[Misc] Cats & Anime
The cat (AKA "Little Black Kitty" or "LBK" or "Kitty Cat" or "Hey, Cat" or "Here Kitty Kitty" or "Trip Hazard" or Something-Japanese-Gwendel-Came-Up-With-That-I-Can't-Remember-Let-Alone-Pronounce) has been adapting surprisingly well to the shift to being an indoor cat. When necessary, I've been able to administer his twice-daily oral medication by myself, but it's still much easier with Gwendel's assistance to hold the poor kitty still. I make a point every time that he's gotten the medication that the kitty-collar comes off immediately after and I make a point of refreshing the water, food bowl, and kitty litter, so I hope that this counts as positive reinforcement. I'm not getting shredded like with the first time, at least, and he doesn't seem to mind the skin cream I apply while he's eating. (If anything, my problem is that he seems to like the scent of the skin cream and if he sees me getting the container on, he wants to sniff at it with such vigor that the nozzle will go up his nose if I'm not careful. Eww.)
I need to figure out some way to entertain the cat, however. "Eat, sleep, do kitty-litter-business" doesn't seem like a good long-term routine. Dangling string sends him into pounce-mode, but only so much, and I'd prefer something that doesn't require such long-term active involvement on my part. I'm doing this all for the sake of keeping the cat safe, and the cat pretty much inserted himself into our lives (and, quite literally, our house, when the door is open), versus me going out and picking up a pet because I had too much spare time I didn't know what to do with (ha!). I think the cat's primary entertainment outdoors seems to consist of "get in fights with neighborhood cats" and "find small animals to stalk and terrorize," so reasonable options might be limited. I've heard of people putting "kitty videos" on TV screens, but when I've tried playing such things on a laptop screen, the cat has been totally uninterested. Hmm.
Gwendel has been watching a lot of older anime in addition to her daily Japanese dramas. "Inspector Hound" seems to be frequently on screen when I get home. Before that, Gwendel made it through "Nadia: Secret of Blue Water," but I couldn't stomach watching through the "Lincoln Island" padding episodes in their entirety. (I wish there was some sort of "director's cut" sort of version of the series where those obnoxious padding elements could be trimmed out. The episodes can't just be skipped entirely, because there ARE some important story elements woven into all the stupidity.) When we watch something together, titles lately have been:
- Flying Witch: Slow-paced, drama-free "slice of life" series with a supernatural leaning (the main character is a schoolgirl who happens to be a hat-wearing, broom-riding witch in training). Being so free of drama and mystery means it doesn't exactly grip me, but the background art is often gorgeous, there are some wonderful touches of ambient scene-setting that invite the viewer to imagine what it would be like to VISIT these places, and the animation is consistently decent. It helps that, unlike many Japanese animators, this team can make animals that don't look like mutant stuffed animals or pug-ugly abominations. This series is, in a few words, honestly cute and sedate, and showcases the imagination of the writer(s) and illustrator(s) rather than just a parade of worn cliches.
Begin tangential rant. When I say "honestly cute," what I mean is that there are a number of anime series that Gwendel has latched onto because they're "cute," but I've gotten creepy vibes off of them. When all the characters are girls, everyone is outrageous and over the top, when the skirts are very short, when one girl starts grabbing another in inappropriate places (and it's okay and not pervy at all because they're GIRLS, okay?) and characters are overly obsessed with their measurements and utterly incapable of more than a few seconds of seriousness and the camera keeps panning up the body ... on and on (and it's the SAME STUPID STUFF from series to series), I can't help but think that it's not really a series about girl empowerment or anything like that, but that the intended audience is male. End tangential rant. - Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu (AKA "Starting Life from Zero in Another World"): Protagonist boy ends up in fantasy world that is very much like a JRPG. Very, VERY much like a JRPG, that is, in a surprising and disturbing way he discovers a while after he has started to adapt to the idea of being in a fantasy world and NOT being granted amazing super powers. This series has a few of the cliches you'd expect, and at times the hero's intellect seems to roller-coaster between "insightful" and "stubbornly oblivious to the blindingly obvious," but in my opinion the balance has improved as the series continued and our hero finally figured out one of the critical things that was happening to him (that any viewer could easily figure out in moments).
