If you google for "debris field", you get this:

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 07:46 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Various comments about it below the fold. Needless to say, it's packed with spoilers.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 06:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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As in "I don't have any." I decided I wasn't going to look at anyone's posts about the final episode until after I had watched it. But I just looked at Aroduc's blog, and he had a post, and it took me about ten seconds to lose the battle and take a look at it.

Ah well, looks like the final episode was mediocre. It's a happy ending, but that's to be expected. Anyway, I'm sure the guys at Mazui will push this one out fast, and I'll be watching for it.

UPDATE: And it's a photofinish between Ayako and Mazui. Since I'm already collecting Ayako, that's the one I'll go with.

This is a lot earlier than usual. Looks like both groups decided to put in extra effort on this one, and thanks to them for that.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 03:03 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Years ago, Walter Russell Mead wrote an article about Jacksonianism for a magazine called "The National Interest". I put a copy of that article, complete with original formatting, on my server.

A few days ago Mead wrote an article called "Obama and the Jacksonian Zionists" and wanted to link to his own original article. But he couldn't; TNI has deleted it. (Or put it behind a pay wall. I'm not sure about that.) But Mead found his article on my server, and linked to it instead.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 08:52 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Fairy Tail is a really blatant ripoff of Slayers. The author kind of rearranged things a bit, but it's in the gray area between homage and plagiarism. And closer to the latter if you ask my opinion.

It's a group of four adventurers. Two are girls (Lina/Amelia, Erza/Lucy). One of the girls is less experienced (Amelia/Lucy). There are two guys (Gourry/Zelgadis, Natsu/Gray). One of the guys has scaled skin (Zelgadis, Natsu eventually).

One uses a sword (Gourry, Erza). One is blonde (Gourry, Lucy). One is red-headed (Lina, Erza). One has black hair (Amelia, Gray). One has unusual hair which is an indication of unusual nature (Zelgadis, Natsu). The phrase "Dragon Slayer" applies to one (Lina, Natsu). One of them is clueless (Gourry, Natsu). One of the girls falls in with one of the guys at the beginning and they are the core of the story; the others come and go (Lina/Gourry, Lucy/Natsu).

I just restarted watching with ep 9, and they're on the road and starving -- which happened in The Slayers too.

Now there are differences, too. Slayers had nothing comparable to the Fairy Tail guild, for example. And the characterizations vary a bit, too. Gray tends to be a bit stoic and superior, and reminds a bit of Zelgadis. Lucy has something of the kind of enthusiasm that reminds of Amelia. But Slayers didn't have anyone with a personality like Erza. And there was no equivalent of Happy.

But there are other similiarities, and this is the biggest one: both series are a combination of single-ep fillers and multi-ep story lines, and they're only really worth watching during the longer stories. At least that's what I remember from The Slayers and that's the impression I'm getting as of the ninth episode of Fairy Tail.

UPDATE: Still, it has to be admitted that there is a lot of nice eye-candy in Fairy Tail.

I was surprised by Mirajane, the guild's kanban musume (poster girl). I thought she'd turn out to be catty towards Lucy because of Lucy's good looks, but she seems to be totally friendly and supportive.

The art seems to vary a lot, though. The artists don't seem to agree on how big Lucy's boobs should be.

Or Erza's, either. This particular outfit makes 'em look a lot bigger than her usual.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 11:50 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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A long time ago I watched the first episode of Fairy Tail and posted about it here, including a cheesecake shot of Lucy. But it didn't really grab me as being a show I really wanted to watch.

Still, there's no denying that Lucy is fine eye-candy, and would make a nice addition to the top rotation, so tonight I started scanning through it looking for decent frame grabs. And starting with the fifth episode I got intrigued by what I was seeing, and started watching it.

The show really hits its stride and begins to be worth watching with ep 5. That's when the last member of the core team shows up. That's Erza, the redhead who wears armor. She's the strongest member of the Fairy Tail guild. Her magic is related to lightning changes in weapons and armor in combat. The guy with black hair is called Gray and he does ice magic. Natsu is the one who, in the initial pictures, vaguely resembled the dude from One Piece. His magic is about fire. And Lucy, the blonde with the world-class figure, is a summoner. (They call them "Celestial Mages".) She acquires and carries magical keys, each of which permits her to summon one supernatural servant. They seem to come in two colors, silver and gold, and the gold ones are more rare and a lot more powerful. Apparently there are twelve of those, representing the zodiac, and in the early part of this series she acquires a new one, Virgo.

Anyway, Erza is the character that makes the show work for me. Gray and Natsu despise each other -- fire and ice, see? -- but they are both utterly terrified of Erza. In ep 5 she shows up at the guild hall and drafts Natsu and Gray into helping her with a mission. Lucy tags along because she's been working with Natsu.

At the end of ep 8, they win that particular fight, which was tough as hell. Lucy even made something of a contribution to it, even though she's nothing like as strong as the other three.

I admit that now I'm interested and I'm going to keep watching for a while yet. The big question is how it will be managed that the four of them (plus happy, the little blue magical cat) will stay together.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 12:58 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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One episode to go, but already some comments about it. Spoilers, below the fold:

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 07:25 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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I'm setting myself up for a couple of days of frustration. I'm going to be finished too soon and will spend a couple of days stewing waiting for ep 24.

Ep 20 begins the final plot arc. Haruue is obviously in the middle of it all somehow. And it occurred to me that Uiharu and Kuroko have, or really should have, quite a rep in Judgement. They cracked the eyebrow case, for example. More to the point, they plus Konori were the ones to solve the Levell Upper case, and that was a hell of a challenge.

I'm trying to figure out why someone went to a lot of trouble to place Haruue with Uiharu. Or alternatively didn't go to any effort to avoid doing so. One possibility is that they were careless and didn't research Uiharu's record.

