When is a motorcycle not a motorcycle?

 

When it's also a surrogate for your dead mother.

All right, I kid.  The better answer is, “When it’s also the crux of a battle between luddites and the rest of us,” which is, naturally, sweepingly broad, but bear with me.

Obviously I’m finally getting around to posting on Rideback.  Everyone else did it last week, but I wanted to take a while to wrap my head around it.  I still feel like it’s a bit early, but I finally had actual thoughts about the show and thought I’d jump over here and inflict them on you.  If you listened to the latest Super Fanicom Voice Module, you’ll already by somewhat familiar with my abortive attempts to grapple the technology of the show into an understandable state.  I think I have made some headway in this endeavor.  

Thank your mighty ghost of choice

…for the Super Fanicom Voice Module returns!  Ever wanted to hear five people talk too much about Ride Back?  Your dreams, they have come true.

Oh, I remember this…

 

I know Tytania is all about blurry lines, but the blonde just looks like an asshole

I’m finally making an effort to catch up with Tytania – if two episodes, a post, and probably a round of Crayon Physics, then bed, can be called “effort.”  I choose to think it can be.  I don’t usually like bitchy posts about the terrible state of affairs in world X (comics, anime, TV, whatever) — I tend to classify them in the same way Wil Wheaton does, as “get off my lawn!”  However, I finally managed to pinpoint the odd feeling I have whenever I watch an episode of Tytania.  Specifically, there are no harem-leads, moe-moe girls, silent meganekko, dojikko, or lipstick lesbians.  All you can see, when you key up an episode, is fucking awesome explosions, space opera so pure that commanders are required to sit on a stage when they give orders, and space-politics (like Earth-politics, but in zero gee) like nobody’s business.  Asshole compressed version:  no pandering, just awesome.

Your dreams have come true.

You might have guessed it:  The Super Fanicom Voice Module is back!  Dance in the streets, damn you, dance!  This week we tried to deal with Maria Holic, which might be a lot crazier than we’re used to.  Then again, it was probably all CCY’s fault.

Light of your life

It’s happened again!  The Super Fanicom Voice Module returns again!  This time it’s a commentary on episode thirteen of Kannagi, and we talk about the whole series in general, the possibilities of the second season, lots of religious themes, and delicious, well-done nerd humor.  Huzzah!

Thoughts on RPGs

Not that I mean to exhaustively deal with all the RPG thoughts I have — just a few concerning video game RPGs.  There are two sources for this little post.  I am, for reasons even I don’t quite understand, replaying Final Fantasy VIII, and I’ve been reading through some of Scott Kurtz’s Ding, a webcomic about World of Warcraft.  

A short note on the fourth Marimite OP

You’re all full of crap, this new OP is great.  See it here, if you haven’t already.  And why do I like it, and disagree with all the other fans?  Two reasons.  One, I loathed the original OP and its variations.  As I made clear once already, I really like upbeat tunes to go with my anime.  

However, here’s point two:  it works.  I know you’re horrified, but think of what the show’s situation was before and what it is now.  As the OP actually makes really clear to me — as in, I hadn’t realized it before I watched the OP — at this point in the series the three girls featured in the OP are basically the new power in the school.  Yes, Sachiko and Rei are still there, and in charge, but they’re going to be getting busy if traditions of high school anime stories have led me to expect anything:  they’re about to graduate, yo.  And the council will be markedly different with these girls running things.  They’re all high energy, quirky, peculiar, and generally lovable.  This is the OP that suits them, rather than the previous one, which suits their respective big sisters.  

Oh, and this is pretty funny.

An Orgy of Glory: really, a glorgy

If you read this blog but not Super Fanicom, you’re a bit odd, because I post over there too, and besides, everyone else there is awesome too.  But for you tragic few, here’s some awesome news:  the Super Fanicom crew, which includes me, has started a podcast!  Yes, I know, you reel in orgiastic glee.  The first podcast can be found here, wherein we talk about Toradora! thirteen.  OGT joins Pontifus and me — lelangir and Kaiserpingvin were MIA this time, but just you wait — and, glory amid glory! — if you’re watching Toradora! you can sync the podcast with episode thirteen.  It’s a commentary track.  If you don’t want to do that, listen anyway, we’re pretty funny.  You probably won’t look at birds the same way again.

Christmas in the Stars… I mean, just Christmas.

Because even I like the cheese.

Last week I was sitting around in the living room while my mom watched a terrible Lifetime Network Christmas special, as she is wont to do.  It was, as usual, about “saving Christmas.”  The particular permutation had to do with a rural area and this huge Christmas village thing run by a guy — played by Tom Arnold — who owes money and will lose his giant Christmas village thing if he doesn’t pony up.  I figured out (I didn’t sit through the whole thing) that the daugher had renounced her rural roots and was dating the douche responsible for the buyout, but she eventually repents and makes out with the earnest young nutcracker-making guy who’s never left the town and has pined for her for ever and ever.  This is typical stuff, both for Christmas and for Lifetime dramas.  I’m telling you all this because it got me to thinking about the differences between Christmas in Japan and America.  Not that this topic is necessarily new, but I thought I’d talk about it a bit.

all art aspires to the condition of. . .

I was talking to CCY earlier today (I guess yesterday, technically), and we both mentioned that we meant to do a post about our favorite openings and endings of the year — it’s the end of the year, that sort of stuff happens.  He’s already finished, and really he’s done a better job than I will?  Why?  Well, just to give you one reason, I’m not sure which themes are actually 2008 and which I simply heard in 2008.   We will do our best, however.