actually think the despair idea made sense?
>11:16
So did you also see the thoughts she MUST HAVE HAD at least once that involved "maybe Madoka is not worth this effort"
Re:Zero portrayed that effectively at certain points in Subaru's psychology
>12:21
And by "followed me" she means "randomly teleported for no reason"
The universe is not a conscious being deciding on what makes sense based on arbitrary rules
There would be no reason for Homura to have had any participation in the resolution of wishes until after it had been decided
>14:00
As in, intercepting at the first witch being created and modifying the trajectory based on the butterfly effect from there? None of you would exist in that case
With the condition that Homura exists, since Madoka said she would exist but perhaps not remember her, it looks like they're just going to copy paste the same main events but remove the witches. That would mean Sayaka still makes her wish and becomes a Mahou Shoujou, but that she would just have died at the parking lot (or wherever that was) instead of becoming a witch
>14:42
By "hard work" she means twenty seconds of poor thinking
>15:08
Is this just a massive cope? Sayaka did not care about either of them before
>16:09
So it IS like the latter outcome I mentioned? The implied opposition is that her wish would be useless if she wasn't there to see it? That last scene was weirdly phrased then
16:51
remuwa... dare?
I haven't seen it in so long, I don't know what the words are
S3 is still at least 6 months away, isn't it
>18:51
Calm the crowd! Have the guards yell "hindsight bias" at them!
>19:45
So he really did lose out on energy.............
>20:40
Lmao so it was useless

>End
Holy
Let me look through my Completed list again just in case...
...done
Okay yeah
This was the worst plot I've seen in any anime, besides Angel Beats. You can't really do worse than Angel Beats without deliberately trying to
The main problem that everything else stemmed from was the wish system, which was either extremely dumb or terribly explained, which results in the same poor experience for the audience either way
The characters kind of exemplified this problem in almost never brushing on it, no matter how obvious the questions were, consistently acting nonsensically

The only decently-significant (i.e. I'm not including e.g. Kyousuke in the ranking) characters that I kind of liked by the end were Hitomi and Junko (Madoka's mother)

I already wrote about this in great length in my notes for specific episodes, so I'm not going to go into further detail here
I'll probably watch the movie (Rebellion) but I'm not interested in seeing Magia Record

I thought the aspects outside of the plot and characters (art, music, SFX, design, general style, etc.) were creative and well-made, though

As usual for these kinds of relationships between titles, I'll try to judge the sequels while ignoring my qualms with the original as much as I can.

14:31: What are those ships flying around in the air?
16:11: Ba... ha... ha... should have watched more anime before coming to that decision
16:47: I'll break his hand so he can't play violin anymore! Then he'll have time for me!
26:11: How do they not get bored of that if they're doing it around once per day, it looks like, for at least the last few months?
47:18: I called it, but I should have written it down earlier. I thought how it would go was that Homura would accidentally kill Bebe and then for some other reason realize that it was innocent, although that makes less sense in hindsight
48:54: Why isn't Za Warudo freezing Mami? Bebe was shown frozen until Homura manually unfroze her, but she never interacted with Mami between her leaving to get tea and her arriving at the scene
49:37: If Homura's stand is useless against her, shouldn't Mami win easily?
52:22:
I think I see. Before, when they showed Mami's yellow ribbon(?) all over the territory as she initially defended Bebe, that was indicating that the ribbon was attached to Homura, and Homura just didn't notice until then. So, when leaving for tea, she must have anticipated Homura's actions and already set the ribbon there? Then, while time was frozen, she was still touching Homura through the ribbon, up until a few seconds ago?

Well I just went back to check and at, for example, 45:11, Homura is clearly standing at an angle where no ribbon could be touching her. Even as late as 46:53, I don't see any. Oh, wait, at 47:02 that's showing the ribbon becoming visible - it was already there but invisible before, I guess. Fine.

The "You were following us all this time?" line is still kind of ambiguous, but I don't know how else they could phrase it better, besides showing this invisibility ability of Mami's more clearly earlier. Also, the phrase "all this time" doesn't work if this is still the same moment of time as back in the house.

54:34: Very low expectations based on average IQ in the anime
54:35: Oh
56:09: Well you don't have much data to go off if you believe your existing memories are fake. If something is actively capable of modifying your memories, even your memories of not trusting your memories could be fake. The only point that is kind of real is the present, which gives you an instantaneous point but doesn't let you draw any trends. It's possible that right now is the start and that you'll be hurt more over time. This works even if the start was a few months ago, since there's a trend towards reality becoming less convincing, as if the witch is gradually revealing itself. Also, don't phrase it like witches require more energy to create larger labyrinths, because you can't expect the audience to know the mechanics you came up with on your own. The witches you remember wouldn't act like this, but that doesn't mean this witch is instantly good. It'd still make sense to extract information out of it, although I agree that harming it prematurely is dumb.
56:34: Pink and yellow seem the most sus but you can make a case for any of them if you factor in that they could mute their own memory as well
58:46: True that blue is sus considering she is spending more than 1.5s thinking about something
59:35: What? I didn't hear the part where Homura made any actual arguments? Are you really going to kill Sayaka for no reason?
1:01:24: Taking actions to maximize your utility is unforgivable, says the character who looped through a month fifty times to maximize her utility
1:01:39: Holy, based. "I spent $500 on this lock on my door, so I better make sure that a bunch of criminals try to break in, or else the lock would have been useless"
1:04:11: There, there, Homura, just relax and take a deep breath. Here, take this schizophrenia medication that Kyuubey lent me. Don't worry about these dreams
1:06:49: And then it extends the screencap - "SIKE\nTHAT'S THE WRONG NUMBER" with a reveal of the Mistral 7B finetuned on 20 MB of her dialogue
1:15:05: What? Wouldn't the obvious extension be that all of them were just simulations of their actions that her brain made? How would Madoka have wandered in?
1:16:22: Yeah, sure buddy, she just slipped in from the other universe. At least it's on the metaphysics and not the characters this time
1:18:14: No, he said that acting out of curiosity when you find the discovered knowledge harmful is illogical
1:18:34: What? You're going to save my friend George from dying in a car crash (while openpilot is not installed)? And you'll... use him to your ADVANTAGE by hiring him as a consultant for your AI startup?? Absolutely despicable
1:18:58: What programmer died and let you write the rules of the simulation? Observing something doesn't necessarily mean you can interfere with it at all
1:22:09: Ding Dong Bing Bong... A body has been discovered
1:24:03: Are we not going to hear more of Bebe?
1:33:49: I remember that guy on the couch on the left. Near the start, when they were showing Homura getting suspicious about the city, there was a random guy in the class whose face wasn't covered with abstract geometry. Now that I think back, he must have been the one who was getting called on to answer questions
1:35:50: I was just thinking about how cringe of a character Homura has been and then she goes and becomes a chad, nice
1:39:16: More passionate than hope, far deeper than despair? When your ping google.com says 64 bytes from google.com (172.217.1.14): icmp_seq=1 ttl=114 time=22.2 ms
1:45:53: They're clapping for Madoka's mom, impressed at her global business ventures. Probably the best character

