1st Edition: Plane Crash

Hey everyone, I’m Andrew. I am good friends with Eddie and the moderator of the Twilight of the Gods subforum. I hope you are all enjoying yourselves. Today, I am going to be writing the first of a possible series of articles. Because you, my friend, are in danger. And you don’t even know it. But fear not, because Danger is my middle name, and I am here to outline for you some possible ways to survive even situations in which death is 110% certain. Today’s worst-case scenario: a plane you are riding in is on a direct course into the side of a mountain.

Category 1: True Desperation

Survival Strategy #1: Jump out the emergency door
A classic yet underused strategy, jumping out an emergency door is a simple and trusted chance to raise your survivability rate above 0. Although jumping out a plane door is usually done with a parachute, in this case, the altitude difference between you and the mountain is probably too small for a parachute to open. To carry out this strategy, simply unbuckle your seatbelt and proceed past the wailing, praying, terrified passengers to the rear of the plane. Follow the directions on the door to open it and throw yourself into the crisp mountain air. This survival strategy works for a few reasons. One, you no longer have the force of the plane’s impact smashing your helpless body like a scrambled egg all over the mountainside. Two, there are potentially objects that can slow your fall on the way down, such as tree branches and snow. When pursuing this strategy, you may find it helpful to wear protective padding. Large, bulky jackets work best for this, as well as any motorcycle helmets you may see among the carry-on luggage in your dash to the rear.

Survival Strategy #2: Makeshift parachute
A time-intensive yet effective survival strategy, knowing which material makes for good soft landings is crucial for those attempting this on the run. Basically, what you are looking for is whatever material you can find that possesses plenty of surface area, is strong enough not to rip, and stable enough not to fold in on itself once you jump out the plane door. Trust me, I saw what happens when parachutes fold in on themselves at my physics class egg drop. That is NOT a good way to come out unscathed, let me tell you. Ideally, you would have something that resembles an actual parachute, but a load of bedsheets, an impossibly huge jacket, or a few blankets may also do the trick. Don’t bother with the complimentary airline blankets; they just aren’t meant for this sort of thing. Instead, snatch one off of a formerly sleeping, now-panicking passenger.

Survival Strategy #3: Air raft
This strategy is nigh impossible to pull off, but incredibly successful when you do it. To make it work, you must simply trigger one of the plane’s emergency slides and detach it from the plane by whatever means necessary. Ideally, these slides would have a convenient release button, but I do not believe we, the survival minded passengers, are so lucky. If detached, the air inflated slide will cushion and/or slow your fall, provided you are capable of hanging on. You must have the firepower and equipment to cut or blow away any attaching apparti. Good luck.

Category 2: Movie-style

Survival Strategy #4: Blowing a hole through the floor of the plane
Once reserved only for international superspies, this escape has become more and more available to the well-equipped survivalist. To pursue this strategy, all you need is a piece of specialized equipment capable of cutting or blowing through a thick shell of steel. A high powered laser watch or explosive gum ought to do the trick. A jackhammer might work in a pinch too. This one leaves room for creativity. Whatever method you use, though, it has to be quick. Mountainsides wait for no man.

Survival Strategy #5: Using a body as a cushion
Executed to perfection in the Bourne Identity, the idea behind this method is that a well-placed human body makes a fine cushion upon impact. Although Bourne broke his leg attempting this stunt, nobody’s perfect. Whatever happens, it’s got to be better than turning into jet fuel ash on the side of a forlorn, snowy mound of rock. Technique is key here. You need to have good balance to position your cushion well while tumbling through the air.

Survival Strategy #6: Use the superpowers you have been hiding
Well, now that we have exhausted all options possible for mere mortals, it is time to consider one final way we might escape death. Whether you secretly possess the power to create force fields, fly, teleport, or go back in time, now is a good time to use your powers to throw up some massive protection or haul butt out of that plane. I know that this will take a great deal of courage for some of you; after all, the most kickass X-Men in the classic arcade game, Nightcrawler, was such a wuss in the movie he was afraid to pop through a simple door. However, you do not have this luxury. Man up, it’s do or die time now, baby.

