Catalyst Castle: August 2012

The Doctor Gets Around

8 comments Posted by Catalyst at 5:34 PM

I'm not a huge Doctor Who fan myself (I like the premise, I've just never taken the time to actually watch very many episodes), but I found these two pieces of crossover fan art amusing. Enjoy!

Even if the Doctor can shut down Vader's lightsaber, somehow I can't imagine he is any match for the power of the Force.

This is a crossover in more ways than one, since those are classic Kirk and Spock taking on Next Gen Klingons and Romulans. I guess the Doctor brought them forward in time to when the show had better make up artists.

What Happens in Budapest...

7 comments Posted by Catalyst at 10:51 AM

I know some of my readers are fans of the Avengers movie, and I thought you might get a kick out of this. It's not my work. I wish I could credit it properly, but I can't recall now where I found it.

Anime Micro Review: Kaze no Stigma

2 comments Posted by Catalyst at 8:00 AM

This is another anime micro review. Read here for an explanation.

This anime takes place in a universe that resembles the modern day world, but where magic is practiced openly, and there are families of magic-users who have gained notoriety for their mastery of different types of magic. The two main characters are a teenage girl and a slightly older guy who both come from the most accomplished family of fire magic-users (they’re cousins, if I remember correctly). The girl is an accomplished fire magic-user herself, and the heir to the family head. The guy never could pick up on fire magic, so he was ostracized at a young age. The story begins when he returns to town and demonstrates a mastery of wind magic. In fact, it seems as though he may have become the most powerful wind magic-user in the world. When members of the fire magic family start getting killed off by means of wind magic, people assume that he’s looking for vengeance against the family that ostracized him, but in reality there is someone else behind it. This whole situation pits the two main characters against each other. The first two episodes didn’t reveal what was really going on. I would be curious to watch more and find out. The two main characters were both pretty interesting. The guy, especially, seemed like an interesting person with a variety of motivations.

Content Advisory: Some minor language. (Maybe? Can’t remember for sure.) There is some fighting, and people die, but there is nothing graphic. You might object to the basic premise of a story about magic users, though honestly it felt more like superpowers here.

Anime Micro Review: Last Exile

2 comments Posted by Catalyst at 8:00 AM

This is another anime micro review. Read here for an explanation.

In the world of Last Exile people live life above the clouds. It is a little unclear if people are living on floating islands, or just on the tops of mountains, but airplanes and airships are the primary means of traveling the vast oceans of sky between settlements. Nations command vast fleets of massive airships and carryout so-called “honorable” warfare, sticking to some kind of code of chivalry that isn’t quite explained in the first two episodes. Meanwhile, the two main characters – a young pilot/navigator duo named Claus and Lavie – work as sky carriers. In the first two episodes they are hired to deliver a letter to an admiral of their nation’s sky navy. The mission puts them in the middle of a battle, where it becomes obvious that the enemy isn’t using honorable tactics. What’s more, the organization that’s supposed to police battlefield etiquette refuses to interfere. So, obviously there is some kind of conspiracy going on. Honestly, the story and characters weren’t especially engaging in the first two episodes, but the artwork was pretty high quality, and the world had a very interesting look. There was enough there to make me slightly curious to see more.

Content Advisory: Some blood in the action scenes. Some mild language.

No Need for Bushido Kickstarter

0 comments Posted by Catalyst at 3:50 PM

Hey, if you haven't read No Need for Bushido, you're missing an awesome, often hilarious, action-romance, samurai webcomic saga. You can read it for free online (Warning: PG-13 Content). The artwork is pretty amateur in the beginning, but has gotten very good recently.

Unfortunately, the artist is taking a break from creating the comic due to circumstances. In order to get the comic back on track, they artist and writer duo are running a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to support the continuance of the comic. They have already raised over $13,000 in money pledged to the project, but they only have 1 week left to raise the remainder of the $30,000 they're hoping to get. This money will go towards helping them to go professional and make the comic a commercial venture, instead of just something they do for fun in their spare time.

Pledging money towards the cause isn't just giving your hard earned cash away. Contributors will get cool rewards, depending on how much they pledge - anything from buttons and posters to printed, hard copy volumes of the comic when they're released. If you pledge now, and they don't get their $30,000 in pledged funds by the end of the week, then they won't take a penny and there is no loss for you.

I'm not really trying to push anyone to contribute to this project. I really have nothing at stake in them succeeding, except that I enjoy their comic and would like to see them continue making it. But I do think this is a really cool opportunity to support a creative team that want to take their hobby to the next level and actually make a profit from their creativity. It would be awesome if more artists and writers could take that step. So, that's why I wanted to bring this to people's attention. ^_^

Anime Micro Review: Sengoku Basara

2 comments Posted by Catalyst at 4:33 PM

A little over a month ago, I got so sick I was pretty much house-bound for a little over a week. During that time I decided to use my sickbed time to enjoy a massive anime simpler via the streaming service from Netflix.com. I watched fourteen different anime, but only two episodes (at most) of each. The idea was to get just a sample of a bunch of different shows that had been sitting in my Netflix queue for a while. Afterwards, I would know which ones might be worth seeing more of, and which ones I could forget about. So, after watching these I decided to write what I'm calling a "micro review" for each anime. It's "micro" because the reviews themselves are only going to be a couple of paragraphs each, and they're based on only a small portion of the anime. I'll be posting one of these each Saturday until I've posted all fourteen. So, here is the first one. I hope you enjoy!

Sengoku Basara

Hot-headed samurai guys are fighting over… I’m not really sure. If there is a story here it doesn’t seem to be very important. I only watched the first episode of this. The art was pretty decent, but nothing exceptional. For an action anime, this was very boring.

Content Advisory: Some blood in the action scenes. Maybe some PG13 language. I don’t really remember because I wasn’t paying that much attention.

OK, so that first one is very brief and a little disappointing. There will be some better ones, though. I promise! ^_^

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