The spring anime season has begun in Japan, and while there’s plenty of standard stuff like kids saving the world, harem shows and busty samurai waitresses (really), there are a few gems that deserve to be seen. If you’re looking for new anime, make sure you hunt these five series down.

Space Battleship Yamato may be the most famous Japanese space opera of all time, and it's going strong in Japan. (In the U.S., where the anime series was renamed Star Blazers, we still haven't gotten the 2010 live-action film.)

The Last Airbender wasn't punishment enough. Whatever we did to deserve Hollywood's "racebending" shenanigans, we've still earned more suffering. Tron Legacy's Garrett Hedlund is reportedly starring in Akira. And there's still the Americanized Cowboy Bebop in the pipeline too. And an Americanized Space Battleship Yamato.

The greatest tacticians in space don't just use high-energy beams and force shields, they use psychology. And the best interstellar smack-downs start with the trash talking before a single shot is fired.

In America, politicians plus whimsical costumes tend to equal "ill-advised career move." But in Japan, cosplay is just one of those staples of existence, nobody gives a fig.

War is hell. But an ultimate weapon is hella cool.

Now that Space Battleship Yamato, the live-action remake of the classic anime series, has crushed the Japanese box office, there's talk of an American version. Chris McQuarrie, writer of The Usual Suspects and Darren Aronofsky's The Wolverine, is the screenwriter.

Starships are the coolest kind of vessels out there. They travel faster than light, they encounter strange new worlds, they turn space into their playground. But what are the coolest starships of them all? After much careful deliberation, we've come up with our definitive list of the 10 greatest starships in all space …

There are really no words for this Space Battleship Yamato dance sequence, from Japanese television. The best part is when Desslok shows up. [Thanks, Madeline!]

Don't just give your loved ones geeky toys — give them weird geeky toys. Nothing says "nerd-cred" like merchandising that makes people gawp at the sheer WTFery. Here are 22 pieces of shwag to make your friends question your sanity.