Month: April 2017

Giant Robot Battle Scheduled for August

In other news, Suidoboshi Heavy Industries and MegaBots, Inc., have finally scheduled their mecha battle for some time in August, as reported in The Nerdist.

In case you didn’t know, both of these companies, the former from Japan and the latter from the USA, built giant robots as hugely expensive toys, the KURATAS and Mark II, respectively. MegaBots challenged Suidoboshi to a giant robot fight quite some time ago. I saw the original MegaBots challenge and Suidoboshi’s somewhat muted acceptance thereof back in 2015, but hadn’t heard anything since.

In the beginning, the Mk. II looked likely to take the KURATAS apart, as it was created to be a hulking beast, whereas the KURATAS was more of a rich kid’s toy. Both companies, however, have apparently upgraded their machines. MegaBots has released video of their new but incomplete Mk. III picking up and tearing apart cars, whereas Suidoboshi has kept its upgrades to the KURATAS a secret.

Both these machines are designed to be piloted, but I hope, for the fight, they set it up so the pilots are not actually inside, since they’re hinting of weapons like chainsaws and drills.

Okay, I Won’t Do Any More of These After This

Okay, seriously, I should not have been drinking while watching this. I struggled hard not to do a real-life spit take.

It’s Back!

The Mary Sue Awakens: Now with Finger Puppets

[VIDEO SHOULD BE HERE]

I cannot believe it. I cannot freaking believe it.

There’s a popular YouTube channel called Bad Lip Reading, which dubs inexplicably hilarious gibberish over clips from movies and TV shows. In one of their most creative works to date, they produced a Bad Lip Reading of that Star Wars movie that came out sometime back, the one I think was called A Newer Hope: Starring Ensign Mary Sue. In addition to the dubbing, they had added blacked-gloved hands over some scenes of Kylo Ren so that he appears to be threatening Han Solo with finger puppets.

Also, Mark Hamill did the voice of Han Solo.

The video was up this morning, and I watched it. It sounds like something I might have made up, but it was real, as you can see here.

This evening, I meant to share it with you, but the video is now gone. This seems odd, since other videos, including previous Star Wars parodies, are still up on Bad Lip Reading’s channel.

According to the placeholder for where the video used to be, the copyright infringement claim came from something called Dramatists Play Service.

I’ve never heard of that, either, so I found their website. According to the mission statement, Dramatists Play Service “was created to foster national opportunities for playwrights by publishing affordable editions of their plays and handling the performance rights to these works.”

The hell?

Maybe they quoted a famous play in the video. If they did, I didn’t notice. I’d go look for it except, oh, the video’s gone. Somebody’s got a lawyer and no sense of fun.

At least there’s still this:

Oh, and by the way, we’ll have a special review in time for Easter.

Everything I Needed to Know I Learned from Magical Girls

I ran across this amusing meme while looking up stuff for some of my earlier posts over the weekend.

Back in the day, it used to be standard for Saturday morning cartoons to present some kind of heavy-handed life lesson, usually in a segment at the end where the characters would break the fourth wall and preach at the audience. On occasion, these segments could take on a life of their own, as anyone who has heard the phrase, “And knowing is half the battle,” can attest.

The DiC dub back the mid-90s added such a segment to the first two seasons of Sailor Moon, even after it had gone out of style, but the above image aptly explains why that was a bad idea. Sailor Moon is a wish-fulfillment fantasy, but Sailor Moon is not a role model. If you want the stuff Usagi has, acting like Usagi is the last thing you should do: for the most obvious example, you don’t get the Sailor Moon bod by following the Sailor Moon diet, but other examples could be multiplied.

The manga’s worse. There’s actually a chapter in there in which she’s on the phone, lying to her parents that she’s having a sleepover at Makoto’s apartment … when she’s actually sleeping with her boyfriend.

And this was a comic ostensibly aimed at twelve-year-old girls. I wouldn’t let my daughter read it. She might get ideas.

Art: Sailor Moon Valentine Cards

Images by guavi.

It’s a few months late, but maybe you can use these next year … if, you know, you’ve been sent back to fifth grade and need Valentine’s Day cards.

My Job Here Is Done

I noticed the traffic ticking up mysteriously last night and into today, so I said to myself, “You guys really like all that hard work I put in on the review of Sailor Moon S, eh?”

No, it actually turns out that there’s a Reddit called “AskWomen,” where someone posed the question, “What childhood crush did you have that you still cringe about today?” The answers are kind of hilarious, and include the following:

The link labeled “white tie” goes to my essay on Tuxedo Mask’s fashion faux pas. I see now that my labor in the name of men’s formalwear was not in vain.

It so happens I was thinking of writing a sequel on Haruka Tenou’s fashion faux pas. Maybe I’ll get on that.

Anime Review: ‘Sailor Moon S,’ Part 1

Better than it has any right to be.

Sailor Moon S: Part 1 (Season 3). Directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara et al. Written by Sukehiro Tomita et al. Story by Naoko Takeuchi. Starring Kotono Mitsuishi, Michie Tomizawa, and Aya Hisakawa. Toei Animation, 1994-1995. North American re-release by Viz Media and Warner Bros., 2016. 19 episodes of 25 minutes (approx. 475 minutes). Rated TV-14.

Long have I desired to discuss Sailor Moon S with you, mostly because I get to write the word “Uranus” over and over again. I highly recommend that you take every sentence in this essay containing the word “Uranus” and read it aloud, preferably in the presence of someone who doesn’t know the context. Continue reading “Anime Review: ‘Sailor Moon S,’ Part 1”