Final Fantasy Meme
January 5th, 2008 by Brack
Posted in Stupidity | Tags: cactaur, final fantasy, recycled content, trick fakery | No Comments »
The Ten Most Viewed Articles of Awesome Engine of 2007
January 5th, 2008 by Brack
1) Ultimates Volume 3 - this was mainly down to a link from the erstwhile Jog.
2) Superjail Is Super - This has been constantly hit from searches since the pilot aired. It’s blipping again right now after Adult Swim aired it again.
3) Cross Counter Of The Day - Blazing Transfer Student Episode 1 - This got a lot of hits from people looking for Cross Counters on Google Image Search. Also there are very few pages writing about Blazing Transfer Student on the web.
4) Giant Gorg Episode 1 - Likewise, very few Giant Gorg sites out there.
5) Top 100 Anime Addendum #3: Maicching Machiko-sensei - this gets a lot of hits from people looking for torrents of the recent live action version.
6) Denno Coil - Episodes 1 to 4 - Looks like I need to reload the images for this entry.
7) Cross Counter Of The Day - Gurren Lagann Episode 3 - More Google Image search traffic.
8) Kawaii Jenny - This was due to AICN link traffic, I believe. Though probably a lot of search traffic, as outside of “top 100 anime” (my static page of the 2005 top 100 anime list is the most popular page on this site) the top keyword was “kawaii jenny”.
9) HATE FUN? October Anime! Part 6~! - This definitely was Kawaii Jenny related AICN traffic. For a brief period there I was the internet’s source of Kawaii Jenny news.
10) It’s Environmental Cartoon Week! - Smoggies - Mainly google traffic. Often people searching for “funny environmental cartoon”.
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CIOASIISAG Part 12 - Cyberpunk
January 4th, 2008 by Brack
I picked this up from a RPG shop way out on the outskirts of Peterborough, the name of which I forget, but I remember it had a specialist doll shop round the back run by the owner of the RPG shop’s wife. It was pretty much the only place to get really indie RPGs in the immediate region. Even Boston and Lincoln wouldn’t have the sort of curios this shop had.
And that was what the 1st edition of R. Talsorian Games’ Cyberpunk was. It came in a box with 2 six sided dice and two books. One which had the character generation, background and general rules. And the other was Friday Night Firefight, a standalone set of combat rules that Cyberpunk used. And it was quite the eye opener. Unlike other games I’d played this combat was short and nasty. Even more brutish than WFRP, which was always tempered by how hard it was to actually hit things. Here, hitting things was easy if you were close to the target. And getting hit by a bullet really hurt. And getting hit by lots killed you. This wasn’t a cinematic combat system, there was a definite sense that if your character got into a fight at any time, there was a chance you weren’t going to walk out.
And it felt very punk too (at least compared to later editions), the paper it was printed on was rough, the layout’s clear, but very ghetto in their design. The edge of the pages of my copy hadn’t been properly guillotined. It felt like a zine, especially compared to the slickness of a GW product or the strangely quaint TSR house style. It kicked off a trend for Cyberpunk-ish games, quickly being overshadowed by the luke-warm watered down Cyberpunk of FASA’s Shadowrun (ELVES? THEY AREN’T PUNK!), until the release of more professional Cyberpunk 2020, which is bone-fide classic tabletop RPG and was a deserved success (though it fell afoul of rule bloat through various supplements about 5-6 years into it’s life, which signified the end of it’s lifespan).
Now, I’ve never been a big fan of William Gibson, but I was a big fan of Repo Man and the sourcebook mentioned that as a cyberpunk film. And an article in Fantasia magazine argued that Cyberpunk was dead and that Repo Man was the only true cyberpunk film. And so my games tended to be influenced more by that film, the first Mad Max film and crime dramas than anything from Neuromancer. Indeed the world of the original Cyberpunk RPG was much closer to our own, than later editions which were closer to Gibson’s ouevre and more noticeably - Bubblegum Crisis (the book “Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads” admitted that the setting of Cyberpunk 2020 was animemetal, rather than cyberpunk. Good book btw, if you were to run Cyberpunk, that’s the one book you should get alongside the 2020 rulebook. My brief look at 3rd Edition gave me the impression of a poorly laid out, poorly illustrated Snow Crash influenced game. OK this long aside has finished, carry on).
R. Talsorian is still around today, but a shadow of it’s former self, in part due to the RPG market and in part due to head honcho Mike Pondsmith’s Xbox related job. I’ll get to some of their other games later on, as there’s some beauties in there.
