http://www.megachan.net/sff Live RSS feed for http://www.megachan.net/sff en'; http://www.megachan.net/sff/res/4352.html#4650 >>4635
They did something like this in Titan AE - Cale and Korso blast out of a hangar bay in a small craft but their windshield gets cracked and starts to fracture. Korso tells Cale to exhale, then smashes the glass with a fire extinguisher and rides it up to their waiting ship

Probably the only scientifically accurate part of the whole movie. It was fun though, I recommend it.

]]> http://www.megachan.net/sff/res/4642.html#4649 >>4648
> Anyone that goes in for Legend of Galactic Heroes has my support. I'm afraid to start it because of the staggering amount of episodes

That's what's held me off.

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>>4647
Oh I didn't mean that the themes were dumbed down so much as it felt the need to be very direct in what it discussed, rather than maintaining a real distance as sci fi generally allows. I felt it was a little dumbed down to so openly treat the themes, they may as well have called it the Battleship America... It was, I suppose, universal enough? Not that the show sucked though.

Anyone that goes in for Legend of Galactic Heroes has my support. I'm afraid to start it because of the staggering amount of episodes (110), spin-offs, movies, etc. Apparently it's all fantastic, but it seems a bit of a full-immersion thing. The novel itself is meant to be rather good too.

Blue Gender might be worth checking out too, though a lot of it isn't set in space. Still, it's one of the late-90s serious, dark anime allowed by the popularity of Evangelion. Again, dark mecha story featuring invading aliens, humans are forced to live in orbiting space stations. Not the best ever, but I could think of worse starting points, and I guess unlike Eva it has a proper ending XD

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I absolutely loved Planetes - I have to say it's the only anime I've ever enjoyed, but hopefully I can amend that statement after checking out some of your recommendations.

I wouldn't say BSG dumbed down any real-life connections foreign occupation and suicide bombers for example but I'm willing to consider the possibility that I've just been missing out on comparatively harder-hitting stuff.

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As the resident not-really-very-weeaboo, I'll just say that I like good, well crafted SF and cyberpunk and honestly, the Japanese are better at it than most.

Wings of Honneamise and Gundam I remember from the local anime club who showed fan subbed movies in a university lecture hall every week in my hometown many years ago; good stuff, and there was little else to do early on a Friday evening anyway.

Voices of a Distant Star made me cry like a little child because I know what it's like to lose someone to geographical distance (and border regulations in this case) so that definitely hit home. I DL'd Planetes a while ago but keep forgetting to actually watch it. I've heard good things about it.

As for Macross, I haven't seen it but I grew up with the Harmony Gold Robotech series and as important as that was to me and my brothers when we were kids I find it utterly unwatchable now, even for nostalgic reasons. The local cable channel didn't have the final few episodes for some reason. They would get to a certain point in the third season and just start again from episode one, they did this several times. Part of me has always wanted to know what happened in the end but I can't bear to sit through the whole thing to find out, it's that bad. In my ten year old mind there was something so bleak and desperate about this band of freedom fighters, riding across the landscape of an Earth that was devastated by three generations of war that was so stirring... yet I can't go back to it all the same.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes has been recommended to me, but I haven't checked it out yet.

pic is from Freedom, which has already been discussed on another board. Not bad.

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As the resident weeaboo, I feel the need to make a thread for the furtherment of space anime. A lot of anime fans seem to shy away from these shows nowadays, caught up in moe and schoolgirl fantasies, and while there's nothing wrong with a bit of that now and then, people are really missing out. The same goes for staunch Western sci fi fans who refuse to give anime shows a look in due to their prejudice against the form as being too full of fanservice or silliness.

Gundam - goes without saying, really. Even 0079, the original show, holds up nowadays. The animation is surprisingly good (especially the HD remasters), and the story has as much political intrigue and personal struggles as the likes of the Battlestar reboot; only unlike modern Western sci fi, it doesn't feel the need to dumb down the political storylines to make the analogy with reality.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of anything outside the Universal Century timeline, but some people love those other shows.

Martian Successor Nadesico - actually a pun on another great space anime, Space Battleship Yamato. (Yamato Nadeshiko is a archetype of feminity in Japan best understood as 'the flower of Japanese womanhood.') The main series of this manages to parody the likes of Yamato, Gundam, et al, without becoming simply a gag anime. The drama ramps up towards the end of the series as well, and what starts as a fairly light-hearted space adventure becomes very serious. The characters are all memorable, and it's worth watching just so that you can enjoy their development in the interim between the series and the film, which is a lot darker and drops a lot of the jokes. Unfortunately a second film was cancelled, so the franchise ends on a rather sour note, but it's still well worth checking out.

