These two auto flowers were planted same day ( 17days ago, 5 gallon pots, outdoor)and the fruit by the foot seems to be growing much better than the BD. I did have to transplant both so was expecting some stress but the FBTF didn’t appear to have any set backs like the BD is.
I have another blue dream seed germinating, should I scrap this plant and use it’s pot for that seed or does this one look like it still could grow up? First time grower so might be overthinking things…

Three years back I started watching the entire Ghibli catalog chronologically starting with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. I had never watched a Ghibli movie to completion up to that point, and let me just say that Miyazaki is kinda underrated. I know its common to rag on him because usually if someone cites one of his films as their favorite anime its probably because it they have probably only ever watched Ghibli films, but the man is by all accounts a master at what he does. Of all the movies I watched during that binge, though, one scene that still sticks with me to this day is the opening sequence to Nausicaä. The way the sound and visual direction is able to build this oppressive and isolating tone without any dialogue is brilliant and is the kind of scene that just tells you that you're gonna be in for a real treat.
If there's one thing that Ghibli films are most known for, even among non-anime fans, it's their ability to craft these cozy, vibrant worlds that awaken your in child and make you just want to explore every nook and cranny of their setting. However, they're far from an outlier in this regard. The 1980s and early 90s are brimming with genius directors who knew how to build an atmosphere. While he's best known for his work on 1995's Ghost in the Shell, director Mamoru Oshii was constructing deeply atmospheric all the way back in the 1980s, with his 1985 OVA Angel's Egg being perhaps the most extreme example of this. 1988's classic film Akira has been making the meme circuit lately, but it too thrives on building strong atmosphere. If you thought it just to be a lucky break, then let me point you to the third episode of 1987's Neo Tokyo which was also directed and storyboarded Katsuhiro Ootoomo and is just as rich in atmosphere as Akira is.
And I'm gonna be real with you chief... they just don't make em like they used to. A lot of people will chalk it up to "digital animation just hits different" but I don't think that paints a full picture. I think there's another factor at play here: one that I don't see discussed at all, but which I think any aspiring creative can learn from. So let's grab a nice warm cup of your preferred [insert whatever time you are reading this here] drink and let's explore pacing, atmosphere, and anime's growing need to slow the fuck down (mind my French).
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I'm sure nothing can go wrong here...
Building Atmosphere
So before I can go into where modern anime feels like its lacking, we first need to break down just how the hell we build atmosphere and setting in the first place, or at least how these classic works do it.
The short and easy answer is that they linger (cue title card), but does that even mean? I could argue that Hell's Paradise lingers with just how much the character seem to stand around and exposit so how is that any different from those prior series? There is, after all, this idea in writing that you can't be action non-stop, that you have to slow down and let your audience catch their breath. However, there's a massive difference between what something like Hell's Paradise does and what something like Angel's Egg does. Angel's Egg's plot certainly moves by at what many would consider to be a snail's pace. Not much happens on screen. Shots and scenes stay on for seemingly longer than they need to, not presenting any real new information in the same way that something like Hell's Paradise does. In that show, every piece of exposition works to build something. In Angel's Egg, it does not. However, what it does do is build atmosphere. With little dialogue for the viewer to chew on, you're instead required to engage with the OVA through its sound design and presentation, you pay attention to the minutia of the world and the fine details in every aspect of its composition. It also contrasts nicely with the more "action-y" parts of the film. By pulling back, it builds in time for the viewer to reflect and contemplate the scene that came before it and how that plays into the overall themes of the work. It isn't just building to the future, but also giving time to reflect on the past.
Most commonly, though, these calmer, speechless, "lingering" sequences are used to build atmosphere, like in Nausicaä or the opening episode to 2003's Texhnolyze. It's techniques like these that gave 80s anime that unique feel about it and (as with the Texhnolyze example) can be seen to have some lingering effects on the industry at large. However, what if you aren't trying to build an atmospheric Sci-Fi work like most of what I've listed above. Well, lingering on plot beats can also serve another purpose: building character.
What a tasty omelette...
