Tranzor Z

Tranzor Z was my introduction to anime. I remember someone much later telling me that anime was quality animation and that there was a lot more attention to detail, and that American animators weren't as dedicated as their Japanese counterparts. Well, I can honestly say that Tranzor Z might just disprove that theory.

I'm not bashing Tranzor Z at all. I remember watching this cartoon on Sunday morning. There's a huge nostalgia factor for this to me. To be honest, it was on when I was probably 6 or 7 and for the longest time I couldn't remember what the show was called. Then, a bunch of guys were talking about old 80's cartoons, and they started on the memorable ones like G.I Joe, Thundercats, Transformers, He-Man and Voltron. Then they started bringing up ones I hadn't heard about in years, like Silverhawks, Turbo Teen, Visionaires and Gobots. So I asked them if they remembered a cartoon where there was a giant robot controlled by a kid in a hovercraft, and sure enough they knew it.

That was a couple of years ago, and I've looked up some of the stuff since then, and Tranzor Z has some of the same feel as some of the giant monster movies that came out of Japan about the same time. I don't know much about the diakaiju genre, but I do remember liking the Godzilla movies that were shown as the Saturday afternoon movie.

I added the second picture to show that way back in the 70's, when this actually was released in Japan as Manzinger Z, the Japanese were still putting a lot of fan service in their cartoons. It was also funny how the female robots were armed (if you're interested, look it up). Regardless, even though my memories of this cartoon doesn't totally match up with reality, it really was still a cool cartoon, and if it came on today, I'd have to watch it.

Leopard Geckos

Alright, I've already said that I was a pet person, and I have several different types of pets. I'm really starting to prefer reptiles, much because they are not the kind of pets that are hounding you every minute of the day, like my dog.

There is a strange correlation of price and maintenance for some of these animals. It seems to me that the cheapest reptiles actually cost more because of maintenance than do more expensive reptiles. There are some exceptions to this, and of course I'm not talking about the most expensive animals, as they can range into the thousands for rare varieties.

There is a safe middle ground, and if you're willing to pay a little more up front. That is the Leopard Gecko. They don't cost too much, and are much easier to maintain that some reptiles that require very specific habitat requirements. They are also very docile, and do not get very large. They are insectivores, so you need to have a constant supply of insects for them, but this is just as simple as hitting the pet store and buying crickets when you need them. They are fairly clean too, and their cage maintenance is pretty simple. Over all, a very cool, and low maintenance pet.

The Rendezvous with Rama Series

Alright, my first Arthur C. Clarke posting. The entire Rama series is four books long. The first book, Rendevzous with Rama, was written in the 70's and the sequel trilogy (Rama II, The Garden of Rama, & Rama Revealed) was written about two decades later. Arthur C. Clarke co-authored the sequel trilogy with Gentry Lee.

The first book is about an forty kilometer long cylindrical spaceship that passes through the Solar System. Mankind has taken to space and the crew of the nearest ship is ordered to investigate the huge ship. They "rendezvous" with "Rama" (the name given the ship) and the book is pretty much about the humans exploring the ship. The storyline is actually pretty simple, and the book is really geared to be technology driven.

The sequel trilogy is much more character driven. The main character of the series is Nicole de Jardins Wakefield and the story picks up her life in her early thirties and explores her life. The characters of this series really come to life, and this is the kind of book that you can sit and re-read and enjoy again, like you are visiting friends you haven't seen in a while.

The story of the sequel trilogy starts with the return of the Rama craft 70 years after it was last in the Solar System. A team of scientists are sent to the ship to try to determine it's purpose. There's a lot of interaction and conflict between the different scientists, military personnel and obligatory reporters on the trip.

In the third and fourth books, the ship travels on to Sirius, back to Earth and on to Tau Ceti. I can't go into too much story here because somehow it will be a spoiler, I'll just say that there are aliens.