My final opinion of this series will no doubt be impacted by where it ends. Certain threads that seemed to be intertwined together have, at this point in the series, been revealed to be unrelated coincidences (or so it seems), which makes me worry that this story might not HAVE any sort of ultimate end-point or resolution ... but it has had its intelligent moments, and I'm still holding on to see if something comes of it by season's end. It's worth checking out, I think. - Mayoiga (The Lost Village): Every one of the characters in this series is messed up -- that much is pretty much clear right from the start. I'm not quite sure how to classify this. It's supernatural and with elements of dread, bordering on horror, but fairly mild compared to, say, Higarashi. One thing I've found interesting is that while there is something dangerous and supernatural in the woods, I can't help but think that if I were for some reason stuck with this group ... I would be more afraid of my fellow-travelers, and what they might do in their blind fear than what fate I might face were I to strike out on my own. Gwendel's patience is being tried with this series, and I have to admit that some of the "revelations" about the characters are delivered in a very clumsy manner.
For being as messed-up as these characters are, too many of them are just a little too articulate in identifying their own hang-ups, and it feels like it's more of a convenience for the author to make these revelations to the viewer in a short span of time. A little more nuance and subtlety and maybe even a case of what characters say being directly contradicted by what we SEE as viewers (and then having to make our own conclusions about which is correct) could add to this. Still, it strikes me as an ambitious departure from the run-of-the-mill dreck I so often see with anime offerings. Gwendel worries that the ending of this series can't possibly deliver, in the short span remaining, but I'm willing to see it through to the end of the season. If nothing else, it's an interesting premise, and might give me some ideas for future "Just Trust Me" style game scenarios. - Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto: This is more Gwendel's thing, but I have to admit, at times it's ... atrociously hilarious. I'm not sure what, exactly, this is supposed to be satirizing, but the main gig is that the main character, Sakamoto is, oh, SO perfect, in reality-bending ways. In my opinion, the joke gets pretty old after an episode or two, and I think Gwendel might be tiring of it, too: She's pretty much in charge of what we watch (since she's queuing it up on her computer on Crunchyroll or Hulu), and she hasn't pulled this one up in a few weeks. It might be amusing to watch an episode or two, but it's more the sort of thing I'd tolerate watching with Gwendel because we can laugh together; it doesn't hold any interest for me to bother following on my own, since there's no real "story" to hold my interest. It's basically just an animated sitcom.
- Boku no Hero Academia (My Hero Academy): This one is hard to pin down. It feels like a "Shonen Jump" sort of story, targeted to the same sort of audience who might have watched Soul Eater back in the day, and ... hmm. Wikipedia time. Huh. What do you know? It WAS a Shonen Jump manga. Aha! Anyway, it's a superhero world where, in an amusing twist, MOST people have super powers ... it's just that the average person has really minor powers, or simply chooses not to bother living the "heroic" lifestyle. Our protagonist is special by virtue of NOT having a super power, but obsessively studying the strengths and weaknesses of others' powers. The series surprises me at times by where it goes (or doesn't go), but it strikes me as something that might be an "acquired taste" for many. (For one thing, the main character cries WAYYYYYYY too much -- a fact that's sometimes commented upon by others.) It's an interesting take on the superhero genre through an anime perspective. (Another series that comes to mind when I think of that premise would be "Tiger & Bunny.")
There are some other titles Gwendel has been queuing up, such as "Three Leaves," but it's fairly lightweight, low-brain-power stuff that I'm content to just pretend to watch in the background while I mess around with stuff on a computer or whatnot.
Stuff we started watching, but I told Gwendel "You can watch this on your own":
- Ace Attorney: This show hurts my brain. I'm no lawyer, but it's just packed full of stuff that makes me go, "Real law can't POSSIBLY work like this!" I can't stand it.
- Anne-Happy: Another run-of-the-mill "wacky" fetishist series, vaguely centered around how ridiculously "unlucky" all these characters are, and some school that's somehow supposed to "cure" them of it, largely by subjecting them to various bizarre torments. Nothing interests me about this series.
- Big Order: I barely squeaked through the first episode. Big stinking power-trip series. Not interested.
- High School Fleet: I hated this from the start, but Gwendel wanted to watch more. "Cute" (read: annoying) dopey girls are assigned to the "Blue Mermaids" school in a future Japan where kids apparently go to school learning to sail WWII-era battleships (with a few tech upgrades here and there), because ... of reasons not fully or at least initially explained. Then "serious" stuff happens -- serious stuff that even remotely realistically should be resulting in a good bit of blood, death, and dismemberment, but this is a "CUTE" series, so despite the occasionally pretenses of "serious" things happening, our "heroines" will still waste time fretting about how their hair looks and how cute they look in their clothes and whether they can stop and go shopping at some island on the way, versus, y'know, the presumed LIFE-AND-DEATH weirdness going on. Gwendel finally gave up on the show when the characters are mere hours away from getting back to home base (and presumed safety) when they report a shortage of toilet paper on board the ship, and hence take a side-trip to some island shopping mall (they can DO that?) for ... shenanigans. It's not just the series that annoys me, but all the gushing reviews I found when I was trying to find some more information about the series and who in the world wrote this and what it was supposed to BE.
