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Everything becomes F A rather well presented ybpxrq ebbz zheqre mystery puzzle. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure that all the information needed to understand what is happening is available ol gur svsgu rcvfbqr or so, though I did not piece it together until much later. On rewatching, you realise there is a lot of attention to detail.

Also, the ending features Life in Life and much Lisp; gotta be a good thing, right? ;)

Gakkou Gurashi failed the "you have five minutes to make me care about any of this" test initially for us; a friend later convinced us to watch the first episode all the way to the end - they were absolutely correct and it is now firmly back on our to-watch-more-of list, but haven't got round to confirming it stays good yet, good to have corroboration.

Another honourable mention: Akagami no Shirayukihime; strong, actually intelligent female protagonist in a misogynistic fantasy setting. Straight romance. It's a little self-aware initially - she tears up in surprise a bit too often when men aren't actively horrible to her - but gets better. Not as strong as Akatsuki no Yona though, would really like to see a second season of that.

Things that we haven't dropped yet from the current season - there's a bumper crop:

  • Classroom Crisis - does for corporate politics what Shirobako did for anime production. I have had those conversations with management...

  • Game of Laplace - trappings of a detective/mystery series, but more psychological thriller than particularly rational so far; still, has potential and the thriller is well done.

  • GATE - still not sure, but still watching. Fantasyland attempts to invade Japan, Japan retaliates, SDF starts a softly-softly invasion of fantasyland (after basically a massacre of their entire combined armed forces, medieval knights vs modern weapons isn't really a contest). It raises interesting issues, and could get very good if it actually follows them up - though it has not so far, and will be quite banal if it never does; will report back here either way.

Honourable mention: Shimoneta. I was expecting a series with this premise to fail the ten second fanservice test, but we ended up watching the entire first episode and it is surprisingly worth seeing an episode (no idea if it remains worthwhile, we have not been brave enough to try a second!). Laugh-out-loud funny, unexpectedly high production quality. Think Fahrenheit 451 crossed with Gurren Lagann crossed with a whole lot of WRONG and WTF and NSFW.

EDIT: have read ahead in the GATE manga. It doesn't quite ascend to the epic "The Irregular at Magic High School" Kim-Jong-Il-propaganda levels of Gary Stu, but that's sadly the direction it's firmly headed in and unless they've rewritten the script for the anime it looks like it's going to avoid any redeeming features it's raised the possibility of. Pity. Dropping.

  • Ava's demon is a somewhat experimental piece of web media, somewhere between webcomic and slideshow, that updates relatively slowly and I keep rediscovering and splurging on every couple of months. It doesn't get enough love and really should be more widely known. An incredibly pretty dystopia, with rather well thought through characters.

I have just spotted that Marina and Sergei Dyachenko's Metamorphosis cycle is being translated into English. The first book is Vita Nostra; I would very much recommend it, especially to anyone that enjoyed Max Barry's "Lexicon".

Finally got around to watching Tatami Galaxy. Found it a very pleasing take on the Groundhog Day closed timelike curve genre; a nice exploration of the idea that blaming external circumstances and even individual seemingly pivotal decisions is not enough to explain poor outcomes.

"counts the number of incorrect facts within a page."

"Facts the web unanimously agrees on are considered a reasonable proxy for truth."

...wait, what?

...I guess they don't actually mean "unanimously"...

It's awesome until the plot does a 90 degree turn near the end. Unfortunately their authors just aren't as good as Dumas and oynzvat Rqzbaq'f npgvbaf ba zvaq pbagebyyvat fcnpr nyvraf xvaq bs erzbirf gur cbvag.

I really enjoyed the film; thought it was a very decent portrayal of misunderstood socially inept genius. Got me right in the feels. My wife concurs. I would happily recommend it on that basis.

If you're expecting any historical accuracy or sensible computer science, you will be sadly disappointed; if this is a problem for you, avoid. This is not Turing's history; this is Turing fanfiction.

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