Well, there you have it! 6 easy ways of surviving should you find yourself on a plane heading towards a hot date with a hard piece of rock. Should you try these strategies, e-mail me and let me know how it worked out! I am always open for feedback or suggestions. And remember, if you do survive, say a quick prayer to our patron saint, Vesna Vulovic.

P.S. Evidently I forgot the mountain bike escape pictured above.

Finally, after what seemed like six months of waiting, There Will Be Blood finally made it out to the boondocks that is the east coast, and it was worth it. Daniel Day-Lewis will clean up at the Oscars, and if he doesn’t, I will start my own strike against the Oscars right as the WGA finishes their own.

Since I’m a bastard with little free time this semester that isn’t spent watching movies (I’m not saying I have a lot of free time, I’m saying the little free time I do have I watch movies during), I have obviously not updated recently, and this post will also be a quickie, in that I’ll mostly just post some videos and links and leave the analysis to you the viewer.

Speaking of little free time, writing all those silly little moon language characters hundreds of times kind of sucks, but I purchased a program to help me with memorization and such, though its usefulness is possibly somewhat limited:

iKana

Sadly for you little-endian plebeians (ok this doesn’t work anymore), this software is only for the greatest operating system ever, OSX.

While specifically on the topic of reading Japanese, I have come across a Japanese version of YouTube with less restrictions and more anonymity. And of course, that means more wacky zaniness that you all so desire. This Valhalla for otaku is called NicoVideo.jp. But wait, when you go, you will encounter a wall of hieroglyphics and be utterly lost in all the wavy lines. Never fear, as this thread will tell you how to proceed.

Moving onto another thing I wanted to cover, independent computer role-playing games. Tell me, what comes to mind when you watch the following game trailer?

Possibly the best game ever made, I’d say. AND NOW YOU CAN PLAY IT. Speaking of role playing games, I hope in the near future to have an update covering some of the better independent role playing games available for Mac and PC.

Finally, I’d like to hammer you with three trailers to new and upcoming films that you may or may not be interested in. First, the most promising of these three happens to be, The Forbidden Kingdom.

From watching the trailer, you can immediately see what makes this movie amazing. Yes, the two greatest Asian martial artist film stars to ever grace the shit hole that is Hollywood, Jackie Chan and Jet Li. I can’t even express to you how long I have wanted this to happen, and I eagerly anticipate the release of this film. I have my hopes held high for this film, however due to the disappointment that was War, another film that had high potential (Jet Li and Jason Statham), you can’t ever be too careful.

Some quickies include the film Mongol. Looks like it has some potential, it’s opening limited release this June (means I won’t ever get to see it). As one may assume it’s about Genghis Khan and it was filmed in Kazakhstan!

Lastly is John Woo’s Red Cliff, based on the (Romance of the) Three Kingdoms time period in China. Opinions on it are somewhat mixed, depending on people’s opinions of John Woo’s directing abilities. An additional disappointment is the lack of Chow Yun-Fat, who dropped out early on in the film’s production. Ken Watanabe is another great actor who was considered for a role but since them dern Chinese won’t let a Japanese actor play in their movie, another talent was lost.

That’s all for now, perhaps I’ll find time to update before the next full moon.

‘Twas my birthday this past weekend, so since I’m a bastard and haven’t updated in forever because I’m lazy or something, I’ll just make an attempt at recovery by having uploaded the following 19 anime episode downloads. This, hopefully, will make the anime downloads page at least a little more current, until I can upload whatever else is missing.

As for this seasons new anime, I think I’m going to stick with the ones I have now, as I’m already many an episode behind on each. Therefore, my posts for each episode will come as I watch them, but I’d like to hopefully have all of Bamboo Blade and Kaiji caught up by the end of this weekend (it’s 3 days), but alas, it’s probably a dream.

Well anyway, here’s something to tide you off, provided you didn’t already download it elsewhere weeks ago when they were released:

Bamboo Blade: 10-13
Dragonaut- The Resonance: 10-11
Kaiji: 11-14
Kimikiss: 11-12
Minami-ke: 7-8
Mobile Suit Gundam 00: 9-10
Rental Magica: 9-10
Shigurui: 7

Just check the anime downloads page to get any of the episodes above.

