Regarding James' nightmare from yesterday of a giant school girl straddling an el in Akihabara, I responded:

Japan is a land of many fetishes. One less common one I’ve run into a few times is a fetish for giantesses.

I can think of a couple of examples of that just in my own collection. One of the episodes of Colorful featured a giantess, and there was one in Aika R-16. NSFW frame grabs below the fold.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Cheesecake at 11:19 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 204 words, total size 2 kb.

Dammit. My sciatica is kicking up, so my left hip hurts. I did something to my neck, so that hurts, too. And I had an idea just before I went to bed, so I have had a hard time staying asleep because of it.

Insomnia is a bitch. And I can't do anything about my back or neck. (NO SUGGESTIONS, PLEASE!) But I can memory-dump the strange idea, and maybe stop having weird dreams about it.

I figured something out about Aika Zero: this is the series where Aika gets her bionic bra. I'll show you the NSFW evidence for that below the fold.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Engineer's Disease at 02:20 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Aika Zero ep 2 hit the torrents about when I expected it. The one I downloaded was downsized to 720p, more's the pity, but I'm sure the full-sized version will show up eventually. In the mean time, it's even more ecchi than the first one. I would say they're perilously close to being hentai.

Really, really NSFW below the fold. I'm not joking. (And there's a duck. I'm not joking.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Cheesecake at 05:46 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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James asks for our help explaining a photo. (Post your responses on his blog, please.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 04:09 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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BD, DVD, MKV -- pick any two. That may well be the choice facing me. I used to have DVD and MKV and not BD, but now I have BD and DVD but not MKV (and not MP4).

I tried reinstalling the CCCP, and it didn't help any. Zoom Player still won't play MKV's. It displays the first frame and then freezes.

I decided to see if Windows Media Player could do it. It can, but sheesh what an inferior experience. For example, if I watch an MKV that way, I must watch the entire thing in order. There isn't any ability to jump around, or to fast forward, or to rewind partially to repeat a section, or anything like that. And I'm sure there's no mechanism for doing frame grabs, let alone single stepping.

It took me a couple of minutes to even figure out how to make it play a video file. Microsoft seems to be trying to turn Windows Media Player into a clone of iTunes.

Dear Microsoft: if I was interested in Apple Products, I would buy them from Apple. Sincerely, Steven

Of course, there's always the Media Center, but that thing's even more inconvenient.

I'm about to seriously consider emergency measures. There are two remaining to me. First, I can go online and buy the "Ultra" version of PowerDVD 9, the latest they offer. $90.

Second, I can try installing the release candidate of the next version of Zoom Player. (Which has been up for several months. I think development may have stalled.)

But both of those are kind of irreversible. If they don't work, I'm kind of up a stream without a paddle.

I may even end up in Hell: please, please, don't make me install VLC! Anything but that!

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Computers at 11:40 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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I just used MediaInfo to look at every BD disk I currently own. What I found was that there were three different audio formats used, overall.

There's PCM, which I cannot play. (That's what's on the Aika Zero BD, and all the Japanese tracks on DieBuster.)

There's AC-3, which I can play. (Cosmic Voyage, and both audio tracks on DBZ Bardock.)

And there's AC-3 TrueHD, which I cannot play. (Burst Angel)

There's no getting around it. I'm going to have to upgrade PowerDVD. Let's give it a try. First to uninstall the older version, just for cleanliness.

UPDATE: Only I can't. The uninstall data file isn't there.

UPDATE: Installation complete. First thing it did was to phone home and find out that there was an update. But it's a different update than the last time. So I let that install, too.

And I just used PowerDVD 8 to watch the DBZ Bardock movie. Worked fine. And the CPU loading was amazingly light; it only used about 20% in the last part, even when playing from the disk, and displaying full screen.

Now for the bad news: when it finished, there was a readme. The readme described the various versions of PowerDVD 8, and what they can do. And if I'm reading their chart properly, the OEM version doesn't support Dolby TrueHD. Which should mean that the sound on the Burst Angel BD's shouldn't work. Now I'll give it a try and see.

UPDATE: No, it worked fine. Sounded good, and the subtitles display properly. So now to see if Aika Zero's sound is right.

That one plays fine, too. Looks like all the codecs I need are now installed, at least as far as PowerDVD8 is concerned. Now the adventure: does Zoom Player still work for normal DVDs? And if so, does it work on BDs?

UPDATE: Zoom Player plays DVDs fine. But it's still using PDVD6's decoder.

