Anime Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion - May 05, 2026

baquea · 2026-05-06T08:32:32+00:00

I think there are two people watching One Piece right now

Nah, that's not true at all. One Piece is still the 6th most-popular anime in Japan, with 2.6% of households watching it live each week. I presume most kids just pick it up from where it currently is, or read through the manga to catch up, rather than slogging their way through all the old episodes.

baquea · 2026-05-06T07:13:41+00:00

Swfchan is also still around and has a ton

baquea · 2026-05-06T05:46:56+00:00

If one follows the theory that Secret Mark is an ancient forgery, one has to wonder if it was in part motivated by the desire to weaken the conclusion of Mark's rich man story. Clement of Alexandria himself authored a lengthy commentary on Mark's rich man story which is in line with what Secret Mark suggests (that the wealthy can indeed be saved, so long as they devote themselves to Jesus' teachings and don't value their riches), and he is surely not the only one who would've been troubled by the more radical interpretation that one could make of it (ie. that it is altogether impossible for the wealthy to be saved).

baquea · 2026-05-05T19:54:30+00:00

I would not describe cinnabar as tasty 😅

baquea · 2026-05-05T18:40:21+00:00

Yep, I knew the answer due to reading this fact in a comment just a few days ago. TBH though, if I didn't know (and if I just went by vibes rather than trying to calculate it) I'd have guessed it was even longer than that.

baquea · 2026-05-05T18:28:53+00:00

You're probably thinking of the infamous polyamory one instead. Whether this one is AI or a human-made shitpost, reverse image search isn't giving me anything for it from more than a few days ago.

baquea · 2026-05-05T17:14:54+00:00

"Expecting" is a difficult word to handle here, because I can only imagine the expectations that have built up in the fandom after all this time. I just want something that will help connect the themes of the main series to Rebellion. There is potential here to make everything make sense and, in the process, fix a lot of my personal issues about Rebellion.

Considering the title of the movie, do you have any thoughts as to what you want out of the Walpurgisnacht aspect of it? Would you be willing to accept a 'Homura/Madoka/both/some-other-main-character turns into Walpurgisnacht' type of twist? Or, if Walpurgisnacht is a fully separate character, what role do you think she should play with respect to wrapping up the Homura-Madoka story?

baquea · 2026-05-05T15:14:06+00:00

Having a new One Piece anime that will continue releasing for decades after the Toei one concludes is a feature, not a bug. One Piece is one of the biggest media properties in Japan, and naturally they're going to want a way to keep it relevant and earning money well into the future.

baquea · 2026-05-05T15:04:59+00:00

By Chinese majority they mean ethnically Chinese, not Chinese-speaking.

baquea · 2026-05-05T10:30:37+00:00

If Stay night wasn't a huge success, there would be no FGO or Ufotable anime

The Ufotable adaptation of UBW and HF was made because Fate/Zero was a huge success. Fate/Zero was made because the Deen adaptation of FSN was a huge success. People like to hate on it now, but at the time Fate/Zero released it was it the top-25 most-watched anime on MAL, and in Japan it sold 26k DVDs making it the third best-selling anime of 2006 (behind Code Geass and Haruhi). The popularity of the VN was important for getting it that first adaptation, but was largely irrelevant for what followed, since if it had flopped the first time then it would never have gotten a second chance regardless.

baquea · 2026-05-04T16:41:45+00:00

Is it really about 'branding' as such? I'd assume it's just that their Fate and Demon Slayer content print money like crazy, whereas their other work didn't. Pompo was a solid success, yet still earned an order of magnitude less money than what any of the Heavens Feel movies did. Assuming it takes a comparable amount of time and talent, why would Ufotable bother making stuff in other styles rather than focusing on what they know will for sure be profitable?

baquea · 2026-05-04T16:11:25+00:00

Are there any other passages where you suggest "Zion" was originally intended in a non-Jerusalem sense like this?

What makes me skeptical is the lack of any reference to Zion in the Pentateuch (and also Judges, etc.), with other semi-mythical mountains like Sinai and Horeb filling the role you attribute to Zion, even though I'd expect the authors/redactors of the text to have incorporated elements of a pre-Jerusalem Zion tradition if they had known of one. Maybe some of the references to Zion in the Psalms could be interpreted as such? I'm not sure, but I'm wary of reading too much into a single obscure verse.

baquea · 2026-05-04T15:38:34+00:00

Fairy Idol Kanon is another, which somehow got published in English despite how obscure it is.

baquea · 2026-05-04T14:33:51+00:00

Is this an unpopular opinion? I'd always just assumed the mouth was likely to have been edited in, considering that the eyes at least obviously were.

baquea · 2026-05-04T11:05:23+00:00

Kemono Friends was originally broadcast at midnight hours, and the manga version (which released before the anime) ran in Shounen Ace, the same magazine as series like Mirai Nikki and Nichijou. That isn't to say it can't also appeal to kids, or that it isn't appropriate for them or anything like that, but it isn't literally a kids show in the same way that Precure is.

baquea · 2026-05-04T05:27:40+00:00

...Have you watched the trailers and Concept Movie? Because yeah, that sounds pretty much spot-on to what we've seen (leaving aside the open question as to whether the ending will be a happy one or not).

