Reach the unreachable stars

So let's not talk about how bad my progress with sewing has gone all vacation, in that I have completed 0 of the 3 projects I wanted to do because one of them has taken all week and has gotten almost nowhere despite repeatedly looking like it was almost done. But hey, at least I was able to sew up the seam on my sister's shirt.

Writing, as a result, took a back seat, but right now I'm trying to analyze Astra's fighting style so I can get back to work on this chapter.

Astra's fighting style is, quite honestly, kind of a mess. And I blame it on lack of continuity across the generations. Also, I'm not entirely sure how much attention Koichi Sakamoto pays to martial arts styles, considering he took over as stunt coordinator for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in season 3, which I bring up because early MMPR used more martial arts rather than stunt fighting, probably as a result of two things: 1) that previous stunt coordinator, Jeff Pruitt, is a black belt in tang soo do; 2) as is documented elsewhere, MMPR would just have the actors (non-union, of course) do their own stunts, so they had to do what they were physically capable of. Hell, Alpha Stunts wasn't even credited until season 2.

Sidenote: The SirSTACK link about Alpha Stunts is nigh-illegible because the website was designed very much over 20 years ago and was last updated in 2006. In fact, it is so old that the credit for Snizzard in Foul Play in the Sky is "?" When now, it's much better known that this was an early role of Bryan Cranston Yes, THAT Bryan Cranston.

So, anyway, Showa era Astra fights kind of like a pro wrestler sometimes, often alongside Leo--bodyslamming, knee-to-back, throws, etc. He'll fight dirty, using cheap tricks (like standing in front of the sun to blind his eyeball-based opponent), striking the neck, and he'll hit the same point repeatedly. In early appearances, he would favor kicks. He's a determinator, refusing to give up the fight even when he's losing consciousness after being strangled by Alien Babalu. He doesn't fight for very long, usually coming in to finish a fight. Like the time he shrank down, flew into a kaiju's mouth, and blew it up from the inside.

However, Leo is often Astra's weakness as well. For instance, when he was supposed to take the Ultra Key back to the Land of Light, Leo was struggling against Babalu. So Astra went in like the world's worst keyblade bearer, tried to bring the Ultra Key down on Babalu's head, and promptly dropped it. When he regained control of it, he hesitated too long, and Babalu was able to get a chain around his neck to pull him back down to the ground.

New Generation era Astra has a flashier style, which I attribute to Koichi Sakamoto directing nearly all of his few appearances. Here, we start to see him using more energy-based attacks (much as Leo did about halfway through his series), particularly in Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined Crossroad, his first major role. His style seems more like stage combat rather than martial arts now. Obviously, a change in suit actors over the years will explain this too, but UGF doesn't credit the suit actors for individual roles, so I can't figure out who plays Astra now. I also don't know if Kin'ichi Kusumi, his original suit actor from Leo, had any martial arts experience. He did the suit acting as Mirrorman, who had a style typical of the time, but Wikipedia's giving me much more information about his adult film career, so maybe the lack of softcore porn is what's changed Astra's fighting style.

Ultraman Orb: The Chronicle episode 25, aired to foreshadow the brothers plot of R/B later that year, showed a sparring match between Leo and Astra, apparently on K76. It's really the only time where Astra's shown at a disadvantage, seeming slower and heavier than we usually see him during either era--possibly factoring his chain into the equation. He kicks up a lot of ground as he runs forward, and where you'd expect his opening attack--based on the running start--to be a leap, he instead just makes a jumping front kick, jumping off of his unchained right leg and making a snap kick with his chained left foot. Leo's able to block it and is countering his attacks. This fight also shows Astra appearing to favor his left side overall, including in his punches--and it's not something usually shown, so it's weird.

Honestly, the lack of an identifiable style makes it harder for me to work with him, especially with him incorporating more energy attacks into his attacks in the modern era. I'd assume that's something he'd save for when he's dealing with a really tough opponent and he needs to get moving, like the Absolutians, but he'll use it against the mooks in TDC when he wouldn't use it against Babalu when he needed to save the Ultra Key.

I'm thinking I may have to pull from actual martial arts if I want to write this, and then look at some RPM for Koichi Sakamoto stuff to mix in.

Also, that does make me think that Astra should inexplicably be Scottish.

Edit: Or I can also look at Avatar again. Duh.

Guys, it's been 27 years.

Can we please stop calling them "Astro Rangers"?

They're in-universe called the "Space Rangers."

You know. Because it's Power Rangers in Space.

And as Andros points out in part 2 of the first episode, they are meant to be space-based. With a spaceship and everything.

Yes, they use "Astro" a lot in their naming scheme, but they also use "Mega" a lot, and you don't see them calling themselves the Mega Rangers.

To be fair, those guys don't either, because they don't put a space in-between.

...That ended up punnier than I intended, and I apologize. It is way too late for me to be up.

Also it was my birthday. I did not do anything, really, so nothing to post. Have a lot of work trying to make sense of disjointed scenes in the chapter I've been avoiding for the last few months.

So basically I have had near-constant headaches lately, especially at work.

I know that ever since we upgraded my work computer to Windows 11, I've had issues. Especially because default font Aptos is a fucking terrible font because it's so skinny, and Windows suddenly likes making everything unreadable.

