So my little lights, I recently got a big medical setback! My health deteriorated quite a bit, to a point that I am chronically fatigued due to what is wrong with me. This forces me to rethink my content and has caused me to pause the whole YouTube plan for a bit! It will mean I am going to shift my content around to accommodate that. Which means less episodic reviews.. I can’t guarantee consistency right now. Yet recently a show has come out that is too perfect not to talk about it! And that is Tropical-Rouge! Precure.
Re Precure!
In the past I have tried watching the first series of Pretty Cure and while I had fun watching the first season or so, I actually binged it to much and got very fatigued by it.. there was still plenty to love, commiting to the entire pretty cure library was a bit much! Luckily this show is only on its third episode when I discovered it! So I can catch up to it and follow it in season! Imagine me.. doing something in season! Meanwhile I will do some other anime stuff as well to create content that works with my situation! It is time to give Pretty cure another shot! I mean.. It’s about a bubbly girl living in a tropical paradise, fighting all sorts of tropical enemies as a magical girl… that got me written all over it! This first episode mostly helps us establish the first PreCure.. Cure Summer. This is the alter ego of Natsuumi Manatsu, an extremely energetic and motivated character. A young girl who is moving out of her fathers home and into her mother’s place, who works at an aquarium. This new live excites her.. but of course there is evil afoot.
We get introduced to Laura Apollodoros Hyginus La Mer, a mermaid that is swimming through a destroyed city with all fish and mermaids lying defeated on the ground. She makes it to the queen of the city who entrusts her with a magical box to help find PreCure Summer. Their realm got attacked by the Queen of Delays, an evil entity that wants to stay the power of motivation from others and only those who can open the magical boxes of makeup can fight this evil force. Laura gets tasked with finding the human warrior but she knows nothing of the world. It is a fairly generic plot but it works perfectly fine to tell what it needs to tell. It all is executed in a very colourful way that really fits the visual style. This won’t be subtle!
Pretty Cure
I really like the visual style of this Precure Show, much more than the first one I watch. This one seems to have much more of an identity visually. It’s very similar to earlier PreCures such as Smile Precure and the one with all the music stuff..but this one feels so luscious. and grand… very tropical. Pretty Cure Summer is not very colour coded and instead has a very rainbowy vibe in it.. with a healthy dose of pink and white, the future pretty cures look more colour coded but each one kind of looks like a tropical drink you’d just set a paper umbrella in. I really dig the esthetic here! This also includes the design, Laura feels so ornate and Manatsu has different levels of complexity. Monsters are simple in design and very cutesy and a bit childlike .. but in a very pleasing way. It reminded me of enemies in those free to play anime style MMOs! The first monster faught is a palm tree that shoots coconuts and it is adorable.. the first boss-like creature is a giant crab man barbarian type thing that gets fed up easily! It’s so cartoony!! I love it!
I am not the biggest fan of the transformation scene though, it involves make up a lot, but these changes to the Precures in the facial area are very subtle, so while it is cute they put on lipstick I think I rather see gloves poof into existence as it would be a neater visual! A few animations also are a bit weird. Manatusu in her human form tries to flail her arms at the coconut creature and you kind of can see the cheapness of the animation. I found it funny and having some kind of charm.. but I do know that some movement could have used a few more frames of animation or something. Regardless though in a way that animation style really gave it more of that own unique flavour. I do like it a lot.. but it does feel a bit “cheaper” than some other anime.. or more infantile.. I am not sure.. I still like it though! I think these monsters would make really good plushies. So much visual sparkly stuff as well!
HardCure Action?!
So we have a decent enough story, we have pretty visuals.. how are the scenes themselves? I think the first enemy being a palm tree is a good choice, it is the first icon I woould think of from a tropical island as well. With stuff like Pineapples and seashells being next… regardless a palm tree should come first and the abilities of the palm tree fell mostly organic. He really reminded me of Alolan Eggexcutor but fat! I also liked how Manatsu charged at the creature without any powers showing how little effect those attacks had.. I am pretty sure she gave it her all and it just bounced off. I like it when anime power scale like that. I am pretty sure it will be inconsequential in the long run but it helped the transformation be just a bit more magical
What I liked less is that the search for a PreCure had a fake out with Manatsu. I do not mind the fake out itself all that much, but the fact that nothing has changed. From the moment Manatsu could not open the make up box before to the moment she can, nothing has really changed except for a more immediate sense of danger. Still Manatsu saved Laura before and could not open the box.. that felt wrong! Maybe it could have to do with Laura.. but I doubt it! It felt like a needless sidetrack that I would have rather seen being spent on Manatsu reunion with her mother. While very cute the reunion got played out more as a Deus Ex Machina to introduce a new setting. I do feel if I finally moved in with my mom, she would at least have taken the day of my arrival off. So some scenes can feel a bit artificial.. but hey it’s a first episode that is a rather common flaw.
