Vespair

I never got on the K-Pop train, but I do genuinely like a few vibey tracks by Neon Bunny, K-Soul artist.

But I love when native languages are mixed with English, especially in metal, as in the case of this tremendous anthem to the joys of food

Super fair. I kept expecting to get there, but haven't yet. So far I'm still loving it, though I'll admit there's been plenty of low times that felt like a real slog. And of course I still have like half the series so far to go, so who knows what the future holds?

Yeah I watched a bit of One Pace with a friend to catch them up and it was pretty great, but my partner felt like we were missing out on something so we switched back over to the full episodes. But in general One Pace is solid way to approach the series. Hope you enjoy it!

God why are we still doing these stupid pop culture opinions?

Nobody actually dislikes hearing the worst moist.

Nobody actually cares if people put pineapple on pizza.

Nobody actually hates candy corn enough to give a shit about it.

Nobody. Not even you. You don't have to do this, you don't have to go through the motions just because they laid them out for you.

You can be a real person.

But this shit, this shit is so fucking lame.

Because it's contextual. The point is that comparisons between human races and dog breeds are almost never (I hope you appreciate the caveat I made for you here) brought up in good faith ways, and are almost always used disingenuously or to evoke emotional response to manipulate the conversation inernestly.

Can you pedantically pick at the statement? Sure, but not without willfully ignoring the greater point.

Yes, I'm aware that evil exists, but it is still nowhere equivalent to the selective breeding of dogs. There are entire oceans of nuance that separate the particulars of the two (note: nuance is not justification and I have absolutely nothing but complete condemnation for slavery and this sort of human rights violating experimentation; this is evil) and even if you disagree with or choose to ignore that the sheer scale is still so astronomically different as to render any comparison entirely invalid.

protein, fiber, carbohydrates, and a staple grain - feels like an exceptional and healthy choice to me

Absolutely true. In fact, a funny effect that happens is as the show goes on it becomes increasingly jarring when they use flashbacks to earlier episodes because the juxtaposition between the ever-improving art and the genuinely ugly episode art becomes ever-increasingly disparate!

That said, regarding it starting in 1999, while I agree on the time capsule aspect, I have point out that as a 40yr old man who has been watching anime since single-digit age, One Piece was indisputably ugly even by 1999 standards. By this point we already had Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rurouni Kenshin, Ghost in the Shell... Hell, I think Love Hina came out the following year and in terms of appearance it absolutely blows the first 100 episodes of One Piece out of the water, no contest.

So yes, One Piece is a cool time capsule to see how an artist can grow and develop over time, but I'd hesitate to call it an accurate time capsule reflective of anime as a whole.

Yeah tbh when we started it we were sort of just giving it a shot because we didn't have anything else to watch at the moment. For about the first 30 episodes we kept saying "this is fine, we'll probably stop it as soon as we have something better to watch." But then boom, Arlong Park happens from episode 31 through 45, and basically as soon as we finished Arlong Park we understood something had changed and that now we were gonna see it through to the end.

Honestly it's hard to recommend One Piece to anyone, because it is insanely frustrating at times, especially in terms of pacing, and it's a legitimate commitment to get into... But goddamn, once it gets going, there's just nothing like it. The only thing I could even remotely compare One Piece to is not any other anime, it's literally the goddamn Odyssey by Homer. That's the kind of scale we're dealing with here. We're only halfway through and I already feel like One Piece is one of the greatest and most important pieces in television or animation history, but it is not without effort.

Oh regarding the art style and animation, yeah, One Piece is fucking ugly at time, especially in the first 100 episodes. It does genuinely get a lot better, especially the animation (later fight scenes go crazy), but I have to admit that as much as I genuinely love One Piece, the art is absolutely not one of the selling points. There are hundreds of better-looking anime out there, no doubt.

The frustrating thing about Iron Fist is that while the main character mails in his performance meekly, especially in the fight scenes (yes I'm aware of the extenuating circumstances), Tom Pelphrey delivers some of the absolute best acting in the entire MCU as Ward Meachum. Like Iron Fist isn't a great series, and it's hard to recommend, but goddamn Tom's performance is so good it's worth watching just for the moments he's on screen. Thankfully the show's quality increases enormously in the second season, including Finn's performance marginally, but even that is really only enough to bring it up to middling amongst the rest of the Marvel Netflix bounty, in my opinion.

Still prefer it vastly to Punisher, though.

Partner and I have been working through One Piece, about to hit episode 600. Aside from that, mostly we've been watching season three of Resident Alien and a lot of Sorted Food on youtube.

I'm hyped as well. I loved all the Netflix Marvel offerings aside from Iron Fist season 1 and Punisher, so I hope eventually more of the characters migrate their way over.