Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022)

The Red Ribbon Army is back! Sort of. Goku trashed it pretty good when he was a kid, but there's still Red Pharmaceutical, the cover company that funded the Red Ribbon Army, plus Dr. Gero's later work on Androids. They're looking to get some more artificial beings to help take over the world, and they think Gero's grandson, Hedo, is just the super-genius to make it happen.

One problem: Hedo loves superheroes. World conquest isn't a selling point for him. But telling him there are mysterious aliens working with Bulma and Capsule Corp to rule the world from the shadows, and the Red Ribbon Army just wants to stop them? That's a selling point.

I point out here Hedo had been in prison because he dug up corpses to make androids to work in a convenience store to raise money for his experiments. He might want to be a hero, but he's a little confused about appropriate and inappropriate actions.

The movie does a 6-month time skip to Piccolo getting attacked by a powerful android with a cape and an outfit that reminds me of Cyborg 009. Piccolo survives and tracks the android, which is how the heroes find out what's going on.

A lot of the movie is Piccolo trying to hand this problem off to other people, but being forced to deal with it himself. Goku and Vegeta are off-world, training with Broly, and through a contrived circumstance, can't be reached. Which is fine; I could have done with the 10 minutes or so the movie spent on Beerus' world being cut in half. That would have been enough to explain why the usual suspects (plus Vegeta) weren't showing up to save the day this time. I guess they figured most people want to see those guys. I'm clearly not most people, but so it goes.

After that, and Piccolo using the Dragon Balls to get his potential unlocked (and Bulma using them for mystical cosmetic surgery), it's mostly Piccolo trying to get Gohan amped up enough to handle this problem. Because Gohan's not training. Again. Can't blame the guy, honestly. He's been fighting for his life since he was 5. Let the man study bugs! There are some funny bits there, as Piccolo spends much of the movie disguised as a Red Ribbon soldier, and helps abduct Gohan's daughter, Pan. Then Piccolo gets Pan to actively play along that she's in danger.

Him standing behind the Red Ribbon guys, signaling at her to cry or to not beat up the guy who wouldn't let her have cookies, because, 'those aren't for hostages,' or pretending to grab her by the shirt (when she's actually standing on his other hand), cracked me up.

Hedo and his creations, Gamma 1 and 2, have an 11th hour face turn when the Red Ribbon leader stops pretending this is anything other than a power grab and activates the best version of Cell they could create from incomplete notes (because Gero's computer actually completed Cell, decades into the future.) More powerful, but with none of the personality. Essentially a rampaging, instinctual berserker monster.

Which is fine; they already had Hedo, the Gammas and Magenta to act as antagonists with personality and motivations. There wasn't time to get into a whole thing with another villain and their desires and monologues. Sometimes you just need something big and dangerous that requires the heroes to go all-out to win, and "Cell Max" fits the bill. Everyone gets to have a moment to be cool or helpful, the day is saved. Gohan shows he has been doing some training on the side, so Piccolo's fears were unfounded. Pan gets to have a little arc when she figures out how to fly in a critical moment, after struggling with it at the beginning of the film. I wasn't so sure about Hedo, but he does offer to go back to prison at the end, so I think he's gained a better sense of what heroism is about, and Dragon Ball is nothing if not about giving people second chances (or third, fourth, seriously, why has nobody re-killed Frieza yet?)

One Piece: Strong World (2009)

Having dabbled a bit in One Piece the last few years, I thought I'd try one of the larger, standalone films they released.

Basically, a big name pirate no one's seen in 20 years reappears. He gets mixed up with the Straw Hats via two threads: One, he figures out their navigator Nami is excellent at detecting storms, which he and his gravity manipulation powers are vulnerable to. (I guess because having a floating island caught in a hurricane is bad.)

Two, he plans to take over the world with an army of wildlife he forcibly evolved into very strong and lethal forms - like a giant duck that produces lightning, or an army of ants that strip flesh from bones in seconds - and he's going to give them a test run on the East Blue, the sea where half the Straw Hats hail from.

The movie starts in media res, the crew scattered among Shiki's islands, dealing with various lethal monsters. Maybe 20 minutes in, it flashes back to explain everything. I don't know if it's an effective approach, since the running around didn't seem to be getting anywhere. It wasn't as though the crew was learning things during this stretch, and then we'd get context from the flashback. It was more like Tom & Jerry chasing each other with frying pans. Action for the sake of it or for the sake of padding.

Along the lines of padding, there's this whole bit where Nami leaves a recording for the crew, allegedly to convince them to not risk their lives trying to rescue her. The movie plays coy about what she said, remaining silent when she initially records it, then letting us hear part of it, but not all. They keep doing it, as though it's some important mystery. Because the part we do hear sounds like she's insulting Luffy. Or like she's trying to intentionally rile him up so he'll fight better.

The hook of Shiki threatening the East Blue works pretty well, especially since it's filtered through Nami. Nami already spent ten years working for a ruthless pirate that conquered her home, even going so far as to betray Luffy once. Whereas most of the others are always confident they'd win any fight, Nami's a bit more realistic about what happens if you challenge power and fail. So there's the push-and-pull to trust her friends, but also protect her family back home the only way she can think of.

Shiki is a mixture of menacing and ridiculous. The man cut his legs off to escape prison and replaced them with swords, and left one village on his islands safe when he floated them into the sky so he could test his creations on them. He also has part of a ship's wheel stuck in his head, keeps calling Nami "babycakes" and confuses his gorilla lieutenant with various members of his family. Cruel, but absurd.

Most of them attempts at humor don't land, but I don't know if that's an issue with translation or I just didn't think it was funny. The one that did was when his chief scientist, who looks like a clown and has shoes that make fart noises, walks into the command room and goes through an elaborate semaphore routine, which Shiki correctly interprets (for the only time in the movie), and the clown is gobsmacked by this. He can talk, he just doesn't sometimes. I don't know.

The animation's pretty good quality. The scenery looks very nice, the monsters are visually interesting, the fights are brief but fairly cool. The story really didn't seem like it had enough for the entire crew to do, but it was alright.

Memories (1995)

This was a collection of three short animated films, produced by Katsuhiro Otomo, who directed Akira (which I should probably get around to watching one of these days.)

Otomo also directs the third of the films, "Cannon Fodder", which is the most distinct-looking of the three, if the least interesting. The art style feels more European, with characters sharply outlined against their surroundings by thick black outlines, and dark, narrow triangles used for shading. The story is about a city where everything is centered around enormous cannons which daily fire at some unseen "enemy" in a "moving city". The father of the small family works on a loading crew, the mother in an armaments factory, their son is in school, dreaming of being the great leader (who dresses like some Prussian cavalry officer) who has the duty of firing every cannon. Life in an endless cycle centered on a war conducted for reasons no one knows.

Of the other 2, "Stink Bomb" is more of a apocalyptic comedy, about a guy who works in a pharmaceutical lab and takes an experimental drug hoping to be rid of his flu. Instead he produces some sort of stink cloud that puts everyone to sleep. The company higher-ups ordered him to bring all the research to them (as a C.Y.A. maneuver), not realizing he was the cause of the outbreak. So there's an extended sequence of people trying to get him to turn around, then the military trying to kill him before he reaches Tokyo. Except the gas he produces also screws up electronics, so no targeting computer can lock onto him.

My favorite was the first, "Magnetic Rose", directed by Koji Morimoto, is more of a horror story, though it might not seem that way at first. An outer space salvage crew responds to an S.O.S., and finds a seemingly derelict ship belonging to a long deceased opera singer. Initially, it's a sad tale, this woman who withdrew from life after the death of her lover, to live among her memories out in the depths of space. Memories and mementos which are forgotten or crumbling to dust. I'm not sure it's sadder than "Cannon Fodder", but it's less bleak, certainly, than the story of a society living their entire lives under and in service to, the gun.

Maybe "Cannon Fodder" was a little too much like looking into a mirror.

The longer two members of the salvage crew explore, the more concerning things get. The loverboy of the crew keeps seeing the singer, and his partner is forced to confront a personal loss he's tried to bury. All the while, the derelict's magnetic fields threatens to overwhelm their ship's meager shielding. I'm not clear how the ship is able to learn about the crew well enough to endanger them, but it makes the ship less of a monument, to more of a tomb, one haunted by a presence determined not to be alone.