>End
Welp

I still disliked the plot but it was slightly better than the main series. It seemed far too contrived with arbitrary, inconsistent, and unsatisfying rules. Like the main series, it started out fine and then had a sharp turn for the worse. In this case, it was at Homura's monologue after she finished arguing with Sayaka about the intentions of the witch creating their dream world

The animation and audio teams seemed to have bigger budgets this time, which they clearly put to use. My favourite scene by far was that of the weird song about cake they sang while banishing a wraith, near the start. I still have no idea what happened there, but as it was playing, I got the sense that if they messed up the song, Bebe would consume one of them instead of the witch, which gave it an interesting tension

I still am not planning to watch the Magia Record side story

- The transition from being annoyed to being neutral about giving Tombo the package, and then following him to his garage seemed way too abrupt
- The reaction from the town with the fire department already marching happily and people raining paper from their windows was unrealistically cheesy
- Kiki's social opinions often seemed arbitrary and inconsistent, but that's probably intended

DAISUKI!

1-5 (Neko Shiro): 7/10
7-10 (Kabuki): 7/10 (> 1-5)
12-15 (Otori): 7/10 (> 7-10)

The background artstyle is so catchy that as of the end of EP 15, I now have 638 wallpapers (screenshots) from Monogatari overall. I especially like the bamboo forest surrounding the shrine, which shows up pretty frequently

17-20 (Oni): 7/10 (~= 7-10)

Have I just been subconsciously filtering them or have the number of "bruh moments" been decreasing (fortunately)? Araragi's behaviour towards Hachikuji is definitely cringe but still way better than some other past inclusions

21-26 (Koi): 9/10

Koimonogatari was probably the best "section" of the series so far. The plot felt more clever and less contrived than usual, and I enjoyed the participation of Kaiki and Senjougahara, both of whom I find much more interesting than Araragi, Hanekawa, Kanbaru, and Hachikuji.

EP 02: 20:59:
I already can't relate to Tenma. "All lives are created equal" makes absolutely
zero sense. Imagine a serial killer, or an elderly person with only 7 days left
to live before their injury. Would you wish to operate on them if they were
wheeled in first? If you save the Mayor and he provides more funding for the
hospital, you could have the budget to increase the quality of your supplies and
end up saving more total people.

Sure, his colleagues are a little sketchy, but defecting this early and this way
is totally unreasonable. Also, did he only get engaged to Eva to help his career
prospects? It doesn't sound like he did. But then he should have broken up with
her way earlier.

EP 03:
07:27: Wouldn't you have intuitive experience with the psychologies of
criminals? Isn't Tenma's demeanor evidence for him being innocent? If they're
going to frame him, it's going to be annoying.
11:32: Lmaooooooo Tenma if you fall for this I'm going to be so upset with you
11:47: Mogged

EP 04: 17:37:
Hmm. Johan's position is still pretty unclear. He obviously has literal brain
damage but I'm not sure exactly how it influenced him. If it's just "lamayo I'm
going to kill whomever I feel like because my utility function was determined by
RNG" then that's dumb. But it sounds more sophisticated than that.

This last "yokatta" implies that he feels gratitude towards Tenma and so was
working in what he though was Tenma's best interest. But does he still feel that
today? I guess he does to some extent, or else he shouldn't really care what
effect he had in the past on him. If he still feels grateful, will he avoid
killing Tenma here? I doubt Tenma will die this early, but perhaps Johan will
try his best to kill him and simply be unsuccessful. If he leaves Tenma alive,
that leaves a huge liability with the knowledge he has now.

Also, where is his sister, then? I'd assume their stances are equivalent, so
maybe she helps with the murders too? And they just operate under one "monster"
entity? But overall, I expected something more "dangerous" than this based on
Jenkens' (? is that his name) concerns earlier.

18:02: Oh wait, yeah, he was like 10 years old at the time. How did he know they
would eat from his bag of candy, and how did he know how to apply the poison
correctly?
21:58: Again, the correct answer is Tenma's story, so if Lunge strays far from
it, it just means he's bad at his job.

