Kingukongu no gyakushu (1967)

Also known as KING KONG STRIKES AGAIN and KING KONG'S COUNTERATTACK but not to be confused with KING KONG LIVES! A direct sequel to the 1976 version of KONG where Kong is revived from his fall from the World Trade Center with an artificial heart the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. It also features a giant female Kong as a blood donor and love interest. No, really.

This week's AnimeHELL VideoBLOG is the Japanese prevue for KING KONG ESCAPES! Enjoy!

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Anime World Order Podcast

Uh oh. I went and did something crazy. Some friends and I have banded together and launched a podcast.

We couldn't think of a name, so as a joke I suggested Anime World Order and...well, nobody came up with anything better. Head on over there and download the show, then be sure to give us feedback via the email address! Better yet, record your feedback as an MP3 then email us that, and we'll play it on the show!

For our first episode, we introduce ourselves to the world, then it's on to the news where we talk about Bandai Visual's plans to enter the US anime market and ADV's plans to release a dub of Macross. Er, ANOTHER dub. After that we've got reviews for the manga Nana by Ai Yazawa, followed by a spotlight on the classic film Animal Treasure Island. Then we wrap things up by way of me spouting off conspiracy theories about Fortune magazine and the live-action Evangelion movie. Note that none of us have radio experience, podcasting experience, audio editing experience, or (that much) website experience, so I'm not kidding when I say that feedback is encouraged.

If anything, it's good practice for when the Anime Hell podcast becomes a reality!

The Original Monkey VS Robot

Following the current trend of exploiting big apes we present to you the American prevue for the Rankin Bass/Toho co-production of KING KONG ESCAPES(1967). That's right, a kaiju movie from the same folks who brought us SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN, (which was animated in Japan.) Believe it or not this movie is actually based on a Rankin Bass cartoon series named KING KONG from 1966, (that was also animated in Japan.)

Watch the AnimeHELL VideoBLOG here!
animehell

AnimeHELL Holiday Gift Guide

Looking for AnimeHELL style cheap video thrills? Go forth and kill with PANEL OF DOOM favorite ZARDOZ!

Or if you've got a little more cash try the highly recommended Hayao Miyazaki key animated DUB THAT TIME FORGOT ANIMAL TREASURE ISLAND.

If your in a musical mood why not try HEINO'S HIT MIX! Nothing says Happy Holidays like 20 Heino songs re-mixed with a NON-STOP DISCO BEAT!



animehell

HEINO Deutsche Weihnacht

Heino
Originally uploaded by LORAC!.

LORAC! points us to an earlier Heino Christmas Album. As an added bonus the album opens to a pop-up Nativity scene! Looks like I'll have to hunt this one down...

animehell

Christmas in HELL

What do you do during the AnimeHELLless December dry spell? You couldn't do worse then pick up a copy of HEINO: MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR! Enjoy Heino as he sings such holiday standards as, "Ein Dorf Mit Namen Bethlehem" and "Rudolph Mit Der Roten Nase" in that distinctive Heino style! What would you put on your AnimeHELL Christmas Gift List?
animehell

This Saturday at CON NO BAKA

animehell

AnimeHELL & Midnight Madness at Youmacon 2005

Detroit Rocks when Ryan Gavigan is the master of ceremonies for both AnimeHELL and Midnight Madness at tonight's Youmacon 2005.

That's right: Friday Night, November 11th, in the Grand Ballroom/Main Programming! AnimeHELL starts at 10pm! Followed by Midnight Madness at MIDNIGHT! 4 HOURS! Can you watch it all?
animehell

Mister Kitty gets BoingBoinged!

Rheinhard sez, "Independent small press comic artist and classic anime collector David Merrill and wife Shaindle Minuk has a splendid little online collection of amazingly weird, surreal, or just plain awful comics from the 40s through the 70s. As they put it, 'Dave and Shain love to buy old comic books. Really stupid old comic books, with stupid covers and even worse interiors.' Currently in the spotlight is 'The Super Wizard Stardust' who saves America from the evil Fifth Column without even bending a single joint ... because the artist probably never got to the second correspondence class!"

