Above: Rica ‘tte Kanji!? really proved to an American audience that manga didn’t have to be about magical girls or robots, but could tell personal stories about the real world. Currently an Rica ‘tte Kanji!? Omnibus is being produced.
When you are around manga and graphic novels a lot, one voice or genre might pop up, and that is the alternative press of gay and lesbian that is quite popular among readers and fans. You don’t have to even be a fan for this genre, but be open minded to know that it is there. Within the past couple of weeks, there has been an issue of censorship in graphic novels on Amazon Kindle. So this week we are happy to have an email interview with ALC Publishing and Yuricon founder Erica Friedman. Erica’s blog is called Okazu which are the wonderful Japanese bread with savory fillings. Read more…
Posted by Michael Sacco on May 15, 2011 in Television
NBC may have passed on picking up the much-maligned Wonder Woman pilot, but that doesn’t mean that they’re done with genre TV for 2011-12. In fact, they picked up two pilots — the first is called Grimm, and it’s about a cop who finds out supernatural creatures are real and has to protect the city from them. The second, Awake, may be of special interest to Harry Potter film fans, as Lucius Malfoy portrayer Jason Isaacs is playing the lead. The plot? Isaac’s character is a cop (yes, again) who lives in two worlds after an automobile accident: one where his wife survived, and one where his son survived. It’s pretty high-concept and Isaacs is a great actor, so with any luck the show will survive.
Netflix actually has a lot of genre stuff available to watch instantly, so you may suffer from what I like to call Netflix Indecision Disorder: the condition that forces you to just aimlessly browse Netflix for two hours instead of actually picking something to watch. Suffer no more, friends! SF Signal concocted this excellent chart that’ll help you find the perfect scifi show or movie to watch on Netflix based on your interests or capricious whims. That reminds me … I need to go watch Alien Nation again. Read more…
Not a live-action one, though; don’t get your hopes up for that any time soon. Roberto Orci, half of the Star Trek reboot’s writing team, tweeted last night that he’s been talking with someone about putting together another Star Trek animated series. Details were left out, of course, given the 140-character limit, so we’re not exactly sure who he was talking to about it or whether it was just musing, but you have to admit that with how far TV animation has come, there might be some potential here. Read more…
Posted by Michael Sacco on May 13, 2011 in Television
Warehouse 13 is apparently SyFy’s most popular show ever, so it makes sense that they’d want to milk it for all it’s worth. Enter spinoff! Yes, showrunner Jack Kenny announced he’s working with the scripted content-starved channel to create a Warehouse 13 spinoff starring, of all people, H. G. Wells. No, not the author. Well, kind of the author. See, on the show, Wells is actually a woman who let her brother write stories based on her real adventures with crazy inventions in the late 19th century, so the spinoff would focus on said adventures in that time period. Kenny describes it as “steampunky environment.” I worry whenever the term “steampunk” is used by a professional.
Posted by Michael Sacco on May 13, 2011 in Pulp Fiction
No, not that kind of song, and not that kind of cover either! We’re talking book covers here. George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire is getting a Japanese translation via Hayakawa Publishing, and a few well-known manga and video game artists have provided covers for the series’ run. Ken Sugawara and Yasushi Suzuki have some of my favorites on here; it’s pretty great to see such a different take on the characters compared to HBO’s recent (very successful) Game of Thrones TV series. Read more…
Posted by Tim Sheehy on May 12, 2011 in Design, Fandom
While many of you may recognize some of her work from around the net, you probably don’t know the name behind some of these nerdy Art Nouveau-inspired character portraits. Her name is Megan Lara, a 22 year-old aspiring artist and self-proclaimed fangirl and her art’s been turning quite a few heads as of late. Her art isn’t limited to these portraits either. Megan’s portfolio also includes fine art, general prints, and more. Currently, a large portion of her works are available on t-shirts via Level Up Studios, but her designs can be found everywhere from RedBubble to, most recently, ThinkGeek. If you’d like to check out more of her work, you can visit her official site or browse on over to her Deviant Art.
