Discovered a nice band belonging to the NWOBHM — Grim Reaper. Really like the vocal (and this guy, Steve Grimmet, also recorded the album “In Search of Sanity” with another very good British band, Onslaught).

We spent a couple of hours in one of the biggest London parks — Springbank park, I drank a couple of 650 ml Sapporo beers, so it looks like a perfect time to post a few new photos of Canada’s natural beauty =)

The dam

I already fed a squirrel — it’s time to feed a chipmunk!

Deadpool 2 provides pretty much the same experience as the first movie — jokes about penises and drugs; violence (reasonable and no so much); plot as simple as possible and tones of references to songs, comic books and other movies. Not an ideal film but it’s definitely worth watching once in a theater. A couple of scenes are absolutely hilarious — Wade growing new legs, for example (Weasel is brilliant throughout the whole movie and in that scene in particular). Will re-watch it later to just write down some quotes =)

It’s possible to find some gems even when the season is as average as this one =)

Something to celebrate — today we have finally submitted our permanent residency application! I’d say it was ぎり ぎり considering that there are only 6 days left until the deadline. 6 month for the diploma evaluation and getting the IELTS results, then 2 month before receiving the ITA and the last step — 3 month for gathering a pile of documents for the final application. Could’ve been longer though. Now it’s time for another period of glorious doing-nothing-but-patiently-waiting — the processing time is up to 6 months.

Animelog: The Slayers Revolution

To be honest, I’m not sure why MAL splits up the fourth season of The Slayers into two. This “first season” is just a completed arch where our heroes must destroy the magical armor Zanaffar, on the way dealing with a lady who wants to create magical tanks.

This anime was aired in 2008 and I was going to watch it in ongoing mode. However, the “puny animal” Pokota back then seemed sooooo annoying that we dropped this show after a couple of episodes. Ten years later, with no new Slayers show on the horizon, I decided that we live only once, blew the dust off my VHS tape with this anime, cautiously pressed the “Play” button in the window titled “Episode 1. Amazing – The Astonishing Dragon Slave?!” and prepared for the worst. However, nostalgia is something that may make some things look better than they actually are.

The Slayers has always been a silly show. Due to 2018 standards even the best of its episodes from Next or Try may look stupid and uninteresting. Stupid jokes, deliberately simple characters, no progress in their relationships and so on. Revolution isn’t any better. All the gang is here again. Queen No-Chest of the Boobless Kingdom Lina Inverse whose name scares the bejesus out of sane population of this world; jelly-head Gourry who barely can remember his own name; Amelia, who’s ready to do everything in the name of Justice and who always manages to find the highest possible place to deliver a speech how important Friendship and Justice are. Zel doesn’t show up on the foreground much but he’s a shy guy after all. Even Xellos is here with his mandatory “Sore wa himitsu desu“. Is it boring to see the same stuff again? Hell no! Ten years is a huge amount of time. Actually, it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun to see Lina who’s arrested for being Lina Inverse (a serious crime and it’s very difficult to prove that she’s innocent), Gourry befriending a giant monstrous jellyfish and others doing ridiculous but at the same time completely expected things. The end of the season was also predictably more boring, with a huge 3-episodes-long battle… but it’s always been like that. And now we have Rezo’s spirit in a jar (oh, Red Priest, we haven’t heard about you for a long time), a mysterious maid and 13 more episodes of eating contests, Dragon Slaves and Lina’s attempt to pretend that she’s a charming innocent maiden. Maybe this time she’ll trick someone, who knows =)

 

Good day. Visited Greenway Park — hadn’t been there before. This is quite a piece of wild life in the middle of the city. It’s slightly insane — just one block away from busy Wharncliff street and you can find yourself on a small trail winding up among trees, bushes and other greenery (an exaggeration, of course — this trail is rather straight and this place in general is not that isolated). I wouldn’t have been surprised at all if we’d met a deer or at least a viper — in addition to typical London fauna, squirrels and various birds. I did spot something unusual by the water but that animal bolted to safety, under  the tree, so quickly that I couldn’t recognize what it was exactly — maybe a groundhog, maybe an otter. So now if we want to find some solitude we know a perfect place in just a 30 minutes walking distance from our apartment.

On the way back we’re thinking of buying either crepes or ice-cream. And ended up with a bag containing boxes with Chinese food and a 2L bottle of Dr Pepper ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The beverage turned out to be a perfect catalyst and I watched 2 episodes (and now want more) of Stens; Gate 0, which is a good show but I’d been putting it off for weeks because it’s based on the game I played and know rather well its plot twists and dialogues.

P.S. In places where they ask the name when taking the order I began using the name Serge. Initially, I was stupid enough to say my real name but after observing how everyone struggled with it I switched to the French variant. Works like charm.

Sometimes an attempt to watch something I didn’t like initially might end up successfully. Like, for example, Slayers Revolution turns out to be not a complete garbage as I thought N years ago but a pretty decent Slayers sequel (or maybe I just had a significant shortage of those stupid Gourry jokes, you know — “Gimme a second, I’ll remember his name!”) On the other hand you can’t step in the same river twice and “Hélène et les Garçons” is kind of trash after all. Weird, 20 years ago I thought it was a good show.

Detroit: Become Human demo

Don’t want to be too optimistic but the demo is very good. We have an opportunity to play the scene we saw on E3 — where you need to save a girl who’s is being kept as a hostage. There are 5 or 6 possible outcomes, so far I reached one of them and Nastya got 3 more (thanks to the length of the demo, a single playthrough takes only about 10 minutes). Gameplay resembles Heavy Rain and this is a good thing — you’re looking for clues, talking to people, reconstructing the crime scene and so on. Visually the game looks very good — soft shadows, good lighting; animation is a little android-ish but that’s noticeable mostly because environment and characters look very realistic.

I looked forward to playing this game and the demo just reassured me that it must give it a try. Maybe one more game I’ll buy on the release day (bad, bad me).

ArchEnemy is playing in London this October

https://www.facebook.com/events/242868602941219/