Because, even with Q-Fan enabled for the chassis fans and put on “silent” in the BIOS, they’re pretty loud, especially if like me you’re still using a mix of 80, 92 and 120 mm fans.

This guide has been written on Linux Mint 20, and is specifically for the Asus P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard. I hope the revision doesn’t matter. In case it does, I’m sorry: you’re out of luck.
Information here could apply to other Asus motherboards, but I’ve still not done other tests.

Of course, the obvious disclaimer: the following procedure is provided as-is.
My computer is still up and running (quieter than before), but if your CPU fan stops spinning, your computer catches fire, there is some fuel around it, and it starts a chain of event that leads to the core of the nearest nuclear power plant melting down, I’ll have nothing to do about it.

Ok, so, first thing firsts: the ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 is a twelve years old motherboard but because it can use cheap 6-core / 12-threads LGA-1366 Xeons, available for as low as 15-20$ on AliExpress, is still hard to find and the prices are still high. Also, it’s a good platform for overclocking and it’s not that difficult to run a 2.5/2.6 GHz 6C Xeon at 3.5/3.8GHz stable. Extreme overclocking can lead top-tier Xeons up to 4.2 or even 4.5 GHz.
Thus, this motherboard is not cheap on the used market.
It just happens that I bought one new in 2010, along with an i7-930 – a 1st gen Core i7 from Intel – that I replaced for an X5650 and then for an X5660, currently on the board, but not overclocked (anymore). The case I used back then is the same as now, a Chieftec Dragon, which by today standard is a pretty old design.

Let’s get to fan speed.

This motherboard has 5 fan headers in total: 1 4-wire (PWM) for the CPU, 3 3-wire for the case fans and 1 3-wire for the PSU fan (whose speed cannot be adjusted).

I currently have four chassis fan connected to the system, all by Arctic Cooling: a front intake 80mm F8, a pair of intake 92mm F9 on the side panel (using a fan cable splitter) and a rear exhaust 120mm F12. None of these are PWM, they’re regular 3-pin fans.
The fan are connected as follows:
front F8 → CHA_FAN1 header
side F9s → CHA_FAN3 header
rear F12 → CHA_FAN2 header

The fan speed can be adjusted by the BIOS or the Operating System
* BIOS: This motherboard support the so-called Q-Fan feature on both the CPU and the chassis fan, and I’ve enabled it, using the “Silent” profile.
* OS: Under Windows there is the well-known ASUS Fan Xpert tool (but I suppose SpeedFan would have worked as well).

With the BIOS control, in silent mode, fan are quieter… but not so much. Both the front and side fans were spinning at around 1300 rpm even with the CPU completely idle at 30°C.

Under windows, with Fan Xpert, I was able to further reduce the fan speed to around 700/800 rpm at idle.

Under Linux… well there are quite a few problems to solve.

The first one is the ASUS ATK0110 driver. As much as I like ASUS motheboards, I’ve never – ever – understood the purpose of this driver.

Mint is “smart” enough to load this driver – asus_atk0110 – automatically so with the use of the lm-sensors package you can have access to temperatures, fan speeds and voltages. Install xsensors and you can even see them in a “nice” GUI application with a “very cool” 1995 feel (all those quotes are there for a reason, you know?).

The only problem is that if you attempt to run pwmconfig to control the fan speed, as reported in many guides, it tells you that there are no pwm-controllable fan in the system (which is kinda true, as the only PWM fan is the cpu one, but I’m not gonna control it, I’ll leave that to the BIOS as it’s not so loud after all). That’s because ATK0110 is something… well… not exactly defined. You find the “same” driver more or less on any ASUS product, from cheap laptops to workstation-grade motherboards, but there are different incarnation of the device and the related driver.

So, thank you Mint for loading the driver automatically, but… let me just use another one.

