April 29, 2012

"Then Lets Take Them Out."

Great googly moogly....
Episode 17 of Bodacious Space Pirates was full of all sorts of surprises...


"...and that, children, is a 'Zuka review."

...and had a thoroughly satisfying story that...


...that...that... ENDED!!1!?

I gotta wait a week? A whole week? GHAAAH!

UPDATE:
more...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 03:05 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 48 words, total size 7 kb.

April 22, 2012

The Hakuoh Pirates' First Job

This episode of Bodacious Space Pirates was largely humorous with less adventure and more silliness than usual. There was a serious point though.There are no longer ANY training wheels. Marika is well and truly in command now. She OWNS this, and although she has a solid XO there is really no one to fall back on.

Also: I didn't see this coming.


The XO is shocked too! At what, we won't tell.

Bodacious Space Pirates really is an intriguing show. Set in the FAR FAR FAR future, the story of a 16 year old girl, who due to an unlikely set of circumstances,* ends up in charge of an interstellar privateer is obviously a thing of whimsy. However, it is surprisingly down to earth and thoughtful in other ways.

One of the things that has impressed me is that it actually deals with leadership. I mentioned in an earlier post that Marika, the young CO, was initially thrown into a position not unlike that of a green ensign or "90 day wonder". That is, she had considerable skill, but zero experience and found herself in command of a small unit, virtually every member of which has been doing their jobs far longer than her. She had to learn to delegate, take advice and cope with the fact that the buck stops with her. It is upon her decisions that the crew will live or die (or go bankrupt...the privateer is a business after all). This has been handled with far more intelligence and subtly than one has any right to expect from a sci-fi cartoon.

Now they've turned this on its head and Marika is in a situation where SHE is the veteran and has to train, mentor and direct people who, while they are volunteers, have very rudimentary training, and not all of them have gotten their heads around the fact that this is a real job, and not just a lark. Marika and her acting XO handle this quite well. The writing on this is impressive.  It's like 12 O'Clock High with zap guns.

This show has a 16 year old female protagonist and it is (very occasionally) set in a high school, and yet it is not a teen angst show, or a show about slacking or raging against an unfair world.

If I had a daughter, I'd want her to watch this.

 This show actually has a lot in common with Heinlein's juvies in that it's is aspirational. Marika is a young adult who is dealing with life's challenges as an adult. She does not run from her responsibilities, and while she takes them seriously she does so with good humor.


  ...and humor is an important thing to have when things go all higgly piggly...

  Quite aside from all that, the premise is pretty clever....


The treaty loophole** that allows the planet to keep highly regulated privateers as naval auxiliaries, combined with the "official" synergy between the insurance companies, the Cruise Lines and the Privateers...is just inspired.

 The action is superb, the characters are likeable and 16 episodes in we haven't had a single upskirt shot yet. I'm quite impressed.

UPDATE: Slightly spoilerish explanations for * and ** added below the fold.

more...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 02:21 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 552 words, total size 8 kb.

April 21, 2012

Haiyore! Nyaruko-san

I'm not really keen on magical girlfriend shows, but when the magical girlfriend is Nyarlathotep I've got to watch at least one.



 This was much better than it ought to have been. I ended up watching both of the episodes that have aired as of tonight and I'll add it to my list. The shows premise is that the Lovecraft Mythos is real, but Lovecraft, perhaps because he was a paranoid bigot , got a lot of stuff wrong. The magical girlfriend (seen holding the blasphemous, baleful big-gulp above) is Nyaruko, an alien. Nyarlathotep is actually the name of her race. She claims to be an intergalactic cop who's been in Tokyo trying to disrupt the lucrative hentai smuggling trade (Tentacle pr0n is popular with several mythos races. Who'd've thunk it?), She claims to have then stumbled onto a related slavery operation that involves a plot to kidnap a fellow named Mihiro Yasaka for ghastly and indescribable purposes. With the help of an "unspeakable tire iron"  she saves him from several night-gaunts (which Lovecraft was largely right about) and proceeds to inform him that to keep him safe she'll have to move in with him...and he is totally her type.
Cyclopean hijinks ensue.

This show made me laugh out loud. I'm very surprised that they got so many mythos jokes to cross the language barrier. It's a fun show that uses the 'shotgun method' of humor and aims at targets far removed from Lovecraft as well. Despite the implied love dodecahedron in the credits it appears to actually involve a love...umm...line and not be a harem show.
Of course its geometry is less Euclidian in other areas.
 Be advised though that It manages to be at once quite clever and bone-crushingly stupid ...which in itself risks some san loss.



An abominable, aberrant, anomalous, appalling, atrocious, and animated alien ahoge!


more...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 02:32 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 335 words, total size 2 kb.

April 05, 2012

Trailers!!


The first 10 minutes of Yamato 2199 have been previewed on Japanese TV. This remake of the 1974 series is going to be a series of 7 THEATRICAL releases over the next year or two. Interestingly, aside from the possibility of other specials there won't be a TV release for at least 2 years.



Be sure to hit "CC" for the subtitles! And hit the fullscreen option to enbigulate. It's a good quality clip.

A few quick observations:

There is a new trailer out for Ridley Scott's Prometheus. This looks cool too!



The trailer for The Hobbit also looks VERY good.




I'd missed the Hobbit trailer until I stumbled upon it here. Which reminds me that Gone to Amerikay is out and getting rave reviews in places as diverse as the Wall Street Journal and The Comics Bulletin.



Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:46 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 140 words, total size 3 kb.

April 02, 2012

Achievements Unlocked

I've unlocked achievements playing...er...Crunchyroll?




That was just odd.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 02:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 10 words, total size 1 kb.

April 01, 2012

Midori Kanda and Friends

Sadly, no...There is no Gai Rei series.

There is, however, a particularly awesome group of cosplayers....



Siergen, this one's for you.




Also, I finally figured out how to use fancy Kanji fonts in Paintbrush.
For the sake of posterity the original post is below the fold.
For legal purposes this was all Wonderduck's fault.*
I hope April is good to you all.

*That is my story and I am sticking to it.

more...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 01:58 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 270 words, total size 4 kb.

<< Page 1 of 1 >>
48kb generated in CPU 0.0257, elapsed 0.2663 seconds.
71 queries taking 0.2526 seconds, 331 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.