Other than the noticeable increase of commits to this site, nothing really interesting happened. After watching almost 30 movies in four weeks it was time to switch to series for another four weeks.

Warning: SPOILERS !!!!

Soy Wars - The Mandalorian

This was the first show I dived myself into. Even though it's been out since november or what I didn't care, because I haven't considered it worthy of a watch. However, it turned out to be much better than Soy wars 7, 8 and 9 combined, but from times to times it has the tendency to jump on the nostalgia bandwagon with those references to the old trilogy. Baby Yoda looked like a McDonald's toy, the one that comes with a Happy Meal menu. Through the series I couldn't help but wonder about one thing that I only realized while watching The Mandalorian: if you take out the force and jedis out of the Star Wars, what makes its universe unique? I couldn't find an answer to this question, partly because of this I think the show is generally uninteresting. Except for the action scenes, those were always badass. It also felt like The Mandalorian was trying to pick up a storyline similar to Firefly or Cowboy Bebop.

Z Nation

This one took most time of the four weeks.

When I saw a scene from the pilot episode where a baby zombie was eating a soldier I knew I must watch this show. And so I did, I watched the whole season 1 in one day back in the summer of 2015 (I had nothing to do at that time). I kind of enjoyed it and thought it's worth a rewatch.

Season 1

Best quote of the whole series

The premise of Z Nation is very simple: a man named Murphy has been given an experimental vaccine, but during the procedure he was bitten by zombies and didn't turn. Because of this, it becomes imperative to escort Murphy from the east coast to a lab in California, where they can create cure for the zombie virus using his blood. The zombie virus of Z Nation is unlike those in other movies or shows: everything and everyone is infected; they turn into zombies when they die.

The man who escorted him to a survivor camp died in the first episode (eaten by the said baby zombie). Fortunately, a former guard member Garnett and his merry band of survivors agree to complete the original mission and they proceed to travel through 'Murica, slaying zombies and humans alike. During their travel Murphy slowly realizes that zombies won't attack him, what's more they even obey his commands. The journey of survivors is closely watched by Citizen Z, a nerd guy who was left all alone on an NSA base somewhere near the north pole. The season ends with a cliffhanger: Murphy refused to be the guinea pig of a pseudo-scientist and skipped the decontamination process while escaping the lab they were staying in. Because of this, missiles have been launched to prevent any contamination from spreading. As a bonus, Citizen Z was targeted too.

The first season had no plot complications until the end, an element that I somehow miss from the upcoming episodes. The main enemies were still the zombies, but as the show progresses it becomes more and more evident that humans are as much dangerous as the Zs, if not more. Except for some silly episodes, like the one with zombie worshipping idiots and the one with the Russian astronaut I think this was the best season so far.

 

Season 2

Warren: Really?
Addy: No. I went to art school.

Shit's about to get real in this season: somehow Murphy and the team managed to get away from the nuclear blast, even Citizen Z survived thanks to the base defenses as a SAM took out the nuke in the last moment, however the base was damaged from the shockwave. Murphy goes into hiding, but not for long as people all around the country want to capture Murphy after Citizen Z announced a bounty on him. A Murphy free-for-all kind of street war erupts between different gangs. Vasquez, a real tough guy joins the team, while Mack is bitten by Zs and then mercied by his sweetheart. Murphy joins the team again and they set off once more to California. Meanwhile, Citizen Z has its problems too, because the zombies from the crashed plane decided to go out for fresh air after jerking off inside the plane for almost a year. Not only his base is wrecked, but now he must hunt zombies all day.

Season 2 surpasses the preceding one in the wtf factor when Murphy's baby is born. Just when I thought the show couldn't get more lame, Murphy got rid of the baby (or so I thought), but in turn the half-zombie half-human (so called blend) Cassandra was finally killed by 10K. The team continues their adventures, which includes visiting a Z-weed farm, a zombie-collecting maniac and Roswell. The latter was probably a joke episode; it had many references to other movies and overall felt alien compared to other episodes.

The main enemies of this season are The Zeros, a spic cartel with medieval habits led by their "queen", La Reina (which is basically the same). The team finally meets them near the end of the season, but they wreck them as if nothing. The cartel's final boss, Escorpion has his duel with Vasquez, loses and is thrown into a tunnel full of zombies.

In one of the last episodes we get to know some background about the team members and what they were doing when shit hit the fan.

The team finally reaches the target destination, after some obligatory bar shooting they hand over Murphy to the captain of a submarine along with a wounded 10K. Then the Zeros arrive for a round 2, in the shooting La Reina is killed by the suddenly arriving Escorpion. It is never explained how could he escape from that situation. Escorpion joins them as they head toward the coast, where they see the submarine Murphy and 10K was on caught fire and is sinking. A second later they are captured by a chink ambush party.

Still a solid season, but major bullshit parts like Murphy biting people or the baby made me reconsider whether I really want to continue watching this show. Because it's downhill from here.

 

Season 3

The season starts with a flashback double episode set in the second season, back when Murphy still had the baby. The main reason for this was to introduce the ebin villain, The Man, who is a one-man army himself. Oh, and to introduce Red, 10K's future gf. Speaking of girlfriends, Citizen Z also got an azn eskimo one for free, the one that saved him from freezing to death.

