October 27, 2009

Princess Lover DVD

It's a fact of life in the anime industry that DVD/BD sales are an essential ingredient in a profitable series. The studios lose money on the original broadcast. So obviously they want to encourage DVD/BD sales as much as possible. BD offers higher resolution than is usually used for broadcast, though the material may not benefit from it. But DVDs are lower resolution than typically used for broadcast these days. How, then, to encourage people to buy them?

Obviously, by offering things that weren't in the broadcast, and the easiest way to do that is censor the fan service in the broadcast version. That used to be exceptional, but these days it's pretty much expected, at least for shows which have fan service.

The latest example of that is Princess Lover. The first DVD just hit the streets, and hit the torrents. When the show was broadcast originally, it was marked that the boobs were huge, plentiful, and bouncy, but the up-skirt shots were all massively censored. So are they, in the DVD version? Check the NSFW pictures below the fold to see for yourself.

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Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 09:48 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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October 26, 2009

Another order in

And as always, RACS shipped next business day. This time it was this:

Real Bout High School DVD's 1-4
Dragon Ball season 2
Dragonaut (first half)
Sgt. Frog (first set)
DBZ Bardock movie (BD)
Burst Angel (BD)

And so I ordered enough stuff to qualify for a 10% discount.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 08:36 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Uh-huh, whatever you say...

A few days ago a jet going from San Diego to Minneapolis overshot its target by 150 miles. Attempts by air traffic controllers to raise the pilots were unsuccessful for quite a while. Eventually the pilots responded, turned the jet around, and took it back.

There was strong suspicion that they'd fallen asleep. Modern jets actually fly themselves for the most part. But both the pilot and copilot denied it.

Today the official explanation came out:

The pilots of the commercial jetliner that last week overshot its destination by about 150 miles have said they were using their laptops and lost track of time and location, federal safety officials said Monday.

Playing Unreal Tournament, eh?

UPDATE: Been a while since I've done a poll.

What were those pilots really doing?
Sleeping
Things we don't talk about when children are around
Entranced by the beautiful night sky
Temporarily kidnapped by aliens
Playing Unreal Tournament
Free polls from Pollhost.com
UPDATE: As expected, the pilots lost their licenses.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 01:30 PM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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October 25, 2009

Geijutsuka Art Design Class

I saw this and was curious about it, so I just started watching the first episode. I'm 6 minutes in. How would I describe it?

Take 40% Azumanga Daioh, 40% Lucky Star, 20% paint, and mix thoroughly.

It's putting me to sleep, I'm afraid. And the Tomo-surrogate and the Yomi surrogate are not working for me. Also, I hoped for better from Kisaragi. She's kind of vanilla.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 09:57 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Bowl-of-noodles

One of the products I tried from the local oriental food store was from Japan:

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And it was really, really yummy. It comes with the expected dried noodles, and a pouch containing dry flavorings.

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Plus a second one. The little green one contains liquid, and you're supposed to add it after everything seeps in hot water for 4 minutes. I think it's got sesame oil mixed into it, but I think there's also fish flavoring of some kind. And they claim soy sauce, but I can't taste it.

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Whatever it is, it really tastes great! Usually with this kind of thing I eat the noodles, drink some of the broth, and toss the rest. But with this I eat (or drink) every last bit of it!

For $1.69, this gets the Chizumatic seal of approval!

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 07:52 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Curse you, Adobe

I just tried using Flash 9 and was told I needed to register again. So I let it, and it told me that my serial number had reached its limit on the number of registrations. One of the things they told me I could do is find one of the other places where I'd installed it and deregister.

The problem is, most of those don't exist any longer. For instance, there was a copy on Arcturus one time, but I deleted it. It seems that doing a Windows uninstall doesn't involve calling home to deregister, so that one still counts.

I think what this means is that I'm going to have to put the 200G drive back into Procyon and bring up Vista again, so that I can deregister the copy which is on there.

But I shouldn't have to do so. This copy of Flash was working under Vista; doing a Win7 upgrade shouldn't make it stop working.

UPDATE: Well, before I try that, I'll see if Adobe tech support can help me. (Heh heh heh heh...HAA HAA haa haaa... I break myself up sometimes.)

UPDATE: I'll be damned. It's the next day, and I received an email response this morning telling me that they'd fixed it. I assume they incremented my use-count. Anyway, I just did the registration thing again, and this time it didn't bounce.

So good going, Adobe tech support!

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Computers at 05:40 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Keisatsu Sensha Tai TANKS S.W.A.T. 01

Today's Mystery Meat is "Keisatsu Sensha Tai TANK S.W.A.T. 01". I downloaded it for bonus points. (By the way, I'm over 19,000 bonus points as of this morning.)

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It's rendered, not drawn, and the figures don't look good and don't move smoothly. And the tanks don't quite make sense to me. It's a bit like Kemeko, in the "How in hell do they fit in there?" kind of way.

Some of the characters are androids.Two of the cops are named Yuni Puma and Ana Puma, and they are androids. They have cat ears.

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It's 29 minutes long, and a stand-alone story. It seems to be a case of them really trying to do something their technology didn't really permit. The rendering just doesn't look very good. The character designs are unconvincing. It's also a no-name cast.

It could have been reasonable with about twice the budget, but then what show can't you say that about? For a show that came out in 2006, the 3D is really surprisingly crude. It isn't that the tools didn't exist by then, it's that they were too expensive. This whole show reeks of corner cutting.

Definitely not recommended.

UPDATE: Yes, I know where it came from. And what else came from the same source.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Mystery Meat at 11:42 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Quality Assurance

Remember Dexter's Laboratory? One of my favorite cartoons ever. And I remember the episodes which introduced Dexter's rival, Mandark. Mandark demanded that Dexter shut down his lab, since it was obviously inferior to Mandark's own. And when Dexter was given a tour of Mandark's lab, it did indeed seem amazing.

But... Mandark fell for Deedee, Dexter's sister. Dexter helped to arrange a date, and once Deedee got inside Mandark's lab, the whole place was ruined in about 10 minutes.

Dexter's Lab has survived Deedee's predations for years. Deedee is Dexter's Quality Assurance team, though he doesn't know that. And it is a sign of how good Dexter's designs are that even though Deedee runs rampant in the place (Dexter never figured out how to keep her out) it doesn't come crashing down to the ground, the way Mandark's lab did.

Who's the better president, Bush or Obama? Hmm?

Well, consider that Bush accomplished most of what he really wanted to despite years of bitter criticism and obstruction by the American left and most of the American press.

Obama, on the other hand, is screaming and crying because Fox News refuses to genuflect the way all the other TV networks (and most of the newspapers) have been.

Adverse news reporting is QA for politicians, and Obama seems allergic to it. Worse, he says that it could derail his program.

If so, it's a pretty poorly constructed program. Obama's political effort is more like Mandark than like Dexter.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 08:19 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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October 24, 2009

I think maybe I've just been insulted

My TMW about Bottle Fairies gets read a lot by people following links from TV Tropes. Based on my referers, it's linked from several places. But tonight I found a new one, and it makes me sound like some sort of stuffy academic.

I added a demurrer. I wonder if it'll get deleted again.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 07:47 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Mystery Meat -- Ninja Gaiden

Today's Mystery Meat is "Ninja Gaiden". I know that I downloaded this for bonus points, so it could be anything. Presumably it has ninjas in it, though.

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Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Mystery Meat at 06:49 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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