Topics

1

MADLAX / The "Madlax Cinematic Universe" is officially a thing

« on: May 10, 2022, 06:43:12 PM »

I was actually going to post about this after the first album, but now that I've seen it invoked, I can't help myself...
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/this-week-in-anime/2022-05-10/.185498

From the first episode mentioning that it was taking place in Nafrece, I was like OMG this show is Madlax II: Electric Golfaroo!
Kuroda's writing it, and I didn't know that not only did he write that smutty Valkyrie Drive show, but invoked Nafrece in that too.  Thus Steve pointing it out in the ANN exchange.

Eve is definitely Madlax
Aoi is totally Margaret
Aoi's attendant, totally totally Eleanore

For Vanessa I was waffling between the woman who runs the orphanage, or Eve's caddyfriend Lily.

The others I haven't quite sorted out yet as it's steadily spiraling in to insanity.  Feel free to posit your own of course.

If you passed it up, give it another go after reading that review.  Spoilers really won't hurt anything because this is the kind of show you just have to roll with.

2

ELDA TALUTA / Tragic arson at Kyoto Studios, over 20 dead

« on: July 18, 2019, 07:06:39 AM »

I'm shocked and my blood has run cold.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49027178

An emoji just doesn't cut at how I feel about this.

3

Announcements & Introductions / A little concerned about the use of personally identifiable information in here

« on: October 28, 2016, 08:04:58 AM »

Just a reminder that although membership has dwindled, this board does still get crawled on a regular basis by search engines.  Also, while it gets regular security updates, I'm not always aware the forum engine needs one and it could be a bit behind.

While the risk is probably low, this is an unsecured public site, and I'm really uncomfortable with members' real names being casually thrown around here.  Especially names associated with photographs, or full names that can be traced to other personal sharing that's been done on here.  And if someone cracked the password database, and tied a real name to a password, and you tend to use the same or similar passwords... okay, a bit paranoid but there really might be thousands of people with nothing better to do but try to scrape little obscure hobby boards for something they can cash in on.

Anyway, please keep that in mind.  It feels like it's "just us", but the whole world can see us, if they care to look.

4

Announcements & Introductions / Possible hack, spam email. Delete immediately

« on: July 19, 2016, 07:25:10 AM »

If you receive an email from "admin[some numbers]@beetrainfan.org" -- heck, any beetrainfan.org email that isn't the Soldats, then delete it immediately.  Do not open the attachment.

The one I got had the subject "Scanned Image" with a .docm file attached.

So far I think it's just trolling beetrainfan.org accounts, but if there's been a hack and the mailing list is getting exploited, please be careful.

5

Announcements & Introductions / New 2.0.x Forum upgrade

« on: February 19, 2016, 01:21:04 PM »

So that was a little easier than it used to be....

I'm in the process of trying to restore a few of the basic modifications (or any upgraded equiv.).  I hope to also get the AJAX Chat connected again.

The Gallery has been upgraded and seems to be working fine, but doesn't seem to be able to be "bridged" anymore. Test your login over there and let me know if something's amiss.

The Wiki is hosed at the moment.  The data is still there, at least, but it's upgrade is stuck on something.  I'm assuming it's the authentication bridge to the forum.  It'll take a little bit of investigation.

I've been looking at existing themes for something easy enough to plop in the random headers, but that may take me a while to get to.  I want the headers back as much as any of us

Errata:  The Dice Roller seems to be the same.  The YouTube plugin has more options, except that all our existing YouTube BBCode has a different parameter that *isn't* compatible.  If you run in to a [yt=320,240] tag, if you just get rid of that parameter and leave it at [yt], it'll start working again.  No big deal.

I'm trying to configure the new anti-spam options, but there may be spam accounts that leak through.  I'll continue to be the gatekeeper.

Please post issues here!  Hopefully this will solve login problems and banish those error messages.

6

Announcements & Introductions / BTF 10th anniversary coming on July 3rd

« on: June 08, 2015, 05:47:45 PM »

...and I don't have anything planned.  Well, involving the Internet, anyhow.

That said, there's also only one year left on my last prepay for this domain.

I haven't had a lot of luck being able to post or PM these past few months (seemingly lucky today), but I have enjoyed lurking some of the resurrected Noir discussions and such.

Anyway, there's a year left to decide what to do.  So I'll try to at least remember to lift a glass for a toast (I'll be lifting a glass plenty on the night before Independence Day, I'm sure... but still!)

Cheers!

[Spoiler:]

7

ELDA TALUTA / The Legend of KorrAsami

« on: December 21, 2014, 08:10:13 PM »

My "yuri goggles" were activated quite a while back, then the finale happened.   

