More Carnival Phantasm news

The opening animation and character introduction videos are up (they have the same music, and it’s more annoying than J-Pop usually is, so beware) (H/T ANN).

The official site has also been updated with a short Q & A with Type Moon’s Kinoko Nasu and Takeshi Takeuchi; they’re both very grateful to all the fans who have made Type Moon a success, and discuss their favorite characters (Nasu’s is Rin, and Takeuchi’s is Gilgamesh).

From the videos (and the fact that the OVAs are being based on Take Moon), Carnival Phantasm looks like it’s mainly going to be taking the Tsukihime and Fate characters and putting them in ridiculous situations; they’ll be the characters from the games, but they won’t have to deal with angst and violence.

I really enjoyed the four panel comic anthologies featuring Type Moon characters, and this looks like it’s going to be the same style of humor.

The barbarians used to be *outside* the gates…

But no longer.

Greek protestors (probably more of those “anarchists“) are so against the idea of budget cuts that they’ve rioted; the unions are against what the government is doing with the power system, and so there will be blackouts.

I hope they like living without modern conveniences.

Like the saying goes, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

The Greeks have run out.

I don’t think this new “austere” budget is actually going to accomplish anything; I think they’re going to continue their profligate spending (just like they did months ago after they passed the last “austerity” measures). They only went through the motions so that the IMF and EU would reinfuse them with cash.

H.T.

To commemorate the limited release of Trigun: Badlands Rumble in US theaters, today’s selection is the opening to the Trigun TV anime.

And it is a very limited release; in most of the theaters, it’s only showing for one or two days.

In the future, humanity has spread to many worlds, including the desert world of Gunsmoke (yes, really). The show goes all space western on us from there, following the misadventures of Vash the Stampede (AKA The Humanoid Typhoon), notorious wanted man; regular people chase him for the $$60,000,000,000 bounty, insurance agents chase him so that they don’t have to pay out claims for all the havoc he wreaks, and outlaws chase him, especially after he screws up their plans.

The first half of the series is mostly off-the-wall humor and action, but then it gets serious; the action remains, but Vash has to deal with his past and the decisions he’s made throughout his long life.

Just when you thought the TSA couldn’t get any more despicable…

It turns out that the backscatter scanning machines have been linked to cancer clusters in TSA workers (H/T Sebastian).

Looks like opting out of the scanning is safer for everyone!

I do find it hard to muster much sympathy for the TSA goons, though; you claim that making a 95 year-old woman remove her adult diaper is “following procedure” and you deserve what you get.

The TSA has never stopped an attack.

It has only reacted, tightening “security” in the hopes of looking like they’re doing something. After all, if people realized that the TSA doesn’t actually do anything useful, the agents would lose their cushy government jobs.