Danno sez, "Who's Rheinhard?"
animehell

Hell No Baka

Anime Hell makes its second Canadian appearance at CON NO BAKA later this month in Toronto! Thrill to the sound of cracklin' videotape and the smell of overheated amplifiers while you enjoy wacked-out and bizarre clips of Hellness.
Hell's tenatively scheduled for Saturday night from 7-10.

http://www.connobaka.com/

animehell

Defenders of Universe

CollectionDX has posted reviews for our new favorite Korean animated features on dollar DVDs:

DEFENDERS OF SPACE

PROTECTORS OF UNIVERSE

and SPACE THUNDER KIDS
with links to the movie trailers, lots of screencaps and they even point out where all the robots are borrowed from. Heck, these reviews are as good as the ones you'd find at Anime Jump. And we hope that we'll see these gems at the next DUBS THAT TIME FORGOT with Mike Toole and Neil Nadelman.

animehell

SugoiCon Madness

animehell

The Oni-Con Spook Show Report

Where to start?

First, let me say the Oni-Con AV crew was great. They had the cables wrangled and the set-up ready for me to plug and pray. And despite that we still had gremlins in the works. An over sensitive SVideo connector gave us the blue screen of no signal from the start. Between roving mic-monkey Bruce Lewis and Video Programming Director Mike Unfried we lost the video feed a few more times over the course of the night. So the AnimeHELL tradition of video snafu was upheld.

The night before the show I found out that HELL had only been scheduled for one hour. I didn't want to drive 4 plus hours to Houston just to put on a one hour show. Thankfully, the OtakuHELL color commentator Bruce Lewis intervened and was able to get the Oni-Con powers that be to expand the show to 3 hours. Unfortunately nobody told the Red Vs. Blue guys who were scheduled to be in Video Room 1 at 8pm, but were moved to Video Room 2. It could've turned into a french farce, but didn't. The Rooster Teeth folks showed up, found the HELL spook show and after hanging around for a while gave their Red Vs. Blue DVD to some fans and disappeared into the Houston night. We did direct the R vs. B entourage into Video Room 2 where the DVD was shown without a hitch, and I apologized to the Rooster Teeth guys Sunday morning and bought a couple of their DVDs to make up for it.

The show was great. With Bruce Lewis on the mic I started the show with some scary movie trailers and some intermission shorts. I'll have to check the tape to see what played next, but I remember showing the Gobelins short SUPER TIBETAN RACER followed by the transforming robot C-4 commercial and following it up with the SPEED RACER THEME. From there it's all a blur. There was a lot of new clips, ATTACK OF THE SUPER MONSTERS, TOMB OF DRACULA, IT ONLY TAKES A SECOND, LIFE IS FOR LIVING, CORY HAIM ME MYSELF AND I, and the horror kept coming. And of course there was the crowd pleasing FORKLIFT DRIVER KLAUS, and NINJA SQUAD for some retro 80s pain. The Betty Boop cartoon MINNIE THE MOOCHER wasn't as well recieved as I'd hoped, maybe I need to trim it down for the next show...

All in all I had a great time, and I hope everybody enjoyed the show. I hope we can come back and do it again at next year's Oni-Con.
-danno!

animehell

Oni-Con Spook Show

UPDATE: Discotek has updated their website. They've gotten a distro deal with Ryko and actually street dates for their upcoming DVDs. Lotsa good stuff on that list, too.
animehell

AWA anime hell report

Okay, three weeks later, the fog's lifted, here's what went down.

Peelander Z put on a great show, everybody loved it, the people who got on stage for the last number sort of stayed there and prevented the band from packing up, so we had to clear the stage. Then we had to keep the lights up so that Peelander could pack their instruments up backstage. So we finally got the lights down and ready for Hell about 25 minutes after the hour, which is typical, actually.

This year I used PRINCE OF SPACE heavily; clips of the film were interspersed with commercial bumpers from shows like ROBOTECH, RONIN WARRIORS, STAR BLAZERS, TRANZOR Z, SAILOR MOON, CAPTAIN HARLOCK & QUEEN OF 1000 YEARS, etc. PRINCE OF SPACE is a terrible movie and I think I had about two segments too much, but in the end it worked as a unifying theme and I might try it again with another film and shorter clips.

