Ever thought about running a toy business of your own?  Does that ever come to anyone’s mind that this is a business that they could do, even though it may sound uncommon to you?

No matter what your varied opinions are on how this type of business could (or should) work, there’s one person who demonstrated her major love affair in this tin-toy business.  And it’s an Australian Chinese celebrity, Claudia Chan Shaw, who’s definitely loving her robot toys like none other you can imagine!  All of her toys ranging all the way to the 50s classic like characters from Lost in Space.  And she also takes a great fancy with Japanese toys too, including Astro Boy!^^

Image sourced from Sydney Morning Herald

I was left amazed of how this OZ celebrity could run a toy collectable business in this  industry, when the fact is that her actual profession is working in the fashion industry, making boutique knitwear for women!  And she’s also running a toy business that any guy (like myself^^) would love to spend their entire life working on?

For there’s a lot of money to be made in this industry.  Crazy lots.

It’s time for me to building my collection so one day I’ll end up having a closet as big as hers!

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Just read exciting news!

Sunrise is going to bring back one of the great 80s classic mecha anime show back into this modern century.

Armored Trooper Votoms is here! THEY’RE BACK!

A new promotional video of this classic series is out!

And after a while, I was browsing for it on Youtube yesterday…  And lo and behold, I found it!

This is fantastic! And with only less than 30 days to go, it’s going to be one heck of an exciting ride to relive the essence of 80s great anime classics!!^^

Source: ANN.com, Youtube.com

Saw this ANN.com post some months ago. And I thought I love to share this piece with everyone.

Japan’s latest wacky robot invention that not only can speak and move recently, but can also – I couldn’t believe it when I first saw this – cosplay and sing as well!!

The new HRP-4C robot model was dressed up as this anime character, known as Miku Hatsune, whose apparently a very popular anime character that seems to be taken a widespread appeal among the Japanese media enthusiasts and raise the industry watchdogs for quite some time.

Never heard much about her.  However, according to Wikipedia, she’s a ‘product’ made by music instrument company, Yamaha, that produces synthetic music and singing of various popular songs by actually matching the pitch and vocal range of the actual singers when she  started to open her mouth to sing.  Really impressed.

Check out some of 80’s popular songs sang by her.

Miku Hatsune singing “Heaven is a place on earth” by Belinda Carlise in 1987

Here’s the original version…..

Miku Hatsune singing “Hard to say sorry” by Chicago

And the original video….

^^

Source: ANN.com, Youtube.com, Wikipedia.org

Before I resume, I just want to say Happy New Year 2010 to everyone! And hope everybody had a great Christmas break and safe New Year’s holiday!  Now the new year  with the second decade of 2000 rolling in, lots of goals and objectives everybody wants to aim.

I certainly have some.  One of my goals is to resume blogging again after being away in my Christmas/NY’s holidays. :-)

And today, I want to share something I learned from AltJapan the other day.

You will find that he’s stumbled across some very interesting documents about GCS…

All the early concept artwork of Mospaeda were found! At last!  It’s been so many years since the show finished in the early 80’s.  And here we have an actual copy of the documents sitting in the all-forgotten warehouse (where the original studio used to run), somewhere in Japan.

You can even download the copy of its documents too! Take a look!!!

Source:  AltJapan.com

Well… Not on all facets of them yet anyway.

Just starting with TV program first.

At least that’s what I understand after reading the blog from AltJapan and LightSabre.

Source: Anime Gender Ranking Page (Japan)

The top chart reads out that males’ top 5 anime preferences are

1. K-On!
2. The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi
3. Lucky Star
4. Gundam (all series)
5. Saki

Whilst for girls, theirs are

1. Gundam (All series)
2. K-On!
3. Code Geass
4. Macross Frontier
5. Evangelion / Toradora

After reading the above blogs, there’s a somewhat general consensus that we’re seeing a ‘reversing’ trend of male vs female otakudom.  Males are usually(and always will be) attracted to high-tech items, gadgets, toys, male-leading roles in various animes whilst girls are attracted to several romance, gentle characters (both male and female), and teenage-type dramas in several anime.

