Aug07

Sumer

by Rindis on August 7, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

At the start of June, Mark and I got to trying out the Great Battles of History series. Or, I did, as Mark has played a little of it in the past. That said, we were trying Chariots of Fire, which apparently has somewhat different rules than the rest of the series. (I am disturbed by the fact that the series seems to have never picked up a single unified rule set, other than the variant Simple GBoH.) In fact, we were starting at the beginning, the battle of Sumer, ca. 2320 BCE.

This basically marks the transition from the old kingdom of Sumer to the kingdom of Akkad. There is, naturally, not a lot known of this period, and it’s obvious this is more of an excuse for an evenly-matched training scenario. Both sides get ten shock infantry, three light infantry (one of each of the three missile types), and one battle wagon (or battle car, as I’ve seen them elsewhere), and one heroic leader. The last is the only real difference between the two, with Sargon (the historical winner, and soon ‘the Great’) being one better than Lugal-zagessi in all ratings.

The map is flat and featureless, under the presumption that the battle would have taken place away from all the valuable irrigation infrastructure (I really doubt that, but again, training scenario…).  We used the standard setup (you can figure out your own) given in the rulebook. So the first few turns consists of the two sides advancing on each other across an empty plain….

I had the Sumerians, and edged constantly to my left as we advanced, with the hope of being able to wrap around his flank. It’s technically a chit draw system, but there’s only one formation on each side in this small scenario, and an initiative roll means one person gets to choose what the first chit of the turn will be. However, there’s still four chits, as each side gets a “momentum” chit, where they have a chance to make a particular wing go again. Overall, the wrinkles to a regular chit draw system are nice, though it feels a bit odd in this extreme case.

Both of us were somewhat nervously edging up as we got into range of each other. I got a double move at the start of turn 3 (tied initiative, drew my momentum, which was successful, followed by my main wing chit; we did not catch the double-move cohesion penalty at this time) and moved about half of my line into contact with the Akkadians, with my right flank refused.


↓ Read the rest of this entry…

└ Tags: , ,
 Comment 
Aug03

Gulliver’s Fugitives

by Rindis on August 3, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized

Way back when, I read through several early ST:TNG novels (all put out during first season). It was a pretty sad bunch. One of them was notably better than the others (not to say that it was worth recommending), and it made sense when I looked at it afterwards and noted it was by Peter David.

Now I’ve come into possession of some slightly later ones; I think this was put out between seasons two and three (and officially it’d need to be set during season 3, as Dr. Crusher is mentioned, though she never gets ‘on camera’). And I can say things have gotten better for the novel line by this point.

Just. Barely.

There’s some good ideas here. The Enterprise ends up involved in a lost colony where all forms fiction are banned, and the repressive government is dedicated to ‘truth’, if not necessarily honesty. There’s a long-running underground rebellion dedicated to preserving literature and mythology. This part is handled fairly nicely, including a very multi-cultural set of story traditions.

However, there’s a couple of side plots that don’t work well at all. In fact the secondary plot gets going first, and looks like it will tie in directly to the main plot, but eventually turns out to be nothing but a red herring. This undermines a fair chunk of the structure of the novel, which is a real shame because at the same time it was also an early look at Troi and her abilities, and undermining that also hurts. The shift to red herring for the secondary plot could have been a nice subverting of expectations, but the payoff isn’t good enough to make it work. (I much prefer my initial expectation that the area happened to be where some form of extra-dimensional thought-beings resided, and Rampart’s efforts to quash fiction was started as an effort to keep from being unduly influenced by beings they can’t understand. Spoiler: Nope.)

And the world-building itself is lackluster. You never get to see what passes for normal life on this planet, never get a sense of what an ordinary person on this planet is like, how the overall culture works, and just why/how there’s apparently a constant bleed of people into the resistance. Also, this setup apparently got started by a bunch of Christian fundamentalists (the “truth” of the colony starts with an inerrant Bible), but there’s no hints as to how they got to be in charge, because the stories and myths that the resistance is preserving shows that the original colony ship had a very diverse population. Also, in the current day the planet has quite a bit of super-tech that lets them plot execption much of what a 24th Century starship can do.