A quick series of “apt install”s, just to be sure everything is installed and up-to-date:

# apt install lm-sensors xsensors fancontrol

Similarly to what I’ve already done by editing a file “by hand” for lm-sensors (you can copy the content of this file and put it in a file like /etc/sensors.d/ASUS-P6T-Deluxe-V2):

# libsensors configuration file for ASUS P6T Deluxe V2
# ----------------------------------------------------

chip "w83667hg-*"

label in0 "Vcore Voltage"
label in3 "+3.3 Voltage"
label in2 "AVCC"
label in7 "3VSB"
# label in8 "Vbat"

set in2_min 3.3 * 0.90
set in2_max 3.3 * 1.10
set in3_min 3.3 * 0.90
set in3_max 3.3 * 1.10
set in7_min 3.3 * 0.90
set in7_max 3.3 * 1.10
set in8_min 3.0 * 0.90
set in8_max 3.3 * 1.10

label fan1 "CHASSIS1 FAN Speed"
label fan2 "CPU FAN Speed"
label fan3 "POWER FAN Speed"
label fan4 "CHASSIS2 FAN Speed"
label fan5 "CHASSIS3 FAN Speed"

label temp1 "MB Temperature"
ignore in8

After a quick check to be sure the correct driver has been loaded:

# lsmod | grep w83627
w83627ehf 49152 0
hwmon_vid 16384 1 w83627ehf

After running pwmconfig, you can customize the /etc/fancontrol file as follow:

# Configuration file generated by pwmconfig, changes will be lost
INTERVAL=10
DEVPATH=hwmon2=devices/platform/w83627ehf.656 hwmon3=devices/platform/coretemp.0
DEVNAME=hwmon2=w83667hg hwmon3=coretemp
FCTEMPS=hwmon2/device/pwm2=hwmon3/temp2_input
FCFANS= hwmon2/device/pwm2=hwmon2/device/fan1_input
MINTEMP=hwmon2/device/pwm2=35
MAXTEMP=hwmon2/device/pwm2=75
MINSTART=hwmon2/device/pwm2=80
MINSTOP=hwmon2/device/pwm2=75
MINPWM=hwmon2/device/pwm2=75
MAXPWM=hwmon2/device/pwm2=235

The result I obtained is the following (just ignore the ‘qlcnic’ temperature sensors of the network card):

And now the system is so much quiter (not silent, as it wasn’t my original purpose) than before that it’s reasonable to work on it.
This blog post was written on the PC in question after all.

Bye



… and I would say that you should buy it if you’re the ultimate Top Gun fan, otherwise just leave that CD on the shelf (or don’t add it to your Amazon’s cart).
If you decide to buy it anyway, what you’ll get?

Let’s start from the outside:

Overall, the case is pretty nice. We have a pretty cover, some nice pictures from the movie, and a clear frame. As you can see, the image on the CD is the same of the inside of the case.

So far so good.

Let’s talk about the booklet:

Here things start to go South. The booklet contains some nice pictures from the movie again and the songs’ credits (strictly the roles and the names for each track) and nothing else.
If you expected to find something like the songs’ lyrics or maybe some notes or maybe a small article by the producers (or the composers, or anyone else) about how the soundtrack came together, how the tracks were selected… I mean, the usual stuff that is expected to be found in a booklet, you’ll be extremely disappointed (I was).

Finally, let’s talk about the audio tracks. These are the 12 tracks found on this CD:

  1. Main Titles (You’ve Been Called Back to Top Gun)
  2. Danger Zone – Kenny Loggins
  3. Darkstar
  4. Great Balls Of Fire (Live) – TBC
  5. You’re Where You Belong / Give ‘Em Hell
  6. I Ain’t Worried – OneRepublic
  7. Dagger One Is Hit / Time To Let Go
  8. Tally Two / What’s The Plan / F-14
  9. The Man, The Legend / Touchdown
  10. Penny Returns (Interlude)
  11. Hold My Hand – Lady Gaga
  12. Top Gun Anthem

Which are exactly the same tracks you can listen to on Spotify, Amazon Music and probably other music streaming services. No big surprise here but would have been nice to have something more (like, for instance, The Who‘s We don’t get fooled again, that plays during one of the training scenes).

Tracks like Main Titles, Darkstar, Danger Zone, Hold My Hand and Top Gun Anthem are the reason why I bought this album, but overall, for a 2022 release, in an era when music is almost always consumed via streaming services, a CD release should add that bit more goodies (more tracks, a decent booklet) and be that little more “exclusive” than the same album available on anyone’s mobile.

