Generation Mech » Pop Culture

Gundam Statue in Japan – Ready for Round 2?

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:07:15 +0000

Hang on a sec. Had they not already done this in Odaiba back in September last year?

It sure wasn’t that long ago when it was constructed as part of the Namco Bandai’s 30th commemoration of the Gundam franchise. And they had to take it off after a couple months of display.

And now they’re doing it again for the second time? Well. I’ve no problem with that if you ask me being a mecha fan…

But I just wish they should make things transparent with these. I mean I don’t see how taking it apart and then putting on it again would make any sense when comes to making a strong attraction for overseas tourists to see what Japan’s pop culture lifestyle is got to offer. Especially when it’s already that good to appeal with IN THE FIRST PLACE!

I mean it just doesn’tt seem to add up! >.< And now we have one here constructed in the Shizuoka city, home of 710,000 Japanese citizens, 5th largest city in Japan.

Here’s the conceptual art of the proposed statue design over in Shizuoka city.

Proposed Conceptual Art Design of RX 78 Gundam Statue

As compared to this one at the Namco Bandai’s actual model at their headquarters, with the up-close shot of the light-saber burning through the blue brick.

RX Gundam 78 statue model in Namco Bandai's headquarters on display

I supposed no human casualty is part of the plan too?

Image sourced from Ngee Khiong

Since the project’s completed few weeks back at beginning of this month. Said to have more lighting and special effects during its opening. So this is all part of the hopes of translating more visitors coming into the city, both local and abroad (last year 4 million people came to visit before it got dismantled back in October 2009). And the only the key thing missing from the statue is the completion of the light saber upgrade.

Thanks for Ngee Khiong’s sources, it said to be opened to the public from 24th July 2010 till 10th January 2011, located at East Shizuoka Square.

Source: Ngee Kiong, Escapist.com, Geek.com, Bionicbong.com, Endgadget.com, All images are copyrighted and belong to the rightful sources.

Chinese Transformers raised in Chinese University

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 07:30:57 +0000

A couple of university students from a local Chinese university went all this trouble to make their own life-sized Transformers as part of the graduation project, as far as what I heard. It’s a very interesting project for them to get into. And it’s a 4500 USD project too. That’s a great prize tag they put aside for this project’s funding.

Boy! They sure come out bigger than life, after looking at these amazing photos of 9-m tall monstrosity!

Such amazing detail of the character design based on one of the Chinese famous legends of “Romance of the Three Kingdom”. For those who are not familiar with the Chinese folklore legend, there’s this famous general from a Shu Army whose name is Guan Yu during Chinese ancient times. He’s one of the most powerful generals serving in the Shu army and many legendary tales have been fortold amongst the Chinese for many, many generations. Chinese have profound religious beliefs tied with him and you can find a lot of statues of him around China and other Chinese communities around the world. That’s probably why the Chinese students picked him as the favourite character.

If you ever played one of Koei’s infamous action game series Dynasty Warriors and you used this character. (see below)

This is him and that’s why the transformer’s color resembles a lot as the picture above, along with the halberd weapon.

And here’s the footage of the CGI animation of its transformation as well.

Pretty neat huh? ^^

Source: Kotaku, Gadgetsin, ClonedChina, All images and copyrighted by the source owner

400,000,000 reasons to like Gundam

admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:38:57 +0000

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.

Anybody up for Evangelion burgers?

admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:32:09 +0000

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

Fun with Gurren Lagann on Iphone

admin — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:21:39 +0000

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.

Voltron Lego

admin — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 09:29:39 +0000

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! ^^

Voltron – 25th Anniversary Collection Review

admin — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 09:57:02 +0000

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.

Here’s a freaky thought

admin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 11:08:46 +0000

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 in LA anime convention

admin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 10:45:20 +0000

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

Evangelion for GT300 racing

admin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 10:32:48 +0000

How’s this for a sports sponsorship idea?

Evangelion makers are looking forward to co-sponsor one of the hottest car racing sports on the planet. It is Super GT300-class grand touring championship series around the moutanous areas of Mt Fuji, Japan.

And they will place a Eva Racing Logo on the entire body of aToyota Corolla vehicle.

Check this out to read on!

Source: ANN.com