EP 05:
16:48: Keeping track of the last names is mixing me up, but it sounds like Johan
would go around to different foster parents and then kill those parents
afterwards?
19:44: Sure, I was thinking that was probably what it was, but is he
romantically interested in his sister then? Those messages sound weird given
this context, although perhaps that was just a way for them to meet up without
attracting too much suspicion.
End: Uh, if he only needed her to see him, that doesn't seem like an efficient
way of doing that?

EP 08: 19:15: Eh, this feels like a deviation from me as the viewer. I would
trust Lunge enough to tell him what I know, I think. Worst case scenario, I
still don't think that Johan wants you dead.

EP 17:
01:15: Yeah, I'm not a fan of Tenma's approach at all. He should be working with
Lunge to find more evidence about Johan. If they can legally conclude that he is
responsible for the murders, then appropriate searches will be made for him.
21:08: Uh shouldn't you have used that bit of time when you were in range to
agree on a phone line or something to use? Or could Tenma have curved the boat
to go back for a second so she could finish the high ROI at least?

Never mind, it wasn't particularly important. Why wouldn't Johan just kill
himself when he is on the non-monster personality? If it's because the monster
personality would instinctively defend itself, why didn't it do so when Nina was
trying to shoot him back then?

EP 19: 10:21: This made me remember that maybe this is an unreliable narrator
situation and Tenma is actually the killer? That would be pretty dumb though

EP 21:
05:50: Where's Lunge? He's still stuck on his stupid multiple personalities
theory while this rando here is getting close
16:42: I'm not as upset with these scenes as others might be. His decision to
hide the gun with this proximity to the house, I take as just a style choice,
and assume that it will have no impact on plot. If it then becomes a device,
there is reason to be angry
21:27: I saw that!
21:31: Okay, yeah. Cool detail, but maybe I'm overestimating the subtlty

EP 22:
05:49: Maybe the mortal blow was there, but he was still alive for a few minutes
and stumbled over to there? To protect his wife that you went to next? These
chains of thought aren't really possible to go through accurately

EP 28:
Start: So far the plot is okay, I think. Tenma's exile feels too contrived, but
I like how the different subplots are tying into each other. Overall, I've been
more interested in the character development and interactions, which has been
done very well.
11:57: Seriously, I'm a fan of Lunge as a character but he has been so
disappointing in terms of his investigation. All of these randos who are
portrayed as less skilled and less dedicated than him are easily surpassing him.

EP 31:
07:18: Remember how Tenma said so dramatically that he didn't care about
clearing his name? Well think about how much easier it would be to go around and
investigate, even if plan to kill Johan in the end, if you didn't have a bounty
for your arrest? Wait, would you even get arrested? Maybe I'm forgetting the
start already but I don't remember them having enough evidence against him for a
conviction
15:56: Idk just as a meme I guess
19:34: Lunge's identity cucking him over would be a decent explanation but I'd
still be disappointed with him on a personal level

EP 32: 12:23: Okay well it's going to be kind of stupid if by the end of the
show Nina never calls her. If she does call, Lotte should mention that because
it could be related to who she's looking for.

EP 35: 08:06: The second the flashback appeared, I had to pause the video to
process my shock. Very well-done

EP 37:
08:14: So they're saying Johan has a hunger for being around foster parents and
also for killing people? The monster's desire for a name seems arbitrary but
eating at least sounds like it'd be required for survival.
08:58: Well was his desire for a name related to people being able to call him
it? I guess that would map to people knowing he had foster parents? Is the
ending video now going to continue following through on that? Oh, I guess Johan
was never his birth name and he just decided to pick it up based on reading the
book in the past
12:29: Are they going to flash back to ~"The real test will come when he has to
actually shoot somebody"?
12:59: Are you sure that applies to Johan? And you know more people will have
that experience of not wanting to die if you leave him alive?
14:20: I'm guessing he goes for Schubert and then Lunge will latch onto this
16:36: Ok good, that would have been kind of frustrating for him to be paralyzed
twice in a row

EP 38:
Ok they did but in the next episode
...
That's the plot device they chose to keep him alive? Nina distracting Tenma for
no reason and then more hestitation? Amazing

EP 39: 12:09: You know he's going to die of old age eventually unless he builds
AGI or something, right?

EP 41:
20:19: The hair looked too dark to be Nina's? If it's Nina, I'm going to be
annoyed with her
21:56: Gotem. I was bullish on Petrov since the start of the children room convo
but didn't think it was worth the written effort to stake. Also the kids'
reactions seem kind of poorly written here but I don't exactly how natural it'd
seem in real life. Now that this was confirmed, this is evidence against Nina,
because you'd definitely be intended to be annoyed in that case, which wouldn't
make sense

EP 42:
17:36: I was sus of that guy the second he mentioned his nail clippers when
standing up from under the desk

- Evidence for Nina based on appearance there. I don't see any good motive for
killing Petrov.
- Why didn't this secret police torture Petrov instead?
- I don't think the aftermath of the state of his fingers did justice to the
earlier scene. They should still be in pain and it should have been especially
difficult to hold the bag

EP 43: 21:29: So Nina could have killed him if he had just chosen to take the
bonbon. Also, obvious large evidence in favour of Nina from the start of the
episode. I'll maybe up my threshold for writing now again

EP 44:
17:57: Based Nina has inherited Johan's "I can tell you anything" level 5 skill
20:28: ?? What is bro doing ??
22:04: Oh, so it wasn't just me hallucinating the art style
22:15: ????????????????????? AAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAA
Nah you should have let him kiss you. Would have been so based
Now that I think about it, yeah, it was Johan and not Anna (yeah I guess we're
using this name) who... wait does Anna even... no yeah we've definitely seen her
in simultaneous places with Johan. But maybe this Anna/Johan is literally a
different person from the original Johan and this is what the twin stuff has
been alluding to

