Do you like dancing? How about hairy men with adamantium claws? Then we have the perfect video for you!
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PlayStation TV, originally launched as PlayStation Vita TV in Japan, is coming to the US, Canada, and Europe this autumn, Sony has announced at E3.
We’re out here in Los Angeles for E3, the largest annual video game and entertainment expo in the world, and we got things off to an awesome start at the Xbox Media Briefing on Monday. Check out our RocketNews24 exclusive photos and video from the event.
Over a year and a half after Hurricane Sandy ravaged New England, some people are still without permanent housing. The poorest populations in New York have been impacted the most, dependent on aid long after the rest of the city moved on. Several major companies got together to assist in the effort for aid, but Toyota had a novel contribution: efficiency.
Toyota sent experts to New York for eight weeks to help Food Bank of New York’s partner organization, Metro World Child, improve their methods, thereby helping to get food donations to as many people as possible using as few labor hours as possible. The improvements meant that the same resources were used to provide food to more families faster.
This year’s E3 trade show, or Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014 to give it its full name, is now just hours away. E3 2013 was one of the most memorable in show history, with Microsoft and Sony both pushing their new consoles in our faces like fame-obsessed parents trying to live vicariously through their grotesquely made-up offspring. This year, though, should be all about the games. And we’re excited.
Have you ever wondered what Sailor Moon soldiers would look like if they travelled to an alternate reality and were drawn by a western hand? Well, thank goodness for fan art because one clever artist has delivered the fantasy. This unique collection of Sailor Moon pictures has the scouts looking more like Disney stars rather than sparkly-eyed anime characters, and with heartbreaking back-stories in each beautiful portrait, you’ll be seeing the girls in a totally new light.
The E3 video games trade event is coming up in less than two weeks and we’re sending a crew out to give you an up-close look! There will be an enormous amount on show this year, but what we really want to know is what YOU want to hear more about. Take our poll and tell us what you’d like to see at this year’s E3!
Now, as a site that features a large amount of quirky news from Japan, we have a feeling that a fair number of our readers may be interested in anime and comics. As such, it is always a pleasure to share on our site beautiful artwork inspired by anime or comics in various forms. This time, we’ve found a collection of stunning work that combines modern anime/comic characters with a bit of antique taste — in the style of stained-glass windows! But these aren’t actual windows, although they certainly look lovely enough to be made into real works of colorful glass. They’re prints that look like stained glass, and there’s a whole lovely series of them!
Nago is located in northern Okinawa, a tourist town with beautiful beaches and a pineapple park. Its waters are home to gorgeous coral and seagrass beds that serve as the feeding grounds to Japan’s last remaining population of dugong, an endangered sea mammal related to the manatee. Nago is also the site of the proposed relocation of Futenma airbase, the US Marine complex that is at the core of a controversy between the Okinawan, Japanese, and US governments.
The mayor of Nago, Susumu Inamine, was in New York last weekend to deliver speeches and have informative discussions regarding the issue.
The Boston Red Sox have consistently had Japanese players since 2007, when they signed Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima. There’s one thing Japanese players bring to the team that’s been overlooked until now, though: delicious imported Japanese candy.
People around the world love Japanese candy, be it endless varieties of Kit Kat flavours, or do-it-yourself candy sushi. There are even companies that will mail it to you monthly for a small fee (or a hefty fee – choose wisely, readers!). And it seems that recently, Red Sox players and staff have been going crazy over Japan’s long-standing fruit chew top-sellers, Hi-Chew.
Darth Vader is a multi-talented guy. From choking subordinates with an invisible force to performing impromptu amputations on members of his family, he can perform all kinds of amazing feats. But did you know he’s also a major league slugger?
It’s true! As part of a collaboration between Lucasfilm and Japan pro-baseball’s Pacific League, Vader stepped up to the plate to show how the game should be played: with light-saber bats!
Opening in the US on May 16 and July 25 in Japan, Godzilla is making waves as one of this summer’s big blockbusters. But even before Godzilla’s gargantuan presence will grace the silver screen, he’s already making his rounds on the little screen. This latest commercial sees Italian car maker FIAT teaming up with Godzilla to answer the age-old question: “What’s your favorite food?”