Bye


Mar 29

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Mar 29

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… and you want to run an ASP.Net Core application on it (be it a web API, an MVC project or whatever).
Suppose you have a supported model, like a model 4B Pi with 8 Gigs of RAM (seems familiar? Well maybe…).

If you’re fine running Kestrel and accessing it directly on port 5000, good for you. Just look at the Microsoft docs on how to set up a Systemd unit to have your app run automatically at startup and you’re good to go.

But maybe you want to run Kestrel behind a reverse proxy, like nginx.

Cool.

Again, for a simple configuration where your app runs at the root of the site, the Microsoft docs are actually fine. They also instruct you on how to forward the headers from nginx to Kestrel and how to modify your application accordingly.

But maybe you want to run your app as a subdirectory (subdirectory, not a subdomain, which should be a simpler task, as the app will reside at the root of the subdomain) of your main site.

Cool, but there are some caveats.

The first one is that missing a single trailing ‘/’ in the configuration file of nginx makes the difference between a working configuration and a non-working configuration.

After some trials and errors I got to the following sample configuration file (which is the “default” file in the “sites-available” / “sites-enabled” directory from which nginx read it’s config) .

server {
        listen 80;

        index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

        server_name your-raspberry-name.your-domain;

        location / {
                root            /var/www/html;
                try_files       $uri $uri/ =404;
        }

        location /apps {
                alias           /var/www/apps;
                try_files       $uri $uri/ =404;
        }

        location /apps/your-app-name/ {
                proxy_pass              http://localhost:5000/;
                proxy_http_version      1.1;
                proxy_set_header        Upgrade $http_upgrade;
                proxy_set_header        Connection keep-alive;
                proxy_set_header        Host $host;
                proxy_cache_bypass      $http_upgrade;
                proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
                proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        }
}

The part of interest is, of course, the ‘location /apps/your-app-name/’ (in my case, my app is located in a sub-subdirectory because… why not?) section.
Notice the trailing ‘/’s in both the location and the proxy_pass directive.

But as I wrote, there are some caveats, not just one.

The second caveat is that, as the app is running in Kestrel, it thinks it’s running at the root of the site, not in a subdirectory (which tecnically is true, from a certain point of view). If you have an MVC app or a SPA which tries to load assets (stylesheets, scripts, images, etc.) from the path it believes it’s running from, it will fail. The result will be a crippled app, where the page will load without any asset (or, in the case of a SPA, it will not load at all).

After a lot of googling and reading every q&a on Stack Overflow even remotely related to this problem, I finally found a comment by Scott Hanselman on some random github issue that pointed me in the right direction (to be honest, that comment also pointed to the correct page to the related Microsoft docs).
The solution consist of a whopping 4 (yeah… four) LOC that have to be put inside the ‘Configure’ method:

app.Use((context, next) => {
    context.Request.PathBase = new PathString("/apps/your-app-name");
    return next.Invoke();
});

of course the argument of the PathString constructor can be retrieved from a configuration file or whatever, but for clarity sake, I have hardcoded the string in this example.
Notice the missing trailing ‘/’ in the argument.

With those two configurations I got a sample app (an app created from one ot the standard templates) running as expected inside a subdirectory with nginx and Kestrel.

Bye


Mar 5

… and you want to run PostgreSQL on it.
Suppose you have a model 4B Pi with 8 Gigs of RAM.
Considering that, up to fall 2019, I was maintaing some actively used business web applications on a 2 vCORE, 4GB of vRAM Windows Server 2008 R2 VM on which were running:

  • SQL Server 2008 R2 – not exactly a lightweight RDBMS
  • IIS
  • a bunch of ASP.Net and ASP.Net Core applications (some of which were really bad performers)

I would say that a 1.5 GHz quad core ARM CPU and 8 GB of DDR4 RAM are more than enough to run PostgreSQL – and even some Kestrel istances – for some small home projects, if not for one small detail: storage.

I wouldn’t dare to run PostgreSQL on an SD card, so there are two options:

  • an external storage medium (maybe a fancy USB3 SSD?)
  • a network-mounted drive

I have a NAS at home, so the second option seems more practical.
Specifically I have a NAS that support iSCSI, so… why not? No file permissions to manage, block level access to the LUN…

So, first thing I did was to configure a LUN on the NAS and expose it as an iSCSI target: takes a total of 2 minutes, while drinking coffee.
Then I tought it was as simple as following any guide about open-iscsi on Debian… or not?