So, it would take a lot of work, but we have a salvageable high concept here. One that could say some interesting things in the tradition of the best of Trek. But we get an underbaked plot, poor characterization (not something to attach a lot of blame to, as the main cast characters would still be developing in the time period the book would have been written, since there can be a notable lead time for that), and no more moral lesson than ‘fundamentalism is bad’ (it would have been fairly easy to point more at ‘stories are important’, and middle does this, but not so much the conclusion).

└ Tags: , ,
 Comment 
Jul30

34 Race to the Bridge

by Rindis on July 30, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

At the end of May, Mark and I returned to Great War Commander. He has gotten the first Battle Pack expansion, and we went to the 1914 scenario from that. It reuses a map we’ve seen before, and doesn’t have any new unit types, so it’s easy to set up in the current Vassal module. However, there is a bridge on the map that doesn’t exist in the scenario (by SSR), and counter for that doesn’t exist. So we just put a shellhole marker on it.

It’s a couple of weeks after the battle of Mons, and the British are falling back. At this point, the rearguard is trying to take and hold a bridge near Antwerp, while the Germans are trying to block them. Both sides are in ‘recon’ stance (the first time we’ve gotten to see that), and get one leader with four platoons. They both start off on the right side of the map, with the bridge on the left. However, the time index starts at 2, and at 3, both sides get five more platoons (including an engineer) and a better leader, and then on 4 they both get three more platoons and a third leader, with sudden death rolls starting at 8. The open VP marker makes the bridge worth 4VPs, and you can deny that to someone about to take it from you by having an engineer blow it up (leaving no one able to cross).

Mark had the British, who go first, and he started with an Air Assault, which didn’t find my troops, and then Moved out. There was then an exciting round of both sides discarding before I started Moving. Mark managed to Fire at them, and broke Lt Ruhberg, but one of his platoons broke to a sniper. We both tried to Recover, but blew our rolls before I did it on a second attempt, and Mark Advanced to get the broken guys out of the way. Fire broke a second British platoon, but it recovered (and the first one didn’t) with a Recover, and he Advanced further. I Moved towards the bridge, largely staying out of range, and occupying the farm house (objective 1). Mark Moved to cross the stream on his side, but I broke two platoons in it. Further Fire eliminated one of them, and then the other Advanced out of the stream. Mark attempted to Recover him, but failed on a 12 to get a time trigger, and I Dug In near the farmhouse.


At the end of the initial turn. Objective 5/bridge K6 doesn’t exist.

I got my reinforcements Moving first, and then ordered an Offensive for the first contingent to seize the bridge. The fire from that action finally eliminated the second British platoon, and an Air Assault let me suppress one of the reinforcements. Mark got his reinforcements moving with minimal trouble (I broke a platoon, which immediately came back with Probe) before we both needed to discard cards again. I Moved my reinforcements up to the rest of my troops just before running out of cards for the next time trigger.

Mark used an Offensive to get Perry closer to the bridge and shoot at the platoon there, but couldn’t get a result. He then Advanced the entire mass of both reinforcements. I Moved my newest reinforcements, getting them around the orchard before committing to an Offensive with everyone else. Air Support managed to suppress the stack of my highest-ranking leader, and a Sniper broke one of the reinforcing platoons, but I suppressed Maj Stone with an Interdiction event. I didn’t manage to break Lt Perry and his platoon on that turn, but the next turn, Fire broke Perry (recovered with a Probe) and the platoon. Mark continued Moving up, but a regular platoon, Maj Stone, and the engineers broke to my Fire. High Command Meddling “forced” me to recover at this point, clearing a few suppressions that had built up, and rally my one broken platoon. I then Fired and eliminated a broken platoon. Mark then Recovered, getting the engineers and and remaining regular broken platoon back, but not Maj Stone.

