This is kind of old and it isn’t entirely safe for work, but we were probably destined to post it here sooner or later.
I’m on a writing kick at the moment, working to move ahead on the sequel to Jake and the Dynamo. Don’t forget it’s on sale. And if you do read it, kindly leave an honest review.
Being Führer is suffering.
So I came across this little gem today. It goes on a little too long and falls a tad flat at the end, but on the whole, I think it’s kind of clever.
Wokey McWokerson
Now, to be up front about everything, I don’t know who this guy is. By his own admission, he doesn’t know a whole lot about anime. Nonetheless, I find his analysis of Crunchyroll’s trainwreck of a promotion for its new, original animated series to be largely insightful.
One of his lines here I absolutely love: “That’s what your whole career has been about? I thought you were an animator.”
Some of those opposing Crunchyroll’s project are, I think, wrong-headed. For example, I follow the account @animeoutsiders on Twitter; they claim to have insider knowledge (which they may or may not actually have) of Crunchyroll, and accuse the company of doing something ingenuous by creating its own animation studio and producing original animation, rather than throwing money at Japanese studios.
Good gravy, this looks awful.
Just watch this video. Watch it and pay close attention to what the creators of Crunchyroll’s upcoming original magical girl show, High Guardian Spice, have to say about it.
At first, it doesn’t look too bad, if we can overlook the mediocre artwork and ignore that the title logo looks as if it came off a bottle of nutmeg. The show’s creators start out by telling us that their new series is about some girls who live in a city and go to school to learn magic. Sounds pretty formulaic. But, obviously, other franchises have seen success with the same premise, so this is not in itself necessarily a problem, even if it’s not breathtakingly original.
But then notice what else they tell us about the show: it has a “modern reflection of the world”—even though the art suggests a historic or fantasy setting. And then they tell us the characters and cast are “diverse” and that half the people involved in the show’s creation are women. And, ironically, they tell us that the “writers’ room” is all women—because, you know, they’re “inclusive.”
In about 25 minutes (3:00 central, 4:00 eastern), I’ll be live with Ben Wheeler to discuss Jake and the Dynamo.
Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEuoMD_X4jw
And here’s the embed; not sure if this works for streams or not:
All praise to the Machine! All glory to my Lord Dread!
At the moment, I’m unable to play DVDs on my computer, but I ask you to forgive the picture quality and to watch this video. In fact, since this is from a TV show that originally broadcast in the 1980s, the quality you see here is probably close to what you would have got back when this originally aired:
This is from the episode “Freedom One,” from the short-lived 1987 television series Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. This is in some ways the most ambitious television show ever made, being the first live-action show to have CGI-rendered characters (you can see one on screen here), being replete with action sequences and special effects, and full of innovative set design combined with miniatures. The show cost a cool million per half-hour episode and during its brief run had more-or-less taken over every film-processing studio in Toronto. Most of it was filmed inside a gigantic, abandoned bus depot that the creators, led by Gary Goddard, had filled with sets, miniatures, computers, and other equipment. J. Michael Straczynski, who became the de facto lead writer, credits Captain Power with teaching him the techniques of making a complex sci-fi television show on a budget, techniques he later used on Babylon 5. Continue reading “‘Captain Power’ is the Greatest Sci-Fi Television Show of All Time”
Played by a real archaeologist!
Okay, we’re going to see if we can make this happen. I’m using Open Broadcaster Software to record this, and it seems to have some quirks (it apparently can’t see the loading screens), but it appears to be working so far, basically.
I have heard a lot second-hand about Diversity and Comics. I haven’t paid close attention to him simply because American superhero comics aren’t my bag. In this particular video, he gets into the mechanics of how to write a good story, and why political correctness hampers that.
I see now why this guy is popular (and why he is hated so much by some writers and illustrators at Marvel). He really understands how stories work, and his criticisms are calm, incisive, and fair.
