kajnrig
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Everything posted by kajnrig
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I dunno, depending on the lighting conditions, she might very well blend right into the environment versus the stark white of a regular Stormtrooper... Are they Stormtroopers now? It never even crossed my question that... Okay, I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees Fett for the loser that he is. He does about as much and gets humiliated as much in the OT as Phasma does in the NT. I thought Stormtrooper armor IS laser-proof. You have to aim for the seams. Maybe that was just part of the EU? I know they get taken down willy-nilly in the movies, but I figure that's simply a case of Rule of Cool. -
Ranka EXQ figure now at HLJ (~$35-40 shipped): https://hlj.com/macross-frontier-exq-figure-ranka-lee-bnp38699
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Solo: A Star Wars Story, in theaters May 25, 2018
kajnrig replied to Dobber's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
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So there's still been no official announcement of an American release, but supposedly it's going to be the same Strangereal Edition as Europe gets. Which of the two would you all be more likely to get? The Strangereal comes with the big frakk-off Arsenal Bird figure, but the Japanese one costs much less (~$100 shipped vs ~€170/$200 USD RRP) and you get a much tidier steelbook and (arguably) better stickers/patches. Now that I think about it, none of that sounds as appealing as they did when they were first announced. I was going to get the Japanese one for the steelbook, but now that I take a second look at the price, it doesn't seem very worth it. And since I don't care at all about the Arsenal Bird model, nor about any patches or stickers, maybe it's best to just buy the base game...
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Wow. Crazy. Okay, then. Thanks for the info, y'all.
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Went to see it a second time against my will (saw it with the nephews the first time, saw it with friends the second). It's not as bad the second time around, but only because it's easier to tune everything out and enjoy the at-times admittedly funny humor. The Venom symbiote is kind of an idiot, I'm glad they kept it like that instead of making it some sort of super edgy badass. Eddie, though... Basically this. On his own, he's just not very interesting. He also comes off as more of a shitty reporter than the accomplished one they want you to think he is, more of a tabloid paparazzo (apparently that's the singular of paparazzi) than a dedicated journalist. He doesn't fact-check, he doesn't gather evidence, he reaches bizarre and tenuous conclusions based on that evidence... I mean, I know that's not the point of the movie, but it really stuck out to me. Like, there was no reason he had to be an accomplished reporter. He could've easily been sold as the sloppy journalist that he is and it wouldn't have changed the thrust of the plot at all. The "science" scenes were also extraordinarily bad. From the very first lines spoken by the Life Foundation doctors, you could tell that the writers had no idea how science is done. And this wouldn't be a problem except several key characters are at least partially defined by how well they science. To have them spouting lines like "The symbiote requires a respiratory host in order to survive in an oxygen-rich environment" (or some such thing) is... illusion-breaking. What is a respiratory host, even? How do they know that it's the oxygen that's dangerous to symbiotes? There's more nitrogen in our atmosphere than oxygen. How does oxygen harm them? Would they survive if the oxygen was depleted, then? Wouldn't that mean they don't necessarily need a "respiratory host"? Wouldn't the exact opposite be true, in fact? If a host requires oxygen to breathe, and the symbiotes are adversely affected by oxygen (which, by the way, reads like a really dumb justification completely fabricated for the movie, I don't remember it ever being a thing in the comics/cartoons), wouldn't they expressly want to bond with something that DOESN'T breathe or otherwise takes in oxygen? All of which is to reiterate that the scientific language is clearly and obviously written by people who had no idea what scientific language sounds like, and more importantly, couldn't be bothered to do the most basic research to find out. They added "weakness to O2" to the symbiote as a dumb justification for why it needs to bond with others, when 1) they didn't need to do so in the first place, and 2) THEY DIDN'T NEED TO DO SO IN THE FIRST PLACE. The writers actually already explained it away fine: In another scene (or maybe even in the same scene as "respiratory host" above), main baddie says that the symbiote bonds with others to better survive in unfamiliar territory. No mention of the atmosphere, much less oxygen specifically, AND he follows it up with "and hey, maybe we can use that very thing to survive in THEIR environment." And that's all you need right there. Don't over-explain it, just let that be the explanation. ...sigh. Anyway. The pacing of the movie was... well, it wasn't half-bad, actually, up until they just randomly decide to skip to the ending. I'll echo @mikeszekely's sentiment that the beginning drags, but it's not too agonizing, and events do build on each other satisfyingly enough. But there definitely seems to be a good 30 or 40 minutes of footage that was cut from the middle there by men in business suits. Interestingly enough, Tom Hardy was vocal that his favorite 30 or 40 minutes of scenes were missing from the film. HmmmMMMMMMMMMMM COINCIDENCE I THINK NOT (skipped straight to it for you) The action, once the movie finally gets to it, is... it could be better, could definitely be worse. It doesn't excite the way a Marvel movie does, it doesn't make the most of the uniquely Venom traits the way Marvel did with... well, any and all of their characters, but let's use Spider-Man and Black Panther during their debut in Civil War specifically. And I know a lot of that has unfortunately to do with the fact that they don't have a Spider-Man to give Venom some 60% of this moveset. Speaking of movesets, I'd have loved to see some dumb Marvel VS Capcom moves show up. Venom Fangs, that completely fabricated for the game Death Bite super move... Any and all of that would have been great. They DO do something fairly clever in the final battle, but it's super brief and I couldn't even tell it happened until that second screening. By the way, they completely screw up that final battle with a very obvious plot hole ...but really, it's the pacing that ultimately dooms the movie. You can forgive subpar writing with subpar characters and mediocre action if they're fed to you at the right pace. But cut 30-40 minutes of interplay between Brock and the symbiote (side note: I also dislike that the symbiote itself calls itself Venom. Maybe this isn't the case nowadays or never was, but I always thought that "Venom" referred to the combined form of host + symbiote. It was why Venom referred to itself in the plural.), and the movie may as well not exist. What little bit of that there is is the absolute best part of the movie; cutting it doomed the movie (if not financially, then certainly critically). I'll second this. I don't know nearly as much about Venom as you do, but I could tell they were at least trying to draw from source material. I'll reiterate that I love that the Venom symbiote is the loser of its own kind. I think that was taken from the comics, no? The sillier (and better) aspects of the movie almost certainly draw from the comics. I feel like this could have made for a great R-rated horror comedy. The lack of gore doesn't get me so much as the lack of... follow-through, I guess. They don't do anything with the person-eating thing, it just feels like it's there to check off the list.