He also ran out his deck during this, taking us to time index 5. He then Fired to break Lt Ruhberg and his platoon, who both successfully Recovered. I Fired on Maj Stone again, but while he made his defense roll easily by rolling a 12, that put us at time 6, and the engineers broke again, and he lost Lt McBeath to Recall Leader.

Mark Recovered both his units, and Fired, breaking Ruhberg again. He then tried to Move across the stream again, getting another time trigger to my Op Fire, returning McBeath to play, and I got a Reinforcements event, which sadly did nothing (out of fusilier counters). And then he got a time trigger again, to take us to 8, and did not pass the Sudden Death check to end the game very suddenly with 11 German VPs.

Afterword

The general scenario concept is good, and it was very nice to see a meeting engagement style scenario. I’m a bit concerned that it may be a little too weighted to whoever can get near the bridge first. Worse, that stream the British need to cross is just nasty. 3 movement, and it makes you more vulnerable. Once I got in range of it before Mark got to it, it was largely downhill for him as I could do a lot of damage as he tried to get close enough to the bridge to contest it.

Much of the action also pointed up the disturbing all-or-nothing nature of defensive fire. Either you don’t have or want to use a card when someone moves, or you do and the game grinds to a halt as each and every hex in a move becomes subject to fire which breaks up the normally free-flowing nature of the game. It’s also a stark contrast to the “normal” Fire Order where everyone just fires once and is done.

The sudden string of time triggers at the end was unusual, but something that has to be expected once in a while. It cut short my expected grind to six casualties to force a surrender, but also prevented any opportunity for the mid-game turn around which GWC has certainly delivered on occasion.

└ Tags: , ,
 Comment 
Jul26

The Years of Victory

by Rindis on July 26, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This second volume of Bryant’s series on the Napoleonic era was published in 1945 (commonly given as 1944, but he mentions “the events of 1939-1945” in his preface), and he has no qualms about drawing a parallel to Britain’s experience in WWII with its experience of the Napoleonic Wars. Unlike some who would bring up something like this several times over the course of the book, Bryant merely mentions it in his preface, and lets the history he writes stand on its own.

Having left off with the Peace of Amiens in The Years of Endurance, this volume starts with a look at England in 1802, and all the tourism to France that happened in the months of peace. This is an English-centric history, so while it does cover the various wars on the continent for a decade, it is largely concerned with what England was doing. The end of the book is naturally concerned with the Peninsular War, and ends with the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo.

Once again, this is well written, and the translation from print to electronic format in the Endeavour Press edition left it in pretty good shape. It’s a good book to read as part of a more rounded set of lighter books on the period, as it does leave out a lot with its English focus.

└ Tags: , , ,
 Comment 
Jul22

3 McDowell’s Opportunity

by Rindis on July 22, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Back during May, Mark and I returned to the GCACW series with the third All Green Alike scenario. Interestingly, it’s simultaneously historical (in that the opening setup is just where everyone was two days before First Bull Run), but ahistorical in that it assumes that McDowell assumes the offensive with the Army of Northeastern Virginia two days early, with the Confederates less prepared.

Somewhat oddly, part of Tyler’s 5th Division, and Early’s Brigade start exhausted because of a small fight the day before (seeing the overall set up for that would be interesting). The Confederate Army of the Potomac is behind the Bull Run, with abatises under work, and Johnston’s units are still far away, while the Union troops are already concentrated at Centreville. The Union forces are going to need to deploy and shake themselves out, but there’s plenty that can be done. And they need to do plenty, as the victory conditions are suitably more ambitious than the pure historical battle.

