(12 episodes for Not-Harem, 13 for Witch Hat)

Farm Harem Never 2, episode 10

Well, if we’re never going to get a proper harem, at least we got a swimsuit episode. Part two is an over-narrated explanation of how they finally got some new human villagers, which Our Hoe-Holding Mayor somehow thinks will resolve the gender imbalance despite all of them being young married couples. And New Female Villager #7 somehow triggers a cliffhanger, sigh.

(unrelated, of course, except for the animal ears and the swimsuit)

Witch Hat Atelier, episode 11

Looks like it’s problem children all the way down, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Also, the return of Sexy Witch Gal, with a disguise that sends Our Heroine to the moon.

Verdict: two episodes left, and they’re clearly trying to create a satisfying season-ender. But true satisfaction comes from announcing a second season…

On Stargate

Some thoughts, now that Amazon has chickened out and shitcanned the previously announced new series…

I remember the magazine hype before the original Stargate was released in theaters. It… wasn’t as cool as they’d made it out to be, but was still a lot of fun. I rewatch it every few years.

SG-1‘s debut on Showtime blew me away. I was sad that we only got bare titties in the pilot episode (because Showtime demanded them), but it’s not like they needed cheesecake to sell the story. What I still love after all these years is that they hit the ground running, with all the characters well-developed and working well together, not just the core cast. About the only real clunker was the poor guy who got stuck with the job of summarizing the movie relationship between Jack and Ska’ra.

Anyway, I loaded it up on Prime over the weekend, and it started at the season 1 episode Bloodlines, in which Teal’c has to deal with the family he left behind when he defected. This was followed by Fire & Water, in which Daniel is declared dead. And neither of these stories could be told by today’s Hollywood. A father balancing duty against family and making difficult choices? A mother who vigorously disagrees with those choices and their impact on her and their son, but behaves like a grown-up about it? A cranky-but-wise father-figure mentor, training the son as he trained the father? And in the second one, a full military funeral executed with precision and respect for the service, without a hint of irony or eye-rolling?

And of course, Good Ol’ Doc Frasier, as usual carrying every scene she was in, standing up for the health of the team while still respecting the chain of command, instead of being used as a writers’ mouthpiece. (and she even got to kick a bit of ass in the next episode, Hathor)

(it did often feel like she was running the medical center alone…)

She has awakened! And she seems to be the only person in the cast who doesn’t shout, which explains why God was trying to keep her napping. Anyway, Evil Ivell attempts another cunning plan that should have worked if Our Shouty Shota hadn’t gotten divine help at just the right moment (a very prolonged moment, when the Big Bad Wolf should have torn him to pieces in the first five seconds of the fight), but even in failing, she managed to get Our Hero’s cheat powers revoked and teleport him right into a cliffhanger.

Verdict: will there be time for Our Dusky Best Catgirl to arrive and save the day? And will she drag along Button Elf and Our Isekai’d School Pals, or will all of that be saved for another season that may not happen? Next week, it ends.

(random unrelated catgirl from the archives)

I was in Buc-ee’s last night and found the 2024 Betty Crocker Found Recipes cookbook, promising “beloved vintage recipes worth sharing”, with a blurb saying they’d been selected from over a century of American favorites, “found in the Betty Crocker archives, dusted off and so delicious you’ll love them on today’s table”.

I opened it to a random page.

The recipe was from 1997.

“Vintage”.

Claude Envy

Windsurf just changed its name to Devin.

An overused trope has been distilled down to its bare essence, with the announcement of an anime version of 「え、社内システム全てワンオ ペしている私を解雇ですか？」= “What, you’re firing me, the person who single-handedly manages the company’s internal systems?”. Short-name is ワンオペ解雇 = “wan-ope kaiko” = one-person operation + dismissal.

I’ve been convinced for quite a while that this real-life experience is the origin of the “kicked out of the hero party” genre.

In other news,

For those of you interested/worried, the fines will be karyo (過料) not karyo (科料).
(Law in Japan explains the new ¥2000 littering fine in Shibuya)

So, same pronunciation, different kanji, and the first one is just a fine while the second is a criminal charge. Given the lack of trash cans in public in Japan (mostly removed after a terrorist attack in the Nineties), it’s an important distinction.

(picture is unrelated but has been gathering dust so long that it’s no longer available on Pixiv…)

Texting a GenAI Gal

Edit-capable image-generation models solve a lot of problems; the early ones tended to change unrelated parts of the image way too much, but things have improved a lot. The various Flux.2 models do a good job at adding text, removing backgrounds, etc, and the paid models can do a lot more. Like “take this painting of dogs playing poker, replace the dog on the left with the character extracted from this French poster, replace the dog on the right with the guy from this painting, replace the dog in the middle with this picture of my sister in a renaissance dress, replace the remaining dogs with penguins, and render the result at 4K”. We’re still tinkering with the details, but Nano Banana Pro (via the Runpod public endpoints API) did the right thing on the first try, flipping the characters around and changing their poses to seat them at the table.