Namco Bandai revealed the latest trailer for the upcoming fantasy action title, Dark Souls. Like it’s spiritual predecessor, Demon’s Souls, the title promises brutal, highly difficult and unforgiving gameplay while providing one of the most immersive experiences the genre has seen to date. I have to admit, I found the previous title to be a bit too difficult at times, often needing to take extended breaks to prevent myself from stressing out. In addition, the game’s environment, though arguably beautiful at times, can be extremely creepy. It had been a long time since a game sent those kinds of tingles down my spine. Nevertheless, this upcoming release looks spectacular and I really can’t wait to give it a try. The trailer also reveals an October release date — unfortunately, the game will be available exclusively for PS3. Given Namco’s involvement, we can always hope that it’ll get ported, but only time will tell.
Like many of the newer cable networks, the Science Channel lies on the fringe of my available HD programming. I almost never catch any of the shows, but I once happened upon it while an episode of Sci-Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible was airing. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the program, the host Dr.Michio Kaku takes concepts from Science Fiction and tries to explain how he thinks they’d work using current scientific knowledge and technology. The guys from Devestator Quarterly threw together this little parody showing us that some fanboys out there might take issue with his often liberal approach to some of the lore we hold so sacred. Campy? Sure, but it’s worth a laugh or two. Read more…
The other month we wrote about Mark at Major League Mods and his amazing R2-D2 Xbox 360 projector mod. His design was astonishing enough to make any Star Wars fanboy green with envy. Now, he’s at it again, this time with a fresh take on his original Millennium Falcon Xbox. Years ago, Mark combined the innards of Microsoft’s old black box with a classic Kenner ’79 Millennium Falcon. Microsoft recently released another black box, and while this one is much slimmer, it didn’t stop mark from throwing together another great mod for a customer. This fully functioning 360 slim looks absolutely fantastic. The engines and running lights are a great touch as well. To see how everything works, check out the video below. You can also check out the Major League Mods website for more of Mark’s mods.
I’ve lost track of how many Dragon Ball games have flooded market in recent years. The license has been spread pretty thin with most of the titles retelling Akria Toriyama’s original plot from start to finish while taking a few liberties along the way. In addition, most of these games have featured similar cel-shaded visuals and gameplay, leading many people to believe that once you’ve played one, you’ve played them all. Of course, I’ve had plenty of people tell me that’s simply not the case. They’ve made improvements with pratically every itteration of the series and while we many have chosen to ignore them in the past, this latest entry might cause you to take notice.
Posted by Tim Sheehy on May 10, 2011 in Cinema, Horror
The New York Timesrecently released this photo of the upcoming film Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter — a film I still can’t believe is actually in production. I have yet to actually sit down and read the novel its based on. The concept for the film just seems so far fetched, not that it isn’t the least bit awesome. Imagining Abraham Lincoln waging war on the South while taking the occasional sabbatical to axe a few vampires sounds pretty cool, and the trailer for the novel did a great job of selling it. I just hope the film lives up to the hype.
Directed by Takeshi Miike the film 13 Assassins is playing at quite a few art houses — if you’re into samurai films this looks pretty amazing. Here’s the trailer: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on May 9, 2011 in Comic Books
I’ve been following a new web comic by Carolita Johnson named Oscarina. The one panel cartoons feature the precocious young lady who’s on a mission to showcase the hypocrisy of adults with cunning comments on everything from allergies to religion. Over the past few years Carolita Johnson has done some amazing work for New Yorker magazine, but what I really love about this strip is that she’s focusing on a single character who has a very strong voice.
