Likely Fall Titles

Every season or so, we watchers of anime (they’re just Japanese cartoons; get over it) are exposed to a new glut of titles. Many are derivatives of past manga (they’re just Japanese comic books; get over it) or visual books / eroge / dating sims. Alas, I haven’t been very good at keeping up with the broad variety of manga available, and just can’t bring myself to play video games whose interfaces tend to revolve around staring at a slide show, clicking my mouse to get the next snippet of dialog. The summer is winding down, with shows like Higurashi no Naku Koro ni winding down and Zero no Tsukaima hitting the midway point, so it is just about time for a new crop to rise up and take their places.

Other, more focused sites like BasuGasuBakuhatsu and Makenai desuwayo have gone to the effort of researching and giving preview opinions of the literally dozens of shows set to air soon, but for some reason I just can’t do it. My reasons for dismissing some of these titles are so petty, so trivial as to be almost embarrassing. Additionally, I’ve been so very wrong about titles in the past (G-On Riders looked so promising for a couple episodes, really it did!) that such predictions based on a handful of promotional drawings are just bound to fall on their face and reveal me as the untalented hack that I may well be.

That said, a couple of titles will definitely get a viewing from me, for at least a couple of episodes.
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Welcome to Llael

Llael, circa 604 AR

The fair nation of Llael is blessed in a great many ways. Located along the busiest trade routes in Western Immoren, Llael is a nexus of commerce, culture, and politics. Rhul borders to the North, Khador to the West, and Cygnar to the South. Ample coal and sulfur deposits lend stability to this kingdom’s economy, which is otherwise subject to the ebbs and flows of international commerce. As the home of the international monetary exchange and the headquarters for the Order of the Golden Crucible, a great deal of wealth passes through Llael.
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Oyashiro Grand Unification Theory

The fate of Mion and Rena

Blatant spoilers follow:

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni is the kind of series that invokes a great deal of theorizing, speculation, and at least a little confusion. Four “question” arcs have been aired and translated to English, and the first “answer” arc just wrapped up, shedding a great deal of light on one of the scenarios, and possibly others. Much like in the realm of theoretical physics, I am currently seeking a plausible grand unification theory for this show. What would be necessary for these plot arcs to all have a basis in the same set of facts?
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Zero's Familiar

The noble and her familiar
Zero no Tsukaima (Zero’s Familiar) is another one of those series that, along with Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (When the Cicadas Cry), sounds a lot less dopey when you use Japanese. This series, along with Inukami, holds a position of the guilty pleasure.
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Who Wants to be a Proxy?

Vincent, stumped

After a six-week hiatus, a new episode of Ergo Proxy has been translated into English. This one carries on with the recent trend of Proxy vs. Proxy battles to the death. As with Episode 14, Vincent’s opponent utilizes a rather unusual method of combat, putting our protagonist in a sitution in which he must reach 1,000,000 points in a quiz contest.

Radio Free Llael

Llael, circa 604 AR

Radio Free Llael is a podcast produced rather in the spirit of Fell Calls, but instead of being run by a gaggle of wargamers, it is run by a group of roleplaying enthusiasts. At only two episodes, it is already shaping up to be the National Public Radio to the Fell Calls’ wacky sports talk. The tone is relatively mellow, and the hosts Thurston and Nick clearly get along well with each other and their guests very well. One thing that is clear from the first two episodes is that these folks aren’t afraid to break away from the canonical Iron Kingdoms, going so far as to incorporate airships into their upcoming Llaelese Resistance campaign.

Give it a try for some mellow, geeky fun.

World Firefox Day

World Firefox Day

Attention nerds: September 15th is World Firefox Day. This is the big day to get your name “immortalized” by talking some schleb into downloading a copy of Firefox. For the uninitiated, Firefox is the open-source web browser based off of Mozilla, the open-source version of Netscape. Netscape, if you don’t recall, is the browser people used to use before Internet Explorer conquered the world in a bloody coup. In the spirit of World Firefox Day, I submit to you my reasons everybody should use Firefox:

  • Tabbed Browsing. You can’t get it from IE without installing Maxthon, which is free, or by upgrading to version 7. You don’t want to upgrade, that would be bad.
  • Tabbed Browsing. You can’t get it from Opera. Scratch that, Opera does it.
  • The Acid 2 test. Firefox fails the test better than IE does.
  • Memory leaks are fun. You always wanted to consume over 100 megabytes of RAM just to have a five kilobyte webpage open, right?
  • If you are one of the Macintosh holdouts, you really should use Firefox. You see, Microsoft stopped making new versions of IE, and Safari is quite possibly the most insidiously bad browsers ever conceived, so Firefox is one of your few decent options.
  • Bill Gates is evil. Unless you’re a third-world kid dying from a treatable disease and he’s sending doctors and medicine to you. But that doesn’t count, he was wildly-successful through the 80’s and 90’s and is therefore the Antichrist.
  • Firefox used to be Firebird. Firebird used to be Phoenix. This browser has more names than Nyarlathotep.

All that aside, I tend to use Firefox more than I use IE, and use Opera solely to test for compatibility issues. The reason for this is largely inertia. The Internet Explorer 7 beta is reasonably stable and does everything I need it to, but I’ve grown accustomed to clicking on the little orange fox in my quick-launch bar.