JsARCLIGHT

"French Films" are not intended for mass consumption in the US no matter how some people think they are. "Anime" on the other hand to the American mass market is looked at as "what can we dub and release on Saturday morning cartoons, market the crap out of, release a million toys for and make a mint". From Naruto to Pokemon to YuGiOh, anime is simply the flavor of the month that is cheap to "import" and sell. From a business standpoint a lot of the as yet untapped popular animes are goldmines in the waiting. They already have toys designed and made, they pretty much market themselves and for a slim investment of broadcast rights and some quick dubbing and editing a venture capitalist can draw some serious cash in the market. A question that I have is when an American TV show or movie is released overseas is it dubbed into the native language? Many times it is. Is that "wrong"? Are foreign fanboys clamoring to see The X Files, The Simpsons or the latest Disney cartoon in English with Russian or German subtitles? I think there is a great degree of strange haughtiness and self-righteousness in the American anime fan when it comes to subbing and dubbing that is not necessarily there in our foreign counterparts. Then again almost all of our foreign counterparts speak or at least understand rudimentary English so they don't have the same shortcomings the vast majority of westerners have being monolingual. Edit: And my comment about anime not performing well on US television is in reference to the shows are that NOT watered down and homoginized. Anime on Adult Swim is a ratings graveyard for them and many people still wonder why they still show it as their domestic comedy shows outperform it three to one generally. The American market has shown that hard core "real" anime shows perform poorly here while "Americanized" dubbed "kid friendly" junk that can be mass marketed like Naruto can hold their own in the toy isle and in the 8 to 12 demographics. Edit o' the Edit: Also outside of us nutjob fanboys subtitles are actually stigmatized in the regular circles. Most Americans will groan and roll their eyes at subtitles but if the program is dubbed they will stand a greater chance of watching it and warming to it. It's always a tough call to mass release a foreign film that is subtitled in US theaters. Subtitles are almost always relegated to the "art house set" and it's kind of an unspoken "rule" in hollywood that Joe and Jill Six Pack (the people who generally pay to see movies or buy videos) won't abide subtitles. A good example of this is my own experience long ago trying to indoctrinate friends into anime. I found it was far, far easier to get a friend who had no prior interest in watching "them foreign cartoons" to sit down and watch when the program was dubbed. Akira was always my "first strike" in college. I'd show someone the dubbed Akira and see how they took to it. If they did I'd slowly bring them into other shows, eventually going to subs. But there were some people who'd watch dubbed Akira then see the subbed version and tell me they would not have "given it a chance" if I had shown them the subbed version first. The circular return of my point is that dubbing caters to the new, the uninitiated and the masses while subs cater to the hardcore regular. If you want to sell your "funny foreign cartoon" to the masses, you need to dub it. If you want to sell "Super Noodle Crazy Indie Robot Children Go" to the thirty something single fat guy with a ponytail you sub it and sell it on dvd for $35 and pray you cover your costs. It's all business in the end, none of this crap qualifies as "art" anymore IMHO. If you think the current state of most anime is art then that means Alvin and the Chipmunks and the Smurfs qualify as well.

I dunno which I love better, Sub versus Dub debates or "could the Enterprise beat a Star Destroyer" debates. In all seriousness though Dubs, while vilified by the die hards, serve a very important purpose. Dubs help to bring the niche into mainstream and make anime more "accessible" to the non-fan and the casual audience. It's one thing for a fat balding thirty something wearing a chocolate and dorito stained Han Shot First T-shirt to laud the glory of the almighty sub, but if anime is ever to break out of the sidelines and be "taken seriously" by the mass media in the US it will only do so dubbed. But then that raises the question of whether or not fanboys even want their hobby brought into the mainstream or if anime can even survive in the mainstream. The last five years or so that anime has been making pushes into mainstream American television it has made equal retreats. Anime, dubbed or otherwise, simply does not put up the "numbers" here in the states... but it could be argued that the anime the US market has been exposed to has not exactly been legendary.

This is the second season ender in which Brock has lost his hockey hair.

Anyone going to get Stalker:Clear Sky when it comes out next week? I'm debating it. The first one was buggy as a bait shop but the concept was interesting. If they found a way to cut down on the bugs but keep the concept it would make for a pretty cool game.

It's definitely 24 that bit it. The final Tshirt of the Astrobase offer is dedicated to Number 24... so it seems to me that he is officially dead. I think that the death of 24 is supposed to be a "who shot JR" moment for this season. After the big deal they made about the bomb and the forethought to show Dr. Mrs. The Monarch leaving the detonator on her throne when she ran out to tend to the Monarch. Whodunnit? My money is on the moppets... but as others have mentioned there are a lot of random villains roaming about. Baron Underbeiht being absent from this season I have a feeling has more to do with Jackson and Doc both professing a dislike for the character and their admissions that they found him difficult to write for since his one big "joke" (his detachable jaw) was wasted already. I myself was disappointed that Phantom Limb did not figure back into the storyline... perhaps they are saving him for season four. As for Brock and Molotov, I'm not so sure she "betrayed" him as much as she used him to further her own aims... and Hunter Gathers just wanted some great tits, he probably joined up with Molotov so he could kill again... but this time wearing skimpy outfits.

