LePoseur

Actually, my nephews are just the opposite of the norm it seems. The three of them are super active/fighting/rough and tumble kids. I just got news that my oldest nephew (12)was hit square in the mouth with a hockey stick before easter and then again with a baseball bat the following week. Seems he doesn't have many teeth left. I wouldn't describe them as girly or weak at all. In fact, if I could bring them back in time, or bring forward myself at their age, I think they wipe the floor with me. The cool thing is their a little cocky, but not super arogant like a bully or anything. In fact, her oldest has a damn good head on his shoulders and will kick my but at chess one of these days I'm sure. They do play GTA, at least the oldest does, and they spend the time they watch TV watching more "adult" type shows. But even that's not much as most of the time they are out "playing" and getting hurt. With all three of them being into wrestling (as in the school variety), I begin to fear the day I can't beat any one of them in arm wrestling is coming soon too. Then again, now that I think about it, they grew up watching Batman, Transformers and my old Robotech tapes and any other 80's anime I had... hmmm... Agent One, you may be on to something. Either that or it's my sister's hell of a job with raising them.

Man, I just need to blow off some steam but I hate, hate, HATE that FUXXING WOMAN! And I HATE the GOD-DXXM DESIGNERS for putting her in this otherwise awesome game. So much for Solid Snaking a level when she follows right behind me and refuses to do anything other than stand around like a dumb ass with her finger up her ass! FXXXING A! all I do is snipe one, ONE fricken guy! and every knows just where I am since she's right behind me like a fricken flag pole. If I run, she doesn't keep up, if I hide, she doesn't, if I sneak, she doesn't. I wish I could put a fricken bullet in her just to be rid of her. Add to that the fact that she likes to carry NO equipment, not wear camo, and generally look like an old Boar's Nest extra and I seriously hope the designers put her in as "Action Movie Kitsch," otherwise they must be about 10 years old. Their little skin scene left me thinking about a recent article on how video games rot your brain. I mean, really. For a game that plays everything else close to reality, their idea of women is pulp male fantasy. Maybe they just wanted to make us feel like a misogynist action movie star. Oh, and did I mention she must only shoot when she fricken feels like it. I try to go all Rambo style instead, but now she lags behind and flipping hangs out with the ENEMY! So now I have to fire at the guy standing right next to her, yet she still doesn't even LIFT a FUXXING FINGER except to say, "Look out!" or "We've got enemies right on top of us." BAH! EDIT in>> Or how about cleaning out a whole enemy camp only to find I can't go to the next level because the "thing" she's suppose to see at the end of it, she can't because she's stuck on a fence about half the level back and is not moving. Even shot her in the ass but she still just kept standing there. The most beautiful thing was when she said, "We haven't got much time, we'd better split up." I jumped up and hugged my wife who'd been listening to me curse so. Too bad it didn't last. Almost worth the price of airfare just to go see the developers and punch them in the head.

You answered "yes" to 50 of 200 questions, making you 75.0% otaku pure (25.0% otaku corrupt). I kinda got smacked on the language questions, even though some only have a causal tie to anime. Plus I'm guessing questions like "Do you own any manga?" don't have the same kind of impact for someone living outside of Japan as they do here - where it's basicly equal to "Does a bear crap in the woods?" Take those out and I slip down to 21.5, and bearly scraping out a normal life. reguardless, I still feel unclean.

Oh, Hell yeah, but then again I didn't like MMI one bit. I do think as things are right now that a Stand Alone Complex Movie would kick this Appleseed's butt though. The thing there is, I love the whole team on SAC, to where this movie is largely Deunan's and no one else's. I mean, sure Bri's in there and all, but he's kinda inbetween a main character and a supporting one. If the second movie gives us a core ESWAT unit to latch on to and doesn't attempt to rewrite too much of the manga's past then I think it'd be a tough call against a SAC movie.

