天下制覇

Oh good, this song and dance, even less convincingly than usual.

Looks like Seinarukana's site finally went up and this is the first I've seen of it as well. I don't even know where those sample images are even from, 'cause they're not even in the right style for the game I worked on. The art books, I guess? Are they even going to sell those? But what I really appreciate is how they tossed out the site I made stole/improved/fixed from the now defunct Cyberfront version, and instead got caught plagiarizing a not particularly accurate summary from some random dip. Without even fixing the grammatical errors. They definitely have my stuff. They used a modified bit of it for the actual preorder page, as well as for the manual (which I literally just now got to review and at a glance looks infinitely better than that site). I see my 'In once such world' typo right there. Aaand multiple copy/pasting errors right after it. Oh, and there's also how they've whitewashed out most of the cast, misspelled a character name, forgot to put a character they listed in the header for that section, and how their awful template is still busted on all of my laptops. Serenity now… Serenity now… And yes, I already sent an e-mail about these issues. Edit: Good, they were quick about fixing the most embarrassing parts of the above.

Impressions:

You know, KyoAni, and Japan in general, there's a general formula to these kinds of things.
Intro -> Attach -> Explaination/Investigation -> Struggle -> Climax -> Resolution
It's served your Buffies, Supernaturals, Xenas, etc very well over the years. They typically punctuate the struggle and climax parts with visceral stabbings or beheadings or something to get the blood pumping before letting things naturally taper off into the resolution. When you skip those parts and try to make the explanation out to be both the struggle and the climax, you don't get any kind of punctuation to it. You just have people standing around until someone spotaneously figures whatever out, and then having figured it out, that's it. Story over. Where's the tension? Where's the effort? Where's the catharsis?

Anyway, particualrly crappy and actionless episode, so didn't even have any eyecandy to gawk at. It's rare that a show manages the whole "obviously overly perfect world for escapists vs imperfect reality" schtick well, Gravity Falls, and this is sure as hell no exception, especially when every single thing actually shown with her so far has been fun times and hijinks. Boring Useless Girl is magically bussing off to eat magically drugged food with her perfect magic rabbit family instead of her completely offscreen supposedly not as nice real family, but Blando says "No, embrace a form of non-rabbit escapism," and she goes "Okay, I guess I will." That's it. The end. Let's move right the goddamned hell along and away without dwelling any further in this post of catalogued incompetence.