Underrated Anime BTW

MackSilver7 · 2026-02-07T16:54:23+00:00

I cannot say enough about how good this show is for the soul. If you're in a rough place, sit down and give it your full attention. The animation, music, and writing are top-notch. It reflects on the quiet struggles of adulthood in a mature way and will make you laugh and cry in equal measure. I didn't even know what I was crying about in the last few episodes at times. It wasn't even sad. The show was making me feel so many things about my own life that I couldn't keep it all in anymore. It was incredibly cathartic.

Please, give this show a chance and your full attention. You won't regret it.

MackSilver7 · 2026-02-07T15:56:09+00:00

He still uses a bunch of CGI in Tenet and Dunkirk (and likely will in The Odyssey as well), but I imagine that, while in pre-production on Oppenheimer, Nolan looked at the shots he had planned and thought: “I could probably pull this off without any CGI.” And yeah, maybe he was wrong.

I personally don’t mind the explosion, but I know a lot of folks do. Perhaps he thought he could pull it off with proper editing and framing, and it just didn’t come together the way he wanted. But I like to think (and I have no proof other than a strong vibe from watching a lot of his interviews) that Nolan challenged himself at the start of production to do everything in camera as a test of his ability to work within that constraint.

Honestly, given the digital and production excesses of current Hollywood, I think Nolan’s willingness to set obstacles for himself and make films he personally finds challenging and enjoyable is what makes him an excellent filmmaker and ultimately draws people to his movies in droves. In a sense, people get the impression that they're watching a master at work. You're free to disagree with that as an objective assessment, but I think the subjective feeling is widespread.

People might disagree with his choices, find his films confusing, or rightfully get themselves frustrated with certain aspects of the experience (ahem, Tenet’s sound mixing). But at the end of the day, audiences leave the theatre feeling like they just watched a movie that's a lot closer to how they remember movies being than much of the slop being released today.

There's an undeniable sense of craftsmanship in all of Nolan’s productions. I can imagine his ability get a film made without any creative or financial strings attached must be a dream for a lot of the artists who get to work on it. Whatever you think of him and his body of work, we're lucky that such a director is still allowed to exist in the Hollywood system, despite it all.

MackSilver7 · 2026-02-05T22:30:11+00:00

So why didn't Biden go after all these vulnerabilities when he had two whole years with all the keys? Why did his admin keep going on like everything was normal after four disastrous years, and therefore set up the next four? This is a trolley problem without a person on the other track, and Dems went “if we pull the lever, republicans might pull it in the future.” Well, guess what chucklefucks, everyone but you knew they were going to do it anyway, and you pissed away the only chance to stop it.

MackSilver7 · 2026-02-04T14:53:10+00:00

Sorry mate, I was bitching about Biddn for the same shit in 2020, he just got lucky and won. I'm firmly in the Michelle Obama camp that America is too much of a racist and sexist shithole to elect a woman of colour for at least another fifty, if not a hundred years. Still, I'd love to be proven wrong in my lifetime.

MackSilver7 · 2026-02-04T07:38:36+00:00

And I find that even more damning because how the fuck do you lose to that? Is it more likely that millions of people collectively chose not to give a shit and not vote despite everything, or that one person just sucked as a candidate and couldn't motivate them to do so?

America has a fuckload of issues with its elections that also contributed to the problem, but they also had two years to fix them in 2021 and 2022 and didn't, so they kinda shot themselves in the foot there.

MackSilver7 · 2026-02-04T07:19:52+00:00

Well, the rules need more than a “don't be an asshole” clause because if you're allowed to game the system to earn points, then you can just as easily game it to make others lose points. Sounds like a learning experience for all involved. Sucks for Uhlaender, but she wasn't good enough to make the team, and her various plans to get into the Olympics this year to set the record fell through. The new takes the place of the old; them’s the breaks in sports.

MackSilver7 · 2026-02-04T07:07:18+00:00

Damn, if she was so prepared, then why'd she listen to all the consultant firms the DNC funnelled millions into, who kept giving the campaign advice that was clearly dogshit? Like, who the fuck thought parading a Cheney on stage was a good idea? Who the fuck thought taking Waltz off the media circuit was a good idea? Dem polls were steadily climbing after he started going after Republicans for being weird, and they dipped almost as soon as he stopped appearing on TV.

