I hadn't heard that take before, but I know a metric **** tonne of anime get made with the intention of selling physical merchandise (not media, but merchandise like figurines, keychains, body pillows, etc.) because the profit margins for the anime itself and its DVD/Blu-Ray/whatever release is so low (I think sometimes even it costs money to produce).

I'm fairly certain that product placement is a rarity in anime, but tie-ins with products are, to my understanding, more rampant than what we see in the states with video games and movies being plastered on every snack food, cereal box, soda can, etc.. It's why even the extremely artsy productions (as a not-so-random example: Eva) will find themselves on all sorts of odd products (shaving razors, cars, bowling alleys, apartments, canned bread, etc.)

The only other thing I know about anime production is what production committees actually are, as a thing. It's a risk-management system whereby several different companies -- the television channels which will be airing the show, the animation company itself, the bands whose work will become the OPs and EDs, the DVD distribution company, and others -- all invest in the project with the intent that, if the show becomes a flop, the actual hit any ONE company takes from it will be fairly small because it's so spread out. I think this is also why profit margins are so low in anime, because each company involved in this committee is taking part of the profits as part of the return on their investment.

So, like, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a lot of anime is made to promote the original manga, but what little I've heard favors it being made to sell [Spaceballs]moichendizing[/Spaceballs].

oh yeah, property licensing is huuuuuge in japan. Smear those characters on everything.
There's a relevant video I can link if anyone is curious. It's not informative, just relevant.


Add the localization companies getting involved now.
Which... worries me.

Hey, look what I just found (mostly) by accident: https://store.crunchyroll.com/collectio ... va-blu-ray

Turns out season one of Konosuba if finally being released late May (for now; I'm not holding any future release date as solid info until the zombie apocalypse is over).

I said mostly by accident because I was probably given the ad specifically because I was watching Konosuba, and only checked it out because I was curious whether the Konosuba girls would be in there.

Speaking of, it's taking a few episodes for me to really start getting the "It's Always Sunny in Isekai" vibe that you described it as before, but I can't say that I'm actually enjoying it so far. I mean, it has made me laugh, but most of it's attempts just make me grimace. I'm trying to refrain myself from passing judgement too early, so I'll try to shut up about it for now.

Meanwhile I am absolutely LOVING every episode of Dennou Coil so far. The amount of subtle detail in that show is astounding.

I wanted to send all of you my love again in this trying time.

My anxiety over this zombie apocalypse has dropped significantly in the past two weeks, to the point where I'm actually forgetting to check the news about it. In part that's because stay-at-home orders got issued for my county (recently extended!) and my mother's county, and also in part because I'm working so little now that I'm spending most of my time at home. Because I stockpiled a bit before this even Italy got overwhelmed, I've only left my home 4 times in the last two weeks, for work, and I've spent most of my time watching anime or playing games.

I hope everyone else is holding out well.

So, um, news. As of yesterday, I am not going in to work for the foreseeable future. I will be paid 40 hours a week, and will at some point be recompensated for the PTO I was forced to use, though I'm not sure that I can even log in to the site to confirm that if I'm not on company computers.

How it's apparently going to work is thus: my managers put me in a system-wide "flex pool" -- this is necessary to ensure my salary and seems to be part of the process to give us back our lost PTO. This flex pool is supposed to be so that the company (Baylor Scott & White which services all of North Texas and probably beyond) can redirect their employees to other locations as needed, however in my case there are a few caveats. Firstly, this is a system-wide thing they're doing to pay the employees who are losing hours due to canceled appointments, especially now that elective surgeries have been cancelled across the state (IIRC, but if I'm wrong that is at least true for the entire city of Dallas), so there are likely a glut of people in that pool right now and we haven't hit a peak of cases where they are needed. Secondly, I am an X-ray tech without further training (e.g. in MRI), which is highly unlikely to be in demand even as local cases reach their peak. Lastly, I am apparently on an "exempt" list due to my allergic asthma -- when I discussed with my manager why I initially did not want to sign up for this flex pool I mentioned that as one reason -- and I probably won't be called on at all since this is a respiratory illness and I have a pre-existing respiratory condition.

Now, due to my privileged circumstance, I didn't even need to have income for some time, but for some unknown number of weeks now, I'm not going to be working. My personal theory is that after some months, but before a vaccine is widely available, we should be far enough past the peak that people should be called back in to work.