I reprised my role as the Union player, who gets the first initiative by scenario rule, and I sent Hunter’s 2nd Division towards the Confederate west flank, and on my second activation (thanks to Confederate command paralysis) came around behind Stone Bridge, while Burnside attacked across the bridge, blowing the roll to do little more than exhaust and disorganize both sides. Porter’s Brigade managed to go again and forced a retreat, which wiped out the Confederates blocking Stone Bridge.

Then I sent Heintzelman’s 3rd Division towards the east flank of the line. The trip took a bit, and ended with Franklin’s Brigade crossing the Bull Run at Butler’s Ford and taking up a position to block the fords while the rest of the division was still on the other side. Mark finally got a real chance to move, and shifted Longstreet’s Brigade to confront Franklin, sent Early to Camp Pickens, and Bonham to reinforce the west flank and occupy Groveton (in two moves).

Hunton’s Brigade moved on the Union flank but had slow going to end up near Sudley Springs. Tyler’s 1st Division took positions along the middle of the line, now that the Confederates were getting spread out, and Miles’ 5th Division headed west to try and get around the flank. Good rolls got him to Sudley Springs for hasty attacks against Hunton, but it took both brigades to force him to retreat near Gainesville despite good odds. Mark moved Early down the Manassas Gap road to join Hunton, along with the 13th Mississippi and Radford’s cavalry. Munford’s cavalry went to get behind Franklin and keep me from using the fords a bit further downstream.

Jackson’s Brigade and the 6th North Carolina entrained and got into the area of the fighting, but the rest of Johnston’s army had a struggle to get to the closest station (Rectortown) for entraining the next day.


End of July 19/turn 1, after fortifications are built, but before recovery.
↓ Read the rest of this entry…

└ Tags: , ,
 Comment 
Jul18

The Tea Master and the Detective

by Rindis on July 18, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This Aliette de Bodard story is every bit as good as the first one I read a while ago. In fact, I felt it was more tightly plotted, and shorter, than On a Red Station, Drifting, but it seems that book was only slightly longer than this.

At any rate, they share a setting, and at some point I will revisit it again, as the stories are well worth reading. I’d say this one could be slightly harder to get into than On a Red Station with no introduction, thanks to the viewpoint character being a ship’s intelligence stuck at a collection of habitats.

However, there is a nice melding of genres here, as a very SF setup quickly turns into a mystery with hard-boiled overtones. The Shadow’s Child is on the thin edge of bankruptcy when a new client walks through her door, and the assignment ends up generating new questions. The initial bit sets up the two characters well, but was a little difficult to get through for me. After that, the plot drives itself, and drags you along in the wake of two interesting characters.

└ Tags: , , ,
 Comment 
Jul14

Planets of Tripoli Y77 Region 5

by Rindis on July 14, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: SFB

At the start of April, Mark and I returned to our SFB campaign. This time, we went to the battle at Mark’s third base, in Region 5. This features one of my two main ‘base busting’ fleets, led by a WDN. With it, I had two heavy cruisers and a light cruiser, plus two frigates. With 25 EPV left in my command limit, I could have put in another frigate (the WNF is only 21, though everything else is too big at 31 and up), or used destroyers instead, but I was out of any of those. Mark, limited by the first turn rules, only had a WCA and and WFF with his base, making it a notably smaller force than last time.

Mark set up next to his base rolled low for weapon status 1 again, while I set up behind the ships (at range 35). I came in at speed 10, while the Carnivons went 7. At that speed the WDN and WVF were running with good EW, though the WRL had a minimal 1/0 and the WFF couldn’t manage any. Only the base put up EW for Mark (it is easy to suppose that charging phasers was more than enough power drain as it was).

On turn 2, the Carnivons picked up to speed 11, while I split between 11 and 12. The Carnivon WCA Wolfbite (201) put up a point of ECM, while I generally reduced mine. On impulse 9 the base launched a pair of death bolts at the oncoming fleet. The Carnivon ships slowly turned clockwise, and on impulse 24 I turned towards their new course at range 17 from the base. The Carnivons immediately turned off, presenting a stern chase. On turn 3, he slowed down to 9 and 10, and then continued counter-clockwise, putting the base between the fleets.  I had increased everyone’s speed to 12, and on impulse 11 broke off to turn for a run at the base, which fired its disruptor cannon at WVF USS Intrepid (SF-68) on impulse 17, but missed, thanks to ECM it was running.

