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F-ZeroOne

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Everything posted by F-ZeroOne

  1. F-ZeroOne
    "Goodbye, Mistress."
  2. F-ZeroOne
    I saw Turn-A about the same time I saw Gundam SEED. I also remember the reaction when Turn-A was first announced and the first images of the mecha designs emerged. Like everyone else at the time, those coloured my impressions of the series way, way before I ever saw it. It was therefore a wonderful surprise to discover just how excellent Turn-A is generally - arguably the best Tomino-directed Gundam, one of if not the best Gundam series, and a fairly strong contender for one of the best SF - not just anime, but genre as a whole - series ever. One of the most interesting aspects to the show is the way that it embraces its past whilst at the same time forging a completely new path without feeling like a blatant - ahem - "homage" to earlier Gundams like SEED does. Its also a great adventure series in its own right, full of daring escapades, dashing heroes, devious villains and plucky heroines. And those weird mecha designs? They work. Boy, how they do work. And they're still going to be interesting in fifty years time. Its not perfect - Tominos trademark narrative jumpiness is still there, and as a whole the series lacks a recurring villain of the calibre of Char, but as a whole, I would argue you're doing yourself a disservice not to see it. Music by Yoko Kanno is simply the cherry on top of a pretty impressively-iced Gundam cake. Please note that it although sounds like I'm being a little bit harsh on Gundam SEED here, I enjoyed that show a fair bit, but in comparison with how I feel about Turn-A its always going to rather outshone.
  3. F-ZeroOne
    I wouldn't say Unicorn is the most original slice of Gundam I've ever seen (at least, going by the first episode) but for the treat-starved Universal Century fan, its like having all the strawberries you can eat.
  4. F-ZeroOne
    Tomino had homicidal tendencies? Funny, it doesn't seem to show in his work.
  5. F-ZeroOne
    They used to let anyone write Doctor Who back in the day, you know: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw/videos/p00fm3w5 and http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw/videos/p00fppzf Hope he found a better day job... (iPlayer, so may not be accessible from all regions).
  6. F-ZeroOne
    Yep. What he said.
  7. F-ZeroOne
    Well, the Royal Navy often refers to RAF personnel as "crabs", mirelurks are mutated crabs, and RAF pilots have flown from her, so... Only other incident I can think of is fictional, in Tom Clancys "The Hunt For Red October". I also recall reading some time ago that the A-10 could use a version of the Maverick with a different blast warhead for use against shipping.
  8. F-ZeroOne
    If you've got the caps - I mean, if you've got the money, you can now buy Rivet City - I mean, you can now buy the former HMS Ark Royal from the Ministry of Defence. Mirelurks and water purification system extra.
  9. F-ZeroOne
    Possibly a reaction of sorts to World War II, where ships of the line proved vulnerable to aircraft attacks (substitute Mobile SUIT attacks). Of course, sometimes you still needed a lot of firepower to sink one. In Gundam, it does serve to highlight the superiority of Mobile SUITs and particularly in 0083, where the Federation building more and more non-MS carrying space battleships is showing how the Federation became all stagnant and OldType compared to those awesome space Nazis!
  10. F-ZeroOne
    Helicopters can't loop, the movies tell us. No-one said anything about back-flips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3aEbVD7Sgw
  11. F-ZeroOne
    So, you've finally been able to walk past a that statue in the park without staring at it until your eyes water. You no longer flood your room with arc-lights, to get rid of the shadows. You've even stopped spilling your coffee every time you hear a bird singing. You thought you were safe again, didn't you? http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw/videos/p00fxf06
  12. F-ZeroOne
    I'm definitely no expert, but you might want to look into Grummans "Tomcat 21" proposal - this was to be an updated Tomcat proposed as a cheaper (for a given value of "cheap"!)alternative to the now aborted Naval ATF (essentially, naval F-22 or F-23) requirement. One of the things they proposed was making the Tomcat easier to maintain. In fact, I believe a swing-wing F-22 was even proposed for that requirement as well!It is also possible to update aircraft designs to a degree; the Strike Eagle is a similar shape to a "standard" Eagle but rather different structurally (designed to carry heavier payloads). Edit: oops, Knight26 got in just ahead of me!
