Japan's samurai mascot for 30 years

How’s this for an amazing fact?  Bandai released their total figures of Gundam plastic toy models in its 30-year franchise business.

Around 400,000,000 Gundams were sold!  That’s like…. A LOT ZEROS to count!!!

Talk about insane numbers that give local Japanese accountants to stay up all nights and days to reach this final figure!^^

Most of the sales come from 1/144 scale model range, and the first one (in 1980) sold was for US $3.20  or 300¥.

Now.  That same model selling in today’s price is US $28.20.

Nine times the original price.

If Bandai were to sell that many toys at today’s price, they would be about $12 billion richer worth of its merchandise!! Guess there was a lot of public reason why Bandai really took the trouble to make their Gundam statue over in Odaiba last year! Just to commemorate this major special occassion.

When I was browsing the links of the news source, I found a couple of great Gundam plastic model (1/44) pictures on display, such as these ones.

It’s the exact model of the giant statue in the Odaiba park before they dismantled it.  . ^^

It was interesting to gather understanding how everything works behind the scenes of making these robots in the mass production lines.  They said how Gundam sales was ballooning so well towards mid 80s and suddenly it nearly died off completely thanks to the increasing but vast competition of electronic goods and video games swamping the youth market of Japan, from early 90s till now.  It was thanks to new and innovative business ideas by Bandai Namco’s business leaders and renew faith by Gundam fans from elder generation that gets their children to get active in accepting Gundam (and other mecha) toys as part of the mainstream entertainment.  Just as much as latest video gaming console from XBox, Nintendo, PS3, Wii etc.  They’re equally as popular as the rest of today’s youth enterntainment, fun and games.

Good on them for persevering to the very end^^.  And wish them for another great success for another 30 years!!

Source: ANN.com, Asahi.com, GameWatch, Images provided are owned and copyrighted by Gamewatch.

If you ever feel like grabbing a quick bite in town, be sure to give this place a stop if you are around in Tokyo.

A fast food chain company called Lotteria are selling a combo meal box using all of your favourite Neon Evangelion characters as the main theme.  As depicted on this billboard ad above

This new lunchbox set Lotteria has in store is called ‘Eva Burger and Chicken Box’, which you will have french fries, a burger, fried chicken and a soft drink of your choice. Price is around 980 ¥.

Hmm… Yum. Yum. ^^

Would love to give this one a nice try.  But bear in mind, this offer is not going to be around for long as the offer ends on 31st May 2010.  So you have 30 or so days to give this a go for your usual lunch breaks.

I want to say my big thanks to Ngee Khiong, our Gundam blogger extraordinaire for this wonderful post.

Source:  NgeeKhiong

The end of Misato Katsuragi's anchor career?

Almost a year ago, I made a post about Gainax’s ambitious plans to have a news running game featuring Misato Katsuragi as the news anchor, working for a ficitious television network company called Nerv News 24. The whole concept behind of the game is giving the user that level of ‘real-life’ update of actual news being delivered by Misato Katsuragi to the TV audience, as if you’re watching the real TV news network.  The game covers everything from politics, economics, sports, education to, yes, anime industry.  Just like you would when sitting in front of ABC or CNN news for eg.

Misato Katsuragi, here. Signing off

And sadly, after it’s disappointing run for a year since the Misato Katsuragi news project began, has its curtains drawed to a final close to the Japanese gaming public.

Here’s an video clip of the game for those who’s yet to follow up what the whole concept of this game involves.

Source: Kotaku

Transformers 3 movie are ready to get into works as I read from this news feed from TFormers.com is going to happen in July, so says Michael Bay. They start the works by July 4, USA’s public holiday for Independence day.

The shooting will start various locations in Chicago along with Moscow, where they will carry out action sequences that will be bigger and louder than the two previous Transformers films.

Here’s another interesting scoop, rumours come as a new Autobot will be introduced as Ferrari!  Hmm… I wonder which Autobot character should play for Ferrari disguise? Wheeljack, Afterburner?  Possibilities are simply endless!!^^

Many of the Hollywood actors are return to the screen for the third time.  So, as expected, Shia  Lebouff and Megan Fox are certainly joining the filming party, reprising their roles Sam Witwicky and Mikaela respectively.

To read more, check it out here.

Source: ReelChicago.com

A while ago, Gainax, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann’s creator, have been busy for the past few days in preparing (and finally releasing) their new range of cool gadgets stuff, featuring Gurren Lagann’s main characters as the main themes.

Gurren Lagann Iphone - featuring Yoko on the cover!!

New Iphone applications have been produced.  In fact, they’re actually game.  It’s the new touch adddres book theme, featuring Yoko.  Dubbed as Tatchigemuapuri Touch.

Now since as I don’t own an Iphone myself personally, so bear in mind when I do my best to describe what the software does, in one’s best interpretation.  (Spoilers alert!)

The game works within the touch app settings on the device which allows the user to get better interaction with the user.  And every action the user makes on the device, Yoko expressed different types of facial moods, depending on what sort of finger stroke actions the user’s intending to do with the Iphone.

Here’s the screenshots to demonstrate.

We have Yoko on the main picture

Yoko expresses grimaced look on her face, when changing setup.

Yoko expresses being happy after you’re completing the settings changes on the iphone.

You can set other Gurren Lagann’s  hero other than Yoko as your Iphone page cover.

Pretty neat.  As much as I’m dying to get this app, I couldn’t cause I have an android phone and I’m disappointed they didn’t make an Android version for this game. :-(

Oh well… At least there’s somebody out there who would love to give this a crack. See how you go!

You can download the app directly from App Store here.

Source:  Gainax, All images loaded are owned and copyrighted by Gainax.