On impulse 32 the lead two ships reached range 8 and unloaded. WCA USS Mare Serenitatis (SF-25) and WRL USS Gatherer (SF-70) each hit with one out of two photons (fairly good with a +1 shift, and it would have been all four without it), while the seven phasers from the two ships rolled horribly to do 3 damage. This left the base’s #6 at one box (I regretted that one box, as knocking it down would have forced him to use general reinforcement only on that shield).


Initial maneuvers, turns 1-3.
↓ Read the rest of this entry…

└ Tags: , , ,
1 Comment
Jul10

Settlers of Versailles

by Rindis on July 10, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Back on the 3rd, Mark and Jason came over to join me and Dave for a four-player FtF game day. The primary activity for the day was the group’s second game of Versailles, 1919 (Jason’s third, and Mark and I’s fourth). Random draws of cubes gave Mark Britain, me France, Dave the US, and Jason Italy.

Dave struggled with converting influence into settled issues all game, and ended the game with only three. They were all high-value, which helped, but his score was certainly limping along. Mark and Jason did fairly well at first before bogging down a bit, and was starting to get somewhere with getting more issues settled to me as the first uprising happened. By the end of the game, I had actually accumulated the biggest collection of issues, though I was aware that my strategy wasn’t going anywhere. Mark also did well on issues, and dumped a lot of influence on Game End, and rushed it through, with the 7 VPs there beating out my card total.

Dave had the first pick of strategies, taking 14 Points, which got him 13 VPs combined with 18 in issues (mostly self-determination and Japan and Italy signing the treaty), and second-place happiness (22), Jason had the second pick for Global Trade for 14 VPs (including 6 for doubled top happiness, and 10 for industrial expansion, but lost three for reparations), I picked third for Contain Communism for 10 VPs (mostly from Japan and Italy again, hardly any opportunities for communist containment came up), and Mark picked Reparations for 9 VPs (even 2s across the board, except 3 for reparations), and got 2 for third-place happiness. Isolationism was left unpicked.

There was a rush to demobilize early on, and the US had completely demobilized by the end of the game. I only demobilized once, as part of an event, so my happiness was well below the others. We also fairly flew through the deck, with only a few pulls from the discards, so even for the ‘short’ game, this was fairly short, and we finished before lunch. The spread was a little closer this time, with Mark getting 47 VPs, Jason 42, me 40, and Dave 35. Last time I noted that generally, who got Game End would determine the winner (Dave was out of reach of it) and this time… this was true again. If Dave had taken Game End, he’d tie with Jason in first at 42… and still come in second, since Italy’s happiness was higher.

After lunch, we spent some time figuring out “what next”, and ended up going to Settlers of Catan. Random tiles and numbers put an 8 and 6 next to each other, and since I got first pick put a settlement there. Even better, it was near the 2:1 wheat port (and the 8 was wheat), which I built to as soon as I could. Dave locked up the other 6 on the other side of the island, while Mark and Jason were a little more central, though Jason settled next to the other 8, which produced bricks.

At the start, a number of 6s were rolled, but no 8s, so my scheme of producing lots of wheat to turn into whatever I needed didn’t work out. Dave managed to build out a third settlement, taking the third slot around the lumber-producing 6. This turned into a mistake, as that was obviously too dangerous and the robber was magnetically attracted to that tile and choked off Dave’s economy. The rest of us got going and left Dave behind, and the robber just didn’t move at all for a long time during that critical phase of the game. I think I produced my third settlement a little after everyone else, and then the luck turned around and my economy exploded. I produced a couple of cities (I just couldn’t get the resources for towns), and I sprinted to a victory. At the end I built a bunch of road sections to take Longest Road from Dave, and then revealed a Chapel for a 10th VP.


