Nerd Culture

Back to posting at last! I’m going to cover a bunch of great stuff that I’ve seen in my absence, so I have a bit of catching up to do, but I think you’ll appreciate the great shows I watched and fun games I played amidst my disappearance. >.>

First up is Tekkonkinkreet. From the same people that brought us The Animatrix (oddly enough), Studio 4°C brings us this new animated wonder. It’s unique style and tremendously detailed animation net this movie countless awards, and it certainly deserves them. Following the lives of the two orphans Kuro and Shiro, or Black and White in Eglish, the story dips in and out of the underlying corruption of Treasure Town; a bustling city puppeteered by Yakuza.

Anime, Movies Michael Arias, Plaid, Studio 4°C, Tekkon Kinkreet, Tekkonkinkreet, The Animatrix

For the longest time my MP3 Player was an iPod which, in all appreciation for how it changed the portable media market, is vastly inferior to some of the lesser known Portable Media Players to come out in recent years. The most significant, in my opinion, being the Cowon A3–the perfect portable media player for an anime lover such as myself. Why you ask? Format support–this thing can play just about -anything-. It can play H264 (unforunately it doesn’t yet support Main Profile) and XviD and most importantly; supports all sorts of container formats like OGM and MKV (Matroska Video). What does that all mean? Well, I’ll let you put two and two together; more than half of fansubbed anime is released in H264 format in an MKV container. Until now those have been unplayable on any form of portable media! That’s just the beginning of the A3’s awesomeness!

Anime, Manga/Comics, Movies, Music, Technology 1SEG, 3D Surround, 720p, 800x480, A3, ASS, Audio Recording, BBE, Cowon, Cowon A3, DMB, DVB, DVD, DVD Resolution, FLAC, H264, HD, High Definition, iPod, Line Out, M3U, Mach3Bass, Matroska, MKV, MKVExtract, MobileTV, MP Enhance, OGM, PMP, Portable Media Player, PSP, PSP Screen, SSA, SubResync, SubStation Alpha, Subtitles, Video Out, Video Recording, VobSub, XviD

Normally my tastes are more manly than chick flicks, like playing football and showering naked together with other men in the locker rooms…okay, maybe that was a bit of a lie, but I feel it needs to be emphasized that you don’t have to be some scrawny, girly wuss to enjoy the NANA movies. If you like JRock or most any kind of modern japanese pop culture medias you will likely enjoy these movies just as much as I did. The music is really great, the characters and their interactions are very believable and the writing is quite interesting. Basically NANA is a chronicle of the struggles a small rock band endures after being torn apart by the seperation of their bassist and their adventures as they attempt to rise up again and take the music scene by storm.

Movies Fujieda Naoki, Honjou Ren, Ichinose Takumi, JRock, Komatsu Nana, NANA, NANA 2, NANA2, Oosaki Nana, Terashima Nobuo

I’m not usually one to tear up at every chick flick that someone tricks me into watching, so I never really expected I’d ever catch myself crying to an anime, but this immensely beautiful piece of modern art proved me wrong. The power of the loneliness I felt in the characters was so strong that I actually felt sad enough to cry for them. This short movie that started Makoto Shinkai’s prospering anime career is well deserving of my praise. I was seriously awestruck after watching this. I had a few episodes of other shows after this in my media player playlist, but after this ended I had to pause for a few minutes just to pull myself back to reality from the intense emotions it invoked.

Anime, Movies Makoto Shinkai, Voads, Voices Of A Distant Star

I’m sure you already know about Tim Burton’s classic gothic movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas, but it’s Halloween today, so it’s pretty much required viewing. As such, I thought it might be something interesting to talk about. Tim Burton has made many other great gothic film like Edward Scissorhands and Corpse Bride, but I feel none of them were quite as fantastic as The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Movies, Time Machine