You know, I’ve had a copy of Dearly Stars since it’s release, and I’ve still not got around to playing it. Part of this is that it’s one of those annoying DSi-enhanced games that are region-locked (therefore, won’t play on my larger-screened EU DSes).

I must confess that I have no idea what he is talking about, because my Dearly Starts runs just fine on a U.S.-market DS:

The print on the box does not say a word about DSi, and if I remember right, the game came out before DSi. It does mention some mysterious Wi-Fi feature though…

Coincidentially, IM@S2 for PS3 works just fine on U.S. console too.

UPDATE:

Dearly Stars works fine on a regular DS, regardless of region. The problem is that, when Nintendo introduced the DSI (and the XL), they created something of a double standard – most DS games are region free, but any which use any of the additional functionality of the DSi will only work on consoles of the same region.

Dearly Stars as some additional functionality which can utilise the cameras on the DSi – something to do with scanning QR codes, as I recall – and as a result, non-Japanese DSi/DSiXL consoles refuse to so much as acknowledge that there’s anything in the cartridge socket. I mean, it’s not like I’ve not got a regular DS (both Lite and Phat), but the screens are a good degree smaller than on a DSi or even a 3DS. It’s kind of hard to go back at this point.

Pretty fun little anime, all things considered.

So:

• Conventional wisdom is that anime blogs are insignificant compared to political blogs. Not so: a dead anime blog still has 436 people clinging to it, or well within striking range of fairly well-knowin political blogs.
• Beta-Waffle has three people reading it [on Google]? Seriously? What is wrong with humanity?

UPDATE: Omo says that GR shows 45 subscribers to Beta-Waffle for him, which would be in the right ballpark. I suspect some sites may have a problem splitting a feed into Atom and RSS.

What is left is trying to know all the songs, and that is a task too tall even for me, lest I get serious. But I just want a short fling with iM@S! I don’t want to turn into [Author] (I jest).

When I saw it, I thought that he only needs to be patient and the urge will pass. However, here’s Shin, a new convert, twittering:

iDOLM@STER ruined Berserk and BRS. For some reason it makes good artists forget about their current projects and focus on im@s instead.

It is difficult to say how far the franchize can go. Who knew that Miku is going to be that amazing? And I do suspect that Kadokawa expected more from Haruhi.

I thought IM@S was going to burn itself out long ago. I looked how Hibiki was a PETA-addled Makoto, and thought that the creators were scrapping the bottom of the creativity barrel. And the crazy trio? A victim of teenage pregnacy, seriously, is that what it takes now?

But that was before the TV anime. It was before Shinkan Shoujo. Before Omo knew Ami from Mami. Before Haruka questioned what it was being an idol.

Both Shingu and Stellvia were either truncated from an unusual 3-cour format, or had extensions proposed, depending how you look at it.

P.S. On second thought, Martian Successor Nadesico was a plain 2-cour affair with no drama attached. Only had a movie, like everything else.

P.P.S. Widespread misunderstanding makes it clear that I should have put more thought into the title. I toyed with “Pirates were destined to run for 2 cours before anime was green-lighted”, but it was too long.

Either Zyl is a king of trolls or I am gullible in the extreme. He told me that OVA of Quiet Morita-san had definite proof that Mayu’s father was actually unfaithful to Yumi. I downloaded the two episodes that are not available at Crunchy, and he’s not in either of them. As far as I’m concerned, Yumi’s groundless jealousy is the source of funny hijinks in the anime canon. She is also a little broken in the head. I say that on the basis of sitting in seiza overnight in front of the door just to give the guy a good earful.

UPDATE: OVA (thanks, Zyl).

