What are you watching?

I found Mushi-Shi interesting, and I’ve kept it on our shelves. But I think the short form anime I most truly love is Girls und Panzer, for its humor, its surreality, and its theme of the contrast between different approaches to martial arts—and for its really amazing action scenes.

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One feels sorry for their dictionary printers…

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Now I’m curious whether the subs are of the same quality as the fansubs I’ve seen.

Actually the German dictionary is smaller than the Oxford. German is way more efficient than English, it uses words to make more words with new meanings instead of making new words that mean the same thing :stuck_out_tongue:


Anyway thanks for the Anime recs, I’ve noted them down so I have things to look for next time I try to fix my Bildungslücke :slight_smile: For now we’ll stick with what we started.

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I thought I’d seen estimates that English has even more words than German, by a factor of a few, and thus even bigger dictionaries.

Thanks for the independent confirmation!

But I’m not sure that’s quite right. Mark Twain said that the difference between the right word and the nearly right word was like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug [firefly]; that’s usually a question of new words that mean very nearly the same thing, but not quite. I remember, for example, Robert Heinlein’s letter ranting to his agent about one of his novels, where he had described the heroine as “lean” and a magazine editor had changed the word to “slender” . . .

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This may be a peculiar reaction, but I find that I’m less inclined to push for watching The Expanse now when C and I are picking something to watch on video. Getting into the new season, with a vast number of new solar systems to explore, and at least one Earthlike planet, changed the stage on which the action takes place, and aside from the bait and switch aspect, I just don’t find myself as interested in the kind of drama it’s become now. I felt the same way when I got to the end of S.M. Stirling’s novel about Mars, which I had really liked right up to that scene . . .

For that matter, though we watched Orphan Black all the way to the end, I felt somehow let down when it began showing Kira as having some form of telepathic or clairvoyant powers. Couldn’t we just have gone with genetic engineering and brilliant acting?

I was just joking. Each word has a slightly different meaning and I appreciate all the various synonyms I can use to try and express what I mean. German is quite a different beast. More “efficient” isn’t always the best thing :slight_smile:

I kind of felt the same when reading the books, the 4th is a break with the previous three in scope and I didn’t enjoy the book as much as the ones that went before. However, I liked the following books better than #4. I keep reading/watching because of the cast. I appreciate a good character driven story and–I’m repeating myselfl, I know–but I think they did a brilliant job with the casting for this series.

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I was wary of season 4. I found the story that was most engaging to me and that kept me coming back, was watching how the change of scope was killing the dream of mars.

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I do have to agree that The Expanse has excellent casting, and more than that, excellent characterization that gives its cast substantial roles to play. That was one of the attractions of the series from the beginning.

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Aside from Holden and Nagata, the cast is great. Shame they are the lead roles.

I like Nagata a lot. She seems to me to be, not the heart, but the conscience of the Rosinante. And I feel that Tipper’s acting makes that convincing.

The role is fine, but the acting wooden and the belter accent not nearly as well realized as all the others’.

I took the difference of accent to be intentional characterization, portraying her as a supporter of the OPA but not really part of the class from which it’s mostly recruited. If she always sounds like she’s playing a part when she speaks Belter creole, that comes across to me as being because she is playing a part.

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Our favorites in S4 are Bobbie, Drummer (and the dynamic with Ashford) and Amos. In no particular order. How do I know that? We watch an episode and there is a scene with one of them and we go “Oh, that was great, I love [insert charactername]”. Avasarala is another favorite of ours but I feel her story arc was better in the previous seasons. I do like her final scene though…

I also really like Alex but he shines more in the books–just a feeling, it’s been a while since I read any Expanse.

It’s so sad and it’s not getting any better either. I mean how can it?

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If I’m remembering correctly that Drummer is Fred Johnson’s second in command, then I have to say that those are all characters who made a big impression on me in seasons 1-3. Another character I liked a lot was Diogo, especially his interactions with Miller.

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Yeah, I get that, I just don’t think she pulls it off. That said, I do recognise this might not entirely be her fault: “be bad at an accent, but not too bad” is a hard direction to follow.

Finished Altered Carbon season 2. Now I’m on to The Man in the High Castle. I’m really like this so far.

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I really enjoyed the first season of the man in the high castle, lost motivation to finish watching the second.

I’m pretty bad at watching TV, so this might not be indicative of anything other than my lack of free time.

I enjoyed the 2nd (although I think the first was better) but I’ve kinda abandoned the 3rd. Might go back to it

We never finished the first season. Not due to any quality or lack of entertainment issues, just got sidetracked and never got back to it. It’s on our “list”.

Along with about a hundred other things.

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