Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
Doraemon
In the village of Wang Luang in northern Thailand’s Phrae Province, there is a traditional ritual held to end a drought that involves putting a live cat in a cage, parading it around town and splashing it with water. The cat’s cries were said to call down rain.
As the area is currently in the grips of a severe drought, the villagers held the ritual again this week, but with one key change: robot cat Doraemon stepped in as the caged feline.
Our mothers may have discouraged it, but playing with your food can be incredibly fun and rewarding. Even if it turns out looking kind of a mess, you still get to eat it – and who doesn’t love eating delicious food? But one thing we just can’t get the hang of is pancake art. Luckily for us, these amazing videos are here to show us how it’s done!
Featuring all of our beloved characters from Pikachu to Olaf to Hello Kitty, these videos have got us drooling and ready to start splashing batter everywhere ourselves!
Well, we didn’t ask for it, anyway. But it’s here, so somebody probably did. Was it you? It was you, wasn’t it? You and your bizarrely specific fetishes, you big weirdo. Now you’ve gone and opened the Pandora’s box of erotic manga parody, sexy Crayon Shin-chan‘s arrival is only a matter of time.
Nozoemon is a new manga series which replaces Nobita-kun with a horny high school kid and Doraemon with a cyborg from the future who takes the form of a very young girl. Just wait until you read about the hijinks they get up to.
We’ve been told to “let it go” more times than we can count, but fans all around the world continue to show their love for Disney’s Frozen. Even in China, fans flocked to the theater to catch the Frozen fever in 2014 grossing US$48.2 million at the box office.
Well that is one “record” the Disney movie is going to have to let go, as another animated movie has managed to surpass those numbers in 2015. It’s not another Pixar or Disney powerhouse though, this movie originates from Japan. If you want to know what movie beat up the Frozen juggernaut, you’ll have to stand by (me).
Even if a movie or TV series has elements that give it a broad international appeal, different countries might take very different approaches in marketing it. For example, Disney’s Big Hero 6 had a pretty even mix of exciting and heart-warming scenes, but as we looked at before, U.S. ads emphasized the former, while in Japan Disney relied on the latter to fill theater seats.
Now, we’re seeing that phenomenon running in the other direction. Classic anime Doraemon just got picked up for a second season in the U.S., set to start on June 15. But while in Japan the titular blue robot cat is seen by many as a symbol of relaxed family programming, some American commercials are portraying him as an action star.
Oh, sorry, we meant to say they’re portraying him as an ACTION! ACTION! ACTION! ACTION! star.
Many overseas anime fans don’t get their first introduction to the medium until they’re in their teens, and most are initially startled by how much more comfortable Japanese animation is than its western counterpart when it comes to depicting graphic violence in shows aimed at that age set. Still, it’s not like every popular cartoon in Japan is a gore fest. For example, perennial hit Sazae-san has over 7,000 episodes, and not one of them features its middle-class family maiming each other by firing energy blasts from their hands or the beam rifle of a giant robot.
Likewise, the Doraemon franchise, about a young boy and his loveable robot cat companion, is relatively free of dismemberment…but not entirely, as this video of one of the characters losing a key body part during a live performance shows.
While some anime attempt to realistically show the passage of in-show years, this isn’t always the case. Much like with their western counterparts, the events of many of Japan’s biggest mainstream animated hits seem to take place in a world where time stands still. So just like Bart and Lisa Simpson have been in elementary school for decades, so too have Nobita, Shizuka, and the rest of the core cast of Doraemon.
But while the anime’s characters never age, the voice talent playing them does, and the franchise’s generations of fans recently received the sad news that voice actress Nobuyo Oyama, the voice of Doraemon himself, is suffering from dementia.
It’s no secret that McDonald’s Japan has been enthusiastic about collaborating with various anime and character franchises to come up with goodies for children. In the past we’ve seen toys featuring Pokémon and Yokai Watch, as well as Pretty Cure, Super Mario and Transformers, among others, being offered with their Happy Meals, and kids certainly seem to be, well, happy with their Happy Meals, since almost 100 million of these sets are apparently sold in Japan each year.
This month, none other than Doraemon, the time-travelling blue cat robot, makes an appearance as six different Happy Meal toys, and they definitely look ready to delight children across Japan!
Taking up cosplay as a hobby takes a pretty significant time commitment to put together that perfect costume to dress up as your favorite video game, comic book or movie character. And for those of us without the, ahem, natural assets to boost our cosplay game, buying all those wigs, fashion accessories and snowman apparel can make the hobby an extremely expensive way to spend your free time.