Couldn’t reach a final comment to say this is necessarily a good thing or a bad thing….

All I can say is that it’s a different kind of the generation for the youth in this modern day.   Tastes have certainly changed (or rather, evolved) and many people within the anime business community will have to be smart enough to follow where the youth market of the future is heading  to (and capitalize on their changing needs).  It’s bold step for them to engage new types of anime business activity for the youth of both sexes.

Perhaps it’s also another way of breaking down the barrier in gender differences for the first time in history and that both sexes don’t have to feel awkward when exchanging tastes between the two?  Perhaps they’re more open-minded now than they were many years back…

Source: AltJapan, LightSabre

Gundam Statue in Odaiba Park before being dismantled in early September this year

Reading a couple of anime feeds from ANN.com, I can see that several bloggers posted a lot on how Gundam won one of the best awards in Japan in the category of art and design.

For the team of Green Tokyo Gundam, they sure certainly deserve a great praise by the public.  A very honourable praise.  Good on them for their outstanding achievement!!   With so many Gundam bloggers online, it’s difficult to see how such a ‘recreational’ figure (why I call it recreational it’s because technically it was part of Odaiba parks’ recreational activities) that’s been crafted to such extraordinary lengths.

And it won’t be long before Tetsujin 28 statue will have its turn to get nabbed for award nominations, since its unveil in early September October.

Not sure about its design potential though.  Maybe more comic potential?

Source: ANN.com, Youtube.com

I was supposed to blog post this yesterday. However, had experienced major problems with my internet broadband due to an major outage around my neighbourhood, so had to leave it till now.

After reading off this Danny Choo’s newsfeed, it worries me for a long while now that Japan’s having one of the lowest birthrates in the world means they’re going to be ‘wiped’ off from this side of the planet, if the government doesn’t do something about it, at this level of urgency. And one of their proposed solution was to manufacture more robots.

Is this right? Is this way forward for Japan’s future of saving its dying population?

Here’s the Youtube documentary video link below to give you a better idea what’s being said…

Source: DannyChoo.com

Just as things are going to heat up as the world premiere approaches in 7 days time, I might as well present yyou the scoop on Astro Boy’s Hollywood celebrities interviews, starring Kristen Bell and Freddie Alfred Highmore.

Here’s the video clip captured at this year’s Comic Con, held in San Diego.

But WAIT A SEC…. can you recognise those two here? When have we seen them before? And how?

It took me a few eye blinks to readjust my eyeballs position and have a good look at Kristen Bell, and reached conclusion that Kristen Bell played the character heroine in Veronica Mars.

Goodness! It’s been a long while since we had that show running in New Zealand. I thought the series has ended, hasn’t it? At least, that’s what appeared to be for us down-under.

And then we have Freddie Highmore, who used a number of child acting roles, not many of us were fully aware of. According to his filmography, he’s done Finding Neverland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Golden Compass and his latest work The Spiderwick Chronicles.

Here’s some of his brief movie clips trailers.

Freddie Highmore in Finding Neverland, 2002

Freddie Highmore in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 2005

Freddie Highmore in The Spiderwick Chronicles, 2007

It couldn’t believe it’s been that many years passed since Freddie Highmore played a number of child acting roles. And well!  He’s all grown up! And now playing one of the coolest anime characters of all time!

Are you a big fan of Kristen Bell and/or Freddie Highmore?

Source: YouTube.com

Now we’ve witnessed the closing (and disassembly) of the 1/1 scale Gundam in Odaiba since the beginning of this month, I began to wonder about the last 30 years of great success Gundam franchise has enjoyed and how special it oughta be expressing to tell everyone in anime industry business that they’re still in good shape for so long.

