I must admit that I’m not exactly a historical fiction buff, but when I heard about Seth Grahame-Smith’s recently released novel, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, I must admit that the concept piqued my interest. Of course, it wasn’t until I stumbled across this amazing trailer for the novel that I found myself compelled to buy a copy. I’m still in the process of reading it, so I can’t comment too much on the content, aside from my assurance that it isn’t Twilight. Read more…
Pullip is a fashion doll line that was created by Cheonsang Cheonha (who is from South Korea) in 2003 which reminds me a great deal of both Blythe and Barbie dolls. This latest Pullip Eos Doll features her in steampunk gear — in fact she reminds me a great deal of Jane Fonda in the film Barbarella, although her looks is more Victorian than French comic book.
For Lotte’s latest commercial for their ACUO brand of gum they’re featuring an animated Haruhi Suzumiya (and her friends) interacting with live action actor Toma Ikuta. As much as I love Haruhi I think the cutest part of the advert is when he runs out side and the three street cats that are looking at him transform into cat girls: Read more…
At long last there’s an answer to the classic problem is that you’re an aspiring j-pop guitar player but you don’t want to disturb your neighbors. VOX is introducing a line of K-on! themed headphone guitar amplifiers so you can practice your chords in private. These goodies will be hitting music stores in japan in late April and come in three editions — one for Yui Hirasawa, another for Azuka Nakano and a bass guitar one for Mio Akiyama. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 11, 2010 in Television
I was sad to learn that Dixie Carter has just passed away — while she did have a role in Desperate Housewives her legacy will be the Designing Women sitcom which ran from 1986 until 1993. If you look at the above clip you’ll see a wonderful fearsomeness in Dixie which almost reminds me of female version of Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction. The writing is pure camp but she owns every damn word being spoken and clearly means it. I always admired how she managed to balance the comedy in her role with the finer points of drama. And speaking of beauty queens it should be noted that in 1959 she competed in the Miss Tennessee pageant, where she placed first runner-up. Read more…
In 1995 the Gamera franchise was robooted with the film Gamera: Guardian of the Universe. Our titanic turtle friend made his first appearance in November of 1965 in the film Daikaijū Gamera in which he awakes due to an atomic bomb explosion during a cold war tango between the Americans and Soviets. So of course our turtle friend the decided to go on a rampage of Tokyo — which has endeared him to generations of Japanese ever since! Shown above is the Tokusatsu Revoltech 006 Gamera and below is the Tokusatsu Revoltech 007 Gyaos who like to fight each other and wreck havoc in densely populated urban locals. Read more…
Astronaut Soichi Noguchi (seen on the left) grew up watching Space Battleship Yamato which is well known to American fans as Star Blazers. And here he is on International Space Station making us Earth bound retro anime fans very proud. Here’s the official caption for the photo from NASA which sadly omits the fanboy reference: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 10, 2010 in Animation
Rail thin blond ladies and killer mecha, yup we got that! This beautiful fan made video from Japan combines Leiji Matsumoto animation with Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. My thanks to Evan Minto of Ani-Gamers for finding this gem!
Apple is turning the screws tighter on Adobe to kill Flash — with their latest update to the iPhone OS they’ve now gone as far as to put in their agreement with developers that they can’t use Flash. This got me thinking about the history of Apple: As old time fanboys remember when Steve Jobs returned to the company it wasn’t a happy time. We were all glad to have him back, but upon arrival he killed the Newton and put HyperCard out to pasture. In fact one of the reasons I first dismissed the iPod was that as an old Apple fanboy it was never going to be as cool as the Newton. Little did I know that it would evolve into the iPhone. Read more…
These fine Kirk and Spock Nutcrackers are perfect for opening the L’maki nut which when pureed makes a wonderful blue cream cake frosting. Ah but that recipe is from Voyager, getting back to Kirk and Spock the pair of nut cracking officers will set you back about $20 for the four inch tall versions — or if you are more ambitious there is an eleven inch tall version of Spock and Kirk which go for about $33 each.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 9, 2010 in Japanese TV
This Godzilla themed canned coffee advert perfectly captures my inner crankiness when I can’t get my daily caffeine fix. The commercial is for Kirin Black Deep Body Fire which features a “51% blend of carefully selected premium bean” from Guatemala. Although the two main selling points are that this coffee is both sugar free (and thus low calorie) and apparently tastes quite bitter. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 8, 2010 in Japanese TV
This commercial is for Daiwa House, the largest homebuilder in Japan. Apparently D-room is a reference to the dining room in a Japanese house. In fact when you’re looking at real estate ads in Japan they’ll often use letters to represent the number of rooms in a house. So an LDK would be a house with living room, dining room and kitchen. And from what I can see D-room is an online service for real estate. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 7, 2010 in Japanese TV
These two adverts for Mizkan are quite creepy yet somehow pleasing with their offbeat humor. Both commercials seem to be for onigiri which are Japanese rice balls which can come in both triangle and round shapes. And although the spot doesn’t show it onigiri are quite often wrapped in seaweed. I really got a kick out of the second commercial which shows the creative ways to incorporate onigiri into a creative bento box for lunch. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 6, 2010 in Comic Books
If you love Naruto you’re going to want to run to your local Japanese bookstore and try and get your hands on Weekly Shonen Jump #18 which just came out. It’s a special edition of the comics magazine aimed at introducing new fans to Naruto. This is part of a larger promotional build up for the new film which will be released in Japan at the end of July. Read more…
Above: Events like this are proof that you don’t have to be a Superman to make the world better!
