The always adorable Laura Shigihara took time out from running her criminal empire to record this wonderful cover of the theme song from Hayao Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service, accompanied by Japanese classical guitarist/nerd Lonlonjp. It’s pretty damn groovy, especially since it cameos Shigihara’s cat Metroid as a rather authentic-looking Jiji (Kiki’s cat). If you enjoy this, you can check out more of Lonlonjp’s anime and videogame music covers here, and you should. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.