So for the Nerd & Tie podcast, we've started featuring photoshopped images inserting Pher, Nick and I into various media for episode title cards. I happen to find them hilarious, so I've been reposting them to my blog. Since that last post though, we've done some more... so I thought I'd share those too.
So here we go:
So yeah, I think they're amusing.
- Traegorn
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Update: People asked for T-shirts, so I opened up a Cafepress Store
So on Monday I finished detailing the fake anime import Soldiers of the Sun. I also posted two versions of the theme song ( long version, TV edit).
Well, last night... umm... my hand slipped? And suddenly I had a promotional poster for Soldiers of the Sun designed?
Yeah. That's what happened.
Anyway, I thought I'd share it. This is destined for the inside of UnCONventional's fifth book (which will come out in the spring). I will admit to recycling a ship from The Chronicles of Crosarth, but I liked it well enough.
And I swear this is my last Soldiers of the Sun post.
For now.
- Traegorn
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So last week I wrote two posts detailing three different non-existent anime series (Magic Soldier Princess Z, Lost Whispers, and Destiny Police) as referenced in the comment section of an UnCONventional from a little ways back. Today we see how in the early 80s these three shows were combined into a gestalt series, "Soldiers of the Sun."
The eighties saw several (real) "gestalt" anime series released in the United States, where multiple shows were combined and highly edited to create a new show that met the number of episodes required for US television. Harmony Gold put out Robotech and Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years. World Events Productions put out Voltron.
And SylverRhythm (as I'm now spelling it) put out Soldiers of the Sun.
Soldiers of the Sun combined Lost Whispers, Magic Soldier Princess Z, and Destiny Police into one series. Even though they were unrelated (and took place in notably different settings), connecting dialogue and "careful" re-editing of scenes combined the shows.
Each of the three series represented a "generation" in the show -- Lost Whispers being the "Ancient" generation, Magic Soldier Princess Z being the "present" generation, and Destiny Police representing the "future" generation.
Lost Whispers was minimally changed - with "Dark Mephisto" being renamed "Lord Hush" and the Seven Swords of Light were said to combine into the "Sun orb" (a wholly unique concept to Soldiers of the Sun not present in the original show). The events of Lost Whispers largely played out as normal, with the ambiguous setting of "the ancient past" (onscreen it says "hundreds of years ago" while later dialogue will refer to this timeframe as "many millennia ago"). Dark Mephisto/Lord Hush is banished to the netherworld, and our heroes remain triumphant.
Magic Soldier Princess Z followed Lost Whispers, with Yoshiko being renamed "Kelli." The flashback scenes of the Ancient Kingdom and Yoshiko's/Kelli's past life are said to be in "the final era" of the same kingdom as Lost Whispers (which is slightly incongruous as the two don't look remotely alike), and the "Z Emerald" which transforms her into Princess Z (or "The Ultimate Sun Soldier" as Soldiers of the Sun refers to her as) is now refered to as the "Sun Orb" (mentioned in the earlier generation).
The Hush (who get to keep their name) are said to be the descendents of Lord Hush, invading not from space, but instead the netherworld. Lt. Tanaka (Yoshiko's/Kelli's love interest) gets renamed "Captain Lloyd Rayburn" as well.
Finally, the Destiny Police portion of the show is said to be set forty years after the events of Magic Soldier Princess Z. General Yamazaki is turned into General Rayburn -- who is said to be the same character as Lt. Tanaka/Cpt. Rayburn. Where the robotic arm from Magic Soldier Princess Z went was never explained (episode 3 of Destiny Police shows the General without his shirt in a single shot -- where he has two intact arms).
"Kelli" is said to have passed away, and "General Rayburn's" daughter "Sally" (Kasumi in the original and part of the Destiny Police force) is stated to be Kelli and Rayburn's daughter (although no familial relationship exists in the original series between Yamazaki and Kasumi).
The "Shadow Force" from Destiny Police get combined with The Hush, and Akira Takei (Now "Jason Baxter") was now experimenting on the "Sun Orb" to split its power into the weapons used by the "Soldiers of the Sun" (nee Destiny Police). Other major changes include the General reaching out to Baxter to create the weapons (instead of vice versa), and the removal of the the General's "dark past."
On a footnote, SylverRhythm let their license lapse on MSPZ - which then got picked up by a rival company... making re-releases of Soldiers of the Sun awkward. SylverRhythm has paid to animate "bridging scenes" with original footage to connect the "Ancient" and "Future" generations (combined with narration), but it gets super awkward.
