I’ll be posting another “anime blog” entry later (lord that is good filler) after Calculus is taken care of. For now just feast your eyes on the official box art for Phantom Brave. This looks like it is actually going to happen, and that it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke. Thankfully.

So are you guys coming down this weekend?

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Yeah, productive weekend. If you rock a shift+reload (or F5 or whatever) then you should notice that the comments bubble thing is now transparent. So thank god for small favours and all that.

Also I messed with some image sizes for the anime blog starting at 150 then working our way up to 250 and stopping there. I think it looks decent and the images are only about 16kb or so. Sadly PNG’s are larger than JPG’s. I’m not going GIF unless I get into trouble for image sizes.

I watched “Musa the Warrior” on Sunday and enjoyed it. But then as you know Martial Arts Epic is one of my favorite genres for films. It was a bit of a downer though, as I was completely unaware that this was the Korean version of the Alamo. Yeah, tons of people survived.

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After that the girl and I caught the Discovery Channel’s “The Quest for Columbus” and have to say that I was not all that impressed. I mean there were two plot thread’s going throughout the special. One on the mainland where a woman is searching for the remains of the first (white people) settlement in the New World, and another where these guys are looking for the remains of the Santa Maria. See, the thing was that no matter what they found nothing would change. There is already a plethora of firsthand accounts and other archeological evidence to give us a damn clear picture of what went on in the New World at that time. The best that either search could find would be the actual remains, not that it would bring to light any new information.

The poor woman in the jungle finds a pig tooth, a rat jaw and some charcoal. Obviously this highlights the location of La Navidad (the first city in question) and hey look, it is in the same exact place as people say it was. Then the guy underwater finds some wood and ballast stones. “Look,” he says “The Santa Maria!” Well, radio-carbon dating tells us the wood is from the 1800’s. He says that this is inconclusive because well, wood could be kicked around, this is the ocean.

Just like the Giant Squid special, these guys waste over an hour of my time and manage to find absolutely nothing. See, when you don’t find anything of intrest, then you don’t get to make the documentary, I don’t care how much damn footage you shot. I could make a damn documentary about not finding the damn Santa Maria. We could film it in my fucking backyard, no need to waste grant money on expensive travel. It could go like this:

“June 15th: The crew is getting restless and I am driven close to insanity. I checked under the magnolia and under the dogwood tree. Tomorrow, if the conditions hold, I may check under the ivy. May god have mercy on our souls.”

See, instant drama.

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Here we go, I figure that the first ep of Samurai Champloo is probably the best way to start this anime blog experiment.

So what is there to say? Samura Champloo is incredible. The music is great, the animation is incredible, the characters rock, and finally: wow. I’m speechless. There are quite a few “A rank” shows that I’m watching right now, but this may actually cause me to need to drag in video game cliches and start an “S rank.”

The plot goes like this: Mugen and Jin meet up in a town headed by a corrupt governor. Jin kills the governer’s Yaguu bodyguards and Mugen takes out the governor’s asshole son’s cadre. The two of them then proceed to start a duel of their own in Fuu’s guardian’s restraunt (she’s an orphan). The restraunt burns down due to random arson and the two are arrested. Seems the governer’s son died in the fire (no big loss. The governor was abusing his power and the son was abusing waitresses). Fuu springs the two and extracts a promice to chase down a samurai who smells of sunflowers. If she can keep the two of them from continuing their duel.

Sounds like standard samurai stuff right? Well this is Shinichiro Watanabe, late of Bebop. Lord but the style here practically drips off the screen. I mean I rarely watch shows that I want to re-watch right after finishing them. Finding these screenshots was an exercise in not actually just watching the episode over and over.

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This whole ramble is a little spoilery. Just get over yourself and read the damn thing. I won’t give away endings or character deaths, I promice.

Yeah, I was apparently under the influence of painkillers when I spoke ill of Gantz, and I hope that it will forgive me. Apparently we are on the outs though, because it refuses to play on several of my machines. It will work on the server though, but no sound because it is a server and not built for sound. Yeah, a good several episodes, and I finally got the translations for the manga from Omanga. It just took a while to find working links, I was getting 403’s on most of the older chapters.

Yeah, last weekend was hella manga weekend. Five volumes of Gantz, two and a half of Drifting Classroom, and twenty-fucking-seven volumes of Naruto. No, I didn’t read all that ninja action, but I did download it. I love the Gantz manga. Even with the incredibly dark violence-ridden action sequences, they manage to inject odd (bizzare as the alien-hunting) bits of humor.

