Around about 10pm Wednesday, Pond Central Time, some maniac walked into Kyoto Animation's Studio 1 building, poured gasoline around, and set it on fire.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 12:26 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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So today is the first time I've honestly had to shut Pond Central up and turn on the air conditioner.  As I type this, it has just reached 86° F, but it's not very humid.  Really, just sitting in front of a fan has been comfy all day, but a look at the forecast for the next week convinced me.  Nighttime lows in the low 70s, daytime highs right around 90, and I'd really like to have the place temperature controlled before that sets up shop.  "But Wonderduck," I hear you say, and you really should get that lump looked at, "what does any of this have to do with AMVs?"

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:48 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:18 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Perhaps some of you may have heard that Christmas is this coming week?  I know, I know, it surprised me too, don't worry.  Still, I figured it out soon enough.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:46 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Okay.  Here's the plan, here's my scheme.  You ready for this?

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:27 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:37 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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One thing I've been able to do while I've been... um... hobbled, is watch anime.  Take the laptop into the bedroom, set up a book holder on the bedside printer stand (what, you don't have a bedside printer stand?), open the laptop, put it on the holder, and voila!  Anime viewing station, perfectly angled for me to see the screen while in bed (I have a low bed).

Posted by: Wonderduck at 08:28 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Almost two years ago I said "I did not expect this to be that good," when referring to ReLife, a little show that just sort of... snuck up on everybody.  Short version of the plot: a 27-year old NEET is given the chance to have his problems (not all of them of his making) dealt with.  He'd be given a good job with a good company, with interesting work to be done... in short, he could honestly feel like he could go out in public again.  The only catch?  He has to spend a year back in high school.  Nope, not as a 27-year old, but as a 17-year old!  There's been a... pill... created that will knock ten years off your appearance until you take the antidote.  Sounds great, huh?  Well, not so much... you're still 27, after all... no longer a teenager, no longer fit, you've been out of high school for TEN YEARS, if you're a smoker you've still got the addiction, and... well, your female classmates are kinda hot.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 07:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A few days ago, I found that one of the private trackers I'm part of was firing up red all over my torrent program.  Nothing from that place was responding, but the other trackers still seemed to be working.  Oh crap, have they gone away?  I quickly visited the site, expecting to get a message saying they'd gotten a C&D, or had been DDoS'd into oblivion.  Imagine my surprise when everything seemed to be fine!  I looked in the attached forum and found out what was going on.

I've been using µTorrent for a very long time, long enough that I can't remember if I've ever used anything else.  While it's been updated a gazillion times, I've kept using version 2.2.1 over the years... I gather there's been some adware built into the newer versions?  Anyway, µTorrent has served me very well and faithfully.  And the tracker site, which I've been using for nearly as long as I've used µTorrent, had blacklisted all versions of it.  Apparently there's been a rather unpleasant security flaw discovered in it, and Bittorrent Inc lollygagged on patching it... to the tune of more than 90 days.  When the flaw was announced after three months, Bittorrent finally released a patch that for all intents and purposes, didn't work.  Oh, it broke the exploit, to be sure... but in such a way that it didn't actually fix the flaw.  I'm not a software guy so my understanding may be incorrect, but from what I've read the patch took the metaphorical keypad lock that the exploit used... and moved it six inches to the left.  When the exploit went looking for the keypad lock, it wasn't where it was supposed to be.  Tah-dah, all fixed!  

For, like, an hour.  Then the guy who discovered the flaw in the first place "moved" the exploit and voila, vulnerability still around.  Because of this, and because the patch only "fixed" the newest versions of µTorrent, the private tracker blacklisted it.  As it turns out, the situation is a little more nuanced than that... for example, version 2.2.1 is apparently missing the keypad lock entirely and thus may not be vulnerable. The recommendation from everybody involved that isn't Bittorrent and µTorrent appears to be "move to a different program."  While there are dozens of torrent programs out there, after a hour or two of research, I've decided to move The Pond to qBittorrent.  It's open source, there are no ads involved, the exploit doesn't exist on it, and it appears to operate in a manner that's very familiar to µTorrent users.  While I'd rather continue to use what I'm used to using, oh well.  If you too hoist the black flag, you may want to look into this matter as well.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 04:05 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Been quite a long time since I did one of these... long enough that I can't remember the last time.  Which tells you one of a couple of things.  1) I never really did them as a regular gig, and B) I haven't been watching all that many shows per season, because III) there's been a lot of not-very-good anime recently.  And I've been the optimist of the group!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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On the whole, I tend not to talk about manga here at The Pond for no other reason than I've got enough on my plate already.  I can only remember talking about two manga titles in the 12 years The Pond has been going, though there may have been another few that I don't remember.  Which doesn't mean I don't read them... oh, heavens no.  I just don't... talk about it here.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:15 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Yeah, I know.  "Wonderduck, another dating sim?"  Yep!  And not only that, it's about as formulaic as they come!  I mean take a look:

