F-ZeroOne

Some personal favourites: Kikis Delivery Service (film): anything with the name "Hayao Miyazaki" attached will get an anime fans attention. But as far as I'm concerned, this is the best thing he ever did. The most perfect animated film ever made. I said perfect. Urusei Yatsura (TV, Movies, OAVs): Guy meets girl, girl is alien princess, guy is a jerk, girl blasts guy with 20,000 volts. Urusei Yatsura is not just a pretty funny show, one could also argue its one of the best SF shows of all time. The genius of it is that literally anything can happen, as creator Rumiko Takahasi not only gave herself the whole Galaxy to play in, but also much of Japanese & Western mythlogy as well. On top of that, theres the central premise - lead character Ataru lands himself the hottest girl in his sector of space, and he isn't interested in her. If you don't laugh at the thought of a giant swallow being mistaken for a penguin wreaking havoc, then a) you won't like Urusei Yatsura and b) you're dead. Gunbuster (OAV): the anime fans anime show. Arguably the greatest anime OAV ever made, and conceptual precursor to the even more famous Evangelion. Except Gunbuster has a proper ending ( ) which packs more emotional punch into 30 minutes than some series manage over their entire run. It is one of the great scandals of Western anime fandom that no decent English-language version exists on any format. Read or Die (OAV & related TV): Yomiko Readman wears glasses, is clumsy, is more interested in books than people, and can slice through tanks with bits of paper. Did I mention shes a special operative of the British Librarys covert Special Operations taskforce? Patlabor on TV (TV. Er. Duh.): a delightful blend of comedy, action, character and, of course, giant robots. Possibly the first anime to treat operating a mecha as just another day job. Star of the show is Captain Goto, who can steal scenes just by standing in the background doing nothing. Project A-Ko (movie, related OAVs): If one had to pick one anime that contained more elements of our chosen entertainment medium than any other, Project "A"-Ko may well be at the top of the list. "A"-Ko has pretty schoolgirls, pretty schoolgirls in sailor suits, pretty vacant schoolgirls in sailor suits, pretty schoolgirls in sailor suits with superpowers, giant robots, bloody huge spaceships, mass destruction of property, battle bikinis, oodles of slapstick, and an alien invasion. What makes "A"-Ko so wonderful is that that final element - the alien invasion - is more or less *secondary* to a tale of schoolgirl rivalry taken to Defcon 1. A very brief selection of some personal favourites...

That reminds me - the Bf-109 was also available. A lot of combat aircraft of World War II were used simply because they were there and ready. I seem to remember that the FW-190D9s had a total production run of a few hundred , probably no more than a thousand or so, while the Ta-152 was limited to just over two hundred - against a total FW-190 run of 20,000, and BF-109 run of well over 30,000 (though most of those after 1943, when German aircraft industry kicked into high gear - for much of the early war years German aircraft output lagged behind even that of Britain, which is why the Luftwaffe kept running into the famous "last 50 Spitfires" during the Battle of Britain... )... ...the history of the German aircraft industry in W.W. II is littered with "might-have-beens", which is one reason why it holds such interest for us aviation fans...

The general opinion I get from the various books I own is that up to the E and F models, the Bf-109 was a pretty good fighter - certainly one of the top three of the early war years. However, the later models onwards went for power above handling. The Bf-109 also had better high altitude performance than the Fw-190, which is probably another reason why it stayed in production so long. F4-U vs Me-262 - well, the Me-262 wasn't invincible. Granted, if it saw you coming, you couldn't out-run it and you probably couldn't get the jump on it, but a number of Me-262s did fall to piston-engine fighters (though mainly on take-off or landing - the early jet engines didn't accelerate too well, so a prop fighter with a head of steam that got the jump on a Me-262 had a chance). It was also possible to out-fly a Me-262 - one of the first Allied encounters with a Me-262 involved a photo Mosquito (just about the fastest thing around up to that point), which managed to get away eventually.

WETA Digital were doing the effects, and they're the FX house Peter Jackson set up for the Lord of the Rings films. AFAIK, thats as far as his involvement goes.

