Kino's Journey, surprise, surprise is an anime about Kino traveling on a motrorad traveling through out an odd world with many different lands. It has somewhat of a western feel to it ,though some of the lands have advanced Technology, our heroine rids into to "town" at the beginning, discovers how the isolated land works and rides out again at the end.

First I just describe a motorad. Basically, a motorad is talking motorcycle, that has a symbiotic relationship with it's rider. The motorad gives the rider speed, but it needs a rider to give keep it balanced, (an acquire fuel and spare parts). Kino's motorad is named Hermes, naturally after to winged messenger of the Greek gods.

We learn Kino's a little about Kino's past, basically she was an unhappy child in her strict homeland, but an encounter with a traveler changed his destiny and sent off on her nomadic path. Our Heroine is basically pretty solitary and refuses to acquire the normal crew of companions that you see in most tales. They would distract from the focus of the story which is primarily the odd lands that Kino visits, most of which she is but an observer moving from place to place.

And they are interesting lands ranging from a Dystopia where travelers fight in a Colosseum, to a land where a girl realizes her dreams of flight, an encounter with starving, snowbound men. This would have been a good anime to blog each episode, though I fear I am far to lazy to do such a thing.

Conclusion: This was a good anime that is different from the normal fair. I enjoyed creative lands and the almost western feel of the anime. The ending in some many ways was sad, but the not the cliche end of a certain unnamed anime, where the main character dies. I do wonder a bit about Kino's time when she was traveling with her master but that wasn't covered in the anime. Our heroine was very strong willed and certainly knows her calling. This anime has acquired my seal of approval.

I know this has been all over the internets all-ready, but I found this to be an decent count to the Global Warming Religion. I love how it's always something along the lines of "we're only ten years from disaster! Repent Now!!!". But of course the actions they call for would wreck our society and have no affect on Global warming even it were to be as dire as they claim. Enough of my rants, watch the video.

 

On the advice of my friend, The Dark Lord Cyclohexane, I downloaded a three episode series that was on the discovery channel about what things would be like in about 50 years. Each episode concentrated on a different aspect of society, beginning with the body and then moving out to the city and finally the world.

Episode 1 - The Body

The main story line in this episode involved an everyman character waking up after night of binge drinking and faking an alcohol test. It seems that in the future alcohol will be illegal and so if you are caught drinking you'll lose your health insurance. Well, naturally our everyman does the classic thing and steps on some kind of robot things that happens to be lying around falls out a three story window on to the ground. Luckily for our Monsieur Everyman, they have flying cars in the future so, the ambulance flies right out to pick him up. They then drain out is blood in an attempt at "reversible Death", or as those of us less prone to ridiculous exaggeration, suspended animation. They then break into a segment about current flying car technology, with an example of a car the can take off all by itself.

Next the talk about printing out new organs directly with printers and nifty real time x-rays, all of which is pretty cool, but then they dive back into the story. The health insurance finds out about everyman fun night and cancels his insurance just before he gets a new heart. (those evil insurance people) so everyman is taken to the uninsured ward where he's left to die. Luckily the doctor has fallen for our hero's dashing good looks and has decided to fight the man by using some rich dead mans fancy insurance to get a new heart for our hero. yay!

Reaction:

The reversible death part was a bit hard to swallow as was the idea that there would be an insurance agent sitting around just watching what will happen. It would have been more realistic (though this is only a hypothetical future after all) if they'd had a computer doing all the work, instead of a mass of big brothers enforcers sitting around watching everyman's drug test all the time.

I'm also not too sure the constant monitoring would fly very well, considering how controversial id cards are at the present. I mean how are you supposed to get an illegal immigrant to do your laundry if big brother is monitoring everyone? (Heaven forbid that you'd do it yourself)

Episode II - The City

I guess I'll get this out at the beginning, I though that this episode was lame. Our characters for this episode involved a smart ass kid (the hero), a crooked cop who is also an incompetent single mother on the side and and an old disgruntled Hacker (who is the kids grandfather) and a bunch of people who were rejected from Idiocracy for not quite making the stupid cut. Basically the future will be filled with hologram advertisements floating everywhere running on windows 95. Every kid will have a little hologram friend hanging out with him, in our hero's case ,he starts with a dolphin, but Grampa makes him a shark. Granpa then leaves after another fight with his daughter the cop. (Considering his daughters reaction he probably throws a tantrum once a week and moves down to the flophouse for the weekend, and stumbles back on Monday morning with empty pockets.)

So after leaving our the kid unsupervised, le hero comes up with the brilliant idea of trying to put his shark into the city's main computer, because that would allow him to put it on all the holographic billboards. (I suppose it's beats going out with a can a spray paint...) So he pushes some buttons on his grampa's old laptop and magically releases an unbeatable virus that completely shuts down widows 95. OH NOES! This disaster paralyzes the city and our hero's mom tracks down grandpa and tries to arrest him,(because obviously no one else could hack Windows 95) until he convinces her that he's the only one who knows how to reboot a computer now. He fixes things and saves the day, our hero doesn't get any jail time for completely crashing every computer in town and everyone learns that setting your laptop to release virus upon startup is a social fauxpas.

Reaction:

I find it completely ridiculous no one knows how to work on the main computers because there so 'old'. And while a virus could get in and crash the system I find it to be equally impossible that someone could do by accident, I would expect that you'd need to know a little bit more that which button to press to bring down the city's entire system. And our stupid hero is too lame for words this episode was really lame and comically bad.