Robot Carnival

Found this odd little '80s anime anthology movie on Amazon Prime. There's seven short films in all, plus an opening and closing sequence involving a giant, treaded machine rolling over a village in the desert while all its fireworks and mechanical ballerinas blowing up any homes and people not being trampled. Kind of a weird start.

Each film has its own style, each goes a different route. Most of them have no dialogue, except for "Presence" and "A Tale of Two Robots, Chapter 3: Foreign Invasion". That latter one is kind of funny, the only one that really tries for humor. This bunch of Japanese kids trying to use their coal-powered parade float mech to fend off some crazy European scientist and his battery-powered, brick-reinforced mech. Although the English voice actors seem to be doing bad parodies of racist imitations of Japanese people in how they pronounce stuff sometimes. Maybe Amazon Prime has the original version, with Japanese voice actors?

Visually, "Cloud" is probably the most unusual. It's presented as more like a drawing. In the lower left corner is the one constant character, walking towards the edge of the frame, head bowed, wind at her back. That remains largely the same, and the backgrounds change. From clouds, to face in the clouds (or spirits?), to a mushroom cloud, to a rocket blasting into space. The changes aren't abrupt, but they aren't quite smooth. You're supposed to notice that it changes, while this sad music plays in the background. I won't pretend I understand what it was getting at it, but it definitely caught my attention.

"Franken Gears" is the mad scientist not understanding his creation. "Starlight Angel" is some angsty teen romance thing, and the "robot" isn't even a real robot. Total rip-off. "Deprive" is a quick action thing about a robot saving the little girl he looks after from. . . I'm not sure how to describe the bad guy. David Bowie if he painted himself like a smurf? The bad guy from Voltron crossed with a member of the Mistfits from Jem? (I figure given when the movie was made, '80s cartoon references are appropriate.)

Here, you look at him and tell me what you'd say. I'd swear he looked bluer when I was watching than that image I found suggests.

"Presence", that one's a little odd. Where a Toymaker creates a robot, then freaks out when she asks him to give her a name, or to help her to be more alive. I couldn't shake the feeling the Toymaker was, himself, a robot. We see that there are perfectly human-passing robots in the world, but that they're broken bodies are discarded in the rubbish. He notes he never knew his mother, and that while he thought he'd found what he was looking for in marriage, he realized he wanted something more basic. Which I took to mean he wanted to create life himself. There's also a bit where he's started up all the old wind-up toys to distract himself from her questions, and one of them knocks another to the ground as he reaches for a wrench.

Maybe it's just that he was human, but not ready for the responsibility of guiding a life himself? Which would mean his wife did everything with the kids presumably (although there was something about how she was presented I can't get my head around.)

My favorite of the lot was "Nightmare", where some massive, partially constructed robot emerges from below the earth and tries to re-create or take over the world. It has a little assistant who flies around on something like a bicycle and zaps machinery so robots crawl out of it. There's one guy, asleep in an alley, who wakes up and gets chased around the city on his moped by the assistant, and in so doing ultimately ruins the whole thing.

It reminds me a lot of Fantasia, the part where the Devil rises from that mountain and sends all the shadow creatures over the landscape. Think I'm remembering that right. I just remember seeing that as a kid and it being the only part that didn't seem too much for babies for me by then (no idea what age I was at that point). I mean, when the chase reaches where the giant robot is, there are a bunch of the other demon/robots just dancing around, partying and celebrating in time with the gears and pistons that move around them. It feels very Disneyish, but in a way that's kind of creepy, and very cool.

One thing I was kind of interested to see overall was the similarities in how different shorts portrayed robots visually. A couple of them gave their robots one eye that was substantially larger than the other. And a couple would depict the forearms as having some outer covering, but the upper arms just look like exposed bone. No wires or blinking lights or armor, just an oddly human looking piece of anatomy.

The Princess and the Pilot

A mercenary is chosen to fly the princess of the nation he's currently fighting for, to a warship of the nation whose prince she's marrying. A lot of people aren't happy about it, because even though he's a native, he's of mixed ethnicity, with half coming from the nation his home country (and the prince's home country) are currently fighting (and being beaten by). This puts him at the lowest social class. 

As a child, not do other kids pick on him, even adults insult and hit him. As a pilot, he's called a "sewer rat" to his face because of it, including by the officer who gives him the mission. It's at least heavily implied that he would not have been able to enlist, but then he catches shit for being a mercenary. When he explains he learned to fly by watching the pilots while he worked as a custodian at the airfield as a child, the guy sneers that he learned by stealing with his eyes, like a rat. Motherfucker, how do you expect someone to learn to fly? With their nose?

Charles is advised to only give "yes" or "no" responses to the princess, but that goes out the window almost immediately. They're flying through enemy territory, so Juana's got to watch their rear and (eventually) act as gunner. The attempt to give their flight cover with a massive daylight attack fails miserably due to poor communication security, so they're hounded and surrounded repeatedly.

The film has a mixed aesthetic for its machinery. They big ships are like Helicarriers, in that they can float on the sea, but spend most of their time in the air. Their homing missiles look like torpedoes. The single-engine aircraft resemble World War 2 designs - the enemy ace at the end is flying what looks like and I think is called a "Shiden", which was a Japanese fighter from very late in the war - but apparently run off a hydrogen fuel cell. Fine with me, that particular look is right up my alley, but it seemed an interesting choice.

The scenes of flight combat and evasion are pretty exciting and entertaining. Definitely my favorite part of the movie. Distinct lack of people telling Charles he's a piece of garbage during those scenes. The princess doesn't share the views of many of her people, which means the two characters can have pleasant conversation, which is nice. Makes the audience want those crazy kids to pull through. I'm not sure about having Juana and Charles having a previous connection, but I feel like the character arcs are erratic.

I think Juana has a decent arc about standing up for herself, rather than sort of gliding through life, letting people direct and position her, telling her it's for the good of their family/nation/war effort. She gets to actually do things to help her and Charles stay alive, and say what she thinks and feels without being criticized on how she does it. Charles, I'm less sure on. He gets her there, but is it because of his feelings for her, which he knows can't be returned, or because he believes that she really is that important? I guess by giving away his money for completing the mission he shows it wasn't just a job for him, and he can believe in his country, even if it's spent his entire life telling him he sucks.

Golgo 13: The Professional

Alex and I wanted to watch some anime, and this is free on Amazon Prime, so there you go. Golgo's an assassin, and he kills the son of a powerful tycoon, right as the young man's going to take over as president of the company. So Golgo soon finds himself beset by forces that seem able to easily track him down wherever he goes, and kill anyone close to him. His information specialist, his mechanic, other people who hired him.

It takes him a while, and several near misses to learn who's after him, and that he's got the help of the CIA and the US military. Although perhaps the guys in Army fatigues with bazookas and miniguns were a bit of a clue. Of course the story reveals that for all that Golgo will kill basically anyone he's paid to kill, the tycoon is far worse. He demands a pair of psychopathic twins the CIA experimented on, then dumped in a jungle where they killed 2,000 rebel guerillas, be released from prison and given to him. A fleet of attack helicopters? He gets them. Tries to turn his granddaughter into a killer. He locks his widowed daughter-in-law in a room with a different lunatic, because the guy implied he'd be sure to get Golgo if he got a little time with her.

Spoiler alert: He did not get Golgo.

Oh, and the oil tycoon apparently ordered JFK's assassination. I'd say they were going a little overboard trying to make us root for the hired killer, and against the bereaved father, but I really enjoyed the guy's eventual death, so I guess it worked.

I'm guessing it's faithful to the manga that practically every woman who meets Golgo wants to sleep with him, but the problem is they use the same sort of saxophone melodies for the sex scenes as for the what are supposed to be sort of melancholy scenes of him moving through city streets. Alex and I made a lot of jokes about that. Most of the fight scenes are pretty good, fairly well-animated and designed. The one with the twins seemed underwhelming at first, but the film did a good job of playing with our expectations on that one, and it was actually a pleasant surprise. 

We both really hated that the mass helicopter attack was apparently done with the finest computer-generated graphics 1983 had to offer. Just hideous. Did the regular animators run out of time, or did someone honestly think something that was so completely distinct from the entire rest of the film's look was a good idea? I also can't help wondering what happened to the granddaughter. We kind of see what happened to her mother, and it's not good. Film just kind of brushes over the innocent people Golgo had a hand in destroying.

