Hakugei Densetsu: Legend of Moby Dick is a 26 episode space adventure based on the Herman Melville book Moby Dick. Abandoned floating ships are called whales and many times are of the shape of whales or other sea creatures. Many character names and themes are shared, but after that this anime deviates pretty far.

The story starts off in the Nantucket Nebula on a massive space station in the year 4699. There whale hunters gather materials, loot, and ship parts from whales. That space station was a project by a government for its people, but its location had a strong gravitational pull that brought dead ships and scrap from all over. An odd bunch is the crew for Captain Ahab, the highly thought of leader of a small while hunter crew. Every character is pretty much explained or given some sort of history in the beginning except for the 14 year old Lucky Luck. All that is shown is that he wanted to be a while hunter, but nothing is presented to really why or what his background is. The only semi-spoiler I’ll give is Ahab saves Lucky Luck as he is being unofficially tested to become apart of the crew. A gold coin is thrown into what was thought to be water and Lucky Luck dives in to get it. Shortly after the captain saves him with Lucky Luck unable to swim in the dangerous liquid. His hand opens up revealing the coin as Captain Ahab grabs him from the deep bellow.

Extra points are earned for the spray that allows people to go into space without suits, the small ships the crew flies on to travel outside their main ship, and that they actually try spearing ships to catch them in order to board them.

The animation is very old school in a good rough way much like Outlaw Star. This anime deserves to be watched in dub form because Captain Ahab has your stereotypical pirate voice with a robotic talking parrot to top it off. Lucky Luck plays a solid role as the narrator for being an optimistic character instead of an unknown voice. Only a couple moments where the lips and voices noticeably don’t sync well. Hakugei Densetsu: Legend of Moby Dick is for you if you’re wanting a refreshing old school space adventure with 1980s like characters designs.

ADV Films has a six disc box set with extras. One of the nicer extras is the interview with the directors Osamu Desaki and Matsuzono. I’ll be watching this to the end.

It’s 9/9/2009 in the time zone that this is posted and the Sega Dreamcast was released in North America 9/9/1999. The Dreamcast was ahead of other consoles with online play, Internet browser, Internet service provider, modem, powerful hardware, and unique controller. Games ranged from all sorts of genres, inbetweens, and a ton of arcade action. Only failures were Sega’s past and lack of a DVD drive.

Hardware for the Dreamcast is built strong and the machine itself isn’t suppose to be a huge multimedia center with glitches and rings of deaths. The controller fit perfectly into your hand and the analog triggers is great for driving games. You can connect with SNK’s Neo Geo Pocket and games if you had both. Later on Sega allowed online players to play with PC players.

Jet Set Radio – Graffiti roll blading action game which couldn’t be compared to Tony Hawk at the time…since it’s action and not trick based. This game has style and amazing music Guitar Vader, Jurassic 5, and more. Graphics were bright blazing cel shaded which so few game used. The analog stick when in grafficti mode was used to paint on walls, so you had to be fast. Jet Set Radio Future cut that feature for more speedy gameplay. Clearly Air Gear had some inspiration…

Test Drive V-Rally – Another arcade like rally game, but with a map maker and pretty good soundtrack. Of course I took advantage of that and made a map as high and low as possible. Watching the insane pop in is quite amusing.

Skies of Arcadia – At the time this game was meant to be a traditional old school RPG, but given modern treatment. There was a VMU mini-game where you fly your ship, special memorable attacks given at the end, and a large beautiful world where you wouldn’t mind getting lost in. Skies of Arcadia has a very Last Exile feel.

Grandia II – Character story is abundant and so many characters are not as you think they are. Areas are detailed, the game included the sountrack CD, and attacks are outer space massive. Battle system has a real time turn based gameplay with a bar listing next attackers. I stayed up late at night and skipped sleep couple times just to play this game.

Bangai-O – 2D mecha side scroller shooter by Treasure, but you aren’t limited to what direction you want to go in. You have a special attack that send out more bang if there’s more enemy projectiles. The screen can be filled with wonderful circular patterns of what you fired. There’s a newer Nintendo DS version which includes a level creator.