Here’s an example: the main female character (who Gantz calls “Titz” when handing out points) finds out that the original her isn’t dead. See, when people end up in the apartment Gantz uses for a base of operations, their real bodies are dead. The people in the apartment who go out and hunt aliens are actually copies of dead people. So Kei finds out that the original Kei is still alive, and that she is an exact duplicate. Because her suicide attempt happens in the shower she appeared in the apartment naked. Kurono gave her his clothing because he had the “Cosplay Suit” (Gantz’s crazy stat-boosting wetsuit) on at the end of the mission. Kei finds his student handbook in the pocket of his jacket and tracks him down. She then asks the poor bastard if he can keep pets in his apartment because well, she’s not a registered citizen (only a copy of one) and would like a place to crash.

When he tries to put the moves on her, she responds “You wouldn’t have sex with your pets, would you?” He says “Well, I did use to make out with my dog.”

And apparently Gantz manages to pick up Sadako from “The Ring.” Girl in a white dress with black hair over her face that is always hovering just outside of the field of vision.

Wild stuff.

“Drifting Classroom” is another “Lord of the Flies” basically. The main premise is that an entire elementary school complete with students and faculty is randomly transported foreward through time to a nuclear waseland. The nearly 500 people in this building then have to cope with reality as they see it. Most of the adults then promptly go insane and start either trying to or actually killing each other. Suddent explosions of violence lurking in the hearts of the mild mannered seems to be a commonly used plot device.

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There. Done with manga-babbing. Ok, Jason? If Bubba Ho-tep is to happen it would have to happen tomorrow at seven. Then you would promptly have to go back to Florence. I’m tired as fuck and I have to work this Saturday (we have to make up the snow days from that week we had off). The fact that it is at the Nick means it will be released pretty damn quick. A quick check of Amazon reveals a release date of May 25, so it is actually appearing faster than I though. My plan then is to order it (along with the next Pratchett, a Tiffany novel also coming out on the 25th), then we will watch it at my house. I’ll get a DVD player for the living room shortly, and we won’t have to cope with the Nickelodeon’s hard-ass wooden seats. And the inevitable Art House Wanker croud. See, some people are lucky, and probably have more than one local theatre carrying odd movies. We down south have but the one, and all the Cafe Depresso croud go to it.

So I cleaned my entire house yesterday. Well, I cleaned my room, the living room/den/dining room, hallway, and my bathroom. The Third Bedroom and Kitchen are waiting for another day to be cleaned. Probably today. I feel a warm glow of accomplishment and the whole place smells of Fabreeze. If Patrick knew I was linking to his webpage from ‘98 then he’d probably get rid of the damned thing. Next on the agenda? The Kitchen and Third Bedroom, then folding laundry and moving the server’s data drive over to the removable rack I just bought. Then possibly mowing the lawn tomorrow or Thursday.

Oh, I can’t do Ho-Tep Thursday because of Kung Fu. I’ll be taking a lengthy Kung Fu Hiatus for the next few months to make room in my life for Calculus so there will be intense training for this week.

Anyway, is that a good plan? The buying-the-dvd thing, I’ll handle the cleaning myself.

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Wow, that week went by damn fast. I swear it was just yesterday I was playing D&D on Saturday. Now its almost Friday. Where does the time go? Killer D&D game by the by. I don’t think anything could have been more helpful to both my roleplaying and to my character than that dream and the conversation with the NPC. Really solidified my character concept and got me to start thinking about this guy as a guy rather than a collection of stats and feats. Thankfully too, because I was about to embark on a career of bowmanship, and now I feel embarassed in character for forsaking my kicking skills so much. Damn that’s an odd feeling.

I also managed to finish both “Storm of Swords” and “Sethra Lavode” this week. One story comes to an end, and another just rips me a new one. I swear, I will have to write George Martin a note and say “Thanks for screwing every character I liked from that book.” Sadly, my girl and I were making fun of all the people who were all caught up in this “Friends Finale” thing, then it occurred to me: both of us are so caught up in Song of Fire and Ice that we honestly talk about going and punching Jaime Lannister in the face like he is a real person.

That’s a hell of a cenograph huh?

The Walking Dead collection is out this week too. It encompasses six issues of the finest comic to be debuted this year (even nomiated for the “Best New Comic” Eisner) and only costs $9.95. I would highly reccomend it to my friends who like such things. And to those who don’t as well. Its a damn good story all things considered.

