JELEINEN

Confirming what you've deducted: http://www.yamatotoysusa.com/ It's there on the front page, Atelier Sai sculpts. But the price... Blergh. I'm glad I picked up Linna with original Japanese packaging in Japan... $74 hurts more than what I paid. 322786[/snapback] That's really odd. Usually the US release is cheaper. Wonder why this one's different.

Actually, the train collecting dead souls anime is called "Night on the Galactic Railroad." Galaxy Express is a completely different show.

Also, to be fair, it should be noted that they did include some of the UK skits/songs that hadn't been released in the US before to try and make up for not being able to include all the original material.

Only the one that just came out a week ago. (The box covered with green simulated frog fur) There are affidavits of different versions on Amazon's customer reviews if you don't believe me. Once I found out I also checked my dvds. Indeed the skits and songs were missing. Click on View all customer reviews 321658[/snapback] It's two different releases, not two versions of the same release. The Complete Season One sets are all edited. The previously released Best Of discs had some of the material that's not in the Complete set.

yeah, they probably spilled it at the Browncoats. 320692[/snapback] Actually, they gave that away in the online preview a few months before the comic started coming out.

Yep. I would have also accepted Mahou Tsukai Sunny, which was the original title of the manga before Sony forced the author to change it due to supposed trademark infringement.

Nope.

Times up. The song, "Twilight," came off ELO's Time, which was released in 1981. New question: Name the first magical girl.

Name the album that the opening theme song for Densha Otoko (Train Man) originally came from.

I bought my copy the other day. What a great show that was. It's funny watching the first season and seeing the third-rate guests they got to start with and how they progressively got bigger and bigger names as it went. The show holds up surprisingly well given that it's thirty years old.

Had to dig out my copy of that episode. Love that show. Anyway, here's the answer: Kobayashi Tofu Ten.

The origins of the story come from a thread on 2ch. Problem is the authenticity of the thread is questionable, and might have been faked. More info here and here aaaaaand here 317266[/snapback] I didn't catch the ture story angle, and honestly I don't give a rat's ass if it's true or not. It's a good story, and that's what matters.

Love the opening is a huge Dai Con IV pastiche. I just watched the first ep and I found myself cheering for the guy right along with his message board friends. Thanks for sharing!

Harmony Gold did no new animation, they just edited the existing animation and dialogue. I believe many of the animators and such behind Macross also worked on Orguss. I think someone once posted Orguss screenshots of a scene where crates were being unloaded in a warehouse, the crates themselves labled VF-1J or something like that. The Orguss Valkyrie itself is a cross between a Valkyrie and an Orguss, hence the name. Just an animation joke, nothing more. There's plenty more in the series and movies, such as the already mentioned beer and sake missles, Macrossonalds, Hikaru's VF-1D crashing into Tatsunoko, Artland, and Studio Nu, with the Studio Nu mascot's expression changing as it's hit by the Valkyrie. 312447[/snapback] Of course the Orguss people recipricated with a brief picture of Misa naked in ep. 1 or 2.

I think this is correct. I recall reading that to get a decent payload into space from Earth's gravity, would require a ridiculously long track (we're talking thousands of miles long). I have heard that putting one on the moon would be very practical and a likely development if we ever decided to put a permanent settlement there.

As I said, it had elements of homage, but that was not the entirety of the show. Aim for the Top! is not a love story, and that's a huge difference. Oh, and here's a clue: when discussing your emotional response to a something, don't do it in second person. Telling me that it affect me is bullshit.

Where? Unless I am blind, I do not see PAL anywhere on either of those two pages. Region 2 yes, but not PAL. 316376[/snapback] If it's a UK release, then it's PAL by default. There are DVD players out there that convert PAL to NTSC (and they're quite cheap too), so you're not completely sunk.

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote a book called Footfall where space elephants attack the Earth ( Yeah I know, nutty plot) Anyway the humans on Earth launch and attack cruiser thats build on like a giant iron plate of metal. And underneath it they detonate nukes in progressive stages to get the thing into orbit. Obviously they were in a dire situation and the environmental fallout was less of a worry due to the killer elephants, however I read somewhere that the theory in practice was sound. That you wouldn't have to worry about weight at all. You just keeping detonating nukes under that plate. Maybe one of the guys who read the book more recently than me, or one of the guys who is better at math/physics could tell me Niven and Pournelle were full of it, or if that was a viable though toxic way into space. It's viable, and not even that dirty. Not very efficient, though. The third law of motion doesn't care whare the force comes from, just that it exists. The US government was actually looking into atomic rockets before nukes became a bad thing. Change the nukes out for chemical explosives and confine them in a chamber to focus and direct the force of the explosion and you've got... a rocket engine. Fallout is really only an issue if you're blowing the bombs up on the ground, as the vast majority of it is irradiated dirt. The amount of material the bomb itself sheds is negligible. Moreso if you're using fusion instead of fission. An airburst with a fusion weapon can be considered clean. That's project Orion that I linked to earlier. Actually, it's a very efficient form of space drive (the numbers are listed in my link); it's just not something you'd want to use to lift off from a planet with. Build it in orbit and you've got one hell of a ship for exploring the solar system with. That site has stats for other types of drives as well. It's a lot of fun, really.

Actually, they're quite a bit different in that HnK is primarily a love story. It's obvious that the film paid homage to Aim for the Top! in a lot of places, but there's nothing wrong with that (especially considering how much Top! took from other sources itself).

Okay, so the Orion is a bit over the top (actually, it's a great idea for a spaceship as long as you don't try taking off from a planet), how about the Phoenix: www.spacefuture.com/archive/history_of_the_phoenix_vtol_ssto_and_recent_developments_in_single_stage_launch_systems.shtml Edit: sorry about the long URL. This board's software blows goats, so I couldn't post a direct link.

I say avoid the anime and look for the manga. They tacked on a really lame ending for the anime which pretty much kills it. The manga is still running.

I think it's time to unshelf project Orion: http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3c2.html#orion

That "For the Barrel" re-imagining of the original series that ran in Newtype for a while looked interesting. Basically, try to turn Gundam into hard SF. I'd like to see something like that animated.

News on the next season: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/t...dio/4714061.stm

I'll second the Allen vs. Van fight towards the end of Esca.