Spider Tanks.... check (even though I think they should have saved them for the second one) Flying Landmates.... check (same as above) But the two best battle sceens are Deunan going hand to hand/close range with stuff. Even though he's almost always there to save the day, Bri just pales by comparison.

Oh, OK, yeah, I guess I shouldn't have said never. You'll see what I mean when you watch it though. That being said, Deunan's eyes are the best, showing that they really did spend a lot of time on it. It's really in the minor, or background characters where it's more noticeable. Oddly I thought the Funny Old Men were visually much better than Hitomi was. Odd, but then again I could be my distaste for Hitomi in this film cloud my judgment. Again, it's a pretty good film with some cool moments. I'm just a long-time Appleseed fan whose still not totally satisfied. Maybe next time they'll get it all right. (after more people have seen it I'll say what some of the changes that miffed me were. Until then I'm trying to stay spoiler-free.)

OK, I saw the movie last night with my wife and some friends. Long story short, it's not bad, it won't make you rip your eyes out or make you join a mob in the streets demanding your money back like the old OVA did. There are still some things I didn't like though. Anyhow, I'll try to do a mostly spoiler-free review. ***But you will get at least one*** so if you don't want them don't keep reading, OK? The movie starts out with Deunan and a team of soldiers fighting robots(?) and armored tanks out in Badland. This is a lot of the footage that has been in the video and trailers. Right a way they show how she's not normal as she manages to stay alive while the rest of the squad bites it early. Much like the manga, she is rescued from the tank by Hitomi (yet in a very different way) and after getting her on a ship for Olympus it's here that we learn they were looking for her with the aid of Briareos (who hasn't seen her since he left two years ago). OK.. I guess that's all I'll say about the plot, since the above might be spoiler enough for some people. Let's see... Good things: Mecha and character animation* (except the below), action scenes, the fact that they actually even try to deal with the content of the manga (unlike the OVA) and the music was good (even if it did need a little normalization to prevent it from drowning out all other noises.) Bad things: The eyes! damn it the eyes! I really wish they'd have gone for motion capture bodies on hand-animated heads. Instead you get pretty cool faces (thanks to motion capture) and spotty eyes. Sometimes they are great, some time they just stare straight ahead.... oh and no one ever blinks. #2 Changes and additions to the story. All in all the story wasn't bad, it's just that everything that was changed and/or added to the mangas story just didn't work for me. I could see where they were trying to go, but they just didn't make it work I thought. A lot of this is related to complaint #3 below, but some things (Like Bri and Deunan starting off as estranged ex-lovers) should have been made better. I would have traded one of the action sequences to see them patching things up better. #3 I realize that most of the major story problems I have are due to fact that they tried to do too much in one movie. We all know that they are making 3 of them now, but as they were plotting this one they tried to put everything that fans would want to see in it. I mean you get elements from all four mangas blended into one story and some of the movie suffers for it, especially the end. I wish they would have made it with the foresight that they might make more and had the guts to leave things like the Spider Tanks out of it, or maybe just hint at them. Oh well. #4 Hitomi.... Well, I'll just leave it at that. There are also various physics grips, like Bri shouldn't float, he can't teleport so it's amazing that he always in the right place at the right time, and he should learn to use the door rather than just blowing holes in the wall as it's just plain rude. But don't get me wrong, it's still worth a trip to the movies. Like I said to my wife, I like it better than any Star Wars movie we've seen together. I will be buying the DVD and going to see the next one as well. So, if they don't ruin the whole thing with a crappy English dub, you should go check it out when it comes.

Awesome work. Abso-flipping-lutely outstanding. Man.... and I thought I'd be content with a 1/48 Kakizaki custom... desire enflamed... wallet aching.

Nah, the parts aren't random, so if you buy a full set you'll get a Monster for sure. Unless a factory error, but that's for anything. They are kinda neat, especially for a desk at work or something, so if you can get a good price, I'd pick them up.

