“Earth-based radar observations have produced a detailed 3D map of the Moon’s south polar region, revealing a dramatic and rugged landscape. The map will help NASA assess the site’s potential for setting up a base. NASA plans to return humans to the Moon by 2020 and wants to eventually set up a permanent base there. The Moon’s poles are considered particularly good locations for a base.
That’s because frozen water may be present in frigid, permanently shadowed craters at the poles, providing a crucial resource for astronauts. At the same time, some terrain at the poles may be permanently illuminated, providing prime spots to set up solar power stations.”
Posted by Guest Author on Mar 3, 2008 in Comic Books
Most people know about anime and manga, but a new wave of Japanese popular culture is just starting to hit the United States: the light novel. The light novel (literally “raito noberu” or “ranobe” for short) is similar to a young adult novel in the United States, but it also has a little twist: manga-style illustrations are littered throughout the books. So now that you know what light novels are, here’s one of our Ten Light Novels That You Need To Know:
Craft Lawrence is a traveling merchant in a world that vaguely resembles a pre-Renaissance-era Europe. He hopes one day to earn enough money to create his own shop and settle down somewhere, but hits a snag in a town called Pasroe. On his way out of the town he finds a young girl sleeping in his cart— odd enough in and of itself, but then he notices that she has wolf-like ears and a tail.
She introduces herself as a wolf god, Horo the Wise. She has been acting as a local deity for the town, blessing it with good harvests as often as the land will allow. Unfortunately the townspeople have ceased to show much respect to her, and are increasingly under pressure to join the church (an unspecified but overpowering organization).
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 3, 2008 in Animation
There’s an interesting interview with the former head of Studio Ghibli who has some interesting insights into the upcoming Hayao Miyazaki film Ponyo on a Cliff:
As a fanboy I count myself as a huge supporter of NASA, however I think it’s important to remind the more mundane minded among us that space program spin-off technology can be found in our everyday world. And to that end NASA has just launched a website called “Trace Space Back to You” which shows how you can find NASA R&D in every thing from toothpaste to tennis rackets.
Posted by Guest Author on Mar 2, 2008 in Comic Books
Most people know about anime and manga, but a new wave of Japanese popular culture is just starting to hit the United States: the light novel. The light novel (literally “raito noberu” or “ranobe” for short) is similar to a young adult novel in the United States, but it also has a little twist: manga-style illustrations are littered throughout the books. So now that you know what light novels are, here’s one of our Ten Light Novels That You Need To Know:
Imagine that one day, you’re walking home from school, when suddenly the world around you stops. As you watch in horror, the people around you don’t move while they are burned with a strange blue flame. Then a strange monster comes and starts to eat the flames, only to be slaughtered mercilessly by a young girl with flaming red hair and a sword.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 2, 2008 in Japanese TV
I’m not 100% sure where this video clip is from, but it seems to be a parody of the long running Kamen Rider TV series (some of which came to the United States as the Power Rangers). I just can’t get enough of the Muppetesque characters in the skit…
Posted by Guest Author on Mar 1, 2008 in Comic Books
Most people know about anime and manga, but a new wave of Japanese popular culture is just starting to hit the United States: the light novel. The light novel (literally “raito noberu” or “ranobe” for short) is similar to a young adult novel in the United States, but it also has a little twist: manga-style illustrations are littered throughout the books. So now that you know what light novels are, here’s one of our Ten Light Novels That You Need To Know:
Everyone loves a good fantasy story, especially when it adds in a lot of comedy and romance. Such is Zero no Tsukaima, which takes place in an alternate universe at the Tristain Academy of Magic.
Don’t write the series off as a Harry Potter rip-off just yet! Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière is a second-year student with the nickname “Zero”— because that’s her approximate success rate in casting spells. Second-year students are made to cast a spell that summons their familiars, but while everyone else summons cats, dragons, and other creatures, she somehow summons a boy from our very own Japan— Saito Hiraga.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 1, 2008 in Japanese TV
Warning: The above video might be slightly NSFW (well depending on where you work). As soon as I watched the clip I was struck by just how surreal it was — Miki Komori (who’s an adult video star from Japan) seems to be wearing underwear on her head and her hair style looks very “avant-garde” to say the least. The video looks like a Saturday Night Live parody of something, but rest assured this is an actual series of films:
“Kekkō Kamen (けっこう仮面 Kekkō Kamen) is an adult rated manga and anime series from Japanese creator Go Nagai. The series is about the misadventures of a student named Takahashi Mayumi who attends a boarding school called “Toenail of Satan’s Spartan Institute of Higher Education”. Takahashi’s only protection is from a mysterious figure known as Kekkō Kamen.
Posted by Guest Author on Feb 29, 2008 in Comic Books
Most people know about anime and manga, but a new wave of Japanese popular culture is just starting to hit the United States: the light novel. The light novel (literally “raito noberu” or “ranobe” for short) is similar to a young adult novel in the United States, but it also has a little twist: manga-style illustrations are littered throughout the books. So now that you know what light novels are, here’s one of our Ten Light Novels That You Need To Know:
I mentioned in the introduction that Haruhi has blitzed the entire world with her antics. Written by Nagaru Tanigawa and illustrated by Noizi Ito, the series currently spans ten volumes, nearly all of which are told in an achronological fashion. (This resulted in the anime airing its episodes out of order as well.)