Murphy didn't like the idea of being a guinea pig this time for billionaires from the island Zona, so he bit a few people and escaped. Determined to "cure" the zombie virus he builds up his base in Spokane and with the help of Dr. Merch starts to create a blend army. 

Meanwhile, the chink squad joined forces with our protagonists but not for long, because the Chinese grunts were killed by their own weapons very soon. Warren's team got more international when Sun Mei decided to follow them.

In almost every episode the protagonists' team is split up: Doc had two episodes exclusively focusing on him, the asylum one and the one with the BDSM "angels". 10K had an episode where he just ran away from Murphy's henchman, hallucinating about Red. Thanks to being bit by Murphy, his appearance in this season added nothing of value, because half the time he was running away, the other half time he was sick and dying. Warren killed Vasquez, who lost its mind and believed himself to be the real Escorpion, because he killed the realer Escorpion. Doc and Addy stop by to check out a presidential campaign in an absolutely unnecessary episode mocking the elections of 2016. Later, Addy had an epic duel with The Man, where the latter could prove he is truly the man of terror.

In the final episode, CZ leaves her pregnant girlfriend and gets on a plane to deliver a message about Lucy's whereabouts to Operation Bite Mark (wasn't worth it imo). Warren and her fellas team up with Murphy to intercept The Man who is about to deliver Lucy to Zona. 10K dies and is resurrected, Warren and Murphy get shot, Addy jumps off the cliff with The Man and Lucy, while Doc gets away with a hard punch. And ladies and gentlemen, this was season 3.

Subtitles were an extra pain in the ass, because no subtitles could match the FPS of the files I have. This means I had to adjust the timing pretty much every minute, sometimes I got tired of it and turned off subtitles. My English is not that bad, but there are always words I can't understand.

Season 4

Season 4 is when this series started to become rather bad and boring: the whole "Zona" concept is destroyed within the very first two episodes. Warren is haunted by weird dreams and spends the most of the season on robot pilot mode. Addy, Sun Mei and Red disappear for this season and Sarge takes their place. The reunited team wanders across the US and nothing interesting happens. But at least Lucy is gone, couldn't stand that character.

Season 5

Every season the zombies got an upgrade: there were blasters in S2, blends in S3, mad Zs in S4. For the last season some idiot thought it would make a nice story if they make the zombies talk - largely contributing to the lameness of this season. There was a change in cast: 10K got reunited with Red, but the cutie Sarge had to go. Sun Mei and Addy appeared too after being on hiatus since S4. As a new regular we got that faggot George, contributing nothing of value to the show. The antagonist - the mannequin-faced woman and her bitchboy - were beyond retarded. I can't remember a single episode that was entertaining.

 

WITCH

Yet another childhood favorite, the last time I rewatched this it was 2015 yet I forgot so much it felt as if I had never seen this. The story is fairly simple: five girls have been chosen to fight the EvilTM with elements. Irma, Taranee, Cornelia and Hay Lin control water, fire, nature and wind, respectively. Will, the fifth girl possesses the heart of Kandrakar, which turns them into fairy-like Mahou Shoujos. The series has a faint sarcastic atmosphere that makes it really enjoyable, I'm thinking of Irma and Blunk's comments. It was also funny to watch that during fights the creators paid extra attention not to kill or even seriously injur any character.

The second season got more serious (for a children's cartoon) and comedy scenes became fewer. Also, the Hungarian dub, at least on Valdik's release - dropped in quality as well, having many untranslated English phrases, e.g. "Sand Pit" or "Guardians". The worst of it, these were used inconsistently, i.e. sometimes the English, sometimes the Hungarian variants were used, often in the same episode as if nobody checked the script before handing it to the voice actors.

I was curious what are other people's opinions about this series, so I searched the /co/ archives and what I found genuinely surprised me: it seems WITCH is such a controversial topic that even mentioning it erupts in an autistic flame war. On the other hand, I should've checked other forums as well, hovewer I don't know any places worth a check.

An interesting thing to point out are the openings: Valdik's release contains at least eight audio tracks and Hungarian was usually the last, so I had to go through all of them. I noticed that the Italian dub had a totally different opening song, which I think suits the show much better. Among the extras was the US version of the OP, not only with a different song, but a totally new animation too - it looks and sounds more badass (for a children's cartoon), no wonder it was created for the US audience.

And yes, this is a live test of the file browser video handling capabilities

 

Road to Avonlea

I can't remember what made me watch this lovely show, but I did not regret doing so. By "modern" standards this show is considered boring: after all, it doesn't have superheroes, evil masterminds and the likes. Set in the beginning of the XX. century, we follow the life of a young girl, Sarah Stanley, who was send to live with her relatives on Prince Edward island. Sarah, being meddlesome and intelligent, naturally gets involved in all kind of incidents with the locals. The townsfolk of Avonlea lead a simple farmer life; their biggest problems include contagious diseases and gossip, to name a few.

The characters, the setting and the music make Road to Avonlea a cozy, charming series. It also made me wish I could live a simpler life and not grind gdb for eight hours a day.

 

BTW It's my birthday today I finished writing this long post.

Shows I had no time for

I intend to watch these some time after I finished my (hopefully only) 2 week gayming marathon.

  • Sherlock
  • Ed, Edd and Eddy