I just found out too that Gentry Lee wrote two other books set in this same universe, and now I'm going to have to look into them. Also, Morgan Freeman has signed on to do a big screen interpretation of the first book, but it is still in an announced status, and no news has been released since February.

Robotech vs. Macross

Alright, I know, I'm going back to the 80's again with today's post, but it's not totaly a product of me being nostalgic. Instead, it's the fact that some of this stuff has become availble on DVD over the last few years, and I'm have been rediscovering over the past couple years.

First of all, Robotech is the American version of Macross, sorta. Robotech is the artifical stitching together of three mecha (big robots) cartoons together because the American producers wanted a series that would be run daily instead of weekly. So the producers strung Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Calvary Southern Cross and Genesis Climber Mospeada together and revoiced them in ways to make the story fit the animation, sorta. Actually, everything after the first series sorta blew, including all the sequels.

Macross started with the same Super Dimension Fortress Macross, but instead of trying to lace three unconnected series together, Macross is actually a good series with continuity and sequels that don't suck. Macross is the Japanese progression of SDF Macross, where Robotech is the American version. Macross is much better than Robotech.

Geek crisis aside, Macross is kinda one of those guilty pleasures. One of the things that I like about some early anime is the assumption that the Japanese know what kind of music seems futuristic. I don't know if Disco will be the ultimate form of music in the universe or not, but the production teams dealing with almost all 80's animes sure seem to believe it. There's also a version of techno-disco out there that is like nothing else I've ever heard. In the 90's they started getting away from this forward thinking and started coming up with some really good music, and the tradition continues today.

Back to Macross, the story is cool, and progresses into sequel series, OVA's and a movie or two. It is a good, if complicated series, and well worth watching.

Sealab 2021

Normally I'm not really a big Adult Swim fan. There's gotta be some head writer over at the Cartoon Network that is totally convinced that the words annoying and funny are interchangeable. It's not that I don't get the jokes, I do, but to borrow from the wisdom of Zorak on Space Ghost Coast to Coast (incidentally another Adult Swim production) it's just that the jokes aren't worth getting. Get it?

There is an exception to every rule, or so they say, and that exception is Sealab 2021. The animation for Sealab 2021 was copied off a 70's Hanna-Barbera cartoon, Sealab 2020 and was re-edited and re-voiced. The real difference between Sealab 2021 and most of the other shows on Adult Swim is that Sealab 2021 is funny.

Enough about that, the cartoon is 15 minutes long, and the characters are all scientists in an underwater laboratory. Captain Murphy is an idiot, but is one of the most enjoyable characters on the show. He's constantly doing stupid things and getting the lab blown up and is just plain nuts. Actually, all the characters have these serious mental flaws that would keep a flock of psychiatrists solvent for all of eternity. I was going to say that there was one straight character, but I'd be wrong if I did, so I won't.

After about a season, there was more original animation as it just wasn't possible to keep re-editing and re-voicing the same clips without someone noticing. At the end of Season 3, the voice actor who did Captain Murphy died, so Murphy was replaced with Captain Shanks. The episodes in the last couple of seasons were some of the best, though I think most people would have liked it better if Captain Murphy had still been around, and the series might have made it into a 6th season if he had still been around.

Anne McCaffrey's Talent Series

Alright, I admit it, I'm an Anne McCaffrey fan. I like her easy-going writing style that is very similar to some of the older serial style stories. I like the way she develops her characters and the multi-generational aspect of most of her stories. She is the only author who I'm comfortable saying, "If she wrote it, I want to read it." High praise indeed.

I was initially introduced to her stories by the Science Fiction Book Club. They sent me the Dragonriders of Pern, an anthology of three Pern books, but before I cancelled way back when, they also sent me a book called Damia's Children. To be honest this was a rather inauspicious beginning to what would develop into one of the most enjoyable parts of my life, which was reading these books.