LLA is on Disc 6 of the R2 release, but, of course, without subtitles. Not that you really need them for all they speak though.

swapping the wing is just as simple too. One screw and you can wiggle the wing loose. A Max1S conversion is only two screws and a quick arrow paint away. Of course, the hard part is coughing up for two 1/48's. But it does leave you with a spare to make a Kakizaki from.

Wow... I never thought Basara's influence had anything to do with love, at least in the hippy "Peace & Love" way. For me it was always about will and the ability to directly express one's self free of clutter, like speech, that can delude it's message. Really though, is the concept of souls any easier to believe? Yet most people believe that. I can't explain either one, but I really feel that music can touch the soul, and that's what I was going on about above. I never thought to consider spiritua to be "a made up magical force that supposedly governs life, love, the universe and everything," just each sentient being's life-force, will or soul (whatever you want to call it). I guess that's the difference. So, our individual experiences caused us to view a vague concept in two different ways. I wouldn't say that that vagueness is necessarily bad storytelling either (after all, look at all the people who got on Lucas after he tried to explain the Force in detail). I think Mac 7 does suffer from bad storytelling in many places, but not the main theme, and besides, it's a cartoon not Shakespeare, so what do you expect. I guess, we each brought different things to the table as we viewed it that shaped our opinions, that's all. But in the end, I don't care if other people choose to think Mac 7 is the stupidest thing on the planet, just like I don't care what shoes they choose to wear. I'm a little sad that it didn't bring them the same joy it did me, but hey, them's there's the breaks. As for Mac 0, I'd prefer a series instead, hell, even a movie. OVA's generally suck for just about anything other than eye-candy, (kind of the profit influenced nature of the beast I guess) and I don't really care for the CGI valks.

Not quite sure what the difference you assign to "Toy" and "Hobby" stores, but if you walked into any generic toy store in Japan I doubt you'd even find a 1/48. The yammies are, by design, aimed at a much older age than most toy stores in Japan cater to. That being said, Toys R' Us is about the only major toy store I have seen them at, but then again, the size of TRU allows it to carry many high ticket items that other toy stores don't touch. TRU also can afford to price their 1/48's at 9999 yen which is well below the MSRP of 14800. Still, even the local hobby stores in Tokyo don't bother to sell a 1/48 at the MSRP (usually always falling 10% or more below it). It kind of works like CD's back home (or at least how CD's use to work before I moved to Japan) The MSRP was like 16.99 or so, but Musicland would sell them for 13.99 and Best Buy would charge ya 11.99 for a "normal" CD, so you'd never really see one for full MSRP except perhaps at that CD store in the mall that no one bought CD's at. (Not to say that the Mall shop was trying to rip you off, maybe Just that each store sells at it's own optimum price point.) But I'm not going to get into a economics lecture. Here's a link for TRU if you don't want to search yourself TRU's Yammie page BTW, 3499 for a Yammie stand? "Ah, no thank you." PS: I think it's in English because "English is Cool!" as evidenced by the huge amount of English used on every other "cool" comsumer product in Japan. Yet if you asked someone to read it to you, most people would be hard pressed to give you anything you could understand.

Right on Gunbuster! My modded xbox hasn't seen a game since Splinter Cell over a year ago. Instead, with it's 160 Gig HD it's my perfect chill out in the living room and watch fansubs or the Simpsons (nothing like having 14 seasons at your finger tips) deck. It's got a fair share of old nintendo games and what not on it, but having numerous full series loaded and ready to go on the living room wide screen is where it's at. In a pinch, it's still LAN'ed up to my computer so I can stream videos off of there, but I haven't had the need yet. Thanks for selling me some awesome hardward at under cost Bill. I almost feel bad for getting my second Xbox set up to run as a Linux server.

