F-ZeroOne

sleddogg83 - thanks for the corrected link, I thought there was something odd about it when I entered it...

Ok, now that F-Zero one has everyone panicing, let me point out, I'm living here. If you want to come to visit then it's a damn site cheaper! I worked out that you can come here for 10 days on a budget of 1000 pounds sterling (including flights, accommodation and food but not anime spending.) This is if your flying out of England through my mate's travel agent and staying at the recommended ryokan.

The president of this company (and an aquaintance) owns a travel agency. Being a piking job master, I've suggested I help with the travel agency since I've been all over Japan and I've got contacts all over the shop in the travel industry. He sounded quite interested and told me to get a presentation together that I can pitch to the staff and the head of the travel agency. I can hear F-Zero One laughing like a maniac right now as he knows how bad I am at presentations, but if I can get this then I'm going to set up anime tours for anime fans. Will have to make specialised "Mecha fan" and "Fanboi" tours.

Edit: white drew carey: you don't know the half of it. Mappy has an extraordinary ability to get to know nice girls like this...

F-Zero One: You know it took me several (very shameless) years to acquire that skill! It's the only one I have which is of any vague use and I'm bloody well going to use it!

If you can speak basic Japanese you can get out of the big cities, away from the high prices and go to some village in the mountains and chill out with the locals. I'm planning to do that for a weekend in a couple of months. When I have the money and the time off...

My apologies if I panicked anyone - Japans reputation for being expensive is probably a result of thes 80s boom years. I was trying to imply that its not exactly "cheap" as people usually define the word, but it doesn't have to be very expensive either - especially if you cultivate contacts over there, as Mappy has done, and who very generously allowed me to take advantage of the hospitality they gave him.

Mappy - sorry to disappoint you, but there already are specialised tours. Of course, if you need some advice on how to get into the back offices of the Studio Ghibli Museum, I'm your man (you'll need a limited edition Kiki portrait and a dodgy credit card, though...!).

Still, a specialist mecha fan tour... hmm... ("...and this is Tokyo Tower, destroyed in Mecha Death Gun Machines I, II, II + and Zeta... ")

As for presentations, all I can say is...

"CHEERI-O!" (sorry, everyone - very private joke shared between me, Mappy, a nice American exchange student and a class of Japanese schoolgirls... )

Knowing some Japanese can be a great help - its not strictly speaking necessary, I've done Japan twice without being able to speak a word - but having certain people around who can is a big help, even if they insist on involving you in the great Hello! Kitty conspiracy...

Those are pretty sweet. Also, I checked out the translated version of the trailer. Two things pleased me greatly. One, Hideaki Anno is listed in Planning/Supervising. While he doesn't do the edgy stuff he used to(he much happier now I hear), this is a relief to me. Secondly, Kohei Tanaka returns for the score. Here's hoping.

Well, theres some hope. I still have some optimism, but the initial character designs are a bit foreboding. The redesigned Buster machine could work; once I got over the shock I felt it had at least some potential...

No anime images, but all the toys you could want here:

http://www.toyboxdx.com/data/takatoku2/ima...nav_credits.gif

400 Quid? as in pounds sterling?

Man that's alot

So much for my ventures towards the land of unlimited anime the Rising Sun

Although Japans reputation for being expensive is slightly exagerrated (you don't have to sprinkle gold on your coffee, after all... ), I think it is safe to say that if you're worried about economy measures, you should perhaps be thinking of going somewhere else...

hey mappy!

rikiryou: She has a lovely personality as well, ask F Zero One. The food there is ok but you don't get much as it's a cafe and not a restaurant.

FZeroOne: I did tell you but only after you got back. When you say "Getting along with" does that include gratuous amounts of slobbering? As there was plenty of that. And she didn't tell me she was in a bikini as I have another male friend to testify, she only sent me a message on my phone asking me to go there as she had a bag of Hello Kitty stuff waiting for me

I've only met her once, but yes, she does seem to be a very nice girl. Your opinion may or may not be affected by what she wears to work...

Mecha pilots don't slobber, we suffer weeks of angst and indeciveness before being shot down, getting captured, being interrogated, having to explain about this whole "where-human-babies-come-from" thing, and then blasting our way out in the enemys hot prototype with their equally hot ace-pilot-turned-defector.

The slobbering is reserved for those unfortunates in the Roy Fokker Memorial Mecha Pilots Hospital...

Ah, Hello Kitty... I should have known...

Edit: white drew carey: you don't know the half of it. Mappy has an extraordinary ability to get to know nice girls like this...

I watched the first season of Spaced a couple weeks ago, so now I really want to see Shaun of the Dead.

There is a three disc Collectors Edition of Spaced due out in the UK shortly:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B...2480229-2079647

Season Two is more of the same, only even better!

Keeping up my habit of my favourite bits of various things I watch being the things that aren't actually in them (er... its like this... for example, my favourite episode of Kimagure Orange Road is the "Giant Monster Jingoro Attacks" one, which is a summer special parody, not really part of the "proper" series), the scene I liked the best from Shaun of the Dead is the "The Man Who Would Be Shaun" segment. Nick Frost does an uncanny Sean Connery...

Oh, and cricket bats. Its about time someone made a film featuring this most lethal of all melee weapons...!

I want a Cornetto.

Oh my God, they let him into the country. There goes Tokyo...

You didn't tell me about this place before, did you?

