Cosmo Wing
Ok, that's the official word on my lecture this Fri/13 at Temple University Japan Campus. I didn't choose that colour or the font for this flyer (which you have to click in order to make it a "biggie"), but being a massive fan of fantasy surrogates myself, I did indeed write my own copy. This event is free and open to the public so show up in your very best Dragonball club shirts and ask a bunch of questions I can't answer about Inu-Yasha.
Otaku Power - Trivia/Desire/Transformation
Laser Discs
Movie posters
Magazines
Trading cards
Guns
MTRON MSD-PATA 3025-109-2
Who is that man, what is the unspeakable power he wields in his hands, and how did he ever manage to escape from Cyber City Oedo 808? Turns out, he's just another A-boy carefully following the instructions in the 11/11 issue of Weekly ASCII magazine on how to “jack into the mainframe” using a canny combination of HMD, USB receiver, battery pack, wireless keyboard, fit-PC slim, flannel shirt, and bad jeans. Follow these instructions, and you too can trash talk Koreans @ 2chan while on the go, peruse the latest issue of Dengeki Moe-oh while actual women waltz by, and just generally help the Neo-Human Army to finally triumph over everyone you hated in high school.
The article also suggests using the set-up in what looks alarmingly like the crapper at the Akihabara UDX center or maybe on an idol stakeout or grassy knoll in conjunction with Google Maps. Either way, FUTURE WAR FOUR HAS ALREADY BEGUN!
Anime Weekend Atlanta
I don't know what else to say except that I'm going to be at Anime Weekend Atlanta from 9/19-9/20 and I'm currently going out of my mind getting ready. I'll be participating in at least 4 panels and lord knows what else will go down in that part of town.
I really think this is the best anime con in the US for so many reasons and I can't wait to hang with Dave Merrill, Carl Horn, the AWO kidz, Paul Thomas Chapman, Darius Washington and the staff of the Waffle House and Paschal's at the airport.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the line-up for the panels and such...
Fri/19, 3PM, Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno, Main Events, Grand Ballroom
Sat/20, 10AM, Mondo Otaku USA, Main Events, Grand Ballroom
Sat/20, 12PM, Anime Podcast Roundtable, Special Events, Kennesaw
Sat/20, 1PM, Message From Space, Special Events, Kennesaw
Handy Dandy Pocket Program here.
Shofukucho locker key #10
"Ultimate, perfect bodies"
Only known photo, so far, of the Kano sisters at Otakon (taken from the ANN blog, go figure...).
Anime Expo® 2008 Report (DAY ONE)
The convention center!
Guests of Honor!
INDUSTRY insiders!
World premieres!
Cosplay! (釣りキチ三平 AKA Fishing Crazy Sanpei)
Subject: Moe
Again, via Yoshiki Takahashi
"These are some of the MOE games and shit from killer's (Tomohiro Kato's) apartment."
Doesn't look like much, but what does it take to turn a downtrodden member of Japan's "working poor", living in a company dorm and heavily in debt, into a cold-blooded killer in the streets of Akihabara?
Full story at zakzak.co.jp
Now You're Talking in Headlines
"Evil Deeds of the Akiba Nerds" "`Nice Guys', Pedos, Speed Freaks".
Taken from the neogaf.com forum.
Japan Probe on 'Fuji TV focuses on Akihabara killer’s love of anime'
Jet lagged with coffee:
The growing tension and push-and-pull between the cops, the normal people, and the otaku in Akihabara was shaping up to be a grand saga, complete with flash mobs and organized protests. But now, all of that has been preempted by some loser who just wanted to kill people.
(Here's the part where I have to cover my ass by saying that I have friends who work in the area and who visit that very spot where the shit hit quite regularly, including me. So no, it's not some abstract GTA IV sandbox where this all took place and I understand what it means when real human beings die real horribly.)
People are starting to brand me an alarmist over my reaction to all this, but do you really want to roll the dice on Akihabara being totally unaffected by a killing spree in the middle of the street?
That's the cost of unthinkingly doing business with one so very temporary
Oh fuck. Gah. Here we go...
Marxy gazes into the coming shit storm and christens the Whole Bloody Affair the AKB MASSACRE.