Other Hell clips included:
vintage 700 club ad
Motocross in the Omni ("We're gonna turn the floor of the Omni into a GIANT MUD PIT" -this ad came from a tape of Starblazers recorded off-air in 1984.)
70s ads for church, the Marines
Subgenius ad
GI Joe PSAs -the Nensler ones, always a hit
Negativland- Drop The Mermaid - good for a "WTF" moment, but not actually enjoyed. I blame Tim Maloney.
Soviet TV 1-800 number - from the Discovery Channel's marathon of Soviet TV in the 80s.
Uzbeks PSA from SCTV's "The Russian Show".
Mini-Wini ad
Harmonica Heino -Next year I might run the "Wig Wam" clip, and that might be it for the old Heino. I'm so sick of looking at that guy. I think we've wrung all the comedy we can out of that motherfucker.
Forklift Driver Klaus - a big hit. Apparently the subtitled version isn't as widespread.
70s Air Force ads
Marlboro car ad - "It's interesting and practical!"
Flinstones Winstons - always a hit. Might retire this one for a bit though.
Purina ad with fursuits, disturbing.
Zingers and Wonder bread ad with Peanuts characters
Bring Me The Head Of Charlie Brown - got a decent reaction, but might get retired for a bit next year.
Dancing in the future clip show - finally got to use the funniest bit from SPACE PATROL ORION. Also Buck Rogers. I had to bring the actual tape of the Buck Rogers episode because that tape is MACRO ENCODED!! Who would pirate Buck Rogers??
Star Trek ad from Nashville TV set to "The Heat Is On".
Geraldo Trek convention footage - the kid cosplaying Kirk is funny, but his diction is so terrible that nobody in the audience knows what's going on. This clip might work better with more setup.
Angry Japanese Toys - found in a thrift store. Might go back to the thrift store.
Japanese Yamato toy ads- Yamato bike always funny, IMHO.
Live VS Anime- Nadelman missing his cues nonwithstanding, the audience really enjoyed the 3D Gundam segment and the Cutey Honey film is a good clip. The Gravitation clip has terrible animation! Does it always look that shitty? Robbie Rist can actually play instruments, BTW.
Cartoon All Stars is always a hit, though I might retire it for a year or so, or at least make a new edit that's not so rough.

Around this time PRINCE OF SPACE clips ran out. I actually skipped an entire segment because I could feel the audience reaction. I interrupted one segment with REJECTED, which gets GREAT crowd reaction.

DOG RIDING BICYCLE was next, which is just what it says.
JUMP OVER CAR, he doesn't make it. Always funny.
NEW ZOO REVUE CHARACTERS give each other puppet sex. I didn't even know I had this clip until a week before the show.
Danno ran clips from the Tetsujin 28 movie and the Godzilla Final Wars segment where he kicks the CG Godzilla's ass.
LIVE STAGE ANIME SONGS - found in a video store on our last day in Vancouver, stuck on the end of a bootleg VCD of anime themes. I was curious as to how well this would go, and it went pretty well. The giant inflatable Astro Boy at the end is a show stopper.

All in all we had the room full of people, (roughly 1000 chairs) we kept it full throughout the Hell, and everybody stuck around for Midnight Madness which started right on time. I didn't have to do nearly as much commentary, which works fine for me. I think the clips work better with as little setup or commentary as possible. Ideally they should be self-explanatory. Maybe I'm not drinking as much as I used to, or I'm not as nervous as I used to be, but the appeal of making a obnoxious drunken microphone spectacle out of myself just isn't there any more.

A great hell, on time and under budget, with terrific assistance from Gavv and Danno and Surat and the wonderful folks at MMI. I think the technical side of things was the smoothest ever, sound was great and the video looked sharp even on the crappier copies of things.

From what I see on the message boards and at closing ceremonies people loved the Forklift Driver, hated Prince Of Space, and want more hollering.

animehell

Clip of the Month - THE SPECIAL PICTURE! And the AWA Panel OF DOOM report!

So just what is THE SPECIAL PICTURE? Well, I could just link to it (it's been hosted on the BBC website ever since it originally aired), but I think it's far better if you watch the entire segment in all its glory.

DOWNLOAD THE CLIP HERE

Hopefully the hosting won't take too much of a beating. This was but one clip I ran at the AWA Panel OF DOOM. Oh yeah, I wrote up the report for that! It's over here in the forum! I'll edit the post to include pictures in a bit.

Clip of the Month Redux - FISH FIGHT!

Now on the AnimeHELL Tracker: YAEN (not pictured) performing live their hit HELLclip FISH FIGHT!

animehell

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy review at Corn Pone Flicks

Matt sez: "Pull up something comfortable: a chair, a piece of carpeted flooring, your dog, whatever-and listen. I'm here to tell you that Douglas Adams, the late great Douglas Adams, was one funny guy...." Read the review here.

