Caprica Opening Titles

The Battlestar Galactica spin-off prequel Caprica just began airing as the ‘Syfy’ channel’s primary show and although I wasn’t very impressed by the two-hour pilot episode that was released on DVD last year this fantastic opening credit for the series makes me want to give the show a second chance. The video, accompanied with Bear McCreary’s excellent score has to rank now as one of the best title sequences in American television.

Evangelion Action Figure Adverts

Here are two TV advertisements for two Evangelion figure lines in Japan. These are pretty fun.

Gantz Live Action Film Images

The first images (that I’ve seen at least) of the upcoming 2-part film version of Hiroya Oku’s manga Gantz has been released featuring the actress who will be playing Kishimoto Kei’s character. Linked from: http://www.alafista.com/2010/02/07/gantz-live-action-movie-magazine-scans/

Weekly Hirasawa 6

Today we have the opening to Hirasawa’s 2003 Interactive Live show ‘Limbo 54′ featuring the song ‘Sniper’, a live version of the song ‘Lotus’ from another undated Interactive Live show and then the song ‘The Dreaming Machine’ from a concert of his in 2009. ‘The Dreaming Machine’ is also the title of the upcoming film by Satoshi Kon…will a remix of this track be featured as the principle theme of the film like in Kon’s previous films ‘Millenium Actress’ and ‘Paprika’?

Miyazaki Music Video

I ran across a music video done by Hayao Miyazaki in 1995 for a band called ‘Chage and Aska’ for their song  ‘On Your Mark’.

Evangelion 2.0 DVD Release Date

A Japanese online retailer has just listed a May 26th release date for the second entry in the Rebuild of Evangelion film series now entitled ‘Evangelion 2.22′. The ‘.22′ in the title denotes the added footage and re-touched animation that will be included in the Blu-Ray/DVD release. As usual, no release date for the American version of the film has been announced although Funimation is finally releasing the first film, ‘1.11′, on Blu-Ray and DVD on March 9th.

High School of the Dead Anime Announced (Updated)

An animated version of the manga High School of the Dead has just been announced…which isn’t too suprising due to not only the apparent popularity of the manga in Japan but also how popular the ‘cute girls with graphic violence’ genre has been in anime recently. Upon writing that last sentence I realized that a large majority of anime has always been in the ‘cute girls with graphic violence’ category, but, to rephrase, it has been quite the trend recently in Japan to produce low-quality shows with the marketable ‘qualities’ of the female characters being the primary draw and the graphic violence used to distract from the lack of a story and sub-par animation. I enjoyed the manga of this, as ‘brainless’ as it is, and although I am interested in seeing the animated version I do not have very high expectations for it. Robert Kirkman’s ‘The Walking Dead’ it is not but it still supplies hordes of the lurching, moaning undead for the main cast of characters to destroy and be eaten by. Exciting.

I found a small image of a two-page spread article in the most recent issue of the Japanese anime magazine Newtype that shows what the general look of the characters will be in the new series.

Scott Pilgrim Movie Release Date

It was just recently announced by director Edgar Wright that Scott Pilgrim vs. The World will be released on August 13th, and, in response, the author of the original work, Bryan Lee O’Malley announced that he has a release date for the final volume of the comic series which he can’t yet announce….but that it is a ‘little while’ before the release of the movie.

Ship and Star Charts for Star Trek Online

Taken from Suricata’s Artwork blog ( http://suricatasblog.wordpress.com/) these pictures have been quite helpful….especially the ship chart! The ship chart had been posted on the Star Trek Online forums outlining all of the different ship classes that one could get in the game; even though the chart was for the Beta (some of the ship class names will be diferent, as well as some designs that are missing entirely from the chart), it’s still a helpful guide to what kind of ship a player might be interested in getting. The star map is, obviously, a full zone map of pretty much everywher you can go in the present game.

Star Trek Online Borg Patch

With the early start of Star Trek Online beginning in just a few hours, the official site has updated with a large preview of the content that will be included in upcoming patches over the next few months; the central focus of the patch being the Borg. The Borg invasion at the end of the Open Beta was a teaser for the large amount of Borg content that will become available in future updates including special questlines, 5-person raids and larger fleet actions. One of the storylines includes the introduction of a new Borg Queen as well as an appearance by Q. More pictures from the ‘Borg patch’ are included below.