Anime Talk: Discussion – What summer 2017 Anime are you looking forward to?

Well folks it is summer time again and with it comes this years crop of Summer anime. In this brief edition of Anime Talk I want to ask you a question. Of the titles being released this summer  what are you most looking forward to and why?

I personally see a bunch of new anime I want to give a watch but there are 4 that I am currently looking forward to the most and they are; Fate/Apocrypha, Isekai Shokudou, Centaur no Nayami, Youkai Apartment no Yuuga na Nichijou.

I am a fan of the Fate series at least Fate/ Stay Night, and Fate/ Stay Night unlimited Bladeworks so I am looking forward to seeing this edition to that series. As for the other 3 series I am looking forward to? Well call me a sucker for Youkai and monster anime, especially if it falls in to the comedy and or Slice of life genres. The last year or so have seen some good monster anime, like Interviews with Monster Girls from 2 seasons ago so I am hoping these 3 shows continue that trend of good Youkai/monster anime!

Character Design Challenge #328 – Masterworks – Chagall

Your CDC this week is to use HM3 to recreate a section of the above painting, “The Circus Horse”. By Marc Chagall

Rules for posts, contests, and challenges: Original characters only, no copyrighted characters, no characters based on copyrighted characters, no characters based on RPG’s or other games. The characters must be your own design and not based on any character that might be copyrighted in any way. Please keep all submissions PG13: full or partial nudity is prohibited. I have the right to delete any post that I believe crosses this line without warning. Only post characters that have been created solely using Hero Machine, and that you know for certain have never been entered in a contest before. If you aren’t certain, don’t enter it, because I’m not going to go back through all of the contests and check.

All entries must be in JPG or PNG form (BMPs are too big), posted to a publicly accessible website (like the HeroMachine :,ImageShackPhotoBucket, or whatever);

  • Entries must be made as a comment or comments to this post, containing a link directly to the image and the character name;
  • Please name your filesas [your name]-[character name].[file extension] before you upload it. So DiCicatriz, for instance, would save his “Bayou Belle” character image as DiCicatriz-BayouBelle.png.

Please make the link go directly to the image (like this) and not to a hosting jump page (like this).

This contest will close on Sunday, July 9th at 9:00am Eastern.

Kaldath’s Corner: Review Of “Syncopation” by Babymetal

Well here I am with another Kaldath's Corner about my second favorite band in the world "Babymetal". I have to say these girls and their backing band ( The Kami band ) have been on a roll over the last year, opening up shows for the likes Metallica, Guns n' Roses, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and Korn as well as selling out a solo concert at the Palladium in Los Angeles California!

Today I am going to be reviewing their newest song ( brand new to me ) Syncopation which they premiered at the end of 2016 at the conclusion of their world tour in Tokyo Japan in the Tokyo Dome! SO let's get started ....

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Character Design Challenge #327 – RPG Character Classes: Final Round – “NOT” Jedis and Siths – Results!

So this brings the RPG/CDC series to an end. Hope you folks have enjoyed it. I know that I've learned more about RPGs in the past few weeks than I ever thought I would know.

So here we go...

Honourable mention goes out to Brons. The costume design is great and is begging to be turned into cosplay or LARP.

Runner up is a tie between Kellkin and JR19759. The face on Kellkin's is very expressive and the costume is classic Sith. JR's features a subtle and effective skin treatment, and an elegant approach to the costume. Both very well done.

 Kellkin

JR19759

And the win goes to...

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Canadian Music Countdown!

 

As a Canadian, I’ve been celebrating my country’s 150th birthday. To that end, I thought I’d do something different and talk about music again. Specifically, Canadian music. So we’re going to do a quick round-up of Canadian bands/singers you should listen to (if you aren’t already). As many of you already know, I come from a heavily classic rock/metal background and that does tend to inform my choices. I suppose that’s what happens when the first albums you own (on tape!) were Bryan Adams’ Reckless and Def Leppard’s Pyromania. So no Celine Dion, or Justin Bieber (we all apologize for that one), or Nickelback, or anyone like that. Everyone already knows Canadian acts like Leonard Cohen, The Guess Who, and Shania Twain, so I think I’m safe concentrating on others. So let’s see what we’ve got!

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JReviews: Doctor Who Series 10

The finale of Peter Capaldi's final series of Doctor Who has just finished, with only the Christmas episode to go before he hands the reigns over to the next Doctor. As is customary on such occassions, we must now peruse this past season and how it stacks up against the time lords previous escapades.

Warning: Of course there are opinions below. Oh and Spoilers.

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Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day 150 to all the Canadian Machiners out there!

What Were They Thinking?: Do-manga-trix

Back in the early 2000's, Marvel were looking to cash in on the anime boom that was going on in America at the time after the success of Japanese imports such as Dragonball, Sailor Moon and Pokemon. So, what they decided to do was to take some of their most beloved characters and give them the manga treatment, creating what was basically a manga-Ultimates line. Now, this is a great idea in theory. Take some of the most recognisable characters in western comics and apply eastern manga tropes, for example Iron Man became a giant mecha along the lines of a Gundam or an Eva, whilst Hulk became a kaiju. But, of course, this being Marvel, they can have the best idea in the world and still screw it up. There's plenty to talk about when it comes to the mangaverse here on What Were They Thinking? (the place where we look at all of the stupidest, most ill-advised things in comic book history). We could talk about the stereotypes, the fact that they took characters and tropes and mashed them together regardless of how well they fit or we could talk about just the general randomness of it all. But instead, let's take a look at one specific character in this whole thing. A character who came so out of left field that it's weird even for an alterniverse style story. I am of course talking about the mangaverse version of this guy:

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Caption Contest #97

Ok guys, time for another caption contest, where you have to come with the funniest replacement dialogue for a random comic panel of my choosing. This week you have to replace the dialogue for this panel:

Everyone can have a maximum of 3 entries, entries must be in by next Wednesday (July 5th) and All Entries Must Be PG-13.

Character Design Challenge #327 – RPG Character Classes: Final Round – “NOT” Jedis and Siths

First off...a huge thanks to JR for suggesting the RPG series of CDCs. And now...

...Time for the final round! Your CDC is to create an original heroic or villainous "space warrior" (something along the lines of an order of characters from a popular movie series maybe).  Your submissions can be either human or alien in origin. These groups use laser swords…yeah…that’s what we’ll call them…which can be found in Items Right: Blades: Page 5.

The characters must be your own design and not based on any character that might be copyrighted in any way.

Rules for posts, contests, and challenges:

Original characters only, no copyrighted characters, no characters based on copyrighted characters.No characters based on Official RPG NPC's ( Non-Player Characters ). Please keep all submissions PG13. I have the right to delete any post that I believe crosses this line without warning. Only post characters that have been created solely using Hero Machine, and that you know for certain have never been entered in a contest before. If you aren’t certain, don’t enter it, because I’m not going to go back through all of the contests and check.

All entries must be in JPG or PNG form (BMPs are too big), posted to a publicly accessible website (like the HeroMachine :,ImageShackPhotoBucket, or whatever);

  • Entries must be made as a comment or comments to this post, containing a link directly to the image and the character name;
  • Please name your filesas [your name]-[character name].[file extension] before you upload it. So DiCicatriz, for instance, would save his “Bayou Belle” character image as DiCicatriz-BayouBelle.png.

Please make the link go directly to the image (like this) and not to a hosting jump page (like this).

This contest will close on Sunday, July 2nd at 9:00am Eastern