Personally, I never was a major Gundam fan during the last 29 and ½ years of my human life.  Only more recently,  I get more involved in making myself a Gundam model after buying it off from an anime exhibit.  And I must admit.  I really do like it. :)  I could get used to this.

And because Tomino Yoshiyuki (the godfather of Gundam) convinced me Gundam has that everlasting appeal to kids and adults of all ages could like and having aplenty of fun with them, I decide to find a good video that truly celebrates its 30th anniversary in this line of business both Sunrise and Bandai certainly have enjoyed.

Some days later…

On last Tuesday, I finally did it.  I found this.

This is probably the most comprehensive, most complete video that ever encapsulates every wonderful marvel of Gundam franchise’s achievements over the last three decades.  I couldn’t find anything similar on Youtube channels. Even if I did, they weren’t as commemorative as this.  It goes on explaining about how the show began in the late 70s, and how that was the starting point for all future Gundam shows it’s going to be modelled everytime new series is produced.  It highlights all of its series in a chronological order that were made in the last 30 years and I’m sure many Gundam fans (old and new) out there would find it refreshing and nostalgic to revisit these.  The characters, the plot, the stories, the myths, the Gundam technology… Old and new.  Everything.

With its ever-lasting appeal of  its anime and growing toy market in Japan and the rest of the world, and its endearing iconic status as Japan’s “mascot”, as part of pop culture, the series would sure flourish well for another 30 years.

Looks like I have a lot of catching up to do during that timespan.  This is going to be fun.

Enjoy the video!

Source: Tudou.com

A little over a week ago, in my last post, I mentioned about endeavouring to find this great rare book online since it’s out of publication for the last 11 years.

And by jolly gosh, I found it! There’s someone on Ebay that’s actually selling this out-of-print copy. So I quickly rushed in and ready to make the purchase of USD $22 (excluding shipping cost) rather than bidding. (Okay so I was pretty desparate that I didn’t want to wait for its bidding period of 14 days 55 hours to be over despite there’s hardly anybody bidding for it. But I don’t care! :p).

However, as soon as I tried to purchase it, I was stopped short in the next screen when it asked me to for my ebay account information.  And… I just realised right at that moment I forgot what my password was and I remembered I had trouble registering my Ebay account with them a few days back and I never got it to work properly. So because of this, I ended up struggling for almost 90 minutes of my life trying to create another account. But Ebay refused me to proceed! What on earth was going on here???

Clearly, I was left pretty flustered, confused and a bit frustrated that I couldn’t get my hands on it anymore…. So I hesitantly gave up and try another avenue instead.

Which I did after 20 minutes later…..

I discovered this on Barnes and Nobles.

The other Super Robot Chronicles Book

Okay. It’s a little different to what I originally wanted. Nevertheless, the theme of the book still revolves around Japanese super robots and the robot toys in the 70s and 80s. And after reading its little content summary on Barnes and Noble pages, it’s confirmed that all the super robot series from the early 70s and 80s are included there such as Micronauts, Diaclones and Shogun Warriors. Interesting they mentioned that the authors of the book who are very passionate with Japanese robots, especially in the toy collection space and that one of them worked for a company called ToyBoxDX that specialises in collecting the Japanese toys from previous decades until today. Apparently, they do have a website that comes with blogs as well. Hmmm… Maybe worth to pay a lengthy visit.

Anyway, I purchased the book online, filled in all the details, and have the order processed. Done and dusted. At least it’s better than nothing, right?

The order is expected to arrive within 7-21 days. Its retail price went for USD $18.95. The shipping fee came up as USD $12.95. The total was USD $31.90. So if you translate that in NZ currency terms, I’m expected to pay around 45 bucks, which is okay IMHO. The book comes paperback after all with 250 pages inside. So it’s a good spend with a great service from Barnes and Noble. :)

Now I wonder would it be worthwhile for me to check out Ebay again for that original print?

Source: Barnes And Noble