Monday, September 30, 2013

Autumn 2013 Anime Preview

I'm back bitches~!I have been back in the warm embrace of my PC & wonderful internet connection for three weeks now - it's been a strange experience.For a start Ireland feels bloody tiny, but the crap public transport means that I am sorely missing not having a car.I am pretty much bankrupt thanks to my trip (which was loads of fun) so had a frantic first week home of job searching.Thankfully I got a temporary 2 month contract to tide me over for a while .which meant very little time being a NEET and catching up on things.



Being the obsessive fan I am, I did manage to keep up with a choice selection of shows from the seasons I was AWOL, but still have a lengthy list of things I want to check out - will get round to them eventually.But anyhoo, you're here for the Autumn Preview, so lets get cracking! (Can't tell you how much I missed doing these things - exhausting, but satisfying~!)

Top Five TV Series For Getting Into Anime

Anime. It seems interesting to many folks, but then they get turned off by its reputation for creepy juvenile fantasy. And that's really too bad, because the genre has a lot to offer if you know where to look. Like many folks, my first introduction to the anime genre was via popular films by(, , etc.) and then later with lesser films such as or film adaptations of TV series. But when I first tried to expand my awareness of the anime genre into the realm of television, I was immediately struck by how many of the highly-recommended shows seemed to be rather childish and really struggled to compete with live-action sci-fi/fantasy for my interest. Was anime simply not for me? I didn't want to write off an entire genre of film, and so I continued sorting through the dross until I was able to identify the sort of anime series that I actually liked. This list is intended for casual viewers who find themselves in a similar position.



The difficulty with coming up with Top 5 lists is that they are often so subjective. Elements that can make a show a favorite can also be deal-breakers for other viewers. Since I came at this list from the perspective of a sci-fi fan rather than an anime-lover per se, I'm quite sure that some of my reasons for excluding veteran shows will be anathema for some. For example, this list is mostly composed of newer shows since I don't feel that the animation and characterization of many older anime has aged well (like /). Cue vitriol.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

The Anime Music Tournament 2013 Bracket Naota

A little late to the party, as the is already completed, and the second one is about ready to finish. But I'll still keep pushing on.

BNR1P1


Thursday, September 19, 2013

Voyager 1 goes interstellar

Earlier this week, NASA announced that the space probe Voyager 1, launched back in 1977, has left the solar system and passed into interstellar space. This was first announced over a year ago, but the exact definition of interstellar space depends on where you draw the line marking the solar system's edge, so it's all a bit nebulous (not unlike the solar system itself). However, by any such definition, Voyager has passed beyond the limits of the heliopause, which is generally regarded as the edge of the inner solar system, although it's still got a long, long way to go before it passes through the Oort Cloud, so really, it's still in the bounds of the Sun's sphere of influence. Here's a handy map (it is, of course, drawn to a logarithmic scale, each increment ten times the last:



Still, it's a significant milestone. Beyond the heliopause, the Sun's influence is greatly weakened, and Voyager is essentially cruising free through the interstellar medium. It's the furthest manmade object from Earth, and it's still relaying data. It's 125 AU from the Sun, which is to say, 125 times further than the Earth is, almost eighteen light hours away. That's a long old way.