This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.
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.
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.
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.
WEBMs
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
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
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
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
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
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.
Skip the anime and read the manga like me. And then drop the manga immediately, cuz who has time for reading nowadays?
Hanayamata
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
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
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
Be honest. You forgot this was even airing this season.
Sword Art Online Season II
Haha, just kidding. What kinda idiot would drop the best anime of the forever? (Next episode plz be good.)
I forgot Barakamon was airing because Daiz stopped subbing it and I was too lazy to make the decision between HS and A-K.
I’m still waiting on UW. RIP IN PIECES.
This.
Who got the first A+?
GotWoot, for their work on Mirai Nikki. Though based on comments from people who used their subs for the BDs and had to modify them.. perhaps I was a bit blinded by Yuno for that review.
Don’t remind me… ;_;
As a certain someone would say, how do you like being part of the “Cartel”? lol
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?
That said, I do like having webms and I think you should always use them, even for basic karaoke.
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.
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.
It’s 2014, any troubled readers should probably just accept that their 56k modem won’t cut it any longer.
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!
Should be fine if you lower the resolution….even embedded 240/360 can get the job done.
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.
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”)
Well that answers my question then. Looks like people like screenshots too, so uhh… screenshot(s) + webm going forward sounds fine to me.
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.
I’m still impressed with Kaylith’s episode 4…
god bless sao
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.
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.
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.
You should find an airport buddy.
>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.
I actually look forward to Blade Dance every week. Est is a miracle of the universe.
As a casual fag, I’d like to see webms.
No blade dance wasn’t forgotten, you want to see forgotten?
Mahouka is still airing.
Mahouka was pretty cool at the start, in my opinion. It’s gone really fucking downhill, though, and now it’s just plain boring.
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.
Just wondering. Was every twitter post on Kaylith’s typesetting <140 characters?
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.
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.
what happened to animetake? o.o
Caught in the same line of fire as Nyaa and TokyoTosho is.
this the great anime crisis of 2014
I dunno, it’s helping me justify stalling these reviews, so it’s not all bad. (Let’s pretend I don’t know what IRC is.)
Or… you could just work on that backlog ^^
IRC – ha, those were the times. Can you imagine people came to chat and leech at the same time, instead of just leeching?
also – sigh. dont THEY know the fearsome HYDRA. For every limb slain, two more shall take its place.
HAIL HYDRA
Should we assume you’re done with the summer series reviews for now?
No.
Oh… Good…. You should do Hanamonogatari next… Please!!!
Monogatari reviews can’t really be accomplished on week days where I’m working. I basically have to reserve an entire day for them on my schedule.
That being said, yes, Hana is on my priority list.
Wow, really? How long do reviews actually take?
Minimum of two hours for regular reviews. For more intensive reviews, like Monogataris, we’re looking at four hours minimum. There’s a reason no one else does these things.
Sage, did you drop rokujouma reviews? I don`t see it in the pool.
Not quite sure, actually. I’ll update the review queue during my lunch break.
Still planned, but low priority due to lack of poll interest. (If a show gets under 10%, I generally remove it from the poll at some point.)
Please don’t drop it. I really want to see if FFF’s A+ was warranted, because I thought DDY’s release was very good.
Why don’t you watch an episode of FFF’s and decide for yourself?
Yeah, fuck that Crymore guy. Why would anyone visit that site in the first place?
That wasn’t a dig at you. I’m just saying that if he actually cares that much about which release is “best,” he can easily check both releases himself and decide which one he prefers. It doesn’t matter what you or Nyaa staff have to say about a set of releases if he can determine for himself which one he enjoys the most.
Dramatic_Sage is dramatic.
I’ve seen FFF’s. I personally thought that DDY was better, but I like seeing D_S’s reviews because often he finds things that I’d otherwise miss.
There’s no actual different between HS’ and DDY’s Rokujouma if you watched both releases, and FFF’s is too slow.
Once again, the best choice is HS.
Except DDY is properly encoded, typeset, and has kfx.
It’s a nice show! You should do it.
At this moment, TT is up and running again. Just confirmed it a few minutes ago.
TT has actually been up for longer periods of time (as opposed to it being down) since the attacks started.
I wonder how long these attacks will continue, don’t they have something better to do?
Nyaa is up, for now anyway.
WE ARE SAVED!!!
Download all the anime you can before more attacks