Meta 2014vSummer

This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

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Because I’m still in a fucking airport.

Kaylith’s Zankyou no Terror

Based on feedback on one of the issues I called Kaylith out on, I reviewed my criticism and now withdraw it.

ZnTTT

This opened up the door for further review of the typesetting, for a possible A+ grade. And as the typesetting’s English was absolutely spot-on (Twitter read like Twitter, Youtube read like Youtube) and impressively thorough, I gotta say an upgrade is in order.

Kaylith's grade for the show has been changed from an A to an A+.
Kaylith’s grade for the show has been changed from an A to an A+.

This is only the second A+ anyone’s received in Crymore’s 12-year history, so it’s a rather significant achievement (and also pretty much the main reason for this meta post).

 

So good job, Kaylith. You’ve earned my temporary admiration, as well as a coupon for one free open-mouthed kiss with Dark_Sage.

Kaylith-exclusive offer. Non-Kayliths please don't use.
Kaylith-exclusive offer. Non-Kayliths please don’t use.

 

 

WEBMs

WEBM

I’ve heard varying thoughts on webms. Some feel they only serve to bloat review size (webms add about 10-20 MBs to each post), while others find ’em significantly more useful than a couple still images, enough so to justify the extra size.

One solution I thought of is just linking to the webms instead of embedding them in the post, but I wanna get your thoughts before I make any changes. If relatively few people have issues with the current process, we’ll just continue as is for a while.

 

 

Dropped

Dropped

This doesn’t have much to do with reviews, since most of the shows here have been out of the running for a while. But since I haven’t been keeping up with my HD_SWW? page for a bit (since I haven’t been watching anything), I figured I’d use this space for some anime drops + reasoning.

 

 

Bakumatsu Rock

Bakumatsu Rock Chibi

It’s a legit enjoyable fujoshibait show, but the plot is really wearing out the welcome of the cute, half-naked boys. Best to drop it before it starts to show its true colors.

 

Barakamon

berakamon
Barakamon and girl-chan.

Barakamon isn’t the kind of show that will ever progress past its tired, old formula. While it may be enjoyable in spite of this, it doesn’t do anything well enough to justify its time investment from anyone with a backlog. Pass.

 

Dramatical Murder

But 2014 isn't a birthday.
But 2014 isn’t a birthday.

This is so bad it’s not even worth watching to keep my hate fires kindled. I blame you for misleading me on this one, ladies.

 

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun

Anime faces!
Anime faces!

Yeah, it’s cute, but the pacing is broken if you’re functionally literate. 4-koma adaptations are nearly always gonna be a waste of time compared to the source material.

This joke sequence lasts ten minutes in the show.
A couple bike jokes made up half of a goddamn episode.

Skip the anime and read the manga like me. And then drop the manga immediately, cuz who has time for reading nowadays?

 

Hanayamata

Hanayamata so Visual

I feel that I should finish Chihayafuru before watching another “pretty” show about after school clubs. I mean, I won’t finish it, but at least I have my priorities in place.

 

Locodol

Uogokuro-kun

I like it, but I doubt I’ll see any Locodol cosplayers at the next con I go to, so I’m just gonna reserve my memory space for something else.

 

PriPara

Pizza for You

Is this like PreCure where it’s gonna limp along for 50+ eps? Let’s just say it is and add another show to the dorpped list.

 

Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance

Q

Be honest. You forgot this was even airing this season.

 

Sword Art Online Season II

Pacing.
Pacing.

Haha, just kidding. What kinda idiot would drop the best anime of the forever? (Next episode plz be good.)

62 thoughts on “Meta 2014vSummer”

  1. Webms are great, but I don’t think you always need them. For instance, static karaoke doesn’t need it. Even some advanced kfx don’t really need it, as a few images can demonstrate what the karaoke looks like. A good example of a kfx that would really need a webm, however, would be DDY’s Tokyo Ghoul kfx, because it’s really hard to demonstrate the shimmering with a couple images. You could always just upload the webm to pomf or something and link it under the images?

    Reply
    • The size concern was solely for the readers (people viewing the site with mobile data or plans with limited speed/data restrictions). Crymore’s got the bandwidth and space to spare.

      Reply
      • Yeah, I mean if you want to cater to those people, it doesn’t really matter too much if you don’t always have a webm. Basically, only use an embedded webm if you absolutely cannot demonstrate the kfx with images.