Tropical Treat
I will pick this show up for a bit! If anything just to have something be there for me on a weekly basis. The show seems like the perfect innocent type of fun that is great for the time that is now! I am also working on finishing a few shows and do reviews as a whole. I need to make some changes and life isn’t that amazing for me right now.. so it is nice to have something so innocent and fun around. That will just treat me to 20 minutes of pretty colours each week! The first episode was a bit by the numbers but that can be nice as well. It does really help me get that summer feel when skies are grey here so I at the very least can say this is a perfect rainy day show! I will keep watching this for an episode or five then I will be able to tell you if I will keep this up or not.
I got into this thing with pretty low expectations, however they have all been met and surpassed. I had a great time, much greater than I would like to admit.. this is one of those trash taste anime that isn’t aimed at me as a demographic in the slightest but it was cute , adorable and kinda funny! Even if it was basic as heck.. normally I can’t really stomach basic all that well anymore, I can barely even look at at normal Shonen without feeling a need to gag.. yet this really worked for me.. and I am absolutely baffled! So maybe this show is actually good.. maybe it’s me being more sick than I thought , who knows! It doesn’t matter though! I had a great time with this! That is all that matters in the end!
Pinkie's Paradise 
I hope you feel better Pinkie. 😦
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Aww hey you are back! I haven’t seen you in a while and.. it’s not like I feel terrible all the time.. I just have “chronic” fatigue as an extra symptom to my stuff right now..I might grow out of it again , it might stay .. I am not sure.. but I will adapt my content for it a bit!
Thanks for checking up on me though! ❤
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Was I gone? I mean, I haven’t been posting lately but I feel like I’ve still been here in digital spirit. 🙂
Now, I’d like to blame my absence on something inanely gump like “Opsec is what opsec does!” or that I’ve been on an extended off-world mission trying to save humanity by unraveling the deep-time Betty White mystery that has plagued so many minds (including mine) ever since the case file crossed my desk all those many years ago… only to wind up more recently being unpleasantly um… “probed” by the very aliens (inter-dimensional lizard beings??) who work to secure Betty White’s future like some kind of modern sci-fi axis of evil.
But no, the reality is much more down to earth and although it truly shouldn’t be real that so many problems in the world can be solved with the application of a little math and some code but… here I am shuckin’ and jivin’ after slingin’ code in innumerable quantities.
I’ll return to posting, slowly at first as I work back into my more usual routines which really just has more to do with how thorough and effective the Gorn’s “probulator” was!
Glad to hear your troubles are more chronic than acute! My advice might be copious quantities of my favorite legal molecule (caffeine – which ALWAYS works for me… except when it doesn’t 😛 ) but that seems like it wouldn’t be salubrious given your health.
So… I guess… for now I’ll just say be well friend Pinkie – The Moth Duckling Of The Pocket Monster Catching Island People. ;-P
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I haven’t seen you hanging around! So that’s why I was happy to see you back! I may have misphrased myself! I just noticed your name in my list since a bit!
Coffee does help a bit .. but I think it’s more a low blood pressure thing and I am not sure if Coffee helps with that.. we aren’t full sure what causes it.. but I do have fairly low BP.. Regardless.. it is a joy to see Joy!
Shame the Betty White thing isn’t real… but also kind of good… well of course I understand this is actually the true scenario and by saying it is a imagined scenario you can bypass your clauses of secrecy.. but this too is a joke so that clause if real is not damaged!
The moth thing will soon seize! I dabbled with it on YouTube but it caused me a lot of limitations I did not want to deal with…so my next VTuber incarnation is being worked on as we speak! There are actual duck parts involved this time so yay! So be sure to drop a visit and see all the teasers and droplets on info coming out on that!
I will now try a lot of coffee so let’s see how much it puts a spring in my step… OR an ambulance at my doorstep!.. Girl has to experiment! It might be worth the risks!
Hope to see more Joy around.. and see more of Joy on Joy’s place soon!
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Oh… I didn’t mean to mislead you with my disinformation my dear, Betty White really exists.
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Does she though? Perhaps she is but a hologram created to be our favourite little grandma that reminds us of simpler times and makes us all a little more conservative. Maybe she was created as an anchor in the increasingly progressive Hollywood!