My money would be on the P-51 - the P-38 was a great plane, but it was never really a true "dogfighter", which is why it had problems in Europe. In the Pacific, it could use its speed and dive ability to jump Japanese planes - a P-38 that got into a true dogfight with a Zero was a P-38 in trouble. I don't think its really fair to compare the P-40 to the others as it was an older generation of aircraft. Seafire/Spitfire - probably depends on which mark, especially if going up against a P-51 (mind you, that would depend on the P-51 model as well - a late model Spitfire would probably eat a P-51A for breakfast... ). Its probably going to balance about evens, though it should always be borne in mind that not only did the Spitfire have a Merlin engine right from the start, it was also an older design than the Mustang - but thanks to continual development it was able to keep up, and even surpass the best of the rest - all the way throughout World War II. The Corsair would probably do well if it kept its speed and altitude up, but I don't know how well it would handle a turning fight against a Spitfire. As for the Shinden - you don't mean Shiden, do you? (the Kawanishi N1K1?) By most accounts that was a pretty formidable fighter, though again, its performance would probably seem a bit low compared to a very late model Griffon-engined Spit (one pilot describes such Spits as "beasts" ). The Shinden only made one or two flights, and going by its configuration and the the problems other nations had with pusher props, it might have made a good bomber interceptor but possibly a poor or average fighter. One thing many veterans will say is that any fighter could be dangerous in the right hands...

I suspect - being a touch of an aviation buff myself - the rationale goes something like: 1) In 20 years, all anyone will be flying will be F-22s or F-35s or variants thereof. Bor-ing! [1] 2) No-one makes interesting aeroplanes anymore. [2] 3) Except Russia. 4) SV-51 = evil love-child of Valkyrie (most-loved transforming anime mecha of all time) + Su-27 (most-loved kick-butt Russian fighter of all time). 4) = Yaaaayyyyyyyyy! [1] Please note that is not a reflection on the merits or otherwise of these aircraft. [2] Cue flood of French/British/German/Swedish/Outer Mongolian interesting aircraft suggestions...

If you do decide to buy one, be warned that they have a reputation for fragility - although mine survived a drop off the top of a PC once (its since been relocated... ) - I've also seen them broken in their boxes. The main problem is that the arms have plastic-on-plastic joints. On the other hand, they're nicely detailed for their size, and the body is almost all die-cast metal. They make a nice addition if you already have Orguss toys in your collection. They do tend to collect dust in hard-to-reach places, too, so display them enclosed if you can.

Having now seen the picture - wow, strange how you don't recognise one of your favourite aircraft when its pointing backwards! - it feels to me very "German Focke-Wulf". So, how about the Arado-95: http://www.fach-extraoficial.com/fotos/maq...ar95_mpm_72.jpg There was a later monoplane, the Arado-196, which might be even more suitable, but unfortunately the very first search I did turned up the phrase "models of this plane basically don't exsist in 1/72 scale... "

You're welcome. I kind of figured the Spitfire would be a bit "wrong", but I couldn't resist mentioning it. I only found out about the floatplane variant recently, and I love the fact they tried it twice - once with the Mk VB and then later with my favourite Mk. IX...!

Well, you could steal from the most kick-ass float-plane there ever was: http://www.modelsforsale.com/catalog/produ...oducts_id=45651 (well, almost - they later made a Mark IX version that could do 377mph. With floats!) The Japanese made a lot of floatplanes: http://www.hlj.com/scripts/hljpage.cgi?HSGNP11 including some much later ones (such as the N1K1 Kyofu). You could also try looking at Fairey Swordfish models; there was a floatplane variant and kits of the popular Swordfish would probably be reasonably common. You could also look at kits from the Miyazaki anime-inspired "Porco Rosso" series; but I'm not sure if they do a kit of the Curtis racer-inspired twin-float bi-plane that appears in that.

I think you may have seen a model kit based on designs by Hayao Miyazaki - I seem to remember seeing a Miyazaki-style tank with pig crew-members somewhere (a la Porco Rosso... )

Two thoughts: 1) How about a song lyric from the show? I don't think its possible to go wrong with "Konya wa Hurricane!" (you'll have to come up with some other way of adding a storming guitar sound, though...!) 2) Or "Story of Knight Sabers 2032" - I believe this appears in at least a couple of the actual episodes, in a somewhat strange curved font...

It was ever thus... its been estiamted that in previous conflicts, enemy action was third on the list of causes of crew/aircraft loss, behind accidents, and - most lethal of all - weather.

I suspect that if he read this, Sir Arthur would be very amused... "The Foundation" was written by Arthur C. Clarkes good friend Issac Asimov (I believe Asimov once dedicated a speech with the words "from the Worlds second greatest science writer to the Worlds second greatest science fiction writer... " ) , though given the friendly rivalry between the two its possible Asimov had Clarke in mind...

