Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 30, 2009 in Comic Books
You’d think that Sky Pirates of Neo Terra #1 would be terrible as it has every reason to fail: You’ve got a comic book based on a Nintendo DS game and then you add a Canadian trying to draw in a Japanese manga style. However the talented Camilla D’Errico is up to the task and does an amazing job: Her draftsmanship is deliciously detailed and her layouts are powerful. The coloring job by Simon Bork adds a nice vivid quality to the story by Josh Wagner. Looking at the first pages of this book reminds me a bit of the original Appleseed manga (アップルシ-ド) by Masamune Shirow, yet Camilla has her own unique look which is well worth checking out: Read more…
What makes One Piece (ワンピース) so appealing is that the characters aren’t stiff but cartoony and fun. This new set of One Piece Portrait of Pirates Excellent Model Mild Straw Theater Figures picks up on this and pushes the character designs even further as collectable figures by making the head of each character just a bit bigger and cuter. This collection includes Monkey D. Luffy (shown above), Roronoah Zoro looking grumpy and a happy smiling Nami: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 29, 2009 in Animation
Shown above is a commercial for the upcoming anime series Sora no Otoshimono (そらのおとしもの) which translates to The Heaven’s Lost Property in English. The series which starts on October 4th is based upon a manga by Suu Minazuki and combines romantic comedy plot elements with fantasy. Here’s an official trailer from July Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 29, 2009 in Japanese TV
Fit’s is a Japanese chewing gum made by Lotte (which is really a South Korean company by the way) and a while ago they started to try their hand at viral video advertising with a series of surreal dance videos. They’ve started their “second season” of the campaign and videos are as strange as ever (which makes me happy). Read more…
All 48 team members of AKB48 didn’t show up for the New York Anime Festival, but we were very happy to have even just a few of the ever so cute J-pop divas at the show! Read more…
Posted by Christian Liendo on Sep 28, 2009 in Fandom
Yes cosplay often offers more cheese than cheesecake, but the art of looking sexy while being dressed up as a cartoon character is a challenge not to be underestimated. And in our case that craft is not unappreciated; here are our picks (which are by no means scientific) for the sexiest cosplayers that we crossed paths with at the New York Anime Festival 2009: Read more…
Posted by Christian Liendo on Sep 28, 2009 in Fandom
Cute and anime go together like peanut butter and jelly, and cosplay is no exception! Here are the cutest cosplayers that we found at the New York Anime Festival 2009: Read more…
Posted by Christian Liendo on Sep 28, 2009 in Fandom
Oh sure anyone otaku can dress up as a character from Sailor Moon, but it takes that extra bit of creativity and hard work to come up with a costume for Sailor Moon Zombies! And thus we salute the coolest craziest cosplay that we spotted at the New York Anime Festival this year: Read more…
Posted by Christian Liendo on Sep 28, 2009 in Fandom
Editor’s Note: My deepest thanks to Christian Liendo to taking some amazing photographs of New York Anime Festival.
Shown above is illustrator Eric Maruscak working on an amazing Soul Eater themed chalk drawing. What follows is a photo essay of what it was like to walk around the convention floor which was packed: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 27, 2009 in Videogames
This is the latest gameplay trailer for Lost Planet 2 which was shown at the Tokyo Game Show. The game is published by Capcom and looks amazing — after seeing this trailer I don’t have much of an idea what the gameplay is like, but the universe Jun Takeuchi and Kenji Oguro have created looks wonderfully rich in detail.
In wilds of suburban New Zealand special effects artist Dean Johnstone has designed a living room worthy of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea for his client Wayne Eyre. This steampunk entertainment room features “plutonium-leaking” torpedoes, rusting steel beams and giant screen television to keep the ships crew happy: Read more…
This film looks silly, stupid and dumb — but I’ve got to see it! Yeah sure the plot reminds me a bit too much of Buffy meets The Lost Boys but that passes with me if you do it with a good sense of humor, and seeing John C. Reilly on the screen makes me feel sort of happy from the get go. And then add Salma Hayek doing her goth thing and we know we’re going to have some fun here. The Vampire’s Assistant opens on October 23rd.
