Angel's Anime Rating Guide

Sometime ago, I noticed a post on the AnimeNation forum regarding an animated commercial --  Xi Avant ... Xi Avant, director Kenji Kamiyama’s (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society) three-and-a-half-minute short film is set in Spain and other locales in the near future, and features the NTT Docomo mobile phone network's next-generation Xi service. Xi Avant is a commercial for a data network, which in the short anime, is being used to do things like automatic scheduling and reservations, interacting with other systems like the computer in a car to automatically setup the vehicle for a given user's preferences and advanced tasks such as lip reading from a video with simultaneous translations and facial recognition using multiple video inputs. The story concerns a young man looking for someone somewhere in the world. Eventually, thanks to technology, the young man successfully completes his search. Xi Avant was originally released in four parts with...

Since the last post, where I detailed my First Year With The Contempo Template , there have been some additional changes to the Anime Rating Guide . The Wallpaper Page received a makeover including new wallpapers and some CSS animation effects thanks to a page on Cool Image Captions with CSS3 by Thoriq Firdaus . The thumbnail images expand and the descriptions drop down over the thumbnails allowing visitors to read the descriptions (or not), but, still see most of the thumbnail images. Along with the new CSS animations, the page layout was changed to display the wallpapers in multiple columns. Likewise, the Anime List Page received some attention including zebra stripes and a touch of color. Under the hood, the section titles now hide themselves for small screens. I had been using an existing image substitution gadget to swap images on-the-fly for the rating images that I use on the site. The plan was to upload a new set of rating images each time I wanted to change the look of ...

In a break from my tradition of collecting anime on archival media, I waded back into anime streaming, to watch Frame Arms Girl ... When Ao found the package on her doorstep, she thought it was a present from her father, but inside the box was something truly unexpected: Gourai! A Frame Arms Girl, Gourai is a walking, talking, miniature artificial person with the intelligence of a ten-year-old human and a selection of snap-on weapons and armor. And the reason Gourai needs armor quickly becomes clear as two more Frame Arms Girls, Stylet and Baselard, arrive intent on testing Gourai's combat capabilities! It seems that Ao has been chosen to help test a new toy line and the good news is that she'll get paid for hosting her diminutive charges' battles! Of course, since they're mainly interested in fighting and gathering information, things are going to get awkward when they follow her to school.  According to Anime News Network ... Kotobukiya's Frame Arms models ...

In 1996, I saw the infamous Nissan "Dream Garage" commercial and immediately afterwards, I made an effort to add it to the archive. But, eleven years later, in the aftermath of the Ultimate Otaku Fall Cleanup , try as I might, I couldn't remember which one of the 2000+ VHS tapes had the commercial on it. So, sadly, the commercial went away. According to Wikipedia ... Mr. Nissan - Mysterious man with the terrier dog, glasses, baseball cap and a big grin featured on a series of Nissan automobile TV commercials in 1996. The mystic Mr. Nissan character was loosely based on the former Nissan Motor Corporation U.S.A. founder Yutaka Katayama who reportedly represented "honor, integrity and fun." Nissan North America launched its "Life is a journey. Enjoy the Ride." advertising campaign with a two minute television commercial at the 1996 Super Bowl. The spot featured a "Dream Garage" filled with vintage Nissan vehicles most notably a silver...

After a bit of poking around on the web, I came across the Apple commercial -- " 1984 ". According to Wikipedia ... "1984" is an American television commercial that introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer. It was conceived by Steve Hayden, Brent Thomas and Lee Clow at Chiat\Day, produced by New York production company Fairbanks Films, and directed by Ridley Scott. English athlete Anya Major performed as the unnamed heroine and David Graham as Big Brother... Originally a subject of contention within Apple, it has subsequently been called a watershed event and a masterpiece in advertising. At one time, I had preserved this iconic ad on VHS, but, after the Ultimate Otaku Fall Cleanup , that commercial went away. YouTube  can to the rescue and I was able to add this item to the archive.