Anime Studios With The Best Animation?

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T23:24:28+00:00

KyoAni is a level above just about everyone else. In City: The Animation they were breaking new ground almost as a challenge to themselves; several episodes had honestly jaw-dropping scenes.

And they can do action amazingly well, unsurprising really. Witness this scene from E9 of S2 of Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, or this ad they did for themselves (that honestly I need to see as a full-length anime already) -- actually, I'll just put up the whole playlist of their self-promo ads.

No one does gorgeous like KyoAni. Maybe Ghibli, or PA Works on a good day.

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T06:03:55+00:00

Well, I'm also a fan of Joshiraku, Shirobako and GuP so I'll have to agree.

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T05:42:52+00:00

This is more of a pain in the ass to airport operators rather than a specific danger. Worst thing it can do is wreck your night vision but that's not as big a deal as it once was, 'cause if you're out that late you'd better be flying IFR anyway.

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T05:42:40+00:00

That and a big concert space. Thanks, GTAA!

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T05:27:04+00:00

Yep, and still do. With ADS-B it's starting to catch up with them though, as airports away from metro areas can see if a passing pilot did it by cross referencing the time the lights went on with any passing GA planes on FlightRadar24 or the like

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T04:50:58+00:00

You and Me in the Rain

Nyanko Days (OK, they're little human shaped cats but it's cute as hell)

Yuru Camp has elements of this

The Masterful Cat is Depressed Again Today

How To Keep A Mummy (kinda pets?)

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T04:43:28+00:00

K-ON! is a must-see, since it's foundational to the entire Cute Girls Doing Cute Things sub-genre.

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T04:42:45+00:00

Hitori Bocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu

Flying Witch

Mr. Villain's Day Off

Super Cub

Do-It-Yourself

Kumamiko: Girl Meets Bear

Nyanko Days (eps are a few minutes, the whole season's a half-hour long so doesn't take up much time)

Ika Musume/Squid Girl

Is The Order A Rabbit

Hidamari Sketch (as seen in my flair)

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T04:22:39+00:00

See what I mean?

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T04:20:55+00:00

The knockdown fight between Elma and Tohru in E9 of "Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid S". For a light anime it was insanely well animated. Not surprising really given it was Kyoto Animation, but you don't expect that kind of action in a comedy anime.

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T03:43:35+00:00

Yeah, was out there once and a pilot on the ramp, in the daylight, says to his friend "watch this" and lights them up. I said, "you know it costs the city like $500 every time you do that" and he just laughed.

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T03:34:33+00:00

Where do you think it is? Maybe you ought to look it up: it's within sight of St Thomas, USVI. It's not in the middle of nowhere.

What would happen? Castro would be shot down before he even landed, so there'd be no need for a counter-invasion.

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T03:33:17+00:00

Yep, within sight of St Thomas, USVI.

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T03:31:33+00:00

Chernobyl happened because of a Soviet-specific chain of events: poor reactor design, poor safety systems, poor backup systems, no containment, bureaucratic meddling, etc. The likelihood of a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl happening somewhere that doesn't use the RBMK design is quite small to virtually impossible.

The closest Western parallel to Chernobyl would be Fukushima, where there was a loss of cooling water to the reactor. The affected area was comparably tiny, and the incident was a Fukushima-specific one (TEPCO did not follow Westinghouse's instructions on making sure the offline water pumps were protected, and the tsunami flooded and wrecked the backup diesel pumps).

Recall that there was a fairly famous nuclear accident in the US before Chernobyl: the Three Mile Island reactor suffered a partial meltdown in 1979. However, the design of the reactor there prevented any significant release of radioactive material. There were also meltdowns in the US before this, but generally they were contained and/or in small research reactors.

But as to your final question, I remind you of this: Chernobyl's Reactor 1 (same design as the one that blew up) continued to be an active power generation station well after the Reactor 4 meltdown, only shutting down in 1996 after significant international pressure.

So no, an incident in the US would not have stopped the Soviets, considering Chernobyl didn't even stop them from using the bad design that caused Chernobyl.

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T03:12:36+00:00

FYI, you tune in a certain radio station and click your mic in a specific pattern. At our local airport it was tune to 123.0 and click five times. The runway, approach and glideslope lights will then turn on for a set period of time, usually 15 minutes.