Modest Heroes

A compilation of three short films. Maybe it's just because it was the one I enjoyed the least, but Kanino and Kanini, about two kids who are some sort of amphibious little people trying to find their father after he was carried downstream in a storm, felt longer than the other two. Not by a lot - like it was 20 minutes and the others were closer to 13-14 a piece, but it definitely dragged. Maybe because none of the characters say anything except each other's name. Like we're in bizarro Pokemon or something.

The other two, The World's Not Gonna Lose and Invisible were both more interesting to me. The first one is about a boy who is allergic to eggs, and the problems that causes him and his mother. Lot of scenes of her having to rush off from work because he got exposed at a friend's birthday party or whatever. And the kid seriously hates eggs in general. At one point he refused to do a math problem because it involved eggs. Just scribbled all over it instead. I guess I can see that response, given how prevalent eggs are as an ingredient in things.

The animation style is very standard for Studio Ghibli most of the time, but whenever he has an allergic reaction, the colors get thicker, more smeared. Everything looks fragile and jittery somehow. Like things are reverting to a sketch, but with color rather than pencil linework. It's a nifty approach, draws the audience's attention because it's a shift.

Invisible is about a guy who is, you know, invisible. Even though he wears clothes and can speak, no one seems to notice or react to him. Even if he hands them a pen, the person's eyes just pass them over. He's practically immaterial actually. He has to keep a metal extinguisher slung over his shoulder or he'll float into the sky. There's a part where that almost happens and I thought he was going to eventually stop struggling and just let himself float away, and then find something wherever he ends up. That's not how it went. Film seemed to be saying more that he'd allowed himself to be a ghost, hadn't tried to do anything to really live or be noticed. I don't know about that.

It's definitely got the bleakest color scheme of the three, all overcast skies and dull modern settings. His moped is this dull almost primer grey-blue. Clothes are dull, buildings are dull. Not a bright, hopeful world. The World's Not Gonna Lose is set in modern urban setting too, but even with all the problems Shun faces, the colors for his surroundings stay bright and sunny.

Aggretsuko

I haven't had much luck finding movies I particularly want to watch on Netflix recently, and going to the theater is, for obvious reasons, not an option at the moment (even if there was something I really wanted to see). I have three or four TV series saved to watch, but instead skipped past all of them to watch an animated show about an accountant who deals with stress by doing death metal karaoke.

That's pretty much what the show is. Retsuko works in the Accounting Division of some company. Her boss is a sexist (literal) pig, her mom is trying to make her get married, she's not sure if she even likes her job or what she wants to do with her life. She struggles with asserting herself, so she stops at a karaoke place after work and screams out her frustration and all the things she wants to say to people there.

Definitely not an impulse I'm familiar with or anything. I don't even like death metal.

Both seasons involve Retsuko falling head over heels for a guy (different guy, not the same guy twice), before coming to the conclusion they don't mesh well with her. One doesn't put anywhere near as much into the relationship as she does, and the other is doing too much, or devalues the things that are important to her. There's a best friend character at her job that's clearly got a crush, and is I think supposed to have a little Punk in him, judging by glimpses we see of him outside work, but nothing's happened on that front so far.

That's the common theme, is how many of the characters are hiding something behind their professional facade. Retsuko ultimately befriends two women who are pretty far up there in the company hierarchy. Almost every time we see Retsuko see them at work, they're striding down the hall together confidently, entirely composed. Then they go around the corner and Director Gori admits walking like that is really painful, or she breaks down sobbing because Retsuko turned them down when they invited her for a post-yoga meal. Retsuko might be hiding a whirlwind of fury, but everyone's got something hidden for one reason or another.

(Now that I've typed that out, I'm really curious what Retsuko's friend Fennuko is hiding. We haven't seen much of her outside work.)

I spent a lot of time eagerly anticipating when Retsuko would actually cut loose on her boss or his ass-kissing lackey, or whoever it was that gave her grief. Which is why my favorite episode was the 7th episode of season 1, when she gets into a face off karaoke battle against her boss after he figures out she filed a power harassment complaint against him. Who hasn't had a boss they wanted to tell off brutally at least once? I've been pretty fortunate in regards to bosses, but even so, there are times I would like to scream at them until they were blown through a wall.

An Odd Couple, But With Six People Instead

I think I've officially abandoned trying to do these hypothetical teams every other month, considering this one is two months late. Oh well. Have to be in the mood to think about it. With this one, if there's a guiding principle, it was to try and push towards extremes on their personalities. A couple of the characters are extremely loud and hyperactive, and a couple of the others (one in particular) are much more reserved and serious. Just let them ping-pong off each other and see if they amuse or irritate the hell out of each other. Beyond that, I was just picking characters I liked, as usual.

The Leader: Balsa (Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit) - I don't know that Balsa would want to be in charge, but she's probably best suited for it of these five. Typically she's a bodyguard for hire type, but that does put her in the position of being responsible for the well-being of others, so she has to be able to think of what she needs them to being doing, and be aware of their strengths and weaknesses. Which aren't bad qualities for a leader to have.

But convincing her to rely on the strengths of others to get things done is another matter. She's used to doing most everything herself. Not that she won't accept help if she has no other choice, but she normally has to be in a situation where she has no choice. For example, being so badly injured she can't doing anything other than lie there and accept medical treatment.

She can be stern and unforgiving; she has certain rules she tries to live by, but she does show a sense of humor when there's a chance to relax. Given enough time around a person, she may loosen up and be friendly. Or if they give her enough grief, she may haul off and deck them.

Most of the other members of the team are as stubborn as she is, so there may be a lot of head-butting going on. Getting anyone on this team to sit down and take five minutes to heal is going to be a challenge, unless they all collapse at the same time.

The Rogue: Excel (Excel Saga) - Excel is the Rogue, not so much because she'll hold allegiance to another organization above this team, but because there is almost no way of knowing what she will do at any given moment.

Excel is a hyperactive idiot. Deadpool on greenies, but with much less competence. She works for a secret organization, ACROSS, dedicated to saving the world by conquering it. Recognizing that's a tall order, they opted to start by taking over one section of one city, as a trial run. Excel fails at most every mission she's assigned. Usually because she won't slow down and take five seconds to think about what she's doing before she does it.

And yet, this approach has led her to prevent alien invasions, zombie outbreaks, and keeping the secret base from being completely flooded. She's strong and fast when the situation requires it (and when she isn't on the verge of collapsing from starvation). She isn't likely to abandon ACROSS, not with her fanatical crush on her leader, Il Palazzo, so she's most likely here because the team has something Il Palazzo wants. Either that or this is somehow the part-time job she's stumbled into to pay the rent. For the team's sake, it's probably better if she's on a mission. Her part-time jobs don't last long before she destroys everything.

Since Excel can't keep her mouth shut, and will no doubt reveal she works for ACROSS in the first 5 minutes, the best chance the team has is to take the Inspector Gadget approach. Get her into a location under the auspices of carrying out her daily mission for ACROSS, then count on her to do something useful for the team by accident instead. As long as what you need from her is destruction, it should turn out alright.

The Muscle: Black Star/Tsubaki (Soul Eater) - Kind of a cheat to pick a duo. I could just pick one, make them half to function without their partner. But they're kind of a microcosm of this team overall, and so this way things are more balanced between the manics and the stoics.

Black Star hunts down people who commit vile acts before they can become a full-fledged demon, essentially. He's supposed to specialize in assassinations, but he likes being the center of attention. So rather than strike silently from the shadows, he will leap into the middle of his enemies and shout out his name and how he's going to surpass God. Tsubaki is his partner, who can turn into a variety of weapons he wields. She's calm, shy really, extremely patient and supportive of Black Star in spite of the fact he frequently screws up their missions. In turn, Tsubaki draws strength from his confidence in her and himself. If the guy thinks he's going to surpass God one day, and that you are the perfect partner to help him do it, then you must be pretty awesome too.

For all his over-the-top attitude, Black Star is extremely strong for someone in his early teens, and pushes himself constantly, at least physically. He's not so good on the intellectual side of things, but I think he's one of those people that is listening even when you think he's not. When things get truly serious, he'll show that he has learned the lessons others were trying to teach. This doesn't keep him from overreaching, challenging people outside his weight class, and he takes the losses hard. In the darker moments, it drives him to pursue power for its own sake, rather than with any greater purpose, which almost got him killed once (and did get basically his entire family killed when he was a baby). He seemed to have got his mind clear on that score by the end of the anime, but I suppose he could always fall back into bad habits if things go south for long enough.