UPDATE: Zoom Player trying to play Aika Zero is exactly the same as before: huge CPU load, and no sound.

UPDATE: If I try to make Zoom Player use PDVD8's stuff, it doesn't work with DVDs at all, and it doesn't know how to handle BD menus, and when it tries to play the Aika Zero M2TS file there's still no sound and it still hammers the CPU. In other words, it can't be used for BDs.

But if I return its settings to what they were, it plays DVDs fine. Looks like I'll have to use PowerDVD8 for BDs.

Which is not the worst of fates. Anyway, I do have a BD playback solution now.

UPDATE: PowerDVD doesn't seem to have made the new codecs publicly accessible. HandBrake still blows up on processing the Aika Zero file. Bummer.

UPDATE: Well, CRAP! Zoom Player locks up when I try to play MKV's and MP4's now. PowerDVD 8 won't even try to play them; it doesn't think they're media files.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 09:08 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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One of the things I bought this week was the BD complete collection of "Burst Angel. It's 24 episodes plus extras.

I was curious how many disks it would take to hold it all. It turned out to be 3. So did that mean they shipped me 480p versions of it? Nope, it's 1080p.

The first BD has the first 10 episodes plus three extras. It's 45 gigabytes, so I guess they averaged about 4.5G per ep, which probably is about right for MPEG-2.

The directory structure shows 10 files averaging about 4.5G each, so presumably they put each ep into a separate file.

UPDATE: Interestingly, I can play it in real time directly off the player. No obvious stuttering or pauses, and the highest the CPUs ever get is about 65% busy.

But I can't hear any sound. Dammit. I have got to figure out how to fix that!

I don't see any way around it. I'm going to have to install a player program that knows how to play BD's. I guess I'm going to have to try the newer version of PowerDVD again. Or maybe outright buy the latest version, instead of relying on the free cut-down one I got with the drive.

UPDATE: Here's a thumbnail of a frame grab:

Here's the real thing, full size.

UPDATE: I just took a look at the files using MediaInfo. The video is AVC, which is a version of H.264. That explains why I can play it without stuttering. And that also explains why the files are so small. The Aika Zero file, which did use MPEG-2, was twice the size.

The audio is "AC-3 (TrueHD)". That's a version of Dolby Digital.

The subtitles are in something called "PGS" which seems to be the standard for Blu-Ray for text streams.

They show up in Zoom Player's streams menus, but only as ID #'s. When I tried to select them, I got told they were unrecognizable formats.

I've tossed the whole report from MediaInfo below the fold, for anyone who's curious.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 08:07 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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My latest order of DVDs was delivered today. Included were the four DVDs of the R1 release of Real Bout High School which I first encountered as a mystery meat.

I think they're the first TokyoPop DVDs I've ever bought. They seem to have been mastered by someone called "Cinesight". And they did something weird in the DVD encoding, because they've done something strange to Zoom Player. It can play the DVDs fine. But when it's running, I can't use the player menus to turn subtitles on and off. I have to go out to the DVD menus to do it.

Even weirder, when I try to take a frame grab, using the ALT-F hot-key, I get told, "Can't frame capture this file format" What the heck? I've never seen that error before.

Which means I have to fall back on the other way I have to doing frame grabs. I open the raw VOB file using Vidomi, and take a screen grab using Thumbs Plus. It's a bit clumsy, but at least it works.

After I've grabbed a bunch of them, I have a Thumbs Plus batch file that strips out all the cruft, leaving just the central 720*480 of the raw image. Then I can use a batch file in Paint Shop Pro to resize the image to get the proper aspect ratio. (I'm sure you have a better way to do this. Don't tell me about it.)

I wonder what the heck they did? It's strange in other ways, too. The first DVD is 4 episodes, but they used six and a half gigabytes to encode it.

UPDATE: Looking at the ANN listing for the series, I noticed something else strange.

Kimura Ikue, who did the voice of Ryoko (and was really pretty good), turns out to have been a real flash in the pan. She worked on three major series (and a couple of others) in the time frame of 2001-2002, and then vanishes completely from the industry. There must be some sort of story there, but I suppose we'll never find out what it is.

UPDATE: She sang the OP and that is really good. I wonder if she went into recording instead.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 12:36 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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My shipment of anime tomorrow will include a considerable number of BD disks, and tonight I decided to try an experiment.

