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The only good thing about Dragonball is Akira Toriyama's art.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I bloody don’t hate it!

I greatly enjoyed the lesser known, knock-off live action movie version.

I just don’t see the appeal, based on what I’ve seen of Dragonball Z, and its whole “very little happens for a long time, then quite a lot happens in a very short time” shtick.

If others enjoy it? All power to them. It’s just not for me.

You may be thinking of my General “I just don’t get it” take on most, but not all anime.

Which Live Action DragonBall movies? The Interwebs mention 2 of them...

There's one from Korea "Dragon Ball: Son Goku Fights, Son Goku Wins", and one from Taiwan "Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins", as far as I am aware. They are both charming in their own ways, I think.

We do not speak of the American live action knock-off movie.

Dune Prophecy

In-flight entertainment, and its rather good, isn’t it,

Did try Kraven out of sheer, morbid curiosity. But…just….no.

US TV

So, it’s 3:49am in New York. But my brain knows it’s really 8:49am and won’t sleep further right now.

Telly is therefore on. Oh man, the ads are doing my nut! Not only do I only very, very rarely watch broadcast TV back home, and so am not used to ads. Some of them are quite odd to me. And so frequent!

3:49 am is a great time to visit Times Square.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
US TV

So, it’s 3:49am in New York. But my brain knows it’s really 8:49am and won’t sleep further right now.

Telly is therefore on. Oh man, the ads are doing my nut! Not only do I only very, very rarely watch broadcast TV back home, and so am not used to ads. Some of them are quite odd to me. And so frequent!

We do not own a TV set and whenever I am in a cinema (rarely) I am reminded how dumb and intrusive commercials are, because I do not see them on day to day basis. It is always a culture shock of sorts.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
3:49 am is a great time to visit Times Square.

Perhaps, but only here for a week, and need to sort jet lag now.

Binged through the latest Devil May Cry anime and its... enjoyable? It's definitely not good and its not a very good adaptation by most measures, but its fun and the franchise is always more about being fun than anything. Also the last 5 minutes are the purest form of "subtext is for cowards" I've ever seen.

It actually annoyed me, not because I disagreed with the message per se, but because 'we're using demons as a metaphor for politics' is the most hamfisted backward ass look me in the eye and tell me you don't see the problem with this metaphor move the director could have made.

Honestly, the weirdest thing about that show is that there is one 10/10 episode in it, and its the episode that has really jack all to do with Devil May Cry and it is unfathomably better than the rest of the show by being a bit too disconnected.

Scavengers Reign

A neat little animated, sci-fi series about people stranded on a rather hostile, alien world.

I rather enjoyed it, could've done with being shorter, quite a few episodes boil down to nightmarish monster/environmental hazard of the week (And there was one whole subplot I just didn't get), but I loved how bizarre and alien the planet was depicted as, even if it occasionally veered into the absurdly convoluted.

I was preparing to scream at my TV over the ending, but it turns out I didn't have to.

 LordofHats wrote:
It actually annoyed me, not because I disagreed with the message per se, but because 'we're using demons as a metaphor for politics' is the most hamfisted backward ass look me in the eye and tell me you don't see the problem with this metaphor move the director could have made.

Honestly, the weirdest thing about that show is that there is one 10/10 episode in it, and its the episode that has really jack all to do with Devil May Cry and it is unfathomably better than the rest of the show by being a bit too disconnected.

Yeah, you could try to ask some very big questions about who the monsters really are, but then the series is also happy to revel in ultraviolence without ever giving it meaning so it just ends up coming across as thoughtless. It definitely tries to have its cake and eat it too in that regard. I feel like if they had made the rabbit's crew more direct parallels to Lady's agents there could be something, but ultimately its just kind of like, "killing bad, except when it looks cool."

 LunarSol wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
It actually annoyed me, not because I disagreed with the message per se, but because 'we're using demons as a metaphor for politics' is the most hamfisted backward ass look me in the eye and tell me you don't see the problem with this metaphor move the director could have made.

Honestly, the weirdest thing about that show is that there is one 10/10 episode in it, and its the episode that has really jack all to do with Devil May Cry and it is unfathomably better than the rest of the show by being a bit too disconnected.

