After I finished browsing online shopping details of Voltron Masterpiece 25th Anniversary edition, I stumbled upon a strange cartoon character that looks so ‘pouty’ in roundness.

I thought it’s big circular round hands and feet, my next best guess was going to be Doraemon (a popular classic Japanese robot cat for kids) that could match this description perfectly. But to my surprise (and my amusement ^^), it turns to be a like this….

Hello Kitty Voltron

The artist chickenpoppod certainly have the humorous imagination in order to come up with something like that.

But wait! That’s not all. How bout this?

The Original Voltron

Now that’s classic! :)

Source: The images do not belong to me.  Courtesy of fan artist chickenpoppod from Fanpop.com

Guess after reading this post from CartoonLeap.com site, we’re starting to see the not-so-rosy picture side of things in Japanese animation for the aspiring young ones out there.

I know it’s awful to hear the truth, but it’s better to be safe than be sorry not to spell out the news….

Or…  You can work your way up to become a manager/audio director of a company.  Only then will you start making yourself a decent living like everyone else.  Provided the inflationary pressures from the world’s economy is not taking a huge on this industry yet….

Source: CartoonLeap.com

Been meaning to post on Saturday evening, however it became such a mission for me to upload the photos on my Wordpress online, I realised this is not gonna be an easy 5 minute job…. And finally here I am.

This is something I dont’ see that often. For the past 15 years since I live in the ‘land of the long while cloud’, anime was word that’s unknown to many general people of NZ and certainly the contrast was incredibly obvious between my adopted country and home country of Malaysia, where anime is seen as a common household product in the neighbourhood of 20 million plus people. Here, to get a manga book was certainly a rarity for these and the closest thing you can ever find them (which I vaguely remember) is from a Taiwanese shop that sells parallel imported goods or from Taiwanese high school friends I used to went out with, and they get the latest trends of manga imports.

Now fast-forwarding the clock 15 years later…. Things have changed. It has changed a lot.

Thanks to the introduction of Pokemon and Dragonball Z into the NZ youth market towards late 90s, the anime space was exploding that was never seen before. It broke all barriers and soon many new young New Zealand fans are spreading the word of ‘anime’ in the community like wildfire. They learn many things about manga, otaku, shonen, doujinshi, cosplay and the culture of Japanese animation so quickly. I feel like I’m no longer a visitor to my new found homeland anymore.  Everything I do here is almost like being back at home! And what better way for them to get into this pop culture phenomenon, is to have our very own local anime convention centre in the Southern Hemisphere, right in the heart of Auckland City.

It’s probably our first anime convention centre ever in New Zealand’s history. At least, that’s what I found from this link at AnimeCons.com. So New Zealand has come a long way with this and we see a rising number of young fans that mould in very well in this array of ‘Japan-esque’ fun everything from dressing up your favourite anime characters as for eg Sailor moon to owning your very first 1/1 scale Mobile Gundam model! (I was kidding about the 1/1 scale part. Lol.)

Nevertheless, my curiosity for discovering the world of anime in New Zealand never dissipates so I decided to venture out on the quest to see just how much New Zealand as a whole learnt much about anime.

And after the first two hours of almost non-stop (well not really, I had to recharge my parking fare every hour (long story) so I had to rush out and rush back in) photo-taking, and a few hundred of photos later, and countless hours of uploading, here’s the entire album below.  Broken into 4 categories.

NZ Doujin Overload 2009

Local Doujin convention centre in New Zealand

10 Photos

Local Anime and Cartoon Artists in New Zealand

Talented NZ anime artists showing off their drawing talents

26 Photos

Cosplay and Dance

All the cosplays, dancing 'Japanese' high school girls and music etc...

30 Photos

Anime Videos, Models and Merchandise

DVDs, Gundam and Mecha Model Merchandise etc..

82 Photos

This is great start for New Zealand.  As I walked around the room, letting my curious gaze linger from one desk to another, prying on the marvellous artworks by these bright intelligent artists, who clearly show their desire and passion in drawing, I sense something’s good is bound to happen for these talented young guns.  I asked every person I met on each desk about their age and how long they love to drawing, and you hear the same answer over and over.  14-18 year olds love to drawing since they were little kids getting their first drawing pencils and continue to excel their ’scribbling’ into great works of anime/manga art.  They’re incredible, I tell you.  (which you will soon see after you look into my album).

