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.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 23, 2008 in Comic Books
Shown above is a detail from the first cover of Sky Doll #1 the first French comic being published by Marvel in May (although it should be pointed out that both the artist and author are Italian). As much as I love manga I think it’s great to see French comics get some real distribution here in the United States. Here’s a description of the book which is illustrated by Alessandro Barbucci and writing by Barbara Canepa:
“Meet Noa, a so-called Sky Doll; a life-like female android without rights, who exists only to serve the State’s needs and desires. But when Noa meets two so-called “missionaries” who aid in her escape from her tyrannical master, all hell breaks loose for our cyborg siren as she uncovers clues that she may be much more than just a robotic toy. The first release in a new partnership between Marvel and cutting-edge French publisher Soleil!”
I never quite liked the TV show itself, but for my money back in 1985 there was nothing quite as cool as the opening titles of ThunderCats, in fact we would video tape it and watch it frame-by-frame to catch everything that was going on! Well now you can relive the glory the this epic show and give your friends nicknames like Panthro and Cheetara with this rad ThunderCats t-shirt from ThinkGeek.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 22, 2008 in Comic Books
How often do you see pink used on a comic book cover in a non-cute way? I just love the concert poster look of the cover of Amazing Joy Buzzards Volume 1: Here Come The Spiders illustrated by Dan Hipp due out in stores in May from Image Comics. Here’s a description of the book which features a story by Mark Andrew Smith:
“The world’s greatest rock ‘n roll adventure band makes their original graphic novel debut With girl-magnet Biff on guitar and vocals, tough guy Stevo on bass, and four-eyed genius Gabe on drums – not to mention their mythical Mexican wrestler genie, El Campeon – the Amazing Joy Buzzards hop from one fast-paced adventure to the next, living life to the fullest! As their world tour commences, their battle with the nefarious Spider Syndicate gets into full swing with the fate of the world in the balance!”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 21, 2008 in Animation
In 1991 for some odd reason Brian Cirulnick and myself were able to talk John O’Donnell of Central Park Media into making the first Anime themed CD-ROM. The CD-ROM featured 1,000 targa images taken from various Anime TV shows and movies (everything from from Project A-ko to Urusei Yatsura) and 100 digital video clips which were produced using the then new technology QuickTime from Apple Computer. In fact the CD-ROM was the 2nd commercial title to feature QuickTime, the first I believe was a porno title. The other cool thing about the project was that it featured a multimedia presentation which contained a catalog showing a thumbnail sketch of each image. After it’s release the CD-ROM started to sell well and was even picked up by Educorp (one of the early CD-ROM catalogs). However sadly the title was spotted in Japan by one of the copyright holders who mistook it for a video game and thus ending the shelf life of the project.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 21, 2008 in Science
I wish I was an astronaut! Shown above is a great photo taken by an astronaut aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle Atlantis on February 18, 2008. Click on the image to see it as full size…
“It took just a couple of hours using data available on the internet for University of Sydney scientists to discover that the Milky Way is twice as wide as previously thought. Astrophysicist Professor Bryan Gaensler led a team that has found that our galaxy – a flattened spiral about 100,000 light years across – is 12,000 light years thick, not the 6,000 light years that had been previously thought.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 20, 2008 in Animation
Shown above are the opening titles for Zero-sen Hayato (０戦はやと) an anime series that ran for 41 episodes back in 1964 and was produced by Fuji TV. The series got started as a manga by Naoki Tsuji and deals with fighter pilots during World War II.
