Perhaps not...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:20 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Christmas kept me away from most entertainment so this week I determined to  had been considering seeing The Day the Earth Stood Still, however the reviews were not good and amongst my messages from an Email list I'm on were these lucid comments on the film by those less fortunate than I.

Save your money for the cheap show, or PPV.

 

"Just saw a movie that happened to have a title card that read "Day the Earth Stood Still""...

...been lurking around for many years, but  I felt  I had to say
something ...and this new disaster makes me feel like somebody threw  a
ton of raw, fresh excrement onto me, in IMAX format, yet...what kind of
Hollywood dumbass wrote this thing?

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:58 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Good lord! The sun...It's up...It's like Noon!
 This game is more cracklike than the most cracktacular crack to have ever cracked out of a crackpipe!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 01:57 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 What game?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sun Dec 28 20:09:49 2008 (+rSRq)

2

Looks like Fallout 3 to me.

Having had no experience with the previous iterations, I'm hesitant to jump in at this stage. I feel like I'd be lacking the requisite experience to angrily mock it as "not really a Fallout game" with all the other alpha nerds.

Posted by: Will at Mon Dec 29 16:49:13 2008 (WnBa/)

3 It is indeed Fallout 3.
Regards the "not really Fallout" griping, I'm not sure where that comes from. It is real time rather than turn based but it is remarkably true to the spirit of the 2 previous games. The freedom of movement in particular is astonishing. I am very impressed with this thing. It is one of the best I have ever seen.

I guess I'm just a Beta geek....

My only quibble is that there is no multiplayer option, but that would probably be exceedingly hard to pull off with the level of detail and freedom this game has, which is as great as some of the MMPORGs.

Posted by: Brickmuppet at Mon Dec 29 19:36:32 2008 (V5zw/)

4 Well, I forgot to open my tag when I wrote that. Everything I've heard about the game is that it's Oblivion but better. Now, Oblivion is a game that sucked up many hours of my time (still not as much as Morrowind). That comparison speaks well of it to me, but I'm really not inclined to spend any money on a game that isn't likely to run well on either of my PCs. I also don't want to support their dependence on overbearing DRM.

It's the same reason I haven't gone out and dumped money on Red Alert 3, even though I desperately want to do so. EA has shown no regard for its paying customers (I'm speaking specifically of the continued unfixed bugs in games like Kane's Wrath) while turning the game into a long-term rental with limited activations and only hollow promises that they might someday maybe deactivate that requirement. I expect they'll go out of business and brick all those games first.

Posted by: Will at Mon Dec 29 22:46:02 2008 (oj5wx)

5 Now that's just plain weird. Last night when I left that comment, the first line said "I forgot to open my "sarc" tag", but I'd actually used < and > in place of ". It showed up just fine on the other machine where I wrote it. Now I'm on my other PC a few hours later and it's gone.

Posted by: Will at Tue Dec 30 09:44:03 2008 (oj5wx)

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All the cool kids are doing it....

• What anime are you watching now?
Bleach, Lucky Star

• What is your favourite time to watch?
The middle of the night.

• And your favorite place?
Within line of sight of the monitor (duh!)

• Who is your favourite auteur?
Satoshi Kohn

• Your favourite OST?
3 actually, Space Cruiser Yamato, Grendaizer, Ghost in the Shell

• What is the most difficult anime you’ve ever watched?
Serial Experiments Lain...but it was worth it


• What was the first anime you remember watching?
Marine Boy or Speed Racer in '74

• Do you have a comfort show that you re-watch?
I watch Arivadercci Yamato every Christmas. I also re-watch select episodes Starblazers, Mazinger series robot shows and VanDread from time to time.
.

• What is the most erotic anime you’ve watched?
As an American I am protected by the 5th amendment to the United States Constitution...

• Which classic should you have watched?
Doraemon.

• Which series did you never want to end?
Bleach....despite its Shonen Jump tropes, the characters are superbly realized and the story is engaging.

