With only one month left before the start of the spring 2010 anime season, I’m disappointed at the anime that have been announced. The only series that I’ve been looking forward to for a while is Angel Beats, mainly because Key worked on the story, but also because of how good the trailer looked. Key’s stories have always brought a tear to my eye, but so far they’ve mostly been focused on the relationships between characters (ie: Kanon, AIR, Clannad, Planetarian). The trailer for Angel Beats looks like it contains a lot of action though, so I’m curious to see how Key integrates that into their usual formula.

The other anime that I’m considering watching are Senko no Night Raid, which sounds like it has some potential, and to a lesser extent, Working. I watched the first episode of Working and it looks decent, but it might turn out good or bad depending on how the rest of the series goes. The seeming lack of a plot is a downer, but it’s pretty funny at times.

A lot of people are probably really hyped up over the 2nd season of K-ON, and I might just watch it so I’m not left out of the loop, but I don’t think I’ll enjoy it. After some time without K-ON and reflecting back on it, I don’t think it was a good anime and sometimes wonder why I watched it. Actually, I do know why I watched it: Mio + mini-top-hat, Tsumugi’s eyebrows, and the ending song. If it weren’t for those three things, I would not have watched the series to the end. After all, there was no plot, no drama, no action, and it wasn’t that funny. It’s scary how easily they drew me in with just a few cute things.

Arakawa Under the Bridge just made me go “wtf” when I saw the picture for it. The guy with a yellow star for a head and what looks like another guy in a green costume has got me wondering what’s going on. I guess that’s a good way of getting people to watch an anime, make them curious.

B Gata H Kei looks like it belongs in the last season along with other crazy anime like Chu-Bra and Seikon no Qwaser. Seriously, what kind of girl aspires to having 100 sex partners? I’m not saying it’s not possible, pornstars have way more after all, but they’re usually in it for the money. This anime just looks like an excuse to put in fanservice everywhere.

As for the Iron Man and Heroman anime, I actually want to see how the Japanese will manage to distort the American concept of superheroes fighting for justice. Considering a lot of anime have really emo main characters and a hot chick thrown in there for fanservice, I predict these two anime will be like that too.

I don’t have anything to say for the other anime that are being aired this spring. Of course, I’ll check out the first episode for all of them like usual, but my expectations aren’t very high. Hopefully there’ll be a few gems to look forward to.

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Well, its been a week since the figure giveaway contest ended, and like I promised, I have finally decided on a winner. Before I announce who won the contest though, I’d like to say that everyone that participated did a wonderful job. Back before the contest ended I could tell I was going to need a few days to decide on a winner, and I was glad that I gave myself a week to judge the entries since I needed the time to pick the best entry. You don’t have to take my word for it though, I’ve put all of the contest entries below.

chibi:

These two cool-looking banners feature BRS and the blue colour match my theme very well. I also liked the stars in the background.

eckotaku:

This banner came with a cute little mascot trying to lure in visitors to my blog ^.^ I don’t think she has a name, but I like her purple hair and cat ears.

Leonia:

Most of these banners offer an improvement over my current banner rather than remaking it entirely. Each banner had my favourite character, Ruri Hoshino, in it along with an adorable pic of Botan.

Lightosan:

Toradora is one of my favourite anime, so Taiga’s a good choice to have on my banner.

Morgan Lamia:

This banner made me laugh, nendo Drossel soaring through the skies!

Ripaz:

I thought this banner was cute and stylish. Can someone give me the name of the maid in it?

SaffySaf:

It looks like someone did their research considering the first banner here included some of my favourite figures. The lighting in the bottom banner was also pretty neat.

Seere:

There are some nice figures in these two banners as well. The designs in the background was a nice touch.

Wilz:

Ruri is still my favourite character, but Fate is not very far behind. What I liked about these banners were the 3 curvy lines on the right.

Basically, I was looking for something that met the requirements for the contest: a 950×200 pixel banner with something related to my blog and the words “Nopy’s Blog” across it. When I announced the contest, I also mentioned that things that cater to my interests would leave a better impression on me. I didn’t state what my interests were, but reading through my blog posts and visiting the links in the “Follow Me” section, you can easily find all of my favourite things (ie: my favourite characters, figures, anime, and character design traits). The last thing I judged was the overall appearance of the banners. I looked at whether the font was easy to read, if it was too flashy or too plain, and how crowded or empty the banner felt.

With that said, I’d like to announce the winner of the contest:

Leonia

Her first banner entry is the one that eventually won out. It includes my all-time favourite character Ruri Hoshino, and Botan from Clannad. The only anime-related plushie that I have is of Botan and my second post ever was about it, so I think it’s obvious to anyone that Botan is my favourite anime pet. The words “Nopy’s Blog” were also very easy to read since it was in big bold text, and I especially liked Botan’s footprints running across it.

