Chinese State TV Uses Clips from Anime to Criticize Japan

 State-run Chinese Central Television (CCTV) used clips from the 2002 anime film Detective Conan: The Phantom of Baker Street in a piece criticizing what it described as Japan's move toward right-wing conservatism and political nepotism. The piece covered Sunday's national election in Japan and focused on how 75 of the 480 winners are progeny of previous generations of politicians, including Shinzo Abe, the presumptive next prime minister from the winning center-right Liberal Democratic Party. The clip used shows the character Shiho "Ai Haibara" Miyano looking at a ballroom full of children of Japan's politicians with disdain, saying that this lineage is "what led to a corrupted future. […] It's because of this politics of inheritance which led to human beings repeating its mistakes in history." After the piece CCTV aired an uncensored version of James McTeigue's live-action film adaptation of Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta comic book series, and both moves have led to speculation about ideological shifts in both the station’s output and also the ruling administration headed by the newly-installed Chinese Communist Party general secretary, Xi Jinping. The piece can be viewed (in Chinese) here, and move can be read here.

io9 Roundup of Superhero, Political and Futurist Articles, Part 9

This weekend we've got a roundup of recent, relevant, and few just really cool, articles from the science, science fiction and fantasy blog io9.com. This is the final part, and I hope you have enjoyed the articles.

• This manga-inspired Greenpeace video borrows from Hunger Games to get its point across
• “The Black Marble”: A New Satellite View of the Earth That Will Leave You In Awe
• Asterix: The Great Unsung Fantasy Hero 
• China gets set to grow veggies on Mars — and plant the communist flag 
• Never-seen Dark Knight concept art reveals the terrifying origins of the Joker’s Clown Gang 
• Practice your silent ninja skills with the Franssen Effect audio illusion
• USA orders a World War 2 alien drama from Walking Dead producer
• Why US Air Corps servicemen were allowed to wear such badass bomber jackets in WWII
• After extensive mathematical modeling, scientist declares “Earth is F**ked”
• A Simple Chart That Explains Why Batman Would Have a Short Career
• One of the earliest victories in the war on science

io9 Roundup of Superhero, Political and Futurist Articles, Part 5

Today we've got a roundup of recent, relevant, and few just really cool, articles from the science, science fiction and fantasy blog io9.com. Stay tuned for all the parts.

• A children’s anime series with rainbow-colored, gut-wrenching lessons in ethical philosophy
• How modern technologies made the fighting in Gaza even worse
• Pulp Science Fiction Under German Totalitarianism
• Here’s China’s impossible plan to build the world’s tallest building in a mere 90 days
• The 1965 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was fucking terrifying
• The Time Mormons Baptized Adolf Hitler and Vlad the Impaler
• The emerging science of ‘collective intelligence’ — and the rise of the global brain
• 5 Historical Myths About Real Scientific Discoveries
• Which Bond villain’s scheme had the greatest chance of financial success?

Infamous Dictators Reimagined as Anime Ladies

From Japan, a new book featuring biographies of 40 dictators was recently released, with the twist that it includes illustrations of the dictators drawn by famous Japanese artists as women, in an anime style, with several done in the "cute girl" moé sub-style.
(At right, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, & Omar al-Bashir)
While turning things into anime-style characters has been popular lately, the book, Nyotai ka!! Sekai no Dokusaisha Retsuden (にょたいか！！世界の独裁者列伝 or loosely, "In Female Form?! Biographies of World Dictators"), has been criticized by some for "trivializing" the dictators with the depictions, although some have said that some of the images, like the one of Pol Pot at right, can make the dictator appear more frightening. More information and a gallery of some of the images can be found at Kotaku.com.
If you want to see anime-styled personifications of the nations of the world, check out the Hetalia series.
And if you wanted to know which dictator has been responsible for the most deaths, you can check this infographic from popten.net.