Oh, and because KorFan claimed he remembered it fondly, I present to you the Soldiers of the Sun theme song (that was the TV edit, here's the long version).
And that's the whole story.
And none of it was real.
- Traegorn
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So on Monday I detailed the fake anime series Magic Soldier Princess Z as mentioned in an UnCONventional from last week. As I said in the that previous entry, it was one of three unrelated (nonexistent) "classic" anime series that were later combined stateside in the US.
In this post, I'm going to detail the other two anime series, and then on Monday I'll talk about the gestalt series "Soldiers of the Sun," where I'll explain how they were hacked together and the legal history of the shows.
And again, none of this is real. It's all background for UnCONventional. Because I'm insane.
Anyway, here we go.
Lost Whispers was a fantasy series based off a manga published in the late 1950s. The anime came out in 1971, and adapted volumes three through five of the manga.
The Kingdom of Sankara has been conquered by the evil Baron Duran's army (assisted by the sorcerer "Dark Mephisto"). A young former Knight named Carl sets off on a quest to restore the last remaining member of the royal family, Princess Francine, to the throne. To do so he goes on a quest to find the Seven Swords of Light - a set of mythical weapons that supposedly grant their bearers "the ultimate strength." Along the way Carl is joined by an unlikely band of heroes, as they try to save their kingdom.
Now, on the other hand, Destiny Police is a very different show. Produced in 1980, Destiny Police is set in an undetermined year "Not too far into our future" (to crib from the opening narration).
A mysterious alien race known only as the "Shadow Force" is trying to invade from an alternate universe. As they aren't able to completely cross over to our world, they have developed a technology which allows them to possess humans in our world. Their plan is to build the tools they need to cross over on our side first, so they can launch a full scale invasion.
Akira Takei is a brilliant young scientist who has been working on a way to fight the Shadow Force, when he discovers a nonlethal method of expelling the invaders from the bodies of those infected. Unfortunately no one in authority is willing to listen to him.
No one except former General Roy Yamazaki. Yamazaki had resigned in disgrace after leading a mission against the Shadow Force that left ten children dead. Yamazaki and Takei pool their limited resources to build enough weapons to outfit a small team of five misfits - a team that would fight for the destiny of the Earth.
And that's it.
Next time... how these three shows became Soldiers of the Sun.
And again, none of this is real.
- Traegorn
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So last Thursday's UnCONventional mentioned the fictional anime series "Magic Soldier Princess Z." I like to use fake shows instead of real ones in the comic because, frankly, it keeps the comic from being dated. But rather than make up a "current" show in this case, I actually decided to make up an "old" one for the comic... because part of the dialogue referred to the series as out of print.
Most importantly though, when I invent a series, I don't just throw together a name. The previously referenced "Wage Project" we've seen in the comic has a character roster, story arc, and even a few character designs.
While Magic Soldier Princess Z doesn't have any artwork yet, I had a history for the series fleshed out before the comic went live. A history that involved two other anime series, and an import history loosely based on Robotech and a few other early American Anime imports. So since I had rough outlines for these three anime series and the American Gestalt it was transformed into, I thought I'd share them with you this week in a series of posts.
(Since we started discussing it in the comment section of the comic, beyond my original notes, I've decided to incorporate suggestions from readers.)
So here we go with the first one.
Magic Soldier Princess Z, produced in the late 1970s, is set in the "future" year of 1992. Earth has been under attack for three years by an alien race known as "The Hush." The United Nations has formed the "Earth Defense Task Force," but have taken heavy casualties and are barely keeping the aliens at bay.
Meanwhile in Japan, Yoshiko Yumeno, an average-but-clumsy 16 year old girl, wanders into a cave near her grandparent's house where she discovers a mysterious green orb. When she picks it up, she has a brief vision of an ancient kingdom... but at that moment The Hush attack, bombing the area just above the caves.
As the walls cave in, Yoshiko (somehow) activates the orb causing her transformation into Magic Soldier Princess Z. As Magic Soldier Princess Z she wears a "cute" mechanized armor suit, and destroys the attacking Hush ship.
Yoshiko then joins the Earth Defense Task Force's Unit 4, led by Yoshiko's love interest Tanaka. Throughout the series, Yoshiko discovers she's the reincarnation of "Princess Z," leader of an ancient race that once protected Earth. The series ran just 13 episodes.