If you’re a comic book fanboy who is in New Jersey you may want to check out the Superheroes For Hospice event on Saturday, April 24 at the Livingston Mall. The event which will be packed with professional comic book artists and writers will be a benefit for the Saint Barnabas Hospice and Palliative Care Center. Visitors will have a chance to meet and greet, get autographs and purchase comic books and original artwork for a good cause. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 5, 2010 in Comic Books
Above: Gesture drawings by the illustrator Don Low.
I just took a look at a webcomic which almost had it all — slick photoshop coloring, a comic book font and an almost dead on faux anime style. Computers area great tool because with some talent you can make anything look pretty finished, but there’s always a stiff quality to aspiring comic book artists who haven’t taken a life drawing class. The reason is that in life drawing you start off with what are known as gesture drawings. The model warms up by changing poses quickly and the artists have to capture the essence of the model within seconds by drawing just a few lines. What’s brilliant about this technique is that it forces an artist to throw their style away and put all of their energy into representing a pose. Read more…
If you’re lucky enough to be in Japan on April 25th there will be an amazing handshake session with Go Nagai at the Go Nagai Wonderland Museum. The day starts off with a Talk Show which traces the career of Go Nagai and then is followed up with the pre-release of the Soul of Chogokin Mazinger Z GX-45C color comic version collectable shown above and below. The collectable robot will be released in a limited edition of 100 and will set you back 6,800 yen: Read more…
Magazine publishers in the United States could learn some real lessons from the Japanese: The May issue of Young Ace magazine features a nice illustration of Evangelion. Apparently the cover is honoring the recent release of a twelve volume manga collection. However the cool thing is that the issue is packed with other Evangelion goodies including a desk calendar. It’s those little extra things like that which make Japanese printed publications so much more lively than what you see here.
This latest Iron Man 2 trailer looks like a great deal of fun, I really like the campy feel to the entire clip. The film is going to be out in early May and my gut tells me that it’s going to do very well in terms of box office.
The charm of a really good internet meme is that they’re so simple that they make you burst out laughing. Like a good bounty hunter I did my best to track down the owner of Jabba the Cat, but alas after going through tineye.com (no results), Google image search (links to several reposts) and then to various Tumblr blogs I still hit a dead end.
On one hand I’m very impressed that Marvel is going ahead and doing an IPad app — but the pricing of $2 per issue seems a bit high to me. My gut tells me that the way Marvel makes their money is by merchandising and films, so the more kids that can grow up with the Marvel universe characters the more money you’ll make over the long term. I get it that you can’t go from charging something to nothing (currently most books are $4 in print), but honestly most comic books are too short to make the two bucks worth while. Imagine if you will if the cost per eComic was $1 per issue like iTunes songs, or if you had an all you can eat subscription model for $20 a month. But in any case my bet is that we’ll see other comic book publishers follow Marvel shortly (that or new publishers will enter the field).
Too many of us take for granted what they actually do at NASA: Shown in this video are two astronauts training to fly the space shuttle with a modified Gulfstream jet. What’s mind numbing is that a pilot might make over a thousand of these flights just to qualify for a shuttle mission. I also have to admit that watching this behind the scenes video is a bit bittersweet as there isn’t a real replacement for the shuttle.
Medicom Toy is one of the cooler Japanese hobby companies which has an beautiful series of super realistically rendered figurines known as Real Action Heroes. This series is based upon well known licensed media properties and in the past they’ve put out figures for everything from Dragonball Z to Indian Jones. And they have just branched into Star Wars — shown above is the Real Action Heroes #494 Star Wars R2-D2 and shown below is the Real Action Heroes #493 Star Wars C-3PO: Read more…