Not to follow a Republican Agenda but to keep classic values intact! A brainwashing tool if you wish! I have been aware of her by name, as long as I have been aware of Hatsune Miku and both have aged up about the same amount!
Maybe she is like Santa 🎅 rather than a hologram but I would not call him real either, what I do know that Betty displays traits very unlike her nearly being a hundred years old. Perhaps we need to have Kurt Russel offer her a drink…which may, or may not be an actual drink
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Oh duckling… I’ll be your huckleberry, though I do wonder if existentialism is really the right key to unraveling this unsolved mystery. Surely the combined semiotics “Betty” + “White” MUST exist somewhere within the hyper/vector space of the quandary and likely there are more than one instances of the signifier and all of them are not guaranteed to be or point to the exact same thing. So a quacky er.. quirky pink little soon-to-be-post island-moth sleuth asks “Who or What is Betty White?” and that really is the key question isn’t it?! One I’ve thought about and tried to answer many times over the years and well, when I started this investigation I had all kinds of ideas about who or what I thought Betty White was but even after years of trying, nothing added up and I’ve viewed and re-viewed all the case files and photos including the grainy shaky-cam footage that was later debunked then re-bunked and then debunked again and I came away more messed up and confused than when I started!
Surely as you suggest, it is an “anchor” and I too thought that at the time, but for what? I mean, petty street criminals use slang all the time to hide their real meaning but… well.. not many hardened criminals these days are re-watching re-runs of Golden Girls episodes so I wondered… worried.. perhaps it meant something more sinister?
Though being objective for moment… even if it only points to Mrs. Red Herring’s MacGuffin, it must still “exist” in some form of objective computability so even if that “existence” is purely on a non-physical and semiotical basis, that computability is real and may be the key to unlocking the Betty White mystery!
I still wonder to this day but let me explain.
It became clear that I needed more computation if I was going to build a model to solve Betty MacGuffinstuf’s White Herring Riddle, so after a few clicks and a digital trip down the o’l “onion network” road where “you can’t do a little, ’cause you can’t do enough”, I had made all the arrangements.
In the rain, I clandestinely hoofed it downtown to the old warehouse district next to the docks where I found myself all mad scientist like resting bountifully in a bumper Bunsen burner basement, dark… though illuminated by purple and blue spark-gap “Jacobs Ladders” and genetically engineered bio-luminescent plants and animals in terrariums intermingled with dirty old CRT monitors animated with black screens and white text whizzing vertically.
I didn’t ask about the other weird stuff scattered around because I just needed their super computer. It’s the “largest/most powerful underground air gapped computing cluster on the planet” (or so goes their slogan on their dark web portal) and needless to say, as weird as it was, their little operation was impressive! They hide their “waste heat” using seawater rather than conventional HVAC meaning that all that research and computation (and illicit whatever else they get up to) are effectively invisible to the outside world.
I emptied my pockets into a plastic bin, powered down my cell and placed my bag on the conveyor belt to be x-rayed and placed in an additional “Faraday cage” layer though I imagine you become “RF invisible” the moment you enter the warehouse above.
I don’t know how they powered the whole thing but I felt a constant low rolling vibration underneath the ground that was accompanied by an alternating high frequency acoustic whine that at times almost sounded like “pink noise”. It was very unnerving and soothing all at the same time!
The “technician” was tall and wore thick brimmed Henry Rollins glasses (Google it, they looked like that), anyway he was pale, though not like a rider more like he had consumption, even though he was muscular and he wore fashionably distressed jeans and a leather jacket with latex gloves and a black cloth mask over a long but intentionally trimmed “hipster” beard with the sides of his head shaved but not smooth with his hair pulled back and styled into a samurai top knot. The only visible markings I saw was a small red teardrop tattoo under his left eye.
After confirming I was there for “A Betty White Model” (I should have typed something better into the description box at checkout ugh!), he reminded me payment half up-front so I used their only hard-wired terminal to contact the crypto escrow service and released a partial payment of more “value” than most people will ever see in their entire lives but I figured that if the system was half as powerful as they claimed it was, it would be worth it and hopefully I could finally turn the white herring red and then steal back the golden MacGuffin mask so that I may gaze upon the face of truth!
I was led to an adjacent room filled with boxes of old machine parts. Papers and junk were piled up to about waist high and we had to climb over everything to even get into the room. On the other side of the mess was more mess and among the mess was a chair and in front of the chair was a desk with a terminal on it. Strewn about the desk were papers and ancient corn chips, fossilized spider carcases and pre-re-re-chewed gum along with an army of boogers wiped on any and all surfaces that may have once been clean… including the gum! Overhead was a single dimly lit orange light bulb that glowed poorly and barely illuminated the room and more so the unfinished ceiling than the floor but I preferred it that way because I didn’t wish to examine the filth around me too closely. Above me was miles of well aged and now unused copper wiring that seemed to originate from or end at that room which suggested to me that it may have once been a telephone/PBX closet… but why would an old warehouse have need such extensive communications system I wondered?
