Ichita Yamamoto is a member of the House of Councillors and the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan. On Sunday he appeared on a political talk show called Shin Hodo 2001, to discuss a recent murder case. Body parts of nine different victims were found in …Read more »
SMAP was one of Japan’s biggest boy bands until they broke up last summer after 25 years. They created the themes for the anime series Hime-chan’s Ribbon and Akazukin Cha Cha, and member Takuya Kimura voiced acted in Howl’s Moving Castle and Space Battleship Yamato. …Read more »
Anime inspired by western medieval fantasy is pretty big right now. Sure, it’s partly just a side-effect the tangentially-related “stuck in an MMO” genre being even more popular, but between more pure fantasy series like Seven Deadly Sins and the new Berserk, and less futuristic …Read more »
American school children have been crafting Death Note-inspired books of ill will towards their peers for years, but recently fully-grown Japanese women have joined in the festivities. A Japanese website called Danna Shine (or “Die Husband” in English) allows women to anonymously post how and why …Read more »
Once upon a time, Sonic The Hedgehog was a character you’d expect to see cross-promoted at restaurants like McDonalds with a line of kids meal toys. In fact, according to Sonic Wikia, Sonic had two different promotions at McDonalds in 1994, as well as three different …Read more »
Japanese Twitter artist @bankokukun was killing time with a Pokémon coloring book last week, when he decided to spice things up by practicing a "serious" shading style he hadn't used in a while. This resulted in a hulked-out Pikachu with hyper-defined musculature in sharp contrast …Read more »
Transformation sequences are a mainstay in magical girl and super sentai shows, and while these sequences tend to be used as lengthy filler to cut costs animating fight scenes, we often think of them depicting impossibly-fast costume swaps. Through magic or technology, either the old …Read more »
In Japan it seems there’s a stereotype that shojo manga begets unrealistic expectations of romance from its readers. Rich, powerful, handsome men seem to always go dropping into the protagonists’ laps with implausible ease, so people assume that women who grow up reading shojo manga …Read more »
It’s hard to imagine for those of us whose nerdy hobbies went misunderstood by the rest of the family, but if Japanese Twitter is any indication, more and more kids are growing up with parents who enjoy anime and videogames. Despite concerns that birth rates …Read more »
Japanese twitter user @33kitta recently posted some screencaps from 2003 film Mei and the Kittenbus, commenting about how hardly anyone seems to have heard of it. He followed up with a poll, to which 88% of 102,000 respondents responded they had no clue of its existence. …Read more »
It’s always nice to see fan-made animations. Whether hand-drawn (like these anime-style tributes to Star Wars and Game of Thrones) or stop-motion (like these Attack On Titan shorts), the effort is always impressive and the results are very different experience from non-moving forms of fan …Read more »
Ben Ramsey wrote Dragon Ball Evolution , and he is sorry. Author Derek Padula is writing a book on DBZ fandom in the USA, and contacted Ramsey for an interview. Instead, he received an apology directed at all Dragon Ball fans, which he posted on …Read more »
In the video games and anime, the Pokémon Gym is where you take your pet monsters to exercise. In (real life) Japan, the Pokémon Gym is now where you go to buy Pokémon merch. Something seems a bit lost in translation here; when you build …Read more »
Italian musician Paolo Tuci is making a habit of creating music videos inspired by 80's and 90's girl's cartoons. First he did one based on Jem and the Holograms , and now he's done a Sailor Moon video using his new single “Sailor Moon e …Read more »
Live-action fan films seem to be all the rage these days. From Joseph Kahn's racy Power Rangers short to Robot Underdog's live-action version of Dragon Ball 's android saga , and the Frieza short by Australian group Deerstalker pictures, this year has seen its fair …Read more »
Julian Gnam
