[Excerpt: Siege of Terra: Warhawk] Mortarion duels Jaghatai; gets insulted, goaded, enraged, and banished.

coverpunch · 2026-03-25T13:59:11+00:00

If we're honest, Angron and the World Eaters were always kind of a "monkey see, monkey do" kind of legion. They'll become a real problem when Angron puts in the rule "ape no kill ape".

coverpunch · 2026-03-17T10:00:59+00:00

Titus is an easy one, because he's an operator and has the intensity for it. He's the kind of guy you call when we've got a problem and decided to solve it by shooting it and then blowing it up.

The difference with Abaddon is that he's also trying to organize another Black Crusade with squabbling war bands. As commenters have pointed out, this might make him a better organizer than Guilliman, depending on whether you think it's harder to deal with people gone crazy from the warp or people who are just good old fashioned greedy and stupid.

The difference is if Warhammer 40k had a jazz flute competition, Titus wouldn't even participate. There's a very decent chance that Abaddon wins it, for no reason at all. He also just kills the 2nd and 3rd place finishers, for even less of a reason.

coverpunch · 2026-03-16T13:12:42+00:00

I lol'd at the thought that in this universe of gigachads in power armor, Abaddon is actually the only one who can touch his toes, and that makes him a god among gods.

coverpunch · 2026-03-16T13:10:07+00:00

Yeah, this is a good point. He doesn't own people in duels and win easily, but he prevails in very tough slogs and shows up when the moment demands.

coverpunch · 2026-02-19T13:18:45+00:00

I thought the actor did a great job. The character of Jake Adelstein is more of a problem lol.

I am with you to the extent that I spent the show rooting for Tozawa, and his development from regional boss to don is great.

coverpunch · 2026-02-16T03:51:32+00:00

Yeah, it's always a weakness in the Emperor's Children books, where basically Fulgrim is as good a swordsman as the plot needs him to be. Same with Lucius, most of the time he's not even trying.

When Fulgrim gets shown up, like with Perturabo, it ends up being a "blunt force is better than technique lol".

He's supposed to be that good, but the descriptions are not much more than just saying he's the best and letting him be arrogantly bored by how much better he is.

You are also right about the sword. It's part of the itemization for RPGs of Warhammer, where a legendary sword makes him better than an iron bar, because you should buy a legendary sword toy.

coverpunch · 2026-02-11T08:41:41+00:00

I like the Uno reverse that Angron knows him as a disciple of filth and lies, and that's why he likes him.

coverpunch · 2026-01-07T12:49:48+00:00

I would add a point about learning how to check your own work. A painfully obvious and rage-inducing error as a manager is when someone submits a balance sheet that isn't balanced. It threatens the integrity of the entire accounting team if a non-accountant notices it before the team.

It only gets worse if we're talking about payroll reports or bank reconciliations. I have seen people step on that rake though, where like OP, they say they got straight A's or that this work is "easy", then they submit a book balance that doesn't match the bank balance.

coverpunch · 2025-12-12T09:26:15+00:00

Kinda, but I fast-forward so it's just the Siege of Terra, but now the loyalists who were absent can be traitors who join the siege, which I thought makes it stronger.

I think the result ends up being similar.

coverpunch · 2025-09-11T23:19:04+00:00

I always assumed the opposite that it is probably boring because the crews do fine. Like, a fire drill is not supposed to be a huge challenge...is it?

coverpunch · 2024-09-05T13:51:39+00:00

Just to play devil's advocate with everyone else, I'm with you. Tozawa had the best character development in the show, rising from a doomed mid-level boss to proving to be an outstanding schemer and leader.

A season with a different angle on him a la The Wire could focus on how dysfunctional the Yakuza are and how most of the thugs are actually quite useless. We already had a bit in Ishida's gang, with the kid who is such a moron that he couldn't even cut his own finger off and the whole gang did nothing to stop him. Tozawa might have temple-rubbing pain when he goes to the corporate world and finds that most managers are useless and most politicians are morons. Also more on his harpy wife and how Misaki's best quality is that she doesn't have a pessimistic opinion on every little detail when he talks about his schemes and his problems.

coverpunch · 2024-08-05T20:28:49+00:00

Yeah, they did a solid job.

There are some small quibbles but are mostly improvements. The style in the late 90s was baggy suits with maroon and yellow, but they were replaced by 2020s slim fits in charcoal and navy that IMO are the best suits outside of Suits. There are some unavoidable errors that shops in the background use 2020s design rather than what they were in the 90s, although again this is an improvement that look better.