• What is your most overrated anime?
Neon Genesis Evangelion

• Which character could you have an affair with?
LOL whut?


• Who is your favourite character?
Ichigo from Bleach...closely followed by Meia Gisbourne from VanDread

^{Other runners up that spring to mind immediately..
Vash from Trigun
Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist
Lady Eboshi from Princess Mononoke}



• Which character do you most dislike?
Probably Shinji from Evangelion

• Which character do you identify with most?
Linna Inverse from Slayers....which is probably a sign of deep seated emotional problems.

• Which anime changed your life?
Starblazers

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 12:30 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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...prevents me from posting much, so in place of content, here is Chii.

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Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:13 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Many of you have seen this bootleg vid of the trailer for the new Star Trek Movie....

There has been some grumbling from fans as there always will be. To me it looks seriously kewel despite the unspockular Spock. However John C. Wright has obtained the opinion of the only person who's opinion we care about...

 

Oh Well....
Still gonna see it.....

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 03:22 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Rocket Girls has been mentioned here in passing (mostly via pictures in science posts) a couple of times. Having been quite taken with the first few episodes that I saw at a party a while back,  I eagerly looked forward to the US release.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Black Lagoon is a fairly dark show. Rather darker than I ordinarily like.
 The improbable story of 3 Americans and a Japanese Salaryman operating as a band of more or less ruthless modern day pirates out of northern Borneo is not happy or lighthearted in any way. It has, however been a perversely fun show, heavy on the action, snark, and over the top situations.

Volumes one and two of the second series had fallen into a pattern of one or two gruesome shows followed by a sad episode and then one or two shows very satisfyingly stocked with violence sarcasm, and girls in hotpants committing all manner of improbably spectacular theoretically reproducible violence while shouting obscenities.  In other words "win".

Volume two in particular had this delightfully gratuitous bit of dreadfulness...

....Sawyer, the local corpse disposal expert who sidelines as an assasin is an implacable, mute, chainsaw wielding  goth chick delivering her sinister one liners through an ultravoice.

I mean really....THAT is quality entertainment boys and girls!

When volume 3 came out I picked it up at once.  I headed over to Allans house, we broke out the popcorn and popped the dvd in. Our reactions can be accurately summed up via the following illustration.

Holy hell that was merciless! We have finally discovered the point of diminishing returns in pathos, gratuity, and gutpunchery. Yikes!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:16 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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For the last 2 years, there has been one show that has exceeded all others in hype, discussion and adoration. It's alleged to be one of those "important" shows that in some ways marked a sort demarcation point in the history of fandom. Most distressingly, it is a show I had seen but one random episode of.

   Well, last night, I finally watched episodes zero, one and two of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumia.

 The buzz surrounding this show was actually a bit offputting,  with some  fans of the show giving the sort of coercive and evangelical salesmanship that leads one to believe that a negative response will be met by violence.
It is by all accounts an interesting show, and I had been looking forward to seeing it.
One of the reasons for my delay is that I was informed that it was exceedingly important to watch the show in broadcast order as opposed to actual episodic order.
The show was initially broadcast deliberately out of order and that is said to be important to the pacing of the story. Of course the broadcast order set is the delux set...and is expensive.

Last night my friend Allan announced that he'd watched it, enjoyed it and offered to show it to me...so I said "Screw it!" and we watched the show beginning with episode zero.....

My first impression was..."Lord what awful voice acting!" This is one of the worst dubs ever! Switch the audio!  

(Then I got the joke that is episode 0.)

Episode zero aside, three episodes in, the English dub is actually quite good. Wendee Lee  gives a great performance as the manic and bombastic Haruhi.

The show has unusually high production values. It is also unusual in other ways.

Haruhi Suzumia is bored...completely...utterly...bored. She despairs of her banal existence and wants desperately to do interesting and unusual things and by golly she is going to try to make said things happen!
This is, on the surface, a really cool character trait and certainly should be an excellent start for anything.
Unfortunately, Haruhi is not a particularly good person, in fact she is a borderline sociopath.