AWA Photos/Report Forthcoming

The home of Anime Hell, Anime Weekend Atlanta, has come and gone, and it was a glorious succcess. Dave Merrill's Anime Hell and my Panel OF DOOM (aka the illegitimate son of Anime Hell) both packed in the crowds and destroyed the sanities of any who dared approach. THE SPECIAL PICTURE destroyed health as well as sanity in what will perhaps be its final appearance in my showings, since I plan to make it October's Clip of the Month.

For those waiting for a full Panel OF DOOM report, I ask that you be patient. I managed to get two hours of sleep following my drive back from the convention, and I'm in such a daze that I'm actually doing this update from work despite my better judgment. Once I've slept for oh, say, a day straight, I'll work on putting up pictures and writing up descriptions. Of course, I'm going to have to learn a bit about Photoshop before doing so, since I forgot to use the red eye reduction on all the pictures I've taken. Also, every picture I took was done at maximum resolution, and I'll need to resize them for downloadability.

Well, except for this one. Here's one of the pictures I took of the crowd during the Panel OF DOOM. The room the panel took place in was in the same ideal location as last year. It's right next to Registration, Main Events, Artist's Alley, and the Dealer's Room entrance. There's just one problem: it's too small now. Well, technically it was too small last year, but now it's REALLY too small:



Click on that for the HUGE full-sized version! Boy, that sure is a lot of people packed into a room without air conditioning! Lucky for me that the fire marshal didn't shut me down. Still, what other room at the Waverly could I have been put in that wasn't itself full? That giant theater video room?

Anyway, if you think that's a lot of people who were just RABID for Zardoz, wait until you see the pictures of how many people GLADLY sat through all those Prince of Space clips at Anime Hell! I'll get it done soon, really!

Anime Weekend Atlanta AnimeHELL

animehell

Very special found sound this week at MISTER KITTY

very special in that it actually IS "found sound", never commerically released and available ONLY in EXCITING MISTERVIBRA KITTYSOUND!!!

One's a crazy mix tape made up of Styx's "Mister Roboto" and audio from PSAs, Tom Shane You've Got A Friend In The Diamond Business ads, and God knows what. The other is a mysterious collage of easy listening music and illegally recorded Citizen's Band transmissions, including the infamous "cornbread" incident. NEITHER are to be missed!!!!

PLUS:
It's awesome robot-to-robot combat this week as Jesus Christ Conquers The Martians!!!

animehell

Casper and the Lady Vampire at Mister Kitty

New Stupid Comics at Mister Kitty!

animehell

Anime Weekend Atlanta 1 Week From Today

animehell

Mister Kitty Anime Theme-Songs

MISTER KITTY DOT ORG comes through with two theme songs from the days when the Dreaded Childrens Chorus ruled the anime theme-song airwaves!!

animehell

Homemade Golden Throats

The relationship between Celebrities and Fans is a complicated thing. The very term Celebrity implies fanaticism, as in a Celebrated individual or Celebrated act or event or film or song. Should we blame the Fanatic for the Celebrated? Are we qualified to ask for something more from Fandom?

We here at AnimeHELL endorse McBoozo's Celebrity Showdown Volume One! until the day a Celebrity endorses AnimeHELL. The phone lines are open!

animehell

Touched by Heino

Heino may be retiring, but he's left a legacy of music for all of us. Heino has been called many things: the Euro-Elvis, Old Weird Eyes, and Über-Creep. But most of all, Heino is the Voice of Germany. We here at AnimeHELL raise our steins to Heino! So, enjoy some Heino Propaganda or a song from De Heinos at The Heino Happy Hour! Thanks for the memories, Heino!

Surat's Final Fantasy: Advent Children writeup

Over in the forums, I've posted my review of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. It's not quite as long, informative, or humorous as Matt's review of the new Captain Harlock, but cut me some slack, will ya?

After years in the making, the highly-anticipated Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children movie is out, and it was everything I expected it to be.

That's not exactly a compliment.

When I saw the initial trailer for it a few years ago, my gut expectation was that it'd be just like other all-CG Asian films like Wonderful Days, Appleseed, or the previous Final Fantasy film, The Spirits Within. That is to say, something pretty to look at with no comprehensible plot to speak of and absolutely overflowing with pretense. I didn't bother watching any of the trailers which would be released thereafter since I figured I'd rather just see the whole piece at once.

