kate

Official Twitter hashtags for anime series can be serious business. Just ask the town of Reading, England whose tag collided with the one for spring's RD Red Data Girl anime. This season, potential for hilarity exists with Freezing Vibration, using the tag #genetics. 

Thanks to @AnimeHashtags, if you want to track your favorite show on Twitter or avoid spoilers, here's what you need to know...

Long-running Shows

• Aikatsu! |  #アイカツ #aikatsu 
• Hunter × Hunter | #ハンター
  
• Pokemon | #anipoke
• Precure | #precure
• Saint Seiya Omega | #seiya
• Space Brothers | #mutta
• Toriko | #toriko

Fall Season Shows

• Ace of Diamond | #ダイヤのA
• Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Ars Nova/Aoki Hagane no Arpeggio ~Ars Nova~  | #アルペジオ
• Beyond the Horizon/Kyoukai no Kanata | #kyo_kai
• BlazBlue: Alter Memory | #blazblue
• Coppelion | #coppelion
• Diabolik Lovers | #animedialover
• Freezing Vibration | #genetics
• Galilei Donna | #galileidonna
• Gingitsune/Silver Fox | #gingitsune
• Golden Time | #ゴールデンタイム
• Gundam Build Fighters | #g_bf
• Hajime no Ippo Rising | #ippo_anime
• IS: Infinite Stratos 2 | #is_anime
• Kill la Kill | #kill_la_kill
• Kuroko’s Basketball 2 | #kurobas
• Kyousougiga | #ksgiga
• Little Busters! Refrain | #litbus_anime
• Log Horizon | #loghorizon
• Magi: The Kingdom of Magic | #magi
• Meganebu! | #mgnb_anime
• Miss Monochrome | No Info
• Monogatari Series Second Season | #monogatari
• Nagi no Asukara | #nagiasu
• Non Non Biyori | #なのん
• Ore no Nounai Sentakushi ga, Gakuen Lovecome o Zenryoku de Jama Shiteiru/My Mental Multiple-Choice Power is Completely Ruining My School Romantic Comedy | #noucome
• Outbreak Company | #ob_c
• Phi Brain: Puzzle of God Season 3 | #phibrain
• Pupa | No Hashtag
• Samurai Flamenco | #samumenco
• Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku Naritai!/Wanna Be the Strongest in the World| #sekatsuyo
• Strike the Blood | #ストブラ
• Super Seisyun Brothers | #ssb_anime
• Teekyuu 3 | No Hashtag
• Tesagure! Bukatsumono | #tesabu
• Tokyo Ravens | #tokyo_ravens
• Unbreakable Machine-Doll | #mdoll
• Valvrave the Liberator 2nd Season/Kakumeiki Valvrave 2nd Season | #valvrave
• Walkure Romanze | #walroma_a
• White Album 2 | #wa2anime
• Yowamushi Pedal | #yp_anime
• Yozakura Quartet ~Hana no Uta~ | #yzq
• Yuusha ni Narenakatta Ore wa Shibushibu Shuushoku o Ketsui Shimashita  | #勇しぶ

「キルラキル」の1話のTwitter実況をまとめました！総ツイート数は15,280、最大風速は875tweet/min！ http://t.co/nTaG3kwCV1 #kill_la_kill #キルラキル

— つぶあに (@tsubuani) October 4, 2013

Beginning with a new miniseries, "Seekers of the Weird"

You might need to shop around to find a shop that hasn't already burned through their allocation, but character goods sellers are now taking preorders for sets of women's stockings featuring a pair of Attack on Titan "tattoo" style designs.

Predictably, subject of the Morimoto Sangyo's pantyhose art is Eren and Levi accompanied by the Colossal Titan, with the designs going for 1,500yen each. Release is slated for November.

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Scott Green is editor and reporter for anime and manga at geek entertainment site Ain't It Cool News. Follow him on Twitter at @aicnanime.

In Bad For You, coming on January 7th from Henry Holt, authors Kevin C. Pyle and Scott Cunningham expose the long-standing campaign against fun for what it really is: a bunch of anxious adults grasping at straws, ignoring scientific data, and blindly yearning for the good old days that never were.