And, as I've argued before, mecha fans get on very well with members of the opposite gender - its just we have a bit of trouble trying to stop them gunning us down with their ace mecha piloting skills to start with!

Edit: "Didn't know she was working in a bikini?" I bet...!

"Macross" inspires "Star Wars" ... video games that is.

Anyone catch the Minmay Poster/Scroll hanging in the office of the SW: Episode III video animator's office? You can see the scene during the "Making of Episode III" video game featurette on the bonus disc of the new SW Trilogy DVD.

On page 11 of this thread: ahem

"Just been watching the "Making the Episode III Game" feature on the Bonus Disc. Would the LucasArts employee who has the Linn Minmei poster on their office wall like to stand up and be counted on Macross World, please?"

Heres a couple to get you started:

http://gojistomp.org/indexm.html

http://www.clubtokyo.org/

Don't know about the 1954 DVD version, I'm afraid - have you tried the usual retailers like Amazon or CDJapan? Very good movie, though, much more so when you consider the impression most people have of Godzilla from the films that followed it (though its exactly those films that got me into Godzilla in the first place - Terror of MechaGodzilla still being a favourite of mine... )

"Skull leader, this is Skull Two - have encountered new kind of Zentraedi warrior - wha -?! Hes got me! Hes got me!! No! NOOOOOOO!!"

"Skull Two? Skull Two?! Respond!"

Just been watching the "Making the Episode III Game" feature on the Bonus Disc. Would the LucasArts employee who has the Linn Minmei poster on their office wall like to stand up and be counted on Macross World, please?

nemesis120, mechatek, you jointly win the no-prize! Which is not accepted at millions of outlets anywhere in the Universe!

Regards the intake stickers - I know; personal choice, I felt they looked better that way up on the 1/55 at least. My Yamatos have them the right way round.

A quick image of my "classic" Valkyrie toys, plus a bonus inclusion of the Takatoku 1/40 Orguss Orgoid and two lovely anime gals!. First person to point out the difference between the two 1/55 Valkyrie toys - asides from the fact ones Max and the other Mirias - wins a no-prize!

Don't forget your towels!

Isn't the MiG-31 just an upgraded MiG-25?

No. The exteriors are very similar, but that's about it.

The internals are quite different.

Theres a definite family "look" to the MiG-25 and -31, but once you see some detailed pictures its fairly easy to spot the differences. The -31 is a much more advanced aircraft, with a monster radar and two seats (the back-seater in the -31 muct have one of the worst seating positions in any modern fighter!).

The MiG-25 was, more or less, a flying fuel tank with a powerful (for the time) radar up front, and two massive engines behind. It was a pure interceptor (and sometimes recon aircraft; the Israelis managed to shoot one down only with extreme difficultly), whereas the -31, while also an interceptor, is designed to deal with low-level targets as well as high and fast ones.

You know.. now that I think about it, genetic degradation might explain why the stormtroopers tended to be complete idiots, or at least horrible at killing anything.  Heavily recycled genes....

What gets me is that if the Empire's stormtroopers (which should be the elite, special forcess types) are that bad, I shudder to think what their regular troops are like.

The Empire only sent Stormtroopers to capture the droids because regular Imperial Troops couldn't even hit the desert...

I got 16/18 when I tried it the other day. I'm rather bad at old-school games, but I grew up when there were a lot of those machines about! Can't remember exactly what I failed on, though...

I think someone once described Where Eagles Dare as the ideal war adventure movie because the good guys get to wear the best uniforms...!

Also, while cool, there is no way the P-40 could survive through the maneuvers it was put through,

I thought Pearl Harbour had established that if you want to take on an entire enemy air amarda, then the P-40 is the only thing that you can do it in...

Okay, okay, - the P-40 is one of the most under-rated aircraft of all time; they were useful enough that, like the Hawker Hurricane, they made them in the thousands long after they were technically behind the leading edge. Pearl Harbour just irks me because the advice given on how to fight a Zero in one is exactly the wrong thing to do...

Or did he?

http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/interview...s/index-pf.html

Oh, David...

I just saw shaun of the dead. I dunno....i think i just can't appreciate British humour....

You were expecting maybe someone chasing round scantily-clad women on speeded up film?

No problem, though - like I say, I did worry about how well some of the humour would carry across, and not everyone has the same tastes after all. A major part of the films appeal in the UK is that its a zombie apocalypse happening in our back gardens. A lot of the incidental, background humour is based around that.

Not sure how common the following term is internationally, but the phrase I've most often heard used among UK anime fandom is "Gainax bounce"...!

Shaun of the Dead is indeed very, very good. However, I do wonder how well its going to cross over with American audiences. Part of its appeal is that its set in a very British suburban environment. In a US zombie movie, the hero grabs a chain-saw. In Shaun, the hero grabs a cricket bat. Theres one line uttered by the lead supporting character that refers to a particular brand of ice cream; in the UK this cracks people up but I suspect its going to be a bit puzzling for a US audience [1].

Still, the DVD version (R-2 - not sure if theres a US release yet?) is extremely good value; it features no less than four cast/directors commentaries (including a "Zombies" one!) and a great many bonus features.

"Shaun of the Dead" is the creation of comedian/actor Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright, who were largely responsible for the excellent anti-sitcom Spaced, which will also shortly be available in a three-disc collectors set.

[1] And despite being only one word long, its an incredibly multi-layered joke as well, which will take some explaining...!

VOTOMS is an obivous one. I've always been a little intrigued why that series attracts so many manufacturers.