Apparently there’s a Korean live action film in the works based on the Taekwon V movie.
Taekwon is your basic mad scientist creates army of evil robots for world domination, good scientist counters with a powerful single robot plot.
(L-R) Taekwon V, Mazinger Z, Great Mazinger and Grendizer
At the time of Taekwon V’s creation, the Japanese manga and animated series, Mazinger Z, was very popular in Korea. And you can clearly see the influence in Taekwon’s design.
The upcoming movie purportedly has a budget of 20-billion Won ($17M Cdn) and is slated for release in 2009.
I played Armored Core on the PS1 years ago and I liked it. I tried the Armored Core 4 demo on the Xbox 360 and found it a little too difficult.
What one reviewer said was dead on. The designers need to find a balance between laughably easy and excruciatingly hard.
I’ve seen some game play trailers on YouTube and while the combat looks fun and very fast-paced, I might have to keep looking for a decent mecha combat game to get into.
I’m currently watching Macross: Frontier, the third TV series of the legendary Macross saga which began way back in 1982.
Macross: Frontier is set some time after Macross 7 (the second TV series and sequel to the original Macross TV series.) Humans have emigrated from Earth in large colonial fleets to colonize the distant stars. One such fleet encounters an insectoid alien race known as The Vajra, who are bent on the fleet’s complete destruction.
With their weapons proving virtually ineffective against the Vajra, the military turns to a special private military contractor group known as S.M.S. and their VF-25s; the most advanced variable fighter yet developed.
Macross: Frontier borrows what appears to be signature Macross themes. You have space-faring humans in a big ass ship, a young hero reluctantly thrown into the crucible of war as a fighter pilot, and music also plays a big role in the story with songs belted out by not just one but two pop star main characters. And they can actually sing! No offence Reba West!
If it’s one thing that stands out about Macross: Frontier, it’s the production values. Great direction coupled with well blended CG and a terrific score, by none other than Yoko Kanno, makes for some very spectacular and heart-pounding battles. Macross: Frontier’s production values really raises the bar.
In fact, the action sequences are so detailed and faced paced, it took me a number of attempts to re-encode the video clip above from the high definition source just so I could balance the bitrate and file size without it turning into an indecipherable blocky mess.
There are currently four episodes released in fansubberland and I’ll be blogging the series and posting more clips. (Yay! Unlimited web storage space!)
Throw in a little bit of World War 2, mix in a little Harry Potter and Top Gun and you get Strike Witches, an upcoming TV series slated for release in 2008 with a manga adaptation to be released March ‘08
The story takes place on an alternate Earth in a time period equivalent to our late 1930’s and 40’s. In order to repel an invasion by mysterious bent on conquering Earth, the various superpowers have combined forces to develop a weapon system consisting of a melding of technology and magic that allows the human body to merge with technological components.
Strike Witches is based on a popular trend in anime called mecha musume, mecha shojo or heiki musume that consists of cute girls wearing armour and accessories that look like they’ve been pulled right off period aircraft and armoured vehicles or are comprised of a combination of mecha parts.
Seasoned anime fans might remember those “Mobile Suit Girls” from long ago where cute girls were made up to look like various Mobile Suits.
Thoughts
No doubt flying in such a manner must be quite exhilerating (I’ve had similar dreams :), it may strike some fans as looking a little silly. But looking at how popular the figures are, no doubt this series will most likely develop a following— if they do a decent job of the story.
In case you’re wondering, the girls can utilize magic to protect themselves (hence the ‘witch’ in Strike Witches) so they’re not as vulnerable to weapons fire as they may appear.
Seeing as how I’ve been following Sky Girls as well which carries a similar theme but without the magic, I’ll most likely be following Strike Witches too.
The streaming music page will be taken offline until further notice. Bandwidth usage is abnormally high. I'd like to further secure the site before implementing such a page.
Got an email saying my $20 rebate on my 8800GT video card purchase has been deemed valid and is awaiting file processing. Woo! The rebate claim process actually turned out to be fairly painless!
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