Killing Petrov makes more sense this way
The actual logistics are pretty iffy but you can probably buy it

Actually this kind of implies Johan holds significance to kissing because
otherwise it would have been easier to do it for the sake of getting more info

Well his mannerisms seemed to match Anna's very well so it makes me think that
at least some of Anna's past appearances were fake too. Otherwise it stacks
against the logistics again

Anyway I was going to say that it was Johan and not Anna who poisoned those
people in the hospital. For some reason Anna using the same trick just seemed
reasonable in my head, like I mixed them together at the hospital, but in
hindsight it was a large sign

I still don't see Johan's goal, though, because in any case it doesn't seem to
be "kill n-1 people and then maybe commit suicide", but it does seem to lightly
align. I don't see how the experimental data would be important to him

EP 45:
13:41: Oh, so has he been saying this "monster growing" stuff in the sense that
he is still the original boy, and that he let the monster in by mistake, but
that the monster is going to eat him eventually? In the story it's implied the
boy never ends up dying, which I suppose is consistent with the info about Johan
surviving a nuclear war or whatever. But the boy in the story seemed fine with
the monster growing?
18:29: *Checks bedroom. Hey, doesn't that dakimakura radiate some sense of
darkness?

EP 48: End: Outside of the double personality idea, I'm always delighted by
Lunge's scenes. The way he started tapping as soon as they said "Anna
Liebert"...

EP 58: 18:03: Is that the opening melody in the background?
EP 64: 10:34: She's also Johan!

EP 71: It's still Nina's fault for not shooting him at the second meeting

The parallel to the books in terms of killing people who knew his name is kind
of cool, except that IIRC the boy was just kind of hungry in general and wasn't
specifically going for people who knew his name. But the town killing each other
doesn't seem like a requirement - do they even know his name?

Trying to recreate the Red Rose Mansion and Kinderheim setup would be more
consistent, but neither of those were big deals inherently

End:

Tenma should have shot Johan the second it was clear Nina didn't have a good
reason for keeping him alive ("I forgive you"). And Tenma shouldn't have
operated on him again. It might have been safer to shoot Nina as well

Lunge felt a bit inconsistent (not in the sense of character development) at the
end, but his involvement in the final episodes was positive overall, and I was
left with a good impression of him. I'd say he was my favourite character

I wasn't a huge fan of the central Johan plot. The revealed circumstances
weren't particularly compelling and the psychology still felt contrived. The
plot devices used during moments where he could have easily been killed were
usually dissatisfying. Instead, I thought the show did its best in its character
interactions, which the plot was fine for facilitating. Wim's Dad being the one
to shoot Johan instead of Tenma, for example, was a good moment

Nina's portrayal in the last episod felt off, though, but that's unusual for the
show, which is a good thing

In general, Nise was higher quality than Bake

Some more specific albeit largely insignificant notes:

It was kind of disappointing that a proper motivation for Kagenui was not provided. Her initial attempts at persuasion of Araragi sounded forced: anybody with half a brain can introspect on their intuitive definition of "human" and understand that a supposed replicating bird fits the important characteristics.

The idea of attempting to catch a source of harm is slightly more reasonable but still unsatisfying considering the nonaggression of (the bird)'s psychology at that point. "Morel reletevesm lemeyo" isn't an argument because your environment and psychology still determine your moral system, which were never explained for her case.

Yotsugi seems to have been more passively following along, so it's more understandable from her perspective.

Also, this isn't an issue with Nise specifically, but the character of Sengoku has also been disappointing. Before starting the series, I heard Mousou Express and, judging by the lyrics, I thought that the character sounded intriguing. I had the impression that she was especially interested in another character (presumably the protagonist) but was unable to enter a relationship with them, for whatever reason. (This is indeed an accurate description from what has been shown so far.)

However, I assumed that as a result of whatever barrier was in place [0], Sengoku was going to either take active steps to destroy it, or simply go through life feeling terrible about it, similar to Hajime's feelings of inferiority in Zetsubou-hen. While I thought that the depth of Hajime's dissatisfaction was portrayed in an interesting and very relatable way, Sengoku does not seem particularly serious at all. Her behaviour surrounding Araragi barely makes any sense. Even that is only if you assume she has put next to no deliberate thought into the logistics of her goals, which shouldn't be the case considering how important he is to her.

Maybe I have a completely misunderstanding of her intentions and/or the character is further fleshed out in later episodes, though

[0]: Which I now know is a combination of the fact that she is quite a bit younger than Araragi and that Araragi is already in a relationship with Senjougahara

OVA 2 (The one where everyone had a party by the tree):
8/10

OVA 1 (The one where Yato possessed Hiyori):
2/10

Giving it a decent score would be unfair to OVA 1, which deserves a terrible score, but giving it a bad score would not be fair to OVA 2, which deserves a good score. Therefore, I think it's better if I don't give "Noragami OVA" a rating.

I was starting to feel like Ougi's character was a forced meme (pun intended), but the exchanges in EP 6 did a good job in fleshing her out. I also thought the cut from 20:52, as it goes back to the setting from the beginning of the episode and the context clicks in your mind, was hilarious

>EP 7 (00:00 to 02:00)

Ougi calling Hanekawa a fool kind of shows the problem with accepting a reputation of intelligence
It's better to always make clear that you exist on a spectrum relative to an average person and that you admit yourself to be a fool relative to e.g. Gwern, Eliezer, or George

"If by 'fool' you mean that I am less intelligent than an average person, then I would have to disagree. It's true that I did not completely solve Araragi's mystery, but an average person would not have been able to do so either. I drew more insight from and made more progress on the current situation than other people could. If you only mean to say that you have angled your mental model of my intelligence downwards to account for me performing below your expectations, then that's a generally fair assessment to make. However, you should not place too high of a weight on any individual event, as there could be other factors (unrelated to my overall intelligence) at play that skew the results in either direction."
How would Ougi respond to that?