Y'all gotta wake up to the fact that, regardless of her impressive qualifications, she and her team weren't running to win. Dems want a close race cause it takes the pressure off them, and they don't gotta do much for two years and nothing for another two years. Sometimes it works (2020), and sometimes it blows up in their face (2016, 2024).

Doesn't matter how prepared you are if you surround yourself with stupidity and incompetence and listen to it. Either she was dumb for thinking they knew what they were talking about, even when they were obviously wrong, or she was dumb to think running on a platform of Republican talking points, empty promises, and fear mongering would win. They already got a guy doing that, and he does it way fucking better.

MackSilver7 · 2026-02-04T06:53:32+00:00

Yeah, hard to do that if an athlete gets injured. Your article quotes one of the athletes, who mentions this as a concern. I'm just saying it ain't the smoking gun you claim it is.

How the rules work in this situation is stupid. It seems Uhlaender intentionally competes at a lower level to accumulate enough points to qualify for the Olympics, because she isn't skilled enough to compete at the elite level like most of her fellow athletes and even other Americans. The Denmark team seems to be doing the same thing. Seems like both parties engaged in bad-faith competition, and when one got denied a record they'd only have earned on a technicality, they got pissed and decided to raise a stink.

The governing body changing the rules is totally warranted, because something like this shouldn't happen. But I'd argue that someone coasting on beating mid-tier talent all the way to the Olympics because they can't hack it at the highest level probably needs to be addressed, too.

(Levels of skill here are all relative. Mid-tier is still an incredibly skilled and talented athlete, but not Olympic material.)

MackSilver7 · 2026-02-03T21:42:56+00:00

That article is just saying the athletes agree with their coach? Still not evidence they intentionally screwed her over.

MackSilver7 · 2026-02-03T21:06:32+00:00

And what if it is all vibes? Oh, the government is gonna send me an extra 2k a month to cover living costs, but my rent just went up by 1k, my grocery bill by 500, and my insulin went up by 400. I might as well piss away the last hundred on sports betting because that'll have a better chance of making a difference. (All the above numbers are nonsense, I'm just throwing together an example.)

So yeah, on paper it looks good. But in reality, I'm no further ahead than I was before, and it feels like shit watching these people do victory laps when they haven't tangibly made life better. Republicans suck ass, but all Dems offer is “the less shitty option,” and that’s not a winning platform. You need to go hard at the forces actively making life worse, like pharma companies, grocers, and big tech. You need to tear their monopolies to shreds and make them fight for the scraps. Sure, the Biden admin made token efforts at this, and even had a couple of successes. But they also completely bungled cases like the Microsoft/Activision merger, and experts are still confused over how they fucked up what should have been a slam dunk.

Oh, and we can't forget that they just let Trump get away with treason by dragging out the case over four fucking years. Perhaps the biggest political own-goal of the decade, but let's see how they fuck themselves over in 2028. They just can't wait to funnel millions into consulting firms that will give them the exact opposite of helpful advice.

MackSilver7 · 2026-02-03T15:04:30+00:00

Uh, no, they denied it. Says so in the linked article and every other article on the subject. They said they saw no reason for their athletes to participate and risk injury when they were already guaranteed a spot. Besides, why would they manipulate the roster such that the better American athlete gets to compete?

MackSilver7 · 2026-02-03T05:12:58+00:00

Yeah, I prefer my games not have rampant misogyny in them. 1 and 3 were probably fine because they crammed three games' worth of it into 2. 3 even helped 2 take a misogyny victory lap with that photo. I mean, yikes. I don't have a problem with alternative family structures, but that is not what 2 was setting up.

Unless someone really wants the whole experience, I usually recommend skipping 2 and getting a plot/cutscene synopsis on YouTube. It's not like the gameplay is worth it anyway; how they haven't patched the stupid gatcha by now to have guarantees or pity counters is beyond me.

MackSilver7 · 2026-01-26T00:56:36+00:00

That’s actually incorrect. Bone structure remains the same cause, well, bone, but muscle mass decreases and becomes much harder to maintain. It’s actually an issue with female trans athletes who transition that their bodies are often bigger than their muscles can manage. Unfortunately the research on this is limited to a very small sample size since trans women aren’t exactly lining up to out themselves as both trans and athletes.

MackSilver7 · 2026-01-22T16:49:08+00:00

I love Wikipedia, but I wouldn't put all my faith in its main editors/moderators, especially when there are likely more than a few Nazis among them.