I will get into this more in a later post, but I am really an Astronomy nut. However, I tend to divide Astronomy into two distinct parts, one dealing with stars and one dealing with planets. Planets are what I like. When planetology for lack of a better term plays a big part a story, I'm liable to be hooked. This is something that McCaffrey does better than just about anyone else I know. Actually when I try to think of a comparison, I usually end up thinking about another of McCaffrey's works like: Nimisha's Ship, the Catteni trilogy, or the Doona trilogy (which I'm still working on). The reason that I bring this up is that the Talent series deals with the beginnings of humanities expansion into space.

The first book that was written was The Rowan, but I think it's better to go back to the Pegasus trilogy when humanity is trying to expand off an overcrowded Earth and make their first journey to another planet. Peter Reidinger is an extremely well developed character that is extremely relatable. Actually all of the characters are really relatable, and realistic to boot. Peter helps assist with the first expedition to Altair.

The real genius of this series is how the story keeps building on itself. I also like the alien encounters are handled in this series, both with the Mrdini and the Hivers. The friendly Mrdini and the rival Hivers are both expanding too, but humanity has an advantage, Psionics.

Psionics are how humanity has managed to colonize other planets, specifically telekinetically throwing cargoes and ships almost instantaneously across the void. Telekinesis, telepathy, empathy and many other psionic gifts are lumped together as talents, and the people who have these gifts are known as Talents.

There are 8 books in the series, one of which is a collection of short stories. They should be available just about anywhere.

I would be remiss if I didn't state that

Transformer's Comic Books

I'm just going to start this post by saying that I do like Transformers, and to be honest probably way too much. Just like a lot of other thirty-somethings, I do feel a bit nostalgic about some of the cartoons and toys of the 80's. So when I say I like Transformers, I'm talking about Gen 1 80's nostalgia candy.

Here's the thing though, the cartoons really sucked. Now don't go hating now if you still love the cartoons, I'd watch them, but just how many times can you screw up the coloring and voices of Thundercracker, Starscream and Skywarp. I mean really, I don't know how many times it would be Skywarp's paint job with Starscream's voice or Thundercracker would fluctuate between his coloring and Skywarp's.

That's not the only problem with the animation either. Call it a pet peeve, but if in one scene a Transformer is towering over two-story houses, he shouldn't be just slightly taller than the human he's catching while rescuing them.

The toys were cool, and I still have some of them. I really liked these toys when I was growing up, and my smart grandmother held on to some of them for me and gave them to me when I was an adult. However, there's no story to toys.

Fortunately there was a Transformers product that did have good writing and kept up with all the additions to the toy line. In 1984, Marvel started producing what would turn into an 80 issue run of Transformers comics. It started off with a four part miniseries, but with the successes of the cartoon and toy line, Marvel just kept it going.

Right out of the gates, the storyline was so much better than the cartoon as the writers seemed to understand continuity. To be honest, it did take some ramp up time, but right away there were some major differences between the comic and the cartoon. To give you an example, when there was a shootout, there were actually casualties on each side; the shots actually managed to hit something! I remember Ratchet (the Autobot Medic) being upset that he didn't have enough parts to repair all of the Autobots, and more and more of them were being shutdown and put in stasis until the necessary part could be found.

Now, I have to get into the movie a bit, because a lot of Transformers, on both sides, bought it in the movie, but come on, the movie was weird, and it still managed to screw up paint jobs (Rewind and Eject come to mind as they both changed colors by walking). There's another comparison though, and it was the Matrix. The comic had like a 20 issue run of the Matrix Quest, in which Optimus Prime (the coolest Transformer ever) lead all the Transformers along with Scorponok to battle Unicron, and that's how Optimus dies. Oh, and by the way, he dies because there's only like a fifth of him left, he doesn't just turn gray.

The stories throughout the comics are good, though a little dated, and the comic also manages to keep up with all the Transformers that were released in toys, not just the first years worth or so, and it manages to incorporate them into the story in inventive ways, like the space bridge! Slag pits, Head Masters, and a storyline of Galvatron vs. Megatron, what more can you ask for? Oh, and BTW, Spike isn't a pansy in this version either.