They got a number of cosplays going on there from Japanese high-school outfits to one guy dressing up as Vincent, a character  from Final Fantasy VII.  Plenty of dances going on too (which I need to find the time to upload,  if I’m lucky enough to be busy).  And last, but not least, there’s a section of all mecha toys and models that I could finally find (YES!!!) in our local shores, ie no need for E-bay buying anymore for sure.   Apparently, NZ market is actually small so having a NZ as a young market for youth products like this is a foregone conclusion.  There’s still potential for this before we could rival our so-called “big brother” of the Oceania region and their much bigger show of anime. (see Youtube clip below).

At the end of the day, I did not go home empty-handed, for I certainly did make lot of purchases, if anything not overtly-exorbitant like buying myself a 1/1 Gundam model and put in my frontyard! I’m planning to post this on another page as there’s a lot of great material including magazine of Japan’s wonderful world of modelling hobby.

So stay tuned.

Source: AnimeCons.com

Do you ever ask yourself why is that you love to watch so many cool movies, tv shows, comics or (like me) anime, and then you decided that the show “works” well for me to enjoy further? You like them so much, you started to talk more about them, you want to share your favourite heroes, characters with your friends, you want to learn everything else about this new found hobby, and get yourself a little wee bit obsessed with them. In other words, you’ve just turned yourself as a fan.

Becoming a mecha fan is no different to the rest of mainstream we all see in this modern pop culture of anime. The question remains now for you is that how do you become mecha fan in the process when there’s plenty of young ‘guns’ out there who’s never heard of the word “mecha” but they do wish to get into it.  Well,  to the reader of this source, your answers lies here.

Here are the 5 best ways you can start to become a mecha fan.  Here are the 5 best ways you can start to become a mecha fan.

1. Watch mecha anime. Lots of them.

   That’s right. The first and foremost step in developing your interests in mecha anime is watch them. That’s the simplest thing you can do to begin with. I watched several mecha anime on TV in my early childhood life and I must say I dearly enjoyed them and I’m glad to be a fan of many of their shows. Go to Youtube.com and search for “mecha”, and you find there’s hundreds or thousands of Youtube link videos of countless mecha from the 70s, 80s and 90s. Most of them are either opening scenes or closing of the mecha episodes. If there’s too many to choose from, start from Transformers cause the most common and blatantly obvious for many fans to get interested into mecha, so get into it, learn about their characters and then purchase any dvd releases once they’re on sale such as Amazon.com, Play-asia.com etc.

2. Buy robot toylines from any toy store, offline and online. (And it doesn’t have to be Transformers)

   Well you can, if you want. So if you do see any Transformers toy stand in the stores, buy them, regardless of your age. That’s right. You heard me. Buy them regardless of your age. I don’t care how crazy you think this idea is to you but you just have to get it. (I have done it. And I feel proud of owning my 1/36 scale Transformer vehicle. Did I mention it’s yellow?) Doing so will encourage you to appreciate the ownership of small scale models and understand why ‘true’ fans do pursue mecha merchandising as a hobby.

3. Attend anime/sci-fi/comic book convention centres

   Pretty straightforward. Just go to any public relations places where they announced the next wave of sc-fi/comic book convention centres to be held at your locality just like ours in NZ. The major advantage you get from this is that you will have greater exposure on several mecha anime figurines and merchandise and more than 70% of the time you will have easier access to them as compared to buying them online. If you like me, living in New Zealand, check out this Armaggedon website for more details on the functions services catered on the days of the convention centre. Otherwise, check out Animecons.com on http://www.animecons.com/ where you can find other convention centres around the world, and pick the ones that’s closest to you. You can also submit the convention centres through there as well, if you couldn’t find any.

4. Join any mecha-related forums or blogs

   I recently started doing this a few weeks ago on MechaTalk.net forum. After signing up, I started to learn more about the common topics people discuss in relation to mecha as a hobby. From there, you will pick up more and more areas on mecha not many newbie are aware of such as modelling, crafting, painting, artworks, your favourite mecha, etc etc. And best of all, they’re free for you to sign up, and doesn’t cost you anything to go online and start making comments on anything you could think of regarding mecha.

5. Start your own mecha-theme collection

   This is new to me. But I thought it would make sense to pursue this area of fandom, as I notice websites like Collectiondx.com that offers wide-range of mecha toys, most of them come as die-cast metal alloy (aka Soul of Chogokin) that I used to like having them around during my childhood years. Now having bumped into them, you’ll find that websites catered for people in my age group (currently in my late 20s) wanting to buy mecha toys, but only for colleciton purposes. I like that idea and I’ll start planning to make purchases on all the old (and new) mech toys in the long run.

That’s it. Those five simple and easy ways to get into mecha fandom should get you a bit of an idea. And the most important thing during this process is that you get to have fun them. With fun, you’ll enjoy your time more with time and you let yourself know why you’re enjoying this in the first place.

For a cheaper price, of course.