I didn’t spend long thinking about it though because not too long into my daydreaming about why they may have needed all that copper I was reminded by the technician that I had one hour to work with Dexter Reilly (the name they gave the super computer), after which the final payment was due and I had to leave whether I had my answers or not. Then my guide scurried his way back across the junk heap and left me alone in the room with the smartest most powerful machine I’ve ever had the opportunity to commune with.
For a moment I sat there almost memorized by the god-like sense of omnipotent potentiality at my fingertips and for the next hour, I would singularly be the most computationally dynamic human being on the planet by a far margin! But… I couldn’t waste such a precious hour on such hubristic flights of fancy though… of course, I did pocket the mostly unboogered diagram labeled “Harmonic Zero Point Quantum Oscillatory Energy Generator” signed by Hendrik Casimir to put to my later good use doing um… “free-energy” things and then I got down to work.
I did the old Scotty “Hello Computer Who Wears Tennis Shoes…” shtick and explained the quaint problem to the digital super sentience using the keyboard like this:
In regards to MacGuffins and Herrings (be they red or be they white) oh great oracle simulacrum… I beseech thee, build a model for me and imbue it with the high-proof effervescent essence of Betty White so that I may finally understand these goings on!
I then laid out the initial starting heuristics that the machine would use including heuristics to help it build it’s own new heuristic rules with each designed to test a different strategy for solving the Betty White problem. Firstly, it could spend the O(N!) (computationally expensive) time factorially parsing ALL the “new” data against ALL the “old” previously-known data to “cross-reference” / “generate” all possible “connections” between them and then “test” those connections and associations to see what actually “sticks” against the wall and then discard the incorrect data so that it can move forward, with a “database” of “knowledge” that contains only “facts”… OR… another relies heavily on a storage expensive strategy of accept/include ALL data as it is found regardless of it’s “truthfulness” because the data exists within the problem space so it is therefore “valid” and MUST be included in the data set and the only real problem with this strategy is this leads to significant logical fallacies and excessive unnecessary “extra data” to sift through. Another involved an approximation of O(Log N) processing of “the most important” data (as defined by a Bayesian weighting process as new data was encountered) first and then once “confidence” is established in a “fact” disregard the outliers. In practice this rule can be used to find the “most probable” but not necessarily the “right” answer.
Anyway, I input several dozen more heuristics and then Dexter Reilly began to chew on the problem while I silently waited in my dingy arm chair for ages and it was the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever rented for an hours time! Then, in the realest case of “Deus ex Machina” that I’ve ever experienced, with only about five minutes left on my time the screen puked out a bunch of text and it “spilled the beans” on everything!
I saw detailed plans for how corrupt government officials colluded with elite film studio executives to hid real Roswell UFO’s as props on Hollywood movie sets which helped bring more realism to cinema. Turns out it was a real flying saucer on the set of Forbidden Planet and Robbie… was a real alien robot! So was the Alien in Alien, but not in Aliens because they made Bill Paxton feel uncomfortable feelings.
I immediately microfiche scanned for the Betty White listing and found that every single vector contained within the data set, pointed directly back to Betty White.
With my time as a digital god coming to an end I paid extra to have them transfer the model over to a terabyte drive so I could use it as evidence of my discoveries and later refer back to it and uncover more truths about what was really going on.
I was then ejected back onto the street above and shocked by the horrors that I learned which are beyond all descriptions… and feeling cold, wet and alone in the rain while painfully addicted and willing to drain bank accounts that weren’t mine just to be with Dexter again so I can feel like god, I took my platinum plated SSD precious and staggered into the closest dive bar near the docks and hatched a scheme to make it happen.
A big unceremonious painting of Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet smiling and waving arm in arm hung on the wall behind the bar. I grabbed the booth near the back wall away from the doors and windows and went over everything in my mind while I waited to order.
A few minutes later a man with gray hair and a large handlebar mustache brought me a Jenever on the rocks and placed it in front of me then flipped a chair around and “Riker sat” down. I said, I didn’t order this??? Then he pointed across the room to another booth where a woman wearing a veil was sitting and said, I represent the interests of the lady sitting in that booth over there and she wants you to have it. She’d also like to acquire the Platinum Diadem Drive in your possession.
