Dimension W

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about Dimension W, the newest series on Toonami, and I feel I have to say something about it. It deals with the fourth dimension, which is always a brain bender. I would say it's right up there with time travel, but in many schools of thought, the fourth dimension is time so there we go. Dimension W has taken an intersting view on the fourth dimension by suggesting it could be used as an energy source, which I suppose is possible if you consider that across the fourth dimension there are other places where energy may be available that we can't access from the third dimension, ut perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself, which might actually be possible in the fourth dimension.

Dimension W follows the story of Kyouma Mabuchi, who is a Collector, someone who collects illegal coils. Coils are the devices which collect energy from the fourth dimension to power everything. This technology was created by a company called New Tesla, named after Nikolai Tesla who used coils to create electricity when it was first discovered years ago, so yeah, huge nod to science nerds. Some people have developed coil that are not part of New Tesla's global system and the company is paying out to bounty hunters to collect these illegal coils. If you think about it, the company is holding a monopoly on this energy source, but as we soon see, it's not just abou corporate greed, accessing the fourth dimension has some serious potential repurcussions and New Tesla is doing everything they can to protect the world from what could go wrong. Mabuchi is a little wierd because he prefers not to use newer technologies, using a phone that runs on batteries and driving a car that runs on gasoline. He lives in an old gas station that nobody uses except him and presumably he only lives there to hold the gas that he takes as payment for his jobs. Things get complicated when he meets Mira Yurizaki, a top of the line robot that claims to be the daughter of New Tesla's founder who disappears shortly after the two main characters meet so he can't really explain anything, but Mira insists that the last instructions she got was to follow the illegal coils, which means she has to stay with Mabuchi. Mabuchi is not happy about this because Mira is a high tech coil powered robot, representing everything he stands against. The story has gotten a little more twisted now that we know Mabuchi is motivated by the fact that he wanted to save his girlfriend from a terminal illness by having her transferred to a robot body by New Tesla and he joined their private military group Grendel to pay for it, but something went terribly wrong, she died and now he doesn't trust coils at all. To make things even more complicated, Mira's body was actually made for Mabuchi's girlfriend, so he thinks of her everytime he sees Mira and he's not sure if that's good or bad, so he's very melancholy(read grumpy) all the time.

Now for my conspiracy theory, I believe Mira actually is Dr. Yurizaki's daughter or Mabuchi's girlfriend, or both. It has been demonstrated that the fourth dimension is all about alternate possibilities, and that sometimes these possibilities can continue to exist in conjunction with this world with coils tying them together. My theory is that Mira is programmed so that her coil is specifically attuned to the possibilities where these girls didn't die and draw on their life force from another dimension to create the mind that functions in this world. This would mean that she either is one of the girls or possibly both fused into one in Mira's mind.

Okay, I'll let you think about that and if your mind doesn't split into the fourth dimension, you can watch the show on Toonami at 12:30. Also, don't forget to check out TOM's endorsement of my book on YouTube. Stay gold Toonami faithful!

STEVE BLUM READS 7TH MOON! Tora Con 2016

So you may have already noticed the blog posts I put up, and that was the biggest thing to happen at Tora Con as far as I'm concerned. Even if somethinge else did happen and I'm not sure whether anything else did, that was really the coolest thing ever. If you don't know what I'm talking about, look here:

This means we have audio of TOM from Toonami saying a promo for 7th Moon. I may get in trouble for this in the long run, but Steve was super cool about it so it was fun while it lasted. Fun fact, I found out he and Mary MacGlynn are a couple, nay, the power couple of voice acting. Somehow, still only the second coolest thing about his panel after reading 7th Moon. I wrote the description as a Toonami promo and even though I didn't have the guts to ask him he threw in the "Only on Toonami, on Adult Swim" and I almost died. If anyone can attach this audio to some TOM footage and the fight scene I posted on YouTube to make this look like a real Toonami promo, that would be awesome. Also he signed two DVDs and two video games that he did voices for, three of them in character. He was Vincent Valentine in Final Fantasy VII Advent Children and Dirge of Cereberus, Orochimaru in Naruto(these are the episodes that introuced the character though not why I got them originally, but for this it works) and he was also Sanjuro and Wiseman in .hack//MUTATION which he signed as himself because he didn't remember before signing, but still cool.

In unrelated news, I held a panel and only three people showed up, one of them was Angela Demchak, the artist who is working with me on making 7th Moon into a graphic novel. It's coming along slow, but she hung out with me for the rest of the day and it seems she's still workign on it, so it will happen...eventually...probably. She's passionate so I'm keeping my fingers crossed and waiting for results.