In my previous blog,  Transformerscollectorsset.com recently launched the Transformers G1: The Matrix of Leadership Edition DVD package of 16 DVDs, fridge magnets, concept artworks, Transformers terminalogy textbook, old Transformers TV commercial etc less than 3 weeks ago.  And that USD $140.00 seems like a heavy price tag to pay for, considering the amount space you’re going to need to store in your bedroom once you unravel the goods.  Check out the photos on the package on this link to see what I mean.  It’s a waste of space, I reckon especially if you don’t know what to do with all that extra pieces of packaging this set comes with.  Worst case would be once you open it, read and ‘consume’ the items, you put them back and hide it somewhere in the attic, and you’ll never see it until you get like ‘geeky’ friends to come over and share your newfound toy with them.

I don’t mean to discourage people from buying it, if they’re considered themselves to be avid collectors.   This is true for people who are serious collectors of the great classic series, and those who love them should seriously make reservations without any hesitation.  I could be one, but I don’t have the decent furniture to keep them in a warm place where it truly deserves some shred of memorabilia people can admire and see.  In other words, I just hesitated! Boohoo!

So if you’re like me, and you’re probably thinking this package is not something worth your while but still feel like an old school mecha fan at heart who just want the DVDs to enjoy, there are other alternate sites you get for a cheaper price.

Here’s the list.

• Madman Entertainment – They have entire collection in 17 DVDs.  The packaging comes  as Decepticon edition, meaning the box comes in a purple color, which is predominant colour of Autobot’s nemesis.  The price is not bad.  Comes around USD $70.00.  It comes along a booklet that has interview with the great Simon Furman, the artists pioneer behind Transformers comics over the last 25 years, old scripts and storyboards, old TV commericals and commentaries from Director etc.
• DvdOrchard.com.au –  Same thing as Madman link above, with a slight marginal difference in the price.  Also they do sell Transformers series in four different 4 DVDs, apparently.
• Yesallasian.com – Very reputable link for all Asian and anime DVDs.  This one’s at the retail price of USD $99.99, comes with 16 DVDs of the series, plus the original “Transfomers: The Movie”, and a deck of cards that has all of your Transformers characters imprinted on them. Neat! Also it comes with a hard casing as well.
• GlobalEasySell – Another good source of great priced Transformers G1.  Price is USD $59.99.  And it has all the 98 episodes on 15 DVDs, including the movie. Says here’s a similar link from Amazon too. (Hmm…  This might work for me. O_o).
• Dvdset.tv – A dvd store that sells popular shows from the past everything from Married with Children to Magnum PI. And tranformers certainly fits the bill.  It has the complete series as well, selling at USD $53.99.  Does not include the movie.

There are a number of good DVD stores that you can get great bargains as well.  But I reckon the important thing is to find out the history of the company, how reputable and professional company has been when servicing its customers, and the good reviews on the products consumers’ get from.  Bottom line is to that you have choices and that’s going to determine the level of satisfaction you get once you have the final product in your hand.  Looks like I’m gonna have to make my own choice soon…

Whilst we’re still waiting for the upcoming and greatly-anticipated Transformers 2 film in a few weeks time,  I bumped across a Transformers fan site that just announced, not long ago, that company Shout! Factory’s going to release Transformers DVD collection set, that comes with 16 DVDs (say that again? 16 DVDS????) of every ‘G1′ Transfomers animated series in the 80s.  Not only that, it also comes with several other impressive items to add to every Transformers’ fan collectors item such as concept artworks, photo gallery, interview scripts etc.

Whilst I was reading the article from TVShowsOnDVD.com page, they said the collection set (entitled “The Transformers – 25th Anniversary Matrix of Leadership Edition: Collectors’ Set”), is available for buy at San Diego Comic-Con, running between July 23-26, this year.  (Check this link for find out more).  And if you’re anything like me, living several thousand miles away from the world’s craziest comic book convention centre and having a decent flight ticket is not ideal approach to getting there (especially in the economic climate everybody’s in), then you can also order it online via TransformersCollectorSet.com.   The starting price is at USD $140.00, which includes free shipping and handling of shipping within USA borders, and the delivery time takes up to 5 days after placing orders  (not sure whether this is theoretically true for international orders as it could take 7-10 days to deliver from my Amazon shopping experience).

Nevertheless, it’s there for everybody to order online anytime before beginning of July.  I would like to make a go for this, but I couldn’t because I’m not sure I really need the other special features it comes with.  Some people may like them.  But I’m not.  So it’s a matter of personal preferences for some people, I guess.  Would be interesting to find out whether there’s a majority of people out there really thought this a great steal of bargain for Transformers hard-core fans…