Oh by the way, my movie plans for this weekend:

Triple Featuring (yes I’m a loser I’ll stay in a movie theater for 12 hours):
In the Name of the King
The Orphanage
Cloverfield (hopefully)
Bonus: There Will Be Blood (…if this isn’t released near me)

God damn Sweeney Todd is the only movie out that I haven’t seen that I’ve wanted to see, but it’s not playing near me.

In this episode we become acquainted with our newest member of the ensemble, Aoi Muto. Two questions first came to mind: Where do I recognize that voice from? And two, is that a nasal strip or a band-aid. One of these questions was easily answered through the use of my keyboard, a google search bar, and Wikipedia. This Mamiko Noto, as she is called, has actually quite the resume, however I mostly recognized her as Nina Fortner/Anna Liebert from the 2004 anime entitled Monster, which happens to be one of the better shows I’ve seen.

As for the second question, using deductive logic as well as exhausting a repertoire of test cases I concluded that Aoi did not possess a damaged proboscis of any sort, and it was more likely a nasal strip to help shield against her large pungent effluence due to a lack of a shower for the better entirety of three weeks. This was because while she and Haruka were originally on a trip together, Haruka forced her to forgo the plane flight due to the volatile products Aoi carried on her person in the form of fermented meats, and thus she was forced to walk.

Also, band-aids and the like are part of the designated “moe” classification, and since I didn’t see any boo boo’s and tears welling up and kissing it to make it feel better, then in order for it to be considered moe, it must have been a nasal strip. Actually just ignore this last entire paragraph.

It turns out that Aoi brought home more than spoiled meat (”Fermented” is just a nice way of saying something spoiled that you will still eat. Kind of like when you’re eating some bologna but when you take the package out of the drawer in the fridge you notice it’s like a week past the expiration date, but then you’re just like “fuck it” and eat it anyway.). No, not an HIV-positive Mexican crack baby, as one naturally would assume judging by her methods of returning home as well as her appearance, but a whole slew of dangerous bacteria that set of sirens to Sawaki. My personal favorite is the microbe with the 6 o’clock shadow, which I would wager the artists used to represent El Tor.

Sawaki notices these border-crossing microbial wetbacks, and a hazmat team proceeds the delousing.

It’s not an episode of Moyashimon with an awesome kick-ass microbe monster, this time caused by a new strain of influenza, most likely a form of avian flu. As a matter of fact, the path of the virus was as follows: The UFO club, led by Aoi for reasons you will just have to watch to find out, for some reason thought it would be a good idea to house both a pig and a chicken in their room. Well, the issue with this is (I believe, don’t quote me, my only reference are these DVDs of Babe and Chicken Run.) that normally chickens and other birds carry dangerous strains of the virus. However, these aren’t easily commutable to humans, so they aren’t usually so much a risk. However, keeping a pig next to the bird is a bad idea, because the birds can pass on the virus to the pigs (also easier to do because generally the pig will be eating the chicken shit, thus passing the virus more easily). Since pigs can catch the same diseases as humans and pass it on more easily, they pass it on and thus the entire UFO club has influenza.

Download Episode 6

Everyone will be disinterested to know that I updated Wordpress to 2.3.4 and Mint to 2.15 just for you because I care :3

Pardon the title, I didn’t really put much effort into it. I’ve been busy doing nothing recently, so pardon the lack of daily updates. However, I do hope to get at least a few things done before I go back to school and this site runs out of visitors. Anyway, I’d like to go over a few upcoming film releases, whether they be Chinese cinema or Uwe Boll-like attempts at video game live-action.

First off, I have come across a trailer for an upcoming film called Kung Fu Dunk. This strikes me as interesting because it is a film about a martial artist who becomes a Basketball star. For those of you who are buffs in the realm of Chinese cinema, you may be aware of a similar film by Stephen Chow, called Shaolin Soccer, which was quite good.

