Mushishi is extremely re-watchable.

As wacky as this seems, this makes a ton of sense the more that I think about it, specifically for smaller regional airports that are less than a 2-hr drive from a larger airport.

If your origin or destination is anywhere aside from a major city, there’s a lot of value in starting your trip at a closer regional airport. You get the small-airport TSA treatment, which is always faster than major city airports. The terminal itself is going to be considerably better-appointed than virtually any bus terminal (commerce, staffing, accessibility, etc). No need to travel between a bus and airport terminal if it’s all in the same building. Ticketing works along-side existing systems, as well as baggage-handling. And a bus requires a hell of a lot less fuel than a jet, making it a more eco-friendly option as well.

People better at modeling than me could probably build a graph of time and feature benefits for air and bus travel, which I’d imagine would show bang-for-buck on buses being superior (despite their speed and moderate prestige) for trips or travel-legs less than 150 miles or so. Any destination or hop further than that would probably make more sense for a plane.

Not understanding the larger context or who any of the referenced characters are is what kept me away. I gave it one episode and couldn’t understand what was happening so I bailed. It needed more narrative training wheels for folks like me.

Sad to see Apocalypse Hotel not here, but happy to see Lazarus suffering from its narrative wheel-spinning and complete lack of character definition.

I wonder how much Scarjo got paid to sit there and pretend to not laugh.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17%2F-27.990030%2F153.423950

Immediately using the radio to try to talk to her grandpa in the afterlife…

My heart…!

Regular Car Reviews will have a ton of fun with this.

Depending on how stoned you’re interested in getting, and your cognitive abilities under the influence, consider Mad Ape Den.

At its core, Mad Ape Den is a writing exercise where you only use words composed of three letters or less:

To bid you a bit of it, the gab may go as so.

Our favorite thing to do is to make a guessing game of it. Have everyone else try to guess something you’ve chosen, describing it using Mad Ape Den. Your turn ends if you mess up and use a longer word. For example:

He is a man, but he is a bat, too.

Batman!

https://youtu.be/v2NFl86LX3Q?t=240

I think everybody with eyes was doing the Leonardo DiCaprio meme at that guy in the encampment.

And +1 on both solid trans representation, and having old friends acting cool and supportive when they discover it. So good!

Cars made to be sold and driven in Japan (aka JDM vehicles, for Japanese Domestic Market) can not be imported into the US until they are over 25 years old. This is part of a series of import laws that American vehicle manufacturers lobbied for to keep foreign cars from dominating domestic marketplaces.

The US also has crash test safety standards that domestic cars must meet because a) safety is good, and b) people drive tanks like maniacs. Kei cars used to be pretty awful in crash tests, but have gotten a lot better in recent years.

I’m watching the subtitled version and don’t speak Japanese, but I get the sense that the rapid-fire dialogue may be serving some fun comedic timing that doesn’t translate via subtitles. The first episode had a frenetic energy that seemed to jive with that kind of tone.

But this second episode, oof. The charm wore off fast, and the entire purpose seemed to just be a dumping ground for Azu to treat everyone like a gigantic turd while the entire cast absorbed it and never reacted. That’s a lot of lost opportunities for character moments.

I will give the show at least one more episode purely to see where they’re going with this Azu plot twist.

Anime Feminist right now: 😬

I’m sure Dunkey will be happy about the Animal Well plug.

Because they’re both directed by the same guy (Shinichirō Watanabe), written by the same guy (Dai Satō), and produced by the same studio (MAPPA).

Isn’t a lot of that just fancy chemistry?

“AMATEURS!” bellows the shadowy mathematician from the dark corner.

Foam can koozie in the breast pocket.

Solid article. I imagine the folks at the cyberwire podcast will be doing more digging over the weekend for a solid summary come Monday.

It all depends on how you define and categorize morality.

The Tolkien dilemma reasoned that since orcs could talk and demonstratively discuss the ideas of right and wrong, then they have some sense of morality. If they have reason and morals, could they at some point decide to stop being evil? And if so, is it moral to eradicate them entirely?

I haven’t read the Frieren manga, but the show referred to its world’s demons as not actually speaking, but having learned to make human-like noises to elicit desired responses. I’m not sure if I buy that explanation (given how the characters behave and converse) but if you do, it’s a functional hedge against feeling bad about our beloved protagonist doing a genocide.

Again, the manga might get into this more. Also this could be a potential character arc for Frieren; whoop lol maybe I shouldn’t do a genocide after all. I do hope it goes this way, but I doubt it will.

The image link is to the cover of The Premonition by Michael Lewis.