However, this innovative cosplay enthusiast from Thailand doesn’t let his limited budget get in the way of making some creative, and frankly, kind of creepy costumes. We’ve spotted him before, but click below to see his latest creative, if not incredibly cheap, take on Dragonball Z, the Teletubbies, Taylor Swift and much more.
Remember the fun you used to have making snowmen when you were just a little sprout of a kid? Sure, your fingers would get numbed to the bone and your knees would get soaked from kneeling in the snow as you sculpted away for hours. But those little niggles were forgotten once you looked upon your finished masterpiece, before running inside to beg for some spare clothes and a carrot nose to decorate your newest frosty friend. Then he melted and you felt a little abandoned, a little lost, as though a part of your childhood had vanished, eroded like so much evaporated snow… Just me? Anyway, making stuff out of snow is awesome, and if you don’t believe us, check out this gallery of the best cute and wacky snow sculptures from China and Japan!
Shoppers at Singapore’s One Raffles Place can get into the holiday spirit with the help of Doraemon. Or rather, dozens upon dozens of Doraemon, which have been turned into a cute and wonderful Doraemon Christmas tree, complete with Santa hats.
Recently, we’ve brought you several articles detailing the meteoric rise of new franchise Youkai Watch as it continues to steal fans and attention away from the much-loved institution that is Pokémon. Die-hard Pokémon fans out there may feel safe in the assumption that Youkai Watch, being more traditionally “Japanese” in feel, will never match the success of Pokémon in the West. Be that as it may, we now have conclusive evidence that Pikachu’s time in the Japanese sun is well and truly over as new champion Jibanyan ascends his throne. Join us after the jump for proof!
An editorial published by the Chengdu Daily News is claiming that Doraemon, the popular franchise based on the manga by duo Fujiko F. Fujio, and the recent exhibitions in China that showcase it, are merely attempts by Japan to subvert Chinese culture.
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.
To get an idea of just what a huge cultural icon Doraemon is in Japan, all you have to do is take a look at the theatrical versions of the anime robot cat’s adventures. The first Doraemon movie was released in 1980, and a new film in the franchise has hit Japanese theatres like clockwork every year since, with the lone exception of 2005. Perhaps in apology for the tiny break in the streak, Doraemon’s producers gave us two films this year. The second just premiered this month, and even though Stand by Me Doraemon is the 35th movie in the series, it still breaks new ground by being the first to be computer-animated.
CG isn’t the only new frontier the beloved character is challenging though, as he’s going one more place he’s never been before: our bellies, in the form of the Doraemon cream bun.
On 16 July Sapporo Attorney Ayako Ito made a visit to Sapporo Kotoni Technical High School to assist the social studies teacher Shiego Kawahara in an important lesson regarding the right of collective self-defense. It’s a thorny issue that can be difficult enough to explain to adults let alone teenagers.
So the pair constructed a highly illustrated lecture on the topic using the classic manga and anime series Doraemon as an analogy. During the talk the teacher posed the question using the clumsy protagonist of the story: “If you gave Nobita a gun you could say he’s stronger, but could he really protect himself?”
As the question was posed a Asahi Shimbun reporter was in attendance and noticed that all of the students heads lifted up. Although it would seem the largely anti-war lecture had struck a chord with the kids, hardcore fans of Doraemon picked up on the fact that Kawahara had just accidentally made the most pro-militarization rhetorical question possible.
Famous Japanese confectioner Glico has been bringing us iconic Japanese sweets like Pretz and Pocky for decades. Now they have a real treat in store for us, thanks to an extra-special line-up to celebrate the upcoming 3-D movie, Stand By Me Doraemon.
The new specially marked packs include a hidden secret: 3-D moving images of Doraemon that come to life in your home. But these aren’t just any images. They’re created by you, with your very own colours and designs transformed into unbelievable, moving images, each with Doraemon acting out a fun scene before your very eyes! Check out all the different designs after the jump.
Some of Japan’s most famous characters created by legendary manga-ka Fujiko F Fujio have been turned into robots by Bandai, which can then be combined to create an even more epicly-super-cool robot of retro awesomeness!
There are days you wake up and just want to table-flip the entire world. You want to scream at the top of a mountain about how people are such dumbasses! You’re just so irritated with everything that the next person you come in contact with will feel your wrath. Your conscience kicks in (usually before anything terrible happens) and whispers that Golden Rule in your ear: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” However, sometimes the lack of face to face contact during text message conversations allows us to forget that there is a real person on the other side. Just because you can’t see the reaction of the other person, it doesn’t mean you can say whatever you want.
For Japanese speakers, the solution is here. And it comes in the form of Shizuka-chan, our favorite character from Doraemon, and a smartphone app.
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.
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