MIT Anime Club Showing #532 Friday 7 March 2008 Spring Showing #5 Note: this showing is in room 6-120 at 7:00PM 7:10 Bamboo Blade 1-2 8:00 Pizza token sales (for the first 5 minutes) 8:10 Bamboo Blade 3-4 9:00 Intermission 9:20 Dennou Coil 9-12 11:00 Short intermission 11:05 Gunbuster 2 (Diebuster) 5-6 (Concludes) *********************************************************************** Contents: Geneon going-out-of-business DVD donation drive Karaoke Break for Anime Boston Membership Pizza Pizza Ordering Procedure Library Silence Programme ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Spring Showing #5 After the sudden room change last week, this week is all back to normal. Besides the next sequence of Dennou Coil, we'll be bringing you the exciting conclusion of Gunbuster 2. That sounds like a good enough reason to stay through the whole showing. We also have a pretty interesting sample in the first 4 slots so you can't really go wrong by stopping by this week. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Geneon going-out-of-business DVD donation drive So if you've been thinking about sponsoring a disc but haven't now's your chance, what better way to prove your love for a series than buying it for us. ^^ In late September, it was announced that Geneon, one of the largest US anime companies, is getting out of the DVD sales business. Unfortunately, there were still a lot of DVDs we wanted to buy from them! To supplement our normal acquisitions budget of money from the UA, memberships, and refreshments, we're also asking for your help in picking up good series that might be going away for good. For more information, see: http://web.mit.edu/anime/www/donations/geneon-oob-2007.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Karaoke Karaoke is back, and will be held on Saturday, May 3 this time around. It'll likely run from 2-5pm, room TBA. All are welcome. If you have a special request or two, please fill out a request form (available at the showing or at http://web.mit.edu/anime/Events/karaoke_May08.pdf) and drop it off at a showing or during office hours. You may also e-mail your requests to anime-inquiry at mit.edu. Songs will be timed and romaji lyrics provided. Whenever available, the karaoke or instrumental versions of songs will be used. Requests are due by March 28. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Break for Anime Boston We'll also be having a regular showing next week. However, note that we'll be skipping showings on the next two Fridays after that: March 21st, because we'll all be at Anime Boston, and March 28th, for of MIT's spring break. Showings will start again with the second halves of Dennou Coil and Ergo Proxy on April 4th. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Membership Did your club membership expire in January? Renew now for continued library checkouts and other membership privileges. Or start a new membership for the term, the year, or a longer period. Ask for a form at the showing or print it in advance from our web site at: http://web.mit.edu/anime/register/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Pizza We'll be using the same token-based pizza sales system we have been using for awhile: we'll sell tokens two episodes before intermission that you can exchange for slices during intermission. This week's pizza options are: $1.50 Plain cheese $2.00 Pepperoni $2.00 Hawaiian (ham + pineapple) (this week's feature flavor) Future weeks will feature: - Hamburger - Sausage - Grilled Chicken - Hawaiian (ham + pineapple) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Pizza Ordering Procedure To bring you a more reliable pizza experience, we're going to be taking orders using a new procedure. Instead of taking a poll on the blackboard and then selling slices for cash, we'll sell tokens early in the evening which can be exchanged for slices during intermission. If there are extra slices, we'll sell tokens for them at intermission, but advance orders will get priority. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Library Because there won't be Friday night showings on March 21st or 28th, items checked out tonight will need to be returned either next week (March 14th) or during office hours. But as an exception to the usual 18-day borrowing period, items checked out on March 14th may be kept through April 4th. The digisub sampler DVD+RW from a few weeks ago is still available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Silence If you talk during the anime, you will be found and dealt with by Satchii. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Programme 7:10 Bamboo Blade 1-4 High-school kendo instructor Toraji "Kojiro" Ishida might have been a bit hasty when agreeing to a bet with a friend from another school. Sure, the prize of a year's worth of sushi sounded appealing, but it may be hard for a team of five female students from his club to beat the opposing team: among other things, the club doesn't even have that many members at the moment. The team's responsible captain Kirino Chiba is glad to see the coach taking more interest in training, though she probably wouldn't approve if she knew the real reason. They might have a chance if they can recruit soft-spoken freshman Tamaki "Tama-chan" Kawazoe, who has amazing kendo skills gained from working at her father's dojo. Perhaps they can appeal to her sense of honor: she's always wanted to be a champion of justice like the stars of her favorite superhero tokustatsu and anime shows, particularly one called "Blade Braver". A light comedy that's organized around its sports theme, but doesn't take it too seriously. You can expect more jokes centered on the eccentric members of the team than actual kendo action, particularly in these first episodes. The show is based on a manga from the seinen magazine Young Gangan (Sumomo mo Momo mo), which is probably most apparent in the character of Tama-chan, who brings a lot of otaku moe elements (she would easily fit in on the set of Lucky Star) to the shonen sports prodigy archetype. But if you can enjoy, or at least suspend disbelief, about that, some of the gags are surprisingly funny. 9:20 Dennou Coil 9-12 In the near future, virtual computer-generated objects coexist with real ones - if you're wearing cyberspace-enabled glasses. Yuuko Okonogi moves to Daikoku City with her parents, her little sister, and her cyberdog Densuke, and gets caught up in the strange events happening in that city's cyberspace. Everything about this series is well-done - the Miyazaki-esque artwork, the augmented-reality interfaces, the character interactions - and don't miss the Mojos. 11:05 Gunbuster 2 (Diebuster) 5-6 Our main character Nono left her rural Martian hometown with dreams of becoming a space pilot, and she's convinced that her hard work and dedication will eventually pay off, even if her current job is just as a waitress in a seedy diner. She gets her foot in the door, though, with a chance encounter with Lal'C, one of the most skilled of a group of elite teenaged giant robot pilots named "Topless". Though Nono's hero worship can be grating (she calls Lal'C "onee-sama", a reverential and honorary "big sister"), she shows some potential after getting caught in the middle of a battle with one of the Space Monsters that plague the solar system. It turns out, though, that Nono is something other than what she originally appears. This 2004-2006 OVA series is Gainax's weird kind of sequel to their classic 1988 OVA series Gunbuster: it stars a completely different cast, and has a very different art style, but there are thematic echos and deliberate homages everywhere. The other clear ancestor is FLCL, which shared a number of key staff: both the character designs and the general atmosphere of weirdness are very similar (no soundtrack by The Pillows, alas). (A naming note: the Japanese title of the original series was "Top o Nerae: Gunbuster" ("Aim for the Top: Gunbuster"), shortened just to "Gunbuster" in the US release. This one is "Top o Nerae 2: Diebuster", so there's some disagreement as to whether the more logical English title should be "Gunbuster 2", as the US distributor eventually chose, or "Diebuster".) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- (This showing is made possible in part with funding from Finboard and the Undergraduate Association of MIT.) You have received this message because you are on the MIT Anime Club's email list for showing announcements. For a change in your subscription, please send mail to anime-inquiry at mit.edu.