Well, in my case, after executing as root (after installing the open-iscsi package):

# iscsiadm -m discovery -t st -p ip.of.my.nas

I got three result, with the same target (i mean, the same iqn) exposed to three different IP addresses… two of which are on subnets not reachable by my raspberry (having a NAS with multiple interfaces is funny!).

To prevent some strange errors at boot, I decided to go (as root) inside the /etc/iscsi/nodes/##nasIdentifier##/ and delete everything with an ip different from the one I wanted to connect to.
Note that the content of the /etc/iscsi/nodes directory is written by the iscsi-adm utility.

The last step I performed to automatically connect to the iscsi target at boot was to modify the default file inside the /etc/iscsi/nodes/##nasidentifier/ip.of.the.target,3260/ directory and set

node.startup = automatic

at the next reboot I had a /dev/sda device available, which was the LUN of my iSCSI target.
Using GParted i created a partition on the device and then created an fstab entry to automatically mount it at boot (always remember to use the _netdev flag in fstab when dealing with network devices, like iSCSI, SMB, NFS, ecc.).

The fun starts now…

I wouldn’t enter the details of installing PostgreSQL on Debian, configuring it for at least the postgres user or setting up the pg_hba.conf and postgresql.conf to allow for access to the server via network.
After moving the data directory to a directory created on the iscsi mount, the following behaviour started to happen:

at boot, PostgreSQL failed to start -according to systemd – but when checking with

# systemctl status postgresql

after login, the result was that postgresql was running, but a quick

netstat -tuna

told a different story: no process was listening on the 5432 port.
But, when doing a

# systemctl restart postgresql

everything was back to normal and PostgreSQL was happily listening on its port.

after having a lot of fun reading the output of

journalctl -xe

I found out the problem was (you already guessed, right?) that PostgreSQL was trying to start before the iSCSI initiator had finished connecting to the iSCSI target.

As

# systemctl list-dependencies

Shows that the postgresql.service unit starts after the remote-fs.target, this shouldn’t happen.
Also, after editing the unit file for PostgreSQL with

# systemctl edit --full postgresql.service

by adding the following line

After=open-iscsi.service ##name-of-the-unit-for-remote-fs-mount##.mount

Nothing changed at the next reboot.

Looking better at the output of journalctl, I discovered an interesting fact: there are two units for PostgreSQL (and only one is shown by the “list-dependencies” command of systemctl… that little S.O.B.).

The unit postgresql@11-main.service is responsible for starting the PostgreSQL cluster, which is the one trying to access the files before the mount point is ready.

So after editing the correct unit by modifying the After line as following

After=network.target remote-fs.target

and adding the mount point of the data directory to the RequiresMountsFor line, at the next reboot PostgreSQL started normally and was already listening on port 5432 right after the Raspberry booted up.
I would say that there’s a lot of documentation about issues related to iscsi and postgresql… all related to CentOS and RHEL.
lucky me, uh?

Bye


Dic 27

Ok, so, what’s this?

This is a list I’ll keep updated during this year about anime series/movies I really enjoyed during 2020 (some… well… in certain ways: looking at you, Scum’s Wish) and that I decided it will be worth rewatching in the following years (maybe before a new season will come out).
It does not contains:

  • series or movies I’ve rewatched this year (all of SAO first and second season, Guilty Crown, etc.)
  • series or movies I’ve enjoyed, but I’m not willing to rewatch again in a near future (like Code GeassAttack on TitansTrinity Seven, etc).
  • series or movies I will for sure rewatch multiple times, like SAO or EVA.