Okay…. There’s been a crazy amount of rumours spreading around online for the past few days that a new Mazinkaizer, super almighty demi-god (Oops! Sorry I mean GOD) persona of Mazinger Z is returning to the TV. As new set of OVA series. I was checking to be sure my hard-wired eyes and ears weren’t playing tricks on me….

Till I arrived at a couple of links. Here and there.

It’s title debut comes as Mazinkaizer SKL, judging by the glossy poster above.  Goodness, it’s been almost 10 years since Mazinkaizer made its spectacular debut.

I also happened to stumble upon this fan’s video on Youtube, foretelling about Mazinkaizer SKL going to be released this year.

At the time of writing, I found out from a reliable source of information on FB, that rumour has it that we have two new different hero characters in this show (as depicted in this video).  It turns out Kouji Kabuto is no longer our main protagonist of the new series??!

THIS CANNOT BE!!

It’d better only a rumor, not a FACT!!  I could not imagine myself if we ever lose Kouji Kabuto to some new kids on the block, whom we know very little of.  Some even said that Kouji is no longer piloting Mazinkaizer anymore?!? No!!!!!!!!!

I don’t want to believe it!  IT MUST BE ABSURD!!! >o<

And I hope that’s what will eventually happen…

Source: Mazingo, Mazinkaizer SKL, ANN.com

Since my last post on my own Voltron toy that I “constructed” out of the Toyanmi box and it was another sheer piece of classic toy many mecha enthusiasts would love to have, I bumped into another mecha enthusiast who happens to like building Voltron toys too.

But… this time! He makes them using Lego parts!

Literally!!!

Check out the video and his impressive Lego-building skills after he won this award at a brick building competition.

One thing you’ll notice is around 0:50, you will see all the 5 main hero characters from the show, built as Lego men (or woman for the Blue lion^^). The detail of the character design was incredibly accurate! You’ll also notice towards at the end of the video, there are other mecha builders putting their mecha toys on display.

I praised this guy for doing such marvellous type of work. His passion, his desire to make one of the best classic mecha in the series as a stand-still robot toy for all mecha fans to enjoy!

A super job well done! ^^

Wow!

This is it!  This is my first official toy review on my blog.  Believe I never give reviews like these before.  Been wanting to do this for months since I got the toy months ago.

So bear with me.  I’m going to have to give a go.

When I first purchased this in November, I knew I was going to send myself up for a big ugly surprise with the BIG spendup.

The shipping fee was just nasty shock to deal with as well… Nevertheless I went on and check out my goods and see how it fares.

I have the following item displayed here.

After working on putting the entire package into one super awesome robot in just under 2 hours, this is what it turns out to be…

I must say. I was really quite impressed with the entire process of unpacking, assembling and finally ‘piece’ them all together.  All of the 5 coloured lion pieces were easily ‘configurable’. Meaning they were easy to fold up. Nothing difficult to move the internal structure around with those lions.  It was a just matter of getting used to listening to the ordinary clicks when putting them altogether.

The entire body

Black Lion Head

Black Lion Body

Red Lion

Green Lion

The lion legs..

Blue Lion

Yellow Lion

Now comes with its reputable sword and shield!

Voltron…. DEFENDER OF THE UNIVERSE!!

Voltron charges for battle!!

I must say. I’m liking this toy quite a lot. I like what I’m seeing this toy provides for an old school mecha love like myself sees when having a big toy put into your bedroom on display so people can see what an amazing toy construct it stands up.

All two-thumbs up to Toynami for producing this great toy collector’s edition!

Thanks for stopping by, reading my toy review!  I hope to do more of these in the future.

Tetsujin 28 Go with Shotaro Haneda

Just ran into this website search on Tetsujin 28.

Apparently, there’s been a growing concerns on many Japanese websites that are advertising or selling child pornography DVD material.  Particularly with young high school boys as the ‘popular’ theme.  And they’ve been circulating aound the schools to teachers or sick pedophiles.

What’s really freakish about this discovery made by the policemen is that during their crackdown on this case, they found several websites that has related keyword search phrases that start with Shotaro, as our main protagonist character in Tetsujin 28.  Here’s the excerpt of the online article below.

Police authorities have detected many Internet sites that specialize in pornographic images of boys, according to the National Police Agency. These sites will be closely monitored.

‘Shotakon’ sites

Sites such as Kobayashi’s are dubbed “shotakon” sites. Shotakon–a portmanteau of the words “Shotaro” and “complex”–is a sexual attraction to young boys.

Shotaro refers to Shotaro Kaneda, the main character in the comic “Tetsujin 28-go” (Gigantor in English), who remote-controls a giant robot. The boy, who always wears shorts in the comic, is a prime example of characters that adults attracted to young boys find appealing. A search for shotakon written in katakana characters got 1.18 million hits on the Yahoo search engine, while shotakon in English got 1.49 million hits.

Well, will I be damned!  Didn’t know they’ll treat Shotaro’s shorts in that form.

So beware guys! If you ever run into finding stuff online about Tetsujin 28, like I do, do keep a lookout for these dodgy buggers!! There’s a 1.18 million reasons you’ll get caught, even if it’s not intentional.  Best to avoid or escape yourself from getting into those traps in the first place!

Source: Yomiuri

Gurren Lagann’s Kamina set for the LA anime convention this coming July as announced by Aniplex the voice cast person himself Katsuyuki Konishi (see picture inset above).

He’ll also be there to be judge panellist for Kamina cosplay contest as well.

I’m sure they will be plenty of Kamina wannabes out there who’ll love to give this a major thrill!

Just like this one down below.

Not bad at all.  Great effort for the Spanish dude’s flawless Japanese dialogues!

Totally rock! ^^

Are some of you guys keen to see some great cosplays in your neighbourhood as well?  Or are you planning to do some cosplays yourselves?

Source: Animenewsnetwork.com