Spoiler: show

I've adored this show almost as much as Airbender, mostly because the animation and expressiveness and portrayal of strong female characters was unprecedented.  In most cases with the Japanese, expressiveness is limited to a bit of wavering jelly-eyes and a blank, read-in-it-what-you-will face, but Team Korra came up with sequences so full of life and weight and physics and gravity... and such an attention to detail I couldn't take my eyes off it.

It had rough spots in the story and the motivations; some frustration as to the obvious poor judgement and brash decision-making -- but in a way, that was probably more authentic than it would have been otherwise.

But like I said, a while back, something activated my "yuri goggles".  At the time I figured it was just a taste of "huge tease, Nickelodeon-style", but this last book had this one simple little blush that tipped it over the edge.  I hadn't kept up with any fanart or shipping, but I was apparently late to the game, as it were.  Still, it had been a while since there was some adorable subtext to swoon over (anime's gotten rather blatant since the golden days; nothing subtle anymore).

Then the finale happened   

According to a tweet by the creators, it's canon... tried to include it but my source gif is domain-blocked...


Anyway, even without, it's an outstanding show and I'm happy to have been able to follow it, and I'll have all the bluray discs on order soon enough, I'm sure.

8

Announcements & Introductions / "AJAXChat" online

« on: November 07, 2014, 04:03:09 PM »

Okay, that was kind of easy...

That "Chat" button up above now pops up another tab/window with the generic install of AJAXChat.  It retains your login info, and moderators of the forum get chat mod privileges (that means Marta can /kick ya whenever she wants ).

There's dozens of things that can be customized and tweaked, but I've just got the barebones up there for now for y'all to play in for a bit and try and get the hang of.

To-do list:

• put it on a "forum template page" so it acts like the old one
• try to bring over some of the "popular" FlashChat sounds and emoticons.  Request them here!
• an indicator of who is on the chat.  They had code for PHPBB but it's a little different in SMF and may require finding or building an add-on.
• Clean up the rooms -- it made a room for every forum board, which is part amusing, and part annoying.  Let me know if there's any you want to keep.
• It has a "socket server", which requires a bit of Flash on the front-end, and some Ruby on the back.  Dunno if I'm allowed to run Ruby socket servers...  But supposedly it will still fallback to the AJAX version for the Flash-less.  But it would hopefully improve performance (it's a tad sluggish because it's doing full HTTP calls every time)
  

There may be more...

If you don't log out, it'll trap you in there forever like Tsubasa; it won't auto-boot you when someone else logs on like FlashChat did

There's a Help button on the bottom-right which gives the standard commands, some configuration options, and the rest you kind of have to play with.

Post feedback in this thread.  If y'all hate it, it's no big loss and we can start trying the other options.

If I get a chance I'll pop in now and then to see how it's going.

9

Announcements & Introductions / Evolve or maintain?

« on: October 13, 2014, 11:42:16 AM »

It's been pretty obvious for these past couple of years that I've been moving on.  With no new Bee Train shows and no new news about Bee Train, I've been unable to maintain any enthusiasm.  Even shiny new bluray Noir discs couldn't quite break me out of my ambivalence about the whole thing.  I burned out on it, and there are newer, shinier things to draw my attention.

Don't get me wrong, I like you guys and don't mind at all keeping this little corner of the 'net up and running.  But now that I'm forced by my negligence to put some effort in to patching up a few things, I've been thinking how I can leverage that with an idea that's been percolating for a long time now.

This whole project was an outgrowth of a time where everyone, including me, started a blog.  My blog was originally intended to explore all my media & animation interests, but wound up focusing on my re-discovery of anime, and in particular, my obsession with M&K and Paris and ELDA TALUTA and, and.... yikes, now it's over 10 years later!  And my blog is entirely moribund to the point that even a few of my biggest Google draws are slipping away to SEO Limbo.

But the core of what I considered my "mission" -- to find the art, the "spark of life", the shows and movies that "grownups" would like if they were able to find their way past the morass of juvenile, extra-violent, hyper-perverted nonsense... I still want to do that.

So I'm about to re-boot kineska as an art-of-animation "magazine" site.  Okay, "blog", but nobody uses that term anymore...   Anyway, industry news, longer-form reviews of shows, films, and shorts -- from around the world, not just Japan -- and some general editorializing.  And hopefully, community-building.  Drawing "challenges", "movie nights" (some of these chat servers have media streaming options), RPGs; those sorts of things you're doing and keeping this place alive, but better-supported, for a hopefully-larger audience.

And yeah, I'll probably start advertising.  If it goes anywhere.

Right now, it's a bit too ambitious.  And still not a done deal, as it were.  But I need a creative outlet that counters the energy drain of my day-job.  Something to look forward to, and maybe re-capture a bit of that excitement of the early days of the old blog.