Thank you to everyone that participated and I just want to say that I appreciate the time and effort you all put into making these banners. All of them were very good and it was difficult to only pick one. The winning banner will be going up later in the week.

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Volume 18 of Megami Magazine Creators came out a while ago back in December. On the cover is an illustration of Kurisu Makise by the artist huke. Kurisu is one of the characters in the visual novel Steins;Gate, a spinoff series of Chaos;Head, and is only available on the XBOX 360. I’m hoping that they’ll translate the game into English in the future since I want to play it.

At the front of the magazine was this illustration by Pollyanna Graphics (http://www.pollyanna.co.jp/). I’m not a fan of the way they draw eyes, but I love the contrasting colours in this piece of work.

Next is an illustration by Sekiya (http://maruta.be/sekiya). You can probably tell from this illustration alone that this artist does loli art without visiting his website. Going through his work, it seems like he draws the same 20-something year old guy along with lolis quite a bit (maybe it’s supposed to be himself?)

One thing I like about this illustration and others by Seventh Heaven (http://sth.kuchinawa.com/) is the way everything is shaded, it makes objects jump out at you more. I think a little more work could go into drawing body parts like hands in the right proportions though.

This was illustrated by Lunatic Joker (http://www.lmrc.be/). I thought that it was a bit plain, but still pretty. If you take a look at some of his other works, some older characters seem to be rectangular in shape, but as you can see above, he’s improved a lot in that area. Lunatic Joker also seems to like drawing girls with headphones, so if you like girls with headphones too, you should check out his site.

I really liked this illustration by Minase (http://dragonpanda.tuzikaze.com/). When I checked out his site, I found a lot of Touhou artwork along with nekomimi characters, and I have to say that I was impressed with the vibrant colours. I also liked the way the eyes are shaded.

I can’t say that I liked this illustration by Seiryu (http://ev3.jp/seiryu/) very much. The face looks off, and those brown balls of hair kinda scare me.

This lovely illustration was done by the artist Hinamatsuri Touko (http://www.moehina.com/). Her art looks like it came out of an eroge (which are usually good), and it looks like that’s how she landed a job doing character designs for Citoron.

Tenmaso (http://park7.wakwak.com/~analblaster/) is another eroge artist (Magus Tale Eternity). It seems all the good artists always end up working for an eroge company.

Although not an eroge artist (or at least I don’t think so) Double Dragon’s (http://dabudora.daa.jp/) work is also worth taking a look at.

Honjyou Raito’s (http://www.geocities.jp/raita_z/) work certainly has a unique style to it, but I don’t find it very appealing. Characters always seem a bit too skinny, and there’s always some kind of weird machine or tank in his illustrations.

Halloween is long over, but I really like this illustration by Misaki Kurehito (http://cradle.cc/). Some of her older works looked a bit plain and at time pasty, but her more recent works like this one have involved a lot of detail and more colours, making them so much better.

This was done by Tomose Syunsaku (http://mugenkidou.sakura.ne.jp/), who seems to draw quite a few h-doujins. I thought that Tomose’s work was ok, but it looks too plain and simple to me so there wasn’t really anything that grabbed my attention.

I still haven’t watched FMA Brotherhood. I’m waiting for it to finish so I can watch it all in one go.

As usual, the magazine came with a  poster. On one side is the same illustration that was on the cover.

The reverse side had some girl and a mecha. I couldn’t flatten the poster very much, so there was a lot of glare in this picture.

Of all the artists featured in this volume, I’d have to say that my favourites were Minase, Hinamatsuri Touko, and Misaki Kurehito. Hopefully I’ll come across some more of their artwork in other magazines or artbooks. Then again, I could always buy some eroge and play it, but that seems like a lot of trouble just to get some nice artwork.

–>Subscribe to Megami Magazine

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I don’t remember the last time I took a look at Nyantype Magazine. Since they don’t release on a regular schedule, I kinda forgot to review them after volume 2. Anyways, better late than never, so here’s a look at the 3rd volume of Nyantype Magazine.

This volume starts out with a pinup poster of loli Nanoha and her two non-magical friends. The one thing I like about Nyantype over Megami is that they always have one of these larger pinup posters that are 3 sheets long instead of the regular two.

On the reverse side is Mikuru dressed in some really nice clothes. Unfortunately for her, she forgot to check the weather report. I bet Kyon would be jumping for joy though.

I didn’t think Kurimu-chan was a very clumsy character from watching Seitokai no Ichizon, but I wonder how she ended up in that position with the milk only falling on her in what seems like groups of droplets instead of spilling across her clothes.

Is it just me, or does it look like an invisible hand is lifting up Haruka’s dress? There’s no way normal clothes act like that.

