Michael Hopcroft

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Chick Sexer Lousy job, but a great title. NT: Signs that your newborn baby is one day going to destroy the Earth

Re: Anime Champions? And on a completely different note: Nagisa Ootori, better known to the Japanese public as nagisa Shiratori or simply "Nagisa-chan", is the heroine of the extremely strange comedy I'll Make a Habit of It. She is an example of taking an anime stereotype and turning it around completely on its ear. About fifteen years old, nagisa is the heri of the Ootori School, a martial arts form that combines techniques from jujutsu and karate. However, her school was so poor that the only students it could attract were forest animals like Kumakichi, the large bear that was nagisa's favotire sparring partner. Nagisa had to find disciples. Her plan was to become an idol. Despite Nagisa's complete lack of anything approaching musical talent, a well-orchestrated media blitz soon made her the most popular idol iin Japan, selling gazillions of records and selling out stadiums. Unfortuinately, this got her no closer to her goal. she then stunned her manager by chopping off her trademark pony-tails and announcing that she was going to enroll in a "tough" school -- as a guy, under her real name of Nagisa Ootori (she uses the stage name Nagisa Shiratori when performing). Alas, this didn't work either, as the gang at her new school proved to be rather below her caliber. Then Nagisa's luck changed completely, and her life turned completely upside-down. The gang from her school told her that a rival school's gang was going to have a brawl with them. She went to the brawl and there found the leader of the rival gang was an incredibly handsome boy named Hiroshi. For Nagisa, it was love -- instant, total and extreme. Unfrotunately, she was dressed as a guy! So all Hiroshi saw was a boyish-looking but extrenmely strong martial artist, who he swore to meet again on the battefield. The next day, Hiroshi turned up at one of Nagisa Shiratori's record signings, and revealed that he was in love with the female Nagisa! So in lvoe with her, in fact, that he proposed to her on the spot. In the process, he also revelaed that he was on a paralell to nagisa's own quest, looking for strong men to be disciples of his family's failing school of martial arts. Eventually it all got sorted out when they finally fought. Hiroshi caught Nagisa in a hold and -- well, let's just say he found hismelf grabbign something he didn't expect. having discoeverd Nagisa's secret, the lovestruck Hiroshi agreed to keep it. That's when things started getting weird around Nagisa. the way to happiness was open to her, but standing in her path were rival idols, strange martial arts schools, the presitigous Women's Academy for World Conquest, music-happy gangsters, a classmate with a head like a volcano and a temper to match, and the surprising fact that just about every idol singer in Japan but her had gotten their hands on pet alligators. Nagisa also ended up foiling a plot to re-establish the Tokaguwa Shogunate (it's kidn of hard to explain). worst of all, Nagisa has beooem the target of Red Beetle, a secret cabal which controls the music industries of every country except Japan and is determined to place their own idols on top of the charts. Not that Nagisa really cares. The most surprising thing about her life is that nobody believes her when she tells the world how untalented and graceless she is, even though she is telling the absolute truth. All of Japan loves Nagisa-chan, forcing her to take refuge at the junior high school on the wrong side of the tracks where nobody is aware that the toughest boy in the school is really the nation's greatest celebrity.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "Dear Abby: I'm dating a cute guy with N-Ray Vision: Always On. How do I stop him from looking at other women?"

Re: Anime Champions? Bubblegum Crisis is one of those stories where part of the question of "How do we save the city?" is "Should we bother? Is the city worth saving?" MegaTokyo thematically is very similar to the Gotham City of Batman Begins: a stinking pit with a glittering surface that all but the most quixotic have given up on. The Knight Sabers, of course, are prettier than Batman, but it's balanced out by the sheer number of dead cops in MegaTokyo. Arguments of 2033 vs. 2040 are sort of like the arguments over whether the Ghost in the Shell theatrical films are better than Stand Alone Complex. Both deal with the same issue (in a world where almost everyone is at least part machine, does the word "human" still have any real meaning?) in different ways. Stand Alone Complex is especially notable for the tachikoma, a series of robot tanks with artifical intelligences who are used by Section 9 as cannon fodder despite the fact that they are developing feelings and emotions.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "Your husband will never know." NT: Signs the rookie hero on your team has a really lame superpower.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat ""No way that's a real Klingon."