So what of this place?

I can keep it going, off to the side, same as it ever was.  Probably getting a little bit more neglected every year, sadly.  And those of you still here, you're gonna wind up out-growing this some day. 

I can roll it into this new monstrosity, as a sub-board of a bigger board.  The benefit is that I'll probably be upgrading and adding features (like the aforementioned media streaming).  The potential positive -- and negative -- is that there would be (hopefully) more users.  But they'd be coming from different interests, and we all know the general attitude about Bee Train amongst the masses

The other risk is that I abandon the whole enterprise entirely for whatever reason.  Then BTF comes down with it.  But to be honest, that's the same risk leaving this all by it's lonesome over here.  I'm not getting any younger.

So that's my idea.  Before I go much further with it, I figured I'd ask those of you who remain just what you think.  These aren't the only options, nothing is "written", yada yada yada...

10

ELDA TALUTA / Spring 2014?

« on: April 15, 2014, 12:39:45 PM »

Haven't done one of these in a long time I think... and unfortunately, despite the sheer volume of shows, I'm have a hard time getting any enthusiasm for trying most any of 'em. 

Mushishi season 2, of course, tops my list.  It may be more of the same, but more of the same is exactly what I want!   

And, now I'm a Yuasa disciple, so Ping-Pong, no question.  Looks ugly on the surface, and *sigh* schoolkids, but it's all about worshipping at the sakuga altar, and I'm all for that. 

I've tried the first 2 eps of Captain Earth, because Bones.  But right now, I'm kind of "meh" about it.

Anyone else latching on to anything this season?



(I miss Space Dandy already...)

11

Announcements & Introductions / The Irresponsible Captain

« on: May 03, 2013, 09:23:05 AM »

So yeah, I haven't been around much lately.

Life has been taking me in different directions, and to be honest, Bee Train hasn't been doing a lot to keep me "faithful"  *ahem*.   

MartAnimE's noticed a few areas that need a little housecleaning, and I haven't really gotten around to any of it.  So, in the spirit of corporate upper-management, the one who points out a problem gets to fix it... 

So welcome MartAnimE to her new role as moderator.  Be nice to her. 

I'll still be admin and taking care of the weekly bot infestation, and I might even deign to post once in a while.  And at some point over the next year, we should all look at the possibility of transitioning site ownership and hosting as well, to ensure that this place can continue (we're paid up through next May, so no rush).

Or Bee Train will rise again from the ashes, and we'll get the post-apocalyptic girls-with-guns sci-fi epic I've been dreaming of for the last 9 years and I'll be impossible to get rid of.

12

All Series / More super-secret hidden Mashimo!

« on: February 08, 2013, 05:31:14 PM »

Was casually picking through the old tokyotosho list, and stumbled across this torrent:

Golden Warrior Gold Lightan

...and thought, hmm, that title looks familiar.  Sure enough, it's one of the early-early series that Mashimo helmed back in the day.  Maybe earlier than any of the other ones stumbled upon so far?  Dunno, I'm too lazy to research...   

So far I haven't had the attention-span to last more than the first couple of minutes, but some sort of "giant robot apocalypse in an alternate dimension" starts the thing off, which means it must be Classic Anime (no, I'm not going to go look and see if it's in TV Tropes; I've got things to do tonight!)

Anyway, brought to you by Saitei Fansubs... go show 'em some BTF love... looks like they're Chihayafuru fans, so they can't be all bad. 

13

All Series / Hyouge Mono episode discussion

« on: April 08, 2011, 10:25:02 AM »

A raw has appeared:
http://www.nyaa.eu/?page=torrentinfo&tid=204712

There's totally no mention anywhere in Animesuki about this as far as I can tell. I don't know if anyone's even going to sub it.

I'll check it out later after work if I get a chance...

14

ELDA TALUTA / Japan earthquake

« on: March 11, 2011, 10:35:56 AM »

I've been watching the BBC coverage, and I'm horrified and feeling as hollowed out as I did after the south Pacific Tsunami.

I know there are a few of you lurking that are Japanese or otherwise in Japan; I'd appreciate it if you checked in and let us know that you're okay.

For the rest of us, feel free to share links to photos, videos, or other coverage.  Kavi posted the Mainichi link already:
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110311p2g00m0dm048000c.html

I'm watching the BBC World feed here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698

15

ELDA TALUTA / Satoshi Kon, dead at 47

« on: August 24, 2010, 08:49:28 PM »

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-08-24/award-winning-director-satoshi-kon-passes-away

I'm speechless and stunned.  It will take me a little while to process this as reality.  He's one of my all-time favorites, and Millenium Actress is my go-to "comfort" film when I need something reliably escapst and enjoyable.  I just don't know what to say.