So, here’s the list, in purely alphabetical (in English) order, with some small comments. Related movies, OVAs, etc. are to be considered included by default (live actions not included). To see the original title in Romanji, hover on the Japanese title:

  • After the Rain [恋は雨上がりのように].
    Simple, delicate, gentle, small love story. Why not?
  • Assassination Classroom [暗殺教室].
    The heartbreaking comedy that will make you binge watch it (both seasons) through the night. Are you up to the challenge?
  • Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor [ロクでなし魔術講師と禁忌教典].
    I usually don’t like magic and stuff, but this was fun. (waiting for season 2! – but it’s unlikely to happen)
  • Are You Lost? [ソウナンですか?]
    One of two funniest series of 2020 so far (the other being Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove It). Many thanks to the owner of FullMeta for suggesting it to me! (waiting for season 2!)
  • Boarding School Juliet [寄宿学校のジュリエット].
    Another Romeo and Juliet alternative story. Lightweight, fun, enjoyable. (alas season 2 seems like it’s not gonna happen…)
  • Cautious Hero: The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious [この勇者が俺TUEEEくせに慎重すぎる].
    Isekai almost completely deconstructed – à la Konosuba, albeit different – in one of the funniest ways ever.
  • DARLING in the FRANXX [ダーリン・イン・ザ・フランキス].
    Probably the masterpiece of Studio Trigger. Goes straight up to the top of the favourite series of the years, along with Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai. Highly recommended and, as a bonus, is full of references to previous Gainax’s works, so be sure to have seen Aim for the Top! Gunbuster, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Aim for the Top 2! Diebuster and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann before watching DARLING in the FRANXX (which I binge-watched in one single day).
  • GATE: Thus the JSDF Fought There [GATE 自衛隊 彼の地にて, 斯く戦えり].
    In an alternate universe there are dragons, goblins, elves and knights. JSDF’s soldiers have rifles. And tanks. And self-propelled howitzers. And choppers. Sounds interesting?
  • Golden Time [ゴールデンタイム].
    This is rather good but a bit complicated. Worth watching by the way if you like the genre.
  • Kaguya-sama: Love Is War [かぐや様は告らせたい~天才たちの恋愛頭脳戦~].
    A very funny, enjoyable and well paced rom-com. Highly suggested. Again, many thanks to the owner of FullMeta for suggesting it to me! (waiting for season 3!)
  • My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU [やはり俺の青春ラブコメはまちがっている.].
    Another rather good serie but not exactly lightweight. Definitely worth watching if you like the genre. (waiting for season 3! Season 3 is airing! Season 3 aired)
  • ORESUKI: Are you the only one who loves me? [俺を好きなのはお前だけかよ].
    More or less your standard harem, but characters make it interesting to watch. Also which other serie has a bench reported as a character (albeit minor)?
  • Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai [青春ブタ野郎はバニーガール先輩の夢を見ない].
    Ok, this was probably the most enjoyable serie I’ve seen this year as it’s a good mix of comedy, science, psicology, social matters… You have to see it!.
  • Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend [冴えない彼女の育てかた].
    Characters are so badly matched it’s so funny to watch… mind that this is an otaku-oriented serie, by the way. The final movie was good, really good.
  • Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove It [理系が恋に落ちたので証明してみた。].
    This was, along with Are You Lost?, one of the two funniest series of 2020. Definitely science-oriented, but definitely a must see.
  • Scum’s Wish [クズの本懐].
    That. Was. Hard. It hurt. Badly. Maybe it was just me, after all…
  • TONIKAWA: Over the Moon for You [トニカクカワイイ!].
    This was the sweetest, nicest rom com of the year. Can’t wait forthe upcoming OVA and maybe a second season.
  • Uzaki-chan wants to hang out! [宇崎ちゃんは遊びたい!].
    Rom com with some pretty funny gags, really enjoyable funny to watch. Higly recommended and waiting for season 2 (confirmed!)
  • Waiting in the Summer [あの夏で待ってる].
    If you were a fan of Please Teacher (I was, and still am), you won’t miss a story set in the same universe.
  • We Never Learn [ぼくたちは勉強ができない].
    Cute girls, clumsy main character, lots of funny situations. One of the favourite comedies of the last years.
  • Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku [ヲタクに恋は難しい].
    Another, funny, enjoyable, otaku-oriented serie. This one with adult relationships.
  • Your Lie in April [四月は君の嘘].
    I’m not gonna lie: it’s a beautiful story, but if you’re just a little bit sentimental, you’ll cry a lot (the good part: I’m not gonna cry for the rest of 2020 since I’m out of tears for the whole year thanks to this serie).

This list will be updated not so regularly… expect some new entries during the autumn.