Episode III - The World

This episode was the final episode and as such treated us viewers with invisibility, space elevators and magical cures for the worlds energy problems. The main plot for this episodes involves solving the world energy crisis by developing efficient solar panels. Reasonable enough I suppose, though it is interesting that they chose the US and China as the two groups working on this research. During this time, they show some nifty gadget, a combination of small screens and cameras, that allow someone to turn invisible by having some cameras shoot what behind the person and then that info is displayed on many little screens on the clothes. Very cool. Meanwhile the EU is reduced to mediating between the quarrellings of Great (Evil) powers, while two scientists attempt to find a magic formula on a research station attached to a space elevator.

There is a scientific breakthrough, but unfortunately each of the evil Super powers wants to keep the info for themselves, but though some smuggling to the friendly media the world is saved. YAY!

Reaction:

The space elevator is pretty cool, and from what I've read, should be feasible in 50 years. Now the solar panels are a bit far fetched, since one has to wonder what would happen on a cloudy day, however I suppose they could put huge constellations of them in space and then beam the energy back to earth somehow.... This was an enjoyable episode. They briefly mention a fusion reactor which seems like it might actually be able to provide enough dependable energy to solve future energy needs, but even in fifty years might still be just a dream.

Conclusion:

This was quite entertaining, and some of it's predictions seemed somewhat plausible, but on the other hand, I'm sure that people thought we'd have flying cars and hearts to go by now fifty years ago, so it would be wise to take this program with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Star Wars: A Clone Apart - Episode 01 is an entertaining fan series based on Star Wars Battlefront II Check out all the current episodes at You tube. Basically the plot revolves around the antics of the clone Danson who was the sole survivor of a batch of clones. He has odd views of the world and really likes rain. He is sent off on mission even though he's had no training and hilarity ensues. During his first mission he's inexplicably catapulted into 20 years into the future and somehow has to find his way in the changed Galaxy. Update: Sadly the A clone apart videos have been removed from YouTube due to Viacom's lawsuit. see the available episodes now at the official A Clone Apart website.

Yes, the promised Haibane Renamei Review is here. The Excitement! As is well know Haibane Ranamei is an anime about a Haibane called Rakka. A Haibane is a strange being who hatches from a cocoon and develops wings his or her birth. They also a receive a halo from some silent monk like beings called Our Heroine is hatched from a giant cocoon inside a complex known as Old Home, on the outskirts of the town of Glie.

From there, like our Heroine we are made to discover this slightly odd world. A giant wall surrounds the town of Glie and it's environs, that will cause bad things to happen if you even touch them. The Haibane can not have money, but they must work to support themselves. Instead of money pay with sheets from books they receive from working.

All the Haibane have a dream when they are in the cocoon and Rakka is no different, her dream involved falling and the seemed to be a bird. Discovering the whole dream and it's meaning is one of the central struggles for Rakka (or any Haibane ). If they discover the meaning of the dream and reconcile with it, they will find salvation on their day of flight. They only have a limited time to do this and if the their time of flight passes and they have not reconciled their dream they will fall in to darkness and vanish.

Conclusion:

The search for salvation in this anime along with the darker second half contrasting with the early episodes innocent exploration. I really enjoyed this anime, and feel that is was very well done from start to finish. I've run into so many shows that have a decent premise or at least interesting first couple of episodes, but then plummet into depths of lameness. (Like zero no Tsukima)

While hunting for new Anime to keep me entertained over the weekend I stumbled across Zero no Tsukaima. I've been led to believe that by the internets that the title translates to something resembling "Zero's Familiar". The setting is a Fantasy world resembling enlightenment Europe, except the people are divided into two classes Nobles, who use magic, and everyone else. The adventures primary take place in a country,Tristania, ruffly occupying the place of Belgium in Europe.

The Heroine:

Louise le Zero is a Feisty student at a magic academy that hasn't mastered any of the four elements, fire, earth, wind and water, hence she has been given the nickname zero by her evil classmates. She's kinda like an angrier, snobbier version of Lina Inverse but with pink hair and no control or her magic.  

The Hero:

Saito is a normal boy from Connecticut Tokyo, who was summed to this anime world by Louise when she tried to summon a familiar. Thus our hero was bonded to Louise, and received a strange brand that appears to give him some mad skillz.

Side Characters:

Tabitha - a Silent bookworm, Extremely boring and lame, however she has a Dragon as a familiar which is extremely cool, and extremely convenient in saving our heroes asses far too often.

Siesta a Lowly serving girl who works at the school, is very friendly with Saito, much to Louise's dismay.

Kirche a Rival of Louise, she is a student from Germania. She is fills the Nage the serpent role in this anime. Supposedly her family an Louise's are enemies and that the beginning of the story the two girls can't stand one another. She's a well endowed girl and has made her rounds within the school, so naturally she's set her sights on making a conquest of Saito.

The Good

It's a lot like an anime version of Harry Potter, with less Potter and more viscous pink haired girls. lol, I really do like the setting it's just that the plot seems a bit week an doesn't develop into a story until episode 10 or so. The main characters are cool, and Saito has an excellent special power and seems to handle this odd world well enough.

The Bad

First of all I don't approve of Louise constantly beating her familiar, I think it's a bit too much for me. But at least it doesn't rise to the years of abuse the Mr. Potter suffered from his family, yet...

My main complaint however, is that it seems that Kirche and Tabitha suddenly become friendly with Louise for no apparent reason other than the fact than it's convenient to save(or to transport) our heroes when they get into trouble. This is odd since Kirche especially is supposed to be a rival of Louise, and it would have been nice if they'd kept that angle going past the first few episodes. Perhaps the Sequel will have a stronger (and more villains) plot since they won't have to spend as much time on the introduction stuff.

Conclusion:

This was an anime that sucked me in during the first episode, but around episode eight, I almost dropped the series because the plot wasn't thick enough to keep things interesting. I think it would have been nice if they'd introduced the main plot, at least in the background anyhow much earlier to keep some interest in the series.