I haven’t actually played anymore Playstation recently, I’ve just been reading all week. It is almost like I’m working my way though the backlog of books I’ve allowed to pile up in recent months to leave my way clear for amazing amounts of La Pucelle. Lord that is an amazing game.

Movable Type 3.0 is out. I’ll upgrade to it later today, when I’m at home and feeling more comfortable.

(Read the article)

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Yeah, gimme a call before you come down, I should be here after 11:30 )Kristi and I are going out for a while). Bring Dungeoneer and I’ll type (or write) up that character bio for you. Anyhow, I’m off to get and adapter so as I can plug my laptop up to the KVM over here. A backup iRO station is never glanced askance at.

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Yup, no La Pucelle for me either. They said “tomorrow” on Tuesday, then “Who knows” yesterday. *sigh* I think, in the future, pre-orders will be done over the internet. That way I’ll only have to wait for something to appear on my doorstep. There’s less driving that way.

I still haven’t played any more Siren or Onimusha. I’m afraid of the former, and my lady is always playing Tenchu so I can’t get to the latter. She’s damn good at Tenchu though, to the point where it is entertaining to watch. Seeing her get Grand Master rank on the graveyard level was a thing of beauty.

Ya know, I’d love to take back my reading of Song of Fire and Ice. Storm of Swords has truely hurt me. I think that House Frey should damn well be cursed dammit. I like all three of the main characters who died at that castle. Fucking Freys. Now I really have to finish this book, or I’ll go insane wondering when the few remaining characters I like will die. Oddly, they’ve managed to get me to give grudging admiration to Jaime Lannister of all people. They’s got to be something there.

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Our regularly sceduled programming. Yesterday was very odd, so please excuse anything I may or may not have said. See this is a PACT (SC Standardized Test) week, so we in Computer Services have been working at the District Office, cleaning up the basement. While doing so, a co-worker dropped a monitor on my leg. He apparently thought that he could remove something from the middle of a pile and this would not cause any problems with the top of the pile. Yeah. Monitor hits my left calf at an angle just off of the vertical and this drops me like a stone. In the course of falling I scrape the hell out of my left arm but am unable to stop my little arc in time to avoid fielding another monitor with my left rib area. Yeah, if you ever want to know something not at all comfortable to fall on, computer equipment is right up there. So I spent yesterday self-medicating (I didn’t take the old Demoral, but that did occur to me). My comments were, to say the least, not at all indicative of reality.

Yeah, I broke a cardinal rule there talking about work. I didn’t bring up my views about the subject though, just what happened. Hopefully this will fly below radar and not get my attacked by higher ups.

Gantz is actually very cool. After watching episode 3 it all clears up and I stop judging the characters. The CG is overused a little, but I chalk that up to camera style. The 2d animation is a bit rough, but hell I’m watching a Squenix production and a Bandai production, so my standards may be a little high. Its back in Rank 1, as is Monster. That’s some cool, creepy stuff.

Sure, come on down. We may have a little painting to do (we did the trim last weekend, but still have a little touch up to do, but that’s all artist brush stuff, and you are an artist, right?

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So yeah, a little site-work a few anime thoughts and a download mainly for Jason, but my other friends should like it too.

Well, If you look the “Newest Article” thing isn’t there anymore. “Where is it?” You ask. I’m glad you did, because if you didn’t I would have to nervously glance aside and change the thread of conversation. See, I am now using Mark Paschal’s CatEntries plugin. Now I can define an MTEntries tag that respects limiting to certain categories and number of entries and number of days. So now the “Newest Entries” thing is the last one entry in the “cat-features” category within the last fourteen days. Rockin’ I’m pretty proud of myself.

I don’t know about Gantz. It was incredible for the first ep, but the next two have been really poorly animated and rediculously slow. I still like the idea and will hunt down the manga relentlessly. I will also watch the show, but it is now a second rank show. It can still get back into the saddle, but it will have to get off its ass.

La Pucelle is coming tomorrow, despite what EB’s own webpage says. Bastards.

So now for something for my friends. A radio dramatization of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Horror Within. Next time you guys come down I have a whole CD of these. Not Lovecraft, but various horror and detective-based radio dramas. The one with Zombies is incredible. There’s a whole hell of a lot of news on this one. Just wait through all the news about Cambodia and Nixon. George Bush Sr. makes an appearance though.

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