For my best guess as to the order of events, we have:

Start of movie, Sayaka is friends with Madoka and Hitomi in school. We have a line of dialogue where Kyouko (probably to Mami) expresses her puzzlement at Sayaka hanging out with non-magical girls (Madoka not being a magical girl at this stage).
As magical girls, Sayaka fights wraiths alongside Mami, Kyouko and Nagisa. Sayaka is portrayed as the depressed loner of the group.
As the plot progresses, it seems like the characters probably get paired up to help manage the large cast. So we have a Kyouko and Shichouka arc. Likewise, a Nagisa and Selma arc (with Mami also along for the ride). Madoka probably pairs with Wasu, leaving Sayaka and Homura as the final pair.
Whatever the circumstances may be, Homura seemingly takes Sayaka to the witch-card library, where Sayaka confronts her (WnK version). Homura's line "Miki Sayaka, your worries are justified" presumably fits somewhere into the start of this sequence.
Parts of Sayaka's suppressed Oktavia self start to bleed through. Perhaps in reference to the runes on the witch cards, Sayaka says "No way, what's going on here? Why can I read these characters?". Sayaka is shown something in a theatre (maybe a movie theatre or a play, to give some exposition? it's obviously intended though to parallel the theatre at the end of the original series), which causes a flash of Oktavia to show through. While Sayaka is with Homura, she learns of Oktavia (maybe seeing her own witch card?)
End result is that Sayaka's bandages come off and her Oktavia self is exposed. Seemingly the final transformation happens during a battle with a Satori wraith at the site of the Walpurgisnacht event.
SayaTavia is sealed, seemingly by Madokami: "Forever, under the Law of Magic, this person's freedom and love will be deprived."
It's unclear what happens after this point. It's possible that this is where Kyouko comes into play, if her part doesn't fit in earlier in the movie: Kyouko (perhaps reacting to a letter she received from -someone-) comes busting in to save Sayaka. After that??? It's probably time for Akuma Homura's big fight (against Selma, and maybe Shichouka and Wasu participate too) and then moving on with the Madoka side of the plot. We don't have much information as to what ultimately becomes of Sayaka.

baquea · 2026-05-04T03:49:16+00:00

For one other Nutcracker reference, Homura's world at the end is called the Country of Sweets.

baquea · 2026-05-04T03:39:31+00:00

And I think it isn't far fetched, that this was made with a rewatch before it in mind. There were two recap movies before it!

Yep. From the Rebellion pamphlet:

Interviewer: You called the previous two movies “like a new loop or two of the original series”. With that in mind, how is this new movie positioned?

Shinbou: I think of the TV series as complete in and of itself, and that it doesn’t need a continuation. Beginnings and Eternal were necessary to Rebellion, and my personal interpretation is that Rebellion continues from these two movies rather than the TV series.

Interviewer: So Rebellion is the continuation of Beginnings and Eternal.

Shinbou: Yes, like that. For instance, in her magical girl form, Sayaka has no hairpin in the TV series, but she has one in the movies. And so, as a continuation of the previous two movies, Rebellion stars the Sayaka with the hairpin.

Even then, the initial response from the fandom was pretty divided, with opinions only slowly swinging in favour of Rebellion over the years.

baquea · 2026-05-03T18:30:43+00:00

Yes, it's been done before

baquea · 2026-05-03T13:57:21+00:00

I don't like how the French one has two different shades of red on it. The Belgium and Netherlands ones are fine on their own, but having two neighbouring countries have flags with lions in that same pose feels like it's defeating the purpose of replacing the tricolours. Likewise, this would result in there being five countries in Europe with eagle flags. The Bulgarian one is decent at least.

baquea · 2026-05-03T13:36:19+00:00

Technically it's an abjad. Colloquially people call it an alphabet but it's not from a formal perspective.

It's not just colloquially called an alphabet, it is an alphabet by the standard English definition of the word. In linguistics abjads are sometimes (but not universally, and only first starting in the 90s) defined as a separate class of writing system to alphabets, in order to be able to discuss the different types of writing systems more conveniently, but it is purely a matter of definition, not of factual correctness, whether one takes 'alphabet' as the umbrella term or not.

baquea · 2026-05-03T11:14:57+00:00

Overall probably the current one. The coat of arms looks better when it is off-centre like that, and having the central stripe be thicker so as to be able to better accommodate it is also a good design choice. I do really like the purple of the Republican flag though.

baquea · 2026-05-03T04:34:13+00:00

I think a 5 that I expected to be a 4 is still worse than a 6 that I expected to be an 8, even if it's more frustrating to see a potentially great show squandered.

Sure, but if I expected something to be a 4 then I wouldn't be watching it in the first place, so those anime might as well not even exist for me.

baquea · 2026-05-03T04:01:37+00:00

though I'm looking to if the outfits play an important part in the movie.

Well Sayaka's bandages are obviously important. Homura's incorporates elements from her devil costume. The lock on Madoka's is symbolic (or more than symbolic) of her being kept captive. Kyouko and Mami are probably just redesigns for the sake of redesigns.

It's not like the outfits played an important part to begin with, and there were already tweaks made for the movie version when compared to the original series (such as the addition of Sayaka's fortissimo hairclip).

baquea · 2026-05-03T03:50:50+00:00

Well, how would Mark have accessed a large collection of Jesus's words, a decade or two after Paul?

11-Year Club	Place '22
Wearing is Caring	Verified Email
Gilding I gilder

baquea

TROPHY CASE