Though we've mentioned before that it's being released as a series of movies, it bears repeating that Yamato 2199 being broadcast right now on TV in Japan. Despite the fact that it almost never shows up in season previews, this is, IMHO the best action show on right now. In fact, despite the rather anachronistic design of its titular spacecraft, Yamato 2199 is one of the better scifi shows of the last decade.

For those of you who watched Starblazers those many years ago, here is a brief promo clip of the battle at the rainbow nebula. For those poor deprived souls that didn't, this isn't terribly spoilerish, it's one of several battles our heroes fight, this one taking place in a remarkably dense, multicolored nebula.

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Episode 2 of RWBY is only about six minutes long but we do learn a couple of things.

Ruby's Scythe is named Crescent Rose....she made it herself. It seems that she's something of a geek-girl with regard to weapons.

"Vomit Boy" seems to be a decent enough fellow, but he's really not overcoming the ignominy of his opening scene. 

Today's physics lesson:

"...not only that, it collapses, so  if I get tired of carrying it after a while I can just fold it up"

"Um...but doesn't it still weigh the same?"
...
...
"Yeah....It does."

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Stella WAHSDC³ has been pleasant enough thus far. The other club members are all likeably eccentric. The problem has been main character who is SO damned insecure and introverted that by episode 3 it begins to grate. Yura has problems. She is terribly introverted, indecisive and afraid of her own shadow.

However, in this episode (#3) these issues stop just being a character trait and become a plot point.

They're at a paintball tournament. Unlike Girls Und Panzer boys are allowed to participate in the league and indeed make up the majority of players at the tournament.  Our girls school heroines win for several tournaments but don't wipe the floor with the competition. The competition is VERY good at what they do.  All is well until they encounter the team from Sisters of Bitchieness Girls School of Implacable Small Unit Tactics For Sadistic Combat Monsters Whose Uniforms Are Black....or something.  This fight is personal, there is some history there and our heroines get routed...well....The team aside from Yura gets taken out...Yura's response to this is not to go down fighting....not to try to make a dash for the flag...not even to run and at least make it hard for them....she jusy says "Eh what the hell"...and gives up. This Of course is a FORFEIT.
...and I'm like "You selfish little &^%"
It got worse...the team came over and comforted her and told her it was no big deal.
OK at that point I just about logged off but at that point Kashima, the president stepped in and tore her a new one. She pointed out quite rightly that Yuna had let them all down, damaged their reputation and essentially insulted them.

It was almost like there were certain minimal standards of behavior expected of people.

Given that she's going to an exclusive girls school that looks like a pink Versailles about the size of central park...I gather that Yuna has probably been pretty sheltered life and hasn't been socialized to grok such concepts as loyalty and honor except as abstractions.

Well...she does seem to understand that she has screwed up mightily.

She understands it SO well that at the end of the episode, she's cut her hair very short.

This is a big thing to the Japanese. Cutting the hair dramatically signifies a major life change. This indicates that she GETS it.
  

It appears that our heroine has come to grips with her problem and is growing as a character.

And I find that cool.

_{As an aside, the actress doing Kirishima is knocking ot out of the park as far as conveying the oddness of the character most effectively.}

UPDATE: Teh Banshee has a fine analysis of Yura's conundrum in the comments.

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Right here. It's a disquisition on the pros, cons and history of pneumatic postal systems scaled up to eleventy.

Now you, gentle reader, may wish to suggest that there is no such post here. To that I'm afraid my response must be...

Don't. You. Think. I KNOW THAT!?
THERE WAS!!1!! BUT NOT'NY MORE!!

 I was almost...almost done...but I pasted a url in the text so I highlighted it and hit backspace.
It's what your supposed to do right?  Blogging...b..basic word processing...imple isn't it?...and and then the screen jumped to the previous page.

A..and it was gone..all those words. ALL OF THEM!

They say that there's no devil...but there is...it came and ate my post RIGHT OUT OF HELL!!

 

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Over the course of the last several months, four computer animated shorts have been released, each focusing on an "eponymous" character from an upcoming animation series called RWBY.

The first two were superb and used color and music to great stylistic effect. The second was less stylish but had a good deal of action and a voice actress whose purr was husky enough to pull a dogsled. The third had a heroine who was not particularly likeable and its pacing was uneven, but it was technically impressive (rather too much so...it had a tendency to break You Tube) with very well imagined action sequences and a fine score. These trailers have generated much anticipation for the series...and now that series is here...

In contrast to the first two trailers, which had a very ephemeral, almost European atmosphere, the first episode has a more or less conventional Japanese Shonen comic feel to it.

It seems that "Red" from the first trailer is going to be our lead.



Ruby Rose is a student at a college that specializes in training monster hunters. She's a typical shonen heroine, idealistic, enthusiastic to the point of being a goofball, and a very adept at the utilization of her .50 caliber, bolt action, magazine fed, fully articulated, rocket assisted, collapsable scythe. Her immediate goal is to graduate college and do her graduate work at Beacon University, which is required to become a huntress. Huntsmen and Huntresses are the elite monster hunters of this rather anachronistic world.

How anachronistic is it you may ask? Well, for one thing, they presumably have monsters. Additionally, they have magic (which is facilitated by a McGuffin called "dust"), machine guns, cities that look like a cross between 1930's Chicago and Vienna, airships, a broken moon, advanced tablet computer devices and villains who wear derby hats....



Meet Roman Torchwick. He is a well known criminal who has decided to rob a dust, dry-goods, jewelry, magazine and music store. Unfortunately for him, Ruby happens to be loitering in the magazine section. While Torchwick relieves the owner of his dust, an ill conceived bit of initiative by one of Mr. Torchwicks henchmen makes Ms. Rose  aware of their shenanigans and fisticuffs ensue.  Things proceed to escalate rather quickly after that, to swordplay to gunfire and eventually all sorts of magical 'splodies. 



Mr. Torchwick has formidable resources at his disposal and (despite the intervention of a professional huntress on our heroines behalf) he makes good his escape.

Afterwards,  she is questioned by the huntress, handed off to the huntres's supervisor and we learn that Ruby Rose is not just a formidable fighter, she collects huntress/ hunter autographs, is hyperactive to the point of being something of a spaz and she can eat a pile of of chocolate chip cookies as big as her head.

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Here we have 4 girls looking for a girl.
Now, being girls, they presumably know all about girls and how to find them, so it's with considerable interest that I note that in addition to he usual methods involving optical detection they have broken out the dowsing rods. I'd never considered dowsing as a means to meet the ladies....I also note that I'm single. Correlation does not indicate causation but this may warrant further study.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:12 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Sony has released an informative How-To video walking prospective users through the involved process by which they share games on the new PS4.

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DRM Free!

...comic book publisher Image Comics announced at its Image Expo convention that it will now sell all of its digital comics as downloadable via its website for both desktop and mobile users, making it the first major U.S. publisher to offer DRM-free digital versions of comics. Readers can even choose the file format they prefer: PDFs, EPUBs, CBRs or CBZs.

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...that will give you a completely erroneous idea of what sort of show Gargantia is.

It will also get you fired, 'cause it's TOTALLY not safe for work....and as for me? Well, I'm going to that special hell for linking to it.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:45 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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