blog.edzimbi.com, edzimbi the black wabbit

Ghost in the shell is a Japanese anime/manga with large cyberpunk influences created in the late 90’s by Masamune Shirow.

The story goes on in the future and tells us about Major Motoko Kusanagi who works for a special security organisation called Public Section 9 and leads a team of highly skilled cyborgs, androids and hybrids.
Up untill now there are 2 movies and 3 DVD boxes.
The movies are truly masterworks. In my opinion not only the drawings are terrific, but with the (mostly japanese) music included, it creates his own cold, scientific, computerized atmosphere.

The series (dvd’s) are less serious than the movies and most of the time quite funny. For instance you have the Tachikoma’s, spider type multi leg combat vehicle equipped with artificial intelligence. They are childish, funny and full of joy. On the other hand you have the major who is a cyborg with a full prosthetic body. I guess the illustrator wanted her to wear sexy outfits, because sometimes it’s hilarious to see what she wears while working on assignments.

Yesterday I watched the first series of 2nd DVD box. I enjoyed it as always …
Here you can find a slightly more detailed article about Ghost in the shell and its philosophy.

A little Youtube warming up …

Yesterday evening I watched Frank play Team Fortress 2, a first person shooter - game made by Valve and part of The Orange Box. I was pleasantly surprised by the cartoon-like style of it. It reminded me of the movie The Incredibles.

So I did some digging into the origins and looked at the changes of their designs through these last years.
What an evolution …

Here underneath you can see only 2 of their latest designs, “The Scout” (on the left) and “The Spy” (on the right). The pictures underneath those, are the elder versions made back in 1999 (Team Fortress Classic), who were very revolutionary back then…

Quite some changes if you ask me. If you want to do some digging yourself - check out wikipedia. (of course!)

Last weekend we bought the latest Dragonball.
I’m almost sure every one of you know the manga series from Akira Toriyama.
I really love it. (Ok, I guess it’s not very girly …)

The storyline is based on one of the greatest classical novels of Chinese literature, ‘Journey to the West‘.
It was written during the Ming Dynasty in the 1590s by a scholar.
The story is about a young monk who learns the art of fighting and secrets of immortality …
He’s given several quests and at the end of the story he succeeds (of course!) in everything and gets many many rewards ….

In another lifetime I used to watch it on “Club Dorothée”. Too bad that it doesn’t exist anymore …
Definitely a must-read for all manga-lovers.