JB0

Interesting you mention Short Circuit, since Number 5 was designed to look "human" Hell, he has EYEBROWS. And each species has it's own different aesthetic sense. Look at birds. The "pretty" birds are all male. But the male birds are looking at the ugly plain-looking female birds. And apparently they like what they're seeing. And of course, there's insects and arachnids and shellfish and all sorts of other "ugly" stuff. That which we like looking at is, generally, mammalian. Avians are a runner-up, and things plummet after that. They quite likely did... and their sense of aesthetics is completely different than ours. Heck, even different segments of humanity have different aesthetic values. Now, the PROBLEM isn't an in-universe one. It's an IRL one. They AREN'T appealing from our perspective(though apparently mainstream America is quite happy with them. Not the first time I've considered mainstream America a bunch of morons.). Personally, I don't care for the movie aesthetic in general. Most of the (handful of) toys I bought from the first movie toyline weren't movie characters. My favorite from that line was Wreckage, actually. Especially once I realized you can make him look down into his chest cavity while still being in robot mode. In a stupid bit of anthropomorphization, I decided it looked like he was aiming his gut cannon, and I suddenly started liking the gut cannon. And personally, I think they bungled the Autobot designs horribly. The Decepticon heads fit the "alien robot" aesthetic(and are ugly as a really ugly thing that isn't pretty at all, just like the rest of their bodies). But the Autobot heads fly in the face of the general design aesthetic. "They are alien robots. They do not look like us. Well, except their faces. THOSE are total mecha-human. Heck, they even have noses. WORKING noses! Why a space robot needs a sense of smell we don't know, but... *sniffsniff* Ratchet says you stink."

She's probably just resigned to her fate after all the merchandise whoring she's been through. You can see it on her face.

Oh. Okay, then I can ignore the biker bots. Sorry, Rei. You aren't enough of a booth babe to sell me on the Constructicons.

Why does this picture make me want the biker bots?

That would be supremely, hilariously, awesome. ... Until I realized it meant I wasn't getting my Disappearance.

So... I've watched the raw, and felt something was wrong. And watched some shitsubs with strange punctuation scattered in randomly(seriously, I can't for the life of me figure out how they typo'ed that badly) and... Haruhi's will is not done( ), so next week, we see the first all-new rerun in television history!

As long as we don't have to wait 594 years.

There's worse things than forgetting she's there. I'm on record as mistaking her gloves for her chest. ... Yeah, I'm not really sure how either. But in stills it looked like a REALLY big bust.

That actually kind of proves his point. It's NOT Masterpiece Prime, it just LOOKS like him. The axe-pistol is hilarious, though.

Roughnecks, AKA Starship Troopers done right. Just to add to the list.

No, that's perrfectly consistent. They're willing to BRING Macross to the world. The problem is Big West doesn't want to deal WITH THEM. They've never said they're willing to watch someone else bring Macross to the world while they get nothing. Because they own the copyright, don'cha know?

Depends on what they do next. Almost* certainly a minimum of 2. They aired Lone Island Syndrome friday. Lone Island Syndrome part 2 is next. After that... we don't know. It could be Endless Eight. If they don't do Endless Eight, it could be Sighs 1. If they don't do Endless Eight OR Sighs, it's either an anime original story or... Adventures of Mikuru Asahina, since they started with Melancholy 1 for this run instead of the movie. And if Adventures of Mikuru Asahina is next, they ALSO run Live A Live, Day of Sagitarrius, and Someday in the Rain before they start Disappearance, and we have a month and a half to wait. *Unless they toss Haruhi Theater in, in which case all bets are off. There's no established time for the Haruhi Theater stories, other than Return of Haruhi Theater is after Haruhi Theater, though it's implied they happen before Snow Mountain Syndrome... which is after all currently-seen episodes, so it's not a useful benchmark for our purposes. They could toss Haruhi Theater in between Lone Island Syndromes, just to inject a little chaos into this chronological-order no-episode-previews broadcast! MUWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!! ... I actually hope they DO throw one in-between Lone Island Syndromes now. Kyon: Wait, we aren't showing the conclusion? Edited because Lone Island 1 has already aired, and I was counting it.