The Lady of Mystery: Lala-Ru (Now and Then, Here and There) - She's much older than she appears, and has a pendant that has a massive reservoir of water inside it. She's the only one who can release the water, and it's tied to her life force. Release it all and that's it for her. Since she lived on a desert world, that meant people have been trying to capture and use her for most of her very long life.

So she tends to be very reserved, calmly accepting the greed and brutality of humanity, which is old hat to her by this point. Maybe resigned is a better word for it. The same patterns playing out again and again. She's patient, because the people after her generally know they can't kill her if they want that water. So they'll try to bargain or plead or threaten, but there's nothing she wants or that they can take. So it's really just killing time while she waits for an opportunity to escape.

That said, she can still care about people given time. She's received little enough kindness in her life that when people try to help or protect her, it can surprise her. Of course, the trade-off is that then there's someone she cares about that can be used as a lever against her.

I expect Lala-Ru is the one that draws everyone together. She was able to escape her world to another dimension briefly before being pursued and captured. In this version, she wound up in a different dimension, and met another person willing to defend, but better able to do it than the well-meaning kid she met originally. The ones initially chasing her aren't going to give up - they're following a lunatic of a king, so it's succeed or be executed - but I'd expect other people in her new home to get wind of her power and take an interest as well. ACROSS, for example.

The One with a Spaceship: Gene Starwind (Outlaw Star) - Whether he can use the starship is reliant on him having enough money to pay for fuel and upkeep. He was in massive debt pretty much throughout the entire series, always promising to pay people back when he 'made it big.' Also, if his crew is gone, then he's minus his tech genius of a partner, who handled a lot of the repairs himself to help keep costs down.

Gene was, like Balsa, a gun for hire. He's kind of a jack-of-all-trades, but calls himself an outlaw. Again though, he has his principles. There are jobs he's not going to take, and if he's trying to protect someone, he won't abandon them simply because things start to get ugly. He's very cocky, a smartass who tends to hide what he's really feeling behind a smirk. A lot of times, he can be very casual about big fights or threats against his life, but he doesn't want to die, he just tends to think he's invincible because he hasn't died so far. Plus, I think he knows his partner Jim would insist on them coming up with a strategy. He can treat it like he's just humoring his friend, but he appreciates it and he will stick to their plans for as long as he can. Hard to say whether, with Jim MIA, Gene will try to come up with plans on his own, or if he'll just trying winging it full-time. And if he does try to make an actual strategy, whether he can make it work without Jim. There isn't anyone remotely close to a computer or engineering whiz on this roster to fill that void.

He's not bad at improvising when necessary, adapting to new threats. He's fairly tough, as long as he doesn't get too cocky. I expect Balsa is probably going to kick his ass at least once during all this, whether Gene underestimates her or not. If he does, it'll just take less time. He's not as much of a ladies' man as he thinks, but he has enough charm that he can make friends easily, sometimes. Sometimes, it goes the other way and he just pisses people off quickly.

Everyone Knows Somebody

I was going to say this team had a bunch of people who are all independent, prone to just going off and following their own agendas. But that's all the teams I make. I don't gravitate towards characters that like being part of teams. Once I thought about it a little more, each of these characters is the sort who would have a lot of sources or connections. They'd always know somebody that could tell them something or help them out. But each of them would move in different circles, so there wouldn't be too much overlap. Plus their status in those circles would vary.

The Leader: Jet Black (Cowboy Bebop) - Before he was a bounty hunter, Jet was cop, until he was shot in an ambush and lost an arm and leg (later replaced by cybernetic parts). He was a pretty good cop by all accounts (except maybe his ex-wife's). Honest, tough, smart. Not some sort of deductive genius - he has his blinds spots - but he's smart enough. Knows his way around a computer, how to track someone's activity. He's not a hacker on par with Radical Edward, but he does alright most of the time. His trademark was his determination, as he was known as the Black Dog. Once he bites, he doesn't let go.

Jet's contacts would be all his former buddies on the force. They like him pretty well, and are willing to give him what info they can, most of the time. The times they aren't, Jet might know a few secrets they'd prefer not get exposed to the light of day.

He can be grumpy, but he tends to get less extremely angry than his partner, Spike. Spike played relaxed a lot of the time, but when something got to him, it would really set him off. Jet may have just reached the point where he doesn't see the value in reacting like that, or figures he has too many responsibilities to waste time. He's got a ship to keep running, employment opportunities to hunt for, or leads to follow on targets, keeping the ship supplied on an often shoestring budget.

The Rogue: Vash the Stampede (Trigun) - Vash is. . . an idiot. Well, OK, not really. He acts that way, because it's easier. Easier for people to believe he's doing whatever he's doing by accident or pure luck, rather than realize that he's so incredibly skilled he can do these things while acting like a buffoon. This is a man who entered a gunfighting tournament, then was able to make sure no one died by throwing pebbles that diverted the competitors' bullets so they only wounded people, and only one person, sitting right next to him, noticed he was doing it.

Vash is an incredible marksman, in that he can almost always shoot to wound, if he even needs to wound them. A lot of times he can simply disarm opponents. It's fortunate this is a team that for the most part isn't going to mind his resistance to killing. If they're going after bounties, it might be preferable. The biggest issue might be that, because he tends to try using as little force as possible as long as possible, someone else could get hurt in the meantime. He's more than willing to play human shield, but that's not always going to be an option. If someone else on the team gets hurt because Vash was screwing around, there could be hell to pay (although he'll beat himself up about it worse than they will). He's stronger than he looks, fast, with excellent reflexes and sharp senses. His tolerance for alcohol is, unclear. Sometimes he seems like a lightweight, but that might be in comparison to heavy drinkers he's with. Other times, he seems like he's playing opossum. It doesn't seem to slow him down too much regardless.

With Vash, the people he knows could be almost anyone. He's over a century old, and he's helped a lot of people in that time. Little old ladies, sheriffs, young children, bus drivers, single moms. There are entire towns that regard him as a hero who would stick up for him. So, if you need a place to stay (or hide), Vash should have a wealth of options available, although he might resist turning to them if he's worried about their safety.

The Muscle: Sanosuke Sagara (Rurouni Kenshin) - Sano spent his teen years as a fighter-for-hire, taking out his frustration with what the Meiji government did to the Captain of the unit he was part of on anybody he could find that seemed worth the time. Eventually, after meeting Kenshin, he changed his outlook, and now he focuses on fighting people who abuse their power to hurt people with less power. Kenshin was very much about protecting those in harm's way, Sanosuke is more about going at the person causing harm.

To that end, Sanosuke is honest and mostly direct. He's not a bad liar when needed, but if there's no pressing need to lie, he'll say what he thinks and feels. He's impulsive, and can be easily baited into action because, for the most part, he doesn't have anyone to worry about protecting. He's not afraid for himself, so it doesn't matter if challenging some Yakuza is a bad idea or not. Let them try something and see how well it works out. His fighting style is much the same. He comes right at you and you take your best shot. He'll certainly take his. If Vash is going to get injured trying to protect someone on the team, Sano may be the most likely choice, at least early on. I imagine after the first time he does it, and Sanosuke socks him one for treating Sano like a liability, Vash will get the message to just trust him (and Vash will remind Sano of Kenshin in a lot of ways, so they'll probably get along OK eventually).

If Vash doesn't want to risk involving any of his fine, upstanding citizen friends, Sanosuke knows plenty of people of questionable morality that can help. The guys he hangs out with aren't crooks, exactly, but they spend a lot of time hanging around, drinking and gambling. They know who the local bad guys are, they know about what sort of illicit business is going on. While Sanosuke could lean on them if he needed to, he tends to be a pretty fun guy to share a drink with, so people are willing to help him out. They know he has their backs if something comes up.

The Lady of Mystery: Nico Robin (One Piece) - Robin is the character here I know the least, since I kind of gave up on One Piece not long after she showed up. The series was going to be too long, too much of an investment. Just trying to read the online biography I found on her was exhausting.

Anyway, Robin is the calmest member of the team, not easily fazed, unless things get really dire. Vash's idiocy and Sano's temper aren't going to bother her. Even the likelihood Vash will try hitting on her is something she'll handle calmly. She'll be polite, but she's not going to encourage it. I'm not positive if that's indifference. Having seen most every group she's joined end when everyone other than her dies, it may be a necessary cover to avoid attachments. A different approach from Vash playing the fool to disguise his bleeding heart, but leading to the same general point. But it could just be confidence; Robin's likely the strongest person on the team, given her powers. Certainly, she won't hesitate to use that power, up to and including lethal force.

