Monthly Archives: June 2017

Back in 1993, 26-year-old author Yukito Kishiro could have scarcely imagined the success that his first long-form manga series would achieve in his home country, let alone on an international scale. Initially published as a serial in the manga anthology Business Jump before being quickly adapted into English, Spanish and Italian, Battle Angel Alita (or Gunnm, as its known in Japan) was Kishiros breakout and quickly earned him his status as one of mangas rising talents. Speaking in an interview with Animerica, Kushiro expressed reservations and doubt over Gunnms viability as an overseas success. [Its a very] introspective story [...] when I was first approached about allowing it to be published in foreign-language editions, I wasnt sure it was a good idea. It was an experimental work for me and I didnt think it could be popular, especially not in the United States. To me, its a never-ending wonder that my work is being translated and read by all sorts of different people.

22 years following the series conclusion, Battle Angel Alitas popularity has only grown, with a persistent legacy among fans and a new live-action adaptation slated for release next year from director Robert Rodriguez. In the lead-up to its release, publisher Kodansha will reissue the series in a collection of deluxe hardcovers this fall, following a now-available digital release of the first three volumes on comiXology that restores the manga to its pre-Americanized glory. Set in a dystopian metropolis dubbed the Scrapyard in some dark, undetermined future, Battle Angel Alita follows the series namesake, a mysterious cyborg woman whose chassis is discovered half-buried in a massive landfill by a benevolent surgeon named Ido. Ido adopts the memory-less mech woman, names her Alita (Gally in the Japanese original) and sets about finding pieces to restore her body. Through the course of their daily adventures, Alita discovers that her mind possesses a long-buried aptitude for the Panzer Kunst, a legendary cyborg fighting style thought to be one of the strongest martial art forms in the known world. Armed with a new body, Alita and Ido team up as bounty hunters to protect the Scrapyards denizens from a rogues gallery of serial killers, organ harvesters and psychopathic cyborgs.

Battle Angel Alita Vol. 1 Interior Art by Yukito Kishiro

Even in its earliest chapters, Kishiros aptitude for choreography and dynamic perspective layouts is unmistakable; a time-capsule of a young storyteller whose nascent talents, impressive as they were, only hint at the mastery of kineticism and detail he would later go on to exhibit. Though fledgling, his grasp for dialogue, foreshadowing and pacing, not to mention his sensibility for intellectually and visually mature subject matter, was already on full display from Battle Angel Alitas outset, flirting with the astuteness the series would later grow into.

Alita poses the question, What good is happiness if its only given to you? Thats no life Moments like these elevate the series above its contemporaries and solidify Battle Angel Alitas enduring appeal to this day. In a similar vein to Ghost in the Shells Masamune Shirow, Kishio is well-known for his exhaustive footnotes that add to the speculative heft and reality of his characters universe, freewheeling capably between biochemistry, neuroscience and even western folklore and philosophy. Moreover, the characters, in particular Alita, are full-fledged personalities who escape the rigidity of early anime tropes, and instead grow and fumble as flawed, yet deeply aspirational, human beings.

Battle Angel Alita Vol. 1 Interior Art by Yukito Kishiro

This is a summary of what long-time admirers of the manga have already come to expect from Kishiro since Battle Angel Alitas early publication. The real draw of this particular edition is how its both translated and preserved. Gone are the unnecessary exposition bubbles and clunky sound effects of the series initial english editions; Kodansha has restored the manga to its intended right-to-left panel format and Japanese katakana, making this new edition an essential read for purists. Full-page color splashes that were previously reduced to crude monochromatic scans are now fully restored to their original glory. Worthy of note is this editions handling of translations, renaming the floating city of Tiphares back to its original title, Zalem, while retaining the main characters name as Alita out of respect for the series popular presence in the West.

Succinctly, Battle Angel Alita is a major accomplishment not only as a Japanese comic, but for its erudite contributions to the cyberpunk genre as a whole. For those who have grown to love the adventures of Alita and her dogged quest for meaning in a world of apocalyptic nihilism, these new editions are a more than ample excuse to jump back into this world and experience it anew from the start. For those new to the series, you couldnt ask for a better time or means to get to know this character and discover for yourselves what all the fuss is about.

Battle Angel Alita Vol. 1 Interior Art by Yukito Kishiro

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New Digital Editions Reintroduce Battle Angel Alita's Cyberpunk Iconoclasm - Paste Magazine

The year is 2042. You blink on your heads-up display that appears everywhere you go, and turn your eyes toward a news video that keeps annoyingly popping up in the corner. It's apparently a huge political gaffe caught on tape. But before you can angrily respond, you feel a cooling sensation on the back of your neck. It's your Anti AI AI, warning you that this videoas real as it lookswasn't taken from an actual event. It's a simulation, created using super-advanced AI that can mimic a human's voice and facial movements.

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"FAKE," you blink out into the comments section.

This future may seems improbable right now, but some of the technology that would allow such simulacra of life already exists. Neural networks are capable of creating convincing sounding replicas of human speech, like this robot Barack Obama.

Combine this with real-time motion capture that makes famous faces look like they're saying different words, and you have all the needed ingredients for spreading misinformation.