So that covers most of the cool stuff that happened, other than that I just sat at my table and sold copies of 7th Moon, Red Ellen, Waking Dream, and Superfrenemies. And while I sat there, I took photos of cool cosplayers and I will leave you with them now.

7th Moon Toonami Promo w/TOM HQ

Steve Blum 7th Moon Toonami Promo

TORA-CON NEXT WEEK! Plus Superfrenemies

So I don't have a lot to say right now because I'm psyched about Tora Con being next weekend, it's sold out so I can't get anymore fans there, but I look forward to seeing everyone who already is planning to attend. I've got four books up, in addition to 7th Moon and Red Ellen, I also have the sequel to Red Ellen Waking Dream and Superfrenemies! But most will be there for Todd Haberkorn, Richard Epcar and the number one, the man, the myth the legend, the ultimate voice actor in anime if bnot all of animation, the currently reigning TOM on Toonami....STEVEN JAY BLUM! Yes he will be in Rochester, I will meet him, so yeah, forgive me for not being able to think about anything else. I hope I will be able to get him to record an ad for me for 7th Moon, perhaps something to attach to one of my existing videos, maybe get it up on Toonami, or at least YouTube. This could be the most important VA meetup I will ever have in my short convention career. I already have a post on how awesome he is, so I don't need to go into it again, but this is just so fucking cool I can't stand it!

If you still give a flip about any of my books after hearing that(I know I barely do) I've already blogged on three of the four books I am selling, and the fourth Superfrenemies, I will fill you in a little bit right now. Sam Shepherd and Ralph Hunter are BFFs but Ralph is a little off kilter and tries to turn Sam into a superhero. It works and Sam becomes the Mighty Arm, but there is nothign for Sam to do as a superhero so Ralph decides to become a supervillain, Insaniac, to rival the Mighty Arm. Sam and Ralph remain friends but Mighty Arm and Insaniac are archnemeses, and since they are fully aware of each other's not-so-secret identities this makes them Superfrenemies. Also, they each have a girlfriend, Mary Sue a.k.a. Mighty Girl is with Sam/Mighty Arm and Abby Normal is with Ralph and changes her secret identity as a running gag. The story is a Deadpool like superhero parody which involves ridiculous tropes and nods to classic comics. I really hope everybody has a good laugh at this, because I really tried my best to make it funny. It's available now on Amazon both for Kindle and in paperback.

Okay, I'm sorry, I'm thinking about Steve Blum again and I'm having a Harley Brain Fart, so I'm out for now. Next time I'll post pics of cosplayers and let you know how things went with Steve Blum and the rest of the con, and hopefully a new promo video.

Pixels

So this week I finally got around to watching the movie Pixels, and I say it goes right up there with Scott Pilgrim vs the World and Wreck-It Ralph for video game nerd ultimate trilogy. Pixels is the ultimate gamer fantasy, video games attack the earth and gamers are the only ones who can save the world.

The movie starts in 1982 when video games first became awesome. At the world video game championship four boys meet who will share an amazing destiny, Eddie "Fireblaster" Plant is the champion, Ludlow "Wonderkid" Lamonsoff is a nerd obsessed with Lady Lisa(the only fictional video game character in the movie that isn't actually a game in the real world), Sam Brenner is the kid who loses to Fireblaster despite having an amazing talent to recognize patterns and is the greatest gamer of the 80's, and Will Cooper is Sam's best friend who's only game in the arcade is the crane. The championship is recorded and sent into space with iconic television footage to attempt to contact intelligent life somehere in the universe. Sam takes his loss hard and never really recovers, meanwhile Will Cooper, played by Kevin James, grows up to be president, which comes off as the most unlikely part of the whole movie. Anyway, a military base in Guam gets attacked and President Cooper has to handle the situation, and calls in Sam to review some footage to see that the attacker appears to be Galaga. Awkwardly, Sam's last customer as an electronics installer, Violet, turns out to be from DARPA and a key adviser on the same situation. On his way home, Sam is reunited with Ludlow, a conspiracy theorist who believes that aliens are using the video game championship transmission from when they were kids to organize an attack on Earth. It seems ridiculous, but the theory is confirmed with a television transmission from the aliens using 80's TV footage edited to say that they have taken the transmission as a declaration of war and following the rules will proceed to best three out of five, first to lose three lives loses their planet. Nobody else takes this seriously until Arkanoid takes out the Taj Mahal. Now they get serious and prepare for a fight in London, which turns out to be Centipede. Despite their best efforts to prepare the military, Sam and Ludlow are the only ones who are familiar with the way the game works and must save everyone themselves. Now that they have earned everyone's trust, they become the champions to fight in the next round, and Violet takes Sam more seriously with a budding romance. They then admit they will need the best of the best, the actual champion Fireblaster who is currently serving time for cyber crimes. He negotiates for early release in exchange for helping to fight the aliens and joins the team in New York City. The next attack is Pac Man and the team fight back with Mini-Coopers acting as ghosts. They do win, getting Q-Bert as a trophy, but as they celebrate their victory, the aliens call them out for cheating, it is revealed that Fireblaster is a cheater and for his affront to the aliens, they're going to release everything on the Earth and just destroy us all, but first they take Violet's son. Sam leads the team for one last confrontation, leaving Ludlow behind to protect civilians and he finally meets Lady Lisa, though the long awaited meeting doesn't quite go as planned. Meanwhile, Sam has to face down Donkey Kong as the final challenge, the very same game he lost in the championship back in '82.