Kung Fu Dunk, also known as Slam Dunk, is loosely based on the manga by the same name. One possible criticism of it is that it could be an half-assed attempt to cash in on Stephen Chow’s success with a sports/kung fu mix. As for the cast, it appears that Jay Chou is starring, who some may recognize from Curse of the Golden Flower, where he plays the older Prince Jai alongside Yun-Fat Chow and Li Gong. The director, while I’ve never heard of him or any of his films, has a fairly decent filmography, so they may be set there. All in all, it looks like it has potential, but see for yourself, view the trailer below:

Speaking of Stephen Chow, it looks like the master himself is coming out with a new film this coming year entitled CJ7, or Long River 7 for ‘Mericans. Sadly, it appears to lack any sort of kung-fu, and is instead a sci-fi comedy about a poor laborer who has a few interesting experiences after getting his son a new toy.

Lana Lang => Chun Li

Personally, a genre of filmography that has not been explored nearly enough is of fighting game live-action. Sure, there have been plenty of video game films, such as Resident Evil, Doom, and everything that Uwe Boll does, but I’m talking about films of an entirely different calibre. A film like the fighting game classic, Mortal Kombat. The greatest fighting game film ever made, even better than its abomination of a sequel, and the original Street Fighter with Van Damme. It’s also one of the last films I’ve seen Robin Shou in other than Beverly Hills Ninja. It makes me wonder why he doesn’t get any more work.

So far, there are two candidates that could possibly fill this gap: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, and Tekken.

Regrettably, both are still early in the production phase, and little is known about either of them. As for Tekken, all that is known is a 2009 release, which will be directed by Dwight H. Little, who’s resume includes among other things, such blockbusters as Halloween 4 and Free Willy 2.

Only a little more is known about the also 2009 release film Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. With action director and cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak at the helm, this film packs a lot of ass-kicking potential. Which it needs, with Chun-Li’s transvestite-like thighs.

Until recently, the real debate was on who was going to be Chun-Li? Well that was recently revealed to be Kristin Kreuk from Smallville. I think the real question is, who should play Cammy? Of course, I’m only assuming that Cammy will even be in the film, but you can bet your bottom doll hair that I will be disappointed if I can’t see some blue British leotard action. I even slaved for like five hours over this picture:

I picked two possible candidates, Christina Ricci and Jessica Simpson. I think that either of them would be an ideal choice. Christina Ricci, though not normally blonde, could fairly easily portray Cammy, as seen from her performance in Black Snake Moan. However, Jessica Simpson would also be a good choice, for obvious reasons (not to mention she said she was going to possibly do a nude scene to “gain respect”). We can only pray that this movie will be R-rated. Also, hearing her attempt at a British accent would be Oscar worthy, in my opinion.

I slaved over /a/ and photoshop to bring you some Christmas cheer.

You’ve seen the show, now here’s the live action movie: Be a Man! Otokojuku The Movie.

The manliest show in the history of animation is now coming out in a live-action version! Hopefully someone subtitles this because this is a movie you will not want to miss as long as blood flows through your veins and testosterone powers your hair follicles.

Sawaki passes on the street what appears to be a cross between the polluted river spirit from Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away and the various perverted ninja from 2 x 2 = Shinobuden (Ninja Nonsense), at least the eyes anyway.

It turns out that the microbe monster was actually not a swamp thing but a close friend of Professor Itsuki, the owner of a liquor store. The two upperclassmen and Haruka are charged with making some purchases from the store, so off they go. For those who are interested in sake and types of sake and flavors of sake and sake brewing, Sawaki is dragged to the store to listen to a discussion about sake between the his friend Kei and the owner.

‘Tis not a very eventful episode otherwise, except that a new character is introduced, a girl named Aoi, who has just returned from a trip with some very potent fermented meat juice or something for Professor Itsuki, and spills it everywhere in the process.

Download Episode 05

I’ve decided to move to jpeg format thumbnails. Who’d know that they would be smaller in size than gifs and better quality?

What anime has evolved into.

Recently there has been an influx of anime to live action films in production. Right now there are two major live action films on the horizon: Dragonball and Speed Racer.