To combat this future confusion, DT R&D, a research and development arm of the Australian creative technology agency DT, created a device they call Anti AI AI, a wearable that sits on your ear like a Bluetooth device and contains a neural network trained to tell the difference between human speech and robot speech. The wearable, hooked up to a small thermoelectric plate, cools the back of your neck when it senses a robotic voice. Ironically, the device uses its own AI to foil the robots it encounters in the wild. The wearable is hooked up to an iOS app that uses a Tensorflow neural network that's been trained with thousands of samples of real voices versus robotic voices. The war between the good AIs and bad AIs is already beginning.

"One improvement would be to continually improve the network based on new input it receives 'in the wild', but that was a little beyond our five-day timeframe," the creators wrote in a blog post.

The Anti AI AI is just a prototype, but as we journey farther into the future of fake news, tools like this are going to be necessary to sift through the increasingly untrustworthy world.

Source: DT R&D

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An Anti-AI Wearable for Our Dystopian Cyberpunk Future - Popular Mechanics

Cyberpunk 2077 was a much-anticipated game long before The Witcher 3s rampant success. Following the worldwide love-in for CD Projekt Reds masterpiece, however, the hype levels for what the Polish developers could do with their next big project have gone through the roof.

As is customary for the developer, they have flatly refused to talk about the game until theyre good and ready, so any news has usually come from internet trawlers and detectives. We dont know exactly what kind of game it will end up looking like, but that hasnt stopped everyone from putting Cyberpunk 2077 on a pedestal as arguably the most exciting game still to come.

Heres what we know so far.

What is Cyberpunk 2077s release date? Coming: when its ready.

The closing line from the games teaser trailer shows that they wont be rushed into releasing Cyberpunk 2077, but rumours abound that we might find out more at E3 2017.

However, an interesting point to note is that the game was given millions in Polish government funding to work towards a 2019 release.

Where can I play Cyberpunk 2077? Nothing confirmed, but you can bet your house that it will come to all modern consoles and PC. It worked wonders for them for TW3, so expect the confirmation alongside its release date.

What genre does Cyberpunk 2077 belong to? Now thats a question.

Its going to be an RPG in the same way Geralts last hurrah was, but as for exactly how it will play, your guess is as good as ours.

It can, however, be played either in first or third-person, and will feature multiplayer elements.

Strap in, CDPR went into a lot of detail:

In Cyberpunk 2077, the player will be thrown into a dark future. The metropolis of Night City is a stage set to tell the tale of one individual, raised on the streets, who tries to lift himself up from the gutter and find a way to survive amongst boostergangs and megacorporations in a city of filth and sin. Drugs, violence, poverty and exclusion havent disappeared by 2077, as people stayed they were for centuries greedy, closed-minded and weak. But not only ghosts of the past trouble mankind, but new issues have appeared. Psychos go on rampages and the streets are filled with junkies addicted to a new form of entertainment the braindance, a cheap way to experience the emotions and stimuli of someone else, someone living a more exciting life.

Braindances are digital recordings of a persons experience. The viewer can stream a braindance directly into his neural system via special brain augmentations, called a BD player. Braindances allow the viewer to experience all brain processes registered, including emotions, muscle movements and all stimuli perceived by the recording person.

The range of themes of these recordings varies from simple braindances made by mega-corporations, which e.g. allow the viewer to feel the full experience of an explorer with all its thrills, sweats, smells, views, sounds and the real feeling of curiosity that pushes men to go beyond the horizon against fear and physical weakness. But there are also more controversial sides of braindance, because some recordings are created illegally in the underground. Entering the mind of a serial killer means not only seeing the monstrosity he performs, but also living his lust to kill and fulfillment.

You havent experienced the latest New Hollywood recording? Youre nobody! The streets live with braindances, everyone just got crazy and wants to be a part of this new entertainment fad. Some people push it even too far and they cannot stop living other peoples lives. If youre not linked to a braindance right now, you are probably discussing what happened to you during your last session. Of course, just like every great new cultural movement, BDs have people who criticize them.

The development was granted $7million from the Polish government in December 2016. The song in its teaser trailer is Bullets by British band Archive. It will be built on RedEngine4. Sandboxes will feature, as a job listing by CDPR confirms. This means that it will be open-world. It will feature Seamless Multiplayer, which might be Ubisoft-style multiplayer or that it just works smoothly. Humans will be augmented. Cyberpunk 2077 will be far bigger than anything the developers have done before. Its based on the role-playing game Cyberpunk 2020 by Mike Pondsmith, who will also act as a consultant for 2077. Marcin Przybyowicz returns from TW3 to take charge of the music. Cyberpunk 2077 will take place in Night City, a futuristic city that looks dangerous close to being dystopic.

Of course. Thats a silly question.

CDPR have a mighty high mountain of hype to climb over and are probably going to disappoint plenty of people when it isnt the exact game they imagined it would be, but its a safe bet to say that its going to be better than most stuff out there.

As long as we get blade arms, were cool.

Sometimes I think I only started this site so I could make up important sounding positions for myself.

Email: jim@culturedvultures.com

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Cyberpunk 2077 Release Date, Trailers And Latest News - Cultured Vultures