AMINE AND MANGA - My Blog

Renji "Range" Murata (村田 蓮爾 Murata Renji, born October 2, 1968 in Osaka) is a Japanese artist and designer, known for his unique style combining Art Deco and Japanese anime elements. He is best known for his conceptual design work on anime series Last Exile and Blue Submarine No. 6.

He began his career in the early 1990s doing design work for video games. He still continues to do some work in this area today, having recently done the character designs for the PlayStation 2 game Spy Fiction.

He has published more than a dozen books of his work, some of the most notable being robot, rule, and futurhythm. He is also voted "Best Artist of the Year" 2006 in the Seiun Award.

RahXephon (ラーゼフォン, Rāzefon) is a Japanese anime series about 17-year-old Ayato Kamina, his ability to control a godlike mecha known as the RahXephon, and his inner journey to find a place in the world. His life as a student and artist in Tokyo is suddenly interrupted by a mysterious female stalker, strange planes invading the city, and strange machines fighting back.

The original 26-episode anime television series was directed by Yutaka Izubuchi. It was created by Izubuchi and Bones studio and it aired on Fuji TV from January to September 2002. It was produced by Fuji TV, Bones, Media Factory, and Victor Entertainment. The series received critical acclaim and was subsequently translated, released on the DVD and aired in several other countries, including the United States. A 2003 movie adaptation RahXephon: Pluralitas Concentio was directed by Tomoki Kyoda, with plot changes and new scenes. The series also spun into novels, an extra OVA episode, an audio drama, a video game, illustration books, and a slightly altered manga adaptation by Takeaki Momose.

The central elements of RahXephon's plot are music, time, archetypal mystery, intrigue, and romance. The series shows influences from philosophy, Japanese folklore, and Western literature, such as, the work of James Churchward. The cultural background of the series is dominated by Mesoamerican and other Pre-Columbian civilizations. Director Izubuchi said RahXephon was his attempt to set a new standard for mecha anime, as well as to bring back aspects of 1970s mecha shows like Brave Raideen.

The backstory of RahXephon is a fight against multi-dimensional invaders known as the Mulians (known as Mu (ムー, Mū^?)). The Mu are visually indistinguishable from humans, however they carry a genetic marker called the "Mu phase" which turns their blood blue and causes memory loss when they mature.

The story reveals two floating cities appearing above Tokyo and Sendai around the end of 2012. The ensuing conflict escalated into nuclear warfare, and the Mu envelop Tokyo and outlying suburbs within a spherical barrier resembling Jupiter, referred by outsiders as "Tokyo Jupiter" ("Tōkyō Jupita"). The barrier has a time dilating effect, which causes time inside Tokyo Jupiter to slow down to one-fifth compared to the outside time.

Although RahXephon is part of the mecha genre of anime, its "mechas" are not mechanical. The mechas used by the Mu, called Dolems, are made of clay, like golems. Each is bound to a certain Mulian, however some are also bound to human hosts, called "sub-Mulians".

Ragnarok Online is divided into a series of maps, each of which has its own terrain and native monsters, though many monsters are present in multiple regions. Transportation between maps requires loading the new map and monsters cannot travel from one map to another.

There are three major nations in Ragnarok Online, the first of which and where all players start is Rune Midgard. The Schwaltzvalt Republic, an industrialized neighbor to the North, was added in Episode 10 and Arunafeltz, a religious nation modeled after a combination of Israel and Turkey is the subject of Episode 11.

A series of other, minor nations also exists, generally modeled after an ancient society in the real world, examples such as Amatsu, which is modeled after ancient Japan, and Louyang, which is modeled after ancient China.

Areas from Norse mythology are also included, such as Niflheim, the land of the dead, and Valhalla, where players can become Transcendent Classes. New map content is constantly being added to game in the form of Episode updates.