A “zombie brand” is “a dead or dormant brand that have been revived or trotted out for second or third chances.” Anime has its share. I recently watched a soporific new Ah! My Goddess OVA, and I’m sure we haven’t seen the last Tenchi Muyo spinoff. What are other zombie anime?
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Yet another volcano in Kyushu is acting up. The Nakadake crater in the Aso caldera has been producing small plumes of ash and steam, and incandescence is visible on some webcams at night. Aso is the third volcano on the island to erupt this year. Shinmoedake/Kirishima put on quite a show back in January, and Sakura-jima has been puffing away since 1955. There are webcams here and here. Aso is currently tenth from the bottom in the box at right at the latter link. (Starting at the bottom and counting up by twos will give you a tour of some of the more active volcanoes in the south of Japan: Suwanose-jima, Satsuma-iwo-jima, Sakura-jima, Kirishima, Aso.)
Today, by the way, is the 31st anniversary of the VEI 5 blast at the American Fujiyama.
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Here’s a different, practical approach to cosplay: superhero styles as everyday street wear. (Via Project Rooftop.)
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(Via Pixy.)
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Time travel is not merely impossible. In China, it’s illegal.
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Cutey Honey has a pretty good track record for coming back from the dead. I hadn’t realized until just now that the live-action movie and OVA series from 2004 were followed by a live-action TV series in 2007.
-j
A “zombie brand”‘s new iterations should also be shambling and rotten compared to previous iterations. re: Cutie Honey, at least, was pretty damned good. I have to wonder if that isn’t an example of a perennial, instead.
Slayers strikes me as a better example. I bought the fourth and fifth seasons sight unseen last Christmas, and the fifth one still languishes at the bottom of my viewing pile, still unwatched. How can you mess up such a rough, goofy, shambling franchise that badly? The new character designs fall, somehow, into the Uncanny Valley – the sketchy, ugly mid-Nineties designs of the original three seasons were translated by JC Staff into a horrid, plastic sort of immobility. I don’t know, maybe CG-assisted animation acts like botox for certain styles of character design?
Yes, the live-action movie was nothing special, but Re: Cutie Honey was terrific. All the good things about Gainax with none of the bad.
-j