Concerned Bystander

The latest addiction to the collection is this Bishoujo style figure of Robyn Hood from Zenescope's Grimm universe comics.

Finally, my Hot Toys Alita is in my hands. Technically not a recent purchase, I bought this when it went up for pre-order in April 2019 with a projected release date of fourth quarter 2019. There were... delays. But finally it has arrived, and she is worth the wait.

I like to think so. I may seem jaded and cynical on the surface but I'm not completely dead inside and cartoons particularly, for some reason, still have the power to move me. I also still enjoy cat videos, I think that they are one of the few pure and wholesome things left on the internet.

This Cheetara statue. Been eyeing it up for a while and decided to make it my Christmas present to myself before it goes out of stock and I miss my chance.

1) It sounds like a religion but isn't considered to be truly one. It's actually more of a cult group. The only differences between a cult and a religion are age and number of members. Scientology has already survived the death of its founder which is an important milestone, and their membership seems to be generally on the increase. 2) You are a considered a member by the simple act of paying them money, instead of years of experience and studying and whatnot Some religions consider you a member simply by being born. Having to pay money is actually a more positive commitment than many other religions ask of you. 3) Forcing you to completely throw away all the people in your life for the sake of belonging to the church. Other religions are guilty of this as well. 4) Brainwashing you This is again very much in the wheelhouse of most religions. 5) Harassing and violently attacking all non-Scientologists I'm sure I don't need to highlight the number of religious conflicts taking place all over the world right now. 6) Cases of fraud, extortion and possibly human trafficking Yep, Scientology is definitely ticking all of the boxes of a legitimate religion. And the worst part is, respect is one-way. Non-Scientologists are forced to tolerate them for the sake of civility and respect, while they get to terrorize others. Try being a Christian in certain Predominantly Muslim countries. There are many reasons to dislike Tom Cruise, and his connection with Scientology is probably as good a one as any, but do you know what isn't? Tropic Thunder!

Be warned, some minor spoilers throughout, biggest spoilers have been screened. As someone that grew up in the 80s I have seen altogether too many properties being needlessly remade, and generally to the detriment of the property as a whole. When I first heard about the She-Ra remake I was intensely skeptical, and even more so after I saw the initial publicity artwork. I am not a fan of this tumblr/calarts style that is so pervasive in modern western animation. Some of the characters have that amorphous potato people look that I find particularly visually unappealing, and the new design of She-Ra herself was unfavourably compared to a twelve year old boy by many, myself included. Of course every rule has its exception, and in this case that would be Catra, whose redesign involved giving her feline elements which really suits her character, and (in my opinion) actually improves on the original design. I gave it a fair go, I had the time on my hands and I watched it. As previously mentioned, I initially wasn't a big fan of She-Ra's new look, but it grew on me to the point where I'm totally fine with it now. Aside from the design though I actually really like the character as a whole, it would have been so easy for her to become the dreaded 'Mary Sue' but she was handled well and portrayed with enough vulnerability and flaws to keep her interesting despite wielding almost godlike power. Having near-Twilight Sparkle levels of adorkableness at times added enough humour to round her out without making her too comical. Her transition from Horde to Rebellion in the opening two-parter was fairly quick but that can easily be forgiven due to the necessity to get her where she needed to be for the main body of the story to start. Dragging out her redemption too long would likely have caused pacing issues for the remainder of the first season. Catra absolutely stole the show, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that thinks that, I mean she just picked the whole thing up and walked away with it in broad daylight. She has easily one of the best character development arcs I have seen in any film or series, she is right up there with the likes of Londo Mollari from Babylon 5, and that is not a comparison I make lightly. She was brought to life beautifully by Amanda Michalka who did a fantastic job in voicing this wonderfully deep and complex character. As much as Catra cared for Adora she felt overshadowed by her during their time together in the Horde, and when she had the chance to get out from underneath that shadow her actions were a conflicted mess of her ambition finally being unfettered and spite caused by her feelings of betrayal and abandonment by the one person in her life that had always treated her with kindness. More than any other character her story was an emotional roller-coaster of manic highs, self-destructive lows, heartbreaking betrayals and fulfilling redemption. Despite the humour and the cutesy moments the series managed to maintain enough gravitas that when things got serious it really felt like there was something at stake. A good example being when Catra led the attack on Bright Moon to destroy the Moonstone. In a lot of cartoons you would never have been in any doubt that the good guys would prevail at the end of that battle, and even though the good guys did ultimately win and the Moonstone was saved, I genuinely believed at points that the battle would be lost and that it would be the Horde that prevailed, causing the Rebellion to retreat into hiding. I wasn't disappointed with that outcome because it didnt come across as being a foregone conclusion, the very real uncertainty was enough to make the outcome satisfying. In summary then, my initial skepticism proved to be unfounded, and although there is legitimate criticism to be levelled against this cartoon (as is always the case), I feel that many of its harsher critics were perhaps so put off by the design of some of the characters that they either haven't watched it, or did so only with the dishonest intention of confirming that which they had already determined beforehand instead of approaching it with an open mind. This was a really enjoyable cartoon with a good story and two great characters that having watched once, I will undoubtedly watch again.