First off, lets talk about Dragonball. As amazing as I’m sure this 100 million dollar film will be, I have a slight inkling that it will be somewhere between a gargantuan and a titanic flop. Why? Because despite what they may think, this film is about 10 years too late. I’d like to say that I see on average fewer shirts with flames, wolves, or flaming wolves on them, which can only mean that those who did watch the show have now grown up into neckbearded college students with interests lying in more “elegant” shows (see image).

Justin Chatwin: Goku

Nonetheless, I could be wrong about this. Perhaps a new generation of Dragonball fanatics have emerged, and somehow this movie will turn a profit. Indeed, let us not forget that this film is based off of Dragonball, not DBZ. Therefore, Goku is a little prepubescent douche accurately portrayed by Justin Chatwin.

I hate to admit but this movie does have potential. Somehow they’ve strong-armed Chow Yun Fat to play Master Roshi, as well as blackmailed Stephen Chow into producing it. Additionally, all of the fight scenes are going to be choreographed by a true chi master. Finally, you can bet your darn tootin’ ass I’ll be at the first showing if they decide to include this Emmy-nominated scene from the original show:

Well, that’s enough on Dragonball for now, you can find out more at their official blog: Dragonball Movie Blog.

The second major live action film coming out next May 9th is Speed Racer.

This will be awesome because of the following:

Wachowski Brothers are directing (Matrix, V for Vendetta)
John Goodman as Pop Racer, Susan Sarandon as Mom Racer
Matthew Fox (from Lost) as Racer X
Christina Ricci (Black Snake Moan, Grindhouse) as Trixie
Silly Monkey (hopefully)

Anyway, all that mixed with awesome racing car action means that this movie will be FUCKIN’ TURBO.

Other live action films in the works:

Battle Angel - A live-action version of Battle Angel Alita directed by James Cameron! Maybe John Connor will survive the fourth Terminator and make it into this one!

Neon Genesis Evangelion - I can only ponder as to how amazing or amazingly bad this may probably not ever be.

I’ve also come across two other films, that though they aren’t live action remakes of anime, they will kick enough ass to make you not really care any more:

The first is called Ninja Cheerleaders, which looks promising, kind of a chimera of several different straight-to-tv movies.

The second is one that I am personally anticipating quite a bunch, The Machine Girl. It looks like Kill Bill but about 30x more awesome and infinity times more drill bra.

Pardon all of the Youtube embeds, I’ve actually installed a plugin that should let me stream my own videos but I decided to try waiting until I’ve tested it out.

By the way, sorry for the huge break in between updates, I’ve been busy recently, but I hope to make up for it over the rest of Christmas break. However, my upload kind of sucks so I may just try to catch up rather than do any major uploads until I get back my university connection! Also, if there is anyone who wants to write for the site, feel free, just contact me.

After challenging Tamaki, Ishibashi and Ishida compare puny biceps in order to prove to each other their strength. Ishibashi has seen something in Tamaki that he realizes as greatness. If only he had that strength back in high school when we was fighting Ishida. Anyway, Ishibashi wants to prove to himself that he is still strong, and that he can beat a puny freshman girl.

Well that idea goes down the shitter as he is bombarded with strike after strike while pressing a heavy attack, which leaves Tamaki unfazed. Tamaki does some never seen before one-handed strikes, throwing Ishibashi off-guard. This causes Ishibashi to actually become serious, and he moves to the ascension stance.

Everyone else assumes that this means the end for Tamaki, as that stance is supposedly extremely strong. However, that stance causes Tamaki to go into a flashback about her mother using the same stance, and Tamaki spaces out. Ishibashi notices this, and then decides to call the match off (poor Ishida and his sushi).

Kirino raises everyone’s spirits with some of her family’s fried katsu, which appears amazingly delicious, even warranting a steaming closeup as seen above.

Download Episode 7

I’m debating on doing something about these screenshots. I convert them to gif for a smaller file size and thus faster load time, however there is a noticeable drop in image quality. It’s either keep them as gif’s, use png’s with higher quality (and twice the file size), or keep lower quality but link to full size pngs. Otherwise, it’s not too hard to find them at any of the 2000 other anime blogs.

Oh by the way, I forgot to mention that Moyashimon 5 and 6 are up, I’ll post the synopsis of them in the next day or so. Check them out on the downloads page.