This month Kantai Con, ‘the anime convention on an aircraft carrier’, was held aboard the USS Yorktown in South Carolina, and attracted some fabulous cosplayers dressed up as the hottest warships in town.
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There are a lot of questions fans of anime and manga mega-hit Attack on Titan want the answers to. Where did the series’ naked, man-eating giants come from? What did protagonist Eren’s father hide away in the locked cellar he gave his son the key to? And when are we going to see the next portion of the story adapted to animation (in more specific terms than “eventually”)?
But series creator Hajime Isayama did reveal something a lot of fans want to know, as he recently told reporters his personal estimate as to when Attack on Titan’s manga serialization will end.
While Sailor Moon’s first four companions, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Venus, get most of the attention, the lunar heroine also picked up a few more allies in her 200 anime episodes. The Sailor Moon B-team has been getting a lot of love from merchandiser Bandai recently, including their own sets of lingerie.
Now, for everyone who wants to show your love for the Outer Sailor Senshi without showing off their undies, Bandai is releasing a five-piece set of smartphone earphone jack accessories, including accessories used by Sailors Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.
The Tokyo Game Show opened up to the general public this Saturday, and we were right there in the midst of the crowds of attendees from all over the world.
With the event spread across the huge Makuhari Messe exhibition centre it was quite a workout getting from one end to the other while navigating meandering queues of gamers waiting for a chance to play exclusive demos, but somehow we managed it and lived to tell the tale.
While there were plenty of gorgeous booth babes around inside, I headed out to the cosplay area where amateur enthusiasts show off their home-made outfits, and often plenty of skin too.
On our visit to the Tokyo Game Show, it seemed like just about every flat surface outside and around Makuhari Messe, the event’s venue, was plastered with ads for upcoming horror title Psycho Break. Inside nearby Keihin Makuhari Station, though, there was a different advertising blitz going on.
Adorning the train station’s walls was a series of posters showing nothing but legs. We’re sure they caught the eyes of plenty of male attendees, but just what the heck are they advertising?
Everybody’s got that story. The story of why they decided they wanted to go to Japan in the first place. Unsurprisingly, for a lot of people it’s manga, anime and even J-Pop. For a lot of guys, it’s the girls. For (comparatively fewer) girls, it’s the guys. Some like the food. Some like the “Old Japan” feel of Kyoto and Kamakura. A few even go for the outdoor activities.
And some go for the pervy action figures.
We recently got a sneak peak at the second batch of Sailor Moon lingerie from merchandiser Bandai and intimate apparel maker Peach John. But while the two companies were generous with photos of what the new bra/panty/skirt sets will look like, they were only shown on nondescript, limbless mannequins.
Not only does a new batch of pictures rectify that with a human model, it also shows off some more modest bedroom attire, in the form of negligees and pajamas inspired by the dresses of characters Princess Serenity and Black Lady, plus the school uniforms worn by the five core Sailor Senshi.
Japanese movie-goers are currently enjoying the third live-action Rurouni Kenshin film. The franchise is now a certified two-decade hit, debuting as a manga in 1994 before its 1996 anime adaptation and recent film trilogy, and it owes much of its success to the popularity of main character Himura Kenshin.
What makes Kenshin so compelling is that despite his formidable swordsmanship, he’s portrayed as consistently kindhearted and good-natured. In certain scenes, he comes off as downright cute, but Kenshin has never been quite as adorable as this stuffed animal of Hello Kitty cosplaying as the scarred warrior.
As a kid, playing with crayons always guaranteed hours of fun. The array of exciting colours, combined with an ergonomic design perfect for young hands meant endless artistic possibilities on paper, walls, compliant siblings…
Now Crayolas are providing hours of fun for adults too, thanks to a dedicated artist who’s created dozens of unique crayons that are so adorable and true-to-life you have to see them to believe.
SHINKUKAN – The Kawaii Steampunk Android TCG is a venture by a Japanese company to spread otaku culture to the world through the power of cute robot girls in the form of an old-school trading card game you can play with your friends. The Kickstarter campaign is currently in the final stages, and they’re just a few thousand dollars off their goal. Read on for anime artwork and an overview of the project.
Disclaimer: RocketNews24 is not affiliated in any way with this Kickstarter campaign.
We’ve been bringing you news of the BL craze in Japan, with cafés, books and even university courses featuring homoromantic male relationships, commonly referred to as Boys Love. With more and more people becoming exposed to the trend, what began as an underground sub-culture is becoming more well-known and popular, with men and women alike.
Now it seems the boys have gone mainstream, as stars of a major campaign for supermarket chain Ito Yokado. Only they’re not advertising beauty products or clothing lines. They’re advertising meat.
