Starcraft Trailer Thingy

As a fan of RTS games (though not much of a player of them), I took note when I recently learned that there would be a sequel to Starcraft (now out), the RTS everybody remembers (as opposed to Total Annihilation, an influential but poorly known game, which for its age had a far superior, even revolutionary engine*). I've never played old Starcraft and I'm not likely to try out the new one unless I get a new computer (RTS games tend to be really hard on computers), but I have to admit, I'm impressed by what I've seen.



My sister was impressed with the trailer too (note that my own judgment was not based on the trailer but on studying informative websites, because I'm a nerd like that), despite emphatically not being an RTS fan, though her admiration for it was expressed through the phrase "I'd watch it if it was a movie."

*Back in the day, when the Total Annihilation community was still young and vigorous, admitting to liking Starcraft bordered on social suicide in some circles. Well, not really, but you'd take a lot of flak. TA fans liked (and still like) TA because it had a far greater variety of units, was simple to modify, and had a physics engine, whereas Starcraft had a small group of units to keep things simple, could only be sloppily hacked, and had a combat system that ignored physics completely. It's that last point that particularly sticks in TAers' craws-these days they accept the other stuff as probably being useful and/or important and/or unable to be helped.

-Signing off.

Hmm...

People create stuff imitating things all the time using the game Spore. Let's see some.

D'Compose...



Kinda gawky...

But that's nothing next to the Tendril I found. This, for reference, is Tendril:
And here's the YouTube video:


Hmm...

Well, I could show you the Metlar, but that thing bounces around too much for my tastes. Whatever.

-Signing off.

The Other War of the Worlds: Edison's Conquest of Mars

Back in the day, "copyright" meant something very different from what it means now. It referred specifically and only to the right to publish a certain book-notions of intellectual property verged on nonexistent.

So when the (illegitimate and at least somewhat mangled) adaptation of the original serial version of The War of the Worlds (published under the name "Fighters From Mars-additional obscenely long subtitle") proved hugely popular, it was decided that a sequel should be commissioned, since none were forthcoming from Wells himself.

Edison's Conquest of Mars (yes, really) was written by one Garret P. Serviss, an astronomer and science fiction author... who pretty clearly had never read The War of the Worlds (at least, not enough of it to write a sequel). What resulted was eighteen chapters of what can be best described as insanity.

Well, perhaps that's doing it a disservice. But it's no TWotW.

Now, I don't know how similar "Fighters From Mars" was. Perhaps the differences between Edison's Conquest of Mars and TWotW are the fault of the adaptation, rather than some other factor. Certainly, the Martians of ECoM feel something like a tidied up, sanitized version of the other Martians.

But first things first. Let's talk about Thomas Edison's role in Edison's Conquest of Mars.

Apparently, all Edison did in real life was rubberstamp his name being in the book. Otherwise, he wasn't the least bit involved in production. (Wikipedia does describe it, quite amusingly, as "perhaps the most literal of the Edisonades.") In the book itself, well, it's pretty crazy.

First off, Edison was able to examine the antigravity devices in the Martians' flying machines (he immediately understood their functionality because they work via electricity, and if there's one thing Thomas Alva Edison understands, it's electricity![/sarcasm]), and determined how to make a super-powerful version of it that could be used to travel from planet to planet. Yes. It took him, like, fifteen minutes.

(Images of scans from the serial borrowed from here.)

Then, he made a disintegrator ray. This ray only destroys specific substances it's attuned to. As is typical of Edison, he tested it on an animal first for no good reason. (If you think I'm being a little harsh on Edison, well, I'll be frank-I'm not a big fan of the man. That's probably because I've read too much about him and his publicity campaigns.)

So then he and all the world's governments put their resources together and made a warfleet of a hundred spaceships crewed by two thousand guys or so (exact figures escape me-it's not like it's important) and set out to make sure the Martians can never attack Earth again.

The Martians are, as noted, very different from those of TWotW, but one doesn't actually notice this at first. This is mainly because the book takes its time to get to them. Once you get there, the differences couldn't be more obvious.

First, while some general bits of technology (heat rays, explosively propelled "cars"-that is, spacecraft, etc.) exist in common, there's one pretty radical difference-the Martians are essentially big, ugly humans.

Ugh. In fact, all dominant species from all inhabited worlds in this weird universe are essentially humans with some difference. The entirety of the difference in natural genetics? Size.

For instance, the Martians are fifteen feet tall on average (Martian women average more like twelve to thirteen). A member of an exinct race of Moon men left a five-foot-long footprint. And there was a woman from the asteroid Ceres who was forty feet tall.

Note that every single female of any species that qualifies for a mention (not counting governmental figures, who weren't described anyway) was extremely beautiful.

Why were Martian men ugly while Martian women were beautiful? Because Martian men had their brains artificially stimulated to be smarter in specific fields, while Martian women were given very broad, general educations. (Debunked pseudoscience, of course-the cranial deformation idea was based on phrenology.)

Anyway, supposedly, the Martian scientist caste didn't even need to do research-they simply knew all the natural laws. Therefore, 1) they weren't technically scientists (a scientist is fundamentally a researcher, y'know), and 2) they had developed the most sophisticated technology it was possible to develop... on Mars.