- Space Patrol Luluco: Hyperactive, offensive trash. I did a quick check on the director and ... yeah, his other work included "Kill La Kill" and "Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt." It's THAT sort of anime.
There were actually a few other anime "episode ones" where we didn't even get past the opening title sequence before we were subjected to pixelated naughty bits or panty-flashes or other obvious signs that this wasn't going to be a series I'd put up with. Gwendel checked out and didn't even bother to share with me "Super Lovers" (I guess after all the "sis-love" teases that seemed to plague the offerings a while ago, "pederasty" is back in style with certain viewers), along with a few others of that sort. Oh, ANIME!
Game-wise, I've been painting up some Warhammer Quest miniatures for Digital_Rampage. They're the new minis from the "Warhammer Quest: The Silver Tower" board game, and just assembling them is a challenge all its own. Actually, I've only gotten so far as assembling them and base-coating them. I hope to get them to be "table-top presentable" for Digital_Rampage to run some demo games at conventions this summer.
Digital_Rampage is talking like he's looking for a point to wrap up the Iron Kingdoms campaign -- or, at least, his job of RUNNING it, so that he can turn it over to me again. This is a little perplexing to me, since it felt like we hadn't really resolved anything, but ... eh well.
I'm still not really coming up with much in the way of ideas or inspiration for the Iron Kingdoms high seas adventures. I'll probably just try to delve into some pre-fabricated adventures that I can string together, see what sort of characters the players are actually going to play (there's talk about swapping out characters for the change in venue), and then maybe inspiration will strike me. It's a bad way to run a campaign, but I was sort of drafted into it anyway.
For Fallout (which has more of my creative interest), I've been looking at the "Savage Fallout" rules put together by Yves Geens ( http://savagefallout.blogspot.com/ ) but the problem is that while some things are useful, some character options are a bit too cheesy, and I'd rather leave them out, or others are too complicated and I'd rather streamline them, or any number of things. Edit, edit, edit. It's fine if I were to write up all the characters myself as pre-gens for a one-shot, but when the players are going to create their own characters, and then shop for improvements when applying experience points, they really need a guide that's ready to go, as-is, without the GM having to peek over a player's shoulder and approve or veto every little thing. So I'm at the point where I'm basically trying to write up my own "player guide" for writing up characters. The real challenge is going to be to keep it brief; too thick and too unwieldy and nobody's going to want to read it.
Dr_Rhubarb finally started up a new Minecraft server. We ran into problems because he's got a Mac, and apparently a lot of the support for Minecraft modpacks out there just IS NOT for Macs. In the end, he basically had to put together a "custom modpack" (installation of which is a bit more MANUAL than the normal modpack launcher process), and I've been trying to help out some of his other player friends based on the travails I had in getting the pack to run on both of Gwendel's computers. We wanted to try the latest version of Minecraft (1.9) for a change, but it looks like modpack support just isn't out there for it yet. We ended up starting with a modpack called "The Pioneers," for version 1.8.9 of Minecraft, and then Dr_Rhubarb went through and stripped out every mod that was causing his Mac to crash upon loading. We're still left with a number of interesting mods, including one that adds "Roguelike Dungeons" to the world, along with a server-side installation of "Ruins" (along with my custom Ruins structures, and some designed by Gwendel).
Gwendel and I played around on the "test server" (the one using the full Pioneers modpack, which Dr_Rhubarb got running on his server, but he personally couldn't sign in to PLAY) and although it was a bit buggy (the "Thaumcraft" mod could cause crashes), we still managed to entertain ourselves by clearing out the better part of a dungeon we found near the spawn point. Now that the world has been reset, we're still trying to get everyone signed in, and those who HAVE signed in have been splitting into groups and tackling dungeons for the most part (a combination of the Roguelike dungeons and my own creations -- most of which the other players aren't familiar with). Last night, I found another dungeon near Gwendel's building area (her big project is to build a "city" on a plains type area), and we managed to clear out the better part of the first three levels. We've never gone down to level 4 yet, though, so that's a bit intimidating, since the difficulty has gotten markedly greater with each level down, and we could barely handle level 3 with two players.
I don't really plan on doing any big extensive building projects, myself. My interest is primarily to do some exploring and dungeoneering with Gwendel (it's more fun to do things together), and to get feedback from other players on my Ruins dungeons, so I can improve them for the next iteration. I find it more satisfying to put work into a structure that may get used again and again by different players (to explore, loot, possibly refurbish as a new base of operations) than to build some grand castle that's just going to go away and never be seen again once interest wanes again in maintaining the server.