The Foundation Series

The Foundation Series originally was a series of short stories written by Isaac Asimov in the 1940's and published in book form in the early 1950's. This trilogy stood alone until the 1980's when Asimov wrote two sequels and two prequels. In these additions to the series, especially the sequels, Asimov tied the whole Foundation series into two other series that he had worked on, the Robot Series and the Galactic Empire Series, making all three series exist all in one continuous universe.

Since Asimov passed away, other writers have extended the canon of the Foundation series again. Greg Bear, David Brin and Gregory Benford have each written a book which collectively are known as the Second Foundation Trilogy. There is also a collection of short stories by various authors called Foundations Friends, and some of those stories are actually pretty good.

Asimov himself has a very unique writing style that lends itself to imaginative interpretation. Other writers have a tendency to over-emphasize detail in their writing style, and some books that I have read could honestly be said to be more detail than story. Other stories are event driven and some books hardly seem to progress the story at all. Asimov's style of progressing the story through dialog is possibly unique; I've certainly never seen anyone else have a story unfold through conversation.

For the story it self, it is based upon a new field of science developed by Hari Seldon called psychohistory. The premise stated basically is that although it is almost impossible to predict the actions of any one individual, predicting the actions of large groups of people gets easier the larger the group is. This is very similar to Kinetic theory, which deals with the ability to predict the macroscopic movements of gases.

Geeky stuff aside, Hari Seldon uses psychohistory to predict the future. He sees that the Galactic Empire will collapse within 300 years, and there's nothing he can do to stop it. So he develops a plan to shorten the period of time between the first and second empires from 30,000 years to only 1,000 years. The whole story has two distinct phases: setting up the plan and following the plan. Since the plan has to be followed for at least 1000 years, it takes generations of followers that are unwittingly making sure that the plan is followed.

There's a lot more to this story, telepathy plays a big part as does atomics and technology. The whole project is a good picture of humanity sprawling across the galaxy. It's amazing just how easy it is to read all these books. You can pick them up just about anywhere.

Ramen

Mmm, Ramen. I'm not talking about just the "Ready in 3 minutes" that costs you a whopping $.18 in the grocery store. I'm talking about the real thing. There's nothing quite like sitting down to an enormous bowl of corn-butter or curry ramen reading slightly inappropriate manga and not hearing a word of English being spoken anywhere in the restaurant.

Ramen = good, there's just no denying it, but you have to understand that there might be some things going on in that bowl that you don't understand. If you know about it, the experience will be much better.

The biggest thing that you need to know about is naruto kamaboko. Kamaboko is a fishcake and the naruto style of kamaboko is a white fishcake with a pink dye swirl in the middle. Honestly it looks kinda strange, but it's taste and texture are both very mild, and it doesn't really do anything other than add a bit of protein to the soup.

Another thing you might want to know is that even if you don't order soup with seafood in it, depending on the restaurant you go to, your soup will likely have seafood of some kind in it. People with allergies beware.

Finally, if you can't figure out what the large tofu looking like lump is melting in your soup, never fear it's only butter. I normally find it better to allow the butter to actually melt and diffuse though the soup before you eat it, otherwise the last bit of soup sure is going to be buttery.

Matsuchan is a restaurant in Canton, MI, which is the only authentic Ramen noodle bar that I know of in the Greater Detroit Area. This place is awesome, and if you are ever going to be in the area, you should do what you can to make a visit. Your taste buds will thank you.

Giant In the Playground

Giant in the Playground is a web comic that is based off of Dungeons & Dragons. It follows the adventures of a group of well, adventurers who call themselves the Order of the Stick, as they quest to defeat evil, score lots of gold and sing.