In the interest of fairness, I should note that I never really cared much for Final Fantasy VII to begin with. I myself have barely played the game, and I'm somewhat loathe to the whole shebang on account of one incident in my youth where an anime club meeting I'd attended ended up consisting of watching the club president play Final Fantasy VII for over six hours instead of watching Japanese cartoons. Then his 3rd party memory card crapped out and he had to start over from the beginning. The teeming hordes of cosplayers, fanfic authors, and fanartists present at anime conventions and on the Internet have done little to change my mind over the years, though they have given me a fairly decent knowledge of the characters and situations to something I've had relatively little firsthand exposure to. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not the target audience for this film, which is quite obviously a "for fans only" affair, much like the Macross Plus soundtrack CD of the same name. In case you forgot about or never heard of For Fans Only, that CD was so named because all the tracks on it were songs that were already available on the other soundtrack CDs with the exception of about three or so tracks which were quite good, particularly "Dogfight." Sorry, I was never big on "Wanna Be an Angel." Advent Children feels a lot like that CD to me.

I was originally going to write about the plot to this movie, but you know what? The plot to Advent Children doesn't matter. All that stuff about the Lifestream this and Geostigma that is ultimately of little importance unless you're a FF7 fanatic, and even then I'd still say you shouldn't bother with paying too much attention to it because it doesn't really make much sense anyway even if you did spend 100 hours breeding Chocobos or fighting Emerald Weapons or whatever. Despite taking place two years after the game, we neither learn any significant new information about the FF7 world from the story of this film, nor do the characters undergo any new development outside of changes that are made for the film only to be reverted by the end. The net change is zero, but it's not like there's much in the way of characterization in this film anyway since this film takes the "Escaflowne: The Movie" movie approach of having nearly all of the characters be introduced in rapid-fire succession by way of popping up out of nowhere then doing something to essentially communicate the message to the viewer that "HEY GUYS, REMEMBER ME FROM THE ORIGINAL WORK WHICH PRECEDED THIS? WELL HERE I AM IN THIS MOVIE NOW EXHIBITING MY TRADEMARK BEHAVIOR!" before pretty much vanishing. The music feels the same way, as if they thought they had to cram snippets of every single instrumental motif from the game into the movie regardless of relevance. This isn't Nobuo Uematsu's best day.

If there's nothing worthwhile to be found in the plot, what's this movie got going for it? Well, it looks nice. Yes, that's the entirety of my reaction to the visuals of this movie. Not "WOW THIS IS THE MOST MINDBLOWINGLY GORGEOUS VISUALLY INCREDIBLE THING EVER," just "it looks nice." Frankly, I got over THAT reaction within the first few minutes of the film just like I did when watching all those other CG animated movies. The main strength of this film lies entirely in one thing, and it's the same main strength that Appleseed et al had going for them: the action sequences. Unlike the other CG movies I've mentioned, the makers of Advent Children must have been somewhat aware of this fact from the start, as not only do the action sequences constitute a significant chunk of the movie, it's quite obvious that the lion's share of the creative efforts put into this film went into the choreography of these fights. I'll tell you right now, they certainly didn't spend all those years crafting the storyline together. In a stylistic decision that can best be likened to that of wuxia fantasy, the action sequences opt to forego the laws of physics entirely: characters--almost always characters with silvery colored hair of varying lengths--leap and fall the heights of skyscrapers as though they had the weight of a feather and are thrown or hit the distances of entire city blocks without appearing any worse the wear. A great many people don't like this style of action because it requires too much suspension of disbelief, and it's not like I can say they're wrong to think that way because well, it IS completely unbelievable while also being rather inconsistent. But from where I'm standing as someone who's a fan of fighting on the screen, most of those people probably don't know what I'm talking about when I wrote the word "wuxia" just now and are happy to equate any sort of physics-defying action with what they saw in the Matrix trilogy. Then again, a great many people who DO like that style of action probably don't know what I meant by that EITHER, so slightly inaccurate jargon aside, as kinetic as these fight sequences are, there's a glaring flaw to all of these scenes which extends to the non action sequences as well, and that's the editing/directing style. It's a neverending barrage of ultrafast cuts, extreme closeups (often of someone's eyeballs), unnecessary pans and zooms (no Wayne's World references, please), and all the other "MTV style editing" tricks (I honestly can't remember if there was "shakycam" or not) commonly utilized in your typical "action movie starring a rapper" flick in order to hide the fact that the people in question aren't actually doing anything of note themselves since they're unable to perform what the script calls for. Such things are not an issue in an animated movie like this where the CG "actors" can do anything the animators can imagine, so to Tetsuya Nomura or Takeshi Nozue or whoever's responsible for doing this ****, I got one thing to say: while I understand that you're REALLY proud of the level of intricate details present in your CG characters and set models, there is no need to have the camera constantly zipping and zooming around nonstop to show off those details. You're making a movie, not an Nvidia tech demo.