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:12 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:29 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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So, in lieu of the latest entry in Operation RTPTIFG, I'm going to direct you to go read a post over at Midnight Tease about yuri manga.  I echo most of what he says.  And I'll just emphasize that Kase-san and... is good for what ails ya.  It's all in the expressions.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 08:24 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Simple, short review:  Do you want to be happy?  Then watch Flying Witch.  It'll do the trick in no time flat.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:59 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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"But Wonderduck," I hear you say and honestly I should get that looked at, "that came out in July of last year!"  And you are absolutely correct, it certainly did, good on you!  "No, that's not what I mean," you're saying crossly, "I mean 'why in the world are you only blogging about it now?'"

Oh, that's very simple.  I only just watched it last night.  Look, let me explain why I, as devoted a fan of the ARIA franchise as there is, didn't watch the last episode of the long-awaited special that was released with the new BD boxsets.  I don't know if anybody else does this, but if I'm hotly anticipating something I often... wait on it.  A new book I've been looking forward to for months?  It's going to sit on the table for a few weeks.  New episode of ARIA?  Oh yeah, that's gonna wait.  Part of it is anticipation: "I'm so excited about this that I don't want to lose that feeling!"  Another part is fear: "Please please please let it be as good as I hope.  If it's bad, it's going to feel awful!"

So I've been saving it for a dark and unhappy night.  Last night, in the middle of a bout of self-loathing (I may be on happy pills, but they don't work miracles), I decided it was time.  I settled into my chair, got as comfortable as my various injured body parts would let me, and pressed play.

Just from the first few minutes, I knew two things.  First, oh god they got it right on the button.  Second, I could see where this was going and I was going to be a sobbing mess by the time it was done.  If you're a fan, you'll note the people in the picture above: three generations of undines (plus Grandma).  The three newbies in the aprons, the main characters on the left, and the "old guard" on the right... except someone's missing.


more...

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:02 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Let me explain the title.  In my mind, there are certain Anime Music Videos that capture the spirit of their subject so well that it becomes the (say it with me) definitive AMV for it.  It could be a character study, or an overview of a particular series, or less often, the AMV is practically synonymous with a song.  

To me, it feels like it's clear almost instantly that "this is it, this is the one!"  It will come as no surprise to me if people disagree with my choices... I can't help what other people think, even if they're terribly terribly wrong... but that's the beauty of this sort of thing.  If you and me think entirely alike, one of us is superfluous, right?  Enough chatter!  Let's get to watchin'!


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Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:41 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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Hopefully all of you regular (or irregular, I don't judge) anime viewers are watching the show of the season, Interviews With Monster Girls.  It's light-hearted, with a surprising amount of depth to it as well.  While I'm not a huge fan of the yuki onna (yet... she basically was just introduced in last week's Ep05), everybody else in the show is delightful.  Even the normie teacher.