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That's crazy. Why? Just popular, maybe? High RRP to begin with?
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Just a quick question: I'm looking at two YJA auctions for the VF-25 Renewal Armor Parts (one F, one S), and they've both reached ~25k yen. Is that close to what they typically go for nowadays? I'd have expected something closer to 10k, maybe 15k, more akin to other expansion parts sets. (They end tomorrow morning in case you're interested.) https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/p638143712 https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/h347559578
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I honestly thought they were opening that in a big box store or something.
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Yeah, that's from the Young Jedi Knights series, where Jacen/Jaina are training on Yavin IV with... a wookie? and Tenel Ka, Battle Princess and Hottest Hottie, under Luke. I suppose there's no one source of info about lightsaber colors, but the idea of crystals was around for a long time, and some stories/reference materials come up with various explanations for how certain things (like colors) work. They've all sort of built up over the years, the new stuff trying to work with the old, and somewhere along the line someone came up with the idea of the crystals being infused with emotions and/or attuning to the Force in different ways, thus the colors indicating things like class, demeanor, upbringing, etc. Apparently Sith intentionally seek out red-producing crystals because those promote violence and aggression or something. Honestly, I prefer the YJK setup where Sith sabers (or at least those used by the Sith academy in that series) are red because of mass production, and that's it. I think this may be part of it, I do seem to recall this being the case. And it doesn't make much sense, because surely a lightsaber is a lightsaber is a lightsaber, color of the blade be damned. There's never been a practical difference between them to justify the color differences.
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For the sake of enjoying a piece of media, this is damn near a holy decree. God knows how many Narutos and Star Trek Voyagers I apply this rule to. Star Wars case in point: lightsaber colors don't follow any rules. I don't care what the convoluted explanations are, how the crystals or whatever reflect their users' demeanors or whatever. All of that nonsense turns what is entirely visual metaphor into... dumb justification.
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From another perspective, you might even call it a... Flash Back 2012. hah hahahah yeah ok
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What Current Anime Are You Watching Version v4.0
kajnrig replied to wolfx's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
So this has nothing to do with nothing, but I found it cathartic. -
So I spent the last few days ignoring this thread in favor of poring over the paper, and... yeah, it's not the best. Or rather, I can understand some of the assumptions made by the author for the sake of keeping the scope manageable for a single person, and to its merit, the paper acknowledges this drawback, but at the end of the day, the findings are so minuscule as to be inapplicable to the real world. As a demonstration of the author's understanding of his projects, it's... fine, despite some misgivings on my part. Given funding to hire people to do a more thorough study, I think they might be able to explore some of the assumptions that again had to be made for the sake of a manageable project. But would I give them funding for such a project in the first place? Based on this paper... maybe, maybe not. Egh. The media feeding frenzy was more disappointing, and more obviously a case of media outlets generating clickbait for revenue rather than "journalism." I'm sure most of this has been covered by everyone already, so I'll just leave it at that. Disappointed in myself for falling for the clickbait like a schmuck. Oh well, lesson learned.