Gundam Side Story 0079: Rise from the Ashes, Red Dog, Evolution, Mars Matrix, and Berserk are great plays. Options are larger if you import games like Ikaruga, Rez, Hundred Swords, Shenmue II, Segagaga, and even an Eva typing game called Neon Genesis Evangelion: Typing Hokan Keikaku. There’s still a few games I wish to play like the first person sword fighting Persona looking Maken X and the supposedly weird arcade shooter Charge ‘N Blast. Project Gotham fans would like Metropolis Street Racer since it’s basically the same game series from the same developers. Kudos system included.

There are still new games coming out every once and a while from indie developers. Most of them are shooters like DUX and Last Hope: Pink Bullets with no region protection. Most games can still be found pretty inexpensive on Ebay and Play-Asia.

Nothing but fond memories of Dreamcast. Happy 10th birthday Dreamcast.

This is in response to a blog post posted on another blog, but it won’t be mentioned further due to it being clearly troll bait. It’s pretty crazy what people can come up with to rationalize with themselves for being a tightwad. On with the show.

1. Anime companies get that people want their anime now, not months from now. English companies and sites have began to place shows online or licensed and released on DVD much earlier than years before.

2. The official subtitles are almost always superior to the fansub subtitles. Fansub groups come and go and vary greatly in terms of quality, professionalism, and accuracy. You’re far less likely to run into poor English grammar, spelling mistakes, goofy multi-colored subtitle fonts, and over the top explainations of why a word was used.

3. Good quality English dub voice acting and the choice between dub, sub, or neither. Some people like their anime differently and voice acting has come a long way in recent years. Anyone who’s bought much anime knows that.

4. Supports the anime industry and the workers to put the anime from an idea to animation. Generally speaking, you give your support if you like a form of media or a particular artist. It’s natural, shows your appreciation, and shows you want more of something.

5. Easy and convenient. Just drop by your local store, order online, rent, or barrow from a library. Plenty of ways of getting your anime.

FUNimation and others get it (it being the expectations and wants of the viewer) and and that’s why there have been so many changes with the anime industry.

Art not made officially by staff of a manga or animation would be the best way to describe fan art. That’s much different than saying art made by people or fans since staff or authors also make their own not so official art. What would you consider that since not all of their illustrations and works may be from series they worked on? They are more than a simple fan and some images they share may also be official ones.

The fact is many people believe it’s fine to take an image off of another blog that was taken from Anime News Network that got it from an official site or announcement to post on a discussion forum. It takes money and effort to get a digital camera and scanner to produce images from real life objects not previously added to the net. This brings me to a good supporting point of how the Internet is. If you make anything creative and share it publicly on the net, what do you expect everyone to do? Not saying it’s okay to be a jerk, but not everyone using fan art has a malicious intent and the uploader should know the possibility of others using their work without permission.

Human beings like recognition and linking to their image account or site shows you support them, however, don’t assume all artists are upset when they see their work used without permission. They may simply enjoy knowing someone liked their art enough to use. This being said, not all sites have field or detail areas when uploading a image and other sites may not be focused on comments and image details. Then what?

The best the artist can do is add a watermark or sign their name and put a notice where images are displayed that you wish to be linked to or asked before having an image used. The best blogger, graphic creator, or web disigner can do is link back, ask, or ask around for the source if unknown. One thing you can learn to do is add the artist or source name when saving an image so you can remember and so that some image hosts may keep that file name in the url or details page. Or just don’t upload at all…any of you.

Besides, people like to be able to find more. On a semi-related note, this community does have a link directory for anime and manga illustration and our gallery does have a copyright area.

Opera has just announced a fairly huge new feature in their new version of their web browser. You can host sites and files from your computer and browser easily. Of course you’d have to have your computer and Opera running for it to work, but it’s easy and free.

Even though you have to create an account of sorts to get urls, Opera claims there is privacy. That’s actually the point of this. We all know how so many of us anime and manga fans download illegally and legally. I wonder if the developers of Opera are counting on this to be abused in order to make the browser popular or if there’s a way to report abuse. Either way this will be used for images or…media. Hope you have a fast net connection.

Nickelodeon’s American animation Avatar: The Last Airbender was set to have an American live action movie titled The Last Airbender. The first images have been unleashed on the Internet and here’s our hero Aang.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is seen as anime by many and was claimed to be the first American made anime. It’s clearly inspired, but if it is or not is up to you. The series is an action adventure with a few cultures that are separated by elemental power differences that can cause wars and battles. Movie set to come out early/mid 2010. USA Today the magazine and site is the source of this revealing.