Wings of the Honneamise - Gainax's first really major production, and a film that should be a million times better known. Unfortunately, it was torpedoed upon release by the success of Ghibli's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (which I actually regard as rather a weak film). This is all about an alternate universe, and the fledging space force full of losers who become determined to have the first manned space flight. Utterly stunning animation, and a story that really stays with you. Beautiful film-making.

Voices of a Distant Star - Earth is attacked by aliens, a spaceforce goes out to counterattack. But that's not what this short (half hour) animation is really about. It's about the two best friends, one who stays on earth, the other who joins the space force, and how the messages they send to one another get further and further apart as the space fleet warps away from Earth. First a few minutes, then a day, and so on. Totally heart wrenching, and impressive animation considering it was made by one guy on an Apple Mac.

Gunbuster (+ Diebuster) - Gunbuster (pic related!), released in 1988, was another Gainax production. Famously nicknamed Bustgunner for the breast-jiggling fanservice, it would be unfair to malign this based on that. Starting off at a high school where girls train to become pilots and concerned with how they grow up and begin to fight an alien invasion force, the show moves quickly in its 6 episodes from fun and light-hearted to intensely dramatic. The last episode in particular is of note, famously causing even the stoniest hearted otaku to weep openly.
Diebuster, a sequel of sorts made years later, strikes a balance between Gunbuster/Neon Genesis Evangelion and later Gainax productions like FLCL. Lots of self-reference from the studio, but once more becomes very emotional towards the end, and dovetails nicely with the original OVA.

Super Dimensional Fortress Macross - One of the big space/mecha anime that isn't Gundam, the Macross metaseries is pretty huge in its own right. I'm not as big a fan of it for reasons I won't go into for fear of spoilering the show, but some elements are great, and fans of space opera will not be disappointed.

Outlaw Star - Everyone's seen Cowboy Bebop. It's ok. I don't hate it. But Outlaw Star is Cowboy Bebop without the angst and teen-impressing melodrama. The fun and adventure elements are cranked to 11, but it doesn't descend entirely into farce, and it's not afraid to be violent or wander into darker territory. The main difference between it and Bebop is that it doesn't let the plot fall by the wayside to establish just how cool the main character is, and everyone has a sense of humour.

Planetes - I've mentioned before. (Relatively) hard sci fi about garbage collectors in space. Consulted with NASA during the production, and has some good, if underdeveloped, plots. A lot of the start is rather slice of life, which might put you off, but it's so nicely animated that I find it hard to hold weak plots against it.

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]]> http://www.megachan.net/sff/res/4352.html#4639 >>4635
Yup...Being exposed to space is very much like being exposed to atmosphere after being at the bottom of a trench. Only worse. explode your lungs in your chest and veins in your eyeballs popping worse.

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]]> http://www.megachan.net/sff/res/4352.html#4635
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html

Compare with examples from fiction. You don't explode instantaneously, your blood doesn't boil out of your ears in a matter of seconds, nor do you turn into a human Ice Pop right away because you aren't immersed in cold water or freezing winds, so you lose heat only by radiation and not conduction. Exposure to solar radiation without a blanket of atmosphere however IS a problem, assuming you're in sight of the sun. Also, the bends in a really bad way.

The scene in Event Horizon (which admittedly crosses the line into fantasy, and intentionally so) where the kid is in the airlock which is about to crack. Someone tells him to shut his eyes tight and blow all the air out of his lungs. Might save you a few seconds?

]]> http://www.megachan.net/sff/res/4352.html#4634 >>4633
Yeah, especially Ender's Game... not that it's my favorite book ever (OK, it was when I was 14), just that I see no reason to make a motion picture out of it. Admittedly, if they did the zero gee battle games well, that part could be quite cool to watch. But maybe they pull a Verhoeven and reverse the message of this one too? Though, this is interesting:

http://www.mcu.usmc.mil/lejeune_leadership/LLI%20Documnets/Enders%27%20Game%203.pdf

]]> http://www.megachan.net/sff/res/4352.html#4633 >>4617
>Card was being stubborn about the way it should be done
Good. I never want those books made into movies, or anything else.

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AT-AT liquor cabinet.

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