(Vash is probably stronger, given he has enough power to put a hole in a moon, but he almost certainly won't use that power, unless they go up against something that strong. Which I don't think is going to happen, unless his crazy brother is on the loose again. Although some of those admirals in Robin's world are no joke. . .)

As long as Jet shows he knows what he's doing, there shouldn't be any problems there. Robin doesn't seem like she really cares to be in charge as long as she trusts the judgment of whoever is. She has a dark sense of humor, and a vivid imagination to go with it. If one of their teammates gets lost, and they can't hear them anymore, she'll state the person's probably getting strangled, or already been killed and eaten by some monster. Vash is going to be the one most creeped out by that, assuming he isn't already put off by her willingness to snap necks. He'll have to work overtime to end some of these fights before she does in a more permanent fashion.

The thing about Robin that interested me enough to put her on the team was she's a history buff. Her main interest is stone features left over from an old civilization, called Ponyglyphs. I remembered that being her primary reason for throwing in with the Baroque Works criminal organization, a chance to study some that were in a country they were trying to destabilize and take over. I thought having an archaeology expert would be something my teams usually don't have, and bring something a little different to the mix. And I thought she might have all sorts of connections in academic circles, people who were also studying the Ponyglyphs, or other similar subjects. As it turns out, the World Government killed everyone else they knew of that was studying that forbidden subject. Whoops.

But Robin's years of study would, at bare minimum, make her a valuable person to have if you need something deciphered, or to understand what a clue is referencing. If they need to talk to a professor or expert in some historical area, Robin's the best bet to be able to pull that off. Where Sanosuke has a lot of friends who are aware of the criminal underworld, and he has a bit of a rep, Robin was a major criminal for some time (falsely accused, but she stuck with the rep regardless), and was the right hand woman for one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea. Even if those aren't the circles she travels in now, there are plenty of people who know her rep, know what she's capable of. Sano's rep was he'd beat you so badly you saw the aku mark on his shirt for months afterward; Robin's rep is she wiped out six ships and she leaves people twisted and broken in ways they weren't meant to bend.

The Guy with a Car: Kimishima (Scryed) - Kimishima's not in here for his ride, which was a cobbled together mess that couldn't carry the entire team, anyway. Besides, Jet has a spaceship, big enough to hold that car, and Jet's smaller, personal spaceship.

Kimishima is Morgan Freeman's character in The Shawshank Redemption, the man who knows how to get things. He's a scrounger, always hustling. Always looking for job opportunities, always looking for a buck, or something he can sell, or use to fix his car. He's not a fighter, though he'll lend a hand when he needs to. He's got connections, or knows how to make them quickly. He does have a soft spot for more hard luck cases, but only up to a point. He's good at keeping a low profile while more noticeable people (and there are at least a couple on this team) keep everyone else occupied. You need someone to talk their way into a place, or walk around unnoticed in hostile territory? Kimishima's your guy. He'll go in, get what you need, and come back with a half-dozen other useful (or at least interesting) things and the names and numbers of three people that might have work that needs doing or could help down the line.

How they end up together: Vash has been living in secret for a long time, helping in small ways where he can, but trying hard to avoid drawing attention with the sort of city-damaging antics he used to get up to. He has to abandon that because someone pursues a weapon that could endanger the entire planet. Maybe it's his brother, or a government, or some other person out for power, but they're going to tap into the power of the plants, and he figures that's something he needs to handle. He probably encounters Kimishima early on, bums a ride off him, has trouble paying off the debt. And since he keeps wrecking Kimishima's stuff as they get dragged into situations, Kimishima keeps upping the tab, and refusing to call it quits. Plus, he thinks this Vash guy is actually an OK guy, and he shares any bounties they cash in as they go along.

Vash being who he is, can't maintain a low profile, and he accumulates a bounty in his attempts to help others. I'm assuming this is far enough into the future his old $$60 billion bounty was dropped because everyone figured he was dead. That brings in Jet and his new partner, Sano (and a lot of other bounty hunters). They're chasing him, at first, keeping themselves funded by turning in all the criminals they encounter along the way. Sometimes Vash actually catches the crooks, but has to leave them behind when Jet and Sano appear on the horizon in hot pursuit. Other times the three of them team up because they all recognize the criminal needs to be stopped. Eventually they figure out they might as well help this guy who really isn't doing anything wrong other than helping in a way that causes property damage.

Robin gets drawn into all this because the weapon relates to ancient history, and she ran afoul of the big bad while looking for other information in the same ruins. It was a pretty serious battle, one neither one could finish, and he destroyed everything trying to cover his tracks. Which is the sort of thing Robin doesn't forgive, so she's after him, and the others have the means to travel faster than she does, so it makes sense to throw in with them. Especially once she figures out Vash might be a fountain of useful information, assuming she can get it out of him past all the stories about places that served the best pizza toast and locations where he met a particularly pretty girl.

Mary and the Witch's Flower

Mary's moved to the English countryside, to her great-aunt's manor, and while following a pair of cats in the woods, finds the mysterious Fly-By-Night flower, which only blooms once every 7 years. Not long after that, she finds an old broomstick at the base of a tree, and she's soon carried into the clouds to a witches' college. For Mary, the nice part there is that everyone thinks she's a prodigy. The bad news is, her power is a result of the flower, and that's what the headmistress Madam Mumblechook and the chief researcher Dr. Dee are really after.

The designs of the buildings and some of the creatures are fantastic. The small cottage the broomstick eventually brings Mary to looked wonderful. I especially liked the different forms Dr. Dee's experiment at the end kept morphing into. Some were just large, gelatinous versions of animals, like frogs, and others were these strange monstrosities.

At one point, when Mary delivers the flower, Madam Mumblechook uses magic just to unscrew the thermos it's in. I started to suspect that, if the people at the college used magic for everything, then Mary's advantage would be that she was used to doing things without it. All their protections and defenses would be designed against magic, and rather than try to blast through a barrier spell over a door, Mary would just. . . turn the knob. That didn't turn out to be the case. Another prediction wrong. It would have been funny, though.

At the beginning of the film, we figure out two things about Mary. One, she's self-conscious about her red hair and how much it makes her stand out. Then she gets to the college where her red hair is a sign of her immense potential and everyone tells her how great she is, which leads to her not getting the heck out of there faster (that and the threat of being "transformed" if she's an interloper). The other thing we learn is she really wants to be helpful and useful, but struggles to do anything properly. A little overeager most of the time. I'm not sure what the payoff was for that. Her being determined to stop Mumblechook and Dee from experimenting on someone, and she sort of managed that, perhaps. She didn't stop trying to help, and she got it right this time.

Ghost in the Shell Arise

Netflix has three of the four Ghost in the Shell Arise films right now, which were hour-long animated films released across 2013-2014. They cover a stretch of time as Major Kusanagi tries to get out of the military and create a career and life for herself, as a freelance cybersecurity expert/troubleshooter. The shooter part is literal, since the cases she faces all end up requiring some amount of gunfire.

I'm only familiar with Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, which was an earlier TV series set later in her life (after her team had been fully formed and had consistent funding from Section 9). So this Major is a bit of a change. She's less experienced, more guarded, quicker to anger, less comfortable in her prosthetic body - her boyfriend in third film, Ghost Tears, says that when they met, she couldn't decide whether to thing of her body as a person or a thing - and still trying to figure out who she's going to be.

Each movie involves a mystery, or two mysteries that end up connecting. One typically involving a death, and the other the theft of something. Weapons or information, typically. The world seems to be in a chaotic state from which their country is still trying to recover (it's remarked they were one of the biggest losers of the war). Of course, the war is still going on in other places, it's simply that any country that was able to peace out has officially done it already.

If, like me, you had any concerns about a world where everyone can just plug their brains into information systems, this is not a movie to assuage your fears. People's brains get hacked all the time. Sometimes it makes them either see something that isn't there, or not perceive something that is. There's a recurring virus that creates false memories. People receive artificial limbs that are, unknown to them, actually bombs. The Major is told in the first movie that, since her prosthetic body was paid for by the military, she's essentially property and can't leave the base without requesting permission first. There's prejudice, mostly likely going both ways, although we see it mostly from the Major and her team towards Togusa, a detective who has no prosthetic parts. They mock his flesh eyes on a couple of occasions (although to be fair to the Major, when she does so, she's really just pissed because he's said he suspects her boyfriend is mixed up in something crooked.)