There is no doubt, however, that the true breakout star of the series is Hikari, the vampire.  She's basically the most realistic high school girl I've ever seen in an anime series.  I mean, other than the whole "vampire" thing, of course.  I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, but not too terribly long after I returned from grad school in ignominious defeat, my old theatre teacher from high school called and hired me to do the lighting design for a play the theatre department at his new school was doing.  He had a lot of expectations of this one, because it was being entered into the All-State Theatre Festival... there were something like 900 shows being considered, but only six would be chosen.  The name of that play?  Dracula.  A fairly faithful retelling of the original vampire story, in fact.  And o, did I go wild on that design!  Easily the best of my 200+ lighting designs, in fact.  Anyway, we did go downstate, where I got to take a custom light design run via computer and turn it into something using a generic light plot run via a manual control board.  That only took four hours to do.  I digress.  They say that there isn't a competition between the "full-length feature presentations" at All-State; officially, they're right.  Unofficially, however, that's a bunch of hooey and everybody attending knows it.  I saw four of the five other plays downstate, and the fifth I saw when it ran here in Duckford at a private high school.  Not only were we the best of the bunch, it wasn't even close.  I'm honestly not bragging about that, it's just a simple fact.  We had a good bunch of kids... which brings me back to my original point: Hikari reminds me of, like, three of my students rolled into one.  Good kids, all of 'em.  If you've been watching the show, you undoubtedly remember the laugh-out-loud moment from the most recent episode: when Hikari needs to chew on someone because "her teeth itch."  Relative to that scene, I found this:

For everybody that ISN'T watching the show, hopefully that just convinced you to do so.  You're seriously missing out.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:36 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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The long-standing rule of thumb is that the Winter season of an anime year is the weakest.  Looking back through my January archives, I see that such shows as Vividred Operation and Rio Rainbow Gate! both aired in that month.  With that sort of pedigree, it seems hard to argue anything but Winter being the weakest.  However, there's always something to watch in every season, and this Winter is no different.  In fact, I went into it interested in five series, and was ordered to watch a sixth.  We're now three episodes into most shows and that means it's time to take a look at what hit with me, what missed, and what failed badly.

Let's see what we can see!

more...

Posted by: Wonderduck at 01:05 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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So we come to Asuka's most revealing episode yet.  We finally discover exactly why she's so wistful about "wanting the summer to go on forever", why she's so adamant about getting the band to Nationals, and maybe... just a bit... about why she's so secretive all the time.  However, sometimes the answers you get aren't the answers you want...

This look comes immediately after an announcement that the Club will be playing a concert at the local train station in about a week or so.  Our Goofy Cute is definitely not reacting the way she should.  A short time later, we find out why.

In the Teacher's Office, Asuka's mother is trying to get The Powers That Be to accept Asuka's resignation from the Club, so she can concentrate on college prep exams.  Body language would seem to suggest that there's some disagreement on this matter.  When Conductor-sempai says "nope, because it's not what Asuka wants, and you really should support her y'know..." it looks like the matter is over and done with.  Until Mom says, quite calmly, "Asuka, tell the nice man you're leaving the club."  It's with some surprise in her voice that Our Funny Obsession says that she doesn't want to quit.

And then her mother whups her upside de haid.  It was at this point that I suddenly had an icy knot in my gut.  Look, I know she isn't real.  I know Asuka's just a secondary character in a cartoon.  Not even ink on paper anymore, y'know?  I know all this.  But this show has done a helluva job making the watcher care about the cast of Hibike! Euphonium.  Hats off to KyoAni for a job well done.  It was also at this point that much of Asuka began to be explained.  Why the desire for the endless summer (so she wouldn't have to quit).  Why she was so desperate to get the band to Nationals (so she had a reason not to quit).  And why she's so secretive about her real feelings (learned behavior, keeping her interest in band under cover from mom). 

When a suddenly contrite mother attempts to apologize, Asuka simply turns to Conductor-sempai and says "I'm afraid I'm going to miss club today," takes her mother's hand, and walks away like nothing had happened.  She's then missing from the Club for the next week (note: the original translation out there said it was a month.  Within twelve hours of release, the length of time had changed to a week).  Well, mostly missing.

She does make an appearance shortly after the slap, tells everybody not to worry, and then mostly disappears again... except for one conversation she has with the president of the club.  Again, she says it's no big deal, but this time someone calls her on it.  It's a lot more serious than she's letting on.  She doesn't deny it, but also says she won't be causing problems.  And then she's gone again until the day of the concert at the train station.

She's back and she's ready to play.  But there's no explanation about how that happened, how things got worked out with her mother, nothing like that at all.  This isn't over, and we're going to learn a lot more about Asuka pretty darn soon I'm thinking.  Though after this episode, I'm no longer quite as enthused about seeing behind the curtain. 

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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