– Created Apr 27, 2020
– Updated Jul 27, 2020
– Updated Aug 10, 2020
– Updated Aug 20, 2020
– Updated Dec 05, 2020
– Updated Dec 19, 2020
– Updated Dec 27, 2020



Part 2 of my blog post on SAO. Part 1 is here.

The usual caution: SPOILERS AHEAD! I’ll be talking freely about the four narrative arcs depicted in the first two seasons of SAO and the plot of Ordinal Scale.

The first season of SAO was probably the anime series of 2012. Following the success of the light novels, the first season, covering the Aincrad and Fairy Dance arcs, counts 25 episodes: 15 for Aincrad and 10 for Fairy Dance.
In 2014 the second season aired, covering the Phantom Bullet arc – 14 episodes – the Calibur arc – 3 episodes – and the Mother’s Rosario arc – 7 episodes – plus a recap episode at the end of the Phantom Bullet arc.

Picture of SAO Progressive mangas and SAO series/movie blurays

Things that I bought…

Dynit – the distribution company of SAO for Italy – has released a more “mainstream” version of the Blu-ray box-sets for the first two seasons. In comparison to the already existing sets, each set now cover an entire season, while the existing ones, which are still available as “collectors’ edition”, only cover one arc each, with the exception of the one covering both Calibur and Mother’s Rosario.

Blu-ray box-sets for SAO

The two “mainstream” Blu-ray boxes

The two sets are pretty basic. There are no books, posters or whatever: just the disks. There are five disks for the first season and four disk for the second season. Every disk include, apart for the episodes, Sword Art Offline – essentially an after-show (Omake) – and various interviews with the staff of A-1 Pictures, the animation studio which make (as of today, with Alicization – War of Underworld Pt.2 still airing) SAO.
Each episode has both the Japanese and Italian dub[1]. Subtitles are available for signs or writings only or for both of them plus dialogues, as usual for a Dynit edition.

At the time of writing, there isn’t a Blu-ray box of the same “mainstream” version covering Alicization; only the “collectors’ edition” is available, but I think it’s just a matter of time before a “complete Alicization” version (or whatever) will be ready, but War of Underworld Pt.2 has to come to an end before it’ll happen.

The Ordinal Scale Blu-ray, always from Dynit, comes with two very nice additions: a theater poster and a booklet containing a lot of information about the plot, the characters, and the crew behind the production, including a series of questions to the original voice actors.

Dynit's edition of Ordinal Scale

Dynit edition of Ordinal Scale

Interview with Miyuki Sawashiro from the Ordinal Scale's booklet

Interview with Miyuki Sawashiro from the Ordinal Scale’s booklet

Secret Report, it says

Secret Report, it says

On part 3 I will talk about SAO. For real.

[つづく]

1 fun fact – I’ve never watched SAO with the Italian dub: I’m too accustomed to the Japanese one.



In 2020, for the most part, we stream content from the web. It’s easy, it’s convenient and it’s actually pretty cheap.
We can read mangas or we can watch animes online – many thanks to the official distributors or the scanlators/fansub groups for their work – on various platforms (legally or not, it’s up to you).

And still, by the way, this is what Amazon delivered yesterday:

Picture of SAO Progressive mangas and SAO series/movie blurays

Things that I bought…

It’s no secret there are some series I really like. One of those is Sword Art Online (from now on, SAO). I’ve seen the first serie back in 2013, and I liked it, but at the time I was too much into Evangelion to really enjoy it as much I did only in the last 3/4 years. Now, as SAO Alicization – World of Underworld pt.2 is airing in Japan – and I’m watching it with just a couple hours of delay on Amazon Prime, already subbed – and I’m waiting for a complete Blu-ray release of the complete Alicization Arc, I got the first two series’ Blu-ray boxes, the movie and, as the novels of SAO Progressive are not available in Italy, the first four tankobons of the manga adaptation.

I can watch every serie of SAO in HD on Amazon Prime – sadly, not the movie tough – so why I bought the Blu-ray boxes? Because this is my way of supporting an author and its work (present and future).
Around 10 years ago I decided that if a serie or movie I really like is or will be available on Blu-ray, I’ll buy it, but I’m not gonna buy DVDs in 2020. I’m currently writing this post on a 4K 32″ computer monitor, where watching a 1080p video is perfectly fine, a 720p video is still enjoyable but a 576p/480p video needs too much upscaling nowadays. This is the reason I haven’t bought the Full Metal Panic serie DVD box when Dynit started selling it.

