Anime

Name that warrior...


“If it weren’t for her plump breasts, most opponents would probably mistake her for a man. Therefore she dressed daringly, exposing most of her flesh. Her skin was swarthy, with a strange design inked on her left cheek. An informed observer would recognize the design as a warding spell of the Arido hill tribes.”

That settles the question of why competent women in fantasy show so much skin: they’re feminist pioneers, working twice as hard to prove they’re just as good as men!

[this message brought to you by my attempt to figure out the word 呪払い, which apparently should be read as “noroibarai”; it’s not explained anywhere, but is in common use in the online fantasy community to refer to warding magic. See also here.]

Girls and guns


So, in addition to Preferential Measure Organization Stella Women’s Academy High School Division Class C3 (which apparently flopped as a manga, but is one of the few watchable anime this season), there’s at least one other schoolgirl survival-game manga running, this one successfully: Survival Game Club.

I had happened to pick up a volume of this one when I was Osaka, and while the general idea is the same, this one opens a bit differently, with New Girl At School getting her introduction to the world of survival games by being rescued from a train molester by a stylishly-dressed but mildly insane blonde schoolgirl carrying what looks like a Beretta 9mm pistol. …who is promptly hauled off by the station employees, to her loud protests. Of course, this is the beginning of a new life for Our Heroine, in more of a wacky-antics universe than C3.

I was reminded of this series when I happened to click the Google translate button while looking at reviews of C3, and saw a more hilarious than usual mistranslation. The official title of Survival Game Club is さばげぶっ! (saba-ge-bu). Google helpfully translated this as “Sabage Bukkake!”. I can only be grateful that they didn’t go with “savage”.

Oh, good, I wasn't imagining that


Separated at birth: Pinion and Louie

Not just the same seiyuu, pretty much the same personality as well.

Popular sizes...


Interesting that the Golden Ghost Ship makes an appearance in this size comparison (part of announcing the 1/40000-scale model of the ship), right up there with the Enterprise, the Yamato, Laputa, a Star Destroyer, etc.

The way this season’s going, though, I’m surprised it doesn’t include Gargantia. :-)

Bentenmaru mystery solved!


Not quite a year ago, Steven found some rather puzzling geometry on the Bentenmaru’s bridge. As I continued to rewatch on a big screen tonight, I spotted something: the bridge isn’t just two levels, it’s two parts, and the upper part has a very good reason to be mobile.

In episode 7, around 10:30, the Bentenmaru is cruising at FTL on its way to a Perfectly Ordinary Mission (coughcough); the level that the captain’s chair is on is much higher than the other, and you can see lovely streams of hyperspace through the giant wrap-around windows. Just after the eyecatch, around 11:40, they come out of warp and go to battle stations, and the top half of the bridge sinks into the body of the ship, covering the windows and bringing the two levels much closer together.

So, the normal exterior corridors either reconfigure themselves with the upper bridge, or else are blocked off to lock down access. And, of course, battle stations is precisely when you’d want it to be easier for someone on the lower bridge to directly reach the upper.

It’s still possible they failed to animate it 100% consistently, but they definitely thought about it.

Reminder: Captain Marika is awesome


…and she gets it from her mom.

I had planned to wait until the second Bluray arrived before re-watching Bodacious Space Pirates, this time with a big screen and a decent sound system, but I’ve been sick all week, and I couldn’t hold out any longer. Marathoning the first arc was a wonderful way to cheer me up, and the surround sound really, really works. The excellent background music fills the room, and even the OP song is now tolerable with the chorus balancing out the screeching of Momoiro Clover Z.

(and it’s still streaming for free on Crunchyroll…)

Vividred Operation


So, a trope-aware Magical Girl-Girl show where the lead character channels Recette? I’m in.

Fukuramase-kata!


Meet Ren. She’s an alien slave girl with a brain the size of a walnut and a heart the size of, well, something big and chest-related.

Ren, bonus postcard

This is one of the postcard-sized bonus items included with the deluxe edition of the DearS PlayStation 2 game. Notice anything odd about it, besides her rather distorted anatomy?

Let’s take a closer look:

more...

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