Tenzhi

Just finished Last Exile today and thought I'd give it another +1. A fine little series.

I just recently watched a one-shot anime called Dead Leaves. I would describe it as "Mangaverse Domino vs. Lady Deathstrike as viewed through a FLCL lens" and a friend of mine described it as "Heavy Metal meets anime." I would simultaneously highly recommend it and -1 it. It's awesome, seizure-inducing, and bizarre.

Ninja Run is kinda cool. I just wish it were slottable. Were it in a power pool I would grab it despite having it already just to have a slottable version. If it were the third power in the pool and the first two powers did absolutely nothing, I would grab a nothing power and Ninja Run in order to have a slottable version. And I would six-slot it with 2 End Reds, 2 Runs, and 2 Jumps.

Naruto has a plot, it just got severely interrupted by filler in the anime. Same with DBZ - Dragon Ball Kai is a much better take. Death Note had a coherent plot after the Event, but I stopped caring about said plot at that point.

Not that having a coherent plot is a hallmark of anime.

And if you really want to talk about an anime milking a story, talk about Wolf's Rain. I was rather enjoying that anime and then it became several episodes of flashbacks retelling the whole darn thing. It was like an episodic clip show.

Some of my recommendations:

Hajime no Ippo and its more recent follow up series Hajime no Ippo: The New Challenger. I think the American retitle is Fighting Spirit. It's a boxing anime with very good fights and characters.

Shijo Saikyo no Desshi Kenichi (History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi/Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple) - hilarious fight anime with great characters.

The Wallflower - an upside down and backwards harem anime about an "ugly" anti-social girl who is inflicted upon a household of stereotypical anime pretty-boys who are blackmailed into attempting to turn her into a beautiful and proper woman.

Miyagami Academy Maximum Authority Wielding Best Student Council AKA Best Student Council - this anime started out slightly odd and amusing and continued to get weirder throughout but surprised me by pulling all the weirdness into a coherent and somewhat touching story.

And as I'm sure has already been suggested: anything Miyazaki is worth a look. My personal favourites are Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, and Porco Rosso.

I, for one, miss the comments. I don't give much rep, but I rather enjoyed seeing both the good and bad things people would say about my posts.

Hey, a new Who fan! Alas that I am late to this thread, though. I have to say that as a longtime Who fan, when the new series started I was initially put off of Eccleston because I found *him* to be less quirky than most of the prior Doctors (with the exception of the Fifth, played by Peter Davison, who is my least favourite Doctor and the one I found to be most mundane).

Eccleston grew on me such that I was sorry to see him go, however. Many of the Doctors have exhibited humour, sarcasm, and general weirdness to varying degrees.

I've seen very little of the first and second Doctors. The first comes across as a cranky old man who is overly cautious. The second seems to be a jovial fellow who worries about his companions (and humans in general), seems out of sorts most of the time, and generally seems to be playing everything by ear (except his recorder/flute thing, unless the ear be tin).

The third Doctor was trapped on Earth for much of his run and showed a fair amount of impatience and bitterness towards the humans he was stuck with, often in the form of sarcasm. This really played well with his military associates, particularly the Brigadier who would generally be unflappable in the face of it and indeed seemed more amused with the whole situation the more put out the Doctor was.

The fourth Doctor tended more towards weirdness and humour. And more brash arrogance than you'd think one could fit under a hat that size, no matter how floppy. He's perhaps the most well-known, or has been up until recently.

The fifth Doctor was the nicest of the bunch. He came across as prim, proper, and polite to a fault. But he also had The Five Doctors episode, which is one of my favourites. And I enjoyed the Black Guardian arc.

The sixth Doctor was crazy, and not necessarily in a good way. A lot of people didn't like him, but I never had a real problem with him. He was perhaps the most careless of the bunch, though. Or at least it often seemed that way in his dealings with his companions.

I haven't seen as much of the seventh Doctor as I would have liked. He seems very polite on the surface, almost whimsical really, but he has a dark streak. One episode was simply him bringing a companion to a dangerous place from her past in order to force her to face her fears.

The 8th Doctor had only the FOX television movie to work with. And it wasn't very good, having perhaps the worst showing of the Master ever, not to mention all that half-human nonsense. That said, Paul McGann made a likable enough Doctor.

I recommend filling in as much of Doctors three and four as you can stand, but I may be biased in that regard. Seeing the Key to Time and Trial of a Time Lord arcs (Doctors four and six respectively) is essential, I'd say, as are any of four's dealings with Gallifrey (the Doctor has an important political history). And you may find any stories dealing with the Daleks or Cybermen to be relevant. Potentially any episodes dealing with the Rani as well.

I got 90.91% which is a bit better than I'd expect to do on even a moderately difficult test of CoH game knowledge. Especially if more Accolade and NPC story related questions were involved.

I prefer SR to Nin simply because SR is more of a passive defense set. Turn on the toggles, set Practiced Brawler on auto, and forget about it.

Earlier this evening when I went to make a character, I wanted to check if a name was available first and the "Check Name" button would only return a blank window with an OK button on it.

When I went to make the character the name turned out to be unavailable. It gave me a blank popup that had a scrollbar on the side when I tried to register the character, and scrolling up revealed the text stating the name was unavailable. Using Check Name after that gave me an 'Unable to check if name is available' message after that rather than a blank window.

IMO it would work better with shorts and the shoes with the long socks.

I take it that the character's mission in life will be to annoy Peacebringers?

I had looked at the filters, but I guess the setting didn't register in my brain (perhaps I need to adjust the brain filter). I'll have to give it another glance when next I'm on.

I just noticed while at the market the other day trying futilely to get two complete sets of Razzle Dazzle that if no one is currently bidding on a piece nor is it up for sale there doesn't seem to be a way to place a bid.

I believe one should be able to place a bid for such an item and let it ride in case someone comes along and posts the piece. Forgive me if there IS a way to do so and I somehow just missed it.