Regardless, Ougi has the social advantage here, since I'm pretty sure [0] that she can travel across timelines like Flowey or something, which makes her capable of knowing things in hindsight that somebody of greater intelligence would not necessarily be able to predict. Ougi should be glad, though, that Hanekawa did not witness her saying that there should be no difference between switching and holding in the Monty Hall problem

>EP 13
It's cool how they linked up the timelines with previous episodes
The watch order I'm following has been pretty good

[0]: This is judging off of, for example, her dialogue with Sengoku in an earlier episode and the symbolism of her crawling into the TV in the first OP

1-2: 5/10
3-4: 8/10
5-7: 8/10

I recommend the 13-episode Director's cut version ("Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu: Shin Henshuu-ban")

S1: 10 > S2 P2: 9 > S2 P1: ~8.5

Probably the best design so far but some misc ~tone issues brought it down

EP 01: So far, seems pretty weird? It's like the tone is too slice-of-life to be plot-driven but too much focus on the pillar system to be slice-of-life

EP 02: Still the same general impression. I feel like they're setting this up for Miyako to die, but I'm really not sure where they'll take this. The ending animation caught me off-guard; are they going to pivot to historical fiction later? Also, maybe I misunderstood the context but why isn't there more attention being drawn to the fact that Claudia's dad is a god or something? She had some special magic angel attack in episode one, right?

EP 03: 19:16: Does this happen for every guy that dies? The dynamic in this base is...

EP 04: Yeah the dynamic is a bit too Japanese for my taste but a lot of the humour did land. It's going to be weird if they pivot to more plot-focus later, at this point

EP 05: It's kind of annoying how the forced the meme is that Azuzu is some kind of genius, but I guess that's just poor portrayal? Miyako only seems like 10 IQ points lower, at most. And Claudia's literally seems higher

EP 07:
04:19: Ok I'm going to need an explanation for this. It's already problematic that nobody is asking any serious questions. Are we assuming that Thor is magically controlling those planes? Then why wouldn't he use his magic to have every plane be as good as Ortlinde, if he's trying to kill the intruders? What if Ortlinde is actually alive and is piloting it herself? Then, she could have been brainwashed, but what if she has some information that we don't? It could be worth allowing ourselves to crash so we go through the same fate she had, which led to her having this revelation. Also, can someone ask Odin for some commentary? Was this supposed to be happening or does this falsify his divine protection?
12:30: Guys are we sure Odin isn't just a kid who watched too much anime going around with an eye-patch? Is your only evidence of him doing anything that one time he seemed to shape-shift in your dark room after you were tired? Did he also predict the pillar turning off a few episodes ago?
End: Oof... pretty good setup; I wasn't exactly sure where they'd go with it. But that means it was literally a bad trade; you saved one person (Named?) but lost yourself, as well as your three orbiters. I highly doubt Odin died but if the characters believe he did, then did they really care about him at all? Would a god really fail to predict that and die so easily?

EP 09:
13:30: Uh guys you know you can just... abort the baby?
19:06: Yeah I feel like that was not optimal. Didn't it look like they were reluctant to attack Claudia, like they recognized her and wanted to keep her there for some other sort of social ritual? And there's no way her katana glowing gold like that was a coincidence, right?
20:27: ??? Is this some kind of Japanese cultural practice that I'm unfamiliar with? You're supposed to start crying when a baby is born?
21:37: So Odin just wanted them to free Thor from that pillar? Surely he controls the pillar and could leave on his own, no? But yeah, I thought something like this would happen; Odin never seemed particularly aligned. I don't get any credit for it now that it's too late, though

GOD DAMN BUGCROWD REJECTED MY BUG BOUNTY SUBMISSION AGAIN NOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Okay had to get that out of the way, now back to anime girls flying planes

EP 10:
01:58: There better be more to his motive than "lol there's more of a plot in the anime if I say things for no reason"... why would he come onto this panel and tell them this if it will decrease his likelihood of winning?
06:57: Wait that was a real thing? Then yeah why would he give them the means to fight?

EP 11: 20:51: Wouldn't it be cool if Amatsuka showed up, on behalf of Odin?

End:
Ehhhh
First of all, it was much better than I expected. 6.45 is quite a low score and I was considering giving this an 8 a few times.

Overall, I liked it more than Vivy, even though Vivy clearly had more effort put into it. Vivy just had way too many nonsensical moments. Here, perhaps the same fraction of the plot was nonsensical, but the plot was less evenly dispersed, so the bad mostly clumped together at didn't spoil the experience all throughout.

There were two main plot problems.

First, Odin's motivation was never explained. At a few different points, different dialogue tried to make certain statements, but none of them made any sense, so I'm taking them as irrelevant. We could look at what Odin says himself, that he is opposed to useless destruction and that he wants to protect the people he loves. This, of course, completely contradicts his actions. The situation surrouding the original Ragnarok was never explained, either but we can gather that everyone Odin loves is already dead. Well, going around killing pilots and military officers obviously won't bring them back, and still constitutes unnecessary destruction.

We could also look at what Claudia and Miyako said: Odin is lonely. His reaction seemed to imply a confirmation to this, but it still doens't explain anything. You could stretch an argument to say that Odin's attacks are only meant to intimidate Claudia into going to live with him or something, which will make him less lonely. Otherwise, I don't see how he's supposed to get more social interaction by killing all the humans. But if that's the real reason, then I guess Odin is just extremely dumb? How would he fail to see that the optimal strategy is to genuinely support humanity and gain Claudia's affection that way?

