#minty post

it went from this:

to this:

(pretty sure its an algae bloom)

all my fish are fine & water parameters are normal so it's mostly a cosmetic issue but it's stressing me out & nothing I'm trying seems to work! I've done huge water changes & smaller ones, squeezing out the filter sponges, dosing with clarity (twice), keeping the light off, scrubbing all the algae off the glass, dosing with biostarter, and I'm now trying purigen in the filter. last time i had a smaller algae bloom, i blacked out the back of the tank that was facing a window & that fixed it, but this is so much worse!

the plot is overly full of predictable, unnecessary twists (I think everyone could tell himi was mahito's mum immediately) and lacks the limited scope of setting that allows miyazaki's worlds to truly flourish- think the bathhouse in spirited away, howl's castle, the titular castle in the sky in laputa etc. also the film touched on a lot of complex themes but didn't spend enough time with them to truly delve into them the way other ghibli movies have... it's a jumble of half-explored concepts and frenetic shifts in tone. almost feels like miyazaki had a lot of concepts for cool scenes and characters but not a coherent plot to link them together and ground them in the setting. also annoyed me that the worldbuilding was somewhat neglected, I've always appreciated how ghibli movies are generally quite thorough in explaining the rules of the setting & the MAGIC, which is instead used in boy and the heron to handwave all the fantastical creatures and events.

also minor tangent but did anyone else notice how many of the characters seem to have been built from the designs of previous ghibli characters? the most obvious to me was the granny with a very similar face to yubaba. there were also shots that felt practically identical to scenes in other ghiblis but particularly howl's moving castle, like when himi is walking through a dark corridor with her flame (same posture, angle, expression as sophie with her candle). there's also a lot of reused background pieces like furniture.