Meanwhile, Yoshiki Takahashi brings us the final countdown...
"On his way to Akihabara, the killer was writing on BBS via cellphone
what and how he would do later."
http://sankei.jp.msn.com/affairs/crime/080609/crm0806091024006-n2.htm
am 5:21 I'm going to kill people in Akihabara. I'll crash into them by
car, and when the car is down, I'll use my knife. Goodbye everybody
am 5:21 sleepy
am 5:34 I still have headache
am 5:35 weather man says it's a rainy day. Worst.
am 5:44 The worst case is that I'll get caught during(the killing spree)
am 6:00 I'm not being cheated, maybe I am the one who cheats
am 6:02 I'm used to play a good guy. Everybody believe it so easily.
am 6:03 Adults liked me, since I am "a good kid".
am 6:03 Couldn't make any friends
am 6:04 still, there were few who got along with me
am 6:05 Some of them kept me in their mailing list, that makes me feel
good a bit
am 6:10 The road I was to take is sealed. Everything is against me
am 6:31 It's time. Let's go
am 6:39 I have to fight my headache
am 6:49 and the rain
am 6:50 and the time
am 7:30 I did my homework perfectly and look at this rain
am 9:41 I hope the weather gets better
am 9:48 Now I'm in Kanagawa. resting. Everything is fine so far
am 10:53 Heavy trafic jam. Dunno if I get there on time
am 11:07 Shibuya sucks
am 11:17 It is sunny around here
am 11:45 arrived on Akihabara
am 11:45 Hokoten today, isn't it?
pm 0:10 Now it's the time
Subject: Akihabara stabbing spree killing
9:45 pm
from yoshiki takahashi
to me
"Some crazy motherfucker just stabbed more than 10 people in Akihabara,
seems like 4 or 5 dead.
Some source say that he crashed into Hokoten people with a car, then
started to stab everybody including cops.
The killer is now arrested."
Update: "The killer says that he did it because he was 'tired of life'."
http://dailynews.yahoo.co.jp/fc/domestic/phantom_killer/
I just saw the TV news footage from Akiba on my jet lagged little set in San Francisco. The camera closes in on multiple puddles of blood in the street. A blue umbrella left behind in the panic. Crowds cower behind green makeshift police barriers in front of Sofmap, right near the new Manadarake Complex. The tourist spot has become a crime scene. Matt and I were in the same spot only a few days ago...
The timing could not have been worse. The energy was already flagging in Electric Town as the area was slowly becoming a police state in the wake of crackdowns on street idols and cosplayers (the TV is now praising the already-elevated police presence in the area, saying there would have been more mayhem if not for them).
But even if the perpetrator, or the media - bless them - doesn't blame it all on moe figures and hentai doujinshi, you know, the "otaku boom", the deal has been sealed, the epoch has been crossed, and the new message is not "Yokoso Japan."
This guy just killed Akihabara the way Charles Manson killed the sixties. And we're all under arrest now...
24 hours later...
Just to clarify, even with those loving close-ups of those manga-style notebook doodles, I don’t the media will peg this as a return of the Murdering Otaku archetype.
With Akihabara successfully re-branded as a major port of call in the “Cool Japan” myth, there’s just too much money at stake to burn it all down now.
My Manson parallel is more about a crime that becomes a turning point for the scene that spawned it, and less about the vilification of the perpetrator(s).
Even if anime and maid cafes don’t go under the microscope this time, I think Akihabara going to be made “safe” again with the help of lots of cops, spot checks, and probably the end of the Hokoten. See also: Harajuku in the late nineties.
And back then, there wasn’t even a body count.
Macross Porn from the Shizuoka Hobby Show
Soldier of warlords from deepspace.
Hurled through the night to this new place.
Crushed and forgotten to Earthlings.
Magically healed and rebirthing.
Just a pile of rust was all they found on that Isle, that no one suspected to see
10 years later Super Fortress Macross would rise Guardian of you and of me.
Sex and Death in Shizuoka: Profit from Violence
Before we go any deeper into Day One of the 47th annual Shizuoka Hobby Show, pause for a moment to marvel at the official logo. Imagine thousands of business suits trying to have serious conversations about model kits and profit margins with this evocative image everywhere reminding everyone of their cherished youth among the strange white people and bootleg robot kits.