Now THAT is what I call a season ender! I can't wait to buy this season on DVD... since they made it in HD I hope they release it on Blu Ray. Season four, here we come!

I think Dr. Mrs. The Monarch has had issues with Brock ever since he "passed" on "having his way with her" way back in season one.

I just thought that Herr was just a gestalt of all the various black leather clad matrix generation killers you see these days. I about threw up laughing when Brock accidentally shoots up the family in the wagon. Sorry! Sorry!

I don't own the toy but Yellow Belmont's armor was of a slightly "earlier" design according to the show's lore and his helmet is indeed different than the other heroes. His helmet's glass face shield comes down over the chin bar so when seen closed it appears to have no "chin"... or at least that is how it appears in the anime.

I'm inclined to believe Jonas studied it and actually knew what it was but ran afoul of the age old Guild "Orders Regarding Bodyguard". After all, he had time to hide or re-hide it before he was killed. When you think about it, it makes no sense that he would be killed only to have everyone put everything back where it was so someone else could find it. All the clues in the cartoon were probably placed there by Jonas... which leads one to believe he found it when Rusty was a kid then took his sweet time studying it before finally deciding to turn it on. After all, Jonas didn't die until Rusty was in college.

I have a feeling nearly everyone here will recommend the original Japanese shows (SDF: Macross, SDC: Southern Cross and GC Mospeada) over their Robotech equivalents. Watching the Robotech versions is like watching translated, edited and in some cases rewritten versions of the original shows. It depends on what your tastes are but I personally prefer the originals.

I'm not so sure it's an issue of "what does this button do" as much as it is the urge to turn the ORB on. It seems that the point of no return is that decision. Rusty avoids it by saying he is going to study the Orb... studying it does not imply switching it on. Knowing what we do of Jonas Venture I would say his intent was to switch it on. As for the finale/cliffhanger of this season I've seen a lot of stills from the last two episodes online and in various other places. We have a LOT that is going to happen. Old characters may return en masse, new characters are going to appear and some unexplained choices are apparently going to be made. I'd say more but then I'd have to execute my Orders Relating to Bodyguard.

OK, everybody just calm down and please return to a discussion more fitting of this topic.

OK, the biggest possible expose of this episode... is it true?

Next week's episode is a two-parter to end the season. "The Family That Slays Together, Stays Together" parts 1 and 2. They've let a lot of loose ends dangling to wrap up in these last two episodes and it will be fun to see where they go with it this time.

I had a lot of issues with the controls when I first started playing but after going through the game I found the controls to become more and more intuitive as time went on. At first the controls were unbelievably frustrating... I couldn't hit crap with a gun, I couldn't drive a car without fishtailing everywhere and I couldn't survive simple straightforward missions without getting hung up on walls. Now when I play I can drive like a stuntman, beat missions with ease and plink headshots every time. I think the game just has this rather grumpy learning curve that you either eventually gel with or fight the whole time.

I wonder if they will clear up the blurry\grainy depth of field effect for the PC release. That was my one and main complaint against the console versions... that darn depth effect nastied up the graphics just enough to make you think it looked like ass when you first played it, but you eventually got used to it. I wonder if any of the supposedly exclusive PS3\Xbox downloadable content (which has yet to materialize even though Rockstar was saying August for the Xbox stuff in their TV commercials but I hear it's been bumped to the holidays) will port over to the PC release?

I just need one more hit of that sweet, sweet dart! It's like bein' sucked off by an angel! I have not laughed this hard all season. I have my new favorite episode. "The Lepidopterists"...

Can you say Raiden? I think the point of building your own Shepard with all the background and stuff is key and they would not abandon it so readily. To me the allure of the Bioware games is that you shape your guy to be what you want them to be and not some set in stone predestined archetype... even though you kind of are doing that anyway.