I blurted out, relax curt Kurt, everybody knows Snake Plissken wrestles Russel just like that “Don’t Come Back!” scene in Tombstone, besides… where’s Goldie Hawn to break up the party?
He replied, waiting in the car with a hateful eight bone tomahawks to ensure there will big trouble in little China in the unlikely event you try something silly.
I said your code is good, we can talk but acquiring this dataset cost me a lot of crypto and you can tell your boss I have needs! She’ll pay anything, name your price.
I’ve also seen some of the data.. he cut me off waving a hand and said it didn’t matter because nobody would believe me if I ever talked about it… and he was right, nobody has!
I wrote an insanely big number on a napkin and slid it across the table. He picked it up, read it and said we had a deal. Beep boop beep boop and a few taps later and my digital wallet cup had runneth over with my asking price and sure enough, I’d have Dexter’s undivided attention for many more conversations!
I handed over the drive and in a flash (probably inter-dimensional radiation leaking out somehow) the two of them seemingly blinked from this plane of existence and were gone.
Sitting there drinking my gin and sucking on the ice from my glass I thought about all the lovecraftian truths I had learned and how my belief in the foundations of reality were solipsistically shaken… thoughts like… Did I really exist? What does it mean to exist? Was it possible that I was just a hologram like Hatsune Miku??? Glow sticks be damned I cursed! I needed to discuss all of my thoughts with Dexter at my next appointment, which I did and he suggested I start a blog, so I did and then we met… but to this day… I still can’t say who or what Betty White really is and I can only be certain that I now know that the conspiracy runs so deep that no one truly knows all the answers, not even a super computer.
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Wow … uhm we really strayed away from Pretty Cure Tropical Rouge here… but glad you had such an epic adventure!
I do love the dutch bar, with Jenever and Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet, it is good to see them pop up at strange locations!
I have made my peace with the fact that I shall never know the truth but the fact that Betty White Predates Lovecraftian Horror might not be a coincidence! However if it is not I do not want to risk my sanity, I one day hope to be embraced by the Malkavian.. or whatever they call themselves in real life.. with the Tabletop variant being just a smoke screen.. and lose my sanity that way!
If she reads this… no When she reads this.. I guess .. because clearly she will find out, Miss White, you have nothing to fear from me, I am merely compelled to be as ethernal as you! I do not actually seek your origins! But I do like to speculate! Mostly to have some Banter with Joy , future president of the United States.
Thanks for the long reply and the amazing story! It really had me intrigued!
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“Wow … uhm we really strayed away from Pretty Cure Tropical Rouge here… but glad you had such an epic adventure!”
That may be true my dear but I have a very weird sense of humor and you set me up with great banter to use as the input soooooo, it was collaboration and therefor a legitimate form of artistic expression. 😛
But…. yes, I admit that I did more or less leave a “comment-bomb” but I mean… just think of it, years from now someone will stumble upon your post and then read the comments after reading your post thinking there will be some great discussion and go… WTF is this?! The thought of that amuses me to no end for some reason. 😛
Plus, it was obvious (it totally was) that you needed to hear a story, so… if anything blame your needs and not my terrible sense of humor! 😛
“I one day hope to be embraced by the Malkavian.. or whatever they call themselves in real life.. with the Tabletop variant being just a smoke screen.. and lose my sanity that way!”
I wholly recommend it! A little chaos never hurt anyone… except when it has.
“If she reads this… no When she reads this.. I guess .. because clearly she will find out, Miss White, you have nothing to fear from me, I am merely compelled to be as ethernal as you! I do not actually seek your origins! But I do like to speculate! Mostly to have some Banter with Joy , future president of the United States.”
Oh she has and it’s only a matter of time before we learn the repercussions… as far as the whole President thing goes… I’m contemplating just going Skynet and playing a global game of Kriegsspiel er… I mean Risk.
“Thanks for the long reply and the amazing story! It really had me intrigued!”
As I said… you clearly needed it. 😉
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*blinking at the comments* wow. Cool. Uh, I just wanted to say it does look very pretty and light and happy and I think I’ll have to work it into my life sometime soon for just that reason. It looks like it would nearly fit into Saturday mornings. Only sad thing is it is on VRV or CR and I haven’t been watching them as much since they have problems with my computer – tons of buffering – so I have to watch on the tablet or phone and I’m a wee bit spoiled to the big screen TV hooked up to my computer… especially for PRETTY anime. New computer…
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Hehe, yeah this one had ain interesting comment section, a post of two on it’s own! Pre-Cure tropical rouge is pretty cute! Have seen a few episodes but I kinda need to be a bit tipsy to properly enjoy. 😛
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