Because of my neighbors I had a hard time sleeping last night. Especially when the children decided to somehow tie together different types of fireworks, including now illegal silbadores (can I call the police over that?) and light them up at the same time, making car alarms go off. I'm surprised none of them got hurt with their experiments or start a fire in the empty lot or the contruction truck warehouse down below.

Mind, you, I'm not innocent when it came to fireworks experimentation. I even played bazooka with bengal lights, sliding them down a long plastic pipe, aiming it down the street and lighting the fuse; taking the gunpowder out of firecrackers, piling it up and setting it on fire; tying up to four volcancitos together; or tying plastic soldiers to silbadores to watch them "fly"; not to mention the time I had the bright idea of lighting a medium sized firecracker and dropping it into a manhole. My ears rang for a whole hour afterwards.

Or the time my brother and I got a nasty hangover from smoking. Rather than using candles, matches or anything with an open flame to light fireworks, my parents used cigarrettes. They're also the kind of parents that say "Since your're almost old enough to drink, I'll let you try beer right now.". So one night they decided we were old enough to handle the cigarrettes and smoking ourselves, thus killing two birds with one stone. Not only did we learn the taste of cigarrette and learn why people smoke, the hangover was so bad we haven't touched a cigarrette since.

But we did all those things under parental supervision. The neighbor kids were kind of on their own, while the parents were inside the house.

Anyways, sometime last night, Gundam 00 episode 12 was released.

GUNDAM 00 episode 12

A little bit of background info regarding the Middle East, which we all know will still be a mess 300 years from now. Basically, in order to promote solar energy, the UN restricted oil exports, which didn't please oil exporting countries, increasing the fighting in the middle east. Tired of the neverending fighting, the UN decides to leave the region to their own devices, and countries have been formed and destroyed as tribal and religious conflict continue. Sometime along the line, conflict in Kurdistan threatens Azadistan, so Azadistan invades and takes over the place. Azadistans don't like the Kurdish one bit.

Of course, that doesn't decrease the religious fighting, as conservatives and reformists battle it out over power. Marina is raised to the rank of princess in order to reinstate the monarchy and the conservatives aren't happy about that. And currently they aren't happy about the UN assistance, so a bunch of them want to become "the lighting of God that strikes infidels" or something like that. They just want to kill Marina, kick the UN out and establish their own religious oppression.

A conservative leader gets kidnapped by Setsuna's ols aquaintance Ali Al Serges, giving the conservatives a nice excuse to throw a coup. Meanwhile some reformists have been in negotioations with the Union for military support, and Graham is happy that the conflict might attract his beloved Gundams. And he's right because Ryumin has Setsuna and Lockon on standby in Azadistan.

The coup starts within the army, and a solar energy recepction plant/antennae get's attacked. Lockon tries to protect it, but Al Serges destroys it with a barrage of missiles that are too much for Lockon to destroy. Graham shows up, orders his wingmen to search for the one that shot the missiles while he faces the Gundam. Lockon does have a hard time fighting off Graham. After all, the Dynames is better suited for long range attacks than hand to hand combat. He's saved  when Graham is ordered to defend the Azadistan palace from the coup.

Setsuna gets there first, destroys the rebel suits and in ordered to go to another base. On the way, he comes upon a town near the base, and what he sees reminds him of the death and destruction he saw when he was a rebel. He snaps, destroys the suits, and when Lockon catches up with him, he ends up with the cryptic "I can't become Gundam", while Marina questions the worth of her own actions.

So episode 13 will be the conclusion of Setsuna's internal conflict and seems he'll fully face Al Serges. Fun.

Dear Saji: Please, please hurry up and get killed so that Lousie runs away from home and joins and army, CB or some rebel group. Manipulative Louise might be better off with Overconfident Patrick anyways. They might learn a lot from each other.

Details on the first DVD are on the homepage. It was already known that it would come out on January 25. It will be plain old DVD and not HD DVD or BlueRay as some people thought. But it will only have 2 episodes and some nice extras, so the episodes might be high quality.

Not that it would really matter to me because I don't buy japanese dvds even though my dvd player can read them, and I wont understand much of what's being said, and my Amazon cart has a SEED volume and a ZegaPain volume waiting for me to click the check out button on friday.