I can't play BD on this computer with my BD drive. Playback stutters. But it occurred to me that it might be better if I ripped the BD to disk, which also decrypts it, and then see if I can play back the result. So right now I'm ripping the Aika Zero BD that I bought, and copying it to storage on Deneb.

Here's what's cool: sustained transfer rate is about 14.5 megabytes per second, with a CPU load here on Procyon of about 30%. I think the limiting factor is the BD drive read rate. Its activity light is solid blue with no flicker at all.

Another problem I had was that my stuff doesn't support all the audio codecs used by BD. I was able to hear sound on the two American BD's I bought, but not on Aika Zero. Another reason I wanted to try this with the Aika Zero disk was to see if that changed with Win 7. Probably not, but you never know until you try.

Still, I'm really pleased with that read rate. If it was gonna take a couple of hours per disk to rip it, then it would have been really painful. But ripping a disk in about a quarter of the normal playback time is completely acceptable.

UPDATE: Rip complete. Playback is a little jerky, with the CPU running between 70% and 90% busy. But it isn't intolerable, the way it was when I was trying to play directly off the drive. (2 seconds of play, one second of nothing.)

I don't know what the sound would be like; I still can't hear anything. Grumble. I need a codec, and I don't have any idea where to get it.

UPDATE: I just ripped "Cosmic Voyage". 11 gigabytes in 13 minutes.

Except that one won't play at all. ZoomPlayer locks up.

Am I gonna have to install that newer version of PowerDVD that came with the drive?

UPDATE: Mass copying from Deneb to Procyon is about 60 megabytes per second. Which I have to do because Handbrake refuses to open a file on Deneb.

UPDATE: Well, crap. Since I was successful using Handbrake to translate the Cosmic Voyage BD, I thought I'd try the same thing with Aika.

'Twas not to be. It kept crashing as soon as it started trying to process audio.

I really really really don't want to install the newer version of PowerDVD. I remember what grief it caused me last time. But I may have no choice but to figure out how to use it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 06:54 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Stripey asks, "What does your top 5 anime say about you?" An interesting question. It's been a long time since I've even thought about a top 5 list, so I had to stop for a moment. But here it is:

Dragon Ball Z
Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A's
Banner of the Stars
Divergence Eve: Misaki Chronicles
Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars

So what does that say? I like engaging characters engaged in desperate struggle for the highest possible stakes.

UPDATE: I think I should amend that slightly: "...for the highest possible stakes, without getting angsty."

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 04:37 PM | Comments (36) | Add Comment
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1 Ah, let's see.

1. Ghost in the Shell (Stand Alone Complex)
2. Here is Greenwood
3. Sol Bianca - The Legacy
4. Pat Labor - The Movie
5. Crest of the Stars (Never watched banner though, curious)

Sigh. I give up.

Posted by: Standing in the Shadows at October 27, 2009 05:41 PM (awY+b)

2 Looks like you like science fiction.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 27, 2009 05:59 PM (+rSRq)

3 Except for the "Greenwood" thing. (I had to look it up; I've never heard of it.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 27, 2009 06:01 PM (+rSRq)

4

Let me see here...

1. Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory

2. Betterman

3. Martain Successor Nadesico

4. Armitage III: Polymatrix

5. Dual: Parallel Trouble Adventure

 ...Of which, the only commonality is that many/most people hate the titles I find are my favorite.

C.T.

Posted by: cxt217 at October 27, 2009 06:13 PM (Bhzsk)

5 It's not "hate" as such, but the complete cop-out ending in Dual left a sour taste.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at October 27, 2009 06:15 PM (/ppBw)

6 cxt217, all those shows are either about mechs or artificial humans.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 27, 2009 06:20 PM (+rSRq)

7 Steven, I'm sure there must be more to it than stakes or else Stellvia would've beaten Banner. In Stellvia, whole humanity is about to be wiped out, twice, but in Banner it's only the matter of some empire or other winning some armed conflict.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at October 27, 2009 06:32 PM (/ppBw)

8 1.  Azumanga Daioh
2.  Kanon 2006
3.  ARIA (all three as one entry)
4.  Noir
5.  Clannad

One of these things is not like the others...

Posted by: Wonderduck at October 27, 2009 06:50 PM (4Mcos)

9 Pete, did you notice the "engaging characters" part?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 27, 2009 06:56 PM (+rSRq)

10 Yeah, otherwise I'd have recommend Bokurano to you - an entire universe is destroyed in every episode, with the implication that even more universes are being destroyed behind the scenes - and Bokurano is terrible.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at October 27, 2009 07:17 PM (PiXy!)