Perhaps they plan to get everything with that lawsuit anyway. Yes, that’s the only sensible explanation.

watched Mouretsu Space Pirates 3: noise in space. SEEMS LIKE THE SUCCESSOR TO STARSHIP OPERATORS IS NOT HERE YET

But of course. For one thing, reportedly, Mr. Sato aimed to eliminate romance from Mouretsu Pirates. A bonehead move for sure. Remember Kyoichi Moriguchi and Harumi Mineo? Does Tatsuo Sato? It was his best anime, Shingu. As for Starship Operators, I remember only 3 things about it now:

1. Bullshit ending and “Truman”
2. Magically contrieved deus-ex ship combat
3. Sanri’s scream — the only redeeming feature of the series

Of course Mouretsu is not SP, duh. How could it be!

What gets to me is how people maneuver in zero G. Pirates has repeatedly had people floating still in the air, not in contact with anything, and then had them just start moving again without pushing off anything or otherwise had some source of thrust. Sometimes people have stopped in midair (not coasted to a stop, just stopped). It’s as if Pirates is treating people in zero G just like people walking along the ground, except they can coast and float and move in any direction.

Pirates doesn’t do this all of the time; a lot of the time people do push off things and stop themselves on things. But not always, and the exceptions make me twitch.

I watched a number of series where zero-G is animated, and they always have these lapses. Even Rocket Girls has it. For example, when Akane enters Atlantis, she floats to a stop:

I suspect that in their production rush animators skip animating most movements. Astronauts say that legs in particular are useless to push off things, so everyone grab something with hands. This is a lot of movement, and skipping it is akin to the common situation when a bunch of characters stand perfectly motionless while one moves or talks. I learned not to be bothered by it.

UPDATE: Chris responds that violations in Mouretsu are qualitatively more pervasive and blatant than in Rocket Girls. I only watched 2 episodes thus far and thought it was not too bad. I have to admit that I noticed the oddities onboard Odette II, but it could be worse.

By the way, you know where this stuff is bad? In Tatsuo Sato’s Stellvia. In many instances, things float around cockpits (including, for instance, Kouta’s oxigen bottle). But tears stream down cheeks.

Remembering Starship Operators is also rather educational in this regard. The creators there had a lot of fun with small detail of living in a rotating space station. For example, a tea kettle has a makeshift sign “beware of Coriolis”, presumably after a few times someone missed a cup. But they were not thorough enough to cover every instance of space physics (the anime includes a large EVA segment). I think nobody is. You have to be a real nerd to be used to it, and sometimes it takes actual calculations to support a plausible environment. Note that Rocket Girls had JAXA engineers volunteering in support of the anime, doing mock trade studies of launchers and vehicles and roughly beta-testing the script.

Something happened to the unfunny comedy show of the season: it made me laugh. And it came out of nowhere, too. Two thirds of the ep.4 were usual, but in the last third, something changed. I assume it’s safe to spoil, since nobody watches that garbage anyway, but anyhow: an assasin on a mission to waste Sonya had an idea to disguise himself as Yasuna. Only the situation turned out more complex than that. A kaleidoscopic sequence of gags followed… with a great attention to continuity. For example, at some point one of fake Yasunas strikes the other one with a poison dart (because Sonya dodges it), then revives her with a zombie antidote. But more interestingly, all of them make statements from the very beginning that permit to track which is which and what their agenda is. It all culminates in almost a Nichijoesque cartoon violence with Yasunas flying on the bloody red background from the might of Sonya’s blow.

I think the sudden laugh came from the ability to cross the viewer and his expectation with a perfectly logical but unexpected development. It is not the complete technique, certainly. In one of the previous episodes, Agiri suddenly proved that she actually is a capable ninja, by defeating another ninja on equal terms. Considering all the fake ninja tricks and merch she tried to sell for 3 episodes, it was unexpected, but not humorous. Perhaps this needs something else, like the rapid-fire comedic timing and a dash of ridiculous but plausible.

Aroduc praised this segment thus:

The fake Yasunas were okay, I guess, particularly with their attempted combination attack, but that middle one’s voice hurt my brain.

You can imagine how good the segment was if he old hater admitted to it being “okay”.