Haruhi is, you see, one of those obnoxious, pushy, psychobitch fangirls many of us have had the misfortune of encountering over the years, the manipulative narcissistic female bully to whom all people she encounters are nothing but disposable red-shirt bit players in the glorious Mary Sue story that she believes her life must be.  Unfettered with any ethical inhibitions and adept at avoiding any serious sanctions for her increasingly bizarre actions, Haruhi collects a likable but hapless band of  bit players through intimidation and kidnapping to join her highschool club ( the SOS Brigade) and help her achieve a state of not-boredom......

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 04:49 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Idiot fanboys are one of them....

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 05:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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UPDATED
Except for dinner with a friend, I spent all of yesterday studying for my upcoming exams. Despite this, around 3 AM I found myself quite unable to sleep. Thus, I got up, opened the copy of Gurren Lagann that's been sitting on my shelf for over a week and popped it into the iMac, intending to watch an episode or two.


This was ill considered, for the people at Gainax had nefariously used the DVD as a delivery vehicle for an advanced, bioengineered, fanboy-optimized, formulation of crack.....
more...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 05:33 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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The first and second volumes of the second season of Black Lagoon came in.

For those unfamiliar with this show, it is despite its name, annoyingly Creature free.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 05:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Steven Den Beste explains my life....

If a high school girl wears glasses it means she's smart and sexy and repressed, a volcano of passion waiting to explode. If a guy wears glasses it means he's a dork. Everyone else who needs vision correction wears contacts.

UPDATE: It also implies that all the cute 30 something girls with glasses are, in fact, dorky traps.

_{( Thanks Steven! That could have led to...awkwardness! WHEW!)}

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 02:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The long awaited paycheck arrived...the first one in 5 weeks...and after the filling up the pickup of peril....with what must have been vintage wine or something... and getting the last book for school I walked out of a local store with Gurren Lagaan Volume 2. Today was spent studying, composing E-mails in Japanese and fretting about Ike, but at 6pm I hung it up and popped in the much anticipated DVD.
Like volume, one volume 2 is a very reasonably priced 2 disc set containing 9 episodes. Unlike volume one however, the marketing department very sensibly put teh Yoko on the cover of volume 2.

I had been quite taken by the first volume and was looking forward to 9 episodes of teh Yoko, giant fighting robots, adventure and teh Yoko...

What I got was 8 episodes of satisfying giant robot battles, a goofy albino Moe Maiden, adventure, heroism, a basically satisfying wrap-up of most plot threads and not quite enough of teh Yoko.
Oh, and one episode of patented Gainax Gut Punchery....

My biggest problem with the show is the crass stupidity and pig headedness of a lot of the cast, which frequently leads to seemingly unnecessary plot complications this is not as annoying as it could be due in part to the fact that said problems are usually resolved by thoroughly amusing giant robot battles. I should mention that the bombastic character Kamina comes off much better in this volume than he did in the first disc when he was...you know...alive

This show is indeed very goofy on its face but there is a surprisingly poignant side to it too.Nia Teppelin the Erie pale outsider with the jigsaw eyes introduced at the end of volume 1  is an effective foil for and observer of the rest of the cast, alien in her outlook, her decency and forthrightness are not only admirable but, at the end of volume1, had saved everyone's behind, however she is so socially inept and awkward that she frequently comes off to the cast as callous or thoughtless. 

_{image via Concrete Badger}

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:47 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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What, gentle readers, is this?

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:08 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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1 {sagematt} zaitcev, it's a crossover between Touhou and FFVII
{sagematt} Advent Cirno
{zaitcev} I cannot recognize Touhou elements, sadly.
{Aroduc} Look for: hat, skirt, lack of breasts.
{Aroduc} If all three are present, probably Touhou.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Thu Sep 4 19:33:38 2008 (/ppBw)

2 Cirno (snow fairy, weak joke character) is taking the place of Chrono. China's (Mei Ling, door guard, abused joke character) in the background. I think the one on the left is Udonge Reisen (lunar rabbit, and nightmarish in any group of characters that wasn't from Touhou...)

