Weiss & Ramblings

We're about 3 or 4 weeks into the fall season, and as per the usual for the industry, the showing is far stronger overall than what we had in the summer. While we don't have an overblown blockbuster in a true sense like spring and summer's Re:Zero, there is definitely a higher general quality in what's airing. That's not to say anything this season is particularly amazing (yet), but there's a notable absence of true dumpster fire series like last season's Taboo Tattoo or Orange. Like the sensible, employed man I am, I made the executive decision to pick up EIGHTEEN series this season. However, my mistake is your gain; I'll give a short synopsis of what I've seen, and whether you should watch it, try it, or just flat out drop it/never start it. Let's get started, shall we? ---

Before I get into the thick of it, I'd like to take a moment to quickly touch on two things: I rate for purposes of recommendation to others, within a show's genre. Like any piece of art, anime is subjective and I don't see any way of attaching a qualitative rating to a subjective medium unless I can categorize a show and compare it to its contemporaries. I try as best I can to keep my personal enjoyment and biases out of my scores, but that's likely impossible. This is why my personal favorites and my top scorers don't always perfectly match up; I try to keep numbers as objective as possible. I'm 'No Drop'. That means I never drop something that I start watching, no matter how bad it gets. This is good for you, because it means you don't have to watch garbage because I'll do it for you. I just hate leaving things unfinished, even if they aren't really worth finishing. Honestly, I just love complaining so much that I turned to terrible a...

For anyone who isn't already aware, I do a lot of streaming for my local Super Smash Brothers Melee community, or rather, I used to. Ever since my senior year workload increased, it's been one thing after another: graduating, looking for a job, getting adjusted to a new job, whatever. It's been hard for me to justify continuing to stream and push footage out at the rate that I used to back when I was in college not too long ago. In general, appreciation for the stream (especially at the weekly) was waning dramatically with our weekly series becoming incredibly stale and losing PR player attendance. In addition to all that, s treaming is a hell of a hassle, requiring me to be the first one in and the last one out from events, cutting drastically into my time to actually enjoy the game, and forcing me to carry around a large amount of equipment that takes an incredible amount of time to set up and tear down.  "Oh, he'll stream his home commute but not fucking Mo...

Let's open this discussion with an example we're all familiar with. Imagine your professor just assigned the class a critical essay on this week's lecture topics. Like all essay assignments you've ever received in your life, this one has a page limit, let's say, 4 pages. Can't be more, can't be less. As you sit down the night before it's due to finally complete (or start) the assignment, you're likely to face one of two problems: 1. You are struggling to meet the 4 page limit that was set for you, experiencing a lack of material to complete the essay or have simply answered the prompt in a concise manner. 2. You are struggling to trim down your essay to fit into the 4 page limit, left feeling like you could not adequately prove your point within the limit or that there is just too much material to be fit within such a small space. Neither situation feels great for you: you either feel frustrated that you just can't seem to fill up those 4 p...