2 weeks ago
Archie: Gettin' Hip to the Times
A gay character is being introduced.
I'm personally waiting for Jughead to join a Tea Party protest...
Something Wonderful
YouTube begets internet sensations routinely, but how often are they over-the-hill Italian-Americans from Texas?
Via Japan Probe
Chris Rock + Kurosawa = ???
During his movie junket for Death at a Funeral, he let slip his next project was writing a remake of Akira Kurosawa's High and Low for director Mike Nichols. Is this a joke? I'll let you follow the trail:
Black Voices
Film
Japanator
I like Rock's comedy and the work he's done, but this definitely has a "WTF" factor to it. I'm hoping for the best if it's true.
UY DVD for $.99
AnimEigo is hustling the first volume of Urusei Yatsura TV DVD for 99 cents! Okay, there's probably some shipping with that, too. Still, it's a great deal and you'd be mad to let it slip away. I mean, this is classic Urusei Yatsura, 4 episodes, quality stuff!
Only in Japan . . . ?
By now you'd think the mutant genes had jumped to other Pacific Rim nations -- including California and Cascadia ; )
Pixels ++
PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
If you want one with a backing track, check this one out. And then someone in the comments section pointed this one out.
via Cartoon Brew
I like turtles.....
Looks like we're getting uncut, subbed Gamera on 5/18/10. Will wonders never cease. I never thought I would see this day. Thanks to Shout! Factory, it looks like we'll be getting all of the Gamera flicks. This is a great time, my friends.
http://wtf-film.com/site/2010/04/05/gamera-the-giant-monster-dvd-shout-factory-2010/
http://www.dvddrive-in.com/reviews/e-h/gameragiantmonster65.htm
You Can Be An ANIME STAR!
http://animeme.klik.tv/
You know that GREAT IDEA FOR AN ANIME you had. The one that would be better then Dragon Ball Z and Gundam? That really awesome anime you and your buds came up with that night you were watching Cowboy Bebop and Lupin the 3rd on Cartoon Network and decided you could come up with something WAY better? Because it had ninjas in it. Ninjas that fought in GIANT ROBOTS! Then this contest is for you.
And the fun part? They're posting the story submissions online.
via Anime Vice
Pregnant? Here's The Beer For You
Tohoscope brought us beer for kids, but now we have beer for pregnant women. Don't worry about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome when you drink Kirin Free. The product isn't a big deal. It's just a non-alcoholic beer (i.e. near beer for the beer geeks here) and seems to be a hit in Japan. What's different is that one of the commercials is aimed at pregnant women and new moms. Why should they be left out when everyone is cracking open a cold one? Check the commercials out at Kirin's homepage.
I really don't have a problem with this, but I just find the commercial "odd" seeing all the moms at the playground with their kids knockin' 'em back.
I love Japan.
via Tokyo Mango
Of "Rape" Games and Japan-bashing
"Lah claims that many of today’s younger Japanese cannot express their feelings in reality and can only do so in the virtual world. According to her, this “trend” is showing no sign of slowing down."
Consider the hornets' nest opened...
Via Japan Probe
EDIT: Original story here
'Voltron' Movie Back to Square One
Word from ICv2 is that the Voltron movie is tossing the scripts out and the director has left the building. Back to square one. From ANN, a previous lawsuit found that former Toei character designer Kazuo Nakamura "may posess rights" to GoLion. There's already been a couple of lawsuits, can you see more on the horizon? I'm not eagerly waiting for this movie now, I want it to die. If made with these players, it will be bad. Not good bad either. Let it rest in pieces for a few years and see if anyone else will be able to put it together. But if you really need a dose of "new" Voltron, don't worry. The new animated series that ". . . will feature an expanded interracial team that will do battle with the classic villains returning from the original Voltron series" is still scheduled for Nicktoons. Feh.
All I can say is thank you Media Blasters for GoLion and Dairugger.
via ANN and ICv2.
(Bomb #20 on a Voltron downer today.)
Bad JPNZ Movie Trailers
Great summer flicks from Japan. NSFW (Violence, nudity, lots of Karo syrup, and good, wholesome cheesiness).
