Fans of Dennou Coil may be able to buy a working pair of cyberglasses sooner than they expected. The “SmartGoggles” just announced by Sensics at CES appear to have all the capabilities that one would expect from cyberglasses, including cameras that let it respond to your hand gestures.
OK, so obviously these things are a lot bulkier and more obtrusive than Dennou Coil‘s cyberglasses, but maybe if we allow a few more years for miniaturization?
This series is one of my all-time favorites and I’m sorry that nobody has seen fit to license it yet. Some shows seem destined to win awards and critical praise, but not to attract a real mass audience. Sometimes they are eventually recognized as true classics.
The story is an unusual variant of cyberpunk, a genre usually associated with dark stories about a lawless world in which hackers with few scruples battle cabals and power brokers who are even less scrupulous. Dennou Coil has some elements of this, but the overall tone is much lighter–partly because the story is told from the viewpoint of an optimistic child. The result is clever and thought-provoking, but also charming.
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This is the time of year when anime bloggers are busy posting their “Top 10 Lists” or other listings of the year’s best and worst. I’m not really in a position to do a top 10 list. I don’t watch nearly enough anime to make a meaningful judgment about which of the 120-odd shows broadcast last year were the 10 best or worst. I’ve seen only a minuscule sample, and from that I’d have to exclude any shows that haven’t ended yet, since the ending often makes all the difference.
What I will do is list some shows that made a significant impression on me (not always in a good way.) If your favorite show isn’t listed below and it ended in 2007, it’s quite possible that’s because I haven’t seen it.
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