Plk_Lesiak

I won't lie, I think one of the reasons I enjoyed Bakemonogatari is how excellent most of the OPs and the ED were...

Have you ever read a guro VN that felt too extreme for your taste? Are there any forms of guro/tags that would make you avoid a VN altogether?

My research into this was half-assed, but what I understood from it is that the early response meant they were able to avoid larger outbreaks and didn't have to do mass testing, the way South Korea did for example. At least, that was the case until recently. Now there are discussions about whether the government approach is proactive enough and whether an outbreak might be happening below the radar. We'll find out in the coming weeks, but once more, Japan has more experience with managing natural disasters than most countries on Earth. It'll be surprising if they really fuck up.

Well, that one goes a little beyond "policies and secrets", considering that Ninetail is working with JAST...

Wow... Well... Wcome back! I hope you at least stick around longer than Original Ren who announced his return in a long post and stopped at that. ;p

True, but it seems that in most cases where the situation became really dangerous the virus spread quietly before any serious safety measures were implemented. While Japan's response doesn't seem as strict as those in South Korea or Taiwan, it looks like it came early enough that it at least very heavily slowed down the spread of the virus. And I think they'd be willing to implement even stronger measures if the situation deteriorated. So, at least they have a much better chance of succeeding than governments that don't have the political will (UK) or proper, country-wide tools (US) to deal with this properly...

We'll only know for sure when it's over, but considering the number of fatalities combined with how early the outbreak started there (first spike in registered cases full two weeks before the ones in Europe), they must have it relatively under control. Otherwise, the situation would already be much worse.

Japan is honestly one of the places I'm least worried about, considering how much practice with crisis management they have and how disciplined the populace is. It's the UK and US numbers that are most suspect at this point. I don't think numbers anywhere, outside of places like Iran maybe, are straight-up "fake", but those two were really slow to implement testing on proper scale, while in US there isn't even consistent approach to this due to decentralized administration and the private healthcare system fighting all the ways it can to not suffer the costs of fighting the outbreak...

I'm halfway through W'z, the Hand Shakers sequel. I still don't understand how this show became a thing, but damn, it has all kind of stuff. Yuri bating. Yaoi baiting. Wierd romantic tension between the new protagonist and first show's main couple. All the absurdly cliched and dumb characters from the first series in supporting roles... Pretty much, it's everything you would expect a Hand Shakers sequel to be, but infinitely more competent. I mean, it's still clunky, visually inconsistent and at times plain ugly, but words can hardly express how barfy and cheap the original was. Even the writing and characters are a major improvement, despite by no means being good – it's a step-up from the ultimate trainwreck of all time to just being amusingly bad. And I somehow find it very fun to watch, probably because of the memories of Hand Shakers being so very much alive in my mind. I'm not sure any bad anime will ever be able to beat it and while this second season is not the same, it satisfies my twisted nostalgia. Maybe it wasn't a mistake after all...? 5/10 so far, and I think it'll stay there. But the joy of seeing arguably the worst anime in history spawning an actual franchise? Priceless. Edit: After finishing W'z, I have to lower my score to 4/10, because some of the new characters proved incredibly obnoxious and once more, the rules of the world and character motivations were all over the place. To be honest, I still don't really know what was the main villain's deal... But I know that the heavily-implied yaoi ending he got with his butler was one of the most glorious things I've seen in crap-tier anime. Generally, the second half of the season was a little bit more of the side of "plain dumb" and less "amusingly bizarre". Still, I have no regrets about watching it, as the "so bad it's good" entertainment factor was never fully gone.

Hey, hey, how can you say that when we have the second season of my favourite shounen trash show and this unholy abomination based on another LN so deeply uninspired its mere existence sounds like a joke at this point. What else can someone want from an anime season? We can't have another sequel to Hand Shakers every time. I need to finally watch that Hand Shakers sequel though... The fact it's a thing is both hilarious and deeply disturbing.