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Psst. Oddhat. You're Reply #3, amkign it your turn to select a topic.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Describe the full extent and scope of every issue in your relationship, speaking only in Klingon.

Re: Rocketmen Hero? Let me guess, Diana also thinks Nick Sion is a massively desirable hunk. One other note: Nick doesn't care whether he lives or dies because his prother was killed by the bad guys. But unless he watched him die, it is a prototypical part of the genre for it to be a cover and for said borther to ahve actually joined the bad guys and gone totally, manaically evil. There is a lot of potential here. Any idea when the next web episode will be up of the cartoon?

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat You accidentally log onto her Paypal account and find it is larger than the Gross Domestic Product of Venezuela. A check of the transactions shows that the balance includes the Gross Domestic Product of Venezuela.

Re: Anime Champions? Nio pussyfooting around for this guy, clawing his way to the top. Since I am already under sentence of death, I can get away with that. That and I don't live in Fremont, home of Casey, Andy, Mary (who likes to dress up as a cop and put several bullets through anyone who tells a pun in her presence) and the being I refer to as Satan-chan.

Re: Rocketmen Hero?

Re: Anime Champions? I don't know. Naga the Serpent must think all her enemies, most of her allies, and numerous random objects are extremely amusing. Her infamous laugh (which has been known to cause entire cities to be evacuated) is used at every opporutnity, reasonable or otherwise. And there is nothing more firghtening than a gang of ten Nagas bearing down on your, laughing and bouncing and looking like they could do you grevious bodily harm without exhibiting a care in the world. Except possibly the 200-foot-tall Naga golem, poweered and piloted by the real thing. I bet you didn't think it was possible for fired clay to bounce like that. And naga is not Lina Inverse's sidekick! She is Line Inevrse's greatest and msot supreme rival! At least that's what she things. To Lina, Naga is a pain in the rear that annoys her and that she cannot seem to shake (although eventually she does, as Naga never appears in the TV series except in brief shots.) Gourry isn't like that. Lina can (and frequently does) shake Gourry, particularly after he says something stupid. But deep down she likes the guy a lot. And even that is probably too light a term -- you generally don't place the entire universe on a silver platter and offer it in sacrifice just to save a guy if you only like him. But Lina Inverse is incredibly stubbornh and not always very honest with herself, so....

Re: What Champions Books Would You Like Published in the Future? You know I'd love to see Anime Champions, but it would have to be a very boradly-written book to cover everything from DBZ-level world-shattering battles to magical girls (not just Sailor Moon-style warriors botu also magical thieves like Kaitou Jeanne and transofrming idol singers like Fancy Lala), traditional sentai five-teams, modern-day mecha, Bubblegum Crisis-style power "rock-and-roll babes in power armor", and demon-fighting shrine maidens and ghost sweepers. The difficult thing will eb crossing it over to the mainstream Champions Universe, although Cantrip and a Japanese majokko joining forces would be quite amusing. Strike Force is otu of the question, but a book built around the same premise (follow a superteam that has had a profound impact on the CU from inception to the present) would be quite cool. The Martial World might be a neat little book, showcasing the CU's martial artists the way The Mystic World showcased its mages. It would be nice to have the little things of being a superhero discussed in a book, such as how a superteam handles the media and the cops, how a superhero does detective work, and the like.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "tell me again how a 275-pound woman can ask her husband 'Does this dress make me look fat?' and expect any answer other than yes." NT: Signs the quarterback of your favorite football team really doesn't have his heart in i9t anymore.;

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Windows ME.

Re: Clubs, Lethal Weapons? (Killing Damage Not Normal)

Re: Anime Champions? You know what amazes me? That anyone realizes that was a pun. Naugahyde, a form of artificial upholstery, has not been used commonly for nearly twenty years, and very few people know what it is anymore. So nobody has been searching for raw Naugha pelts for decades.