Alien vs. Ninja
Mutant Girls Squad
Both these films are from Sushi Typhoon, a subsidary of Nikkatsu, which will specialize in "extreme gore" films with an eye on international theatrical and dvd releases.
Alien vs. Ninja
Mutant Girls Squad
Both these films are from Sushi Typhoon, a subsidary of Nikkatsu, which will specialize in "extreme gore" films with an eye on international theatrical and dvd releases.
William Tell in a Skirt?
bando headshot
Uploaded by kayamaha. - See video of the biggest web video personalities.
Via Japan Probe
SHE
Did Japan try to develop an "ultimate weapon" in response to the August, 1998 overflight of a North Korean Taepo-Dong ballistic missile? According to a CIA document leaked to the press today, the answer is yes. The document, entitled "Theopotential Technology Development In Japan: An Intelligence Retrospective", details the clandestine effort of the Japanese military to develop a weapon of "godlike" power in response to the DPRK missile launch. The secret weapons program, named Saishu Heiki ("Ultimate Weapon Development Project", or UWDP), was initiated in May of 2000 by "elements at the highest levels of Japan's military, industrial, and intelligence hierarchies". Its apparent goal was developing a weapon of theopotential ("godlike") power -- a weapon so potent that its deployment would render pointless any and all weapons development by any other nation or combination of nations for all time.
According to the heavily-redacted CIA report, the UWDP delivered its initial program for development of the theopotential weapon to unidentified authorities in Tokyo on 25 December 2001. The program identified a theoretical approach to the weapon's design and a contained a draft proposal for its development. Although the details of the weapon's basic principles have been deleted from the CIA report, the proposed weapon system was apparently based upon a "well-supported" phenomenon "common to all cultures", although it remains unclear what a cultural phenomenon could have to do with a weapon of mass destruction. The CIA report also refers to the weapon cryptically as an "ontological bomb", although the meaning of the term is left unexplained. (Ontology is a term coined by the Greek philosopher Aristotle to refer to the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence, and reality.) According to the CIA documents, the authorities approved the UWDP's proposal and initiated a crash development program known as PON CHISE, or Operation WINDHOUSE, to develop the weapon itself.
The truly alarming section of the document details the response of the United States and its NATO allies to their discovery of WINDHOUSE. Although the report again omits crucial details, such as the exact means by which the WINDHOUSE project was discovered to exist, it does outline in chilling detail a series of actions conducted at the highest levels of the Alliance as a result of that discovery. Citing the "almost-unimaginable risks" associated with the development of a theopotential weapon, the CIA documents tell of an emergency meeting in Mons, Belgium in January 2002 between U.S. military commanders, those of the NATO allies, and "representatives" of eleven other non-NATO states, along with eight unidentified non-state organizations. (One copy of the CIA report lists the Holy See as having been one of these.) In this and subsequent meetings, the Allies and their associates formulated diplomatic and military plans of action intended to forestall further Japanese activity on WINDHOUSE. In early February, these parties signed a secret "Treaty on the Research and Development of Ontological Technologies" known as the SUMUS Treaty; soon afterward, Treaty operations were transferred from Mons to an unidentified "Special Facility" deemed most likely to survive in the event of a "catastrophe" -- likewise unidentified.
In its final, heavily blacked-out paragraphs, the leaked document hints at the fantastic nature and apocalyptic power of the proposed theopotential weapon. The weapon's operating principle is said to be somehow "philosophical" in nature, involving the power to "rewrite the 'source code' of the universe" and "disrupt the ontological 'is-ness'" of its target. A possibly-human "implantee" is mentioned, one with an ability to manifest both conventional and nuclear weapons "out of thin air". The report's final words tell blackly of a "subsummation of ego" and "two young volunteers" but does not reveal what these phrases might mean in the context of the project
Officials at the CIA, the Pentagon, NATO, and the Japan Ministry of Defense have each denied any knowledge of an Ultimate Weapon Development Program, PON CHISE, WINDHOUSE, or any research into theopotential or ontological weapons. The documents, which were provided anonymously to an Associated Press reporter in Sapporo, Japan in late 2009, have not yet been authenticated by any government authority.