I never really got into the Strike Witches craze, but was the girl on the left always so… droopy? It also looks like one of her hands just disappears into nowhere.

I guess at least one good thing came out of Princess Lover

Can someone explain why they have microphones. I thought Koihime Musou was set in some ancient land or something.

Like I’ve said in previous posts, Horo always appears naked in posters. This only further proves my point.

It’s been a while since I saw Saki poster, but then again, this volume came out a long time ago. I was surprised at how fast everyone forgot about the anime, I guess it wasn’t really very good.

I wonder if To Aru Kagaku no Railgun will turn out like Saki after it ends. Anyways, I thought this poster looked a bit off, I think it might be the way Mikoto’s eyes are drawn, it looks like she’s cross-eyed.

The Sacred Blacksmith also seems to have dropped off the radar. Just goes to show that fanservice won’t save a bad anime.

I can’t believe that Kissxsis is actually getting a full tv anime and not just another OVA. If people really wanted to watch two girls come on to their brother, they can get some hentai. It just doesn’t make sense to me to have a regular anime with a hentai plot but remove the sex. Hentai plots aren’t even that good, they’re just meant to provide a reason for the characters to get it on.

The existance of Queen’s Blade also doesn’t make much sense to me. It’s either a bad regular anime, or a heavily censored hentai anime. It would make more sense if people watched good regular anime or uncensored hentai.

As for Asura Cryin, I thought it had some potential, but it just tried too hard to combine too many genres into one anime.

Fight! Ippatsu Juuden-chan is also one of those fanservice-based anime. As much as I liked the character designs, the plot wasn’t that good, and I’d bet that no one will remember it 10 years from now.

Shakugan no Shana was at least a decent anime. It had a plot that sorta made sense and it wasn’t jam packed with fanservice, just enough to keep people happy.

Besides the posters, Nyantype also had some pages dedicated to the Seitokai no Ichizon girls. I highly doubt you’d ever actually see them in the kind of situation shown above except in Ken’s fantasies. I’m still kinda upset that the anime is over, it was one of my favourites of the year.

When I watched Macross Frontier, I thought that Ranka would be everyone’s favourite character, but apparently Sheryl is more popular. I wonder if it’s because of her personality or her character design.

Nendoroid Luka came out a while ago, but I won’t be getting her for a couple months since I ordered her from an American store and they don’t release there until later

I watched the first episode of Kanamemo and it was too childish for me. I don’t get why they’d put an ad in Nyantype Magazine since it seems like it’s geared towards children.

Rather than coming with a free poster, this volume included this really nice Nanoha illustration collection. Most of these images have been used in Nyantype already, but it’s nice to have them all in one little booklet if you’re a Nanoha fan. The images come from all of the Nanoha series.

When I first watched Triangle Heart, I never would have imagined that the little sister in the anime would ever get her own series, or that it’d turn out as successful as it did. It’s a good thing that people liked Nanoha though, or else we wouldn’t have all this pretty artwork.

This volume had it’s high and low points. The poster of Mikuru was really nice, and I’ve hung it up in my room. The Nanoha illustration collection was also a welcome treat. On the other hand, some of the posters were less than perfect. Missing limbs and crossed eyes just make a good illustration horrible. Unless there’s something you really want in this volume, it may be better just to pass it up.

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Despite how much I like anime, I’ve never been a big fan of incredible events with no viable scientific explanation. This includes things like flying through the air with no apparent form of propulsion, creating vast quantities of energy from nothing, and penetrating the armour of a vehicle using a weaker material by using shear willpower. This is one of the reasons why Martian Successor Nadesico was and still is one of my favourite anime: it used the latest theories of quantum mechanics and newest technological advancements of the 90s to explain how things like instant transport and the terraforming of Mars was possible. When there was no way to explain something (like the generation of particles to perform a gravity blast), the topic was simply avoided rather than trying to make up something fake and untrue.

With that said, one of the things that have been bothering me this season are the esper powers in To Aru Kagaku no Railgun (A Certain Scientific Railgun), and the general use of the term “esper” in anime. The word “esper” was derived from the acronym ESP, which stands for “extra-sensory perception.” As the name implies, someone with ESP has an extra (or 6th) sense that the rest of us don’t have, and are generally known as psychics. An esper, in this sense, does not refer to someone that can shoot lightning bolts out of their body since that’s not a sense but an an ability. To be fair though, words often change meaning when they’re introduced through a different culture or language, so the definition of an esper in Japan might be different from the rest of the world.