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All Things Videogame Related: EXTREME VS!!
kajnrig replied to Keith's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
Either option is fine. The Pro howls like a banshee, though; during Spider-Man (oh btw I got Spider-Man it's great so far except for the drone chase challenges those are the worst) it ramps up to max almost right away and stays there for pretty much the entire duration of play. Probably I should dust it sometime soon, though... But anyway, the Pro can have passive benefits even for non-Pro-tailored/screens. There's a Supersampling option that renders non-Pro games at higher resolutions and then scales them down to 1080p (or whatever your screen resolution is). It's basically an extremely high-quality anti-aliasing solution. Some games it will also boost the average framerate. Until Dawn saw framerates shoot up in some scenes, far above the normal 20-30 range a normal PS4 gets. (Same with Bloodbourne.) It will also arguably benefit more from a hard drive swap than a stock PS4 will owing to it using a SATA III interface. Better HDDs are an option as before, but an SSD nets you (usually) more improvement than a PS4 gets. To answer your specific questions: - Option 1: 1TB has been enough for me. I've deleted some game data on occasion, but not because I was running out of space, because I always try to have a sizable buffer of free space. A 4K TV is not necessary, and in some cases is my preferred option, if a game can use the extra horsepower to render at a locked 1080p60. (Other benefits are as noted above.) - Option 2: This'll also do you just fine. The PS4 is nearing the end of its lifespan, so this might be the more economical option until the Playstation 5 comes out. I suppose it all depends on how much you can knock off the Pro price by trading the PS4. -
Americans get nothing, Japanese get their own unique collector's edition. I think the only things that cross over with the European one are - base game - Aces at War artbook I might have switched to getting the European version if the model had been of something OTHER than the Arsenal Bird. I mean it looks fine, I guess, but it's no Arkbird, or any of the superfighters, or Stonehenge, or the Aigaion.
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Yeah, the face sculpt on the Sheryl figure isn't the greatest. It does match some of the artwork of her, but I think maybe the lines of the chin need to be sharper. Otherwise, it's a nice figure. Surprisingly tall, too. The Ranka figure I imagine will be the same height or to scale ie shorter. I'm looking through YJAs and stores currently. Maybe when HLJ sells her I'll bite. Maybe they'll do a grab bag with her same as they did with Sheryl.
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Phew. Don't watch this one. Edit: sheesh the credits are stupid long for such a short movie, too. The second of two post-credits scenes is just a clip from the better-looking of the two Sony Spider-Man-related movies coming out this year, so at least that's something to look forward to, I guess... until it inevitably shows up on Youtube.
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Bandai tend to make oversized landing gear in general, probably opting for stability and strength over accuracy. The best-looking landing gear are on the Hasegawa kits, and those are spindly in comparison.
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Bandai getting landing gear wrong? waaat no way
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If you believe the conspiracy theories, a lot of those "bad" "reviews" are Lady Gaga fans.
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To be honest, I didn't take too long a look at the articles. Taking a better look at it now, I think I may have fallen for clickbait more than anything. Boo. That said, the articles do link to the paper itself - dunno if it let you just download the whole paper, but it let me - and the methodology sounds... sound. Or as sound as you'd expect a PhD candidate without access to the huge amount of data that Facebook and the federal government regularly do to be, anyway. It's authored (and researched) by a single person, which is problematic. I haven't looked through the entire paper, but it would be more bulletproof if it had been the result of a broader effort, with more people able to define the scope and methodology of the research. I'll get back on this one, though. There's some interesting bits in there worthy of independent verification. It would be nice if the author also provided the data he studied for such a thing.
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New trailer, not as cool as the original trailer. Skipped the intro for you:
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hoooooboy i regret my decision already I don't think the point was to get revenge with a single initiative, but to continue to sow and foment discord among a US citizenry. A whole lot of points were made about how TLJ was just a downright bad movie, many of which are fair, but some of which were and are extraordinarily dumb. I remember one being that Holdo had dyed hair. That was the criticism. Not that she was a bad CO and/or that her plan was needlessly convoluted and/or what have you, y'know, actual problems with her as a character or her role within the narrative. The criticism was that she had dyed hair, and that because she had dyed hair, she was the result of a progressive social movement in the US of A. And because she was the result of said movement, all her other faults are also a result of that movement. Russian trolls fan that flame, and progressives (perhaps also unwittingly aided by Russian trolls), hit back with incredulity at how such a blatantly dumb criticism could be so popular among detractors (when in reality it's not, none of the reasoned criticism I see here cares about that). I mean you might think it's far-fetched, but just look at how stupid people have gotten on this thread. All of the reasoned criticism of the movie is being drowned out by racist, sexist jackasses making racist, sexist comments that are amplified by Russian bots. All of the reasoned counter-points are being drowned out by reactionary, impulsive, barely-considerate idiots making reactionary, impulsive, barely-considered responses... that might also be amplified by Russian bots all too prepared to capitalize on the backlash. Eventually, that's all the conversation becomes about. It makes the extremes of both sides seem bigger than they actually are. There are maybe a handful of people on this forum whose opinions I don't bother with because they're either dumb racist trolls or dumb... just dumbs who lose all ability to function when confronted with dumb racist trolls. Everyone else has gotten dragged into the shitstorm unwillingly (some more unwillingly than others, but all unwillingly). Gahk;lajsdflakjsdf;lasdjfk; Anyway. Just thought it'd help everyone calm down a little to know that the crap we're flinging at each other comes from the butt of a hostile foreign government.
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Maybe with the extra scrutiny on Russian trolls and bots, this next movie can avoid the same shitstorm of... stupid... from everybody... that TLJ suffered through: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-last-jedi-was-targeted-by-russian-trolls-study-says-1148475 https://comicbook.com/starwars/2018/10/01/star-wars-the-last-jedi-rian-johnson-harassment-bots/