- Traegorn
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So we all know that I've been updating this blog a lot less since launching the "Mega-Blog" on Nerd & Tie. Since I used to cover a lot of those topics in this space, I thought I'd highlight my most popular three articles from the last month.
Because, y'know, it's something to talk about. Let's get started.
#3 - Webcomic Artist Yale Stewart Does Everything WrongYale Stewart, the creator of the webcomic JL8,is at the center of not one but two scandals right now... and it's kind of amazing when you parse it out. I mean, we are literally spanning the gamut of artistic integrity to dick-pics here.
It's kind of incredible.
#2 - DashCon Rebrands as EmotiCon, Hopes You Won't NoticeFor those of you who don't remember, DashCon will likely go down as the worst managed convention of 2014. Even with all of its issues though, DashCon 2015 was almost immediately announced for June of 2015, set to be held in Indianapolis instead of the Chicago suburbs.
And yes, I was kind of surprised by this.
What I'm not surprised by though is DashCon's attempt to rebrand itself. You see, the organizers have smartly decided to disregard the DashCon name... and have rechristened the convention "EmotiCon."
That's going to be really difficult to find in Google.
#1 - Do Some of Ryan Kopf's Conventions Break the Law? Quite PossiblyThis was all supposed to start simple enough: I was going to write a follow up on Ryan Kopf's new ventures run through Black Materia Inc. I had discovered that Black Materia Inc was a completely seperate corporation from Chrono LC, and I was going to reveal who Kopf's new business partner was.
I figured I'd be done with it under 300 words, and likely never think of it again.
But as I took my stroll through Google searches and public records, things started to feel off. Something wasn't quite right, and I couldn't put my finger on it - so I kept digging even after I found the answer.
And what I found blew me away.
So yeah, those are what's currently blowing up on the Nerd & Tie website. Remember you can always get the latest geek and midwestern convention news there.
- Traegorn
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 So when I got home from Geek.kon 2014 the first thing I wished was that I was still at Geek.kon 2014. I don't always feel that way after a con, but in this case three days felt too short a time. I wanted more, but in that "because it's so good" sort of way, not in a "because it was lacking" sort of way.
That's an important difference.
Of course Geek.kon, like many Wisconsin cons, feels more like a family reunion than cons elsewhere in the country do for me. I see so many old friends I don't see elsewhere, that it's hard to compare my experiences to other cons.
Frankly, so many of my friends were there, there are many who I barely got to see at all this last weekend, and I hope my absenteeism didn't offend anyone.
Anyway - I want to thank everyone who came out this last weekend and stopped by my table. Whether you bought print copies of my comics (UnCONventional and The Chronicles of Crosarth) or if I just shoved cards in your hands, thank you for spending the time to look at my work. Also, each and every one of you who stopped by our live show for Nerd & Tie is a hero - and if you missed it, you can always listen to it on the site.
Also, thanks to the jackass who set off the fire alarm at 3:45AM in the morning. I still intend to hunt you down and punch you in your genitals, but at least you provided me with a pretty great story.
But yeah, still going to punch you in the genitals.
Multiple times.
I don't have anything on my calendar until Daisho Con come November, which is unfortunate, but that should be a good time at least. I always want to do more cons, but time and funds are finite.
But hey, we keep looking forward.
- Traegorn
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So this weekend I'll be heading up to Madison, WI for Geek.kon 2014! I'm excited. Geek.kon is a multi-genre con that I've been to almost every year of it's existence (I missed Geek.kon 3 back in the day, and I feel bad about that -- but my sister was getting married, and family always takes priority). This con has changed so much over the years, but it's been consistently fun regardless.
Anyway, I'll be in the Artist Alley portion of the vendor room most of the weekend, and we're also doing an episode of the Nerd & Tie podcast live at 6pm on Friday night.
You should come to that, it'll be awesome.
Anyway, if you're looking for me in the Artist Alley, this is where you'll find my table:
If you can make it down to and/or up to Madison for the weekend, you should come. Because it'll be an awesome time.
Just do it already.
- Traegorn
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So I really don't have much to say this week, so I thought I'd share with you something I've posted other spots: my favorite title cards we've used on episodes of the Nerd & Tie podcast. It's not that exciting, but I think they're at least mildly amusing.
Personally I think they're funny... but I made them, so that's probably to be expected.
- Traegorn
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