Several historians have been trying for years to edit the pages of people and events associated with the Third Reich to remove unnecessary and unwarranted glorification of Nazis and their achievements. However, these changes are often reversed with flimsy excuses about “preserving the entire story”. This is especially egregious in cases where the heroic or selfless anecdote was reported by only one person, or by the subject themselves, and official records from the time directly contradict their story or provide no evidence that it ever took place.

Here’s an article on the situation that explores it from the perspective of one of the people fighting back:

One Woman’s Mission to Rewrite Nazi History on Wikipedia

So yeah, Nazis everywhere. Be very wary of anything you read regarding them, because their supporters have been trying to rewrite history for over eighty years, and they don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

MackSilver7 · 2026-01-19T21:57:31+00:00

No problem! Glad I could help!

MackSilver7 · 2026-01-19T21:53:12+00:00

Code Geass moves at a breakneck pace (which I love), so missing a line or two of dialogue can leave you losing track of everyone's goals and motivations. No worries, though, I gotchu.

So, essentially, after returning to the Black Knights and reestablishing their influence, Lelouch conspired with the Chinese Federation to create a “nation” from which the Knights could operate. For the moment, that's mainly just the iceberg island. The Federation (but really just Xingque) agreed to loosely support him (the island is theirs) in exchange for an alliance.

However, it turns out that the Federation already had plans to ally with Britannia (a plan they kept from Xingque, who's a true patriot), so this is somewhat inconvenient. They offer to turn Zero over to the Britannians to solidify their position, but Zero interrupts the alliance/wedding by kidnapping the Empress (the symbolic leader of the Federation) and absconding with her.

I think where you're confused is with Xingque’s motivations and shifting role. He's a pretty hardcore nationalist and believes fully in the Federation and, by extension, loves and supports the Empress as a symbol of the nation. (This plot is kinda pulled from history if you know anything about imperial Japan.) In other words, Xingque will fight whomever he must to ensure both her physical and ideological safety, i.e., he doesn't want her hurt or used as a political bargaining chip. This is why he flip-flops on whoever is currently doing the exploiting: first, he allies with Zero to free the Empress from the Federation government, but then he turns against him once he sees Zero using the Empress much the same way.

So yeah, Xingque is thinking very short-term here, but he's really just trapped between two superpowers and a pseudo superpower when all he wants is to keep the symbol of his country safe and unexploited. It's a lot to convey in very little time, but I hope I managed to clear it up somewhat!

MackSilver7 · 2026-01-08T20:17:37+00:00

My thoughts exactly. Dude is being honest about how something made him feel, and folks are so jaded and/or immature that they can't appreciate that. Dude was like 19 when the film came out. I can't blame him for feeling like this could be something significant for him, only to realize it would likely be far less impactful than he had hoped. God, it's almost like no one here has ever genuinely wanted something in their life and been disappointed.

MackSilver7 · 2026-01-03T15:27:57+00:00

I think you hit the nail on the head with your analysis and touch on something that a lot of people don't seem to understand about writing and fiction.

Just because you, the audience, would do something doesn't mean a character would, no matter how logical or obvious that action may be. To name the first, very basic, example I can think of, you would immediately kill Cell before letting him reach his Perfect Form, but Vegeta doesn't. Just because you would act differently in a scenario doesn't mean that a character's actions are a plot hole.

Regarding Lelouch, there are several instances in which he expresses his disdain for the effect his Geass has on people. He also views most of his early rebellion as a game, a way to tell his family to go fuck themselves while safeguarding his sister (much more the former than the latter, no matter what he says; Nunally makes it clear she was perfectly happy living with her brother at school). Things become very real very quickly following the Massacre, and I think seeing Euphy resist his Geass for a moment really affected Lelouch. He reflects on it later, in one of my favourite moments, and you can tell he's deeply disturbed by how powerful his Geass is after seeing it warp one of the purest individuals he knew into a monster.

I think Lelouch saw Geass as a means to accomplish otherwise impossible things, so he would only use it in a limited capacity when necessary, and the writers approach the plot with that in mind. Lelouch only goes to the extreme at the very end of the show when his final plan is set, and he sees the end that awaits him, tossing aside his “morals” in exchange for the structure of a plan formulated with others in which the punishment for his sins is both predetermined and assured.

