hitagi

I watched two movies the past few weeks:

• Genius Party

This is a collection of animated short films from different directors. The two notable ones here for me were Masaaki Yuasa and Shinichirou Watanabe. Happy Machine (Masaaki) was my favorite! The little baby character (and the overall vibe of it) reminded me of Pendleton Ward's Adventure Time.

There were other really quirky ones in the collection too. Deathtic 4 was different from the rest. It was 3DCG and I don't know the language (it sounds European). Interestingly, there's a scene there where the zombies said they were fighting "injustices" and it shows them trying to pick a fight with two girls wearing a US flag and USSR flag suits (it was funny). Genius Party (same title as the collection) was chaotic and fun while Limit Cycle was really (intentionally) boring (it's about a salaryman).

The more "normal" ones were Shanghai Dragon, Doorbell, and Baby Blue (Shinichirou). Shanghai Dragon was partly in Chinese because it's set in China. I think anyone familiar with Japan-China relations will raise eyebrows here because it portays a poor China and a technologically advanced Japan, but at the end it was the Chinese boy who saved everyone through his imagination as opposed to the technology of Japan. Doorbell reminded me of Satoshi Kon, and Baby Blue was maybe my favorite for the "normal" shorts.

• Ghost in the Shell (1995 movie)

I had this in my watchlist for a looong time (because it's a certified classic) and I'm happy that I did not watch it earlier. I don't think I would have appreciated this at a young age. I think this is the second Oshii Mamoru movie I watched. The first was Angel's Egg which was pretty much the ending of GITS. There's already a wealth of information and reviews on GITS especially by Western writers so I don't really have to say much here.

But I noticed how spirituality or religion always ties with technology in anime. People who've seen Serial Experiments Lain probably know what I mean. It's very similar to GITS. Evangelion is another example. Also, it might sound a bit odd but it reminds me a bit of the "programming" in Angel Beats too which I complete last month.

(Also Major Kusanagi is very beautiful. Holy shit.)

This week I might watch Genius Party 2 and maybe look for an older series to finish (maybe more Masaaki Yuasa stuff).

I'm not sure about the others, but the last guy (from Oregairu iirc) was definitely pretentious. Like being vague about his ideas just to appear smart and productive. The hand gestures was the best part.

I'm still playing P5R. Steam says I have 100 hours in but I'm only 70 hours in my last save. That probably means I put almost 30 hours playing the card game in Thieves Den.

Though they couldn’t even manage to do that without sticking the bitch in the scene

I read the Scum's Wish manga. If I recall correctly, there's an extra chapter of her some time after the events. I think that was the very last chapter too. Now that you point it out, it does kind of seem like the story centered around her a lot.

For some reason though, I actually enjoyed this manga lol

I found this video essay interesting. The style is a bit different where narration is text on screen but I found it enjoyable without an audible narrator.

I never really thought about the trains in Hideaki Anno's works but now I'm a lot more conscious about it.

Didn't they have like an Evangelion event before? lol

In my opinion, the cause of "the burden of animation" is being underpaid and overworked. If there were better laws that can address these issues, we wouldn't need to resort to AI.

But for in-betweening, I assume you're referring to something like CACANI but that's a bit different from generative AI I think. It behaves more like 3DCG because the lines are vectors.

The clip is from a documentary where Miyazaki works on a 3DCG short film (something completely unheard of). You can watch the documentary here. I do like the point he makes:

(Suzuki) "So, what's your goal?"

(Guy) "Well, we would like to build a machine that can draw pictures like humans do."

(Miyazaki) "We humans are losing faith in ourselves."

Could you send an email to [email protected] so I can take a look? Thanks!

Good luck! Let us know how your pulls go!

I should clarify that NLnet is probably not a commercial company like Skeb is. I know translation exists but all the Lemmy support chatrooms are in English.

Reddit was (and still is) seen as foreign/overseas social media. Other social media platforms are much more diverse than Reddit. Twitter, TikTok, and Insta for example. YouTube and Facebook too.

Most people here in Lemmy come from Reddit. Reddit is very popular in the Western world. It's not popular outside of it.

In the context of the larger Fediverse, I think Misskey is an interesting case study. It's created and designed by Japanese people. The docs are in Japanese. It's sponsored by a Japanese company. Resources and support are also in Japanese. Therefore it has a strong Japanese userbase.

On the other hand, Lemmy is created and designed by Western people. The docs are in English. It's sponsored by a Western company. Resources and support are in English. Therefore it has a strong Western userbase.

Also I should point out that other than Twitter, Instagram, etc. there are some platforms operated by non-Western companies. China has a lot of those like Bilibili, Weibo, Baidu, etc. Korea has Katalk and Line, etc etc. They aren't popular outside of the region.

edit: I should probably clarify. It's not like we don't use Reddit. It's just not as popular.