Hmmm... Myriad's is a different series from mine... might have been earlier, as I can't find it in any of the stores. The one I have (with Batou and the yellow car) have decent face sculpts, but nothing to write home about. Batou is on the good end (infact, he's almost perfect) Motoko is in the middle (but something is off about it) and Togusa is at the bottom (at least by looking at the packing). That's too bad cause I wanted a pair with him and Batou, but after checking out this face (especially the eyes) I decided I'd quit while I was ahead. Only bought three and got the Tachi, Batou and the car and the full size Batou, my top three, so I was doing pretty good. Next up would be the squating Motoko now that Togusa fell a little short of my expectations.

A few more things, The release date for here (Japan) is still April 19th. The prolog fills in a lot of holes, but doesn't really give that much new footage. One weird thing is that they did motion capture on the faces, so the seiyuu's are actually providing the facial movements for the characters too. Deunan had three motion capture actresses, one for gymnastic stunts, one for regular combat and hand to hand, and finally the seiyuu for the face. Minor spoilers ahead... The fight with the red dudes is in Badlands and should be the begining of the movie. The Tank from the begining of the manga is also the one you see in the trailer. Look for fun with monofiliment during Deunan and Hitomi's car chase, but since the trailer already showed us Bri punching straight threw that baddie I guess we know how they meet their end. Hmm, the sound track album also has a mini look behind the scenes put to music. It only runs about 5 mins so maybe someone will encode it and put a torrent up soon. That covers the car fight much better. Any how, more as it comes up.

This is a cross post from the Shirow thread, but actuall it fits better here, so anyhow... >>> Man, I'm getting pretty stoked about the Appleseed movie... less than a month to go. Picked up the prolog to Appleseed DVD with the Bri figure and the soundtrack this week. Both are cool (damn "Dive for You" is stuck on repeat in my head) but the prolog DVD is a little steep at 5,000 for a 35 min making of video. The fact that the figure is the same as the Yamato I already own (although with way better aticulation and a new paint job) doesn't help any. I also bougth the delux soundtrack that gives you the BGM and a bonus disc of a BBS video for Dive for You as well as the trailer that's on the web site. For Japan, at 5,000 yen that's not that bad, as the two CD would run about 6,000 if sold sepperately, but for America, $50 buck is way too much to spend on a soundtrack disc. Anyhow, here's a BT link for the video, worth checking out if you haven't seen the trailers, even if you have. Hmm... not liking the link... the [] in the name messes up the link. Oh well here's the cut and paste version, but besure to copy the whole thing, from http to .torrent http://66.90.75.92/torrents/1460/[WGR]Appleseed_-_AMV_Trailer_-_Boom_Boom_Satellites_-_Dive_For_You(640x480_DivX5.1.1)-avi.torrent

Actually, taking that into consideration only makes it worse. The starting salary for just about any entry level job is 150,000 (or just under $1,500) a month. But that's not really enough to live on, at least without living like a poor college student. By comparison the minimum wage allowed for foreigners in Japan is 250,000 a month. Now that's enough to live on and still be able to go out once and a while. The company I used to work for had a real funky system of determining salaries, they used to pay 10,000/year old + 10,000. So at 31 years old, I would make 320,000 a month. Now a little bit of quick math would also tell you what my 50+ year boss was making. On a side note, this is really not limited to anime, or even computer games. Comedians, for example, often go through really, and I mean really, lean times as set up by the system. Stories of newcomers making less than 1,000 (about nine dollars) a month are not unheard of. And that's while keeping a semi-full schedule, or at least full enough to prevent them from having another job. If you look at it in a positive light, perhaps this suffering is built into the system to weed out those who aren't really dedicated. The negative reality that someone else up the food chain is making a wad of cash off your hard work is always there too. I should mention though that, in the entertainment industry, as the comic example above, the management companies are all powerful. They control their workers on a level you'd never see in America. Young actors don't get a choice about what roles they get, many singers (as in idol singers) songs/dance/clothes are picked for them. You also can't leave. Once your in with one management company, you're in for life, and if you leave, especially on bad terms, your blacklisted from all others. The one up side of this is job security I guess. The young worker's money is used to support older, not-so-popular-anymore talents. As bad as this might sound though, I don't think the animation/manga industry has anything like it.