Macross Zero episode 1, Deculture Edition

The subbed version I watched is the Shinsen Subs one. To tell the truth, I don't like Shinsen that much, and I only watch theirs when there really isn't any other option. Maybe someone else will pick up this one, maybe not.

So it starts with singer Sheryl Norme arriving at the Macross Frontier fleet for her tour, then a very, very short story on the Zentradi invasion, the colonization fleets leaving Earth, with a nifty graph showing the fleets' routes with one reaching planet Eden (where Macross Plus takes place), and then more fleets leaving Eden, with Frontier being one of them.

Cut to Ranka and her freaky, squeshy frog phone/communicator/watch/pet thingy, happy because her brother got her tickets to Sheryl's concert. Then cut to a school, apparently a pilot school, where Aruto and four other guys are practicing their flying coreography for the concert. Actually, three are practicing, one, Luka, is studying the coreography in a laptop, and Aruto is making paper planes with Sheryl posters. Seems like one of his companions, Mikhail (it sounds like Mikhail, even though Shinsen subbed it as Michael, I'll use Mikhail until something more official appears) seems to enjoy teasing Aruto by calling him princess. He does look like a princess.

While Mikhail, Luka (I like that name) and the other are drooling over the report of Sheryl's arrival, Aruto throws the plane, decides wind speed is good for flying and launches himself on the catapult. They have some personal flying pack/armor. And so he flies until he nearly crashes on a monitor thingy and starts complaining that the ship's sky is too low.

At the same time, a patrol plane encounters and is destroyed by an alien in a nearby asteroid field, and the army launches more planes.

Ranka arrives near the concert stage, but it's crowded to she decides to get closer from another side and get's lost in a forest. Mikahil and company are also in the forest, complaining over the fact that they weren't giving a changing room and were told not to any stunts that could be considered dangerous. Frith forbid that Sheryl suffers a minor scratch, or it might become an international incident. What is she? The Galaxy Network's patron deity? Anyways, Aruto is the one sulking the most.

He really hates being in the colony fleet and wants to become a Valkirie pilot because he'll have more freedom. Or so he thinks. Is he naive enough to think the army will let him fly wherever he wants? So the others go before him, while he's still sulking. Ranka stumbles, gets soaked by a sprinkler (sprinklers in the middle of a forest?) and sees Aruto. Cue in Aruto's long hair flowing in slow motion, with sparkles, until she realizes, that Aruto is a guy.

Aruto takes her close to the concert place, Ranka invites him to go to the restaurant she works in, and they part ways. Concert starts at the same time the reconaissance planes launch. Sheryl starts it with Basara's famous "Listen to my song!" line, yet she is the complete polar opposite of Basara. She also seems to be quite different from Minmei and even Sharon Apple by the looks of it, but I could be proven wrong once the series officially starts.

Reconaissanse planes are destroyed, fleet captain informs Frontier president and Frontier president calls someone else, telling him it's finally happening. A special civilian squad is launched, whose leader just happens to be Ranka's older brother and seems they know Mikhail's little group. battle starts, aliens destroy battleships and heads towards the main colony ship. This particular fleet captain must be a bit stupid because it never ocurred to him to close the colony's shield. Anyways, the alien manages to get in and destroy stuff.

The people in the colony are also stupid because they were told to head to the shelters and didn't do so. A military detail was particularly careful to make sure Sheryl evacuated safely, leaving the concert-goers to take care of themselves. Very smart. Aruto is appalled by this. Who wouldn't? And Sheryl even tells him that she's a pro and he's just an amateur.

Aruto flies to the place the alien landed, sees it being attacked by a Valkirie, but the Valkirie is captured and the pilot crushed to death (with lot's of blood pouring) and then the alien sees Ranka and heads towards her. Aruto gathers his courage, gets in the Valkirie and starts firing at the alien and the episode ends.

Looks interesting, but the official episode will be different. What scenes will ve changed or removed is anyone's guess. The CGI isn't visually distracting at all. We'll have to see how the thing turns out on it's official start in spring.

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Shrimp flavored crackers are actually tasty

And on mech unrelated news, Bandai Namco has announced a new Tales of... title, Tales of Vesperia. They haven't announced yet which platform it will be for, but the promo video on the site looks awesome. By the looks of it, it could only be for the PS3 or the Wii of maybe even the X Box 360. They will eventually tell.

Feeling: allergic

Now playing: Itsumo Itsudemo (Digimon Super Evolution Best!)