[NB: It took me a few hours to translate this article, during which the protest the article concerns already took place. NRK reports that the protest was attended by 1,000+ students; I can translate that article later. Also, if I got anything wrong here, please say something. I took more liberties with the translation than usual, adding extra context or rephrasing ideas more naturally.]

Thousands of protestors are expected in Hamar to protest the closure of multiple schools. The police comes with a clear message.

AWAITING TRAFFIC CHAOS: The police requests that people avoid driving into Hamar when thousands of protestors are expected to descend upon the city. Map courtesy of Google Earth.

By Magnus Kallelid, Annabelle Bruun, Bendik Hansen, and Kristoffer Solberg. Published Tuesday October 22nd 2024, 10:33 AM, last updated 10:40 AM.

HAMAR (Dagbladet): Prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre strongly reacts to the comments made on Monday by mayor of Lom municipality, Kristian Frisvolds, concerning the school structure debate, TV 2 reports.

— "For a mayor to call for a war, I think that's completely unacceptable," Støre said to the TV channel.

County-level politicians in Innlandet County, representing the Conservative Party, Labor Party and Green Party have proposed the closure of Dokka and Skarnes upper secondary schools as well as the school grounds in Dombås, Lom, Flisa, and Sønsterud.

This has caused outrage in Innlandet County. Several thousand protestors are expected to descend upon Hamar's downtown on Tuesday afternoon, according to the police.

According to Hamar Arbeiderblad (lit. Hamar Workers' Paper), several buses full of people from various places in Innlandet County are on their way to the city, which is located on the coast of Lake Mjøsa.

— "We're on the ball and monitoring the situation. These are people who desire to make use of their freedom of speech, which is by all means legal in democratic Norway," Ketil Enger of Innlandet police district, who is leading the police group assigned to the protest, said to the newspaper.

He said that it would in principle be possible for the protest to happen without a police presence, but that they will still be present on Tuesday. He wished for the time being not to say how large the police presence will be.

— "Some have notified us beforehand that they wish to attend the demonstration while others have not. There is both an organized and unorganized section that will join in this demonstration," Enger said.

He made a request for those thinking of going to the demonstration by car:

— "Avoid driving into the city if possible. There will be many people, and we may be forced to close individual roads and regulate traffic if the situation calls for it," Enger said to the newspaper.

Declared "total war"

On Monday evening, mayor of Lom municipality Kristian Frisvold spat fire, saying that "a total war is declared" and that there is no longer a need to be impersonal about the case of the proposed school closures, but that it is now acceptible to go after the politicians personally.

Frisvold has received much criticism for his commentary. He said in NRK's Political Quarter Tuesday morning that they have tried everything, but that this has been decided beforehand. [Does he mean "this was inevitable"? And who is "they"? The anti-school-closure movement?]

Kristian Frisvold is a member of the Conservative Party but in his capacity as mayor represents a different party, the Village List. The Conservative Party has distanced itself from Frisvold's comments, saying that they violate the party's ethical guidelines.

When Frisvold declared a total war, he stated that "all is fair game".

He said that he had contacted journalists to ask them to dig into members of the county council representing the Labor Party, Conservative Party, and Green Party. "We want to uncover all sorts of dirt," Frisvold said.

— "Can you as mayor say that all is fair game?" NRK's host asked.

— "I will utilize all legal means possible to stop [the closure of the schools]. I have only encouraged legal methods and nothing else," Frisvold replied.

On the subject of Conservative Party members contacting the police after his request, Frisvold said:

— "They can go ahead and do that. I have nothing other than legal methods to use, and I will use them. It is legal to investigate if people have nothing to hide."

SCHOOL CLOSURES: During the meeting of the Lom municipal council on Monday October 21st, mayor Kristian Frisvold declared "total war" against the county-level politicians in Innlandet County. Video courtesy of Lom municipality.

— "Completely unprepared"

The mayor's political party, the Village List, commented Tuesday on the mayor's strongly criticized remarks.

— "Mayor Kristian Frisvold must speak for himself, regarding his choice of words in yesterday's municipal council meeting, about Lom's situation around the school structure reform, and personal attacks on county-level politicians in Innlandet County", Trond Volden of the Village List wrote in a press release.

— "We the members of the Village List in Lom were all completely unprepared for the words that came from the mayor's mouth," Volden wrote.

I'm reminded of the old Lenin quote, "There are cours where nothing happens and there are episodes where seasons happen", because Toradora was roughly like this for me:

Episodes 1-11: "Hey this is pretty good, I can dig this: it's cute, it's fun, it's silly, and it's got just a pinch of drama that makes it feel more substantive..."