Recently I was at Anime Boston, and met an interesting cosplayer with a rich in potassium banana. I also definitely attended panels hosted by this person of interest. Meet Charles Dunbar aka Anime Antropologiest of Study of Anime. From the time I have met him to now, his panels at conventions will pack rooms. This is a scholar that has made my appreciation toward anime more interesting and academic in a sense that is away from the college environment. I hope to see more of this man speak, so I happened to be able to conduct an email interview with him. Read more…
This wonderful Star Trek fan film was made in 1971 as part of a final exam for a TV production class at Ohio State University by Ray who was a 21 year old fanboy back in the day. The film was first done on a 1″ open-reel videotape and earned an A-.
The latest incarnation (literally) of Doctor Who has been its most successful yet, with Matt Smith proving a popular Doctor and his lovely companion Amy Pond acting as his impulsive foil. It looks like their duo (now trio, with husband Rory) may be coming to an end, though — actress Karen Gillan, who plays Amy, has signed on for a role in BBC’s drama We’ll Take Manhattan, and its filming schedule conflicts with Who‘s. Arthur Darville, the man behind Rory, also signed on to play Mephistopheles in Dr. Faustus, which runs throughout the summer and fall. Where does that leave the Doctor and his companion? Well, it’s not the first time he’s picked up a new companion in his travels. But somehow I feel a little more attached to Amy than others we’ve met. Read more…
Three of late the 80s’ pop culture mainstays (Back to the Future, Beetlejuice, and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) are being reimagined at Galleries One Nine Eight Eight in Los Angeles in the “3 B” show. Yes, that’s right: a real art show with artists’ renditions of 80s movies. Pieces like the above Beetlejuice-themed painting can be viewed right now at the gallery, and they’re even purchasable for what the gallery owners say are “insanely low prices.” Maybe not as insane as Beetlejuice, but still, that counts for something. Read more…
Leave it to Japan to create an entirely new level of cosplay. Tokyo-based Neurowear has created a set of cat ears that, when worn, allegedly react to your brain waves and act accordingly — if you’re concentrating very hard, the ears will perk up, and will droop back down when you’re mentally at rest. Are they very useful, all things considered? Well, probably not. At they very least they’d add a new level of realism to your catgirl cosplay, though. What do you mean you don’t cosplay as a catgirl? And a more important question: what happens if you put these on a cat? Read more…
Brooklyn artist Donato Giancola has made his living on illustrating scifi book covers, but the US Postal Service grabbed him for a slightly more grounded task — that is, if you can call what astronauts do “grounded.” He’s the artist for two of the USPS’s new commemorative astronaut stamps, including the one above, featuring Alan Shepard. So what was it like illustrating real space travel, as opposed to works of fiction? It’s all in the details, he says. “When you’re creating art that’s going to be a historical record like these stamps, there’s no room for mistakes.” That kind of work pays off for Giancola, whose work is now in circulation to the tune of millions of stamps nationwide. Read more…
Perhaps it’s a day late to post fun Star Wars stuff, but: did you know Christopher Walken was almost Han Solo? It’s weird to think of it now, of course. So who knows what could’ve happened if Star Wars was made a little … earlier? These mashup pics of classic cinema stars as Star Wars characters delves into it a bit, with appearances from Marilyn Monroe and Peter O’Toole, as well as … William Shatner? You’ll have to see that one yourself. Now we can just try to imagine a strange universe where there Star Wars movies made in the 90s. Maybe ones that took place before the original films. Boggles the mind, doesn’t it? Read more…
We Found a Hot Springs is the name of a very cool Japanese blog which features an amazing ongoing series of moe looking characters which are based on the flag and flower of each nation in the world. The site reminds me of an anime take on the Disney concept of “It’s a Small World After All!” The artist on the site is going under the pen name Senami_ and can also be found on Pixiv here. Here’s a gallery of some of these charming caricatures: Read more…
Film director Takashi Yamazaki who brought Space Battleship Yamato to life in the world of live action back in 2010 is working on a kids film which will be called Friends: Naki on Monster Island. Like the Yamato film this picture will have a bit of SMAP by making use of the voice over talents of Shingo Katori and Kouichi Yamadera. Here’s a trailer: Read more…