This of course begs the question of why they had to build cruddy cannon-launched spaceships, while Edison could build craft that were far superior to modern (by which I mean, modern in the present) spacecraft, ones that could make the journey to Mars in a matter of a month and a half or so, which is pretty incredible. There is an explanation, but it's a lame one: Earth has certain elements Mars doesn't, and these proved necessary for construction of the disintegrators (which were much deadlier than heat rays, since they turned stuff to vapor in an instant) and antigravity devices. Earth is better than Mars, nyeah nyeah nyeah!

Ahem. Ultimately, that's sort of the message we get-Earth is better than anyone else. (The story is pretty unabashedly imperialistic, so this isn't terribly surprising.) Of course, there's an issue with this-the Martians used to rule Earth.

Yeah. In ancient times, Mars invaded Earth, kidnapped a bunch of people, built the Great Sphinx and the pyramids, and then... um, left when Earth germs started killing them... or something?

Sheesh, the Martians were dummies if that's true.

The book has a lot of surprisingly strong points-it describes space better than you'd think, for one. (On the other hand, it turns out that a comet has a gigantic electrical charge and traps the electrically driven spaceships in its tail. So, yeah, what?) It also can claim the title of "first space opera."

So, if you like TWotW, well, you might consider reading this, and finding out about the numerous other things I didn't mention, like the asteroid made of gold. (Oops, mentioned it!) But don't be surprised if you feel a need to throw it to the floor when he starts talking about Aryans being the people from the Garden of Eden... Um, yeah.

-Signing off.

Tributes and Homages: Where do they begin?

So I was poking around YouTube, and found this clip from a series called Gear Fighter Dendoh:



This clip is a lot of fun because the creators are tributing series that they had created previously.

For instance, the numerous guns with which that robot (Dendoh) has armed itself all belonged (more or less) to the robot Xabungle:



The bow and arrow come from Raideen:



And that sword could probably come frome any number of different robots, although I don't currently recognize-WAITAMINNIT!!

He uses the bloody yo-yos!



COMBATTLER V's YO-YOS.



(Note: The above video seems to be taking Combattler V seriously. This should be a felony.)

After getting over the fact that this robot is using the crazy awesomest silly robot weapons I can think of (the only weapons I can think of offhand that are cheesier are all from recent Super Sentai, and they're less believable), I started thinking in a serious way about tribute/homage-heavy stuff.

Hardly anything new for me. I mean, I like Transformers, for crying out loud. Anymore, that's almost one big fat tributefest.

But still, I was looking around some more...



That robot (Baan Gaan) looks an awful lot like Xabungle in terms of general scheme, doesn't it? (Mr. Wholelottaguns from up a little ways.) He even transforms fairly similarly.

Then again, that transformation might be homaging the more closely related Exkaiser:



I mean, these two robots are from the same metaseries, and they do both have sword type weapons and animals on their chesplates (features Xabungle doesn't share with either).

I suppose the only people who know the truth are the designers and God.

Anyway, so I was looking around a little more, and found this clip, which for me is sort of like an "oldie but goodie," as I found it a long time ago and really loved it, and finding it again is great fun:



What makes this clip for me is the theatrical music. It's so... so... I'm not even sure how to put it, but it makes the clip both completely typical of anime and completely un-anime somehow all at once. (Fun fact: This clip technically would qualify for my Super Robot Wars Sunday posts.)

Anyway, not the point. Big swords often are given to robots, and there are lots of them, but the first really big robot sword that did the mass-shifty thing that I know of belonged to Great Exkaiser, a form of Exkaiser:



Where does it end/begin?

Super Robots: Gattai-Sexual Metaphor?

It should be noted that both these clips feature transformations that are magical, rather than the physical, engineered transformations I prefer. I'm not going to make that big a deal out of it, though.

Be warned: There's a lot more bosom showing than in most videos I post here.





This Gurren Lagann clip isn't so bad in terms of what I'm talking about here (it's mostly gaggy, although my dirty old mind wondered about the one chick's reaction to the phrase "gattai" and the use of the term "it" when talking about gattai), but the Godannar one is WAY over the top. I can't even bring myself to type about everything that's wrong with this clip:




*shudder*

East Vs. West: Ideon and Jean Grey

When comparing manga/anime with Western comics/cartoons, there's a lot of information to be found on stylistic differences, reinterpretations, and so on. Sometime soon, I'll do a similar article comparing Superman to Son Goku.

So what do Jean Grey and the Ideon have in common?

Themes and Powers:
Jean Grey is powered by the Phoenix Force, a power source of death and rebirth, which is an embodiment of the unborn and the collected life force of the entire universe.
The Ideon is powered by the Ide, a power source of death and rebirth, and pretty similar in terms of scope.

Power Level:
With the Phoenix Force, Jean Grey can potentially destroy worlds or devour suns.
The Ideon blew up the universe.

Appearance:
Jean Grey is a 5'6", 115 lb. redhead.
The Ideon is a giant red robot that stands over three hundred feet tall and weighs over five thousand tons.
(Hm. At least they're both red.)

Other Features:
Jean Grey was cloned or duplicated at least twice, and at one point was merged with the clones and duplicates. Also, she brought herself back to life at least once aside from the duplications and false deaths.
The Ideon was made up of three unique vehicles that combined. When piloted by younger people, the Ideon was more powerful-it was once piloted by a baby.

I think that this can be viewed as one of the relatively few instances where the Japanese series doesn't make an otherwise similar character into a cute girl instead of something perhaps more logical; of course, they go with the other Japanese path.