I was bored yesterday and wrote a little summary of my thoughts for the future. This was partially inspired by the upcoming Singapore General Election taking place tomorrow and a certain online conservation I had with someone. After I finished writing it, I realized that it bears some similarities to the Dune timeline, so perhaps I was just agreeing with Frank Herbert.

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Read the rest of What I think the future will be (969 words)

© DarkMirage for Ramblings of DarkMirage, 2011. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: capitalism, dystopia, future, marxism, sci-fi, wtf

Clichés make a show boring. The more clichéd a story is, the less interesting and enjoyable it becomes. But my theory is that this relationship only holds true until you hit a certain magical event horizon where the laws of the universe break apart, one gets divided by zero and clichés become art.

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Read the rest of Infinite Stratos (868 words)

© DarkMirage for Ramblings of DarkMirage, 2011. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: comedy, harem, infinite stratos, osananajimi, quad drill, romance, sci-fi, tsundere, twin tail

Hollywood has its flaws. Cookie-cutter scripts and commodification of art can often ruin beautiful things. But at least Hollywood gets the cinematography right and doesn’t usually suffer from the pandemic of awkward overacting rampant in Japanese mainstream cinema. 2011′s Space Battleship Yamato live action movie is anime-comes-alive, but in a bad way that constantly reminds you how stupid the world would be if everyone behaved like manga characters.

Still, it’s not a total disaster.

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Read the rest of Space Battleship Yamato (Live Action) (915 words)

© DarkMirage for Ramblings of DarkMirage, 2011. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: meisa kuroki, movie, sci-fi, space, space battleship yamato, takuya kimura

Recently, renowned sci-fi writer William Gibson of Neuromancer fame annoyed a bunch of Miku fanboys when he tweeted, “Hatsune Miku doesn’t really rock me. I want higher rez, less anime.” This was immediately parsed by some to mean that he hates all things anime and wishes horrible things to happen to otakukind and hilarity ensued.

Coincidentally, I have been spending some time thinking about the concept of virtual idols recently and just picked up a copy of Gibson’s Idoru novel that touches on this exact issue. Incidentally, it has a pseudo anime-style cover.

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Read the rest of Virtual Idols and Hatsune Miku (1,041 words)

© DarkMirage for Ramblings of DarkMirage, 2010. | Permalink | 17 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: future, hatsune miku, idol, meme, sci-fi, virtual idol

Up until recently, I had been under the impression that industry giant James Cameron was reduced to making a movie adaptation of this. This misconception was finally shattered when I saw the trailer for Avatar and it piqued my interest.

Fast forward to a few months later, I have watched the movie in cinema four times and now believe it to be one of the defining works of the decade. Though not perfect, (is anything ever?) Avatar is an awe-inspiring viewing experience that far exceeds any other productions of similar scale. And though it has done remarkably well in the box office, I still consider it to be a highly underrated title.

Keeping alive my tradition of writing about things only after everyone stops talking about them, here are my thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar.

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Read the rest of Avatar (2,072 words)

© DarkMirage for Ramblings of DarkMirage, 2010. | Permalink | 20 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: avatar, james cameron, movie, na'vi, sam worthington, sci-fi, sigourney weaver, skxawng, zoe saldana