If you like Yuki now, wait until Alt-Yuki shows up... Also: watching the reruns, I remembered what first prompted the "Kyon is the one with powers" thought. It was in Mysterique Sign. The Brigade logo that caused all the trouble WAS NOT THE ORIGINAL VERSION. It was the resampled web-size version. Resizing an image file creates a TOTALLY DIFFERENT IMAGE FILE. Especially if Haruhi was working in a different file format than Kyon(Probably BMP or PSD on Haruhi's side. The anime shows her using Photoshop, and while it's not specified in print, Paint is by far the most likely candidate. And Kyon is certainly using GIF or JPEG.) But even ignoring file differences, the actual IMAGE is changed by resizing, and changed MORE if Kyon used JPEG instead of GIF(GIF is quite likely lossless for Haruhi's masterpiece.) So HARUHI isn't the one that accidentally created the most compressed data file in the world. KYON is the one that created a tiny-ass GIF that represented hundreds of petabytes of data. Of course, Yuki should have caught this if it was relevant. But she may have just felt that correcting Koizumi wasn't important enough to say more words, given she was over-budget for the week already.

http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.ph...Suzumiya_Haruhi But the server's down right now. And there's only one episode of season 2. Though apparently the reruns are an extended cut. Either way... http://www.nol888.com/plog/category/fansubbing/releases/ Because Our Lady Suzumiya must be worshipped in HD. (Hey, I bought the deluxe editions of all the DVDs, and the US hardback novel. I'm supporting the Brigade.)

The way I read book 9 was more

A LOT of fandoms seem to not really know what they want. I can't count how many things I've seen ruined by doing EXACTLY what the fans asked for. Heck, several times I've seen the fans flip around and ask WTF was wrong with the creators. Though I think Transformers: Animated is a better example than the Bayformers. Given there was probably MORE initial outrage over the Animated designs, and it's become a VERY fan-popular installment...

It's subtle, but Kyon's really become a much more active persion since the beginning of the story. Certainly some of it is just that he gets to hang around Mikuru every day, but... The "current" Kyon probably wouldn't give that horrible waste of breath he called a speech that inspired Haruhi to create the SOS Brigade. I think he might even find it offensive(I know I did, and I really hated Kyon's character for a while because of it). Especially since he now knows a plain old ordinary boring person IS changing the world. Hell, he's even saved it from total annihilation a time or two. It kind of undermines the entire premise of that little speech. I wonder that too, actually. Watch them do it someday. And it'll just be "Meanwhile, Kyon(younger) ate dinner. It was take-out. He then went to bed." Well... Being Haruhi's foil makes him a "person of interest" by default. Hence why the Brigade members revealed themselves to Kyon in the first place. He's also someone who needs protection, as the Ryoko incident demonstrated. Given the factions represented in the Brigade would rather NOT see a repeat of Three Years Ago, it's in their interests to look out for Kyon . He's also a convenient common ground. The various factions aren't really working towards the same goal. So Mikiru, Koizumi, and Yuki are limited in what they can do with each other business-wise, even if all three are there merely to observe. But Kyon is neutral, so they have a bit more liberty to work together with him. Mysterique Sign is a good example. Sans Kyon, Yuki just deals with the situation on her own(as she probably has several times before). Add Kyon and it becomes a Brigade activity, with everyone but Haruhi taking part in the monster hunt. The way I understood it, As of Disappearance