A different possibililty is that they did do so and chose Uiharu deliberately because they want Branch 177 plus Mikoto involved. Konori, Uiharu, Kuroko, and Mikoto are smart and tough and resourceful and tenacious, and if there are secrets to uncover, they'll find them. Maybe somebody wants that.

Unfortunately, there's a third possibility: it's a deus ex machina. Sadly, that's the most likely explanation.

(I wish I could include Saten in that, but she didn't make any significant contribution to the previous cases. With any luck that'll change this time. I think she brings a different viewpoint to the table and may see things the others do not. Plus there's the way she's hooked into the rumor mill; she may find things that apply.)

UPDATE: End of ep 21. I'm having a hard time articulating the feeling I'm getting about this.

Y'all remember the game "X-COM: UFO Defense"? An amazing game, one I spent a lot of time playing. There was a sequel to it, which placed most of the action underwater. The second game was idiotic.

It wasn't the same creative team; it was another who were handed the source of the first game and told to create a sequel. Enough the same to attract the same customers, enough different so that they won't feel ripped off.

It didn't work; it felt too much like a me-too. In the first game, flying was one of the technologies you could capture from the aliens. That was the case for the second game, too, except that it didn't make any sense. Zero buoyancy isn't all that difficult when you're underwater; all it takes is an adequate quantity of styrofoam attached to your object, or something else that floats. (Let's not discuss this in comments, please; I'm simply using it as an example.)

It's the same thing here. This story seems like a retread of the Level Upper story, almost like it was put together by a different creative team. And it has that same kind of second-rate feel to it. The plot revelations feel forced. The characters don't feel like they're in character. The story concept itself doesn't feel fresh and original -- because it isn't. This is the Level Upper story with a big paint job on it, pretty much.

I don't think it's the case, but it feels as if JC Staff reassigned the first team to something else and let a different team pick up and finish the series, and the second string doesn't measure up.

UPDATE: Ep 23, what a ripoff.

UPDATE: I continue to be underwhelmed with the story telling, but there's no doubt that they've set things up nicely for a slambang finish. I wonder if Kongou is going to be part of the strike team. Looks like she will be, and maybe the reason they didn't reveal her power this time is because they're saving the reveal for the next one.

Interesting point: whatever her power is, it doesn't seem to have been affected by those loud speakers.

I really want Saten to manifest a power before this is all over. Somehow or other, she has to have a moment of awesome or I'm not going to feel satisfied. But even without that, they've got a hell of a striking force. Mikoto has enough firepower for the team, and Kuroko and Kongou are both level 4. Konori's X-ray vision is sure to come in handy, and she's well trained in hand-to-hand. And before it's all over I bet Uiharu's power comes in handy, albeit in some sort of absurdly contrived way (e.g. "We must get this crystal from here to there without its temperature changing in any way").

But before it's all over I want Saten to have a power, and for it to be a game changer. It's probably not going to happen, though, because it would break continuity with the manga.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 04:22 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I'm seven minutes into ep 18 and I really don't want to watch it.

The very epitome of a filler episode is to pluck a minor character out of the background and tell a story about him or her. That's what's going on here: it's about Kuroko and Mikoto's dorm supervisor, who until now has been presented as a battleaxe.

The coincidence of Saten and Uiharu being at the same place is too much to take; it's a deus-ex-machina, not a coincidence. But the worst aspect of it all is that characterization is drifting. Kuroki is not like that. She has her catty side, but this isn't it.

Starting to skip now.

UPDATE: That was even more worthless than ep 17.

UPDATE: Ep 19:

That's for sure. She's out of character too. Kuroko in ep 18 and Uiharu in ep 19 are like parodies of themselves.

UPDATE: I guess the way to approach ep 19 is to take it as broad comedy. Uiharu does have a tendency to otakuhood when it comes to the upper class, and in this episode they're playing with that full out.

There's a point where there's a joke that doesn't really come through in translation. Uiharu starts talking with an oujo-ben, I guess you could call it. She starts using watakushi and ending her sentences in desu wa. She's affecting an upper class accent. But there isn't really any good way to render that in English, and Chihiro's translater didn't try.

Saten's response to that was completely in character.

Saten seems to glory in being plebian. I wonder if it's part of her process of trying to become comfortable with who and what she is after the Level Upper incident?

UPDATE: It looks like the main purpose of this episode, in terms of serving the long term story line (such as it is) was to let us see Touma after his "accident". But aside from that this episode was another total loss.

It was interesting to see that it's not just Uiharu that's a Mikoto fangrrl. The other girls in the dorm all seem to idolize her. She's Tokiwadai's Ace; it's inevitable, I guess. She's notorious, known all over the city albeit not necessarily recognized by sight. When she unlimbers her power, people instantly know who she is -- at least to the extent of knowing that she's the Railgun.

That's a lot of weight to carry. I can see how it gets her down sometimes, but overall she does a pretty good job of carrying the load.

OK, now to switch over to the Ayako directory and to pick up ep 20, which IIRC is the beginning of the final plot arc. I'm not expecting much, but it might be OK.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 02:44 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Strike Witches is available, early. And I almost hopped over to Bob's order page. But I'm going to wait until the reissue of Nanoha A's becomes available, and then order them both, plus a couple of other things.

For one thing, I'm going to get the DVD version of Mai Otome Zwei as a guilt buy. I won't watch it, though; I'll keep watching the 1080p version I downloaded.

Next time I put in an order to AmazonJP I'll pick up a copy of the BD of Summer Wars. ANN says it's sold 73,000 copies so far, which is pretty darned good. Usually the top seller on ANN's weekly list is something like 12,000 copies, or often a lot lower than that.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 10:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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