11 Gah, yes.  I've heard nothing but horror about Bokurano.  Apparently, this extends to everything else written by the same guy.  He writes Crapsack Worlds run created by a particularly sadistic God.

Posted by: metaphysician at October 27, 2009 07:22 PM (vM63Z)

12 Going from the last time I compiled my list, mine are:

1. Slayers
2. Dirty Pair
3. Kamichu!
4. Urusei Yatsura
5. Tenchi Muyo

Not sure that anything has changed since then.

The obvious common theme being cute girls who will destroy your entire neighbourhood by accident.  (Okay, Yurie less so than the others, though the first thing she did was inadvertently invoke a massive typhoon.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at October 27, 2009 07:25 PM (PiXy!)

13

I'm only really comfortable putting together a top 3 series (I haven't watched enough series to put together a good list, really):

1. Ghost in the Shell: SAC & 2nd Gig

2. Haibane Renmei

3. Crest and Banner of the Stars

(Actually, that's 5 series total, right?)  So I guess what this says about me is that I need to watch more anime.  Thing is, I'm on  a streak of stuff I didn't much care for, like Trigun.  I liked Noir, but I didn't love it.  Same for Hellsing, which was fun and enjoyable while watching, but ultimately kinda pointless and thus it hasn't really stuck with me...

Posted by: Mark at October 27, 2009 08:24 PM (1y5ce)

14

Mark, give Nanoha A's a try. Truly awesome series. And it's 13 eps, so it's not as much of an investment (time or money) as some.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 27, 2009 08:51 PM (+rSRq)

15 1. Noir
2. Lucky Star
3. Nanoha A's
4. Le Chevalier D'Eon
5. Ghost in the Shell (etc.)

I guess that means I prefer somewhat-complicated storylines and characters with secrets, and Lucky Star.

Posted by: Mikeski at October 27, 2009 09:17 PM (GbSQF)

16 I have a hard time coming up with a "favorites" list, as when I put together a list of what I think was high quality stuff has little in common with what I re-watch.  So I have two lists:

Top five re-watchable anime:
  1. Spirited Away
  2. Bubblegum Crisis
  3. Shingu
  4. Vandread
  5. RahXephon
 
Top five "high-quality, I'd recommend them to people, etc" anime:
  1. Spirited Away
  2. Haibane Renmei
  3. Ghost in the Shell (original movie)
  4. Crest/Banner of the Stars
  5. Cowboy Bebop

Posted by: David at October 27, 2009 09:49 PM (4NX60)

17 Mine differs week to week.  This Week.

Cowboy Bebop
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
Bakemonogatari
Monster
Haibane Renmei

Posted by: BigFire at October 27, 2009 11:46 PM (JylMM)

18 Mine is easy: 1) SDF Macross 2) All three Nanoha's 3) Banner/Crest of the Stars 4) NGE 5) varies according to mood I'm a romantic who loves crowning moments of awesome and sappy love stories. When I don't feel like that kind of show, I like visceral, over-the-top sci-fi/horror mind screws. Although I have become quite wary of religious symbolism. Oh, and Mark, second on Nanoha A's.

Posted by: Ben at October 28, 2009 06:43 AM (LNHCk)

19 Thanks for the recommendation Steven... I notice that Nanoha A is actually the second series... does that matter?  Or is it easy to jump into the middle like that?  (For the record, I truly enjoyed Crest of the Stars and wouldn't have minded watching that before Banner - does Nanoha have a similar amount of worldbuilding going on?)  For now, I'm putting both in my Netflix queue

Posted by: Mark at October 28, 2009 07:58 AM (aUPJJ)

20

As David in #16 noted, there's a gap - for most of us, I think - between what we regard as our favorites and what we might commend to others; especially beginners.

Heck, that's even true personally.  I have the highest regard for Haibane Renmei, but it's more than a year since I've rewatched it.  OTOH, a random ep of Lucky Star is about a 2-3 times/week event here.  And don't even get me started on my owner's current obsession with Fate/Stay Night.

Posted by: Tiberius at October 28, 2009 08:25 AM (TXmvK)

21 I raised that question before, and the consensus was to start from the first series. The result was a monumental disaster and I soured on anime period. Now some people (like Sagematt) claim that they dissented (towards going with A's) back then. Not that it really matters who was wise and who wasn't, the fact is most everyone made that suggestion (except Steven who had not watched A's at the time).