Posted by Guest Author on Feb 29, 2008 in Japanese TV
This is Denki Groove’s recent music video, “Mononoke Dance”. Denki Groove is a band who released their first album in 1990. They are the key band bridging the Technopop and club music. Key member Takkyu Ishino has been working on his somewhat more techno styled solo albums in recent years so proper Denki Groove releases have been rare in the last few years.
Posted by Guest Author on Feb 28, 2008 in Comic Books
Most people know about anime and manga, but a new wave of Japanese popular culture is just starting to hit the shores of the United States: the light novel. The light novel (literally “raito noberu” or “ranobe” for short) is similar to a young adult novel in the United States, but it also has a little twist: manga-style illustrations are littered throughout the books.
Light novels have been around for ages, and many prominent artists and mangaka have illustrated them. Yoshitaka Amano, best known for his character designs for the Final Fantasy series of games, illustrated the Vampire Hunter D novel in 1983. Shoujo/boys love mangaka Fumi Yoshinaga has illustrated dozens of BL novels.
“We’ve talked about the Citizen Astrodea “Moon Age” and “Celestial” watch series many times, and it seems we’ll have to keep doing it forever since they update the watches yearly. For those unfamiliar with the line, these are very detailed watches that keep perfect “celestial time” as the face rotates in real time. You can perfectly tell the placement of the stars just by using the watch’s many measurements (which I will never understand completely).”
Shown above is a fun sculpture project by Ludovic Blay, a fanboy artist from France who loves Ray Harryhausen (which makes us think all the better of him).
“The Tokyo International Anime Fair (TAF), the world biggest trade fair for toons, has presented “Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone” with its Animation of the Year award, organizers announced on Monday.
Receiving the Grand Prize in the Nominated Works section was “Adventures in the NPM,” a Taiwanese short by Helen Huang that is an animated guide through the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Grzegorz Jonkajtys’ “Ark” and Moin Samadi’s “The Lost Puppet” were selected as Notable Entries in the General Category, the section’s second prize. Young-kwang Jo’s “Christmas in Taxi” scooped the Special Award, while Takashi Kato’s “The Clockwork City” and Guillaume Briet’s “BistRobot” won Notable Entry prizes in the Student Category.”
Posted by Guest Author on Feb 26, 2008 in Comic Books
Our Top Indie Cartoonists to Watch For in 2008: Keeping true to our “Anti-Superheroes in Tights” mood at fanboy, we took a look back at the comic books and graphic novels that caught our eye:
When you’re a kid, you don’t have much say so over how you live your life. It’s all about the rents who call the shots, for the most part, and that’s part of the reason that outward manifestations of personality such as choice of clothing or cliques one associates with take on utmost importance. They’re early ways of asserting who we are, sometimes before we even discover who we are for ourselves. And nothing is more important in asserting who we are in youth than the music we listen to. And it’s never a simple matter of liking a catchy tune. The musical artists we prefer are alignments, social statements about who we are and what we stand for, and I’m sure everyone reading this has those bands that swept them away, whose lyrics were something we fiercely identified with, even if we hadn’t realized it until we first heard the songs. And for comic artist Mike Dawson, this musical epiphany came through Queen.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 25, 2008 in Japanese TV
It’s funny I always associated the above song with Sheena Easton selling out to some national gym chain in the 80s, little did I know the same song was also used to sell a shochu drink in Japan!
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 25, 2008 in Comic Books
The texture in the above detail from Hellblazer: The Fear Machine is so unusual in a sea of flat looking comic book covers. What’s also impressive in this illustration by Phil Hale is that most horror comics always go to a goth black color scheme, however Hale scores with an unexpected pale palette with the final cover falling between film noir and German expressionism.
Hellblazer: The Fear Machine will be hitting comic book stores in May and is published by DC Comics, below is the full illustration:
Shown above are TV commercials from the 70s for the Shogun Warriors, the Micronauts and Suckerman! Following that are spots from the 60s for Parcheesi, Union Station by Remco, Word Nerd and Duncan Yo Yo.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 24, 2008 in Comic Books
When I first viewed the above detail from the cover of Power Pack: Day One #3 I was blown away by the sense of chaos in the illustration by Gurihiru Studios (who are two artists based in the city of Sapporo, Japan). This Marvel book is due to hit stores in May, below is the full cover:
“Google and X Prize officials have unveiled nine new privately funded teams that will compete for $30 million in the Google Lunar X Prize challenge, a race to the moon. “It’s not just a new mission,” Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, said during Thursday’s announcement here at Google’s headquarters. “It’s a new way of doing business.”
The Google Lunar X Prize, unveiled last September, aims to encourage privately funded lunar exploration — just as the $10 million Ansari X Prize provided a jump start for space tourism three years ago. Private-sector moonshots could open the way to commercial ventures ranging from robotic mining operations to lunar hotels and virtual reality-TV expeditions.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 23, 2008 in Science
Currently only a few lucky fanboy (and fangurl) multimillionaires have had the pleasure of going on vacation in outer space, however according to this article the price may come to down to a mere $80,000 for a quick taste of the final frontier:
“Outer space will rocket into reality as “the” getaway of this century, according to researchers at the University of Delaware and the University of Rome La Sapienza. In fact, the “final frontier” could begin showing up in travel guides by 2010, they predict.
“In the twenty-first century, space tourism could represent the most significant development experienced by the tourism industry,” says Prof. Fred DeMicco, ARAMARK Chair in UD’s Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management program.”
By the way the image of the Orion Space Plane from 2001: A Space Odyssey is from this great page on Martin Bower.