--------

Else-wise, I want to say just a few words about Konosuba. I've finished the first season (not including the OVA counted as episode 11) and feel I've finally seen enough of it to give it a fair shake.

I think I was just expecting too much, honestly. It wasn't bad, but with all the hype since I first heard about it, I had become convinced that it was a parody of the isekai genre, and that is not at all the impression it left me across that first season. I remember first hearing about it before it blew up (I probably didn't even know what an isekai was back then), and I had gotten the impression that it was a more down-to-earth slice-of-life-in-fantasy-land given how the first episode focuses on the main characters needing to honestly work up from the bottom of the food chain instead of being handed literally anything on a silver platter, and for the first few episodes that was the impression I was getting before it had introduced the whole cast.

Once it got into the swing of "It's Always Sunny in Isekai" (as Barinellos put it), it hit its stride but I wasn't really wanting to follow along. I would neither call the show boring nor aggravating, but the only show I can think of where I've enjoyed having a cast of only despicable characters has been Breaking Bad. I almost never laughed at any of Konosuba's jokes, and the biggest laughs it got out of me were from the dad jokes:
"Kazuma! Kazuma!"
"I'm Kazuma."
"We should do this quest!"
*10 seconds later*
"Kazuma! Kazuma!"
"Yes, I am Kazuma."

I have enjoyed "comedy of errors" types of comedy, but I think all of those have been "good" characters acting with the best of intentions, rather than selfish characters failing in comedic ways -- I say "I think" because the only example I can bring to mind was a pony fanfic. The brand of comedy that Konosuba serves tends to play on anime tropes that I really find aggravating in the first place, like awkward bath scenes or male leads "accidentally" ending up with panties in their hands. I also could not help but notice how every female character with even an ounce of fat on their chest (and most are well-endowed) have that GAINAX BOUNCE to them, in addition to a lot of really, really unnecessary male-gaze camera shots. I remember once scene in particular cutting away to a woman's breasts first before zooming out to show our main cast walking up to her, for no real reason because neither is she a new character nor do any of the main cast start ogling her.

Like I said, I think I just went in expecting too much. It's simply a comedy isekai and I expected a lot more.

Oh, and since I feel it's appropriate, my tier list would be: Darkness>Megumin>>>>>>>>Aqua. My favorite character was actually the Dullahan knight evil guy. Besides having a cool manner of fighting (ignoring the Eye of Saruman reference), he also seemed to be the most aware of just how awful our main cast is.

Very interesting. Well, keep your body healthy and your mind active, I suppose!

Do you have any specific plans for your time off?

Konosuba, just like AoT, is a show where I didn't really care about for the first season, but really enjoyed the second one.
But with AoT I can at least rationalize it, while Konosuba, I don't really know why. Maybe I just accepted it for what it is? Maybe the quality for some nebulous reason hit better? It felt like exactly the same show, so really, I don't know. I'd expect to get tired of the same comedy routines, but somehow they grew on me instead, episode 8 being the highlight.

I mean, I've been doing it? I thought I had mentioned earlier that I was only going in to work on Monday and Fridays for the last three weeks, which is why I've been on more often, but I keep getting confused which of my friend groups I've told what, so that may have slipped my mind.

I've got some things I would like to get around to -- uploading more of the old Archive to here; painting some of the boxful of mins from the Reaper kickstarter; working through some of the many books I've never read over the years; et cetera -- but it's kind of hard to break out of habit, especially since I haven't had this much free time in a long time.

What I have been doing so far with my time off:

• Playing Persona 4
  
  Theoretically, once I'm "done" with Persona 4 ("done" in quotations because it's a ~80hr game with multiple endings that also apparently changes if you start a new game+), I'll get to some of the rest of my backlog, like finishing Shadow of the Colossus or playing through (most of) the Metal Gear Solid series, though I have a lot of games and tend to get easily sucked in to one or two (the most recent one being Super Mario Maker 2).
  

  ---

• Watching anime that I've been meaning to get to for years
  
  There are other non-anime shows that I may get around to here and there -- HBO put up something like 500 hours of free no-account-needed shows, movies, & documentaries such as The Sopranos, Detective Pikachu, or The Case Against Adnan Syed for now, and I've long been meaning to rewatch Breaking Bad since I own the entire series now -- but I just enjoy the medium so much that I'm drawn to it more than live-action.
  