The Oricon Style website reported on changes that the Doraemon television anime is undergoing before its American television premiere this July. The Disney XD channel will run 26 episodes of the quintessential Japanese anime about a robot cat. The anime has been adapted for American culture and customs, as well its strict guidelines on violence, depictions of discrimination, and depictions of sexual content.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (C) guides the multiple-rocket launching drill of women’s sub-units under KPA Unit 851, in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)
North Korea called the United States “a living hell” while offering a comprehensive listing of criticisms against the country it called “the world’s worst human rights abuser” in a news report from state-run media Wednesday.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
The financial news source Nikkei reported on Friday that the American media conglomerate Walt Disney will begin running the quintessential Japanese anime Doraemon on television throughout the United States this summer. 44 years after the original manga about a robotic cat from the future debuted, the anime has already aired in 35 countries and territories in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. However, this will be the first television showing of Doraemon in the United States.
A few months ago, we brought you news that Japanese developer Spike Chunsoft was bringing manga and anime smash Attack on Titan to Nintendo’s popular portable, 3DS. Up until now, the game seemed destined to remain a Japan-only affair, but rumour has it that its makers are searching for a publisher to bring the game to Western audiences. Get hype, kids!
Even as an American, it never occurred to me that the in-game cuteness of the iconic Kirby character doesn’t really carry over to the box art – where he’s typically portrayed as a Pokemon ripoff in need of anger management courses.
Don’t believe us? Take a look at this decade-old print ad for a new Kirby game in the U.S.:
Somewhere down the line, Nintendo America producers decided that Kirby should be portrayed as tough and menacing on American shores in order to appeal to U.S. audiences, who at the time were still in love with macho heroes from the ’80s action movie heydays. Even if the hero in question was a puffy pink ball of cute, Americans apparently craved sheer anger in their main characters – a far cry from the Japanese, who were raised on Kirby as an adorable, smiling murderer that ate his victims whole and gained their power like some fantasy world maniac.
While some of us get to spend our days taking selfies, slurping on Starbucks and shopping at designer stores, others are not quite so lucky.
In a crushing reminder of the disparities and injustice that exist in our world, a woman shopping at luxury New York department store Saks Fifth Avenue has discovered a note at the bottom of her bag written by a man imprisoned in a forced labour camp in China, pleading for help contacting his family and the United Nations.
A Sunday newspaper in my native England used to run a column called “Can you get a table?” in which reporters would call fully-booked high-end restaurants claiming to be representing various celebrities of differing degrees of fame, and see whether they could wrangle a table for that night. A-listers tended to garner responses along the lines of “yes, I think that can be arranged”, while talent show contestants were more likely to be met with apologies and mumbling. Thus, order in celeb-land was successfully maintained.
I was amused and impressed, therefore, to read that there’s a restaurant in Tokyo that can’t even make room for the most powerful man on the planet to have dinner with the Japanese Prime Minister. When Obama met Shinzo Abe last week, Abe took him for world-class sushi at Sukiyabashi Jiro. However, sushi wasn’t Abe’s first choice. He wanted to take Obama-san to Tempura Kondo, but the booked-out restaurant turned them down. “Customers with reservations are more important,” the owner is reported to have said. “Even for the President of the United States, I can’t disappoint my customers who already made bookings.”
Fans of monster movies or big Hollywood blockbusters are no doubt aware that a reboot of the famous Godzilla franchise is due to hit theaters next month. As you might imagine for a movie featuring one of their most beloved pop culture icons, the Japanese are deeply interested in how America is going to bring their national kaiju to the screen.
When clear pictures of the creature hit the net this week, the response was probably not what studio execs were hoping for. Some Japanese fans are apparently calling this incarnation of Godzilla “fat”. Ouch.




















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No more using real katana for tourism activities, Japan’s National Police Agency says
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Heinz Japan finds its perfect pitchman: Pokémon’s Pikachu!
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