Addendum: I also recall our teenage gaming group would on more than one occasion plan what we would do in the event of an apocalypse, and the ensuing collapse of civilization. This kind of thinking also made the dystopia of the Cyberpunk world appealing. I’d like to think this was because we’d grown up in the 80s and had seen things like the BBC’s adaptation of the Day of The Triffids at a young age. But I suspect it is just something all kids do at some point. After all Nostradamus, occult nonsense, being a goth, witchcraft and the like tend to popular among teenagers. Is thinking about doom and gloom entertaining at 14?
Posted in Cut It Open And See If It Swallowed Any Gems, Role-playing Games | Tags: cyberpunk, mike pondsmith, r talsorian games | No Comments »
Captain Harlock Episode 3
January 3rd, 2008 by Brack
Warning there are spoilers ahead, though as this show is 30 years old this year I really think the window of spoilage has long past.
I think I talked about Episode 1 ages ago, and indeed may have not imported that post to the Awesome Engine yet. And Episode 2 had far too much of that blue hair moppet that was apparantly foist upon Matsumoto. Orphantainment at it’s most annoying.
Episode 3 however had Professor Daiba getting killed, and that was awesome.
He is shot by a Mazone assassin, and as the shot connects the style of animation used to animate Daiba changes. The colours change to just black, white and red. The animation changes from pose to pose to this continuous, fluid motion. In death, Daiba has more movement to him than most of the characters do in the show. He certainly has more movement than his cold, static killer.
The effect is fantastic, the move to a more abstract animation, given to expressing the feel of the moment, rather than the reality of the moment, works wonders. Also the feeling I got when I first watched it was one of wishing you saw this sort of experimentation in mainstream anime nowadays. Even something like Gurren Lagann, which experimented with different styles on occasion, felt more in the realm of homage and pastiche. Or in the case of episode 4, was the subject to vocal criticism for being different. (Roll on the DVD release so I can properly do an episode by episode look at GL!).
Whereas with a lot of anime you can easily break down a scene shot by shot, or even frame by frame, this scene has such movement and flows so well, I’d be posting a ridiculous number of images to show you just how awesome it is. So here’s just a few to give you a taste of how it goes from shot to shot.
So, anyone know who animated this scene?
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New Years Resolutions
January 2nd, 2008 by Brack
The past couple of years I’ve been pretty good and actually got at least one resolution done (set up a spreadshirt account, set up this website, run an event actually about anime at a UK anime convention), so let’s throw some ideas out there.
1. Self Indulgent Vanity publishing. I’ve been meaning to do this for ages. So inspired by today’s Achewood I’m thinking I should make the Awesome Engine Annual* for the end of the year. As my last two doable resolutions have been similarly self-regarding, I’m sure this is achievable. Terribly Xmas presents all round next year!
2. Make better use of the ridiculous amount of webspace I’m paying for. Thank god for the weak dollar.
3. Get all content I want to preserve for the ages off my livejournal and onto this website. There was some Hate Fun? stuff I had only there only when I was trying to keep this site all upbeat joyfullness. But people liked it and so the Hate Fun? thing came here too. There was some good stuff in that original Hate Fun? run of posts that should really be up here.
4. Change internet providers. I’m sure I’m paying more than I should be for the quality of service I’m now getting, so I need to change.
5. Get back into shape. My change of job totally threw out my lifestyle and I’m lot less healthy than I was mid-2006. I need to get back into doing daily 1-2 mile walks again to sort myself out. 2007 was stressful for oh so many reasons that I never managed to get myself into a routine for anything, let alone exercise.
6. Get back into the swing of things with eBay. Again, mid-2006, I was kicking ass on eBay, with one thing and another it fell by the wayside last year, and I still have plenty of junk that I need to unload. Plus my shelves are getting full again, so it’s time for a clear out of books.
That should do, as usual I’ll be happy if one gets done.
* For the non-UK reader, Annuals are a traditional Xmas hardback publication that were originally based on comics. But have expanded to cover magazines, sports, pop music, celebrities or TV shows. Normally they are full of comic strips, stories, quizzes, and text articles. The Doctor Who annual, clocking in at a measly 64 pages (note - this is the page count I’m aiming for!), is the current best selling annual.
Posted in Vagaries | | No Comments »
Pro Wrestling Wednesday - Stuff That Ruled in 2007 edition
January 2nd, 2008 by Brack
Larry Sweeney
Ted The Trailer McNaler
Santino Marella
Chuck Taylor Scaring Children
Kenta Kobashi returning after recovering from cancer
Posted in Wrestling | | No Comments »
Things I know about pirates, fresh for ‘08!