The other problem is that we never received an explanation for the pilots being revived. Considering the nontrivial possibility that they're literally alive in their original forms, the characters should have been more interested in investigating that. Odin vaguely talked about the dead joining his side as if they actually retain their previous identities. I don't see why Amatsuka didn't actually come back.

Besides that, the characters were decent and I thought a lot of their interactions were solid. The music was pretty good, and I liked a lot of the comedy.

The other nontrivial thing that brought the rating down is the overinclusion of "bruh moments" (not e.g. Monogatari levels but still bad). I didn't like the attitudes of the air base staff either. A lot of it was comedic but there were also moments were it went over the line.

And I still maintain my dissatisfaction with Azuzu. This girl thinks and is treated like her IQ is as high as Near or something when it's only in like the 85th percentile.

Rewatch twice in quick succession before dunking on it

Start: I'm not really sure what to expect. I don't know much of anything about
the plot or characters. FMAB had a really high rating (not quite 9.39 but
still), and it wasn't amazing. But literally everyone I've heard talk about this
(besides Okeanix) has sung a song of praise. It's hard to think that something
could beat Re:Zero for me, but of course, I would hope that it does. I don't
specifically want Re:Zero to be bad relative to others, but just to maximize
quality.

...Eh, hopefully some of the art is good at least

EP 01:
01:30: Opening seems decent. I usually like them more over time, though
End: Decent so far, overall. I see the potential. Also, the art style is more
versatile than expected

EP 06: I think Stark's introduction was misleading. They went too far in making
him cry about never having fought a monster and thinking of himself as a fraud,
if he indeed has been training

EP 07:
16:50: Uh so your opinion is based on a few anecdotes? You don't think there
could be more possible diversity in psychology?
17:15: Well at least acknowledge that it just made a mistake by telling you
that, if you will then use that fact to kill more of its kind
18:18: I mean, sure, you can pull this trick to convince the audience that she's
right in this case but that's still not a great justification
19:32: I'm against it. You've declare to all third-parties that no cooperation
is possible with you because you'll backstab them later. I would recommend
banishing them out and formally ending your truce before you attack on the
outside
20:37: Lmao that's not how it works. "You know, the government was 5s away from
killing my family on the spot but then they changed their minds after I told
them a joke. Yeah, that was crazy. Anyway, catch the game last night?"
End: I'm liking the "ED" (?) quite a lot too. The tone of the song, the colour
palette, and the visual design, to me, symbolize some sense of peace in the face
of death

I've thought pretty positively of the "fights" so far. Other anime that seem to
put a larger focus on them like Gintama and JoJo would, from what I can
remember, usually feel more contrived and entirely unpredictable, but these have
been better

The magic of the demons like the string, blood, and movement copying, were
pretty creative

EP 10:
10:39: Uh are you really sure that that will work long-term? It takes one demon
to observe some behaviour, come up with one explanation, and then everybody
knows not to use mana expulsion as a consistent indicator of total power
13:51: Yeah, well they could still just flash their full mana potential every
once in a while and rely on memory for the rest. If you can consistently know
when to enter "stealth", I guess it's fine, but then your culture is cucking you
when you fail to jump people with it. I don't see why it has to be a disgrace.
It's a better explanation than just "the demons are stupid lol" at least
20:20: Isn't it going to be suspicious in this context if people later hear that
Aura died because of you?
End: Would it have worked to try to get her to go kill some other demons first?

EP 16: 19:12: These flashbacks are kind of insulting, but I guess my
dissatisfaction is of lesser magnitude than that of somebody who forgot who
Kraft was. They might not even understand that the fault is with them. So, it's
not totally unreasonable.

EP 18: 14:05: This is the worst test I've heard described, which is quite
accurate to how these sorts of certifications tend to work in real life. The
rules obviously encourage you to steal cages from others, kill members of
others, or push them out of the circle. That's not really the type of behaviour
you want to be certifying. Furthermore, it's unfair that your given team will
affect your performance, when the teams are a random factor. Somebody with a
skilled team will have their skills tested less than somebody with an unskilled
team.

EP 19: 15:23: You went 1 m/s instead of 0.4 m/s at the stop sign? You're
unqualified to own a driver's license! Die now!

EP 21: 05:06: Based. "Nah bro the joy comes from searching for the cure for
cancer, not actually curing cancer. If your company finds it, I don't want it,
because then it wouldn't have been me who found it. Huh? All those people dying?
Yeah, and?"

EP 23:
05:25: You could still be of mutual benefit to each other. You'd probably notice
cases where it'd be useful to sacrifice somebody, and thus know to defend
yourself at that point.
End: Uh did they just throw Frieren in arbitrarily? So she will have to fight
another of herself after she beats the first self? Or does it somehow choose
based on the people inside the dungeon that aren't in your "party"?

EP 24:
13:15: Huh? Where were Frieren's party's replicas? They couldn't have
skipped a section
15:48: Then are they just scattered randomly, with Frieren's happening to show
up to block the main path? Wait, but if Frieren, Fern, and Sense were exploring
every floor fully, they should have found Übel and Ranto, as well as this group
here, by that point?
17:28: This is again running into the problem of the psychologies, which I guess
they at least brought up deliberately earlier. If she's a pacifist, would she
possess a mental contradiction if arbitrarily loaded with the goal of killing
the intruders?

EP 25:
08:27: Just bring the mimic down in front of it
13:31: What is it that stops people from going to the North if they don't have a
Class 1 Mage? There's no way it's as dangerous as these tests

26: End: I thought there were three challenges? Why'd Sense say they were all
worthy of becoming first-class mages?