Touhou is a series of arcade-style shooters for the PC... think games like the old 1942, but much more refined and with a difficulty pegged to max (and then far, far, far beyond). You might wanna try one out; think you can download most of them at http://www.doujinstyle.com/, along with a metric ton of fan material.

Keep in mind that the games are really thin on story and character development (it's a series of curtain-fire games, not RPGs!) However, the fan community has really taken off with the characters and done some fun stuff. You can spend a whole day or two just reading funny translated doujins about Alice, Reimu, and Marisa.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Fri Sep 5 03:34:42 2008 (pfysU)

3 Thanks guys! 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Fri Sep 5 13:10:37 2008 (V5zw/)

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In the previous post I mentioned that one of the girls in Lucky Star (Konata) is an Otaku and slightly maladjusted.

As far as maladroit fandom goes....there are levels.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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 I just watched Lucky Star volume 3.

Lucky Star is a show that ought not to interest me in the least. Yet this show has grown on me...like a fungus.
Based on a 4 panel strip, this slice of life show focuses on the antics of 3 normal if awkward Japanese teenagers...and a slightly maladjusted otakuette. A collection of short skits, with topics ranging from dessert consumption etiquette, to the dark results of child star exploitation  (!?), the show is reminiscent of Peanuts more than anything else.

It is also a costly thing to miss.

Recently, I went to Japan, and suffered a bit of a mishap my first night there. The guest house I was to be staying in had burned down and I found this out shortly before the trains shut down. While in Chofu station waiting for a transfer I spied what I mistook for a cybercafe, so, thinking this area had to be cheaper than Shinjuku I left the station...and what proved to be the last train out.

 "Relevancy?" you ask?

   Now if I had watched Lucky Star volume 3....I would have learned that Chofu is an expensive and hoity toity yuppieville, thus I would not have left, I would have gone clear to Shunjuku and not paid nearly twice what any other hotel cost me on the whole trip, just to get out of the rain....which would have been most useful given that the mishap cost me a large chunk of my available funds.

So...watch Lucky Star, buy it AS SOON as it comes out...don't wait!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Between school, work and physical therapy, I'm not watching all that much this month, but if you get the itch, Pulpjunkie has a quite large list of DVD reviews and speculation up.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:35 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Pulpjunkie links to these two interesting Hanna Barbara Terrytoon pilots from the late 60s. Both were created by the late Iwao Takamoto.



(how does one FORGET about the Chasm of Doom?)

By far the more interesting of the two is Sally Sargent, the tale of a High school girl who moonlights as a government agent . According to the comments at You Tube, the show was to be the  flagship show for an adventure programming block.


While there were no horrible deaths ala' Johnny Quest in either episode, there was a great deal of violence and peril. Both shows, but particularly Sally Sargent, ran afoul of the public outcry against violence in kids shows which hit the US in the late 60s as a response to the social unrest of the time. In '68-'69 people were twitchy about pipe bombs. The silly supposition was that the violence was happening because kids were mindlessly repeating what they saw on the TV...and not...you know...because Bill Ayers is just an evil bastard. 

This trend against any reproduceable violence only got worse as time went on and led to the generally insipid mess that was the US Animation scene from about 1969 until the late 80s. Particularly ironic given that Tatsuo Yoshida (the creator of Gatchaman Speed Racer and other shows that really started the anime industry) claimed both Marvel Comics and Johnny Quest among his inspirations.

Given the talent available at the time, one can only speculate where US TV animation would be today if standards and practices had not strangled it just as the Japanese animation industry was coming into its own.

UPDATE: Pulpjunkie corrects me in the comments. These were not Hanna-Barberra shows, but rather the last gasp of Terrytoons. More here.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:18 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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