Paul tries to play fake guitar in Rock Band 3 while Chris distracts him with a real guitar (and a ukulele).
Oct 102013
Oct 102013
Mark Webber has had a difficult few weeks, with several potentially strong performances quite literally going up in smoke. Unless his awful luck improves, it seems that his final season in Formula 1 will wrap up on a forgettable note. This is a shame, since Webber has played a major role in Red Bull Racing’s dominant form over the last few years.
To win the constructors’ championship in a period where multiple teams are fielding world champions, it takes more than an excellent car (courtesy of Adrian Newey) and a talented first driver (Sebastian Vettel). A team also needs a second driver who can consistently beat his counterparts and occasionally challenge the fast guys. Red Bull have had exactly that in Mark Webber during each of their championship-winning years.
Webber finished third in the drivers’ standings in both 2010 and 2011, while Vettel took first. Mathematically speaking, even if another team’s drivers took second and fourth, it would be impossible for them to bring in more points than Red Bull. 2012 and 2013 have seen Webber drop farther down the grid, but he has still been outscoring virtually every other “second driver” in the sport. And as long as Vettel can win the drivers’ championship, that’s all Webber needs to guarantee Red Bull their fourth consecutive title.
Compare this, for example, to Felipe Massa. His Ferrari teammate Fernando Alonso finished four points behind Vettel in 2010, and came even closer in 2012. Had Massa been able to outscore Webber by just five points in either year, Ferrari would have taken the constructor’s title. Instead, Webber beat him by 98 points in 2010 and 57 in 2012. Going by numbers alone, the likable Australian handed Ferrari a much more decisive defeat than his world champion teammate.
Looking towards next year, we can infer a few things. As Webber is replaced by the younger Daniel Ricciardo and Massa is replaced with the always-consistent Kimi Raikkonen, the potential exists for a much closer fight for points. Also, it’s obvious that Webber’s arrival at Porsche’s endurance racing program will make for a very interesting 24 Hours of Le Mans. Ricciardo has some big shoes to fill, and Audi’s LMP1 drivers had better watch their mirrors.
Pit Box One is written by Paul Jensen. You can follow his thoughts on video games and motor racing on Twitter.
Oct 012013
Convincing a friend or acquaintance to watch your favorite series has always been one of the most daunting tasks an anime fan can face. There’s the litany of facepalm-inducing misconceptions (Anime’s basically all porn, right?), the language barrier (Just watch the dub!), and the intimidating time commitment (It really gets good after episode 57!). As if all that didn’t make anime a tough sell, it sometimes seems like Japanese studios and American distributors make a point of giving excellent shows bad names. What follows is a brief, probably incomplete, list of some of the cardinal sins of idiotic anime titles.
Titles That Give The Wrong Impression
There was a healthy mix of laughter and sighs when the English simulcast and eventual dub of Moretsu Pirates was effectively stuck with the name Bodacious Space Pirates. Admittedly, having a title that sounds like it belongs on the cover of a softcore porn film can help generate some buzz before a show comes out. However, when the title implies oversized bosoms in zero gravity and the series instead delivers a smart sci-fi storyline that’s effectively devoid of gratuitous cleavage shots, there’s bound to be quite a lot of confusion. A misleading title can hurt a show’s chances of success by disappointing fans who expect what the title implies and scaring away fans who might enjoy what the series actually delivers.
Titles So Obnoxiously Long That Most People Can’t Even Say Them Without Stopping To Breathe Once Or Twice
This particular offense is especially common among anime based on novels, although they certainly don’t have a monopoly on syllable overloads. There’s really no solid excuse for naming a simple high school comedy Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come Machigatteiru (translation: My Youth Romantic Comedy is Wrong as I Expected). The first person to deliberately break the rule of keeping titles short and sweet was reasonably witty. Everyone else needs to just give it a rest. And don’t even get me started on WataMote (full title in English: No Matter How I Look At It, It’s You Guys’ Fault I’m Not Popular!).
Titles That Require A Detailed Explanation
Once upon a time, someone decided to combine the characters from Read Or Die and Read Or Dream (two manga series set in the same world), and make one big anime starring all of them. The result was a very cool show about secret agents with paper-related superpowers that was released in the U.S. with a terrific English dub. Unfortunately, the result was called R.O.D.: The TV. The official explanation is that R.O.D. doesn’t stand for Read Or Die or Read Or Dream, and is just a meaningless acronym that reflects the fusion of the two series. Personally, I just refer to it as Read or Don’t and hope that people don’t notice the half-dozen DVD cases on my shelf with ROD printed on them in big, friendly letters. If they do, I essentially have to give them the lengthy explanation that you just read, whether they want to hear it or not. Great series, absurdly difficult to recommend to a friend.
I suspect I’ve only just scratched the surface here, but I’ll leave the rest to you, dear reader. Are there other things not to do when coming up with an anime title? What’s the worst offender of all time? The world may never know.
Kawaii Overthink is written by Paul Jensen. You can follow his ramblings about anime on Twitter.