A portion of the book looks at the hysteria over gaming, be it tabletop or video, and how depressingly cyclical that unthinking hysteria can be. As evidenced by the following snippet from the book, even chess was once considered a path to moral degeneracy. Checkmate, said the devil.

[We must not allow our youths this “chess,” lest they form clubs and unite against us]

You can see more excerpts from Kevin C. Pyle and Scott Cunningham’s Bad For You here on Tor.com, including maps of comic book burnings, a history of banned books stretching back over 2000 years, and much more.

Houston, I have no problem with this.

What’s Extant, which will premiere on CBS next summer, going to be about? Take it away, official press release:

“[Halle] Berry will play an astronaut who returns home from a year-long solo mission in space and tries to reconnect with her husband and son in their everyday life. Her experiences in space and home lead to events that ultimately will change the course of human history.”

So where are we getting the “sci-fi” from? “Events that will ultimately change the course of human history” sounds supernatural, sure, but who’s to say it’s not something like a NASA-related government conspiracy? For that we have to travel back in time to August, when a bidding war for Extant‘s spec script was underway. Back then Deadline told us that the show is about “a couple with a human-like android son created by the dad and another child, possibly an alien, on the way.”

Says Berry:

“I’m always on the lookout for amazing roles and when you see material that contains this strong of auspices, nuance and complexity it compels me to run toward it no matter the medium. For five months a year I’ll get to live with and play this incredibly intelligent and vulnerable woman, and for the remainder of the year I’ll continue to look for other roles that move me as deeply as this one.”

Androids. Space travel. (Possible) alien baby. Steven Spielberg‘s Amblin Entertainment is co-producing. Halle Berry. Not to mention how Extant, with its woman of color lead, will bring some much-needed diversity to television. It’s too early to say whether this show will be any good, but I’m going to go ahead and say that, based on what we know now, there’s not a single thing I don’t like.

(via: Collider)

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BMO, the adorable sentient video game console on Cartoon Network's Adventure Time, has been lovingly recreated as a working Lego model, using a Raspberry Pi microcomputer. Michael Thomas, a software developer, created the build for this weekend's Seattle BrickCon. The model has "Lego skin and a Raspberry Pi heart."

Read more...

BOOT

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going to worlds today… bye bye!!

Brace yourself: Firefly references are coming.

This year, Nathan Fillion is going to join names like LeVar Burton and Betty White on the list of Community guest stars. According to Deadline:

“When Annie (Alison Brie) and Professor Hickey (guest star Jonathan Banks) team up to navigate Greendale’s corridors of power, they must contend with Bob Waite (Fillion), the politically savvy head custodian who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty but is smart enough to wear rubber gloves.”

Fillion is a fan of the show who has visited the set before, so look forward to some good chemistry with the regular cast. And, of course, where Nathan Fillion goes, Firefly references follow. In the past, Community hasn’t even needed his help for that – they’ve referenced the show on their own – so expect a ton of them. Let’s start taking bets now. Will the rubber gloves be blue?

I’m in favor of any opportunity for Fillion to show off his comedy chops (though I’d also like to see him as a serious villain again someday à la Caleb from Buffy – the man can do anything). He gets to be charming on Castle but not full-on goofy, so it’ll be great to see him have to opportunity to let loose a little. All evidence points to this being A. really funny in itself and B. a major nerdgasm. Shiny.

(via: Vulture)

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October is finally upon is, and here at ComicsAlliance, and one of the best parts of the month is gearing up for Halloween with costumes! It’s the one time of year when even people like me who could never cut it in our Best Cosplay Ever feature can drop by the local department store and walk out with the ability to dress up as our favorite characters.

But is that really a good thing? I have my doubts, which is why I’m spending every day taking on the store-bought costumes inspired by our favorite things. Today, we're carving Jack-O-Lanterns at the Shatterdome with Pacific Rim costumes!