        Personally I like always having webms, but if people have a problem with it, you could use that approach to try and get to a middle ground.

        Just a suggestion, I suppose.

        Reply
        • it’s about bandwidth consumption, not connection speed. I’m also on a mobile plan and probably wouldn’t click reviews anymore if it resulted in loading 20 MB or more.

          webm links are highly appreciated, though!

          Reply
      • I like the idea of having the link to the webms and having a screenshot. I don’t always feel like watching the webms and as already stated, they’re not always necessary with the static karaoke and such.

        Reply
      • That’s actually not a problem because the HTML5 people were smart enough to add a “preload” attribute [1] to the video-embedding, so you can hint the browsers what you expect them to download in advance.
        Looking at the source code, your WP is already using preload=”metadata”, therefore browsers won’t (unnecessarily) pre-fetch the whole video.

        In fact, according to this [2] test, it looks like mobile browser don’t preload a single second of the video when you specify “metadata”.

        [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/embedded-content-0.html#attr-media-preload
        “Hints to the user agent that the author does not expect the user to need the media resource, but that fetching the resource metadata (dimensions, track list, duration, etc), and maybe even the first few frames, is reasonable.”
        [2] http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2013/04/12/html5-video-preload/ (“Table 1” and “Observation #1”)

        Reply
        • Well that answers my question then. Looks like people like screenshots too, so uhh… screenshot(s) + webm going forward sounds fine to me.

          Reply
    • I don’t think there’s a point in using WebMs for editing reviews (kara and animated TS aside). Translation maybe, since you can compare the line to the audio.
      Still image link to WebM sounds like a good idea, but pomf removes its files occasionally so hosting it on Crymore is probably the best.

      Reply
  2. I had good expectations for Barakamon because the source is amazingly good, but the people in charge of the adaptation went out of their way to cut out everything that was good about Barakamon, EVERY SINGLE THING, and leave only the things where the story is exactly the same as every other comedy-driven SOL show.

    What they chose to adapt is also aired out of chronological order to boot, but it’s not like it matters because they didn’t leave anything that required any sort of sequential order anyway.

    Barakamon, like Nozaki-kun, is only worth it as its source material. But at least you can watch the Nozaki-kun show and be relieved that it is what it is and nothing more.

    Reply
    • Wait, seriously? I’m quite liking Barakamon, though I do admit it’s a bit slow and generic right now. I’m guessing I should check out the manga then.

      Reply
      • Yep. Barakamon anime started out good, but the manga made the messages of the author more meaningful when there was drama, and the comedy was more natural as written rather than the adaption strategy of sticking to Japanese Rom-Com 101: How to read Lolita in the East. At least the music in the anime isn’t so bad though, better than Index quality says a lot.

        On the other hand, regarding the anime: first off, RIP UW now that NT going down makes it nearly defunct. Meanwhile, it’s interesting to compare A-K and CR. CR does the traditional “everyone speaks Texan with cliche idioms” thing, but A-K places more emphasis on drama and word choice to convey the tearjerking messages instead, so I guess take CR if you want more Harry Potter and Hagrid talking lahk yer auntie gone down South, and take A-K only if you’re willing to accept that the fansubbers actually believe you’re smarter than a 5th grader to know that they’re speaking dialected Japanese without being told so.

        EDIT: interesting new function. that or I never noticed it before.

        Reply
  3. >Be honest. You forgot this was even airing this season.
    I’m watching it, but I’d be lying if I said I don’t forget it exists until the next episode pops up for me to watch.

    Reply
    • Mahouka was pretty cool at the start, in my opinion. It’s gone really fucking downhill, though, and now it’s just plain boring.

      Reply
      • I think it’s just the opposite.

        Well, FFF is 10eps behind and CR raw is so terrible it makes me consider retiming it on zero_raws(which is also full of artifacts).

        STiNX is… no one know what it is, and Doki(which is somewhat isolated), seems to be the only option left.
        PS: Doki is 4 eps behind.

        Reply
    • The show appears to be set in the near future, where twitter has a 280-character limit. I’d say Kaylith definitely hit that mark.

      Reply
    • Yeah, we kinda bitched about that in staff chat. 140 kanji was proving impossible to get down to 140 english characters, so we used abbreviations etc. instead to get the correct effect across.

      Reply

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