Building Character
Think about it like this, lingering as I've described above is the cinematic equivalent of "stopping to smell the roses". However, there's an equal component in character writing that is also frequently overlooked. I can't think of any colloquial idioms off the top of my head, so I'll instead I'll invoke Cowboy Bebop (and maybe a little known, band named after bugs) and call it the "You're gonna carry that weight" principle.
In the same way that not every story has a happy ending, not every emotional arc is gonna have a neat conclusion. Introspection is a great thing to do in your own life and sometimes its helpful to just sit down, clear your head, and just stew on a problem. Not every emotion is gonna present itself with a sweeping orchestra and a river of tears. Sometimes you just have to live with those emotions, only being able to make sense of them in the quiet moments. The night sure is thick with the feeling of impending clarity.
This applies as much to story-telling as it does real time. Series like 1981's Urusei Yatsura, 1998's Cowboy Bebop, and 1995's Neon Genesis Evangelion thrive here, and (perhaps unlike the section on atmosphere) this does permeate to some degree into the more modern era of anime, serving as the core to 2016's March Comes in Like a Lion, and 2021's Megalobox 2 and Sonny Boy. So it's not a hard principle to grasp, but one that I do feel (as I will elaborate on in the next section) is a dying art. Hell, if I can go off on a brief tangent, while Chainsaw Man got a lot of shit by a vocal minority of fans for being "too cinematic", I think that cinematic feel and Nakayama's insertion of anime-original "fluff scenes" (see that famous Aki's morning routine sequence) help to build the atmosphere and sense of resolve in its characters. It helps them feel far more real despite their absurd flaws than most other Shounen casts in recent memory, but I digress.
So now that I've name dropped a dozen or so series that do it right (in what is quickly unraveling into a mess of a writing piece), let's explore why old thing good, new thing bad, or at least where a lot of more recent shows seem to miss the point...
I'm sure this man brews a mean cup of Joe...
The Modern Problem
Who here is watching Heavenly Delusion? Yeah, that's right. Time to talk about current things and get SPICY with my takes.
I think Heavenly Delusion is one of the biggest let downs this season. Ironically, while its OP builds a strong sense of atmosphere and does a lot of what I talk about here but in OP form, the series itself never seems to get it, and its far from alone. See, for a post-apocalyptic story, Heavenly Delusion does a pretty poor job of world-building. It's always moving, always proposing new questions (to speak nothing on how I feel about those questions), and always expositing, but it never stops. It never slows down long enough to give you time to process any of it, and in a genre as stooped in atmosphere as post-apocalyptic survival stories tend to be, I find that deeply unfortunately. Just take a look at 2017's Girls' Last Tour and I dare you to say that Heavenly Delusion has half the sense of atmosphere that show has. GLT is dripping in atmosphere for a lot of the reasons I've already talked about. It's hauntingly dripping in suffocating silence and hopelessness and feeds that into what narrative tangents we get every odd episode. Heavenly Delusion has none of that. Hell, it can't even make the man-eaters convincingly intimidating.
And it's far from alone. While some series from recent memory thrive on their quick wit (Bocchi the Rock, The Tatami Time Machine Blues, Great Pretender, etc.) so many others seem intent on moving at the speed of sound, and missing out on the slow parts that gives your story heart. Trigun Stampede doesn't work half as well without slowing down every so often, and finishing every episode off with a contemplative and slow ED that works as a great consolidation of resources to give you that breathing room and time to linger; Skip and Loafer excels at tinging some of its slower moments with a hint of profound sadness and introspection that build a sense of realness to its narrative instead of droning on from plot point to plot point; and the highly overlooked Do It Yourself from last fall is basically Lingering the Animation with how it uses a methodical plot to deliver one of the most pointed portrayals of "enjoy life in the moment" that the genre has ever put forth. All these series work by slowing their pacing when they need to and giving time to linger and are all newer series, so what am I even on right now?