Continue reading…

Credit: AMC

More than you might expect for a show that portrayed it as a metropolis largely devoid of anything but meth cooks, neo-Nazis, Drug Enforcement Agency employees, and delicious, delicious chicken, Albuquerque, New Mexico’s gotten a great deal out of its association with Breaking Bad. So it’s perhaps not surprising that New Mexico resident David Layman organized fans of the AMC drama, which ended its run last weekend, to place a paid death notice for Walter White in the Albuquerque Journal:

Credit: Albuquerque Journal

The obituary itself is a revealing little artifact. It’s nice to see that it suggests donations to drug abuse prevention organizations, an echo of Elliott and Gretchen Schwartz’s major donation. While that gift may have been a way for Walt’s Gray Matter co-founders to distance themselves from his meth empire, it’s also an acknowledgement of the damage Walt’s work cooking extremely pure drugs did on a major scale. Breaking Bad had characters who were meth users, and whose bodies and minds displayed evidence of that damage in ways that weren’t as endearing as Badger and Skinny Pete’s Star Trek fantasies in early seasons, like Wendy, a prostitute Jesse tries to convince to help him commit a murder. But those characters receded from the shows in later seasons, as did any real consideration of the human cost of the expansion of Walt’s ambitions, beyond the murders he committed or directly inspired.

Exploring the lives of the people Walt’s drugs destroyed by keeping around a character like Bubbles from The Wire would have required Breaking Bad to be a much bigger show than it ever really was. And its aperture narrowed in subsequent season to focus tightly on Walt’s moral state and the condition of his family, with Jesse Pinkman as the lone adjunct to that circle. But part of Walt’s moral state is his ability not to think about what the meth he cooks is doing to the people who use it, to see his business as essentially contained to his lab in all its gleaming metal and immaculate glass, to focus on the purity of his product rather than the decay it produces in the human body. And given that Breaking Bad seemed determine to preserve at least some sense of audience sympathy for Walter White, it might have been too much to tally up his body count for real, to make us face up to someone who–unlike Jesse or Skyler–had committed no transgression other than to use Walt’s product, and who was destroyed as a result.

And as for the idea that Walter White “will be greatly missed,” that’s a complicated question. Even though “Felina” didn’t quite work for me, I can’t stop thinking about Skyler, about Flynn, and about Holly. I can imagine a version of events where Skyler and Flynn misses Walter White, who may have been gone from them for good once he went on that ride-along with Hank, even as they hate Heisenberg and the memories that are tainted by the knowledge of what he did, like that car Walt brought home for Flynn. I can see Gretchen regretting the loss of the man she once loved, and Holly the father she never got to know, the fact–if she ever learned it–that she became a pawn in her father’s last gasp at preserving his family. But as a fan, I’m satisfied for Walter White to be gone.

The post This Albuquerque Journal Obituary For ‘Breaking Bad’s Walter White Is Kind Of Amazing appeared first on ThinkProgress.

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Details for 2014′s MoCCA Festival have just been revealed, and it answers many questions. The Guests of Honor are Alison Bechdel, Howard Cruse, Fiona Staples and Robert Williams (Above), but more featured guests will be announced later. The show will return to the Lexington Armory on April 5-6. I know organizers looked at different venues but this is still the most practical for many reasons.

In a really huge change, the price of admission is being dropped to $5 per day. Last year tickets were $15 which is just too much for a “Caf” of this kind. Hopefully the lower price will open MoCCA up to an even wider audience.

The guest list itself presents, to my eye, a nice wide range. Bechdel is a current superstar, Cruse is a veteran master (and groundbreaking creator) deserving the attention, Williams is a hero to a whole different crowd, and Staples should be a big draw. None of them have been over exposed in the area. It’s my understanding that a well-known local veteran figure will be taking over the programming, so that should be in good hands as well.

This is the first show that will really show the imprimatur of the Society of Illustrators, led by Anelle Miller, which took over on short notice for the 2013 Festival. If nothing else, lowering the admission price is a huge step in the right direction.

ABOUT THE GUESTS OF HONOR
Alison Bechdel is an award-winning cartoonist who developed a loyal following for her long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For.  In 2006, Bechdel published Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, an autobiographical graphic memoir chronicling her childhood and relationship with her closeted father.  Fun Home was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and was named Best Book of 2006 by Time Magazine.  A second graphic memoir, Are You My Mother: A Comic Drama, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in May 2012.  
 