  ---

• Learning more Japanese
  
  I'm still at a beginner-level, but I'm learning more and more, and it's becoming more and more enjoyable to do so. I've even recently learned of a site where I can watch anime with Japanese subtitles, so I might even be doing that on either some shows I know really well (e.g. Fullmetal Alchemist) or some that aren't on my radar, preferably more grounded, realistic shows so that it's more normal speech and less "anime" speech (e.g. K-On!!).

Some things I expect to be doing in the coming weeks:

• Make my own bread
  
  I need to order or pick up some yeast, but I've been wanting to learn for a while now, and it will be extremely useful/convenient if I do so now. Besides not liking most bread that you can find here in the U.S., I've heard it's actually incredibly easy and I have loads of flour sitting around from when my great aunt would bake.
  

  ---

• Building a PC
  
  Right now, I'm still kind of leery about using the postal system -- both because I've heard anecdotal reports that they're not following guidelines to keep things uncontaminated, and just not wanting to take up space that should be used for delivering essential supplies to the places that need it right now -- so I probably won't be doing this for the next few weeks, but I might depending on how long I'm not working. Several bits of hardware on my laptop are failing, and that's on top of being old enough that I can't even try doing some projects I'd like to (such as record gameplay for a critical analysis video).
  

  ---

• D&D (or, more accurately, Pathfinder)
  
  That friend who has been threatening to run a game since forever ago has suddenly found a lot of extra time on his hands, so he may actually get around to finally running that. Whether we'll be able to play in a way that everyone will be happy with is another matter. One of the hardware failures in my laptop (as mentioned above) is the sound input -- I've been told it just puts out mechanical screeching -- and I know the other players have an expectation of voice chat when I would really prefer not to for personal reasons. I'm also the only one with decent internet and I have no idea how demanding whatever programs we'll end up using are going to be on top of the voice chat.

Since I stocked up a bit before all this started going down, I still have a lot of food that I can work through; I expect to be good for a few more weeks before I need to go out, but I am finding myself craving more of what I would usually eat such as salads (I ran out of leafy greens over a week ago).

with sourdough you don't even need yeast

No, you did. I just thought maybe things would have changed when your schedule changed further, so I thought I'd ask.

Wait, really? I thought even sourdough needed yeast?

I guess it's time to look up recipes and experiment.


I mean, I'm letting myself sleep now but I'm also aware that it's going to be hell readjusting when I start working again. Other than that I don't think there's really any major change. The thing is we're seeing maybe 1/6 of the patients we normally would in our downtown Dallas office and the doctors are each limited to 4-hour blocks a day, so even on the days I was going in, I was doing a whole lot of nothin' anyway (trying to work on my Japanese, but usually getting distracted by reddit and other things).

**** A, you can say that again.

yes and no. sourdough is usually done by just leaving a starter out and then accumulating natural yeast from the air. yeast is involved but you don't have to purchase or add it yourself.

For me, Konosuba will always be the anime of 8-bit Theater, which is pretty much the only other media I've liked with an all-despicable cast (though said webcomic goes much farther with black comedy than Konosuba) and simultaneously a huge point of nostalgia for my early days on the internet.

So... I hope everyone is doing alright in these... interesting times.

Hadoken

I've started making sodabread. That one is actually no yeast involved.

I ended up finding a recipe/step-by-step directions on how to make sourdough without needing your own yeast, so I've started on that, though it should be a week before it's ready for cooking.

Here and there I've been rewatching some early episodes of the old TV show Scrubs as a comfort thing, and I'm wondering if any of you watched it back in the... I guess early aughties? Mostly I don't know how to really judge it and I'm wondering if it was/is an actually good show or whether I just happen to like it a lot because I'm not aware of how bad it is?

My sister was really into it when we lived together, so I ended up seeing some of it. I was never particularly interested, but I didn't think it was bad.

I loved the musical episode they had late in the run, though. That was good stuff.

The writing can be really solid, but it was a while after I came to a conclusion:
The two primary characters are HORRIBLE human beings.
JD and Elliot are genuinely scum.

Everyone else on the show is pretty good.

I loved Scrubs, but never had a chance to watch it all the way to the end.