End:

Alright, pretty good overall. I have a favourable opinion of everything. The
quality was generally consistent from the start. Something like the "budget"
felt higher than Re:Zero's but I didn't end up liking it as much. Some things
that Sousou no Frieren did better, with the disclaimer that my memory of Re:Zero
is not fresh:
- The art
- The comedy (not the focus of either but still)
- There were more significant characters: Re:Zero generally centered around
Subaru, and other characters generally existed to serve as exploration of him,
but Sousou no Frieren was more balanced. Actually, maybe the balance means that
no individual character will be able to match Subaru, which dampens it overall,
but it's still something to strive for, I guess

As I said, I generally like openings and endings more over time as I see them in
each episode, which was also the case here. There was a drop at the start when
the new opening was introduced, but now I like it about as much as the first
one. I still prefer the first ending, though. (Obviously it's the same song, but
the first section was better, and I liked first ending's video more too.)

There was occasional issues. I mentioned a lot of them (a few got resolved later
but most didn't), but there were others, like how Frieren said that Serie will
fail Fern and then ten seconds later (in that moment; not actually depicted in
the same shot, because it was jumping backward in time) said the opposite. It's
nonsensical and misleads the viewer into getting excited by one prospect without
actually implementing it.

It was definitely better than Brotherhood so I guess the MAL market is efficient
in that sense.

- Steins;Gate's opening video is definitely my favourite out of any anime I've seen
- Convinced me to drop Chemistry to take Physics instead (2023-05-07: Great decision in hindsight)

A quote I particularly liked was "It's because the past cannot be undone that people can accept all sorts of pain, adversity, and cruel accidents, yet still move forward."

One of the BS reveals of kibou hen is actually done at the end of this one, so this is what receives the appropriate loss in enjoyment/score

1:33:39: Cool how the same fox-squirrels from Kaze no Tani no Nausicaä are back. Maybe it's just an easter egg, or it implies a connection between the movies? Based on Kaze's plot, I think it would make the most sense if Tenkuu was a prequel, where the events we are seeing here all happened before the Seven Days of Fire. The robots being shown also sort of look like those giants that were destroying the Earth in Kaze, and they even have similar functionality in terms of the lazers. It's possible that new evidence is brought up that contradicts this hypothesis later in the movie, though.

Overall, the writing seemed significantly better than Kaze's. Characters felt much more consistent and coherent, even when I disliked their actions. Kaze's resolution was better, though; here, I wanted to see the aftermath of the Earth's government's response to the developments, and whether or not Muska survived.

The moral about it being impossible to prosper away from the Earth was dumb, but I wasn't expecting much of Ghibli on that front. I knew something like this was in store as early as the first second of Kaze, where they advertised the WWF.

By the end, what I said earlier about this being a prequel still seems plausible.

EP 01:
14:12: So far the premise makes zero in terms of how any technology would actually be plausibly implemented. That's fine, though, as long as they don't start using arbitrary plot devices later as "logical conclusions streaming down from the premise". Like, there better not be a riddle about whether a task counts as "one task" or "two tasks", and is therefore possible or not possible for an AI to follow
24:34: Okay... a lot of arbitrary logic related to time (it should be a rule that if your story involves any sort of time travel, you have to read the entirety of the Butterfly effect Wikipedia article first) and technology but I liked some of the scenes. Overall I see more ways to mess this up than to make it good, but we'll see

EP 02: 10:07: Damn it, we rolled a deontologist. Not sure how annoying this will be

EP 03:
20:54: I'm stating my prediction (67%) that Estella is innocent; if she really did crash the station, it was by accident or because she was hacked or something similar.
22:00: Okay, confidence increased to 80%
23:18: Down to 45%? "Innocent" would assume that during her interactions with Vivy were before she was hacked

EP 04:
09:07: I'm taking this as "resolves YES". I should have stuck with my 80% and considered the possibility of a double
18:26: The deviations from real life are annoying in these kids of sequences - at this level of technology we'd be able to fit petabytes on a thumb drive, and then just copy paste her psychology onto there or something

EP 06:
10:08: Well then there's nothing particularly special about you. Pretty much any human would give her valuable information as part of a marriage. There's no significance to her accepting your proposal. That's kind of the problem you have to figure out. In real life, people generally accept that there are X amount of people that your partner would have accepted instead of you. Do people even care how large X is? But if X just consists of a large number of Eliezers and Sams, then you can't really be complaining, right? That's the kind of thing you have to think about before you even step into the arena. You're a bit late if that is your concern now.
10:21: Ahahaha what a massive sidestep; did not see that coming. Good luck increasing your status from "anime logic" to "actually is optimal in terms of your mission". Overall, this Saeki guy seems mega based though
11:21: Do they have legal ownership of Grace? Well then you just fell for the OpenAI problem, which is separate. The solution to that is... Oh wait, does that mean Grace is the Mother that M was talking about? ... anyway, you're supposed to have an alarm in your head going that is just repeating "temporary temporary temporary"
13:00: Uhh is that just a self-psyop or is there actually evidence for that? Wouldn't it have been easier to extract the data while everything was still running in peace?
13:07: Oh, because of that, then yeah
14:16: Okay so you really have to accept the fact that the writers can basically come up with any state they want and then come up with a "convenient" explanation for it. It's clearer to deliberately state that "there's no way to rescue Grace" is just a given axiom that you'd have no way of knowing up until that point. But it's not that bad as long as they don't expect you to predict them
14:50: Yeah, I also thought about that. But the recent damage would imply that her old self is less defined now
15:47: Hmm yeah I was going to jump to "lol who cares" but he should actually take into consideration the fact that Grace would prefer to die in many cases
16:29: Let's just say that your gun was aimed the wrong way
23:10: Hahaha he went for it. OK at this point I'm probably adding him to the favourite characters list, unless he comes back later and becomes cringe or something. The OpenAI problem is what got him. And that's not particularly fair considering he was a small child, although it's unclear exactly what his opinion of Grace was when he first came to the hospital as a researcher. In his position at the first time in the hospital, I right now (18) would not have let her hug me, because I know how broken my psychology would have been afterwards. But if I was his age (~10?), I'd fall into the same trap.