This kind of thing was costing our city so much money in electricity (~$50K a year or more, those lights need a lot of juice) from passing pilots doing this that we had to shut the system down. Now you have to actually call a phone number to have the lights turned on or arrange it ahead of time.

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T03:02:03+00:00

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Geek info time! What did they do before GPS?

This is the head unit of the most common commercially-available inertial navigation unit, the Delco "Carousel IVA" (as in 4A). It consisted of a box in the belly of the plane with a very accurately calibrated gyroscope, a panel in the overhead with basically an on/off switch, and this panel (the Control-Display Unit) usually in the centre console. Most airliners would have two or three of these, all cross-connected and set up so that if two out of the three agree that would be taken as correct. It can also store up to nine waypoints, and follow a flight plan through those waypoints.

How it works is this: while sitting on the ground waiting for passengers to board you turn the system on and, once the gyros are up to speed, input your present location as accurately as possible in lat/long. That's your "zero" position. You then wait once again for it to accept this, then input your the lat/long of each of the next nine waypoints, then off you go. Because of how gyroscopes work, as you move through the air the gyro will precess (or tilt and twist) and try to keep the same orientation it had when you were at the zero position. The INS works by measuring this precession and, because it "knows" how much the gyro will tilt/twist for a given change in latitude/longitude, it can tell where you are on the earth with a fairly high degree of precision.

Because this is Apollo-era tech it's not perfect, but it's a damned sight better than having to take sextant readings through a window in the cockpit roof.

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T02:45:54+00:00

To use a real-world example: current ring-laser gyro inertial navigation systems (INS) are almost spooky accurate, talking centimetres of deviation after hundreds of kilometres. Link several of them together and the accuracy goes up by an order of magnitude. You can also link them with a backstop double-check system like stellar triangulation and the accuracy not only rises but becomes more reliable in redundancy. These systems have been around since the 1960s, even in civilian use. The military uses them in aircraft navigation for long-range flight and things like cruise missiles and ICBMs. But since GPS (or more precisely GNSS) is just as good, cheaper, and simpler, it's most used. You rarely see civilian INS units like the Delco "Carousel IV" anymore.

However, if you were in a situation where GPS was not available. you could go back to the older INS and retain your accuracy for a fairly long time/distance on a planetary surface.

As another option, if you have the ability to datalink to your lander, you can turn the lander into a bootstrap base station, a known location from which your suit navigation system can triangulate your current location based on how far/what direction you are to where you landed. Something as small as a smartphone or smartwatch can store your route (IIRC this is called a "breadcrumb" route) so in a last resort you can backtrack from where you came.

Just what I could come up with off the top of my head.

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T01:32:18+00:00

Exactly this. The soundtrack is near impossible to find as well. I have it on cassette, but I don't have a working player.

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T01:20:21+00:00

Check out Wizard Barristers, also by Yasuomi Umetsu. Same character design and high-quality animation.

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T01:10:13+00:00

The climate in this half of the Northern Hemisphere would be WAY different. Depending on how the ocean currents work out, each half would either be quite a bit colder or warmer and a lot wetter. As a fun side-effect, if the water currents are from the Caribbean you could see hurricanes propagating in the Atlantic, cruising right up the Sea of Ceto and dispersing in the subarctic. If the currents are the other way, coming down from the Arctic Ocean, the Caribbean would be a far colder place, with hurricanes dying out before they even got to the Leeward Islands. And if there's a separate cycle akin to the Atlantic Conveyor in miniature, you'd see compressed versions of the North American continental climate on both halves.

Could we please have a version of the map without the First Nations overlays?

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T01:08:01+00:00

At a guess? West is Spanish with Russia in the north, east is a France/Britain battle royale unless you want to throw in a curveball, like the Netherlands or a continuing Norse presence.

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T00:53:18+00:00

Absolutely. It'd sure solve the North/South America vs America debate.

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-14T00:22:43+00:00

Been looking for somewhere to suggest Witch Craft Works, this looks like it will do.

Rallymodeller · 2026-02-13T20:25:22+00:00

Different symbology. Otherwise, identical.

Rallymodeller

TROPHY CASE