Sometimes I sample things that end up with a high rating, but in my experience that serves as a rather poor indicator most of the time; basically anything between ~7.4 and ~8.8 on MAL is a total crapshoot in terms of actual artistic value
I've found that if an episode discussion thread in reddit's /r/anime has a high number of comments then it usually isn't bad. (The inverse isn't really true though, i.e. low number of comments doesn't always mean it's bad.) MAL ratings are quite unreliable anyway - not to mention that people often dismiss anime that don't agree with established themes, e.g. any occurrence of ecchi fanservice.
moozooh wrote:
Something-monogatari: How many seasons does this series even have, like seven or eight? Considering there have only ever been four series spanning over 70 episodes that I have watched (and only three of those I would recommend without any reservations), this is a super hard sell for me.
12 parts so far. I only became a fan after my second attempt into it, when I was reading a blog alongside with watching the episodes to help me understand what I was seeing. It's been great ever since.
moozooh wrote:
Ajin: I saw the vomit-inducing CGI and never gave it a second thought.
Just like with Sidonia no Kishi, it takes some getting used to. I found the characters and plot interesting enough to keep watching. You also might have some success with running "enhancement" software like SVP, though I don't have experience with that. (Btw. there's a Sidonia torrent out there that is interpolated to 60fps.)
I have noticed that with many anime series watching the first episode only is not actually enough to get a good picture of what it is really about, or even if you will like it or not.
Yes, that's why Kiznaiver is still on the list.
Warp wrote:
after watching more episodes I ended up liking it after all. (Although, to be fair, sometimes the exact reverse has happened as well.)
And that's why I dropped Assassination Classroom during season 2.
would you consider Boku no Hero Academia to be good for somebody who's grown pretty tired of typical shounen stuff? Its premise seemed pretty banal to me, and I took the high rating as more indicative of a lowest common denominator sensibilities rather than good writing. Is it at all clever about what it does?
If you look back at the summaries of your favorite anime (e.g. at myanimelist or elsewhere), you'll often see that the premise sounds either insane, misleading or even incredibly boring. So after eliminating titles based on some rough criteria (continuations of shows that I dropped, certain topics that are not for me, like yaoi or idols) I just give each show at least one episode. That allows for enough judgement regarding topic, art style, plot progression etc. (So this season that resulted in watching the first episode of 22 shows, from which I dropped 10 after one or several episodes.)
It doesn't have to be clever. I just watch shows that don't feel like a waste of my time, shows that are uplifting (Boku no Hero Academia), make me forget real life with action (Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress), plot (Joker Game), comedy (Bakuon!!), soundtrack (Ikkitousen), all of the above (Re:Zero) or some other mysterious ingredient (Flying Witch).
Boku no Hero Academia is the story of the kid who meets his ultimate hero, in a world where everybody in his class except him has superpowers. It's the story of the guy least equipped for his dream job getting one chance to do what he wants to do.
It's idealistic and realistic. It's not some shounen where the protagonist gets good at saving the world overnight.
moozooh wrote:
This season is pretty decent, all in all. Far better than the two previous ones, anyway.
But there's been Ajin, Boku dake ga Inai Machi, Gate: Jieitai Kanochi nite, Hai to Gensou no Grimgar, Heavy Object, Kaku Tatakaeri 2nd Season, Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo!, Koukaku no Pandora, Koyomimonogatari, Little Witch Academia: Mahoujikake no Parade, Noragami Aragoto, One Punch Man, Oshiete! Galko-chan, Owarimonogatari, Shinmai Maou no Testament Burst, Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu, Ushio to Tora, Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid
moozooh wrote:
Also, to those who haven't been following the previous season too closely: do yourself a favor and watch Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu
Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu - Best anime this season. Characters are likeable, setting is nice, mystery is intriguing, plot is engaging, cliffhangers are deep. Apparently the author was unsatisfied with the current status of the industry, and set out to lead by example. He's also a sadist who loves to torment his characters.
Boku no Hero Academia - So sappy and emotional, but somehow it works and the episodes are over much too soon.
Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress - Some similarities with Attack on Titan, but thankfully the shounen is dialed back. Highlights are the animation quality, action and worldbuilding.
Ushio to Tora - Continuing from last season, it now seems to prepare for an epic ending because the plot is moving awfully fast.
Kuma Miko - Best comedy slice of life of this season, imo.
Joker Game - Best cerebral show this season. It seems like it's having an episodic plot though by following the different agents around the world, so it'll probably not entertain me as much as it otherwise could.
Sometimes there were parts of the source code in some ROMs, probably because whatever tool was used to burn the ROM chips copied whole harddrive / floppy disk sectors, including previously deleted data. Sometimes the original developers released the source code years later, or it was leaked some other way. That's pretty rare though.
For 6502 code you might find this talk interesting.
- Avisynth (plus AvsPmod for editing Avisynth scripts)
- VirtualDubMod (with x264vfw) to encode Avisynth scripts to .AVI files
- mkvtoolnix to convert the .AVI files to proper .MKV files
In VDM:
- always set "menu | Video | Fast Recompress" (in "menu | Options | Preferences | Main | Video mode" you can change the default to that)
- set the video compression to "x264vfw" and configure it (usually rate control = CRF 16..22)
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — At first, Fan Hui thought the move was rather odd. But then he saw its beauty.
“It’s not a human move. I’ve never seen a human play this move,” he says. “So beautiful.” It’s a word he keeps repeating. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful.
The move in question was the 37th in the second game of the historic Go match between Lee Sedol, one of the world’s top players, and AlphaGo, an artificially intelligent computing system built by researchers at Google. Inside the towering Four Seasons hotel in downtown Seoul, the game was approaching the end of its first hour when AlphaGo instructed its human assistant to place a black stone in a largely open area on the right-hand side of the 19-by-19 grid that defines this ancient game. And just about everyone was shocked.
“That’s a very strange move,” said one of the match’s English language commentators, who is himself a very talented Go player. Then the other chuckled and said: “I thought it was a mistake.” But perhaps no one was more surprised than Lee Sedol, who stood up and left the match room. “He had to go wash his face or something—just to recover,” said the first commentator.
Even after Lee Sedol returned to the table, he didn’t quite know what to do, spending nearly 15 minutes considering his next play. AlphaGo’s move didn’t seem to connect with what had come before. In essence, the machine was abandoning a group of stones on the lower half of the board to make a play in a different area. AlphaGo placed its black stone just beneath a single white stone played earlier by Lee Sedol, and though the move may have made sense in another situation, it was completely unexpected in that particular place at that particular time—a surprise all the more remarkable when you consider that people have been playing Go for more than 2,500 years. The commentators couldn’t even begin to evaluate the merits of the move.