Not likely. She reacts to events, she doesn't instigate them. The Compuer Research Society really IS that obsessed with the SOS Brigade. Remember, the president is the person other than Haruhi that visists the Brigade website(while Mysterique Sign could've been a linkspam fluke, he accidentally admits to it in Sagittarius). They established early on that she's got that cliche "really good at everything" thing going for her. Perhaps because she is The Suzumiya. That which she wishes to enjoy, she is capable of. ... Though she's not really a good pitcher. She only knows the fastball. Maybe helping people gives her a sense that she matters. Remember, Three Years Ago happened because she realized her life was meaningless(which is probably why she dumped such an ugly look on Kyon after his "inspirational" speech early on, since he basically told her to just embrace her meaningless existence in the world's background). I still find the Haruhi and Kyon contrast interesting, really. They both approach the same issue from opposite directions. Haruhi realized her insignificance and started doing everything she could to stand out. Not just subconsciously remaking the world, but consciously altering her behavior to be more ... well, weird. Kyon realized his insignificance and more or less quit caring. He started shuffling along with no real goal or motivation. Of course... When you consider that Kyon's living his dreams and having wild adventures every day, and Haruhi is completely ignorant of the amazing things happening all around her as well as the fact that she rules over an alien, an esper, a time traveller, and a Kyon... It makes you wonder if Haruhi's REALLY the one with the super powers... (She almost certainly is, but it's fun to poke at alternate takes on events)

Because the castle isn't really a castle in the strictest sense. It's a mystical WTF that reappears whenever Dracula comes back/is about to come back. Nathan Graves in Circle of the Moon isn't a Belmont or Morris. Yet he gets the Vampire Killer. It's probably safe to assume he's from an offshoot of the Belmont family and has the blood of the Belmonts, though. (I'd actually always assumed John Morris from Bloodlines was a Belmont relative)

They need to remake Hercules in New York.

Mikuru's mole is important. And not just because it's on her breast. Kyon's mole... isn't. I don't believe it was even mentioned in the print stories, so unless the anime starts making lots of stuff up, there's no significance whatsoever to the mole. Lone Island Syndrome also diverges a bit from the print version, for what it's worth. I plowed through all the (then-completed) Baka-Tsuki novel translations shortly after discovering the anime. And started checking back every month or so to see if they'd gotten further. Now I get to curse the lack of new material to translate instead of the lack of translations. And book 1 is on US shelves now. Both in a standard paperback release AND a deluxe limited-edition super-extreme hardcover edition with the original J cover art.

See, here's the thing.... Shadow Chronicles WASN'T that lucractive. Both DVDs were horrible shelfwarmers. The BluRay release I can't really speak to, as I don't look at the BR sections much, what with not owning a BR player. I don't really expect it to move much better. That's about all I really have to say on the issue. I haven't watched Shadow Chronicles.

I'm sure Our Lady Suzumiya can find us a loophole to exploit. She probably gets along really well with the Hory Froating Head. ... Crap in a hat. Some part of my brain just decided that Kawamori's disembodied cranium is what the Integrated Data Sentient Entity Or Whatever The Heck Yuki Called Her Boss looks like. I blame all of you for this.

So it's ten minutes of an empty room? Honestly, I'd like it a lot more without the big gaps of "absolutely nothing is happening." But as-is, the pacing is wonky as hell. The ending of that one IS one of my favorites, along with Live Alive's. You don't get to see Haruhi's "softer side" very often. IKKIMAS! Or not! Or maybe not... Day of Sagitarrius has the preview for Live Alive(in the original broadcast order). "LISTEN TO MY SONG!" "Huh? BOMBA!"

That's what everyone wanted in 1984? Okay, I grant more Minmay songs. I reiterate: The story HAD an ending. It had TWO endings, even. The post-war arc is almost painful with it's re-opening of the love triangle. (I love the fact that the show actually deals with the ramifications of the end of the world, but the core love triangle makes me cringe.) Throw in DYRL's alternate version and there's THREE endings. The original cast's story is over. All we'll get out of revisiting them is a bunch of Minmay fans whining about how Hikaru needs to break it off with Misa. ... Or worse yet, he WILL break it off with Misa and start the triangle all over again.