I still have such a hard time even imagining how Monogatari could work as a light novel, considering how much the shows rely on abstract visuals, cuts etc... You can do that in manga, but it must require some extremely creative writing to pull off a similar feel with mostly just text. Anyway, I'm nearly done with Bake and my previous impressions mostly stayed, it's really enjoyable in its craziness. I'm also on the exact opposite side when it goes to Senjougahara, I think she's a really cool partner for Araragi and her behaviour makes the romance pretty fun. As harsh as she might be in her words, she's really supportive towards Araragi and encourages his altruistic nature despite also being burdened by the messes he creates. Also, there was a full-on romantic episode suddenly breaking up the Hanekawa's arc and I really enjoyed how impactful it was and how it touched on some really serious themes, like Senjougahara's traumatic past being something she needs time to overcome before she can fully commit to the relationship. Monogatari formula is so wacky that it's often dangerous to dig for actual meaning in it, but the overall story is far from being random nonsense. There's some kind of balance here between the never-ending formal experiment and genuine storytelling, which is more than I'm willing to say about most "avant-garde" popculture. And the form itself is deeply unique, always introducing something new and subverting your expectations. Also, the production values and attention to detail are amazing... I mean, I'm not sure I've seen as many interesting elements in the OPs of all other shows I've seen as I did in just Bake. The fanservice is still the biggest downside, particularly when it suddenly explodes from nowhere with middle-schoolers being the focus. There were situation when I could look past it, like the tension between the protagonist and Nadeko, who clearly has a crush on him, but in most cases it's just deeply off-putting. Also, I imagine for some the core formula itself will be absolutely unwatchable, but I dig it. If not for the awful horniness and some grotesque violence that I'm not sure serves any purpose, I'd rate it extremely high. As it is now... 8/10. I'll probably take a break before I go to Nise though. This show is somewhat exhausting and I'll probably switch to some massive trash to laugh at and give my brain time to regenerate. Beatless maybe?

It is the first pandemic of this scale in 100 years though, and proved to be different from lesser outbreaks, even SARS which was much more deadly but less contagious. I'm not sure if I feel like defending WHO much, but fucking up when constructing recommendations for what is essentially an unprecedented threat will happen. The actually disturbing part is the governments still actively ignoring the lessons from the most affected regions...

I was looking for a good live performance of this song and well... Considering how Shizuka Kudo was singing at the beginning of her career, it wasn't easy. But finally, I found this one in which she seems to be slightly older and the difference is pretty significant. ^^

Worth watching, particularly the second half.

That's somewhat true, but the thing is, when the problem grows to the size of a full-on epidemic, like in Northern Italy, it's likely that no amount of money or resources would be enough to handle it. National healthcare systems are tuned towards long-term functioning and preventive care rather than crisis management and they're already incredibly expensive as they are. So, you at least need both a well-prepared healthcare system and "political" procedures for limiting the infection rate (basically keeping people from interacting with each other, particularly when it goes to a disease as contagious as the coronavirus), otherwise things will fall apart in the end.

Well, the simple answer is still that the official data massively underreports the number of cases in Italy, as no one is able to do testing on such a scale (and honestly, it's not even the priority anymore with how many people require immediate care regardless of whether it's the virus). It might already be getting close to the spread in mainland China and we just don't have a way of knowing, while combined with a much older population and overload of the healthcare system it creates death numbers that look absolutely horrifying, but might not be that far from the severity of the original Wuhan virus. The question why it spread this fast is crucial and I think the whole world is analyzing it now. What I've seen/read suggests that only focusing on travel from China and the government's denial lead to extremely counter-productive behaviour from normal people, like visiting the sick by whole families and continuing with social engagements as usual. Then people started fleeing in mass from regions that already were experiencing an epidemic... It's a mess, but thankfully somewhat unique in that. When it goes to the full extent of the epidemic, we're unlikely to get reliable numbers on how many people got infected. Sorry for how morbid it will sound, but the death count is probably the more reliable measure of the virus' spread, also showing how different the situation in Italy is from the rest of Europe.

Yeah, but that's exactly it... I don't think this happened anywhere else in Europe. Even in UK, I think the delay in preventive measures is more about wrong priorities than straight-up denial. Those mortality rates in the North clearly show that the infection rate must be massive and only the speed of testing and people getting through the disease outside of the system are obscuring the real numbers. At that point, there's not that much either a single person or the government can do. But this is the only case so far of things getting this severe outside of maybe Iran. Hopefully it will be contained outside of these regions...

