Penn and Teller on the Patriot Act

For the Gaming Inclined

Just a rumor floating around, but still exciting as hell:

Apparently, while Nintendo has debunked a rumor stating that the Wii could launch in September, they did say that October was a possibility.

Nintendo isn't making any promises, though, because all they really need to do is launch before Thanksgiving, for obvious reasons.

Warning: Shitty Anime

Hoshi no Koe - The Voices of a Distant Star
While Ah! My Goddess is an excercise in anime done right, Hoshi no Koe is a perfect example of anime gone totally and boringly wrong. How, exactly this sleep inducing junk got an 8.5 on AnimeNfo and an 8.o on IMDB is beyond me. People must have no fucking taste. (Mahoromatic earned a meager 6.5 on IMDB, what the hell?)

Okay, so here's the story of Hoshi no Koe: It's the year 20X6, or it might as well be. This middle school girl and her boyfriend are in love, etc, "I hope we go to the same high school!". Well not so fast, bitch, you're going to war. That's right! A 15 year old girl is drafted to pilot a mech as part of humanity's last best hope to strike back at an alien menace! It's never explained why or how the UN Space Force is drafting people not even old enough to drive, it doesn't matter, apparently.

But it's okay, because she's got her cell phone! She can text message him! I'm not making this up or exaggerating. So he checks his cell phone constantly waiting for any comminique from her. The entire story is told with her in the mech's cockpit in her school uniform, as if they didn't give her time to change before she left Earth and then locked her in the mech permanantly. Most of the time we see her sitting there, in the fetal position, holding her cell phone. And her boyfriend doesnt seem to do anything but stare at his cell phone and sleep in empty classrooms.

Eventually, she gets to Pluto, they get attacked, and they warp 1 light year out to the Oort Cloud and she sends him a message along the lines of "This message will take a year to get to you, but I'm still right here!".

Shortly after that they jump to 8 light years from Earth. So of course she sends him another text message! "You're 24 now, but I'm still 15. I miss Earth." But Sobby McEmopants had already given up on ever hearing from her again, or at least thats what he claims. Let's ignore the fact that he kept the same phone the whole time so that if she DID text him, he'd be able to get it.

But it doesn't matter because the entire planet they're exploring turns out to be a huge alien den, and they start picking off the Earth battlecruisers. The girl, somehow the only one left, decides she has to protect the last capital ship from the gigantic alien fleet, so she goes to the nose of the ship, adds her meager firepower to the already-ineffective battleship-class weaponry pouring out of the last earth ship, then goes out in a blaze of glory, somehow making her tiny mech's beam saber strong enough to cleave an alien cruiser. For some reason this loss of a single ship cripples the alien fleet enough to allow the earth ship to warp away.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the animation, it was awful. The actual animation was sketchy and choppy, and the CGI for the mech scenes was also choppy and just plain poorly done.

The voice acting in this version was suck, because it was done by the director and his fiance. Apparently there was another VO done by professionals, but I don't care enough to find it.

The only redeeming qualities were the background art, a little bit of the music, the box art, and the merciful fact that it's only ~25 minutes long.

Warning: Anime

Ah! My Goddess!
I must admit, I'm a freaking sucker for anime that's just...well...nice. That's probably how I'd best describe it. It reminds me of Mahoromatic (which, once I watched it, instantly became one of my all time favorites) in that it's got easily likable main characters who have a not unhealthy, though relatively platonic, relationship, among other things.


Actually - and I'm writing this off-the-cuff - It's actually got a surprisingly large number of similarities. Hmm, I think I'll look up the writers for both.

Anyway, the story is good, as of episode 10. It's generally lighthearted, but I think it might get a bit more serious later on (just like Mahoromatic, hmmm). The humor is there, and is decent. The character design for the goddesses is fantastic, I must say, and the artwork overall is very good, despite being relatively old. (1993)

It's not all just sentimental stuff. There's some action every once and a while, and good secondary characters abound to keep things light. The special effects are good, again, for their age, and the music isn't bad either.

Anyway, I think this is an anime that anybody who doesnt mind anything a little sentimental can enjoy. I haven't got a single greivance to air about it, so I guess I'll just leave it at that for the time being.