Cool Character Designs: Gurren Lagann

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SaiMecha! Submit Your Nominations!

SaiMoe is an annual tournament-style competition to determine whom the most moe anime character of the year is. Some people have a lot of fun participating in it each year, while others make their own English-language versions or alternatives like “SaiGAR.” Currently, set-up is going on for SaiMecha, a tournament to determine the most… well, the mecha that can get the most votes, I guess. Find all your info here.

Anyone can contribute nominations while they’re still open, and each person can submit up to fifteen mechs via email to executiveotaku AT gmail DOT COM. This post is to show off my noms in the same vein as ghostlightning and Schneider. These nominations are in alphabetical order by the name of the mech.

There are three general categories of interest for me when it comes to mecha: first and most importantly, their appearance. Second and equally important, their presence in the series. And third but still important, how they move. The third criteria has nothing to do with the functionality of their movement, but more to do with how that movement is animated.

Calling All Artists! Please Draw Me a Banner Image!

The recent fanart debate reminded me of my long-standing desire to fill my site with original artwork. However, I can’t draw worth a half of a shit. I don’t mind trying to draw some of the site’s imagery, but for my banner image, I’d like it to be done by someone with talent. So, if you have that, please help me out!

GURREN LAGANN WITH SAMURAI – SENGOKU BASARA EPISODE ONE [RAW]

The first episode of Sengoku Basara is probably the most manly and fucking awesome first episode of anime ever. I don’t even know where to begin – my fucking beard grew longer while watching it. My fucking balls grew. I felt like I should have had a beer and a porn mag or something while watching it. Basically, Production IG decided to pretend to be GAINAX and produced some insanely over-the-top, totally fun-loving samurai action. It’s purposefully cheesy, throws back to all kinds of chanbara film techniques and fights so insane it’s hard to believe the characters aren’t in mechs. Fucking Date Masamune rides his horse with ARMS CROSSED and WIELDS THREE SWORDS AT ONCE — PER HAND

But lets not forget the main reason to watching this, NORIO WAKAMOTO AS FUCKING ODA NOBUNAGA. I loved the game, I love the show, will watch all eps at least twice. There is nothing negative I can say about this ep – it was astonish-mazing. Will do a more through post when Shinsen drops the first sub.

Almost forgot, op is a pretty good Abingdon Boys School song.

Episode of the Month – Mai-HiME Episode 15 – School Girl ☆ Through the Galaxy

To make up for obviously not posting anime moments weekly, here’s an anime episode for the whole month. More specifically, it’s about 2 particular moments from the episode, neither of which I wanted to miss out on talking about. There are spoilers for Mai-HiME, and if you haven’t seen it, this isn’t a show you want to be spoiled on, though I wouldn’t say anything truly big has happened at this point compared to the episodes that come later.

Much like Gurren Lagann, Mai-HiME sort of has two climaxes – one in episode 15 and one in episode 26. The first climax takes out the first major villains in the series, though ultimately the whole villainous force was probably just a thing to push along the set-up part of the story. I’d go so far as to say the whole first 16 episodes are just set up for the stuff that happens later, but extremely well-written set up done in ingenious ways. Therefor, the first climax, while exciting, doesn’t hold all that much weight in light of the act that the overall plot and drama just breeze right by it, barely paying attention to it. However, not wanting to be just a throwaway plot, the first climax makes a point to be doubly exciting and fun.

Defining My Fandom – What I Like More Than Anyone Else OR Oh My God, It's the Return of the Hayate Titles! OR Hey Guys What if I Finally Decided to One-Up My Former Longest Post Title? You Know, That One About Gurren Lagann and Stuff but Really Had Nothing to do With the Post? I Really Liked That Post Title. So Yeah, Lets Go for That. Though it's Going to Lay Waste to My Comment Thingy in the Left Hand Column, Especially if There's Like 5 Consecutive Comments. But Whatever, it's Worth the Reprecussion – OR Digital Boy Gets Indy – the Forgotten Parts of Your Lost Destiny

This is probably going to be one of my favorite lists ever. I want to list all of the things that probably mean more to me than they do to most people, some of which only I seem to ever talk about. These are some of my absolute favorite anime things, period – the kinds of things that make me an otaku. These are what I believe everyone else is missing out on. My most personal, precious anime treasures. They range everywhere from moments of dialogue to entire shows and occasionally artworks or others – and while I tried to exclude things that too many others would appreciate, some of these I’m sure are recognized by at least a cult support.

Originally, I was going to do this as a series of 4 or 5 large posts, but I decided it’d be more fun to do an individual small post for each thing – possibly grouping some together. So for today, we have the Hayate the Combat Butler Chapter Titles!