Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
Disney (Page 9)
With just over a month until Star Wars: The Force Awakens hits theaters, Star Wars fever has taken the world by storm, and Korea is no exception! K-pop group EXO has recorded a tie-in single, named “Lightsaber”, for the Korean release of the film, and a music video for the song was released on YouTube earlier this week. As you may expect, it quickly went viral, reaching almost two million views in the last few days.
If you love Japan’s bite-sized Pino ice creams as much as you love Disney’s range of adorable Tsum Tsum characters, then this special collaboration is sure to bring you joy this holiday season.
Just as languages around the world are each unique yet beautiful, art has also developed its own flavor depending on where you are from. When comparing Western and Asian animation, there is a distinct style difference when it comes to the shape of faces, size of facial features, and the overall aesthetic. Both styles are very appealing, but when push comes to shove, all of us probably have a preference between the two.
Art is also a conversation though, and it can be transposed between two different worlds, such as Western art with an Asian flair or vice versa. One artist’s rendition of Final Fantasy characters drawn with a Western touch is making us super-excited because they look like they are ready for their Disney close-ups.
Tokyo Disneyland is a popular destination at any time of the year, but when the holiday season approaches, the theme park swells with visitors keen to get in on the festive spirit.
One of the highlights of the season is the “Tokyo Disneyland Electrical Parade Dream Lights”, where a number of well-known Disney characters appear on large floats dressed up in spectacular light displays. Accompanied by music, the scene is also accompanied by huge crowds, eager to receive a wave from the likes of Mickey, Snow White or even Woody from Toy Story.
Now there’s a fun way to avoid the crowds and enjoy the illuminated parade from the comfort of your own home. It’s called the “Sync! Illumination” and it lets you link up with your friends’ cellphone screens to create an awesome interactive show.
I’ve actually never seen any of the Toy Story movies. I hear they’re entertaining and poignant, but my extremely busy lifestyle only leaves me so much time for watching cartoons, and I generally prefer my animation to be hand-drawn and Japanese.
But I may just have to check out the newest Toy Story Blu-ray release, since it contains a piece of original animation from Trigger, one of Japan’s hottest anime studios.
If you’re not much of a morning person breakfast can be tricky. Sure, it’s the most important meal of the day and heading out on an empty stomach is never a good idea, but at the same time the temptation of an extra 10, 15, 20 minutes in bed is often too much to resist.
If that’s the dilemma you face every morning, these plates of edible cuteness might just be motivation enough for you to haul your ass out of bed and sit down to a proper breakfast. Generous servings of cute after the break!
Step into a convenience store in Japan, and you’ll find no shortage of tea drinks—and not just Japanese green tea either. You’ll have a wide variety to choose from, including oolong tea, barley tea, jasmine tea and English-style straight, lemon or milk tea. And one of the most well-known tea drinks in Japan has to be the Gogo no Kocha (Afternoon Tea) line of products from major beverage manufacturer Kirin.
Well, the folks at Kirin have apparently decided to make their popular “Gogo-tea” drinks, as they’re sometimes called in Japan, into something artistic and playful as well. It’s the “Disney Design Label” line of their Gogo no Kocha drinks, and with these, you’ll actually be able to mix, match and play with the bottles!
At some point in our childhoods, most of us probably owned a few coloring books to keep us entertained on rainy days or while traveling.
Although coloring is still a great way to boost a child’s imagination and improve motor skills, as digital technology continues to develop, fewer children are turning to coloring books to pass the time.
So in order to make coloring “cool” again, Disney decided to do a little research into what they could do to breathe some life back into this old pastime favorite.
As we expect you already know, character lunch boxes or “chara-ben,” short for “character bento,” are all the rage in Japan. And their creators are rarely shy about sharing their awesome work, so you can find hundreds of examples of how to make lunch time more adorable on social media networks like Instagram and Twitter.
One of the biggest themes for chara-ben right now is Disney’s Tsum Tsum, a line of stuffed toys that has been adapted into a smartphone game by Line. There were so many great photos, we had to compile our favorite Tsum Tsum chara-ben shots from Instagram for you to check out. But don’t forget to grab a snack, because you’re definitely going to get hungry!
I’m pretty sure that by this point Nintendo is used to being one of the giants on whose shoulders many other video game developers stand. After all, just about every platformer or action RPG owes a debt to the company’s Mario and Zelda franchises, and its Metroid series was so influential in the design of similar exploration-heavy titles that gamers just threw their hands up and decided to call the genre “Metroidvania” (somewhat unfairly giving half the credit to Konami’s Castlevania, which wasn’t nearly as groundbreaking in establishing the category).