Keith, I've got Ultra Fire! As far as I can tell, the songs mentioned are not on that either, although two of the listed tracks are only named in Japanese, so I can't be completely certain. By the way, it took me ages to work out what the little shield/badge thing was that came with it... ...its a guitair pick!

Whats really bugging me is that it reminds me of something - not a SR-71 - from somewhere. Did we ever see the human spaceships in the film "Enemy Mine"? Edit: or maybe it was Stargate SG-1?

The one thing it isn't is a SR-71. I'm sure David will be having fits about now but a real SR-71 has much, much bigger engines - nearly as wide, if not wider, then the main fuselage "tube" (I'm not counting the "chines"), among many other things; a SR-71 also has triple landing gear wheel sets under each wing, not what appears to be the single wheels shown here. My guess is that its a prop from a TV or low-to-mid budget SF series, possibly a Japanese one?

Actually, the Amiga did have a rival - at least in Europe; the Atari ST. Slightly less powerful but much beloved by musicians for technical reasons I'm not qualified to understand. As for the Spectrum being crap... yes, it did have graphics issues, but while arguments like this can basically go on for ever - and have done - have you ever played a Spectrum game called Driller? Its been pointed out that it had a more advanced 3D engine than Doom several years later. You could look up and down, and crouch, and even fly. Mind you, it did run at about 1 frame per second though...

David, regards the mystery "CR-601" missile - I believe this may be a Chinese-built copy of either a Silkworm or Exocet anti-shipping missile. As for no replies yet - I guess everyone is still going "wow".

Anyone who grew up in a school playground in 80s or early 90s Britain would, at some point, have taken part in the "Speccy" vs "Commodore" wars... (the 48K ZX Spectrum - marketed under the Timex brand in the US - against the Commodore 64. Everything in Britain - I'm reliably told by outside observers - is about class; the Spectrum was the working class underdog, while the C64 was the "posh" persons computer). The impression I've always had is that in the US, PC vs Mac and later, Nintendo vs Sega, were the battlegrounds of choice whereas in the UK, console games didn't really take off until the MegaDrive (US Genesis) appeared, Overlooking Lego is certainly a very huge oversight on this list. As for "snottish" - well, I guess it can work both ways. 1-up.com is currently running a list of the essential 50 video and computer games. They're currently up to 47. Whilst they've covered such things as Tetris and Zelda, and its not quite complete yet, from a UK - and possibly European - viewpoint, a list that doesn't include Sensible Soccer or Elite (arguably the most influential space combat game of all time) looks rather strange...

That scene is actually Raiders of the Lost Ark. Temple of Doom has a similar scene, but Indy remembers too late he left his revolver in his other hat...

Christmas is coming... I also got the impression that Orguss toys appear to be relatively common finds in Japan. Not exactly everyday items, but with the exception of things like the "Olsen Special" (sp?) they seemed reasonably easy to come across, at least in Tokyo.

In Hiroshima once I saw a cafe called "Cafe Asse"...

Kimagure Orange Road movie - now theres how to end a romantic anime series, by ripping one of the central characters - and the viewers - heart into little bits and throwing those bits into a wood-chipper... Its an interesting question. In some cases, production difficulties are to blame (Evangelion, His & Her Circumstances). In others, its because no-one wants to slay the golden goose (almost anything with the name "Takahashi" attached [1] with the very hounourable exception of Maison Ikkoku). Theres also a theory that the beginning of a series should set up the ending, but not the ending that anyone expects - Macross is a good example; we're never in much doubt as to whether or not the good guys will win, but the cost - Roy, most of the Earths population, the love of Minmei - is the thing. Someone I know got very annoyed about the Escaflowne ending, which seemed to be heading towards a really big conflict at the end. Someone else pointed out that the fact that the ending went somewhere else instead was the whole point... And then sometimes people just write themselves into a hole (the Matrix sequels... ) Some of my favourite endings: Haibane Renmei Gunbuster Revolutionary Utena TV (not that it made much sense getting there, but I liked the way it ended... ) Nadia of the Mysterious Seas Future Boy Conan [1] Please note that I am not having a go here, I love much of Takahashis work.

Sorry to but they are very real. Which is the whole point of Engrish.com because some are so bad you gotta wonder why they even botehr trying to put signs up in English. Hell, some music is pure nonsensical Engrish like the opening music to the Hellsing series. I've only seen a couple of episodes of Hellsing, but it was interesting to see how the Japanese portrayed my home country. I'm pretty sure the Eurostar staff at Waterloo station don't really bow to their passengers...