One bit I thought dead-on was we see that more and more wealthy elderly people are getting fully prosthetic new bodies, young bodies, to enjoy more active and energetic lives. And since people with prosthetic bodies have specialized dietary requirements, now there's a lot of progress being made on new, more high-class foods suitable for them. When it was mostly just soldiers, no one was gonna bother with anything more than beer and fish sausage, but the old rich folks got involved and now there's money to be made.

I think they use CGI for a lot of the sequences where the Major's on her motorcycle, and it doesn't look great.Not terrible, but it's noticeably different from the rest of the film, which is jarring. Throws me out of it for an instant. Otherwise, the animation seems pretty good. The fight sequences are mostly brief, but they're usually well done. They do this one bit where one character will do a jump or a flip to get behind another and as they're dropping into their landing, it slows down. So the viewer can see what's coming, anticipate the next move, but it's a nifty effect. It's almost like the Major's legs are so powerful gravity can't catch up, so it doesn't pull her back down like it should.

Of the three films, Ghost Tears was probably my favorite. By that point, all the characters I was familiar with are involved, even if they aren't all officially working together. The mystery in the second film, Ghost Whisper, might have been the strongest. The other two relied on a couple of "surprises" related to the Major that they telegraphed too much. Ghost Whisper also probably had the Major Kusanagi that was closest to the more experienced, pragmatic one I was used to.

After Time Working in Government, Most People Want to Go Private Sector

I meant to do another of these made-up team posts a couple of weeks ago, but I've been pressed for time the last three weeks (last three months really), so it was easier to do other, quicker posts. Anyway, this idea this time around was to build a team from a bunch of people used to working for various secretive government organizations, but they'll be operating independently this time. Fortunately, "government teams of people with special abilities" is an extremely common thing in fiction, so it wasn't too hard to come up with a group.

The Leader: Major Motoko Kusanagi (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) - The Major's a highly skilled former soldier, now special government investigator type. Her consciousness was transferred over to an advanced cybernetic body sometime earlier in her life (Stand Alone Complex said it was when she was a kid, but I'd imagine the other versions have different takes). So she's much stronger, faster, and more resilient to injury than your average flesh-and-blood person. She can also mentally enter communication networks, or another person's brain, assuming they have any sort of cybernetic hook-up to it (as most people in her world do). The question is whether the team will be operating in a place she can use that. The other team members all hail from fictional universes less technologically advanced than hers. Which could also be a problem if she's injured in the course of their work. There is one person on the team who might be able to handle repairs.

The Major was the field leader for her Section 9 group. On missions, she's serious and focused, not in the mood to hear excuses if someone doesn't carry out their job. She keeps a high standard, and expects the people she leads to do the same. Most of the characters in this team are pretty competent, if erratic in various ways. There may not follow orders, though if they can get the job done without collateral damage, she'll roll with it. She knows when to give someone a confidence boost, and when she can give them some guff for screwing up. She has a dry sense of humor, but she can definitely unwind. She's a private person, which shouldn't be a problem as long as none of the team develop a reason to question her.

If she needs to she can drop out of sight fast. None of the others have any cybernetic parts that could potentially be traced or monitored if they're in her world or a similar one. There's still surveillance all over the place, but she can handle most of that, remotely hacking it. Moving around undetected might be fairly easy in her world, if they're careful. One person on this team might louse that up, though. Assuming she had any say in the roster, she'll have scouted all of them thoroughly, wanting to maintain a high standard. Some of them are questionable in how reliable they are, but she'd be certain she could handle it if she's put them on the team. Of course, if she didn't have any say, that might make it more interesting, figuring out their powers and personalities on the fly, trying not to let the thing rip itself apart in the early stages.

The Rogue: Aoi Miyoshi (Night Raid 1931) - Aoi is the one most likely to irritate the Major. He's not a dishonest, untrustworthy Rogue, he just has his own strong sense of what is right and wrong. Which may not always jibe with the mission. One advantage to them not being connected to a government is they should have more leeway to alter how they handle things if they want. The Major can probably use that judiciously to keep Aoi from getting too out of control. Hey, she likes to freelance, too.

He's impulsive, rushes in without thinking. Relies on charm and wit, and manages it some of the time. He's a bit of a goof, tends to hide his more serious emotions behind that mask. The guy who flirts by playing at being a clumsy oaf trying for charming. He's not as good at it as he thinks, but even if it isn't working to get him in the front door, it might work as a distraction. He can be stubborn and impatient to an irritating degree, which also works for a distraction. Sometimes you need someone to piss off the door guy buy insisting he left his wallet inside and refusing to leave.

He's a telekinetic, limited to manipulating objects he can see. He can only use it for 15 seconds a day, total. It doesn't have to be all at once, he can partition it out over the day, but that's a narrow window to rely on as heavily as he does. It almost got him killed once, when he'd overestimated how much time he had. He's also a decent photographer and a terrible violinist, one of those will probably come in handy at some point.

The Muscle: Seras Victoria (Hellsing) - Seras is a vampire. She wasn't a full-fledged one in the anime, because she hadn't taken any of her sire's blood. In the manga, she did eventually become a full-fledged vampire after feeding on a dying friend so they could win the battle together. Even in the anime, she's strong enough to carry a 30mm cannon around like a toy popgun. In the manga, once she's leveled up, she can destroy dozens of trained Nazi soldier vampires with minimal effort, tearing through them like a scythe. In raw power and speed, she's the top of the mark for this bunch.

Seras works well as part of a team, or individually. She was a police officer before being turned, and afterward, she was part of a military organization dedicated to defending England from supernatural threats. She's used to taking orders, and frankly, the Major is less scary than either Integra or Alucard. She's filled a number of different roles. Long-range support, working as the lead for a unit, or as the one who roams and destroys while everyone else holds the line, or simply as a bodyguard for the boss.

On certain occasions, she performed surveillance. When she wears regular clothes, rather than the Hellsing outfit (in-story there's no reason given why they don't just give her some pants, she wore them as a cop), she can look like a fairly normal person. The red eyes might be unusual, depending on where they are, but that could be special contact lenses. Depending on setting, her British accent might be the biggest issue for blending in.

She's a bit silly at times, although you could chalk some of that up to trying to adjust to a strange circumstance. She's the person who takes things very seriously, and in an effort to not screw up, goes overboard in her response. She can think quickly when she needs to, she'll do her best even if she's scared. She was still young when she was turned, and there's still a certain amount of immaturity to her, although reaching her full potential seemed to take care of some of that. She was hesitant initially about killing what seem to be people (and I imagine she still thinks of herself as a person, so these other vampires must still be people, too), but that's worn off after all the carnage she fought through. She's not kill-happy; she'd just incapacitate a person if that was enough; she has cop training for that. But if she needs to put a 30mm shell through someone, she'll do it. Sometimes an encouraging word is going to work best with her, other times it's gonna be the blunt approach when she gets depressed and starts navel-gazing.

The Lady of Mystery: Miss Deep/Nancy Makuhari (Read or Die) - Nancy's ability is to go intangible, like Shadowcat (the white line in the image on the left is the path of a weapon passing through her). She can at least make objects she's carrying or her clothes phase with her or not as she chooses, but I don't remember seeing her make another person intangible. Maybe it just didn't come up. She's also a kind of clone based on Mata Hari, as part of a group of "geniuses" reborn as clones by another genius seeking to take over the world. Nancy would have easily fit into the Rogue role, but it's going to be hard to figure why she's working with this bunch. What's she getting out of it?

She wasn't much of a team player, considering she betrayed both sides at one point or the other. Even before that, she didn't enjoy being on a team. She hates her codename, she's frustrated by her partner Yomiko's easily distracted air and unprofessional approach. But she's willing to trust the rest of the team is there for a reason, to trust Yomiko does actually have some idea what she's doing. They developed solid teamwork, considering how often they were making up plans on the fly, taking turns being the distraction in their battles. She'll be distant at first, seem like she doesn't even want to be there, then come through in a key moment to save someone's life, confusing everyone for a bit.