Apple has officially announced the iPhone 6, and also its big-screen sibling, the iPhone 6 Plus. This is great news for technophiles who’d already started lining up for the new device before it was officially unveiled, but there’s one slice of the Japanese population that’s completely unimpressed: hard-core fans of idol singer video game and anime franchise Aikatsu! The otaku subset has compiled a list of seven reasons why, compared to one piece of Aikatsu! merchandise, the iPhone 6 is a piece of junk.
The currently streaming Sailor Moon reboot, Sailor Moon Crystal, has sort of an unusual schedule. Rather than showing a new episode every week, like most anime series, a new installment of Crystal is released on the first and third Saturday of every month.
It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean viewers get a new episode every other week. This year, August had five Saturdays, meaning that at one point there was a three-week gap between episodes. We’re sure hard-core fans were miffed, but we think sponsor Bandai will be able to smooth things over and make everyone forget about the inconvenience by opening preorders for its newest batch of merchandise, the second round of Sailor Moon lingerie sets, featuring colors for every member of the main cast.
Last weekend, McDonald’s Japan launched a new Happy Meal, or “happy set” as they’re known here. As with all of the fast food giant’s kid-centric food boxes, these sets come bundled with a gift guaranteed to appeal to children so much that they’ll bug their parents incessantly to take them to the Golden Arches.
This time, however, the bundled gift was a little bit more special than usual, with McDonald’s securing a deal to offer sets of arcade cards for anime sensation Yo-Kai Watch. While that name not (yet) mean much to anime and Happy Meal fans in the West, this collaboration pretty much allows McDonald’s Japan to print money, and there were lines out of the door at dozens of locations from the moment the sets went on sale.
From a genie in a bottle to a city at the bottom of the sea, if you’re a fan of Disney, then you’ll know the sweetest things can be found in the most unlikely places.
So it’s no surprise that Disney princess parasols are now waiting patiently for new owners down at the local 7-Eleven. On sale from the beginning of September, fans are heaping praise on the seven designs available and falling in love with all the gorgeous details from their favourite Disney films.
The classical Japanese board game Go is deeply strategic. A single match can last hours, and in the case of top-ranking professionals, days, or even months. But while this complexity makes the game all the more intriguing for adult players, it can also make it intimidating and inaccessible for kids, who often start off playing simplified versions such as Gomoku Narabe or Reversi.
Similarly, Go’s aesthetics of stark black and white stones on a plain wooden board are often seen as pleasingly elegant by adults, but don’t really do much to excite children. So in order to provide a little more visual stimulation, there’s now a Gomoku Narabe set featuring anime’s most famous robot cat, Doraemon.
Charapedia asked 10,000 what anime series they’re most looking forward to this Fall. The sequel to Gen Urobuchi‘s futuristic, dystopian crime-drama Psycho-Pass took the top spot with 2,015 votes. Here’s the Top 20ranked based on all votes, followed by Top 10 by gender.
With Japan’s relatively lenient attitudes towards sex and violence in cartoons, you might get the impression that the whole society has come to a consensus that anime artists can draw whatever they like. That’s not always the case, though, and in recent years a string of crimes committed by individuals with an obsessive love for animation and comics has rekindled the debate about how much, if any, legal control should be placed on anime content.
It’s no shock that a former manga artist and adult video director has spoken out in opposition to such regulation. What is surprising, though, is his pick for the creator of the most detrimental anime: Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki.
Studio Ghibli seems to be spiraling into a pretty deep identity crisis, with producer Toshio Suzuki murmuring about closing up shop. The question seems to be, can the studio continue making movies at an almost yearly pace, while delivering the quality that’s become as much of a Ghibli trademark as its Totoro silhouette, without a leading visionary like the now-retired Hayao Miyazaki?
Some anime fans had hoped that Hiromasa Yonebayashi, director of 2010’s The Secret World of Arrietty, would fill that role, but his second project. When Marnie Was There, hasn’t universally enchanted audiences during its theatrical release. So if Yonebayashi isn’t the next Miyazaki, then who is?
Definitely not the legendary Hayao’s own son, Goro, and by the younger Miyazaki’s own admission, no less.
The Museum of Kyoto is hosting an exhibition for Chūya Koyama‘s Space Brothers franchise until September 23. The exhibit, which takes up two floors of the museum, features more than 200 pieces of original art from the manga as well as story summaries, anime storyboards, information about JAXA and space exploration, models of spacecraft, and of course, a very large inflatable Apo. ANN had a chance to go to the museum and take some pictures of the exhibition.
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