Adding the text to this was trivial by comparison, and took Flux.2-Klein-9B a few seconds:

(I’ve pretty much given up on doing nudity with Flux-based models; it can, on rare occasions, produce plausible bare breasts, but it mostly doesn’t, and none of the available LoRAs and customized models I’ve tried has done more good than harm)

Farm Harem Never 2, episode 9

Pouty Hakuren trying to make friends with a child should lead to sexy Hakuren making a child with friends, but it seems we’re never, ever going there. Related, having the Demon Lord defeated almost entirely off-screen is something I wish they would have done with Boxxo And Friends.

On the bright side, we got lots of Insane Tan-Elf Engineer Gals this week.

Verdict: mmmmm, tan-elf engineer gals.

(tan-elves earn the Esil seal of approval)

Witch Hat Atelier, episode 10

“This week, we’re going to tell a small story about overcoming disability and self-doubt.”

“Let’s animate the fuck out of it!”

Verdict: really, really hoping for a season 2 announcement soon.

Trailer Park: Busty Catgirl Slob With A Habit

Wrong kind of habit, though. She’s just what it says on the tin: Chainsmoker Cat (Japanese title yani-neko = tobacco-resin cat), and it looks like the sort of gagging gag comic that would drive me away even with the promise of big bouncy titties. And it seems she hangs out with other addict catgirls (as opposed to catgirl addicts, who might have thought “I can fix her”). Not one I plan to watch next season.

For fun, here’s the result of telling an AI model to generate an image based on an AI analysis of a manga panel:

Original:

NSFW

(and yes, that’s Jamie, the Little Blonde Titty-Witch from A-Rank Adventure Harem, drunkenly expressing her affection for Our Hero)

“Your ideas are intriguing to me…”

“…and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.”

Today I Learned…

…they opened a Buc-ee’s 30 minutes away from my house. Oh, dear.

(okay, they opened it two years ago, but it’s on I-70, and if I’m up that way, I’m either going west from I-75 or east from I-675, and guess where it’s located)

Well, that escalated quickly. It seems that God has a really good reason for protecting Our Shouty Shota with ridiculous cheat powers. This is either foreshadowing for the end of the season or a prayer that they get a second one.

Anyway, we’re off to the dungeon, and I must register a complaint with the guild that they did not install a sexy catgirl at the reception desk. A cheerful loli is not an adequate substitute.

On the B-side of the story, Button Elf is surprised and disappointed to discover that Ivell is not a good friend.

Verdict: do they really have a stopping place for this season? They just keep throwing out plot coupons and spending most of their time on Adventurer Basic Training.

Frontier Lord & Oni Gal teaser

Here. Our Hero is voiced by someone with a lot of experience in shows I didn’t watch, while Our White-Haired Tan Teen Oni Waifu has done a fair amount of shows, of which the only one I watched was the one where busty high-school girls hung out in a closed-down mahjong parlor.

(no fan-art for this one, so here’s a popular horn-y teen waifu)

…that most image-generation models have no idea what spin-the-bottle looks like, and neither do prompt-enhancing LLMs. Not even just the part about spinning a bottle.

Jumping under the bandwagon…

I still haven’t done anything with GenAI video, but I finally broke down and made a song using my parody lyrics. The tune and rhythm aren’t anywhere close to the original song, of course, but this was a lot closer than the first eight attempts (several of which were wasted by having to phonetically spell certain words).

[Update: okay, this one is better, at least for pronunciations.]

(Grandpa Snazzy is unrelated, and cleaned up surprisingly well, given that I used Flux.2-Dev to restore and upscale him based on a PDF scanned from a 1932 Ecuadorian art/culture newspaper)

(okay, the title would work better if Shouty and Farm Harem aired on the same day; WHA is definitely not a bust-forward show…)

Farm Harem Never 2, episode 8

This week, A Wild Loli Appears. Also, the most nudity we’ve had in this show all season. From the loli, sigh. At least Our Gorgeous Oni Chief Maid gets some good screen time, and maybe three frames of streaking across the room in pursuit of the naked loli.

After that, a huge helping of tell-don’t-show plot coupons, as Our Divine Toolsmith narrates the mystery found under the hot springs.

Verdict: another example of how removing all the harem elements has damaged the story. The behavior of Our OP Dragon Gals would make a lot more sense if they were openly attached to him, as in the source. As is, the only reason we’re given for their continued presence is a vague “we like it here”.

(ditto for these two…)

Witch Hat Atelier, episode 9

We’re well into the plot now, but there’s still time for character development for all four of our little witches, and our increasingly-complex teacher as well. Even a side character gets some respect.

Verdict: don’t make us wait too long for a second season.

Magilumiere 2 promo video

Here, introducing a magical-girl-research engineer magical girl whose civilian identity includes underrim glasses. Also, for those who might be interested, the ED song is by Marine Houshou.

Heartwarming, with a side order of titties

Finally got around to reading the manga for Cosplay Haremettes. The anime was a quite faithful adaptation, except for toning down the delightfully gratuitous nudity, and there’s enough material for them to do another 2 cours.

Also, in recent volumes there’s a thicc cutie with glasses and long braided twintails, insisting that she’s forever 17 (plus 20). And she gets more impressive the more we find out about her.