Noriko Takaya

You know, while Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within did have some rather obvious flaws, like the lack of a decent script, I felt the CG animation was quite good. I even liked the movie. I for one, think Cameron will do a knock-out job on this movie. If there is one director out there who has the ability to make a decent movie based from an anime, it would be him. He is just quirky enough to pull it off.

The Japanese soldiers I met while I was stationed in Japan all saluted with their right hands from what I can remember. Maybe it was a dyslexic soldier?

This is from the Anime News Network, if you haven't seen it yet:

I'm not one to listen to liberal minded radio stations such as NPR, but a friend of mine pointed this out to me from a radio broadcast last Thursday. While talking about his new documentary Aliens of the Deep, Cameron let out this little tidbit about his project of converting an anime and manga series into a live action film. I copied this down so you would not have to sit through the entire 35 minutes of the interview. But if you would like to hear what Cameron had to say about his other stuff, you can access the interview HERE. It's about 31 minutes into the interview.

Gainax Net has started to post fan artwork from Top O Nerae! 2 on their homepage. I figured I would share it with you by posting it here. Hurry up and save it if you want the image at its full size. Gainax keeps them up for a week before archiving them as part of their image museum.

Yes it is. And here it is in all of its glory!

Yep. I like flight sims somewhat, but what I would really like is a really decent grunt based project from the war. I wanna mow down some VC and chop ears off.

Shizzler, huh? That's the first time I've ever heard the Cyzlar referred to that way. I generally go by the romanized Sizzler as used in the US Renditions tapes because it sounds closer to the original. Sorry, I'm being picky.

Then God only knows how long it will take before it reaches the States. I'm probably going to have to start watching PBS here in my state (Maryland) to see if they are still running Doctor Who on Saturday night. They were usually pretty good about getting new episodes and such. Hey here's a few of the autographs I've managed to collect over the years:

Where'd you come up with that? I figured that it was just a dead specimen they were keeping to study. Yeah, that's the first I've ever heard of that. The specimen was just a dead drone they acquired for study.

valk1j is correct. The image is taken from the first episode of Ressurection of the Daleks. The Daleks are there to try and liberate their creator Davros. They are hoping that Davros can come up with a cure to a virus created by their enemies, the Movellans. As for that new guy playing the Doctor, meh.

McGann only got to film the Fox movie, and continued out his run in the series of original novels, so he has got something of a timeline, so to speak. It will be really frustrating for the casual fan who watches Doctor Who to see a 9th Doctor come out when they are not familiar with the 8th because they did not read the novels. I personally did not, so the only exposure I have is the movie, which I did not like. And if they are making McGann's character canon, what about the supposed reference to his being half human? According to some of the books that were published where some of the original writers set up a basis on Time Lord society, they weren't able to procreate outside of their own species. Yes, I am aware that Leela married a Citadel guard, but it's been proposed that there are two groups of people living on Gallifrey, the Time Lords and your basic everyday Gallifreyan citizen. This is explained to some great extent in John Peel's book The Gallifreyan Chronicals. Okay, let's play a game. Guess which episode this image was taken from. Should be easy if you are a moderately faithful fan.

Tom Baker was the first Doctor I ever saw when NBC tried airing the show on television in the late 70's, so I kind of have a soft spot for him. The first complete story I ever saw was The Hand of Fear, where they found the Kastrian Eldrad's hand in that rock quarry. I also am a big fan of Jon Pertwee's work and liked some of the stories Colin Baker was in. Attack of the Cybermen is one of his best stories. I found it kind of strange they used Colin Baker for the Doctor's 6th incarnation when he played a Citadel guard on Gallifrey during the 5th Doctor's reign. The character I was to use was none other than the Daleks. I actually spoke to Terry Nation (who created them) on the telephone back around 1993, when he was working for the studio which put out the show McGuyver. I did a lot of research on them, and had them down to a science. But when crunch time came, Mr Nation dropped the "No!" bomb on me. Well, Terry Nation has since died some time ago and one of his friends, John Peel (one of the novelists for some of Nation's Dalek stories), says that the rights to the Daleks belong to his family. The letter I got from Mr Peel was dated some time ago, so maybe the BBC owns the rights to them. Funny thing is, since Ben Aaronovitch penned Rememberance of the Daleks, there have been no new stories about them to the best of my knowledge. I haven't read any of the newer adventures past the TimeWyrm and Cat's Cradle series to see if someone has. And I am not including the Abslom Daak comics. Not canon as far as I am concerned. I have been thinking of writing the Beeb to see if they ever got the rights handed over to them. I originally typed the novel on a typewriter way before I ever got interested in computers. I'm gonna have to transfer it over to disc sooner or later. All 600 some odd pages. I do; however, have a few ideas floating around in my mind concerning a possible Cybermen story, or perhaps one featuring the Sontarans. The Sontarans have always been a favorite of mine. Tough bastards those Sontarans. I found the Dalek model. It is in some sorry shape, as there is some mold growing on it and pieces of the gun-stick are missing. I will have to try and clean and repair it before I post it. It was originally a movie Dalek, used in theatrical releases staring Peter Cushing. I totally modified it and painted it to look like one of the Daleks used in Genesis of the Daleks. It was also one of the toughest models I ever built. I don't know what it is with British model companies, but they love to give you a challenge.