Still, it’s one thing when some third-tier software publisher or homebrew video game outfit toes the line between being inspired by your creation and outright copying it, and another when it’s world-famous Disney.
Typically, nail art in Japan is bold and colorful or just plain huge, but it turns out neither are requisites to being impressive! Sometimes small can be just as amazing as big (at least that’s what we tell ourselves), and one Twitter user has gone a long way to proving that with her diminutive and delicate nail art, created by literally carving the tips of her nails!
For a country that’s ordinarily very concerned with not doing anything to shock or offend, Japan can be extremely open about its sexual tastes, in ways that manifest as both perfectly healthy and perfectly pervy. Japan is also pretty open and comfortable with its weakness for cute things, as you’ll often see adults of both genders sporting clothing or accessories bearing the image of popular children’s characters.
But what happens when you have both a sexy anime huggy pillow and a cute Disney stuffed animal in your bedroom, and you leave them alone for a while?
Disney announced on Thursday that it will release “The Collected Works of Hayao Miyazaki” Blu-ray box set. In addition to Miyazaki’s 11 feature films, the set will include a bonus disc with the 1972 television pilot film Yuki no Taiyō (Yuki’s Sun), three episodes of the 1972-1973 series Akado Suzunosuke (Little Samurai), and a video of Miyazaki’s retirement press conference.
A while back, we talked about adult fashionistas, including actress Zooey Deschanel, who’d become smitten with the boxy Japanese backpacks called randoseru. In Japan, though, randoseru are strictly for the prepubescent set, as they’re exclusively used by elementary school students.
That’s not to say that kids don’t appreciate a nice-looking bag, though, which is why Disney is getting in on the randoseru game, with a line of backpacks that can only be purchased inside its Tokyo theme parks, and cost the equivalent of several hundred dollars.
If you’re an anime purist, you’ve probably watched at least one title with a localization choice that rubbed you the wrong way. Maybe you were irked by Sailor Moon’s Usagi being called “meatball head” on American T.V. instead of “dango/dumpling head.” More recently, you might have wondered why Doraemon’s central family ditched all their chopsticks and now eat their Japanese food with forks in their U.S. appearances.
But localization runs in the other direction, too, and it’s just come to light that Pixar has altered part of the artwork in several scenes of Inside Out solely for the film’s Japanese release.
If you’ve seen Disney’s Big Hero 6, you know that the film’s most memorable character, marshmallowy medical helper/combat robot Baymax, spends about half of his screen time being awesome, and the other being adorable. In one of the best examples of the latter, he becomes a mattress for his exhausted friends, letting them lean into his soft, cushioned body during a brief respite during the bumpy transition to their new lives as superheroes.
If you’re feeling similarly worn out after a hard day, you’ll be happy to know that, just as the trailer for the film promised, Baymax has your back…or your front, or your side, depending on how you sleep, in the form of this amazingly heart-melting semi-posable Baymax bed.
At Tokyo DisneySea, there’s a special theater-style attraction called Turtle Talk where you can ask questions in real time to Crush, everybody’s favorite East Australian Current-surfing sea turtle from Finding Nemo.
Sounds fun, if not a bit like a generically staged Q&A session, right? However, audience members during a recent talk were in for a bit of a surprise when Crush shared an unexpectedly profound piece of wisdom in response to a young woman’s question.
It’s a well-established fact that Disney theme parks are places of dream and magic. Well, visitors to Tokyo Disney Resort can now feel the magic even while washing their hands — courtesy of the special “Hand Washing Areas” that officially opened today July 1 at both parks in the Resort.
Yes, guests at Tokyo Disney Resort can now wash their hands with adorable Mickey-shaped soap foam, and parents just may have to deal with their children wanting to wash their hands too many times instead of not enough!
Duffy, Disney’s lovable stuffed bear character, has a huge following in Japan. Just step inside Tokyo Disney Resort, and the bear’s popularity is abundantly clear as you see the large number of guests carrying their own Duffy toy in adorable and sometimes exquisitely hand-made costumes.
Well, we’ve already seen the well-loved bear tuned into an amazing furry bus that made a special tour from Tokyo to Shizuoka Prefecture a little over a year ago, and now it seems the mascot will be embarking on a whole new journey — into the big blue sky! Read More
It’s no secret that Disney has been hugely successful in Japan. The Japanese anime industry may have cultivated a unique style over the years that’s quite different from that of the international entertainment giant, but the public here in Japan definitely seems to love all things Disney, from beautiful lingerie to adorable mini-cakes.
So we guess it’s not too surprising that Disney characters have now been recreated using traditional Japanese crafts, which is the concept behind the Disney Japan Classic Series of merchandise. Join us for a look at what delightful forms the familiar Disney characters have taken at the hands of traditional Japanese artisans! Read More
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