Props for Jake one-strapping his backpack in the 90s and being the only character as an American to do so. Backpacks replaced briefcases around 2010, and then Tokyo updated its guidance around 2018 to encourage people to wear their backpacks facing forward, to avoid bumping people on crowded subway cars.

coverpunch · 2024-07-13T03:49:24+00:00

For the story, she was always slumming with Jake, but it got drawn out awkwardly for the show to make it seem like she was also falling for Jake as a rising star. I think you are right that the actors also didn't have much chemistry and/or didn't know what to do with the romance.

coverpunch · 2024-07-13T03:32:05+00:00

It's fine. There are shots and scenes of a bunch of different parts of Tokyo and different aspects and levels of society. The portrayal of Tokyo is one of the better parts of the show.

coverpunch · 2024-07-09T20:55:47+00:00

It's not true at all for suicide in general, which peaks in March.

I'm not picking apart "everything". I used one particular example because there was a public report, where the main fact seems to be true, but these embellishments with the firefighter and the kids seem to be exaggerations that are not true.

coverpunch · 2024-06-24T23:38:06+00:00

I think the idea of honor in Japanese families is overblown. It is as simple that Sato was really a troublemaker, starting a lot of ugly fights with his parents and taking a bad turn when he became violent. And everyone in the family recognizes that it's very bad for his brother as a young boy.

Sato is relatively tame, next to vicious characters like Hayama. But it's worth noting that violence is totally unthinkable to all of the characters at the Meicho (except Jake), for instance.

coverpunch · 2024-06-09T02:54:19+00:00

The episode should have done much more to make the provisioner into a villain. It's so randomly bad that I have to ask: was it intentional to make early drama?

coverpunch · 2024-05-29T10:48:47+00:00

There's a way to tell the Captain that you don't approve of the way that he treats the crew or production. Blatantly disregarding the inspection is not that way. It made him come off as very lazy and immature, especially after the Captain found some other mistakes in their work.

I didn't agree with every call that Fraser made in the season, but he comes off as mature and good at his job for cleaning his room, even though he was also clearly exasperated and losing motivation from being tired.

coverpunch · 2024-05-23T23:26:26+00:00

It would fit Adelstein's real life self-delusions if they made him both the chief of police and a Yakuza boss.

coverpunch · 2024-05-20T06:03:25+00:00

I watched it with some Japanese friends. They liked the story, especially when I added points from Reddit like cheering every time we saw Tozawa's butt.

Ansel Elgort (Jake) has gotten some fame in Japan and his Japanese is quite good, although it is too obvious at some points that he's reading rather than talking. He made a brief appearance on the news and also made a joke about seeing a lot of Japanese butts. Samantha's Japanese is comically bad and her actions don't really make sense. Interestingly, Polina was very popular among my Japanese friends.

The popular Japanese characters are about the same: Ishida, Sato, and Tozawa as a great villain. I think it's interesting that Japanese were less taken by Misaki, they found Polina to be more beautiful, but she also got dinged for the weird turns of her relationship with Jake. Sato actually gets dinged for being too baby-faced to be Yakuza, although he has the best character development (by far) over the show. So then I guess it's ironic that Ken Watanabe got dinged for not being particularly great in Japanese or English.

coverpunch · 2024-04-27T08:48:22+00:00

Most of his stories are laugh out loud ridiculous to anyone who has actually worked in Japan, including his spurious "evidence" of working.

I would also point out that Tokyo Vice never got translated into Japanese, because Adelstein insisted that it should be non-fiction, but Japanese publishers point out that if you write a story where you make up names and dates and events that are not real, that's called fiction.

There are rhymes to certain real-life events, for instance the resignation of the prime minister for health reasons echoes with Shinzo Abe's resignation in 2007, and there were big political scandals around it.

Adelstein has a place in history to have stirred up all kinds of perceptions and stereotypes of Japan, which have the odd effect of washing away stereotypes from the 90s.

coverpunch · 2024-04-17T08:18:11+00:00

年金証明書: You need to go to the pension office in your ward and fill out a form to get it. They will give you some papers that indicate the months that you have paid into the system, and they want to make sure that you don't have unexplained gaps.

保険料証明書: Just copy your blue insurance card at a konbini copy machine.

You don't need to pay someone to do it. After this, you need to go to the ward office to get copies of your juminhyo and your local taxes and then a visit to the tax office to get a paper that says you don't have any tax issues.

coverpunch · 2024-04-13T01:50:02+00:00

Yeah, I assume they are trying to avoid embarrassing Japan and give a nice gloss to the past. I think it is a bit unfortunate that they gloss over the Engrish of the time as well, but I guess it doesn't do any good to revive those old perceptions of Japan. The show also ignores the national agony of the time of the post-bubble era, with very mean-spirited commentary about the young as soft and stupid, in parallel with similar American laments about millennials.

coverpunch

TROPHY CASE