On this day in 1961 the classic film The Hustler opened to both critical and popular success. Frankly before this film Paul Newman had an amazing body of work behind him, but this was the film that made him a star for years to come. The reason is that in this film Newman fine tunes his anti-establishment personality on the screen which would resinate with audiences in the 60s and 70s with films like Cool Hand Luke and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This trait allowed his career to continue after the 50s while many other actors from that decade fell out of style. Sadly as of tomorrow (September 26th) Paul Newman passed away exactly a year ago — but this film is a treasure worth revisiting for every fanboy of the cinema. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 25, 2009 in Animation, Fandom
I came across this very odd photo essay from a Japanese blog that shows some poor store manager in the Akihabara district of Tokyo who is forced to wear a suit and a Keroro mask in order to sell snacks based on the anime series that features frog stories aimed at fanboys: Read more…
The Toyota Automobile Museum (located in Nagakute Town, Aichi Prefecture, Japan) will be running a special exhibit on “The Car and Comics” from October 10th until March 7th, 2010. The exhibit will feature many autos from various popular manga titles and anime series like Initial D, Detective Conan, Speed Racer and my favorite the Lupin III film Castle of Cagliostro. Here’s a guide to the exhibit from the official museum website: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 24, 2009 in Animation
This episode of Little Lulu dates from the mid to late 90s which took place just a bit after Gen X started to come into their own thus bringing tattoos into pop culture. Little Lulu dates all the way back to 1935 when she got her start as a comic in the The Saturday Evening Post — anime fans should note that she even had an animated series in Japan called Little Lulu to Chicchai Nakama (Little Lulu and Her Little Friends) which was produced in 1976.
Star Trek: Spock: Reflections #3 looks more like a bad coloring book than a real comic book. Now I’d love to blame the artists, but my bet is that they’re underpaid. I’d love to blame the writers, but my guess is that they’re given too little time and told “what ever”. I’d love to blame the publisher IDW, but then my guess is that they felt like they needed to cut corners because they paid too much for a license that’s seen as a cash cow. The fault that Star Trek: Spock: Reflections #3 looks so bad is because Paramount doesn’t give a damn about Star Trek. Read more…
The main selling point of the Coffee Prides Motion is that unlike a Japanese maid café not only can you read a manga while drinking your coffee but that you can actually draw a manga too. This first café in the cyber city district of Zhongguancun (which is in Beijing, China) is that there are classes on how to draw cartoons. The building which houses the café also sells all sorts of anime goodies as well: Read more…
Above is a featurette promoting the film Pandorum. Of course I’m a sucker for sci fi so any film with a spaceship goes to the top of my list, although being an old fanboy I’ve become cynical over the years anytime I see something that I think I’ve seen before. Pandorum looks like a number of other films I’ve seen on the surface but I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. So I guess this film goes on my “got to find out some more” list which is bad as it opens this week on September 25th.
K-On! (けいおん!) candy is hitting the store shelves in Japan for sweet toothed otaku. The candy inside of the cool guitar packaging are chocolate and strawberry marshmallow treats (which are not in the shape of a guitar). Although some of the boxes include a Yui Hirasawa t-shirt treat at random. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 22, 2009 in Comic Books
Photoshop is an amazing tool, but in the wrong hands it can be a disaster! The first beginner mistake that most kids make with Photoshop is to use every damn filter that there is like gleams-and-glows and goofy texture maps of fire effects. This is not too dissimilar to the graphic design mistake of using too many typefaces when just one will do. I’ve got to say the quality of covers for Marvel Comics Entertainment is a pretty mixed bag: Sometimes the cover look great, but other times they cover illustrations look amateurish. And Ultimate Comics Armor Wars #4 is just screaming to me that Brandon Peterson needs to lay off the lens flare just a little bit: Read more…
My latest net addiction is the Japanese website cat.piq.jp which is essentially a cat version of the the old “hot-or-not” meme. Even though the instructions are in Japanese the game is pretty simple: You just click on one of the two cats that you think is the cutest. In return that kitty will keep getting higher ratings and thus appear more often. And if you’re more of a dog person there’s also dog.piq.jp…
A line of Lucky Star toys with a Macross theme (that’s Robotech for you American fanboys) is due to hit stores in Akihabara on September 26th. This photo series shows a preview of these goodies which are put out by Banpresto and will be awarded on some sort of lottery system: Read more…
Star Trek: Spock: Reflections #3 looks more like a bad coloring book than a real comic book. Now I’d love to blame the artists, but my bet is that they’re underpaid. I’d love to blame the writers, but my guess is that they’re given too little time and told “what ever”. I’d love to blame the publisher IDW, but then my guess is that they felt like they needed to cut corners because they paid too much for a license that’s seen as a cash cow. The fault that Star Trek: Spock: Reflections #3 looks so bad is because Paramount doesn’t give a damn about Star Trek. 
