Lack of context is fun!

I’d ramble on about rage-inducing design choices for game production, but something like that is up for an entirely different post.

At least the combat makes it so that Dragon Age is the closest we’ll get to a modern version of BG2. Only without the pure lethality of BG2-style mages.

I love acronyms. And so, I managed to shoehorn a series of words into RAGEcast to make it a proper acronym, which I felt represents our podcast a bit more accurately. Because we always seem to be charging our masers for subsequent firings. This word was also coined during our third podcast by Koda-P, and I ended up loving the word.

And thus, I present the renaming of our previously horribly titled podcast:

(R)elevant (A)nime & (G)aming (E)lucidation Podcast

Yay. I feel like I did something today.

wonderful touhou image above done by haniwa

Nyoron.

An interesting post by omo about the usage of the phrase ‘slice-of-life’ sparked a small chain of responses. So we did it the way we can, with our podcast. It’s not a breakthrough in thought exercise, but we’re happy enough to hopefully inform people about the rather ambiguous slice-of-life phrase we tag onto anime. If anything, we manage to add more criteria which lets one be more accurate when pinning an anime as slice-of-life.

And the image above is nekomimi mold. Of all the images I could have used, we went with an idea from the podcast. I’m too lazy to color it the proper cheese-yellow color, so you’ll just have to make do with a bad sketch.

Recording date: 17 August 2010

Topics at hand: Slice-of-life discussion, Mayoi Neko Overrun!, Honor Fics, Highschool of the Dead, Saki, Gag Manga Biyori, and Zombies. And it’s never our podcast unless there are derails. (And delays in publication. I was supposed to wait on someone before posting this, so screw that.)

nekomimi moldo drawn by yours truly.

But I have something to say.

There’s this Korean drummer.. he is awesome.

And I’m two years late to the party. How does this kind of stuff slip by us?

My favorite characters, Perrine (left) and Yoshika (right). A Lynette (center) is fine, too.

Oh man. Where to begin? I absolutely loved Strike Witches, so I was super hyped for season 2. In order to prepare for it, the crew here at Maserbeamdotcom decided to marathon the entire first season the day before the first episode of S2 aired. It was a good 6 hours of pantsu and plot. For those who wrote off the show as mediocre, they are mistaken. It is pure win. I’m not biased, honestly.

I don’t like thinking to deep or analytical about anime, when it comes to the type of show that Strike Witches is made to be. It’s rather cheeky fanservice, but not so blatant and crass as Queen’s Blade or Seikon no Qwaser. Those shows just felt so revolting. So what’s different with Strike Witches? For one, Strike Witches doesn’t have any girls with disgustingly large breasts that would be physically impossible. And the premise: A foreign invader with overwhelming power suddenly hikes up the intensity to conquer Earth, and the only thing we could think of to defend ourselves with is a jury rigged mechanical device made to augment and convert witches’ latent magical power for use in military applications. The details behind this odd idea is actually fairly interesting.

It’s all about the fact that these young women aren’t wearing anything over their pantsu. It’s great: the truth and reason behind that they don’t wear skirts or pants can be filled in automatically by us and remain within the mythos. They don’t wear it because they might wear Striker Units. Why are they wearing Striker Units? For the previously explained reason of military applicable reasons, and to defend against this new menace. You have a logical and legal chain of reasoning for a lack of pants. Yeah, sounds a little forced. But what’s to stop the imagination from filling in more? I can already think of a myriad of strange (that are in-mythos) reasons for these Striker Units to be a viable weapons platform instead of standard military planes and vehicles.

Put your brain into low-power mode, and enjoy the rather accurate militaristic setting of a show that’s about underwear, boobs, and weapons. Food also ends up being a theme in this show. More often than not, I find myself eating a meal while watching.

omnomnomnom

images straight from EP4S2, SW2 (yay acronyms)

I finally got the idea to use my dynamic compressor that’s actually meant for my guitar. Plugged it into the recording chain, and it seems it’s allowed us to be more relaxed about sound levels, instead of being paranoid that it’ll clip at any moment. Yay!

Normally I’d have to subject you to a long list of items that we talk about in the podcast, but since we’ve been largely talking about the 2010 Summer Season of anime, I can just link you to a site that contains a brief synopsis of the show alongside a preview image. Quite convenient if you just need a quick reference. And if you haven’t noticed the Black ★ Rock Shooter image, yes, we talk about the OVA. We also snuck in a gaming tidbit of a doujin game called Recettear, which I’ve blurbed about before already.

Recording Date: 27th July 2010

art by chan_co
music intro and insert from Mushihimesama Futari OST