January 1st, 2008 by Brack
I checked the couple of recent-ish threads by “Greg” on Arlong Park - the translated web interview with Oda and the Jump Festa coverage. Very interesting stuff.
- The whole thing about OP being halfway through was interesting. You got the feeling that Oda hadn’t expected it to be this long/popular, and it was kinda scary to think he still had another 10 years to go.
- The commitment to the SBS was neat. There is an underlying sense that as much as he admires Toriyama, on some level he wants to outdo him.
- The comment about when Brook was conceived was shocking, and subsequent discussion of how he assembles One Piece was fascinating.
- Also fascinating was the comment about writing Franky with Kazuki Yao in mind.
- Talking of whom - I really want to see a proper interview with him now. His Franky-esque dress on stage at the Festa was hilarious, particularly in comparison to how everyone else was dressed. I’d like to know if he is the genuine eccentric he appears to be.
- Brook seems to be all over the latest OP games, I’m guessing he’s proving popular.
- The OP boat race looked fun and horribly reminiscent of seaside holidays on the east coast of England.
Also I see Yuichi Nagashima is apparantly Brook’s voice (he debuts on the 6th!). I’m only really familiar with Nagashima’s role as the deputy head on GTO and the sickly Kyasharin in Sexy Commando. So I’m guessing he’ll have a higher pitched voice than I was expecting (I was expecting a deeper, more gentlemanly voice ala Jouji Nakata - check the Club Escaflowne extras on the Escaflowne DVDs, Nakata can do the dirty minded gentleman perfectly, in fact, judging by that, he is one!). Still, Nagashima was good on GTO and Sexy Commando, so I’m sure it’ll be good. Just different.
Stuff on HLJ.com that caught my eye:
Straw Hat’s Flag Knitted Cap
Chopper w/ Wanted Poster - he looks so upset!
One Piece Barrel Mugs - in particular the Sanji one - I love that they are using that picture on merchandise.
I also caught some of the Chopperman special on youtube. Are the commentators on the wrestling bit real people? If so who? Also in the final battle, is that a parody of some of the Giant Robo music or am I imagining things because I want to buy this?
Posted in Anime, Manga, Things I Know About Pirates | Tags: One Piece | No Comments »
Macross Frontier Episode 01
January 1st, 2008 by Brack
Macross Frontier is a new anime series by Satelight that is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the original Macross series. I’ve not actually seen all the original series, nor all of Macross 7 and Macross Zero. And I think I’ve only seen the movie version of Macross Plus. Nonetheless I can pick up on a lot of the nods and references to the earlier shows in this first episode.
The show makes use of the number 25 straight out the gates. The series follows the 25th fleet, and features a new Valkyrie (the trademark transformable jet mecha of the Macross franchise), the VF-25. Strangely the timeline doesn’t seem to play with this number in any obvious way, being set 50 years after the start of Macross, 14 years after the start of Macross 7 and 19 years after Macross Plus. Maybe they just decided to double the number as they had already covered events 25 years after the start of the original show?
The first episode, for the most part, delivered. It was certainly a step up from the general standard of post-Noein Satelight shows. Valkyries, a pop star, a potential love triangle, Itano circuses, and grizzled pilots who look to be doomed were all present and correct. The story and the mecha action side of the show definitely felt like Macross. However there’s a couple of niggling issues.
Firstly, the character designs aren’t by Haruhiko Mikimoto. Which isn’t necessarily a deal breaker, Macross Plus and Macross Zero’s weren’t either. However, the character designs here are fairly nondescript and just sort of bog-standard mid 00’s sci-fi anime designs. ANN gave two designers in the credits neither had anything of note in their c.v. (one only had four credits and two of them were porn OAVs under a pseudonym).
Secondly, the enemies in this first episode set off alarm bells. They appear to be organic, almost crustacean and insectoid in appearance, and I’m hoping this doesn’t mean we are in for a heavy handed Shoji Kawamori environmental lecture further down the line. I respect the man for having such a strong theme behind much of his work nowadays, but too often the message smothers the art and grinds the whole shebang to a halt. I never made it to the end of Macross Zero for this very reason.
Those two reservations aside, this first episode was very promising. The CG was especially strong for a TV show, even when you take into account the usual debut episode budget/production time boost. And it was nice to get some more Macross Universe electropop compositions from Yoko Kanno again for the in-show pop star character Sheryl Nome.
Posted in Anime | | No Comments »