The Major's going to know some of Nancy's checkered history. This might be one of those things she keeps from everyone else, figuring it's not going to help if the rest of the team is looking at Nancy with suspicion, trusting she can keep Nancy in line if she needs to. I'm not sure how she'll manage that with a person who turns intangible, but I could see her having some ace up her sleeve. Either that, or she only needs Nancy's help for a certain amount of time, and after that, it doesn't matter so much if she sticks with them or not. At any rate, that could end up being the thing that makes the rest of the team suspicious the Major's hiding things (Aoi and Seras both have experience with people who turned out to not be what they presented themselves), unless Nancy can defuse it. If she cares to.

The Guy with a Motorcycle/Car/Giant Robot? - Norman Burg (The Big O) - The protagonist of the show, Roger Smith, is a Batman-meets-James Bond (with a giant robot). Norman is Alfred-meets-Q. He looks after Roger's house, runs errands, makes sure everything operates exactly as Roger wants it to (until R. Dorothy takes it upon herself to not let Roger sleep in past 11). He's also the one who maintains Roger's car, and his mech. On occasions when Dorothy's android mind was tampered with, Norman knew enough to run a diagnostic on Dorothy to determine what had happened, what could be done to deal with it, and whether she'd be OK. His role was to know whatever skills are necessary to help Roger fulfill his role. Like Alfred.

Let's leave it at what we have there. Norman has some sort of past (which he doesn't recall the details of) as a soldier, is a mechanic and engineer, understands computers to an extent. He's a good motorcyclist. Knows when he can afford to attack, and when to hold back because the risk is too high. He follows orders, and if he disagrees with them, he won't argue openly. He'll opt for the gentle side comment to illustrate where he thinks the person is making a mistake. He might be able to get Aoi to curb some of his more impulsive actions, act as an occasional buffer between him and the Major. He probably won't convince Aoi to tie his tie properly, look a little less slovenly. He's probably going to remind Seras of Walter, who in the manga turned out to be a traitor. That could cause some problems. Walter seemed kindly and helpful, easy to trust. Which is going to make her worried about whether she can trust Norman when he offers to maintain her cannon, or patch her clothes or something. Norman isn't going to press things. He'll do his job quietly, and let the others decide what they think of him.

Best guess on the threat is something combining aspects of all their worlds. Read or Die had self-proclaimed geniuses out to "improve" the world by killing most of the people (the old Ra's al Ghul bit). Big O had giant robots, but also a collective amnesia about all events further back than 40 years ago. Night Raid 1931 had a guy clued in to a vision of the war ahead who could convince others to help him terrify world leaders into bowing to his will, because he hoped to avert that. Ghost in the Shell operates in a world where basically everyone in the world can connect their minds to the Internet. Hellsing had Nazi vampires, and lunatic Catholic soldiers out for another Crusade. Well, they need something to punch on their way to the ultimate problem. Take Night Raid's idea of a terrifying future, but instead of averting it, try to make it reality by accessing people's minds world wide and tampering with how they remember things. Or have one person try to use their vision of the world, and make reality somehow bend to that. That's basically what the Read or Die TV series did though, so maybe not.

Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro

Lupin is a thief, from a family of thieves. He and his partner Jingen robbed a casino, only to find the money is all counterfeit. Excellently done, but counterfeit. They resolve to find the counterfeiters, and take over the operation, which brings them to the tiny country of Cagliostro, where they'll have to break into a heavily guarded castle. The job quickly turns into a rescue mission, as there's a young princess Lupin knows from his past in danger as well, and Lupin, being the charming rogue type, can't leave her to her fate.

It's a caper flick, but also an action-adventure story with a fair amount of comedy. Maybe that is a caper flick, but I tend to think of those as having fewer explosions and mysterious goons in hoods with metal gauntlets. I remember reading somewhere years ago, that Steven Spielberg took inspiration from this movie for Indiana Jones. Which I can see, given Lupin and Indy's less-than-squeaky clean natures. Plus all the death traps, ancient riddles, and narrow escapes. Hayao Miyazaki, who also directed Spirited Away and Castle in the Sky, among others - directed this and has a writer credit, so it's pretty high quality. There are some gorgeous shots in this film. One of Lupin scrambling up a steep roof with the moon reflecting off a lake in the distance really caught my eye. The animation is detailed when it needs to be, loose and expressive when that's what it needs.

Adult Swim used to show one of the Lupin III series, and I always felt bad for Inspector Zenigata. He was a cop tasked with arresting Lupin. He's honorable, decent, hard-working, and has no idea that's he's essentially Wil E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner. Or Sisyphus, if you want a more classical reference. He'll chase him and chase him, and never catch him. Or, on the occasions he might get the cuffs on Lupin, he'll turn around a moment later and find himself cuffed to an empty chair. The two of them usually end up teamed up, because Lupin's trying to rob someone worse, or Lupin maneuvers "Pops" into taking care of the guy for him. Still, there's a nice moment near the end of this where the Inspector, having been taken off the case because the Count has friends in Interpol, is able to use Lupin a pretext to get back in and expose the Count's criminal activities over international TV. He feigns innocence to an absurd degree, and I thought it was great.

A lot of the characters have backstory with each other, but the movie fills you in enough that you can follow along, rather than assuming you know all the history. Which was nice since some of it was different from what I remembered from the series.

I wasn't sure whether I'd enjoy this or not, but I really did. A lot of twists, turns, and sudden reversals, plus some funny gags.

I Should Have Posted This On Valentine's Day

I really love this couple, individually or together.

Krillin's my favorite character in the Dragon Ball universe, as I've mentioned a few times befores. Tries hard, even when he's getting his guts kicked out. Clever, kind. Android (really, she's a cyborg) 18*, the first time we got to see her fight, she broke both Vegeta's arms with almost casual ease. That earns a character a lot of points with me.

I think they're a good couple. I know a lot of folks don't. Because Krillin is shorter, or because they think he's ugly. Or because he's physically weaker than she is. Or because he ended up getting a job, and she stays home and looks after their daughter, and they think she should be out fighting and kicking ass. Which I wouldn't mind if they both got to do more of that, preferably at the expense of screen time for Vegeta.

I can sort of see the argument. It does remind me of the marriages you see in a lot of sitcoms here in the U.S., with the attractive wife married to some sloppy moron. Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens, The Honeymooners, about 1,000 others. Though Krillin's in much better shape than Ray Romano or Jackie Gleason, and he's a lot nicer. I'm pretty sure he doesn't forget their anniversary until the last minute.

There are a lot of fans that insist Eighteen doesn't even like Krillin, which is bizarre. Not that there aren't couples who stay together when they don't like each other, but it seems entirely against her character. Eighteen is reserved, but she's also blunt. If she thinks something's dumb, she'll say so. When her brother insisted they turn hunting down Goku into a road trip, rather than just getting it over with, she told him she thought it was dumb. When Vegeta tried talking shit, she didn't hesitate to humiliate him, mock his so-called power. When she believed Krillin had tried saving her because he thought she'd be so grateful to him she'd just swoon, she let him have it. Verbally. If she'd let him have it physically, he'd have been dead again.

Point being, if she wanted to be somewhere else, she would be. If she wanted to be sleeping with someone who looked like Captain America, she'd go find that guy. If she wanted to fight all the time, she could go do that. If all she wanted was money, she could find a wealthy person and wrap them around her finger, figuratively or literally. Or just rob banks. After the Cell Games, there are three people alive stronger than her, and none of them could sense her to figure out where she was (assuming Vegeta, Piccolo, or Gohan would try to stop bank robberies). Even if Krillin wanted to try and stop her, and that isn't his style, he couldn't.

But she stays with Krillin. Even when that meant living in Master Roshi's (a notoriously dirty old man) home, when I'm not sure if Krillin even had a job. They live in a decent two-story home later, they have a daughter, he's a cop. It pays the bills, but she's mentioned they'd like to go on a vacation as a family, only the money isn't there. They're solidly middle-class. But she doesn't leave, or go on a vacation alone. She once planned to use a wish from the Eternal Dragon, which could give her anything she wanted, specifically to get something for Krillin, because she appreciated how much he does for her and their daughter, and wanted to do something nice for him to show him. Because she was worried she hadn't done that. She got angry when someone she was fighting called him an ugly midget and said that the two of them being together was an insult to love. Eighteen kicked their ass, too.