Ok, and now the usual caution: SPOILERS AHEAD! I’ll be talking freely about the four narrative arcs depicted in the first two seasons (plus Calibur) of SAO and the plot of Ordinal Scale.

Aincrad is probably the most well known narrative arc of the whole SAO franchise and also one of the most loved ones – Asuna quickly getting on the top of everyone’s favourite waifus’ list sure came from the Aincrad arc – so, author Reki Kawahara decided to write a more detailed version of the first two light novels by starting the SAO Progressive project, completely depicting what happened during the two years our beloved characters spent in the game.
If you’ve seen the anime, you’ll have noticed that from episode two to episode five we’re taken from level one up to level fifty-six without knowing what happened in the meantime, like how Asuna joined the Knights of the Blood Oath or how Kirito gained his 14500 HP he claimed when helping Silica in episode four.
SAO Progressive tells us all the details, but in doing so changes the story quite a bit. The SAO Progressive‘s novels aren’t published in Italy, but the manga adaptation has been published this month, the first four tankobons being released in a very nice box by J-Pop (which is the name of the publisher. Yeah, the same as the musical genre, deal with it).

The first four volumes of the manga adaptation of SAO Progressive

The first four volumes all have Asuna on the covers, and the box as well: nice!

As I wrote, there are some differences in the story, as always when dealing with different adaptations of the same concept. From the anime, we know that Asuna and Kirito didn’t see each other for a while after defeating Illfang the Kobold Lord together (they only met sporadically when planning large-scale attacks to defeat some bosses).
In the manga there are both differences in small and large details, from Asuna taking a bath in Kirito‘s bathroom (which seems to be one of the many “Oh-Yeah!” moments in the manga), to both of them defeating the boss of the second level together.
The drawings are so like the anime (having the same character designer surely helps!), sometimes I was thinking of looking at some storyboard or key-frame from the serie rather than reading a manga.
The italian edition kept (as usual) the original reading order. Translations were done correctly and I think are on the spot even with some English term differing from, for instance, the English translation (e.g. Asuna is called “Fencer” instead of “Flash”, which could be totally fine as she use a rapier, but I have yet to understand if it’ll be subject to change in the future, as I don’t know when Asuna gained her “Flash” nickname – “Saetta” in Italian, which translate literally to “flash of lightning”).

The hard part is when you consider what will be the final volumes count. The first four volumes cover the first and second level of Aincrad; as there are seventy-five levels to beat (should have been one hundred, but we all know how it went), that means we’re looking at about a hundred and fifty volumes just for the progression of the game, bu we should account for the various extras, like the quest with Silica, the one with Lisbeth, the murder-solving part, all the Yui-related events, Kirito joining the Knights of the Blood Oath and the Kuradeel matter… all things considered, we are probably looking at a hundred and seventy volumes long manga. At a rate of one volume every two months (it’ll never go this fast. Ever), should be finished in just a little less than thirty years.
Probably Sadamoto’s manga adaptation of Neon Genesis Evangelion will be a matter of “just a couple years” in hindsight.

[つづく] – (Aug. 21, 2020) Part 2 is here.



… it’s not great; and that’s just because of a couple things, so, right off the top of my head:

  1. Sakura is just a lovable main character, but she’s annoying at times, especially at the beginning of the story. Of course YMMV.
  2. The beginning of the story seems a bit too forced… sorta “things have to be like this” or like “this situation have to lead to this conclusion”: why?
    This maybe occurs because there are too much things happening in too little time, probably in a 2 ½ hours movie the pace would have been slower (thus better for this type of movie). Again YMMV.
  3. The soundtrack: I can’t remember a single track standing out from all of the background music
    (compare this to some tracks from Scum’s Wish); and, no, the opening and the end titles don’t count.

 

Theatrical poster of I want to eat your pancreas

Theatrical poster for the movie

Setting these things aside, I want to eat your pancreas is still a very good movie, the story is easy to follow, drawings and animations are really well done, there are silly moments, tragic moments and the main characters are sympathetic enough to make the movie enjoyable to watch.

Recommended, if you have enough spare time to watch it.