Suffice it to say that, for better or for worse, the action scenes look like they're something you'd see out of a video game, which--hey, what do you know!--they are. If you've ever played the Devil May Cry series of games, the cutscenes in those should give you an idea of what to expect. Ultimately, that's all this entire movie is: a theatrical length videogame cutscene. For some, that's a plus, but I think it's kind of disappointing since the film could have been more than that without too much effort. The most entertaining non-action aspects of the film came from the interplay between the supporting characters such as the Turks and all the heroes once gathered aboard the airship, because those scenes don't take themselves seriously. That's really what this movie needed: someone at the helm willing to channel the spirit of a Go Nagai or Jun Kawagoe or Yasuhiro Imagawa and just make the non-action sequences consist of something like "yeah, I'm a guy with a cool transforming motorcycle and a big sword and I'm totally going to **** up anyone who gets in my way, like THOSE GUYS RIGHT OVER THERE." But alas, that's not what the brooding angst junkies which constitute the core FF7 fanbase want to see. They want to see Cloud and Vincent being emo, and they REALLY want to see Sephiroth and Aerith do stuff even though they're dead because this is SERIOUS BUSINESS to them. And uh, I guess they also want to see annoying kids because there's a good bit of those to be found too. On those notes, this film certainly delivers, so while it's not exactly of the jiggly Gainax variety, it's not unfair to say that fanservice runs rampant in this movie. Pity I'm not much of a fan.

Bottom line: Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children entertained me, but it's completely forgettable and is not what I would consider a good movie. I don't plan to go out of my way to watch it ever again. Two stars out of four for the fights alone.

Clip of the Month Redux - Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown

It's back. The video clip that brought down animehell.org twice is back for your amusment. Go to Prodigem Hosting for the tracker info.

Whip it, Whip it good.

devo.mov (video/quicktime Object)
Whip it, as preformed by fifth graders.

UPDATE: Torrent the file HERE

Corn Pone Flicks Reviews CAPTAIN HERLOCK

Matt weights in on Endless Odyssey by Pioneer/Geneon

chaotic intransient prose bursts: Yahoo! goes hard gay

chaotic intransient prose bursts: Yahoo! goes hard gay
Variety show comedian Razor Ramone visits Yahoo! Japan...

Wonder Boy or Astroman at Mister Kitty!

It's ASTROMAN, Communist America's bewildered defender of justice! Join him in his crusade to walk the thin line between counterrevolutionary havoc and totalitarian vengeance!


Plus, FOUND SOUND treats you to the Mark Mercury CAPTAIN HARLOCK "Take To The Skies", and 80s supergroup BULLETS rocks out with NINJA THE WONDER BOY!!

Strange Psychokinetic Strategy

Check out the trailers for the 1974 movies Zero Woman Red Handcuffs and Lupin the 3rd: Strange Psychokinetic Strategy on the Discotek Media website.

The OtakuHELL experience

IMG_1057
Originally uploaded by tohoscope.

Photos of last Saturday's show are now online for your immediate enjoyment! See me fumble though my set up! Watch Colour Commentator Bruce Lewis and Co-Commentator Michael Tatum throw fistfuls of candy at the audience. See us, SEE US! Burn these images into your soul!!

Thanks go to Joshua Roberts for capturing these moments and sharing them with us.

I'm slowly posting the write-up of the show in the forum. Check it out...

Tomorrow Night at AnimeFEST Dallas TX!

The Master Control Program Anime

Play the Disc

"The Special Picture"

click here

OtakuHELL at AnimeFEST

I Am Not Frodo

FAZED - Video Viewer: "What does Leonard Nimoy have to do with Lord of the Rings and Bilbo Baggins? I don't know either, but this classic clip of the beloved Vulcan is one of our very favorites!"

Sounds from HELL!

Check out our radio.blog at the bottom of the HELLsidebar. Loaded with blacksploitation radio ads thanks to the generosity of Bedazzled! Enjoy!