Giant ITP can be said to definitely be service to many of the old school D&D fanboys. There are many references to spot checks, saving throws and dice rolls, very pleasing to old gamers. There's also a lot of references to rule changes and other updates in the D&D system that just seem to confuse the characters more than anything.

The story is well written, with multiple story arcs, and lots of character development, especially for stick figures. New elements are added quite often, and some of the old story arcs are actually completed, so they don't just hang out there forever. There's also tons of in-jokes and lots of great satire throughout this comic. It gets updated fairly regularly, and will take you a couple of weeks to read through the archives (I know this from personal experience), which I greatly recommend. If you are going to get into this, start at the beginning and if you can handle it, just keep going. I will warn you though, when you get caught up like I am now and have to wait for new comics to be released, you will find yourself suffering from OOTS withdrawal, and unfortunately there is no cure.

Cornsnakes

Alright, I am definitely a pet person, and other exotic pets are going to come up in this blog in the future, but for right now, I'm going into one of my favorite pets, cornsnakes.

I know that not everybody is a herp (reptile) lover and I understand that there is definitely a stigma to owning reptiles. Fortunately there are also tons of people who just don't understand that stigma, and know the truth that most reptiles are enjoyable pets that are easy to keep.

There are some reptile that are considered "starter reptiles" because their maintenance and needs are comparatively simple. Cornsnakes definitely fall into this category, but that doesn't mean that they aren't really enjoyable pets for anyone who likes a pet that isn't the cuddly type.

This is a picture of one of my own cornsnakes, Kama Tui, and in this picture she is really just a neonate. She's grown to about 20 inches long and is definitely into the yearling phase of her growth. She will eventually reach about 5 foot long and be about 2-3 inches in diameter. Right now she eats mice that are about a week old, but will eventually be all the way up to rats, cornsnakes are red rat snakes after all. She eats once a week and she is a pretty good eater. Other than that, I hold her some during the week, but not so much as to stress her out, just enough to keep her calm when being handled.

I've got four of these snakes. Mushu is an orange-red coral snow, Yuki is a gray-brown Miami phase, Konami is a butter (shades of yellow), and Kama Tui, as you can see, is a hypomelanistic that is shades of brown.

Incarnations of Immortality Series

It's easier to write about a book series that I like than about just about anything else. The Incarnations of Immortality series is written by Piers Anthony, and was originally a five book series that dealt the the personifications of five fundamental forces in the universe: Death, Time, Fate, War and Nature. The antagonist of the first five books is Satan, another personification of a fundamental force, and the protagonists work for the cause of right, personified by God. What's interesting is that each book in the series tells a very similar story. The main character of the series is a girl named Luna, but interestingly enough, she is never the main character of any of the books. She is an important character in every book, but is never the main character, and the books never make the mistake of changing the perspective to her point of view.

The series was a hit back in the 80's (before I was doing any serious reading) and Anthony was persuaded by fans and publisher to finish off the series with two more books, that dealt with the personifications of Satan and God. Actually, book six, For Love of Evil, is my favorite book of the series, and one of my favorite books of all time. This book turns the whole series on its ear, and takes the simple formula of protagonist vs. Satan and complicates it up a lot, although this was hinted at in book five, Being a Green Mother. And Eternity, book seven finally wraps the story up and ties it together by exploring humanity's predisposition to vacillate between extremes, and righteously defend their position against anyone who disagrees with them. The whole book is dedicated to the thought that everyone could be wrong about everything they think they know, and only by finding out the truth for themselves will they be able to fix their problems. Just so you know I'm being purposefully vague here because I don't want to give any of the story away.

Here's where I would be done, but 17 years after And Eternity was written, Anthony capitulated to the desires of the fans again, and wrote an eighth book, Under a Velvet Cloak, which explores the much more complicated mythos of the Incarnation of Night, Nox. First, it's important to understand that Thanatos, Chronos, Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos, Mars, Gaea, Satan and God represent the major Incarnations of Day, and that the Incarnations of Night were never really explored, and barely mentioned other than as a mystery in the other books.

