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<
Within less than 3 weeks to go before its official release date, I ran into this Chinese post a while back. It’s about how they expressed their view of bringing the good ole’ classics back into the TV sets. Back to where it all began!
Here’s excerpt of the chinese article of what the article said.
From leading film production company, Cinematoday news, comes a television broadcast of classic mecha series lasted “Armored Cavalry Votoms” (1983 – 1984), which is recently released. Its works are done and overlooked by Takahashi Ryosuke, Igarashi Purple Zhang, heavy Tiandun Division, Otsuka Tian Ting-style animation and other key staff fully played. Serving as the main animation direcotyr Mr. Tsukada, who’s also the co-producer for “Armored Cavalry Votoms Case: IRVINE“, “Votoms Viewfinder” and “Armored Cavalry Votoms“. These three works will still be based on the original animated view of its original animation works, in the past based on the story that are not part of Jiemi further decryption. However, it will be part of the series series of that represents a whole new dimension of depth that they’ve never done before, and the audience will find this very engaging and are eagerly looking forward to the show. The crowd get a sense that the old Votoms production team with its superb production technology and performance techniques are proven to be a promise for audience to appreciate all the elements of human emotions that are moving and uplifting (which they originally wanted to do in the first place).
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!!^^
Speaking of Tetsujin 28 statue on my last post, Japan’s mobile phone telecommunications provider, NTT Docomo, not long ago aired their new TV commercial, featuring Mitsuteru Yokoyama’s Tetsujin 28 (Gigantor in English).
Basically, the main attraction behind this is to grant the computer users the ability to gain remote control on any movable vehicles or devices using NT Docomo’s wireless data communications adaptor (via USB port).
And when they mean any, they literally do mean ANY.
And what better way to give their latest telecommunication gadgets the ultimate test is to use an 18-foot giant robot as the prime example to show off its power capabilities.
After reviewing their website, I had a quick browse. By passing all their nifty Flash player presentations (just like any other ordinary company websites’ that wish to show off their media content) explaining about their latest telecommunications invention, I found several downloadable wallpaper images of the Tetsujin 28 (select link 05 on the main page).
These images are 1024 x 768. There are larger ones as well you can try ie 1280 x 1024 and 1680 x 1050, if you have a bigger LCD screen with bigger resolutions. So those are sure nice to have.
There’s also this wicked screensaver you load onto your computer once downloaded (which I downloaded and tested it). And what it shows you is the computer prompt screen that loads some OS code and after a few seconds, you’ll see number of blueprint images of Tetsujin 28 appearing on the right half of the screen.
For a telecommunications provider to come up with a design like this and little or no relation to Japan’s anime industry, they sure deserve the big pin-ups for great media works such as these. Good on them for making such effort!
Just reading this article last night. Apparently, Astro Boy was selected as the lucky mascot for Japan as part of their efforts to bid for the FIFA World Cup 2018. It coincides with its impending worldwide release of the film within 7 days, it makes a lot of logical marketing and public relations (PR) sense to make complete use of this opportunity to tell the whole world who and what Astro boy is all about (and the country he proudly serves).
Nothing like a great way to building up its appeal to the masses at such global proportions.
Other countries like England,
Australia, Indonesia, France, Mexico, USA, Russia, South Korea and Qatar are also bidding their hardest for this prestigious host before the bids close for the end of this year, by FIFA.
Are you looking forward to seeing Japan’s increasing chances of winning the bid for the World Cup? Or do you think FIFA should let other countries have a chance because Japan ‘technically’ already done their host in 2002? What do you think
I read this very cool article blog feed from AltJapan.com. Apparently, a pachinko-making (which is a Japanese form of gambling machine that has the functions like a pinball machine except you win the marbles in exchange for cash instead of credits) company, Sankyo, released a couple of amazing TV commercials, using Macross themes as their main elements of advertising, as part of their goals promoting new pachinko machines in Japan’s gambling market.
Macross Commercial - by Sankyo
If you watch the commercials, they used everything from the Macross series to make such impact! The music, the Valkeyries, Macross City, the clouds, Lynn Minmei! EVERYTHING!
With a tiny difference. They use real-life actors and objects.
Well, almost all real-life actors and objects. I love the way they did the bring out (spoilers alert!) transformation sequence of the Macross city like that!