I have a fairly old 360 (pre HDMI model) and I encounter the texture pop in quite a bit. It's not as bad as what I've heard it can be and most of the time mine is the pop between a low res texture and the high res texture. It's most noticeable for me during the "talky" bits, when you press the action button to have a talk with someone or something the transition has a lot of texture pop in but once it does it "once" it's done and it doesn't do it again for a little while. I have never noticed any texture pop in during the actual gameplay action sequences, only during cutscenes and talky bits. And just a hypothetical... how do you think they will handle the whole "bring your ME1 guy into ME2" thing? I mean, won't it kind of "spoil" ME2 if you bring in a level 60 tank character from ME1 with level ten or eleven spectre gear and just mop the floor with the game? I mean, I'm on my second play through on insane and the game is just far too easy now with a super high level character with super high level weapons and armor. I win most fights quickly and easily now it seems... at level 50 I waltzed through Eden Prime like it wasn't even there. I'd hate to buy into ME2 only to wade through the game with a level 60 barnstormer. They are going to have to have some sort of built in "reset" button in the sequel that shoves you back to square one somehow.

I've always thought that a lot of Jonas' seeming apathy towards his son's peril was based more in his confidence that nothing would actually happen to him more than his lack of concern. The Jonas Venture / Rusty relationship is more or less the time honored stereotypical "Jock dad with a dork son" motif. Jonas thinks his son is "loving every minute of it" like he is but Rusty is really being traumatized repeatedly. I have friends who attest to this kind of treatment at the hands of their fathers... stories of games of catch that resulted in broken noses, tales of "pet the nice dog junior" resulting in nasty bites. Hearing those almost makes me glad my father was crippled... in a sense my childhood was reversed, I was the one constantly pushing my dad to do things he didn't want to do or wasn't comfortable doing.

To a degree it's a strange catch 22... for future generations to truly gain a foothold in the stars humanity has to grow out of our infancy, our single minded divisiveness and petty squabbles. Something tells me if we can ever get to that point we may not be in a position to see "space wars" unless space becomes a "conquest" like the new world was in the 1400's, with privateers and private enterprise creating the colonization and exploration. And if you ask me that opens us up for another era of exploitation and conflict. For all we know the space fighters of the future may have the words "Microsoft Space Division" and "Sony Corporate Empire" emblazoned on them as they exchange rocket fire vying to capture a lucrative deposit of steel alloy.

I can see that angle. In the "chess match" of physical combat the vastness of space pretty much reduces you to meeting engagements for the lion's share of your tactical encounters. But I was operating from the stance that no space fairing race can totally remove themselves from a terrestrial base. An all out positional strike by two sides which wipe out their stable of planets I would imagine would create massive upheavals in the solar systems their ships inhabit plus would reduce or possibly eliminate several key resources. I guess I'm one of those people who believe it's impossible to create a fully autonomous existence off world. I would think even with "super science" that the base needs of having a stable of worlds occupied and inhabited is required. I can easily imagine colonization fleets going from world to world like Macross 7 but I can't imagine them existing on their own indefinitely without planet fall to resupply themselves. I should probably also state that my "imagination" is heavily limited by my own understanding of scientific law. By that I mean I cannot "believe" transporters, "warp drives" and other things that I consider to be "impossible". As such the "space wars" I'm imagining will probably be fought between humans of differing factions based off of planets. I actually imagine the first "space war" will most likely be between Earth and her first planetary colony much like how America rebelled against Britain. It will probably be a very costly and awkward affair in which a lot of people die and a lot of resources are wasted over a long period of time ending with whoever had the most money, manpower and resources winning... and "winning" probably means hostile invasion of the opponent planet which would be a massively costly affair to begin with. In all this theorizing I can imagine many things but the underlying cost is always at the front of my mind. You can build awesome weapons and ships but it all still boils down to a slug-fest of attrition.

Another possible clue to Dr. Tara Quymn being Jonas Venture's daughter is that when Col. Gentleman decks Rusty at the museum party he yells "And that's for breaking my step-daughter's heart!" Tara Quymn isn't Col. Gentleman's biological daughter... so who's daughter is she?

Oh I have no doubt either that in the far-flung world of the future there will be unbelievably powerful weapons capable of destroying planets... but the choice to use them would be disastrous. Just as they said with atomic weapons, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. Once the bomb is dropped and people see what it does they stand in awe of it's capabilities and realize that further use could and would bring about the end of the world. I would imagine the same goes for "planet buster" bombs. Blow one planet off the map and it gives pause to everyone... because it "puts that option on the table". And if militarism and tactics have one key concept it's MAD, mutually assured destruction. Blow one planet out of a system and your adversary will do the same, creating an unending chain of planet destruction. Having "the bomb" and using "the bomb" are two different things. Nine times out of ten the sole purpose of a "superweapon" is as a device to dissuade attack rather that one to actually be used. Fear of it's use is the main and usually most potent effect of such a system, which was the key principal behind the Death Star. The Empire didn't actually intend to tool around blowing planets out of alignment with it, they intended the fear of the thing to carry their fight for them. But to get back to the topic at hand in the end all it took was a bunch of fighters to take out the Death Star... proof positive that a military doctrine of fighter/bombers will always survive no matter what the stage.