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New Bourbon water features Frozen girls and Disney princesses

In Japan there’s a company called Bourbon. Rather than specialising in alcoholic spirits though, Bourbon in Japan is famous for sweets, chocolate and natural mineral water. This summer, they’ll be adding something really sweet to the water: bottles adorned with Disney Princesses in ethereal watercolour designs. In addition to the series, they’ll be releasing Anna and the Snow Queen from Frozen too. You know these girls will want to live in your freezer this summer because, well the cold never bothered them anyway.

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New Attack on Titan souvenir straps feature Colossal Titan at famous Japanese landmarks

Attack on Titan has such a worldwide following that many visitors to Japan can’t help but keep an eye out for possible sightings of the Colossal Titan as they travel around the country. Chance encounters with the steaming giant are now more real than ever, thanks to a new series of souvenir straps featuring the hungry beast at famous locations throughout Japan. Now you can see him dressed up as a samurai, devouring Tokyo Tower or reincarnated in the form of a giant gold Buddha. If you want the whole collection, you’ll have to do some travelling as each souvenir is limited for sale only at the local tourist hotspot it features. From Tokyo to Osaka, check out the Colossal Titan posing like you’ve never seen him before!

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Special exhibits on Studio Ghibli’s art and architecture coming soon to two Tokyo museums

For any serious anime fan making a trip to Tokyo, a visit to the Ghibli Museum should be at the top of their list. Not only is the design of the building bursting with subtle references to the works of esteemed director Hayao Miyazaki and his compatriots, the on-site theater also screens Ghibli shorts you can’t see anywhere else, such as the heart-warming follow-up to My Neighbor Totoro.

This summer, though, two more Tokyo museums are getting in on the act with special exhibits focusing on the architecture of Studio Ghibli plus artwork for the animation house’s newest film.

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Awesome Snorlax bed lets you be just as lazy as its namesake

If there’s one thing every human being has in common with some of anime’s most beloved friendly monsters, it’s a love of being super, super lazy. Mei found Totoro sleeping one off in the forest, after all, and who can forget that obviously lazy (though somewhat creepy) daikon-monster in Spirited Away?

Then there’s perhaps the most famous lazy anime monster: Snorlax from Pokémon; who I always want to call “the Snorlax” because it sounds like a Dr. Seuss character. The bear-like Snorlax is known throughout the Pokémon universe as an exceptionally lazy, docile – though voracious – creature. Heck, its first appearance in the anime was in a story that revolved around Snorlax falling asleep in a river somehow and blocking up an entire town’s water supply for months.

Now you and Snorlax can block up lazy RPG towns’ water supplies together with this exceedingly comfortable-looking Snorlax bed!

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Japan’s national soccer team floundered through the first several decades of its existence before finally earning its first World Cup berth in 1998. Since then the squad has shown steady improvement, with an impressive performance in South Africa in 2010 that saw it reach the Round of 16.

But while expectations and confidence are both running high, that doesn’t mean Japanese soccer fans don’t wish there countrymen could receive a little help from the world of comics and animation, as shown in a poll asking which manga characters they wish were a part of Japan’s team competing in Brazil.

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In science fiction, 25 years may as well be an eternity. The genre is littered with visions of the future that were initially compelling, yet suddenly felt overwhelmingly dated and dull just a few years later.

That said, it’s been a quarter-century since the first manga installment of Ghost in the Shell was published, and Japan’s most successful cyberpunk franchise is still going strong. Ghost in the Shell succeed where others failed because the story’s true focus isn’t on shiny, imaginary technology itself, but rather on the question of what it means to be human in a rapidly evolving society, and how an individual’s personal answer to that ties into the concepts of identity, free will, and interconnectedness.

Those are concepts mankind has grappled with for centuries, so it’s only fitting that this live performance of the anime’s most iconic piece of music feels at once both modern and ancient.

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2 men arrested for stealing kid’s 320 Yu-Gi-Oh! cards

If you don’t trust your friends with your valuables, this story might bolster your paranoia: two 20-year-old salary men were arrested yesterday in Kōbe for stealing a 15-year-old kid’s Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.

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Evangelion theme song played on a pea pod is just as weird and awesome as it sounds【Video】

Things I can do that impress Japanese junior high school students: touch my nose with my tongue; recite the lyrics to ‘That’s What Makes You Beautiful’ on cue; whistle the Benny Hill theme inconspicuously during class and then blame it on the Japanese sensei.

There’s one thing I’ve never mastered though – one thing that would hugely augment my repertoire of “odd things the English teacher can do”. I can’t whistle with grass. Or any kind of plant, in fact. Clearly, I should’ve taken some lessons from this guy, who can play entire tunes with a single pea pod.

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Attack classroom boredom with Attack on Titan notebooks

Unlike a lot of children, I never doodled in my notebooks because I was bored at school. This wasn’t because I was consumed with the beauty of education or absorbed in what my teachers were saying. I was simply such a bad artist that listening to them drone on was still more enjoyable for me than trying to draw a picture, even if the lectures ended up putting me to sleep as often as not.

If they’d only had these Attack on Titan notebooks when I was a kid, maybe I would have stayed awake more often.