It just occurred to me that Tokyo Game Show 2009 happened over the weekend whilst I was away at my friend’s place for fun, food and games amongst with other busy things I’m involved with lately. Looks like I’d better get into the scoop and see what fun I missed…
After watching the video below, I expected nothing less of the game show. Lots, lots of promotional stands on the latest video games on all platforms, developed by various international software companies of the world. Some big ones like Microsoft, Capcom, EB, Activision etc etc. And compared to the experience I had with other cultural expos that revolves travel, wines, food (and anime of course) in NZ, this was massive, off the charts.
It’s definitely a very, very, very (and I do mean) very wide space of a video games ‘playground’, where people of all walks of life come together to frolick themselves to their utmost content for hours.
Here are some of the latest video game trailers you may be interested to view. (Well they are my personal interests to me, because I’m fan of big guys game makers like Capcom, Koei and Konami)
Final Fantasy XIV
Metal Gear Online
Sengoku Musou 3 (by Koei: makers of Dynasty Warriors Series)
Trinity: Souls of Zill O’ll (by Koei: Makers of Dynasty Warriors Series)
Tatsunoko vs Capcom Allstars
The last trailer was interesting one because it featured certain characters that have mecha-esque characteristics. One of them was a giant robot called Gold Lightan, a very popular super robot show from the early 80s and he’s selectable fighter in the game (from the looks of it). Anyone who’s got Gold Lightan as a favourite super robot series from those early days? I wish it was. But they never aired it back in Malaysia.
And….
I found out that our anime enthusiast idol ‘legend’, Danny Choo, recently received a photo of a giant Gundam’s head (which was disassembled a few weeks ago) been put on a display at the Tokyo Game Show! See the link below.
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. Â 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.
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?
One of my favourites (or everybody favourites, if you lived through the 80s) of all time. It was one of my first favourite mecha shows to watch other than Macross.
Who would have thought this long-line of Japanese toys made by Takara (aka Takara Tomy as of 2006) were reused or rehashed in this cartoon version that everybody get so much craving for? Having to learned that Takara’s toylines range Diaclone and Microman series were scooped up by Americans when American toy maker Hasbro came to see Takara at the Tokyo Toy Show in 1983. They were keen to have their toylines range because they were impressed how their scale models were designed to include humanoid figures to sit/drive in them and they’re able to transform into humanoid forms. Since Hasbro bought the rights to their product lines, the company and its key people began their marketing heavily on these as one major toy line range, hence the name “Transformers†was born. So what this evolution possible?
What started was that Takara made Microman toylines that were based on one of Japanese cyborg anime series called Henshin-Cyborg 1. The series’ popularity spawned many of these 3-inch cyborg models are that tiny many kids grew to like them so Takara made one of many great commercials on these such as below.
After its success, Takara made another spin-off of Microman series (using the same toy design development) which you have miniature size vehicles that are transformable into humanoid figures. Since then, Takara had made a number of Diaclone TV commercials in the early 80s such as this (featuring Optimus Prime in its formative days).
There are a number of countless Diaclone commercials featuring other familiar Transformers characters such as Ironhide, Ratchet, Bumble Bee just to name a few. And that’s probably the reason why Hasbro made a wise decision to have them and reinvented them into a branch so people in my generations would never forget how and why it was considered as one of the great childhood cartoon stories that’s ever produced of all time.
Henceforth, Hasbro decided to give us two distinctive factions.
Autobots Logo
Decepticon Logo
The story sets in a far away distant planet called Cybertron, and the two forces are battling out for the greater control of the planet. Autobots were fighting for peace and justice whilst Decepticons sought for power, domination and control. The battle was fought for many millennia. Several millennia later, the Autobots wanted to come up with an ultimate strategy that will end the war with Decepticons. They want to start the space exploration to find raw source of energy that will help them accomplish that goal. However, little did they aware, the plans were eavesdropped by Decepticons and so Decepticons decided to ‘join’ the exploration in their own space ship as well. Soon, once both of them caught up with each other, the intense fight took up in the Autobot spaceship. Next few brief moments, their spaceships made a collision course into the Earth’s stratosphere and Autobots crash-landed onto a volcano. All of them remained lifeless.
Four million years later, they were revived again as new technologies were invented. And Autobots and Decepticons learned to adapt the Earth’s environment and began to transforming into all sort of vehicles. Later in the series, the battle between the two forces ensues and once again the war of the Transformers resumes…
They are two great leaders of the two factions.
We have Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots, seen as very honourable, compassionate, strong, pragmatic, possess strong leadership qualities and a very wise leader.