Re: Rocketmen Hero? Way cool! Now commission a real animated series and put Paul Dini in charge and a Classic Will Be Born! I wonder is WizKids really knows what they have on their hands. I don't normally play CMGs, but this one I think i want to try. And I definitely want to roleplay in this setting. Nick Sion is my kind of hero -- brave, resilient and cleevre than he looks. I also like the way the story started out, although I wish the episodes were longer because there's a LOT more they could do here....

Re: Nanotech!

Re: Good News For Time Travelers! That would be US Patent No. 1. James Ernst runs the company, which is still going. They are best known for the legendary "pre-mytsery" boardgame Kill Dr. Lucky, in which the players are trying to be the first to off a wealthy man while trying to prevent the other players from beating them to it. Some of their other titles include Deadwood (try to make money as a hack actor in a B-movie studio) and Unexploded Cow (no sane description of thios game is humanly possible). A somewhat higher-end branch of the company is responsible for Girl Genius: the Works and Brawl, cardgames that frequenlty feature Phil Foglio art (which is fitting as both Foglio and Ernst are in the Seattle area and Phil and Kaja Foglio are the creators of Girl Genius). ernst also won a lot of acclaim for Falling, a cardgame with the simple goal of "be the last player to hit the ground -- you may be just as dead as everyone else, but at least you won!" The weirdest ngame in the line would have to be Devil Bunny Needs a Ham. The title alone would make a great movie. it had a sequel, Devil Bunny Hates the Earth, about suicidal candy machines rebelling against the hideously evil Devil Bunny. I keep hoping he'll come out with a new Devil Bunny game, because the character is just so wickedly cool.

Re: Anime Champions? At the risk of giving ym enemies more ammuntion..... Back when I was watching raw anime with commericals on it in the mid-'90s with one of my friends, there were commercials for the cookies that we call Koala Yummies. The Japanese refer to them as Koala no Maachin ("Koalas on the March"). They are manufactures by Lote, a leading Japense confectioner. And I knew none of this when I heard those guys at the end of the commerical name the product. I thought they were saying "I love the Koala Machine." You don't give me an opening like that. "I love the Koala Machine! Push this button, get a koala! Push this button, get another koala! I love the Koala Machine!" Cross-langauge puns. I will never live them down. (One of the other in-jokes I had with one of my friends was that there was a time when I had difficulty remembering how to pronounce the name of the city of Orlando, imporant because I was a basketball fan. Whenever I found myself fumbling over a word or a phrase, my friend and I would look at each other and say, with one voice, "Or-LAN-do!")

Re: Anime Champions? Purin is pudding, although the Japnese version looks more like a flan than what an American would refer to as pudding. The title of the fantasy comedy Dekatato Princess ("Suddenly Princess") is a double pun, because the charatcers for "pudding" are used. The heroine just happens to be totally addicted to pudding, to the point that she will wither and die if deprived of it for long periods. That is not as bad as some of the anime puns I've come up with. "Look out! it's Naga! Hide!"

Re: Anime Champions? I'm sorry, but I'm a purist when it comes to my magical girl shows. The main reason I haven't seen any Tokyo Mew mew is that it is not available here in its original form. American Sailor Moon, Cardcaprots, and whatever they are going to do to Ojamaho Doremi tend to get my goat faster than any other topic you can mention, even though I have no objection to dubs that do not do substantial aletrations in setting, location, theme or content. Idol/actress is a popular cover for magical girls, actually. In the new live-action Pretty Guaridan Sailor Moon, Minako-chan actually is a superstar idol (a status she only aspires to in the anime) in addition to being the mysterious superheroine Sailor V. Apparently something really bad happens to her near the end of the series, but I haven't seen that far. Watching a live-action Sailor Moon with a blonde wig on the heroine form only and Power Rangers-level visual effects can be very odd. But in a sense it reutrns the franchise to its roots, as Naoko Takeuchi was actually attempting to combine the sensisbilties of the magical girl series previous with those of sentai. So PGSM is a throwback, somewhat updated to 2004, to what she originally had in mind.

Re: Good News For Time Travelers!