Surat's AFO 2005 Report

I've posted my report of this past Friday's Panel OF DOOM over in the AnimeHELL Forum. It was in a different room than I originally thought, the time got shifted back an hour, and the DVD player didn't work! WAS I ABLE TO OVERCOME SUCH ADVERSITY? There's only one way to find out!

The Day of DOOM is here!

Today! Daryl Surat's Panel of DOOM! SEE THE SPECIAL PICTURE! Tonight! 11pm! Main Events! Anime Festival Orlando! The SPECIAL PICTURE will haunt you forever! See it if you dare!

Download this Panel of Doom flyer HERE

Prepare Yourself for Tomorrow's DOOM

Daryl Surat's Panel of Doom! Friday Nite! August 5th! 11pm! Main Events! Anime Festival Orlando!

Download this Panel of Doom flyer HERE

Battlevision! Vision 1: DOOM ON YOU!

With Anime Festival Orlando but a day away, I figured it'd be prudent to actually do a front page update myself rather than solely post over here in the forum. With my showing schedule pretty much finalized save for some tweaks and the addition of a couple classic mainstay additions courtesy of the Neil Nadelman and Crazy Monkey Hell compilations (thanks to Phil "Evangelion: The Musical" Lee and David "Love Hina: The IGN Review" Smith), I've got some time now to actually do it.

Traditionally, my take on Anime Hell known as the Panel OF DOOM has been something I decided to do at anime conventions so there would be counterprogramming to a major Saturday evening event such as the costume or AMV contests. I usually do this out of a panel/workshop room or video room, and each year at AFO I've been lucky enough for the attendance to be greater than the capacity of the room itself. With no larger workshop-type rooms to put me in, AFO has decided to put me in their Main Events room and shift me to Friday at 11 PM. With a different night, different room, and different start time compared to years past, I decided the best course of action would be to draft up some flyers. Not that I expect to fill THIS room past capacity since it holds a decent amount of people, but there's no way I'm letting a chance like this go to waste. I mean, most people who run Hell events in the main events room do so because they're helping to run the con!

I've posted two flyers in the forum thread linked above, and then Tohoscope's been posting his ones here and on the LJ community, so I took a cue from him when crafting my latest:



I did try to use that Add Images button on Blogger, but when I previewed the post, the images didn't show up. Then when I manually entered in the uploaded image URL, Firefox tells me "redirection limit exceeded" and IE just tries to load it forever, with neither of them actually showing a clickable thumbnail to the full-sized image. Oh well. Download this Panel OF DOOM flyer HERE.

As it's exceedingly obvious that I have no eye or actual talent for graphic design, are there any suggestions to make these flyers better? Shift around/enlarge/shrink the text, maybe? Oh, and what do you suppose is a reasonable print run for all of these? I'm thinking I can just make a very small amount of copies of each design (like say, 5 at the most) since I'll be posting these up around the convention Friday evening rather than setting down a stack on the freebie table for people to take.

doom! Doom! DOOM!

Panel of Doom! Anime Festival Orlando! THIS FRIDAY! THE SPECIAL PICTURE!

Download this Panel of Doom Flyer HERE

Jesus Christ Conquers The Martians

It's a end-times Japanimation free for all as Satan's Martian communist minions attack the One World Government, with the fate of all our aluminum siding in the balance!

It's all here - updated every Sunday!

The Special Picture

Only Surat knows the dark secret of THE SPECIAL PICTURE! Ask me how. This Friday, at Anime Festival Orlando, the Special Picture will be REVEALED!!! You are compelled to go to The Panel of DOOM!

Download the Panel of Doom flyer HERE

Private SNAFU: Spies: FREE!

The Internet Archive has the 1943 U.S. training short SPIES with Private SNAFU available for your enjoyment! But keep it under your hat, THEY may be listening!

80's Video Archive

What more clips from the last century? discu80.ru is full of downloadable pop videos from the 80s, including a slew of Euro Pop videos from the likes of legendary Dschinghis Khan! and others. How did I ever survive that decade?

Max Fleischer's Classic Betty Boop Cartoons: FREE!

Film Chest Vintage Cartoons has posted a few dozen Fleischer Brother Betty Boop Cartoons over at The Internet Archive, including the trippy Cab Calloway trilogy: MINNIE THE MOOCHER [1932], SNOW WHITE [1933], and THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN [1933]. What are you waiting for? Get some now!