There's a lot to choose from here, beneath my normally gruff exterior I can actually be quite sensitive at times and for whatever reason cartoons seem to bring that out of me more than real life does, maybe it's just harder to be jaded and cynical about other worlds that exist only in fantasy. As I said, there's a a lot I could choose from, I recently watched Brother Bear for the first time in years and when they finally arrive at the salmon run and Koda is telling his story, watching the realisation gradually dawn on Kenai that he was responsible for Koda being an orphan was definitely quite emotional. I think, however, that first place (for the time being) would have to go to Tinker Bell and the Legend of the Neverbeast. Gruff returning to hibernation for another thousand years was intentionally treated like a funeral, and when each of the fairies are gifting him something from their own talent to make him more comfortable I gave up on any attempt at emotional restraint. It wasn't just the metaphorical death of Gruff himself, it was also the fact that when the fairies realised that they would never see him again it highlighted their own mortality as well. Although it was alluded to throughout the film series that fairies could meet an untimely end in a variety of ways you never really thought of them growing old and dying, and even though that is the normal conclusion for most living things it was still strangely poignant to have it laid bare in that fashion.

Not a series this time but a film. One of the films I watched for Hallowe'en was Perfect Blue. I have seen it before, I own the DVD but haven't watched it for many years. It's always struck me as being a film which is (almost) uniquely Japanese for one particular reason. In the west, films are largely animated when to make them in live-action would be difficult or prohibitively expensive, or sometimes just to give them addition appeal to children (maybe not be so much the case now, but was more so when Perfect Blue was made). What makes Perfect Blue 'uniquely Japanese' in this regard is that it is a psychological thriller, one that could easily have been made in live-action but was animated as a creative choice rather than out of necessity, something which is not unusual with Japanese films but much rarer in the west, especially at the turn of the century when this film was made and when anime was still an emerging genre over here. I won't give anything away, just in case anyone wants to watch it, but it deals with a young woman struggling with a transitional period in her life and trying to maintain her grip on herself as the line between fantasy and reality blurs and she becomes unable to distinguish whether the things going on around her are real or happening purely within her own mind. Well worth a watch.

I shall reiterate that it's 18 rated for a reason, there is some lascivious behaviour but it's mostly played for laughs at the expense of the socially-awkward main character rather than being serious or disturbing. Watched the series and read the comics. I felt that it dragged a little towards the end but apart from that is was pretty good.

Yeah, Princess Mononoke is definitely nothing like The Cat Returns, but if you haven't seen it I strongly recommend you remedy that, it is without a doubt one of Miyazaki's best films, being right up there with Spirited Away. It succeeds in managing multiple factions without reducing any of them to moustache-twirling villains and even if you end up hating some of the characters for their actions you can still empathise with their motivations. The relationship between Sora and Shiro is certainly a bit... unconventional? Probably worth noting that they aren't actually related by blood but, she is still eleven so there's definitely that. That detail however wasn't prevalent enough to greatly affect my overall enjoyment of the series. How Not To Summon A Demon Lord doesn't feature any weird pseudo-incestuous relationships. It does have a whole host of issues that I'm sure would have the puritans clutching at their pearls and would drive the SJWs into a conniption fit but it carries an 18 rating for a reason. Is it for everyone? No. Is it suitable for the whole family? Definitely not. But if you want a light-hearted, fun, humorous fantasy with a side of catgirls and improbably-proportioned elves then it might be up your street.

Straight off the back of No Game, No Life I have been watching How Not To Summon A Demon Lord. There's a degree of similarity between the two, at least in the basic premise, with both featuring socially awkward gamers that have been summoned into a fantasy world. Both were quite entertaining with a fairly generous helping of humour, particularly HNTSADL, and I'd happily recommend either.

Sometimes. Not so much if it's a mosquito, a midge or a clegg or something else that has actually attacked me to feast on my blood, they made their choice, and if comes down to me or them I'm going to pick me. On the other hand, things like spiders or moths in my house I generally try to trap with the old glass and paper technique and evict them outside. Beyond bugs I would generally never willing kill anything for no reason, but sometimes accidents happen, I remember once driving on the motorway and a bird flew out in front of me and I hit it, I felt terrible for ages after that.

I wouldn't call myself a fan of the Dora cartoon, having never watched it by myself, however my daughter was of the right age to enjoy it while it was showing in the UK so I have seen more than a few episodes and am very familiar with it. What I did watch by myself out of curiosity was the film, Dora The Explorer And The Lost City Of Gold, which (to my surprise) I actually quite enjoyed. This was largely due to the sheer quantity of self-referential humour such as Dora breaking the fourth wall and her parents looking around them and wondering who she is talking to, and the scene in which she is under the influence of a hallucinogenic plant and perceives everything as animated in the style of the cartoon. I'm not aware of there being an adult fandom of Dora, but then again I wasn't aware of an adult MLP fandom until I watched a certain youtube video so I wouldn't be altogether surprised if it turned out there is one.

Banned for not eating at Wendy's.

Banned because everyone knows the moon is made of cheese.

Banned because you're out of order, the whole damn system's out of order.

Disney have had their ups and downs, but they can still bring the old magic every now and then when they stick to their core strengths. In more recent years I really enjoyed both Frozen films, Moana, Zootropolis and going back a bit further to The Princess And The Frog and Tangled, and of course the older classics like Robin Hood and The Jungle Book. Also, I'm a big fan of the Tinker Bell films, all six of which I think are good solid films with engaging characters, and which (in my humble opinion) are too often overlooked in favour of the big blockbusters.

Conan the Barbarian is my favourite film, and I have wanted a replica of the Atlantean sword for years. I am so happy to finally have one. Just need to make a suitable wall plaque to display this beast in all its brutal majesty, lest I incur the wrath of Crom.

Banned for streaking.