Man, I'm getting pretty stoked about the Appleseed movie... less than a month to go. Picked up the prolog to Appleseed DVD with the Bri figure and the soundtrack this week. Both are cool (damn "Dive for You" is stuck on repeat in my head) but the prolog DVD is a little steep at 5,000 for a 35 min making of video. The fact that the figure is the same as the Yamato I already own (although with way better aticulation and a new paint job) doesn't help any. I also bougth the delux soundtrack that gives you the BGM and a bonus disc of a BBS video for Dive for You as well as the trailer that's on the web site. For Japan, at 5,000 yen that's not that bad, as the two CD would run about 6,000 if sold sepperately, but for America, $50 buck is way too much to spend on a soundtrack disc. Anyhow, here's a BT link for the video. Hmm... not liking the link... Oh well here's the cut and paste version. http://66.90.75.92/torrents/1460/[WGR]Appleseed_-_AMV_Trailer_-_Boom_Boom_Satellites_-_Dive_For_You(640x480_DivX5.1.1)-avi.torrent

Grunt work, such as animators and Manga "assistants" all make peanuts. The reason it is accepted is because each one of them dreams of becoming a "top-tier" producer/Manga artist. But the entry level is just that, entry... much akin to a play testers at a video game company. To me the more "shocking" discovery was from a co-worker who also worked as a bottom-tier manga assistant, who mentioned that even though his boss was making a bundle per page, the boss actually did almost none of the actual art - relying instead on his assistants to draw everything from his thumbnail sketches while he worked on the story. I mean, I knew they had background and tone assistants, but I at least expected them to be doing the main characters. Oh well, such is the real world as they say.

Well, let's see... According to the Old Man Murry ® school of game grading things are not looking good so far. Start up the game and what do you see? Crates... and lots of them. Things went downhill from there when I found that it was going to be a jumping game, ie leap to this platform, then to that one... oh and don't fall, 'cause then you'll have to do it all over again. Man, what piss poor imagination in level design... I mean, how do the toops in any of those sections get out themselves? Do they have to do the jumping thing too? Oh, and how come I can gun down people right and left, but there's no aleart or anything? Man... should have just picked up the sequel to Splinter Cell instead. Too bad.

I picked up the Quad the other day during a moment of weakness at lunch. Just a few points: First, the monster is split into 5 parts like was originally planned, so you have to buy one of each to get the full thing. Also they're bigger than I expected. On caveat, I don't have a ruler on me so all these sizes are guestimates. If the Quad could stand upright (it can't BTW the knees are fixed) it's be about 3 inches tall and over an inch wide. The monster's arm cannon is just a little over two inches long as well. So I hope that gives you a pretty good grasp of the dimensions to draw from.

Technically, even though it's on TV, it's not really a normal TV series. the order goes like this Pay Per View -> R2 DVD -> Free TV -> America Free TV -> R1 DVD. So they really are milking it for all it's worth. But hell, I say more power to them, especially if that what it takes these days to get a show of this quality. The only real regret I have is Motoko's costume design. I love the combat fatigues and her dress uniform, but who in the heck approved the ugly thing they usually have her in? I'm all for skin and what not, but, if they're gonna go that way, at least pick something that looks a bit closer to Shirow's skimpy clothing style. Bah, all the more reason why Batou rocks.

Just saw them at 7-11 about 10 mins ago. I was looking for GitS figures, but they still only had the same set as before. These aren't secret, as the boxes are numbered telling you what's inside, but the only had # 3,4,5 left, so I didn't pick one up. I know, I know it's only 300 yen, but once I get one, the rest will follow. The Monster is the secret fig, but if anyone couldn't tell from the blacked out shadow, they must not be a Macross fan. Maybe after pay-day, I pick up a few.

While not canon at all, the video games that deal with this problem all refer to it as the "ARMD Attack." I'll be the first to admit that it doesn't have the same impact as the original though.