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Jojo’s bizarre coffee – Anime characters to grace cans of java in Japan

With their dramatic posing, frenetic accessorizing, and manic shouting, you could easily arrive at the conclusion that the cast of long-running manga and anime Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures is one seriously over-caffeinated set of super powered bare-knuckle brawlers.

Don’t expect Jojo and company to settle down anytime soon, though, as the characters created by artist Hirohiko Araki are set to grace cans of Coca-Cola Japan’s Georgia coffee this summer.

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Western media ranks the toughest women in animation, list unsurprisingly anime-heavy

While TV and movies seem to have a hard time grappling with the evolving role of women in society, animation has been delivering strong female leads for decades.

Sure, some of their empowering swagger is tempered with skimpy clothes and breasts so large they’re almost certain to cause major chiropractic problems, but animation has been surprisingly progressive when it comes to depicting women in comparison to film and live action television.

So it was only a matter of time before someone put together a list of the most badass female characters in animation, and it makes sense that the list is heavy on the anime; Manga and anime artists infamously have a bit of a fetish for strong female leads, after all.

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There’s a unique challenge for anime professionals working on a franchise with as long a history as Gundam, which aired its first episode 35 years ago. Since each new series does away with the war mechs of its predecessors, designers are always under pressure to come up with giant robots that look more powerful, technologically advanced, and, in the case of the villains’ machines, sinister than what fans have seen before.

With Gundam Unicorn’s NZ-999 Neo Zeong, piloted by baffling-named antagonist (and Toyota owner) Full Frontal, we think the animators did a pretty good job. From its sharp, angular lines, blood-red paint job, and the crevices in the sheet metal produce murky shadows, the mobile armor appears immediately menacing and dangerous.

Unless that is, you remove the head unit and replace it with a cute anime girl or kitty cat.

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By far the most popular series today among Japan’s ultra-hardcore anime fans is Love Live. With a bevy of cute girls, pleated skirts, pop idol competitions, and nary a prominent male character, it’s checked off enough of the necessary boxes to give it a solid pedestal on which its charismatic cast has been placed.

Fans of Love Live even have their own nickname, as it has become common to refer to them as Love Livers. Yes, grammatically that makes no sense, but you can’t expect the franchise’s fan base to stop and correct the odd nomenclature. They’re too busy celebrating the birthdays of Love Live’s dozen-plus idol singers by buying merchandise, sending online salutations, and, in the case of one fan, getting a giant tattoo of his favorite character that covers his entire – and we mean entire – back…

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When you stop and think about it, personal grooming should be everything to the man-eating giants of Attack on Titan. After all, it’s not like they can rely on their fashion sense to look their best, since they’re constantly naked.

By nature, though, giants have giant beards. So how do you fight back against so much facial hair? With a whole new branch of Attack on Titan’s military, as documented in three new animated shorts.

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Smell like your favourite sailor with the Sailor Moon Miracle Romance Eau de Toilette

Sailor Moon’s ever-growing Miracle Romance cosmetics range is continuing the 20th anniversary celebrations with news of their most coveted release to date: the Eau de Toilette. Designed for adults, the fragrance features a delightful blend of fruity florals and earthy tones while the packaging includes adorable details fans will love.

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Tomonoura: Where Ponyo and Wolverine crossed paths

With her unique mix of weird and cute, you’d be hard-pressed to find an animation fan who doesn’t recognize Ponyo, the fish-girl from legendary director Hayao Miyazaki’s 2008 film of the same name. On the other side of the Pacific, justabout anyone with even a passing interest in comics at any point in the last 40 years knows who Marvel’s Wolverine is.

While one character is a symbol of innocence and whimsy, and the other of machismo and toughness, Ponyo and Wolverine’s paths have actually crossed, in a small fishing port called Tomonoura, where the mutant superhero made such an impression on the locals they named a rose after him.

And no, this isn’t fanfiction we’re talking about.

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What Sailor Moon characters would look like if they were born in the Western world

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.

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Japanese Frozen fan transforms herself into Anna with amazing results

While people around the world are still in love with Disney’s Frozen, in Japan it’s all about Anna and the Snow Queen. The Japanese title for the animated movie puts the focus firmly on the two heroines at the centre of the story, and whether you’re a fan of Elsa, the Snow Queen with the X-Men-like ability to create snow, frost and ice, or Anna, the younger, darker-haired sister, you’ll be in awe of the dedication this Japanese netizen shows to her favourite Disney princess. With some clever hairstyling and awesome makeup, it’s like Anna stepped out of the frozen kingdom and into the real world!

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There are so many 2-D girls out there with different hairstyles and colours, body shapes, and personalities, although they do all share the same big googly eyes. And apparently the sexiest of them all share something else in common too. Did your waifu make this list of the top 10 sexiest female anime characters?

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Gundam VS Evangelion: Women of Japan give their verdict (kind of)

What’s that you say? A survey that polled Japanese women about two of the country’s most popular anime series? I wonder what kind of questions they asked! Maybe we can learn how Japanese audiences feel about the female characters in Gundam! And does Shinsekai Evangelion really offer a “radical solution to the socio-environmental curses of patriarchy“? Maybe they’ll talk about female otaku being under-represented in mainstream media! And whether the word “otaku” still carries negative connotations…

But wait! Oh. What? This survey only has one question! “What kind of men do you like better”, the pollsters asked, “guys who like Evangelion, or guys who are Gundam fans?” Oh.

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