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at October 28, 2009 08:29 AM (/ppBw)

22 The problem is that the first five or so episodes of the first series are completely atypical of all the rest of the franchise. And some scenes in it are extremely difficult to watch.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 28, 2009 08:42 AM (+rSRq)

23 My favorites Series:

1.  Crest/Banner of the Stars
2.  Last Exile
3.  Vandread (Both Seasons)
4.  Trigun
5.  Moon Phase

Favorite Anime Movie ( one of my favorites overall): Princess Mononoke

I tend to like shows where people/relationships change (hopefully for the better).

Posted by: schaumannk at October 28, 2009 09:20 AM (npu+U)

24 It's noteworthy how many of us have listed Crest/Banner of the Stars.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 28, 2009 09:29 AM (+rSRq)

25 In no particular order:

Maison Ikkoku
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Gunslinger Girl
RahXephon

Interestingly enough, there's one representative each from four of my favorite studios... and Studio Deen.

Posted by: Andrew F. at October 28, 2009 11:47 AM (KY8yE)

26

1) Azumanga Daioh

2) Lucky Star

3) Elfen Lied

4) Clannad

5) Minami-ke (first season)

Humour is the key for me, plots are optional. yuri and brokeness is also good (have a seperate list for those shows!)

Posted by: Andy Janes at October 28, 2009 01:07 PM (cEaZp)

27 1) Dragon Ball
2) School Rumble
3) Ouran High School Host Club
4) Samurai Pizza Cats
5) Black Lagoon

Posted by: Jaked at October 28, 2009 02:42 PM (mc2+T)

28 Andy, you consider Elfen Lied to be funny? Or Clannad?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 28, 2009 05:16 PM (+rSRq)

29 1. Aria (First and Third Seasons)
2. Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha (First Two Seasons)
3. Ouran High School Host Club
4. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
5. Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (First Season)

Dual!, El-Hazard and the original Tenchi Muyo! hold a special place in my heart, and are eminently rewatchable.

Posted by: Civilis at October 28, 2009 05:17 PM (aH7a3)

30 Banner is only the greatest military classic in anime, ever. And I'm saying that after watching The 08th MS Team. Masterfully made as 08th was, it was driven by the agenda too much, and then there was ep.12.

It really is too bad that Banner's excellence is all in the story and characters. I rage about its budget every time I rewatch it and see all the stock reuse, same ship exploding for the 3rd time.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at October 28, 2009 06:47 PM (/ppBw)

31

The quality in Crest/Banner comes from the author of the original books. He did a hell of a job. All the inferior parts are the responsibility of the studio.

But it remains the case that the quality redeems the inferior parts. Good story and bad animation is better than bad story and good animation. (As proved by the classic Bullwinkle cartoons.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 28, 2009 07:18 PM (+rSRq)

32 No particular order:

Crest/Banner of the Stars
Nadesico
Divergence Eve/Misaki Chronicles
Vandred
Code Geass

Grand stories, and unique characters you can care about.  I'll forgive bad CG, disorganized pacing, and lousy art.  Given that, no wonder i've soured on anime the last few seasons; I've been chasing harem fluff, which may have a lot of the latter and isn't known for the former.

Posted by: ubu at October 28, 2009 08:08 PM (FxDET)

33 Well Clannad is a comedy-drama in my book, but yeah Elfen is the odd one out in my list. (even though it has a very few lighter scenes it is def not a comedy)

Posted by: Andy Janes at October 29, 2009 10:26 AM (cEaZp)

34 Not necessarily in order (and this changes from time to time): Haibane Renmei Noir Madlax Princess Mononoke Spirited Away

Posted by: dkallen99 at October 30, 2009 12:43 PM (1PFDl)

35 Rats - re previous comment - sorry for the bad formatting. Also, I found "Grave of the Fireflies" affected me terribly -- which may argue in favor of it being well-done. But it is definitely NOT my favorite. I notice in reviewing my list, the lack of lighter titles which I enjoyed (e.g., Strawberry Marshmallow, Hand Maid May)... they're just not my favorites, which probably takes us back to what our individual lists say about us.

Posted by: dkallen99 at October 30, 2009 12:47 PM (1PFDl)

36 I rewatch shows that aren't in Top5 as well, sometimes Chobits, Mahoraba, etc. Why? Well, there's more to the anime than just the 5.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at October 30, 2009 03:09 PM (/ppBw)

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