Red = me, 10VP; Orange = Mark, 6 VP; White = Jason, 4 VP; Dave = Blue, 3VP.

After that, we tried one of the various small games Dave has and hadn’t tried yet. Samurai Jack is a semi-cooperative game based on the Cartoon Network series. Like a lot of games of its ilk, the rules are both well-written, and a mess. Reading through the rules, they kept answering questions just as we were asking them, but finding things later was nearly impossible.

The biggest trouble was that Jack’s sanity meter stayed stubbornly at the bottom the entire time. This is good, but it was obvious that a big tension in the game should be fighting its rise towards insanity. After the game, Dave finally found that it should rise by one whenever he is in a location without any of the players (okay, this we knew), but that this is judged when Jack moves, instead of during the main character resolution phase when everything else is judged. So we were aiming for where he was, instead of trying to be ahead and have him join us.

The rest of it operated fairly well. The building and tearing down of the journey path for each round makes things a lot more fiddly than they should be, while the mechanical reasons are sound, it needs work. Building up resources to fight a couple of enemies and then Aku is the primary scoring mechanism, with everyone trying to get the most honor with limited choices to get the high score. I managed the top score in the second round, and nothing in the other two, though I had a bunch of spare resources for 21 honor. I think Mark was the only one to score for fighting the first enemy, and won at 28, while Jason was at 27. Dave only had 18, but I don’t remember if he scored in the first two rounds (I know he did in the last), and didn’t have much in leftover resources like me and Jason did.

Like other cooperative games, I find it good (especially with at least some problems figured out), but not great. I think there’s too little going on for the amount of fiddliness that it has, though it is nicely quick. I also note that Jack is too much of a non-entity in the game (actually having to fight the sanity meter back down would help). The concept of playing as his friends and allies is good, but he doesn’t do anything other than randomly move down the track. There’s some language around him helping in the fight against the bad guy at the end of each round, but I’m not aware of anything actually happening.

└ Tags: , , ,
 Comment 
Jul06

1 Fighting Withdrawal

by Rindis on July 6, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

After finishing “Lost Opportunities” with Mark, I took him back to the beginning. The first scenario for ASL, 1 “Fighting Withdrawal”, is a very strong one that really does show off maneuver and firepower. Set in the initial Finnish thrust towards Leningrad at the start of the Continuation War, both sides are trying to exit off the far edge of board 21, while fires rage behind the Russian lines.

I played it with my then-current roommate when I first got the game around ’96. As I recall, I came up just shy as the Finns as I could match, but not beat, the Russian exit points, and the Finns need to exit more off the far edge of board 21 than the Russians. I can still remember one squad generating heroes on back-to-back morale checks, and Colin was asking, “Why am I even shooting at these guys?”

I had the defending Russians this time, who have a six column setup area (V–AA), with 14 squads, three leaders and MGs, and 8 OB-given “?”. They also get two HIP squads, but I forgot about that during setup. They suffer from ammo shortage, but also have a SAN of 7 versus 2 for the Finns. The MMG went in the back behind a wall, concealed squads went in the rear of each flank, and a mostly concealed line went up front, with leaders on each flank, and the 7-0 in the rear to help catch anyone routing back. The dense buildings make for easy initial routing, though it can become a problem later.

The Finns have 16 of the ‘super’ squads (648, spraying fire, assault fire, self-rally, and they’re not even elite!), with three leaders, and one more MG than the Russians. Across a ten hex frontage, that’s about where you want to double up and put the MGs. Mark avoided stacking, and had a fair amount slightly in the rear.

Mark opened by firing everything with an LOS, and broke and ELRed one of the visible squads, while pinning the other, and revealing and pinning the 8-0 and the LMG squad with him. Movement was minimal, other than one squad shifting flanks.


