If you’re not already familiar with Cave Story, it’s a Japanese freeware platformer, a 5 year labor of love by one man, and possibly the finest example of that 8-bit genre.

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A bit of background first, I’m an old time Star Wars fan. My childhood was pretty much defined by the original trilogy and I remember fondly the old Action figures, comic books, even that trashy novel by Alan Dean Foster! :p

In highschool I was an X-Wing (and Tie Fighter) addict, and while I remember little of the details, I was strongly impressed by the depth and complexity of tactics thoose games created. I suppose they were partially responsible for my adult fascination with military wargaming from WWII to more modern stuff.

Today I like fast paced games that simulate the meta aspects of combat more than stuff that attempts to simulate every bullet on the battlefield, mostly because computer games (largely the Combat Mission series) made me realize that it was much better to let machines to that kind of work. If I’m going to play in real life, I find that playing with minis beats the stuffing out of the old cardboard counters I gre up with. However I get no enjoyment at all out of the painting, so I’m a big advocate of the style of collectible miniatures games like WotC has been producing. I guess that as a visual designer in real life, painting is too much like work!
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Behold, the Beast!
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So the way I heard it was that Yoshida, Reiko, one of the script writers at Kyoto Animation got Rock Band(tm) last Christmas because she was such a big fan of Karaoke and Western music. This inevitably led to the entire animation department spending time in the break room endlessly trying to master Maps on expert mode instead of working on their next heartful anime. When the producer caught them at it, all they could do was mutter some half-hearted excuses about doing ‘research’ for a new show… and so K-ON! was born. Well, maybe it didn’t exactly happen like that, but you have to admit the timing does fit!

In any case there’s a few shows I was eagerly awaiting this season. K-ON had huge potential because, well rock bands are awesome (and they are more so now that we play entirely too much Rock Band(tm)), Japanese highschool girls are awesome (and they are more so when uber moé), so it could be two great tastes and all that… Of course it also had the potential to be utter dreck since an all-too clever concept can easily be a crutch that replaces the more important things like plot, and characterization.

So how did it turn out? Read on…
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Watarase Jun vs Ayasaki Hayate

Wow, an epic match-up by most accounts. Jun’s would normally be a shoo in. His femininity is clearly established and he has huge fanbase with plenty of screen time and lots of doujin and fanart to bolster his popularity. Hayate on the other hand seems a tough sell. Since he spends most of his time as a normal boy (well clueless servant to insanely rich and spoiled loli-tsun-otaku) you’d think its hard to see him as very moé at all. Nontheless I’m going to give my vote to Hayate. The fact that he’s a normal hetero boy makes his cross-dressing discomfort that much more adorable, not to mention that his outfits tend to be cuter and frillier too!

Too funny, but the votes are serious now…
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After doing copious researching for my Lego mico projects I was shocked to the discover that the Internets were sorely lacking in this.

This is much harder than you would think due to the total lack of official information on the ships. There is huge difference of opinion about the actual scales of these ships and the battlestar wiki unfortunately is home to some of the most outlandish theories (and is not even internally consistent across it’s articles).

For this posting I started with this awesome Star Trek comparison chart as the basis, then matched the scale based on two observable features: the main gun batteries and the Viper launch tube opening/hatches. Both of these match in scale, giving a reasonable confirmation to the idea that Pegasus is ~1600 meters long.

What’s smaller than Lego minis? Lego micros of course!

Another shot after the break…
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Hanyuu vs Tsukasa – I had to give it to Tsukasa.

As much as I adore Higurashi, Hanyuu is really nothing without Rika. Hanyuu’s horns and Miko dress combine with the ’shy+timid’ charatype for 3 distinct moé points, yet she feels like less than the sum of her parts. In contrast Tsukasa’s shy, timid, lazy, slow, etc. attributes are dull and stereotypical even by moétic composition standards. Yet what she lacks in the creativity of her basic nature, she more than makes up for in nearly flawless execution.

Is anything more inane than blogging your moé tournament voting? I think not, yet I feel compelled to continue… Full map of my votes after the break.
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Go vote! Moar Taiga!

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I voted, did you?

My votes after the break…
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