Howard Cruse emerged from the countercultural underground comix scene and, in 1979, began editing the pioneering Gay Comix anthology series, featuring work by openly gay and lesbian cartoonists and directly addressing aspects of queer experience. In the 1980s he went on to createWendel, a strip about a gay man, his lover Ollie, and a cast of quirky surrounding characters, which appeared regularly in The Advocate.  During the 1990s Cruse worked on the award-winning graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby, published in 1995 with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner. Since then, Cruse has published numerous titles including Wendel All Together, The Swimmer with a Rope in his Teeth (written by Jeanne E. Shaffer), From Headrack To Claude, Felix’s Friends, and more.  
  
Fiona Staples is a comic book artist living in Calgary, Canada.  She has illustrated numerous comics including Mystery Society, Done to Death, Secret History of the Authority: Hawksmoor, Jonah Hex, and Northlanders.  She has contributed cover art to DV8, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Criminal Macabre, Superman/Batman, Archie, and more.  In March of 2012, Image Comics published the first issue of Saga, an ongoing series by Brian K. Vaughan, which received critical acclaim and for which she received two Eisner Awards, a Hugo Award, and several Harvey Awards.     
  
Robert Williams is a prolific oil painter and cartoonist whose iconic detailed images depict naked women, death, destruction, booze and clowns.  During the 1960s Williams worked under Ed “Big Daddy” Roth in the Hot Rod Culture, creating advertisements and graphics and developing his style.  He later became one of the key contributors to Zap Comix, the flagship underground comix anthology that also featured work by S. Clay Wilson, Spain Rodriguez, Rick Griffin, Gilbert Shelton and Victor Moscoso.  By the 1980s Williams had shifted his attention more directly to painting, and in 1994 founded Juxtapoz Magazine, creating an outlet for artists in the contemporary art world who identified with his “Lowbrow” style. He exhibits his work frequently, and has had several solo shows at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York City (with one upcoming in 2014). He is the subject of the 2013 documentary film Robert Williams: Mr. Bitchin’.

thousandskies:

Another set of fluffiness. 

thecakebar:

Pumpkin Baked Donuts Tutorial

Yet another reason I’m so tempted to get a donut pan right now. This and mochi donuts. *grabby hands*

kateordie:

megthebrennan:

I was reminded at SPX that I did this comic for the Monster Milk Funny Pages zine!! Figured I might as well post it, because I liked it a lot.

This is… Incredible.

If you have a smartphone, you've probably played at least one, if not a dozen, endless runner games. They're one of the easiest, least imaginative game types to produce for the platforms, and now One Piece's Chopper has one of his very one.

One Piece Running Chopper: Chopper and the Island of Bonds doesn't mess with the formula too much. Chopper runs across the landscape as players tap the screen to make him jump and collect items like cotton candy and other treats. 

Once Chopper's transformation gauge is full, he can change forms and attack enemies that get in his way. Areas in the game—each of which features a surprise guest character, such as Franky below—include Torino Kingdom, Karakuri Island, Momorio Island, Boin Archipelago, and Kuraigana Island.

One Piece Running Chopper is up on the Apple Store and Google Play store for ¥170/$1.75.

Via Siliconera

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Joseph Luster is the Games and Web editor at Otaku USA Magazine. His blog can be found at subhumanzoids. Follow him on Twitter at @Moldilox.

The Game of Thrones opening sequence is a thing of beauty in many ways, even I know that, and I don’t even watch the show. And now you can recreate it. If you’re any good a stop motion. And if you build this puzzle first, available from the HBO store in November.

(via Winter is Coming.net)

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Indulge in a chocolate fountain fun after lunch or dinner any day of the week at Hollywood & Vine restaurant at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, delicious warm chocolate spilling over like a waterfall. Fresh strawberries, pineapple, apple wedges, dried mango, marshmallows, strawberry shortcake – there’s always something delicious for dipping in the sweet chocolate at the buffet restaurant. The strawberries and marshmallows are clear crowd favorites.

