The Big Cheese is the villain

[austin_dern]

Cyborg Kurochan was on Animax; the cable-box guide says ``The story is about Kurochan, the most powerful robot cat in the world, who tries to save Sakura Town from the evil scientist Dr Goal.'' I wonder who's the second-most-powerful robot cat in the world. In this morning's zany comic kids' show the good-guy scientist makes a local rat into a cyborg; the rat promptly escapes and builds his own unstoppable horde of robot rats. One of the supporting characters wonders to Kurochan if the robot rats bite.

``No, they don't bite, but I'm pretty sure they drill holes in your skull.''

There, see? No biting. I'm glad finally someone is honestly examining the risks and benefits of a giant unstoppable horde of robot rats. (Giant refers here to horde. There was only one giant robot rat, who was quite stoppable.)

Perhaps coincidentally I've seen in the toy and Japanese kitsch stores the Disney ``Future Mickey and Minnie Mouse'' dolls, Designed By Haijime Sorayama, who's renowned for pictures of scantily-dressed android women and much more fetishistic work. I'm surprised they needed a celebrity-name designer since it seems to be just Mickey and Minnie in silver and gold instead of black and white, and elbow joints in place of, uh, elbows. The ears are dishes hooked on by brackets, but they don't even have feed horns or masts, which seems like a gyp. Still, the dolls do sparkle in the light.

Trivia: Communications, signal processing, and information theoretician Claude Shannon invented a black box which, on being started, would open a panel, snake out a green hand, and turn itself off. Source: Life Science Library: Mathematics, David Bergamini.

Currently Reading: Development of the Space Shuttle, 1972-1981, T A Heppenheimer.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, shiny.. ^_^

If Cyborg Kurochan is repeated, do you have some means of preserving it? I'll have to sniff around and see if it's available anywhere, but it's not a title that rings any bells. Oddly, a quick google shows plenty of results - almost all French. YesAsia has some sets available, such as this set of 52 VCDs (http://global.yesasia.com/en/PrdDept.aspx/pid-1002898332/section-anime/code-c/version-all/did-7497/), yours for $70, save for the small matter of - predictably - having only Chinese subtitles. Oh well.. I'd been meaning to pick up an extra language or two anyway.

Mmm. Wonder what a Sorayama version of Chester might look like? Oh, I'd positively hate to see anything like that.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, well, it's part of their morning shows, so it'll be on for another couple weeks I think; Animax seems to be rather better than Cartoon Network at rotating off shows that have finished their run and letting others take their place. I don't have any means of recording at the moment -- I keep faltering on the DVD Recorders Versus VCR debate, with storage and flexibility (and ease of sending something neat to a friend) on the one side, and cost on the other.

But if I do get one, or if I see the series on Video CD, I'll see what I can send you.