"And now, we're going to become absolute tyrants..." sez President Mirrorball. The wonders of the ellipsis, no?

I've been marathoning Dead Zone, which I mostly missed when it was actually on TV & I actually had cable. It's much, much better than I had given it credit for back then. Some of the episodes strongly resemble that old joke about a supposed conundrum offered to philosophy students.

I've also been watching Tears to Tiara, which I bought blind. It's not as good. A bland action-fantasy harem anime, with no sexual tension, placed in a Celtic/Ancient British setting by writers who have never seen anything Celtic or Roman, and have severely stunted imaginative capacity. The show's warriors have never heard of shields, for instance.

The characters constantly kevetch about their lack of weapons, but everybody has swords, and in general are better-armed than the imperial enemy. They hunt *boar* with *longswords*, for the love of mike. Everybody has one set of elaborate-formal clothing, and they wear all of it in every circumstance - from hunting boar to milking a cow to fighting animate skeletons.

Galleys operate themselves, without any apparent crew or effort made by the protagonists to row, sail, or otherwise acknowledge that there's a ship to be run. The central nakama does everything, from hunting expedition to spying trip to forest ambush. Nevermind that said group of protagonists includes a cute, harmless little seeress with no apparent fighting skills. The imperials wear full armor at all times and in all occasions, except for the one chick who is clearly being set up for a heel face turn. Said armor never protects the wearer from being quickly disemboweled by the merciless protagonists, who lead a scrappy band of leathery hillbillies who never die on-screen.

Because of the way that the companies release shows in half-season "coers" these days, I now own half of this show. It's not badly-animated, and it isn't actively offensive. A mild case of OCD demands that I finish out the series, but we're not talking Heroic Age or Romeo+Juliet here. Those two weren't really brilliant shows by any objective measure, but they were highly-animated, clever at times, and very, very pretty. This is more... eh. For a show about a resurrected Great Demon King and his increasing collection of nubile young wives, it's moderately... dull. It's not even entertainingly sketchy.