Then we have Megatron, Leader of the Decepticons, leader of the Decepticons, seen as the tyrant, vile, cunning, evil, greed for power and seeks for interplanetary domination with the final quest of eradicating all the Autobots in all galaxies, starting from our solar system.
And then you have the Autobots and Decepticons teams who follow their respective leaders, all of them share one purposeful goal of winning the Transformers war. With an impressive cast of characters, we see a large array of Autobots and Decepticons, each has a unique characteristics when they transform from robot mode into humanoid mode and vice versa.
Autobots
Dinobots
Aerialbots
Decepticons
Insecticons
Constructicons
Combaticons
Since the series ran for 98-successful episodes between 1984 and 1987, numerous toy production lines came out from the series and many new Transformers series came out such as Headmasters, Beast Wars, Machine Wars, Robots in Disguise etc etc. Transformers franchise really became a serious hit for many kids around that time and they just flocked to their toy stores like crazy buzzy bees sucking out all the last boxes of Transformers toylines to bring them home. I was like that one of them. All of the Generation Mechs were, I’m sure.
Transformer’s popularity was its raw power of attraction that has kept people for talking about it for years and generations, even after the series ended. And now we have several websites that are dedicated to these such as Transformers.com (by Hasbro), IDW Publishing, TransformersClub.com, Botcon.com and several other unofficial fansites more to come.
We’ve seen the two latest Transformers movies that’s recently came out towards the end of first decade of 2000 since Transformers: The Movie back in 1986.
And to remind ourselves that have seen Transformers G1 and recall those four seasons of episodes, here are their intros. (If you haven’t, then sit back, relax and watch the intros and I would put a recommended suggestion you get its DVD/Blue ray release.
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
Season 4
I remembered after the entire series ended at its fourth season, the continuity of Transformers saga went on but it was divided into a couple of streams, and one of them was produced in Japan, where they gave us The Headmasters, Super-god Masterforce, Victory and Zone. They were broadcast mostly in Japan/Asia in the later years. Looks like I have another Transformers subcategory to write into my list of mecha chronology. It’s going to be a long while.
In the meantime, let’s us rejoice the fact what is to one of the best childhood cartoon series that’s ever produced, throughout our lives. For the past, the present and the future. And it’s all thanks to this one little figurine that turn Takara’s and Hasbro’s imaginations into a reality. A reality that results in achieving incredible scale of critical success to its franchise.
I’ve heard a lot about the Super Robot Wars games lately. And after spending some time in Youtube, judging by the looks of countless Youtube videos being posted by so many mecha fans in relation to this title, there’s a clear suggestion that they were great games to play and I wished we had something like that in New Zealand shores.
Even if they are completely done in Japanese language, they should be still be sold in one of those selected niche parallel import markets where people like me living downunder can come over and get a taste of them. But sadly, no. Our market’s too small to be catered for this at the time.
My understanding that these games were made by a company Banpresto, a Japanese video game development company who has made the Super Robot Wars series franchise for the last 18 years in the business. The company, part of Namco Bandai’s division, has spawned numerious SRW titles on several video game platforms from Nintendo to Playstation during its tenure. The concept of the game is that they are RPG genre, which involves plenty of turn-based rounds with your favourite super robot characters. They get to level up, get experience points, learn new skills or attacks and they get to challenge tougher mechanical monsters just like your favourite characters from Final Fantasy games, Kingdom Hearts, etc. Players beat monsters when it’s their turn, monsters beat the crap out of players once it’s their turn next etc.
In those early times, not many super/real robots were brought into the games. There was only Mazinger Z, Getter Robo and a Gundam character, probably. The other robot series in the 80s and 90s were later added on other SRW titles.
Having check on this Japanese SRW blog page, I gazed upon its huge gallery of SRW titles and I wanted to find out what was the first SRW game title created. And I looked at this.
Super Robot Taisen F 1997 PS1
And I looked up this video link on Youtube that relates to the poster above.
Okay. I should have mentioned earlier this is not a Playstation game as you can see from the video.(apparently, they don’t have any Playstation video equivalent online -_-) Nevertheless, fundamentally it’s still the same title.
A number of familiar characters’ faces from the Mazinger Series and Getter Robo as you began the game and several dialogues emerged as you keep playing. This is very refreshing indeed.
I would like to get one of these. However, they don’t see anymore PS machines in our shores. :(
