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So, years after the memes have stopped and the hype has dried up, I decided to hop on the Madoka Magica train, shotgunned the series over the course of the last two days. As expected, it's real good. Solid action and character writing but I think the most impressive thing about the series is its attention to detail. I never felt like the show actively contradicted itself in small ways like most anime I've watched and the little, only noticeable in hindsight details (like the reason why Homura didn't "disappear" when grabbed by Kyoko being less "she's not able" and more "didn't want to let her in on the secret") were great. Plus the backgrounds were fucking gorgeous. Dub was solid though Madoka and Sayaka's voices initially grated. I watched an episode-by-episode review from one of my favorite internet personalities as a sort of companion piece as well (listening to those as I do stuff around the house and can't sit to watch episodes). It's an interesting watch. He doesn't (or didn't at the time anyway) usually review anime and isn't really into the anime fandom or culture AT ALL, so it's fun seeing him review it solely AS A WORK, purely on its own merits as a piece of art/media and not as an anime specifically with anime specific criticisms and likes. I would have liked a little more explanation about how the powers worked (particularly in regards to Mami whose power seemed to be "creation/control of thread" but also "summon big guns" for some reason) but that's a minor gripe. Plan to watch the movies at a later date.

Had a dark one last night. I was an ex-guardsman, soldier, or investigator for some empire and I was coming home to figure out what to do with my life. Unfortunately home turned out to be a dark, polluted, plague-addled city like Dunwall from Dishonored, even down to the 33% death rate from the plague and the government just welding houses and apartments containing the infected (who would shamble around and decay in their feet) shut. So I return and immediately make friends with some street urchins who introduce me to their family. I join them selling their wares in the shitty market outside befor they invite me to stay with them. We squeeze through an unsecured doggie door in a nearby closed "infected" building and go upstairs to apartment 208, which is just a single room that they all just have to lay down flat in for everyone to fit. Across the hall in 209 you can even hear some infected banging around so they never get good sleep. So I round up the family and tell them to follow me and take them to the rich sector of town which doesn't look much better. I take them into one of the unused high rises and force my my into the penthouse apartment using my credentials. Inside there's a lot of really nice modern furniture, good food laid out for us, new appliances, and for some reason, a Prius sitting in the living room, which at least 10 sets of keys for it lying in various areas of the house. We make ourselves at home. Unfortunately good things can't last and the corrupt government immediately finds us and shines a spotlight on us that melts the entire family's flesh and immediately kills them, but I escape and run through the city streets. The dream becomes disjointed here but I think I tried to jump off a building but the dream treated it as a bad ending and let me restart from earlier. In the end I visited a Japanese-looking temple, waited for their traditional ceremony (letting a dog eat the first snocone of the year) to end, and then talked to the shrine maiden about appealing to the gods to remove the plague from the city. She agreed and took me to the temple to pray to the gods. But then we didn't do that she just fucked me silly instead and I woke up. Sorry not-Dunwall, my dick is more important.

this is cool