Wallpaper: Mobile Suit Gundam’s Char

narutaki I’ve decided to start posting some of the wallpapers I make. They are just for my personal use, but I figure hey why not share! I’ll be sharing them in three standard sizes, but if anyone requests a specific ratio I can probably make it for you without much of a problem.

In honor of Mobile Suit Gundam’s April anniversary and because I got my copy of The Origin, it had to be Char.

1920×1080     1280×1024     320×480

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Anime 101

There was a formspring question a while back about what anime you would show a class, we liked it so we expanded it into a little post. Imagine you are a professor. You have students who have anime studies as a major. What titles should they be familiar with in their first year that introduces them to the major? Lists like this are never really complete especially when working in some sort of restriction like our 10 TV series and 5 movies but there is only so much time in a semester. It also becomes more difficult as the years go by and more and more shows are produced. But you can still attempt a good foundation. It is important to note that not all of these titles are necessarily the best representations of their genre. Titles were often picked because it helped show the full range of what anime has to offer more than being the pinnacle. The shows here are meant to show what anime can produce in order to help the student decide where they want to focus their studies. So here’s what we thought of, what would be on your list?

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Ode to Broken Things

If your anything like me you have found yourself dissecting your choices in entertainment and what they mean about you. I occasionally sit back and wonder why I truly enjoy the things I truly enjoy. During these examinations I have come to one major conclusion. The artists and works I usually like the most are usually very flawed. I loved Kinoko Nasu, Rumiko Takahashi, and Yoshiyuki Tomino but they are all idiosyncratic artists with highly imperfect works under their belt. This realization lead me to another even more shocking revelation.  All the most influential works in a genre are not the masterworks but flawed works. All the shows that define radical shifts are often riddled with major flaws but are inspiring despite that fact.

Flawed works are sometimes the most special of all; they are chance taking stories that don’t quite have all the details worked out. When breaking new ground it is no surprise when one gets lost along the way. This can occur in many different facets from having the amount of episodes suddenly shortened due to low-ratings or lulls in the middle of the story as they try to stretch or even extraneous characters taking up too much time. But these are also stories that surprise you with their decisions and that’s a most powerful and memorable reaction.

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