Now to get to the main point of my post: how do esper powers in To Aru Kagaku no Railgun work? The explanation that they gave in the anime was that espers have an AIM (An Involuntary Movement) Dispersion Field around them that allows them to use their powers. This is obviously a made-up term which doesn’t help us understand how esper powers work, so I’ve thought about how some of the esper abilities (mainly Mikoto and Kuroko’s) would be possible and explained them below:

Mikoto Misaka:

Before I try to explain how Mikoto’s powers might work, lets list all of the things that we know she can do. First off, she can deliver an electric shock to someone by touching them; secondly, she is able to shoot lightning bolts from her body; third, she can control iron sand as she wishes; and fourth, she can fire a coin like a railgun. As stated in the anime, Mikoto is also called Academy City’s “electromaster,” indicating that she is able to do all these things through electromagnetism.

The way I see it, Mikoto’s body would have to be made out of a different type of material so that she can supply electrons to run a current through herself. One type of material would be metals, but since Mikoto isn’t a robot (or at least I don’t think so), she probably has some kind of ceramic in her body where she somehow induces the electrons to move from the valence band to the conduction band. This way, she would be able to run a current through her body without too much resistance. To be able to shoot bolts of lightning from her body, Mikoto would have to be able to create a charge difference between her and her surroundings. I figure to do this, she would need to have two materials in her body rub against each other like when you rub a balloon against your hair. The next part of Mikoto’s powers, which I can’t explain, is how she as able to control the direction of her lightning bolts. When an object is discharging electrons, it’s not like the electrons will just follow someone’s orders and go in a certain direction. Instead, the electrons will always take the shortest path to neutralize the object. This is why lightning tends to strike tall towers, the electrons in the clouds only have to move the distance between the cloud and the tower rather than the cloud and the ground.

The inability to control the movement of electrons also pokes a hole into Mikoto’s other abilities: moving iron sand and firing a coin like a railgun. Moving iron sand the way Mikoto does in the anime would be possible if you could make a complicated magnetic field, but since there’s no way for Mikoto to control electrons, then there’s no way for her to use them to make several magnetic fields to control the movement of iron sand. Mikoto’s patented “railgun” move would technically be possible if her body was made out of different materials, but not in the way that they’ve shown in the anime. In simple terms, a railgun works by accelerating a ferromagnetic object through a tube by generating a magnetic field in front of it. If Mikoto’s body were vastly different from a normal human, it would be possible for her to extend her arm out, place a coin on her shoulder and shoot it wherever she’s pointing her arm because then she would be able to generated a magnetic field in front of the coin, pulling it along her arm. It would not be possible to flip a coin out and fire it once it falls back to her hand.

Kuroko Shirai:

Kuroko is my favourite character in the anime because of her hilarious Mikoto-rape moments, crazy ideas, and cute character design. Unlike Mikoto, her powers only allow her to perform one action, and that is teleportation. I’m sure all of you have been exposed to the idea since it’s so widely used in science fiction. The two most popular ways in how teleportation is explained to work is through data transfer and bending space. Kuroko obviously doesn’t use any type of device to teleport, so recording her body on a computer, then destroying it and rebuilding it someplace else obviously isn’t how she teleports, so that leaves bending space.

If you imagine that the universe is 2-dimensional like a piece of paper rather than 3-dimensional, then if you fold that piece of paper, it’s possible for something on one end of the paper to move to the other end without crossing the middle. This analogy is commonly used to explain how you can teleport someone or something from one place to another. The problem with this method is that it would require insanely huge amounts of energy to bend the universe, so how does Kuroko do it?

The only way that I could think of that would allow Kuroko to teleport from one place to another is if 4-dimensional beings existed. If they do exist, it could be possible that one of them has taken a liking to Kuroko and is bending space for her. Lets imagine for a moment that 2-dimensional beings in the shape of squares lived on a piece of paper in your hand. You would be able to see inside a square since you’re looking at it above, but the squares on the piece of paper would not be able to see inside each other since they can’t move into the 3rd dimension (above) the piece of paper. It would then be possible for you to see a set of instructions within a square explaining where it wants to go and all you would have to do is fold the piece of paper to line up the square with its destination so it can just move over. Kuroko might be like that square, where a 4-dimensional being is able to read her thoughts by watching the electrical signals in her brain. This could explain why Kuroko can only move things she’s in contact with because she would have to push it to the other side once space is bent.

So to sum things up, Mikoto would have to be some kind of monster do be able to do the things in the anime, and even then she wouldn’t be able to perform some of her moves. Four dimensional beings would also have to exist for Kuroko to be able to teleport the way she does without an energy source. Basically, the esper powers in To Aru Kagaku no Railgun do not work except under very extreme assumptions, and even then some of them still don’t work. I guess it’s a good thing that the target audience is too caught up fantasizing about biribiri to care if she could technically exist or not.

If you have other ideas on how esper powers might work, feel free to share. Any nerds reading this can also point out any mistakes I’ve made since this is mostly stuff I remember from school.

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