Situation, Finnish Turn 1. North is to the left, and the goal is to get off the south side.
↓ Read the rest of this entry…

└ Tags: , ,
 Comment 
Jul02

Anime Spring 2022

by Rindis on July 2, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Anime

Okay, the ‘wait for me to finish a season’ delay got so bad that I missed an entire summary post. So, we should be about at the start of a new anime season, and here’s what I’ve watched semi-recently. …Not all anime, but in rough order of recommendation.

Picard — I picked up the first season Blue-ray a bit ago, and we all just finished watching it last week. Any raves you’ve heard about it are correct; they did a really good job, and I’m eager to see the next two seasons. It goes a little more shaky-cam than I’d like on occasion, but other than that, the production is really well done, and the writing is great all through the show.

Violet Evergarden: The Movie — The biggest problem was figuring out when we were going to schedule a 2 1/2 hour movie for everyone. The series was very good, and this movie lived up to it very well. The usual conundrum of how to explain things for people who haven’t seen the series was handled very gracefully, and makes this the best series-to-movie move I’ve seen. Highly, highly recommended whether you’ve seen the series or not. (Though, go back and watch that too, it’s worth it.)

World Trigger — My biggest disappointment earlier this year was actually getting through the (current) end of this, after a very long time of getting through it all. After a sub-par start, the series got very good, and kept it up in the more recent seasons. So, I’m sad not to have solid show anchoring my watch schedule.

Ascendance of a Bookworm — We’ve been showing this to the guys, who certainly started liking it once past the first episode. We’re just no hitting the second season, so we’re still a ways out from the most recent season that started about the time we introduced them to the show.

Wakfu — I was unsure of the start of the third series, but it rapidly got better, and the ending sequence of episodes definitely wasn’t what I’d expected from the early parts of the series. All of the Wakfu and Dofus series need more attention as they’ve been very good.

Orbital Children — Smudge and I saw the first episode, and put it on the ‘to watch with the guys’ list. We’re now about halfway through, and it is continuing to be impressive. The budget’s pretty good, the world building is very good. The plot is trying to juggle about three major ideas at the same time, and succeeding. More good SF is always needed, and this is delivering.

Hisuian Snow — This is a short Pokemon OAV series that’s started coming out, and like all the specials they’ve done lately, it’s really well done. They spend a lot on the art budget on these, and stories are good too.

Girls Last Tour — This is a quiet post-apocalyptic tale. Two girls tour through the wreckage of a giant wrecked city on a kettenkrad. Most everyone else is dead, so there’s only occasional extra characters, leaving most of the time to Chito and Yuuri talking, questioning, and philosophizing on various subjects. Think… philosophical travelogue.

A Lull by the Sea — Smudge showed me the first episode of this a while back, but I didn’t bite (I barely remember the fact of that). Currently, pickings are a bit thinner on the ground, and I’ve just started this (three episodes so far), and it’s being good. We have a world that looks a lot like ours (above the surface), but some people can natively live under the water. It’s really something of a metaphor for the emptying rural life in Japan, and the drama’s being fairly good.

Forest of Piano — Okay, I have problems. A piano sits abandoned in the woods for years, and is still playable. Past that bit of fantasy, it’s a good drama with the usual decent-sized cast of characters, and the world of classical music.

Kingdom — This continues to be a potentially good series wrecked by its own production values. The dub is very sub-par (not too bad for, say, an early ’90s dub, but we’ve moved past that now), and it’s hard to say just how many problems are the writing and how many are the translation, but I have feeling they’re not doing each other any favors.

Pokemon Journeys — I’m surprised. Smudge and I have caught up with this. Well, what’s been released on the Pokemon Network so far; it’s likely it’s being delayed from Netflix. At any rate, it continues to be okay, and generally not much more than that. They recently did the sequence where they go through the main 8th Gen games’ plot, which is often weak when it hits the show, and continued to be so here.

└ Tags:
 Comment