Yeah, you could try to ask some very big questions about who the monsters really are, but then the series is also happy to revel in ultraviolence without ever giving it meaning so it just ends up coming across as thoughtless. It definitely tries to have its cake and eat it too in that regard. I feel like if they had made the rabbit's crew more direct parallels to Lady's agents there could be something, but ultimately its just kind of like, "killing bad, except when it looks cool."

Soooo.... worth watching?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
It actually annoyed me, not because I disagreed with the message per se, but because 'we're using demons as a metaphor for politics' is the most hamfisted backward ass look me in the eye and tell me you don't see the problem with this metaphor move the director could have made.

Honestly, the weirdest thing about that show is that there is one 10/10 episode in it, and its the episode that has really jack all to do with Devil May Cry and it is unfathomably better than the rest of the show by being a bit too disconnected.

Yeah, you could try to ask some very big questions about who the monsters really are, but then the series is also happy to revel in ultraviolence without ever giving it meaning so it just ends up coming across as thoughtless. It definitely tries to have its cake and eat it too in that regard. I feel like if they had made the rabbit's crew more direct parallels to Lady's agents there could be something, but ultimately its just kind of like, "killing bad, except when it looks cool."

Soooo.... worth watching?

It's under 4 hours and regularly has some cool fight scenes. I've definitely spent more time on worse.

I could list faults for days, particularly as a DMC fan. I wouldn't call it a good respresentation of the source material, but then again, the source material has never let telling a good story get in the way of looking cool, so maybe it's a better representation than I think?

I definitely don't regret watching it, if only for the the opportunity to discuss some of its..... choices.

As a mediocre action series..... it was fine.

I actually watched it, but forgot I had watched it and never put anything up here.

Rewatching Breaking Bad. Still a great show.

It's amazing how every time I watch it, Walt is worse and worse. You notice more and more of his insecurity, his arrogance and recklessness. And it gets weirder and weirder that people hated Skyler so much. Not that she's perfect but Skyler calls Walts bs from day one, is gaslit by everyone around her, and is actually a better criminal than Walt.

And Gus is just. Man. What a character with a phenomenal actor and performance behind him.

So the latest Dr Who is pretty mental. Fun, but mental.

Reminds me of “Frauditors”, sad little gimps with nothing better to do in their pathetic tragedy of a life than try to provoke a reaction from military or emergency services personnel, for the sake of claim “halp halp I are the oppressed”.

Though given those goons rarely gain any real traction this episode is a wee bit far fetched.

Paradise on Disney+ really took my wife and me by surprise. This show is so well done on every level. We enjoy immensely unpacking the story, layer by layer.

Do yourself a favour and don't watch reviews to avoid spoilers, just check the first episode to see if it is your cup of tea.

Decided to rewatch Babylon 5 from the beginning.

I forgot how cool some of the alien designs were... and how many Trek actors were in the show.

It’s definitely a landmark tv sci-fi. I still feel the space borne CGI is a bit naff looking. But the design work, and especially the physics of the thing carries it all the same.

The brilliance of the plot takes a bit to get going, and like all sci-fi that turns out amazing, it’s entirely expected that a fair chunk of the first season is working out the kinks and getting the fine tuning in.

Even so? Like SG-1, that first season lays an incredibly solid foundation.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So the latest Dr Who is pretty mental. Fun, but mental.

Reminds me of “Frauditors”, sad little gimps with nothing better to do in their pathetic tragedy of a life than try to provoke a reaction from military or emergency services personnel, for the sake of claim “halp halp I are the oppressed”.

Though given those goons rarely gain any real traction this episode is a wee bit far fetched.

I didn't enjoy this one too much. I've always hated how inconsistent the show is about how much humanity knows about aliens, so poking fun at the problem just annoyed me!
Plus the whole "On-line disinformation grifter" angle is bringing too much current real world bs into my sci-fi escapism.

Uhhh... ever been in the wrong frame of mind for a show?

I watched Pacific Rim and the decided to watch HBO's True Detective.