She found someone that was simply a decent person, who even after she and her brother beat up his friends, even when they were planning to kill his best friend, still wouldn't destroy her when he could have. Because he saw there was no need (Goku was in the process of getting far stronger), and he didn't think either of the siblings were truly evil. If they were they'd have killed him and the others the first time they fought. A conclusion the Guardian of the Earth had come to as well. Yeah, Krillin had fallen for her, but it turned out he thought her brother was actually her boyfriend the whole time, he wasn't putting conditions on his help or concern, didn't really expect anything. He just thought she was a person who deserved a chance at a life. I think she was suspicious initially, suspecting an ulterior motive she hadn't figured out yet, probably curious, kept an eye on him, and things went from there.

As for Krillin, he said back when he was a kid he hoped being a martial artist would help him to meet and eventually marry a beautiful girl. Well, Eighteen loves him, has even said she finds him "cool". She appreciates his kind nature, but doesn't take advantage of it, as a previous girlfriend did. She isn't the most demonstrative in public, but she does little things to show she cares, that she appreciates him. Krillin can get down on himself, and Eighteen will support him, try to raise his spirits, but if that fails, she'll give him a verbal kick to the butt. She won't enjoy doing it, and she'll worry she's hurt him, but she'll do it.

They try to look after each other, pick one another up. She offers to go with him to face Frieza - who'd already killed him once -  when that tyrant comes back to Earth. He appreciates the offer, but points out if something goes wrong, she's better able to keep their daughter safe. She's stronger, she has no ki signature to track, Frieza wouldn't even know she exists to come looking for her. (Granting that none of that does any good if Frieza just blows the planet up out of boredom waiting for Goku to show up, but in that event, everyone is screwed either way).

I didn't have any larger point to this post. Just wanted to talk a little bit about a favorite pairing.

* Apparently her original name was Lazuli, and her brother was Lapis, but neither of them remembers that now. The first time I saw that was in a story I read online, and I thought the writer just made it up, and they'd been watching a lot of Steven Universe. But Toriyama named a lot of characters after food, so why not rocks?

The Teens Are On The Attack

Not doing so great on that "every other month" thing for the fake team posts. A lot of shit is occupying my time these days. Anyway, I hadn't done one using anime characters yet, so that's why I'm doing this time, with a focus on younger characters. Lot of precocious and talented adolescents and kids to choose from.

The Leader: Quatre Raberba Winner (Gundam Wing) - When I was younger, Quatre was probably my least favorite of the five pilots on Gundam Wing. Probably because he was the most quiet and peaceful (except for that stretch in the middle of the series where he lost his mind). He was the one that would offer an enemy that was trying to kill him a chance to surrender, which to my teenage self, made him a big wuss or something.

Now that I'm older, I can appreciate him a little more. The others were mostly lone wolves, but Quatre fought as part of a group. A group of soldiers who cared about him, and who he, in turn, cared about a lot. They were willing to risk their necks to save his, even when he tried to get them not to, and that kind of responsibility can weigh on a person.

Anyway, Quatre has more than fair skills as a soldier and survivor, but he's also a fairly reasonable and empathetic person who is willing to talk things out if he can. Or he can fight if he needs to. The Winner family was a pretty big deal in that universe, so if we place the team there, his name and connections can get him access through the front door of a lot of places. I don't expect a lot of huge personality conflicts with this bunch - none of them are colossal asses or anything - but having a calm, friendly person with a solid tactical mind running things is still a good thing to have.

The Rogue: Radical Edward (Cowboy Bebop) - Ed's name for herself is Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV, but her hacker name is Radical Edward. I'm not sure if Ed would actually be interested in working with a group, but I could see her getting lonely after a while wandering the ruins of her Earth with a fairly intelligent corgi and choosing to join in.

Ed's extremely intelligent, but also silly and a little odd. It's difficult to tell how much of what she does is planned, and how much is just the way things work out. There are certainly times Ed manipulated the crew of the Bebop, but other times, I don't think she had any idea what response she'd get. I could see her behavior alternately amusing and infuriating the rest of the team. What she's getting out of associating with them is hard to say, if there's even a reason beyond "for the hell of it".

Still, if you need a security system or database broken into, it would be hard to do much better than Ed, short of putting one of those sentient A.I.s that exist solely in the electronic world onto the team. I'd rather have Ed on there, personally.

The Muscle: Makimachi Misao (Rurouni Kenshin) - In the series, Misao gets played largely as a comedy character, another character (usually Yahiko) saying something that riles her up, and then she behaves comically outraged. But by the time she was introduced in the series, she'd been trained as a shinobi for several years by the remaining members of an elite group of fighters left over from the wars that went on in Japan prior to the Meiji Restoration.

I always figured she deserved a little better than being the butt of so many jokes. Her personality is mercurial, shifting from being full of doubt and concerned one moment, to extremely excited the next, and more than willing to pretend the doubt never existed. She's very confident, to a level dangerous to her at times. She's also extremely loyal to the people she cares about, refusing to abandon them in dire situations. And she has a knack for rallying others when their spirits are low. There are a couple members of the team that shouldn't be an issue, but Quatre has been known to get too hard on himself, to take losses badly.

And she has a set of skills I'm not sure the others really do. Quatre knows firearms and probably explosives. Kino is a crack shot, but the team could use someone fast, capable of being sneaky if she'll focus (especially if Ed takes care of any security cameras), and can handle herself in a fight. She knows a little bit about disguise, although it's another of those things she's too sure of herself on. But the talent is there

The Lady of Mystery: Kino (Kino's Journey) - Kino's a traveler, visiting different countries for just three days, no more or less (usually). She travels on a motorcycle named Hermes, which can speak (it doesn't have a face as we'd recognize it, but it talks and characters other than her can understand it). An extra mode of transport is handy. Like I said, she's an excellent shot, and knows quite a bit about roughing it. She's polite, calm, and straightforward. She doesn't rush to judgment; if she's not sure about someone, she will give them a chance to demonstrate what kind of person they are, even help them if they're in need. If they do try to attack or harm her, then she'll put a bullet between their eyes without blinking, but she's not going to instigate it.

I'm very curious how she and Ed would interact. All the adults we saw Ed around, other than her dad, tended to be perplexed by her, and not shy about showing their confusion. I expect Misao will get frustrated with Ed, while Quatre will probably find humor in it. Kino has probably seen enough strange things in her journeys that Ed won't seem too odd. I don't know that they'll have much of a rapport, but I assume if Kino is confused by Ed, she'll simply ask for clarification. Or maybe not.

Kino would probably drift into and out of the rest of the group's orbit. If they're moving from place to place regularly, she'll probably stick around. Otherwise, if the team's not doing anything, or they're stuck in one place for a long time, she'll say her farewells and continue on her way.

The Kids with a Plane: Claus and Lavie (Last Exile) - Claus (in the background with brown hair) and Lavie (foreground with red hair) were delivery pilots, who got stuck trying to deliver a special kid to safety and wind up in the middle of a big mess. Claus was the pilot, Lavie the navigator, but as they were drawn into combat, she opted to become his mechanic and let someone else be his navigator. So if they have to fight, Lavie may hang back. But the team can still use someone with mechanical knowhow. Kino has some, enough to keep Hermes running at least. And Quatre must have worked on his Gundam some of the time. Between the three of them, they should be in pretty good shape on that front.

Both of them are energetic, Klaus has a tendency to act before he thinks, while with Lavie it's more what she might say. Although she can be pretty fierce if someone she cares about is being bullied or mistreated. Whether she can back up her bark with some bite is another matter, but there's a few people on this crew who could and probably would have her back.

Their enthusiasm for this group is going to depend on what the job is. This crew isn't likely to get up to anything too heinous - some espionage, a little stealing, for a good cause naturally - but if things start getting bloody, Claus and Lavie both may start looking for the exit sign. Claus will fight, and Lavie would do her best to keep him and the others alive, but it's not what either of them lives for. Although if it comes to that point, Quatre would probably encourage them to get out. His whole thing as a Gundam pilot was to try and fight so others wouldn't have to be put in danger.

It's a funny situation, because I wouldn't expect a lot of squabbling on the team. Most of them should get along pretty well, and I don't think there's much risk of a lot of mistrust and accusations. Too many of these characters are easygoing or relaxed for that. But they're also used to walking their own paths, and those paths are going to go in different directions swiftly. It's probably a one-mission crew, maybe two if they happen quickly or bleed together.