Yeah, but since we are talking about corpses here, wouldn't they eventually rot down to the bones? I'd say if they gave it a year or so in an isolated community that those infected would eventually decompose, that is if they could remain alone for that amount of time. Kind of like the living zombies in 28 Days Later. All they really needed to do was wait for them to starve. The original DotD even let that clue in as zombies started to rot as was evidenced by the bodies in the parking lot of the mall.

Hey, don't feel bad. I have almost every paperback novel put out save for the newer ones, and have recorded almost every episode from Hartnell's era on up to McCoy's incarnation. And I am probably the only MW'er who has written a novel (as stated above) about the Doctor which has been summarily shot down by the publishing company who holds the license because I could not get copyright permission to use a certain character. I've even got a model of a Dalek somewhere around my basement. I will have to dig it up and take a picture of it.

How's this? Best I can do for right now, but Jung looks pretty pissed off.

Manga will probably do the same thing to Gunbuster like they did to Dangaioh. They'll probably condense the first three episodes down to just a half an hour and give it the worst English dub ever. And they will totally remove the option of having a Japanese language track.

Keith has been using that same old answer for years. He gives it at every convention he attends when asked "When is Gunbuster coming out on DVD?" and he gives it when answering someones' e-mail. Screw Manga. I'm getting my new R2 discs soon. Yes, there is some animosity. Do you blame me? Manga has been saying this ever since the DVD format came out. The only good thing I can see of this is that maybe, just maybe, they are going to get the new masters for the American market.

I bought the remake of DotD today and was watching one of the bonus features when I came across this image of a woman who shares a name similar with a character from Robotech. So there, now you have it. The Zentraedi, or the Robotech Masters were the ones who did this to those people.

Ha ha ha! It's mine! I have been looking for a Kazumi cel and this may be my chance to get one. No touchy! Mine! I bid on it!

Yeah, the second one is cool. But I wonder, how did Kashiwara rate being added to this image and poor Kimiko was not?

How could you have forgotten to add The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man, both of which were television movies in the 70's before they became craptastic television shows. And don't forget Red Sonja. That movie may have had Ahnuld in it, but even he could not save that disaster.

Yeah, some of it looks funky all right. Mikimoto seems to have different versions of his characters. You should see the 'other' Coach Ota. By the way, here's a brighter look at that image.

Tetsujin 28-go is one of the very first anime series I can remember watching as a kid growing up in the late 60's-early 70's alongside of Speed Racer. Although it was primarily known as Gigantor, the premise of the story seemed to remain the same although like everything else imported from Japan at the time, it was edited for content as well as names. It just so happens that there is a live action version of this old anime being made. You can see the teaser trailer for it at: http://www.tetsujin28.jp/. The site is in Japanese. And from the look of the picture on the front page, it looks as if there will be a little retro look to the grandpappy of ass-kicking robots.

Nice pictures. I'm glad I ordered that set. I just wish I hadn't told CD Japan to wait until the rest of my order comes in. Besides the new images which were part of the original Japanese DVD release, are there any other new ones? Most of those you showed us were in Complete Gunbuster. I may have to buy another one of these DVD's as a used copy just to cut up the book to scan those images. And Mercurial, I may come off as sounding rather harsh about the new series, but it has got a lot to live up to. Gainax has got to have something pretty major up their sleeves for it to compare to the original, but then again, I am old school, and so is a lot of the anime I like. Who knows, it may just turn out okay, but from the first episode's preview, all I can say so far is "Bleh!"