EP 11:
01:05: I have a feeling we are not going to get a satisfying explanation for this
01:52: Bro
01:54: Ehhh maybe it's barely passable
08:25: If Toak "hacked" them to kill humans, attempting to start a small war but then have the AIs lose, to spark hate against AIs, I'm not going to be pleased
20:11: So it's literally going to be that someone pushed a software update that changed their utility function. The type of versioning system that they're using is stupid then, but the explanation itself is generally fine. However, that invalidates their past effort, because like I've been thinking this whole time, if things actually made sense, it would have been way better to only really care about the final issue itself. You should have been researching AI yourself and looking through the permission system to figure out how someone could cause this
21:55: Wtf just happened? Did she go "hey it looks like the last update is what made AIs kill humans, how about I go visit the update center"? But it also made it look like the centralization AI was who made the decision rather than a human operator? That makes it worse, if so

--

END:

Okay, I actually have no idea what happened at the end there. I'm going to read the Wikipedia summary

...

Yeah, I gathered that the Archive made up its own arbitrary reason for humans to die, but was offering Vivy the chance to sing, which would show it that Vivy wants humans to live. Since she is special for no reason, her opinion matters more.

Up until that point, everything was going fine. Then, there was the conversation with Navi, which made zero sense. I should have rewatched it. Actually, I'll do that now, before continuing reading.

V ~"I'm here to sing on the main stage"
N "Why?"
N "Shouldn't that be old hat for you by now?"
N "Oh, right, that wasn't you, was it?"
(What does this mean? Who is "that"?)
V "Wait, you were in the archive?"
(What did that line have to do with the Archive?)

...

N "Did you forget the promise you made with that little girl?"
N "You promised her, remember?"
N "You promised that you'd make everyone hear you sing!"
...
N "Just keep fulfilling your promise to her- fulfilling our promise (instead of
whatever you're doing now)!"

This I was already confused by the first time as well. Although the show doesn't really take the mission system particularly seriously, it's obvious that Project Singularity is generally compatible with the mission of singing, and with the promise she made. Actually, the stage is going to pretty much get destroyed from the satellites, so it seems like stopping them is important to the promise.

N "Get it through your head!"
N "Even if you manage to execute that program, you're not getting off scot-free."

I first assumed this was meant in the sense that Vivy will have regret for breaking her promise (going along with the established anti-logic that this is breaking her promise). But I guess Navi is saying that Vivy will die if she does that?

N "If you sing it, you're also going to-"
V "Wakatta💀yo"

Oh okay. This is what it felt like they were implying but it just didn't connect with anything I could think of. So... why would singing kill her? I thought the Archive said that it would choose not to eradicate the humans if she sung: how does that possibly imply that the AIs should shut down instead?

(Scene end)
I'm still confused. Back to Wikipedia...

It says "[Navi] desperately tries to convince Vivy to [give up], since the logical impossibility will likely kill her"

??? That was not mentioned at all? And how would that make literally any sense??
- Why is it a logical impossibility?
- If it is, how is she able to reason about it or otherwise execute it in the first place?
- If she can, why would it be harmful to her?

...

Oh, well it sounds like Vivy is the only AI that was permawiped as a result of that? The rest were just shut down temporarily as part of the maintenance, basically?

Eh..... yeah, I'm not happy with that at all.

Anwyay

Overall, it was a decent show. I can see some of the similarities to Re:Zero, although I much prefer the latter. I'm actually terrified of the prospect that the next time I rewatch Re:Zero, I will hate it, because my preferences have changed or I became better at detecting BS or something, since I last saw it.

The main problem is that it felt too contrived. That's harder to explain, so I'll identify the next biggest problem, which is that a lot of the attempted ties to reality were really annoying.

AIs aren't magic leprechauns that can do anything in any circumstance. Like any technology, they can be tested and understood. With our current capabilities, we lack interpretability into the weights of large models today, but that's going to change in 10 years (if we somehow survive), let alone ~100 years. The show consistently said "I don't know how AIs work and the viewers don't either, so it's fine if they now exhibit magic quality X". In a few cases they decide to change the logic of how X works later. It's not satisfying when the authors can make whatever they want happen at any time.

The logic surrounding time and chaos theory was scuffed too but not quite as bad.

The characters was overall pretty good and decently consistent. The most problematic ones were probably Kakitani Yuugo and Antonio.

The art and music were nice. Vivy's actual "song" did not inspire a notable amount of happiness in me, unfortunately, but that's mostly because of my disinterest in the genre of music (and in turn the composition) rather than the singing itself. If she instead sung, for example, Yuudachi Houteishiki, it'd be better. I quite liked a lot of the background tracks, though.

ChatGPT told me that 夜に駆ける is played somewhere, and every episode I was wondering if it would show up... nope. I disliked the opening, but almost all of the other music included was successful in its contribution to the tone, though.

Final wallpaper count across the entire series: 4463, at 440M
I was using jxl through mpv with d=1

My favourite openings (although I still liked many of the others) were Mousou Express and Kogarashi Sentiment in terms of music, and Platinum Disco and White Lies in terms of the video

Koimonogatari: Hitagi End was definitely the highest quality