I tried switching to dark mode, but it made my emails illegible, especially because we have to use a signature with a graphic that ends up completely unviewable in dark mode. I tried looking a few things up, and I saw issues about drivers and getting a new monitor and oh what about blue light glasses and nightlight mode and...

I'm currently remoting in on my personal computer. Still Windows 10, and it will have to remain that way, regardless of what happens in October. I do not get headaches on this. I can read it. I can see it. And my prescription says that I need Crizal on all of my lenses, so it's not like I need to get another pair of glasses.

The problem is not the monitor. It is the operating system. Because I am not using my work monitor; I am remoting in through a separate computer on an older OS, and the problem persists when I am using it--but not when I am looking away on something in my local computer.

So I finally tinkered with the settings on the work computer enough. Customized the settings so that I have the windows set to dark, apps set to light, then customized Outlook's settings to dark grey mode (and the same with our database), and IMMEDIATE improvement.

I still have some degree of pain, but it's nowhere near what it was. So I'll need to keep tinkering with it.

Great job upgrading your product to the point where it actively harms the people who use it.

So clearly the universe was telling me today that I shouldn't try and bake English muffins and blueberry muffins because wow did everything go wrong:

1. Active dry yeast for my English muffins appears to have been dead. Had to add instant yeast and hope for the best.

2. Started creaming the butter and sugar for blueberry muffins and it smelled off. Took it to Dad and he confirmed it smelled like cheese. Had to throw it away and start over with margarine, while inwardly panicking because I used 1 tbsp of the same butter for the preferment of the English muffins (...which might have been what killed the yeast).

3. Started mixing the blueberry muffins with the flour and realized that I accidentally added a whole damn extra cup of flour when I was measuring. Added milk and sugar and hoped for the best.

4. English muffin recipe definitely does not make 8, or at least not when I make them.

5. Blueberry muffins tasted like sweet flour and the bland-ass water beans that are grocery store blueberries. Very glad I decided not to take out the last of my frozen U-Pick blueberries from last year.

So the lesson is that I'll swallow the cost of the King Arthur English muffin mix because it makes a lot more than homemade, I need to write down the recipe that I'm using for the blueberry muffins and make sure that I do the math for my substitutions on the recipe itself, and to mash up some of the baking butter before I start using it to be sure it didn't go bad on me.

Hopefully these English muffins will taste good.

I am almost done with Tiga, and I plan to go back to finish the Orb reviews after. I may or may not post my thoughts on the show after I finish it, but at some point I will say something. As opposed to my still unfinished draft of my thoughts on Blazar.

Currently, I'm debating if I should wait on the Origin Saga reviews, and instead do the Seven retrospective and selected reviews first (along with Leo selected episodes), then go into Mega Monster Battle and the Zero movies.

The reason behind that logic is that Origin Saga features Asuka from Dyna, which I have yet to watch, and Musashi from Cosmos, which I'm even further off from watching (because it's the friggin' longest season), and based on their interactions, it takes place after Ultraman Saga. And it would definitely help to have an understanding of at least Asuka before I get to that movie.

Which brings me to what slowed me down with Tiga: the streaming agreement with Shout Factory expired at the end of December, so I've been trying to finish it on Pluto TV, which is currently the only way to watch some of the seasons. And my adblocker doesn't work on Pluto TV, so when I watch on my lunch break at work, it's taken longer to finish each episode, and Pluto keeps wanting me to skip the end of the episode. And this is not only really annoying, but it's also taking up more and more of my lunch time, and I really don't want to have to keep making up that time at work. Plus, I don't have the DVDs for Dyna or Cosmos, since I wanted to wait and see the shows before I got them (I'd only bought Tiga because I'd gotten a couple of the original 4Kids release, and it was very much the same issue as the original Power Rangers RPM DVDs: plenty of the early volumes, and then impossibly expensive rare later ones).

Ultimately, Mega Monster Battle leads directly into the first two adventures for Zero: Ultra Galaxy Legends: Mega Monster Battle and Ultraman Zero vs. Darklops Zero. And since Zero's history depends on Seven's and Leo's histories, it makes a lot more sense to go back and do their selected reviews first while trying to watch Dyna, then go into Mega Monster Battle and the Zero chronicle before returning to Orb Origin. But again, we'll see what I decide.

Either way, expect a return to Orb soon enough.

So tomorrow is the Lunar New Year, bringing the Year of the Dragon to a close.

Tomorrow begins the Year of the Snake. Which means that I am obligated to post this gif again.

My plan yesterday was to write all day. Just spend the day relaxing.

Instead, due to the imminent threat of everything falling off my shelves from the vibrations of my dad remodeling the master bathroom, I spent my day going out and buying Sterilite bins, taking everything down off the shelves, dusting everything, and storing it away until the remodels are done.

So...yeah. That was my third day weekend.

So I don't know how true it is, since I'm not inclined to go looking for a Japanese Ultraman Leo DVD set that I wouldn't be able to get to play in my machines anyway, but according to the wiki that particular release had an option to replace the theme song from episode 13 on with the good one, the one by Gen's actor that played for the first 12 episodes.

...Why was this not an option on the Mill Creek blu-rays? Or was it on the edition that I didn't get, since I opted for the steelbook?