Only ‘lite’ in the sense that he’s not violating the laws of physics, but otherwise pretty amazing.

Boing Boing notes that Japanese artist Nagi Noda, who directed the video for Yuki’s ‘Sentimental Journey’ (embedded below) died earlier this week. Noda apparently suffered ongoing complications from a car accident some time ago, but it’s not clear whether the accident was ultimately responsible for her demise.

I thought this was supposed to be taken offline at the end of July, but Hulu still has the whole thing - and now you can watch all three parts in one big fell swoop. Or a non-fell swoop, if that takes your fancy. Regular swoops are fine.

I don’t think it requires a highly-paid media analyst to predict that the anime production companies who will still be around in 20 years are those which take advantage of what the internet does best, namely allow people to share information. Naturally, when one says ’share information’ it really means piracy.

An increasing number of media outlets are coming to grips with the fact that handing out freebies isn’t such a bad thing, and in most cases is nothing more than free publicity. See, for instance, the Haruhi Suzumiya craze which has run rampant across YouTube for the last few years. If a cadre of Filipino prisoners can’t bring attention to your brand, I don’t know what can - and Haruhi Suzumiya studio Kadokawa seems to agree.

Last May, when Kadokawa Holdings released The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya on DVD in the U.S., fans of Japanese animation swarmed shops in Los Angeles and other cities. For months, Kadokawa, a Tokyo publisher and TV and movie distributor, had dropped hints about the anime’s imminent overseas release on a Web site. But other than that, it did almost no advertising. It didn’t have to. The company merely tapped into the huge following Haruhi Suzumiya already had on YouTube and other video-sharing Web sites.

It sounds like the classic viral-marketing success story. But Kadokawa arrived at this strategy more by luck than by design. And lawyers would have been appalled by what they saw: the company allowing rampant Internet piracy to go unchecked.

That’s not how Kadokawa sees it, though. Chairman and CEO Tsuguhiko Kadokawa thinks his company has nothing to lose by reaching out to anime diehards. As he sees it, the company’s traditional publishing business has no future in the digital era. And suing YouTube for copyright infringement, as MTV Networks owner Viacom did last year, would have only angered anime fans who have been using the site.

Just one of those oddities I came across while trolling YouTube at 3am…it’s a clip of alt-rocker Matthew Sweet decked out in a Captain Harlock t-shirt performing ‘Girlfriend’ on David Letterman about 2 decades ago. Man, were the early 90’s that long ago? I feel old all of a sudden. Anyway, it’s worth watching just to see proto-punk guitarist Robert Quine (R.I.P.) laying down some fierce lead guitar.

While I’m at it, here’s the original video, which cribs copious amounts of footage from the anime Cobra. Also very cool…

This is purportedly a video of today’s massive earthquake that killed nearly 10,000 people in western China. Truly frightening stuff…