No, the problem is all the shows that simply don't so this. Call of the Night has a setting rife for this atmospheric contemplation but decides that's slow and boring so its gonna be a pseudo-Shounen instead. Hell's Paradise comes out of the gate with its narrative and only slows down to play exposition catch-up after hooking in the audience. Demon Slayer couldn't be bothered to give us more than a line of dialogue from the family whose brutal (off-screen) murder at the hand of demons serves as the backbone of its entire narrative. Jujutsu Kaisen suffers the same, ultimately undermining what could be a half decent meditation on death and the meaning of life (good thing we got Chainsaw Man for that). Oshi no Ko decides to front load its story, not with endearing character moments, but an hour and a half of exposition all to set up one scene that itself barely deserves the setup. I'm kinda picking on the big names because they're the most prominent, but believe me this issue goes all the way down the food chain. But I think the most egregious offenders are Summertime Render and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. The former having the audacity to layer that sweet, sweet atmosphere on thick in the opening episodes only to push it aside in mind-numbingly fast-paced action, and the latter... well...
I watched Edgerunners back during the initial hype, and while I certainly enjoyed its great cast, great animation, and excellent score, I always felt like it was missing something though I could never put my finger on it. Now I kinda get it. For a series based on Japanese cyberpunk aesthetics that (as far as I'm aware) arose from the Sci-Fi boom of the 80s, it seems to not fully understand what made that aesthetic work in the first place. In the most brutal twist of irony imaginable, Edgerunners is a fast-pace, high octane action series form start to finish that never once stops to linger long enough to allow any of the weight to settle in. It never slows to explore the implications of its setting besides "this is just how the genre does things I guess" and tries to be so cool so hard that at times it overplays its hand and can come off as awkward (you will never convince me that "Choom" is not cringy af). It is an overall really good show, but standing in the shadow of giants, I just can't help but feel like it could have been so much more.
Anyway, let's wrap this puppy up...
Side note: the ED actually has a pretty great sense of weight to it that the series itself lacks. Go watch that MV if you haven't already...
Final Thoughts
So what's the point?
Gonna be honest... I don't know. I know at the end of the day, most people who watch anime don't care and that's fine. I hold no grudges for those who like any of the series that I listed above, and do think many of them (pretty much all of them except Summertime Render) have their own charms that make for enjoyable, if incomplete, watches. But at the same time, I'm hoping that by spending this last hour or so of my time, I can maybe get some gears turning in your head and get discussion going on how to improve things in the future. I know a lot of new fans don't like to watch older anime for any number of reasons, even if I think by doing that we blind ourselves and create problems that past generations have already solved. I'm an artist at heart. I love to hone my craft my seeing what works and doesn't work in others, and hope that just maybe I can maybe provoke a cheekly little "interesting. I never thought of it like that" from like-minded folk.
I've always loved anime for its ability to build atmosphere and style, and maybe just a little feel like the modern climate is moving away from that. However, instead of making another "old anime good, new anime bad" post I wanted to maybe be a little more constructive and dive into the why behind the way I feel.
I hope this was at least mildly enjoyable to read, and I'd love to hear what y'all have to say about this topic in the comments below. Meanwhile, I've been sitting at this screen for close to two hours and need to go touch some grass.
Maybe I'll finally watch that 2nd Patlabor film like I've been meaning to for the last week...

I've been growing this sunflower for a while now. It surprising survived a very damaging transplant into its current pot and took off with rapid growth a few weeks later. Now it's 5' 10" tall with a flower head from petal to petal being about 11", almost a foot across. My main questions are, is it normal for the flower head to lean off the plant so much, and will the flower head continue to get bigger over time? The mini flowers in the center of the sunflower only just recently filled in the space completely for context. I also water it about every other day, never letting the soil get too dry or getting to the point that the leaves begin to droop from being dehydrated.

Looking to get some feedback on what I may be doing wrong. This is the second plant in the bunch that started doing this and im afraid my last one will be next. I'm afraid to defoliate at this stage since I'm early to mid flower. My ppm for this plant has been hovering around 650 and the ph is currently 6.25. I'm wondering if it's not getting enough feed.
420 fast buds gorilla punch Ocean forest 3 gal pot General hydroponics 3 nutrient system 420 fast buds recommended feeding schedule for soil Humidity 50% at this stage Temp is in the mid 70s