  13. F-ZeroOne
    You know its a tiltrotor, I know its a tiltrotor, the media on the other hand is having trouble with a thing that can be two things at once [1]. At least one British newspaper referred to the CV-22 Osprey that rescued one of the downed F-15 pilots as a "helicopter" today... Also: its not a vacuum cleaner, its a Dyson. Perfectly engineered for its designated function. [1] I suppose I should be thankful they didn't try to claim that it cures cancer...
  14. F-ZeroOne
    The Daily Mail website ran that "Supermoon" thing in a boxout in an article about the disaster, only a couple of days after it happened. I was so angry that if I hadn't been at work I would have punched the screen...
  15. F-ZeroOne
    Glad any MWers in the country appear to be okay. I have a couple of contacts in Japan - in fact, I'm due to fly out and meet them in three weeks, will have to see what happens between now and then - and they've reported they're okay if a bit shaken. There is one person I'm quite worried about, though, who lives in Sendai...
  16. F-ZeroOne
    Japan may be flying a prototype stealth fighter within 5 years, petition to get it named "Yukikaze" starts now! http://defensetech.org/2011/03/08/japan-to-fly-its-own-stealth-fighter-prototype-by-2014/
  17. F-ZeroOne
    I managed to miss the first half-an-hour but - once my brain had given up on its fantasies of wanting to punch the script-writers in the face for insulting its intelligence every five seconds - I, much to my surprise, rather enjoyed the first one. I mean, it has a car chase where two of the vehicles involved are on foot and the third "vehicle" is not just a ninja, but freakin' Snake Eyes, who is what ninjas dream of being when they grow up [1]. Favourite bit? Let the world tremble at the unstoppable speed of the High Velocity Missiles. Nothing can possibly catch something travelling at Mach 5...! [1] Also, freakin' practical ninja. Rest of your colleagues standing around staring at the aforementioned unstoppably fast missiles? Not Snake Eyes.
  18. F-ZeroOne
    Miyazaki didn't direct it, I forget the name of the person who did. What always blows my mind about "Grave" is that apparently it was shown as a double bill with Totoro in some Japanese theatres! Edit: ah, sorry, Bri, didn't notice you had answered the question already.
  19. F-ZeroOne
    The stripes on the white parts almost make it look like a throwback to the days of corrugated skinning...!
  20. F-ZeroOne
    Hmm, can you really call an externally mounted weapons pod "internal"...?
  21. F-ZeroOne
    Kikis Delivery Service. Not just my favourite Miyazaki film, not just my favourite anime, but my favourite film full stop. Porco Rosso. Always better than you remember from the last time you watched it. The quality of the image on the Nausicaa Blu-Ray, by the way, is among the best I've ever seen. Of course, everything Miyazaki did, he did first in Future Boy Conan.
  22. F-ZeroOne
    The more pictures I see of the J-20 - well, its always difficult to judge on incomplete information, and it would not be the first time the West has been "surprised" - but the more it looks to me like a relatively conventional airframe design given a bit of a stealth makeover (also bearing in mind that prototypes can sometimes be a bit removed from actual, finished articles). Thats purely on visual impressions, though, if hordes of these things suddenly materialise over the Channel and destroy all the worlds supply of Devon scones I'm fully prepared to eat my hat. With butter, jam, and cream on of course.
  23. F-ZeroOne
    A lot of that sort of stuff seems to end up on Yahoo! Japan, but a lot of the sellers will only sell to Japanese buyers. There are ways around that, such as proxys like Celga: http://www.celga.com/ Mandarake also have an English language web presence and have held auctions for cels in the past: http://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/shop/en/ Or, given the shipping charges usually involved, buy a plane ticket. Its probably cheaper.
  24. F-ZeroOne
    Pah. Our new Artificially Intelligent Quiz Show Overlord has yet to meet Stephen Fry and Q.I.. (link has a little swearing).
  25. F-ZeroOne
    ...because one of them is reported to have said "The best place for canards is on someone elses airplane!"...?
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