Genuine: Studio Ghibli's animated music video/short film for "On Your Mark" by Chage & Aska—I'd seen clips of it for a few years, but never the whole thing until it mysteriously appeared somewhere on the internet a few months ago. I have no idea what the song is about, because it's in Japanese, but I know the video is…

How the hell should I know? Whaddaya think I am, some kind of obsessed nerd?

Up (or in this case, down) yours, Bevel Lemelisk.

The additional tactical advantage beyond misdirection was that by flying along the trench, "below" the Death Star's horizon, the fighters gained cover—only the weapon emplacements within the trench itself could target them, rather than all the guns "above" the horizon.

How is the tagline for Extraordinary Tales not "TWO DRACULAS PERFORM FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!"?

Don't! You'll get lost in the MindMaze!

Ultimately they form something like the Young Men's Reformed-Cultists-of-the-Ichor-God Bel-Shamharoth Association, or YMPA for short.

This sounds like "A Study in Emerald: the Video Game (Special Papist Edition)."

Yikes, you're right—Sword and Star Wars both came out in '77, so it had to've been written earlier. To be fair to Brooks, then, I guess he and Lucas were playing with the same character tropes to get a similar pair of ultimately honorable scoundrels… Maybe they were both riffing on Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & the Grey…

I'll go ahead and say what can't be unsaid—the Leahs are the best Highlanders in fiction.

Garret Jax is a ridiculous cliche of a character that I unabashedly love for being so over the top, but who still manages to get a pretty interesting and emotional plotline in that book.

Padishar Creel. And Morgan remains my favorite character in the whole series. The Heritage books were the first ones I read, and damned if I didn't reread them a dozen times—thanks, limited school library Fantasy section.

It really doesn't help that he gave all the main characters monosyllabic first names…

Right, right, making them the Han and Chewie of the Shannara series.

You mean Super Ultimate Badass Cool Guy Garret Jax, the Weapons Master?

That scans nicely. And I'd definitely rather watch that than what was in this clip.

Well, the setting is closer to Thundarr, but the series is definitely cribbing more heavily from Tolkien.

Right, that was it—thanks! Man, those giant, spider-like robots were built to last.

So which one of them turns out to be the Dragon Reborn?

I think it was hinted at considerably more in Sword than in Elfstones, but in any case it wasn't explored in detail until later books in the series. At most I think in Sword the party passes through the ruins of a modern city and gets jumped by a monster, or something?