Our arrival at the show coincided with a buzzing overhead by T-4 fighter jets (why they didn't carpet bomb the convention center remains a mystery). Later this weekend, the Self-Defense Forces will roll out the decidedly non-miniature tanks and troops while the local boy scouts toot their bugles in salute. Shizuoka, you really know how to put on a hobby show. As do...
Bandai, the Great! Bandai, the Mighty! Bandai, the giver of the bullet train tickets and keeper of the expense account! All hail, Bandai! Bandai, all hail!
Lots of Gundam porn at the B-Club, 'natch. New recommended servings for the HCM-Pro Mobile Suits include inside of brandy sniffers, ashtrays, and potted plants.
Perhaps you've heard of them! Code Geass kits, Ghost in the Shell stuff, and a Naruto thing.
I guess they really got us senior citizen otaku by the nutsack with all the old-school stuff coming down the pipe soon, like these transforming Mospeada cyclones. Although there was little to no Space Cruiser Yamato stuff (but lots of Yamato battleships), this was balanced out by an absolute lack of moe anything.
Hot Votoms, for you Tim Eldred!
Ol' Steve Harrison called this like a lucky Bingo card...there was indeed Macross everywhere, and it was maybe even the biggest anime property across the board besides Gundam at the show. Here's the re-issued classic Valks from Bandai.
And the new flavour via Macross Frontier.
...and the Macross model kits from Hasegawa, which look good dogfighting the Nazis who remain "number one with a bullet" among the military kits.
There was, like, no tokusatsu action to be found, much to my blustery chagrin! Aside from these Ultra vehicle kits, also at the Hasegawa booth, that was all she wrote.
Then again, who needs giant monsters, or indeed scantily-clad booth bunnies, when you got mad AIR-SOFT GUNS and cosplaying commandos hawking goods for Tokyo Marui!
Such a very sexy booth. I don't work for *this* Marui, but I wouldn't mind at all if I did. As I marveled over the guns, Matt Alt explained to me that there was a war going on in the middle east fought by private military companies using weapons just like this one! Sounds like a great hobby.
We got carried away and tried to shoot each other's eyes out with glow in the dark tracer bbs. I was too jet-lagged to aim straight, and Matt could not keep a straight face as per usual. Still, I think we'd do OK either in the self-defense forces, or in the boy scouts.
Tamiya was running a mean trading post that included a million T-shirts, military hard-tack rations, and other useful items for surviving in Japan's many hot zones. And for navigating the mean streets of the The Shizz, international buyers from Dubai and Laos could choose from either oversized RC German tanks or the Jägermeister mobile!
More modeling fun for the whole goddamn family: building the unmanned Predator drone.
As ever, Aoshima remains the most bizzaro world of all Japanese hobby companies. Their line up for 2008 looks like it would have been massive circa 1985, beginning with these hot Megazone 23 part 2 Garland kits. Dorvak mechs, the Airwolf chopper, the A-Team van, and (not pictured) K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider!
Aoshima PR woman (pointing to tiny Fishing Crazy Sampei model kit): "Anime and manga is really popular in the US, and so is this, right?"
Me (thinking of Denki Watanabe, Ed Chavez, and Erin Finnegan): "...."
Coming soon from the Shizz: The Podcast! The Videos! The Exquisite Model Glue Induced Hangover
Futatsu no ginga
I don't know how many of you "heavy users" pick up Dengeki Hobby magazine on a regular basis, but the March issue (the one with the *spoilers* mobile suit on the cover) comes with a nice bonus 20 page pull-out insert on Yamato.
Most of the booklet is a loving guide to building and customizing the 1/700 scale kit packaged with the new Season One DVD box set, which went on sale in Japan on 2/22. I begged and pleaded with the Bandai guys to sell it as a stand-alone kit, but they've sworn to keep it as an incentive to buy the DVD set, which costs around US$400.
That might seem like a steep price to maintain the original look of the Yamato, amidst a sea of redesigns that purists frown upon, but think of all the fun you'll have replicating the all-silver look the Yamato dons during the final minutes of episode 26!
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