7th Station ~TV, movies, games~

[erilaz]

One of the things I've been doing during my staycation is watching Season 1 of Dark Angel, which I hadn't watched since its original airing, twenty (!) years ago. The first line spoken in one of the episodes I watched yesterday amused me:

“I can’t imagine a time when you could just walk into a store, shelves were full, and you could buy whatever you need.”

[JonCC]

Taking the opportunity to reduce that backlog of games, TV & movies

Star Trek: Picard - I stopped watching Discovery after three episodes, Picard I binged over the course of two days. Sublime.
Doom: Eternal - Much more different from Doom (2016) than I expected, but very enjoyable. Very intense, had to take frequent breaks just to take a breath.
Castlevania: Season 3 - Much improved from Season 2 and the ending has me optimistic for Season 4
The WItcher: Season of Storms - It's nice to go back to a standalone Witcher novel that's not all that connected to the greater saga.

[erilaz]

I just binged the five episodes of Dead Set — less than 2½ hours total. A show about people stuck in the Big Brother house during the zombie apocalypse seemed to be an appropriate thing to watch during the present situation.

[Amped]

Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula teaser trailer


also Kingdom Season 2 on netflix

[Celedam]

Inspired by the wondrous paintings of Simon Stålenhag…



https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B084NSNCK6/

It appears to be an anthology series like Amazing Stories or Black Mirror, but not as kinetic as the former and not as pessimistic as the latter.

[esm]

I've been watching some anime on Netflix.

Beastars - I went back and forth between thinking it's good and that it's uncomfortable to watch (in a bad way) because of all the sexual components involved in a series where the characters are all anthropomorphic animals. There's a lot of creepy predator-prey dynamics involved. It's a pretty unique series though. I tend to appreciate darker stories.

Violet Evergarden - I started this a few years ago with a friend but never continued, so I started over from the beginning. It's definitely one of the best anime I've ever seen. I stayed up late to watch almost the entire series at once.

Your Lie in April - It's pretty good, and it's aesthetically amazing (music and artwork), but the violinist girl annoys me. I like the beginning half of the series more than the ending bit.

[Zunu]

Violet Evergarden - I started this a few years ago with a friend but never continued, so I started over from the beginning. It's definitely one of the best anime I've ever seen. I stayed up late to watch almost the entire series at once.

I think I watched like a half episode of that a couple years back. I'll have to check it out again.

I recently finished Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (at least, the seasons available on Netflix). It's such an odd show to get into. The characters are all ridiculously hyper-macho and drawn in an exaggerated comic book style. Everyone is super serious, and the story is all tragic and grimdark, and then you start to notice that (mild spoiler)

Spoiler: show

a lot of the characters are named after 80's music groups.

After that it becomes more and more obvious that the show is really a next-level sendup of its genre. Characters constantly getting beaten to within an inch of their lives, getting stabbed, shot, bleeding out of various orifices and then kicking asses in the next scene. During fights the participants engage in extraordinarily lengthy banter between blows, or their over the top interior thoughts are vocalized. The Jojos (they're a dynasty) are always predicting what their opponents will do with absurd levels of precision.

The first season is a bit subtler because the overall story is played straight. The later seasons start to drop that pretense and more and more overtly silly things happen, and the bad guys' powers get increasingly fanciful. Crucially though, the characters always remain deadly earnest and never break their own sense of unwavering commitment to the world they are presented with. For that reason, you start to get attached to them after a while. (To put it in terms of "The Office," it's the reason why as the series went on, Dwight Schrute arguably became a more compelling character than Jim Halpert. Dwight, no matter his ridiculous flaws, really believed in himself and that made us want to root for him. Jim on the other hand was always very arch and above it all, treating everything as a joke. That diminished him in our eyes, and made it harder for us to deeply care what happened to him.)

The big boss in the later seasons had a coolly confident god-level overpowered demeanor reminiscent of A**** from Bleach (spoiler'd for the 3 people who are still intending to get around to that).

In short, I really liked it, although I felt a bit off-balance the entire time.

[Celedam]

I recently finished Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (at least, the seasons available on Netflix).

That takes you to the end of Stardust Crusaders, including Battle in Egypt.

Hulu has the next season, Diamond Is Unbreakable. If you're interested.

and then you start to notice that (mild spoiler)

Spoiler: show

a lot of the characters are named after 80's music groups.

Spoiler: show

That can be hard to notice because some of the names have been changed in order to avoid trademark issues. The names were very obvious in the original manga, but then they were changed for the anime and then changed again for different translations of the anime.

Anyhow, I would add that Jojo's features a lot of body horror. At first glance it seems campy and cartoonish, but after a while you realize that characters' bodies are frequently modified and maimed in bizarre, disturbing, almost psychedelic ways.

Of course, that's what many fans enjoy about it, but it can also be a real shock if you're not prepared for it.

The whole thing — the characters, their names, their powers, the artwork and color palette, the sound design, the music selections — feels like a very long acid trip, and intentionally so. Hence the title.

The sound design in particular gives me shivers. Especially…

Spoiler: show

…that VRRRRRROOMMMMP when Dio invokes The World to stop time. Woofers were invented just to emit that sound.

[Zunu]

<scoffs> All that body horror is lightweight next to the raunchily revolting rerorero-isms

Cover your eyes children (nsfw):

Spoiler: show

[erilaz]

I've been trying to finish Portlandia (still a few episodes from the end of Season 7), and this skit that I watched yesterday really hit home for me.



I'd pay $120 for that. Even without the not-bobbleheads.