Beyond the chocolate fountain, other housemade favorites include a dense chocolate pecan bar, a light-as-air banana cream puff, gooey brownies, key lime tart, red velvet cake, macaroons, and oatmeal cookies. (It’s vacation, after all.) And, surprisingly, one of the most popular desserts is the no-sugar-added cheesecake – don’t confuse “no sugar added” with “no taste” – the pastry chefs work their magic with this one.

Do you have a favorite Hollywood & Vine dessert?

Mmmmm, Kids of All Ages Love the New Chocolate Fountain at Disney’s Hollywood Studios by Pam Brandon: Originally posted on the Disney Parks Blog

It's rush hour in Silicon Valley, and the techies on Highway 101 are shooting me laser-beam stares of envy. Beneath the floorboard of my Tesla Model S, a liquid-cooled pack of 7,000 laptop batteries propels me down the carpool lane at a hushed 65 miles per hour. Then traffic grinds to a halt, and I'm stuck trying to merge onto an exit ramp as Benzes and BMWs whip past. It's the excuse I'm waiting for: I punch the throttle, and the Model S rockets back up to speed so fast that I worry about flying off the road—a silly fear, it turns out, because the car corners like a barn swallow. "And there you go," says Tina, my beaming Tesla sales rep. "Takeoff!"

More Mother Jones coverage of Tesla Motors

• Taxpayer Subsidies Helped Tesla Motors, So Why Does Elon Musk Slam Them?
• Geek Mythology: What Tech Startups Say vs. What They Actually Do
• Silicon Valley: Your Tax Dollars at Work
• Tesla Motors Earns $26 Million in the 2nd Quarter—Thanks to the Government
• How Green Is a Tesla, Really?

Every bit as practical as a Volvo (rear-facing trundle seat!) and sexier than an Aston Martin, the Model S isn't just the world's greatest electric car—it's arguably the world's greatest car, period. The curmudgeons at Consumer Reports call the seven-seater the best vehicle they've ever tested, and that's after docking it considerable points for only—only!—being able to travel 265 miles on a charge. The first mass-market electric car designed from scratch, it sports huge trunks in the rear and under the hood, an incredibly low center of gravity, and the ability to hit 60 mph in 4.2 seconds. Plus you can recharge it for the price of a burrito. Named car of the year by Motor Trend, the Model S has recharged Tesla as well. In May, the company announced that it had repaid, nine years early, a $465 million loan it had received from the Department of Energy.

Tesla posted its first quarterly profit the same month, and by mid-July the share price of the decade-old Palo Alto-based carmaker had more than doubled. The buzz in the Valley is that Tesla has in the Model S something with the disruptive potential of the iPhone—and in its CEO, Elon Musk, the next Steve Jobs. "Individuals come along very rarely that are both as creative and driven as that," says Jim Motavalli, who writes for the New York Times' Wheels blog. "Musk is not going to settle for a product that is good enough for the marketplace. He wants something that is insanely great."

Musk, who is 42, certainly plays the role well enough. The New Yorker's Tad Friend has noted how his "curious apparel"—black half-boots and a gray hacking jacket—along with his "Pee-wee haircut, glowing blue-green eyes, South African accent (he was born in Pretoria), and manifest determination to save the world—single-handedly, if necessary—conspires to make him seem somewhat alien."

Fittingly, it turns out, since in addition to Zip2 and PayPal, both of which Musk cofounded before he hit 30, his entrepreneurial portfolio includes Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), a company that aims to colonize Mars—in 2008, it landed a $1.6 billion contract to resupply the International Space Station. He is also chairman and top shareholder of SolarCity, a solar finance and installation firm. There's a kind of futuristic synergy at play here: If we all buy Teslas and charge them via a distributed solar-panel network, then maybe we can survive the effects of global warming long enough to populate the red planet.

Continue Reading »

Last weekend, almost 3,000 cyclists entered the Third Maebashi Mt. Akagi Hill Climb. Held in Maebashi City, Gunma Prefecture, the bike race is a a grueling 20.8km (12.9mi) climb up Mt. Akagi for a vertical difference of 1.3km (0.8mi) from start to finish. Among the racers was the mysterious "Kikumimi Motors," known for racing in cosplay on a moe-decorated and customized mamachyari (mom bike). 