Where the Incarnations of Day seem to have a defined purpose, the purpose of the Incarnations of Night are nebulous at best. In all the books, each Incarnation is supreme in their own bailiwick. This theme seems to be climactic to each of the first five books, and also has an effect in the last 3, but to a lesser effect. The thing is, Nox doesn't start the story really know what her bailiwick actually is. Every other Incarnation has dealt with their interpretation of their office, but each has had some guidance. Nox doesn't and is left not to interpret her office, but to discover and define it, and she has no help doing it.

Also, Nox's story is much more centered around herself than any of the other stories, and it is a deviation from the rest of the series. She is a much different kind of Incarnation, and instead of working for the greater good as she understands it, she is more working for herself, and that seems to coincide with what is good. She has many character flaws that the other Incarnations don't possess, but this seems to be how the Incarnation of Night is supposed to be, so it's all good.

All in all, an excellent 8 book series. Most of these books can be found at your local used bookstore in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section. Under a Velvet Cloak however is published by Mundania Press, and can be purchased online at www.mundaniapress.com. Well worth the read.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Alright, just to clarify everything, I'm not blogging about the movie. I'm not blogging about the books. I'm not blogging about the BBC TV series. I'm not blogging about the BBC Radio drama. What I am blogging about is the whole franchise that is the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

For some reason there are HGTTG purists out there, and for some reason they hate the movie, or they hate the TV series, or they make a huge deal about how the books are different from the radio drama. Here's what I say about that. Don't Panic. Here's the real skinny for these purists: Douglas Adams wasn't a purist himself, and he wrote the thing. Adams was obviously OK with a little flexibility in his stories, and this can be seen by the fact that while he was writing Salmon of Doubt, he wasn't sure whether it was going to end up as a Hitchhiker's story, or a Dirk Gently story, and he was planning on altering it to fit his purpose best. Also, Life the Universe and Everything originally started out as a Dr. Who movie script called Dr. Who and the Krikkitmen. You need to go take a nice long lunch break and just relax a bit.

So disclaimer aside, HGTTG is really enjoyable nonsense. There are some really funny jokes in this series, and the typical British style satire really makes the whole thing great. There are some really great lines, like Adams describing the ability to fly as "The art of throwing ones self at the ground and missing." Also the thought of a mutant star goat, always entertaining.

For the movie, it must be understood that I do understand that some stuff that people really wanted to see was left on the cutting room floor, and I feel for them. I also understand that a lot of people just didn't like the movie much. I however liked the movie quite a bit, and here's some of the things I think they did right. First, the casting was good. Alan Rickman is best Marvin ever!. Mos Def plays a nerdy geeky Ford Prefect really well. Martin Freeman and Sam Rockwell are also excellent. But the shining star among the cast has to be Zooey Deschanel as Trillian. She is a wonderful actress, and I got to say I really like her big blue eyes. Thank God she doesn't have her sister Emily's fivehead.

For the TV series, I think it's really the campiest part of the franchise. The whole production looks like it was comprised of old Dr. Who sets that had been repainted and shifted about a little bit, and then bad Brit actors did their best to keep audiences awake. To be honest, I love watching the series if you haven't figured it out yet. What makes the series though has got to be the book animations. They are priceless. They are so 80's and just so kitschy.

The books are fun. I always was amazed at Adams' ability to write the shortest chapters. Life, the Universe and Everything and Mostly Harmless were actually a bit of a letdown to me, but I liked So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish a lot.

The radio drama was sorta the origin of the whole phenomena. I'd just like to point out, some stuff works in radio that wouldn't in a book, or visa versa. The same is true for film. Somethings just work and other things just don't. Just look at each presentation as an artist's representation of the original, and you will be OK.

Finally, just got to say, I like the song Journey of the Sorcerer a lot, and I think it's a great addition to the franchise.