For the most part this movie is what every gamer wishes would happen, for our finely honed but completely useless skill set to become critical and for us to become actual heroes. Just the fact that this fantasy plays out is totally worth watching for but the romantic subplots are poorly played and seem less realistic than the alien invasion. The best part arguably is Peter Dinklage as Fireblaster who shows his range as the opposite of Tyrion Lannister in every way, he's just the goofiest character but you never stop laughing at his performance. I do recommend this movie to gamers, but you might want to turn off your brain and just enjoy the nostalgia.

Parasyte

Definitely one of the wierdest shows I've ever seen, Parasyte is a rather complicated story about a young man who's hand is taken over by...well, we don't exactly know what, but for lack of a better term, it's a parasite. And it's not alone, there are more, and they don't like the boy who's parasite isn't attached right, forcing the two to fight for survival.

So they don't explain the biology very well, and I feel I need to explain what I've been able to deduce. The parasites begin by hatching out of spores in a larval form which seems to seek out nervous tissue to consume, the richest and most desirable source being the human brain. Once they find a source of nervous tissue, they consume it and in the process go through a metamorphosis, resulting in the parasite merging with the surrounding tissue into a mature form that can continue to transform with few limits, one of the most significant being that their mass is fixed, another being that they don't acually take over the whole body, just a part of it. The drawback of their shapeshifting abilities is that since they have no stable body, they can not support themselves and must rmain attachedto a fixed body with the right organs. Ideally, the parasites take over the head which by proxy allows control over the central nervous system and therefore the entire body, but they only shapeshift the head and are limited to the mass of that body part regardless of what shape they take, defaulting to whatever that part of the body looked like before they took over. Most cases are the ideal situation of taking the head, but there are a few oddballs that tell us about the other limitations; they can switch hosts if necessary, but not species or genders, the new host must be of the same species and gender as the one they matured with(most likely due to hormones and DNA like an organ match), and if they take over a part other than the head, the lack of nervous tissue will prevent the mature parasite from being able to control a full body and will always be limited to other body parts. The parasites draw unwanted attention when they kill humans, operating under simple instincts to continue eating human brains, it takes a while before they realize they can eat normal foods and when it nourishes their body it will in turn nourish the parasite, but they already have the police on them before they figure this out. Another quirk is that they can sense each other, though this seems to actually cause more trouble than it prevents.

The main case in this story is Shinichi and Migi. Migi tried to go after Shinichi's brain through his ear, which usually works fine, except that Shinichi fell asleep weaing headphones which prevents Migi from entering so Migi tries his nose which causes him to sneeze, expelling Migi and waking up. Migi desperately tries to go after Shinichi again, but Shinichi blocks with hi right hand and desperately uses his head phone wire as a tourniquet to prevent the worm from crawling up his arm into his body. By cutting off his circulation, Shinichi forces Migi to settle for being just his right arm. Migi is able to adapt to the less than ideal situation easily enough, but other parasites can sense migi and once it becomes clear he's not the head, they assume he's a failure and they must eliminate the pair. It also doesn't help that Shinichi feels responsible for protecting the innocents around him forcing Migi to fight to keep both of them alive. Migi isn't compelled to eat human brains, being sustained sufficiently by Shinichi's bloodstream, but his dependence on Shinichi for his own survival makes him do things for Shinichi that he'd rather not do just to keep his own support system going. The story becomes more complex as the conflict between the parasites and the humans grow more personal for Shinichi and Migi, they come for Shinichi's mother and his girlfriend, and after studying how the duo functions, they start makign their own Frankenstein monster of multiple parasites to one body.

I can't say much more without giving away bg spoilers, so if you're interested, tune into Toonami at 1AM EST.