Noboru Ishiguro passed away yesterday. If you were alive in the 80's and watched anime on TV or bought anime on VHS, then you probably know who he is. For those of you who don't, he was one of the reasons anime became a thing in the US. He was a director and oversaw some of the most popular shows at the time. Yamato, Robotech/Macross, Gatchaman, Lupin the 3rd, Astroboy...

He's also one of the reasons people in the US believe that all anime looks the same and is about giant robots and cheesy sci-fi. His stuff was so popular in Japan that it's all a lot of TV stations in the US bothered to license. The stigma exists largely because we were only ever exposed to the work of one guy. It wasn't until later that they started importing other shows like Voltron, and most of them were just ripping off either Gatchaman or Robotech.

Huge influence in anime and on a lot of people who were kids in that era (myself included). It is a sad day, indeed. I think I'll go watch some Gatchaman.

First Class good elements, but those are maybe like 5% of the movie. Otherwise pretty much everything Zarban said.

Also I'm still remarkably amused by the whole "training" scene.

"We're gonna have to work hard, and it'll be tough, and the only way we're gonna get through this is with each other."
*3 days later*
"Well now that we're all awesome and amazing, with each of us an amazing piece of new unheard of technology that was designed and built yesterday, let's do this shit."

I guh buh, what?

That's amazing. So applicable to so many movies.

So I was wandering the wonderful random paths of ImDB today, when I found what looked to be a pretty cool newish TV series. Falling Skies. So I decided, what the hell.

I just finished the premiere,

AND IT IS AWESOME.

Basically, take The Walking Dead, replace Zombies with invading aliens, add an actual sense of humor, replace the dipshit kid with one whos pretty kinda good, and then just make the whole thing actually good.

Oh and add Noah Wyle as History professor turned apocalyptic soldier and Colin Cunningham being rockstar apocalyptic gang leader.

And yes, it's just as awesome as it sounds.

Only down side is the effects suffer from being a lowish budget TV show, but they did a cool thing with some puppetry so I gotta give em that.

EDIT:

V.

Finally got around to starting this one. It's been sitting on my list for a while now. The first time I tried watching it, for reason I just got horribly disgusted with it within 5 minutes and just turned it off. I honestly have no idea what I was on at the time cause it's actually pretty awesome.

Though it does suffer from one of the things I hate about studios/networks, and thats the whole thing of having to explain your entire show in one episode so that they can decide whether they want to buy it or not. Because when I was hearing about V from other people I was expecting (Or maybe hoping) that it would be the sort of thing where it's a slow gradual reveal and it spans a season or 2, and it's really gradual and subversive. But nope, it's just BAM, suck my giant truth of the V cock. So that was dissappointing.

What is never disappointing though is Morena Baccarin in short hair. Oh yes indeed.

Oh yeah, and I guess Alan Tudyk and bunch of other people are in there too, but my gods Morena.