Well, minimazing the threat rather than implementing safety measures and educating people on what do to is already pretty huge. Anyway, I would have to study the timeline properly, but the general impression outside of Italy is that both local and central authorities were slow to react. It allowed for both rapid spread of the infection and mass movement of people from affected areas (like, in tens of thousands), which will likely make it impossible to contain the situation within the Northern regions. It seems unlike what happened in other European countries (we'll see how UK ends with their approach). In Poland, all the harsh restrictions, like banning public events, international travel and closing entertainment hubs were being implemented with just a few dozen cases spread around the country. TV and social media all encourage people to stay at homes, avoid crowds etc. At least at first glance, most things that could've been resonably done were done. We'll see where it gets us, but the fact people seem to be listening, really laying low as much as possible, makes me hopeful it'll not get completely out of hand.

The death rate is extremely hard to evaluate because cases without severe symptoms are likely to be overlooked in statistics while fatalities are obviously all noted. The death rate in Italy does not have to be a mutation, but come from different demographic structure than previously-affected regions and the massive overload of the healthcare system. Seasonal flu complication would also be much more deadly without proper care. Anyway, I mostly know anecdotal evidence about the Italian case, but it seems that the incompetence of the government was coupled with some poor reactions from the general populace that made the problem even worse. If the government fucks up the epidemy can easily become so severe that avoiding infection becomes extremely hard. But even if the government acts properly, if people ignore safety measures it can easily lead to unnecessary tragedies. I don't undestand the reason to be absolutist about this.

So, enjoying that new hikikomori livestyle I was always striving for, I was able to go through the first half of Bakemonogatari... And I was positively surprised. I still consider Kizumonogatari, which was my unfortunate introduction to the franchise, extremely obnoxious and pointlessly grotesque. But so far, Bake turned out to be a lot less whimsical and unsettling than I've expected it to be. The arcs are actually pretty cohesive, while I was worried the show will meander pointlessly. The characters are fun in their over-the-top silliness and their gimmicks are interesting. Experience of Kizu also made me pretty comfortable with the visual gimmicks and abstract storytelling the series relies on and once more, I kind of enjoy them more here than I did in the movies (actually, these were among the very few things I actually liked about the Kizu movies, after a short adjustement period). Also, surprisingly enough, the fanservice didn't bother me much so far, mostly because it was flowing pretty decently with the overall story. I absolutely abhored how detached and pointless it felt in Kizu. The whole character of Hanekawa felt like fanservice prop there, barely having any other role in the story. Anyway, this series feels very promising, while the extreme praise Kizumonogatari gets still undermines what is left of my faith in humanity.

Well, probably it won't, I just mean I take full responsibility for this and leave to the rest of the admin team the desition on how to interpret it. And yes, theoretically I could've just tried to mod that last thread, but it was the OP and much of the posts that reacted to it that I've found problematic, so there wouldn't be much left of it if I did that. So making a new one and setting out the rules felt more reasonable in this context, and less confusing for anyone reading it, even if it was against the usual practice of moderating around here.

I'm sure there were discussions like that, but to be honest, there weren't that many IRL topics here lately outside of confessions or random small-talk. Thus, I have few points of reference, particularly with stuff this serious and immediate in its nature. I consider this a special case and as it's that far detached from the Forums' main topic, it's not the primary thing the rules are here to protect – free discussion of VNs and various popcultural topics. I feel this is necessary and I'm going to stand by it – if it's overturned or even costs me my admin powers, so be it.

Well, it's limited for sure, but not irrelevant. Your individual desitions can further the problem and if you have people from high-risk groups around you, it can literally kill them. I'm not worried about myself much, but I am about my mother who is over 60. Me getting infected would be very dangerous for her even if the health care system doesn't get overloaded. I'm in a very comfortable position that I can lower my exposure to risk factors very heavily and not everyone can do that, but everyone is able to take some precautions. Once more, both sides of the issue are important. Edit: To summarize it a bit, there's not much you can do to help the situation outside of keeping yourself safe, but there's a lot you can do to make it worse. Don't be that guy.

Just addressing what @WinterfuryZX said in a post I've hidden for the reasons mentioned in the first post, a lot depends on how your government responds to the danger and it's probably a good idea to pressure them to not follow the early Italy or UK examples of not taking the threat seriously. In Poland, basically all public institutions, restaurants and entertainment hubs are closed off. It probably should be like that in all Europe right now, considering how fast the virus can spread. However, there's still a lot you can do as an individual to minimize the danger and keep those important to you safer. Remember about both sides of the issue, but focus on the things you can do yourself.