Episodes 12-20: "Alright this is kinda boring tbh, I'm not nearly invested enough in these characters to particularly care about their teen drama nonsense."

Episodes 21-24: "ACTUALLY I DO CARE SUDDENLY! HOLY SHIT! THEY'RE ACTUALLY DOING IT‽"

Episode 25: "And they... I guess sorta stuck the landing? I mean there were good parts of this episode, but I feel like pacing-wise it would've been better if they just didn't have any conflict in this episode."

^アモガス^

The picture shows Pinkie Pie who is the main character from Bocchi the Rock, for those not in the know

It was apparently called Powerpuff Girls D: Battle in Megaville, and as I remembered it, it also featured Dexter from Dexter's Lab, and whenever you beat your opponent, they'd make this sort of echoey cry/scream. I remember finding the game both very fun and cool — despite not having much of a connection to either cartoon — yet also a bit "disturbing" because these characters are supposed to be each other's siblings, and yet here they are just beating the crap out of each other. I didn't quite understand what the deal with the art style was, but I still understood that it, coupled with the violence, made the game feel more teenage and edgy than the cartoon — and being a preteen at the time, that of course appealed to me. Yet I'm pretty sure I only played the game once and then immediately forgot what it was called, and so I would sometimes think to myself for years later "What was that game?" but simply never bother to look into it until today.

Apparently the D in Powerpuff Girls D stands for "Doujinshi", and the game was based on a Powerpuff Girls doujinshi called Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi written by someone called Bleedman. The game itself upon revisiting it was not nearly as good as I remembered, it was decently fun but the controls were still a bit clunky, and the art and music and sound design were not nearly as "uniform" as I remembered, either (add to this the visual bugs as a result of using Flashpoint). The things about Battle in Megaville that made the game stand out so much as a preteen are obviously just a whole lot of nothing now as a young adult.

It does make me curious about that doujinshi, though, because it looks like it has (or at least had) a pretty sizeable fanbase.

The threat to Jewish and Israeli targets in Norway is seen as significantly increased. The terror threat level is therefore raised from moderate to high, and the police is armed.

• There are multiple negative conditions that have increased the terror threat, among others conditions related to the ongoing escalation of the conflict in the Middle East. In Norway it is first and foremost threats to Jewish and Israeli targets that are significantly raised, says PST senior advisor Eirik Veum to the Norwegian News Agency.

He says that the PST does not wish to say anything concrete about what this entails, but informs that the PST is available for the press from 17 o'clock.

• The PST has at the time no information on if there are concrete plans at hand for committing terrorist acts against targets in Norway, but we are working quickly with clearing up threats and points of insecurity, Veum says.

The "high" terror threat level is a level 4 on a scale of 1 to 5.

The police director has based on the threat evaluation decided that the police should be armed nationwide.

• The PST describes a serious and tense situation in the Middle East. Increased likelihood for attempted terror in Norway is a situation the police take incredibly seriously, and we have a number of measures for protecting the people and ensuring we are as prepared as possible, says police director Benedicte Bjørnland in a press release.

The temporary arming of the police is effective immediately.

• The decision is based on that the police should be able to go quicker into action in the case of a possible terror attack to prevent it, limit the area of damage, or stop an ongoing attack, says Bjørnland.

The police have for a longer period had more measures for the purposes of protecting Jewish and Israeli interests in Norway. This effort is now being strengthened.

• Going forward we will have increased attention directed to the fact that state actors can use criminal networks for committing terrorism, and which consequences this has for the police's efforts against these milieus, says Bjørnland.

As someone who hasn't had that much exposure to the magical girl genre yet, I find that I've tended to think of the "big 3" magical girl shows as Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Precure, and for a "big 5" add Ojamajo Doremi and Tokyo Mew Mew to the aforementioned... But really, I feel like the main determining factor for inclusion in this list is more than anything just that I've repeatedly heard about them, and that isn't objectively the same as actual popularity and influence, although there is certainly a correlation.

So what would your lists look like by comparison?

It's happened to me a few times that I see the original title of an anime compared to its English title, and I just think that the original title is so weak compared to the translated title that it feels like the translated title actually "came first": that the translated title uses alliteration, rhythm and rhyme, brevity, and wordplay so well that the original title feels "phoned in" by comparison.

...Yet I can't actually remember for certain which anime I've had this thought for, so I want to ask here if anyone else has any examples of this that they can recall.

Now someone needs to make a compilation of Sakura going "ho-e~"

In any case we love this kaiju don't we