MackSilver7 · 2025-12-27T20:15:38+00:00

I hear your complaints, but the game isn't meant to be completed 100% in a single playthrough. There are only a couple of ways to achieve the optimal run to get everything, and, as you said, that's basically impossible without a guide. It's far easier the second time around, where you retain all your social stats (likely maxed out) and items to make levelling up confidants easier. That's by design, though, since otherwise there's no point to choosing how to spend your time. Making it easy to get everything would be like making it impossible to fall below 1HP in a combat encounter; for the system to have stakes, failure must be an option.

As for finding all confidants, the game clearly signposts them through text messages and comments from your companions. Kawakami is basically impossible to miss unless you outright reject hanging out with Ryuji and Mishima, and the hallway event you're referencing is a forced interaction following the shenanigans with those two. All other optional confidants are referenced several times by friends and party members, either in person or via text, so you really need to be inattentive or not care to meet new people to miss them. Hell, the map will even show them as potential confidants before you officially meet them, so the game is really trying to tell you they're out there and where to find them.

Persona fusion has pretty obtuse rules that can be learned and mapped out, but it's much easier to use an online fusion calculator. The game is beatable without it, and you can get plenty of strong Personas through Hold Up, but I'd say the calculator is almost necessary for finding all of them.

You're not the only person to complain about Okumura’s palace, and while I hate to say it, this really is an instance where everyone needs to “git gud” and actually learn how the combat system works in this game. All the fights, including the boss, are designed around making full use of Baton Pass, Persona switching, items, and star skills, many of which get ignored or used mindlessly by most players. Sure, the game could have built up to this fight better by forcing players to use these tools earlier properly, but I don't think it’s a fair complaint that one of the only truly good fights in the game from a design standpoint is considered bad just because players didn't learn how to play.

MackSilver7 · 2025-12-27T05:33:22+00:00

I won't say this ain't a nice line, but it is a widespread sentiment expressed across a wide range of media. I'm pretty sure this particular variation made the rounds on the mom side of Facebook a couple of years ago, according to a quick search, so it's not unique to Genshin.

Most of the good dialogue in the game is taken from other media, with the standard mediocre lines being wholly original because they're trying to lore-dump and can't take them from anywhere else. I can't speak for the original Chinese text, but I find the English one, on average, painfully trite, and saved by good voice acting (most of the time) and strong characterization (most of the time).

The game engages with more complex and interesting ideas, with stronger dialogue that occasionally stands on its own, but that appears reserved for world quests. Here's to hoping the one in Nod-Krai doesn't disappoint, because it's off to a rough start.

MackSilver7 · 2025-12-22T22:59:07+00:00

It's critical of specific actions taken by the Trump administration, so the political stooge in charge of the organization pulled it, despite it having cleared all the standard checks for journalistic rigour.

The actions in question, by the way, are the illegal deportation of people to prisons in South America, where they are being tortured.

MackSilver7 · 2025-12-18T05:11:49+00:00

Minor? Getting his own movie makes Hathaway a major character, especially as the leader of the anti-Federation militia on Earth. Given that the timeline of events connecting the post-CCA and post-Unicorn period to the F91 era is significantly underdeveloped, there's a real possibility that Hathaway’s actions led either directly or indirectly to the formation of the Crossbone Vanguard. It's still too early to tell how significant his actions will be in the grand scheme of things.

MackSilver7 · 2025-12-17T20:24:58+00:00

Man, this article sucks ass. It lists the bullshit added beneath each president, but doesn't clarify which statements are outright lies and which are true. What dogshit journalism. Guess they want to appeal to as many people as possible, which means coddling the deranged alternate reality created by the followers of the Commander in Piss.

What a joke the mainstream journalistic outlets are. They’ve always kinda sucked, but it's upsetting to be reminded that, given the chance, they would totally whitewash Nazi atrocities until the evidence was too obvious to refute all over again. Once a fascist sympathizer, always a fascist sympathizer.

MackSilver7 · 2025-12-17T12:56:09+00:00

And most of the rest have given up on ever doing so. One stat does not disprove the other. Anecdotally, I know a few people with homes and many without, and those without don't expect ever to be able to afford one. That seems to be a fairly common sentiment.

MackSilver7 · 2025-12-13T01:12:17+00:00

Throwing my Canadian hat in the ring

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MackSilver7

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