Night and day difference in storytelling, theme, tone, etc.

I'll try again later after I finish watching the F1 race in Miami.

Tony Robinson is back on Time Team! With a month long dig!

Oh it’s grand to have him back. And the detail feels crunchier this time around, going more into the techniques being applied, and why.

I’ve done the first part, and it’s absolutely superb.

Shadows House:- Season 1

A bit of fantasy anime I've had on my "To watch" list for a while.
Unfortunately, I didn't think too much of it. It's not a bad show, it's just very disappointing because it has quite an interesting premise that it does very little with.

It was popular enough with others to get a second season, but having had a quick skim of the episode details, it still doesn't seem to really go anywhere, so I'm not going to watch further.

 aku-chan wrote:
I didn't enjoy this one too much. I've always hated how inconsistent the show is about how much humanity knows about aliens, so poking fun at the problem just annoyed me!
Plus the whole "On-line disinformation grifter" angle is bringing too much current real world bs into my sci-fi escapism.

Felt like another one where the need to push some kind of writers/show runners agenda got in the way of a better story.

Rework it as a plot about people 'broken' by whatever has been going on mindwiping the population. The old robocop concept of "I can feel them, but I can't remember them". What kind of person do you get when their family is blown away by a dalek except that now there was no dalek, no invasion, never had a family...



Stories aside what are they doing with all that run time? The show is almost an hour long and nothing happened.

Stargate SG-1 suffered from this after a while.

Its a top secret program that no one knows about. But....

1. We have super awesome technology.

2. We have starships, that are being manned by the US Military.

3. The Gou'uld like to show up to Earth in giant ships.

4. We had an alien invasion and a giant battle over Antarctica.

5. But no one outside of the President, The SGC, Congress, the Joint Chiefs, various government agencies, the Air Force, etc. knows about the StarGate.

When a show is starting out, you can get away with the secrets, but as a show continues and you up the "danger of the week," to ridiculous levels, plausibility sometimes has to take a backseat to a good story.

Stargate did get what I consider "long in the tooth" near the end. Another one was how at some point they gave up with translation and had most factions speaking English.

I do think that once they had the Pegasus in space they should possibly have done a big reveal - but I think the issue that TVshows - esp basically a self funded one and back then before big-streaming - it becomes a huge cost to try and do justice to a big reveal. You need SO many more actors and a lot more wide-scope scenes and such and probably a bunch of other sets.

It's also hard because whilst its realistic it can also drastically change the tone. Stargate was always this "4 friends gating around in space" and whilst they can go up to 5 and down to 3 and mess with it that way; you can't really do "sensible" things like. "US military invades planet with 10,000K soldiers trained and using Zzat weapons and such".

Because lets be fair there were a LOT of worlds they could have taken over with a handful of teams considering how insanely effective just the SG1 team were.

Whilst I agree, I do wonder what they would do with a planet. They would have a very tenuous supply situation, and wouldn't really be able to bring back resources in large quantities. Even after the spacecraft come in, I think humanity is still very much at the narrow end of the interplanetary imperialism spectrum.

10,000 troops is about a division. Random WW2 stats I found that sound about right suggest such a force needs 80 tonnes of supplies a day, even if they are doing nothing at all. Heavy fighting turns that up to over 1,000 tonnes a day.

I wonder if their system is based on the BattleTech world conquest system.

I have defeated your lance of 'mechs with my star. Your world is mine!

Back to StarGate... why were there so many gates on Earth?

Well, there’s two.

Just watched the episode where the Beta Gate is discovered. The theory is following a failed rebellion, the Beta (Antarctic) Gate was lost to Ra. But as he remained in control of the planet and his holdings, he had a second one brought from another world.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well, there’s two.

Just watched the episode where the Beta Gate is discovered. The theory is following a failed rebellion, the Beta (Antarctic) Gate was lost to Ra. But as he remained in control of the planet and his holdings, he had a second one brought from another world.

I wonder if the SGC still rents the gate from the Russians.

(And if we want to be a nitpicky douchebag, there were 3 gates at one point... In "Touchstone," the rogue NID team replaced the real second Stargate with a fake one)