As tweeted by fans on the bike route

From the mystery @kikumimimotors himself

A possible KM spotting from the Mamachyari Gran Prix 2010 

Speaking of Miku, Wokada posted a hot, end of summer illustration sequence

via RocketNews24

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Scott Green is editor and reporter for anime and manga at geek entertainment site Ain't It Cool News. Follow him on Twitter at @aicnanime.

Attack on Gundam?

Lego has had a line of watches for a few years now, but the designs were decidedly targeted at kids. And since the building toy probably has as many adult fans as children who love it, Lego will be releasing a new line of watches this November with designs geared more towards its grown-up fans.

Read more...

There won’t be a new Pixar film until 2015, but at least you can listen to songs from their earlier films. Pixar in Concert is a newish symphony event that presents live philharmonic orchestrations from the scores of Pixar movies.

After premiering in Taiwan earlier this year and touring the rounds of US cities like Boston, Houston and San Diego, as well as Puerto Rico and Mexico City, Pixar in Concert will reach even further abroad next year. Performances on the 2014 calendar already include London, Sydney, and Paris, as well as more US dates in New York, Cincinnati and St. Louis, among other cities.

The symphony show features selections from the scores of all thirteen Pixar features from Toy Story through Brave, and is synchronized with digitally projected HD scenes from the films. The complete performance schedule for Pixar in Concert can be viewed on the Pixar website.

Here’s a recording an attendee made of the Up portion of the show:

Knockabout Comics and graphic novel app SEQUENTIAL are publishing a digital collection of Neil Gaiman’s ‘lost’ comic strips from the 1980s for free – and it’s in aid of charity.

Neil Gaiman’s Lost Tales will feature collaborations with Bryan Talbot, Dave McKean and more with a rare interview conducted in the eighties, Gaiman’s original typed notes for Sandman, sample scripts, project proposals and more, including an original cover by Hunt Emerson.

For every free download received, a fifty cent donation will be made to the charity Malaria No More.

The news is cover featured in the new issue of Infinity, available on Sequential, and embedded below. No stories are named, but I’d guess Luther’s Villanelle with McKean and An Honest Answer with Talbot have to be favourites.

Neil Gaiman’s Lost Comics, For Free, And For Charity

Have you had enough of Sailor Moon? Good, I didn't think so! Coming soon to a shelf near you are these absolutely adorable Chibi Sailor Moon figures from Megahouse.

First seen at Chara Hobby 2013, there will be eight different characters in 14 different figure designs. So there will be figures of Artemis and Luna, and two versions of Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Mars, Sailor Jupiter, Sailor Venus and Tuxedo Mask. Oh yeah, there are figures of Tuxedo Mask!

Each figure, aside from Luna and Artemis, will also come with a stand in their own color. These figures will be over 2 and 3 inches tall, depending on the figure, and be ¥700 each. Sure, the two different versions of each figure aren't that drastic, but for the price it's good. The Megahouse Chibi Sailor Moon figures are expected to be released some time in the winter. 

[via Sailor Moon News]

animemiz:

chibiyuuto:

New illustrations drawn by CLAMP for the Card Captor Sakura mobile game.

Special thanks to cutecherry (http://cutesherry.livejournal.com/)

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Mark Waid’s taken to his blog to write some advice for freelance writers who are just breaking in – or trying to break in – to the industry. And as expected, it’s thoroughly compelling, smart, and invaluable stuff. If Mark Waid were ever to take off his glasses, it seems almost certain that we’ll all collectively realise that he’s actually really Superman.It’s all important and worth reading, but this section in particular stood out to me:

Don’t let anyone scare you. Don’t let anyone bully you, ever. Some will if they think they can, but you teach people how to treat you. You can be confident and show integrity without being argumentative. And for God’s sake, don’t be so afraid to explore your options that you keep turning in work that makes you wince; no good decision was ever made primarily out of fear.

If you want to work in comics – or already do! – I really can’t recommend this blog post enough.

(and while you’re there, go read some of Thrillbent’s comics!)