Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 9, 2010 in Japanese TV
This Godzilla themed canned coffee advert perfectly captures my inner crankiness when I can’t get my daily caffeine fix. The commercial is for Kirin Black Deep Body Fire which features a “51% blend of carefully selected premium bean” from Guatemala. Although the two main selling points are that this coffee is both sugar free (and thus low calorie) and apparently tastes quite bitter. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 8, 2010 in Japanese TV
This commercial is for Daiwa House, the largest homebuilder in Japan. Apparently D-room is a reference to the dining room in a Japanese house. In fact when you’re looking at real estate ads in Japan they’ll often use letters to represent the number of rooms in a house. So an LDK would be a house with living room, dining room and kitchen. And from what I can see D-room is an online service for real estate. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 7, 2010 in Japanese TV
These two adverts for Mizkan are quite creepy yet somehow pleasing with their offbeat humor. Both commercials seem to be for onigiri which are Japanese rice balls which can come in both triangle and round shapes. And although the spot doesn’t show it onigiri are quite often wrapped in seaweed. I really got a kick out of the second commercial which shows the creative ways to incorporate onigiri into a creative bento box for lunch. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 6, 2010 in Comic Books
If you love Naruto you’re going to want to run to your local Japanese bookstore and try and get your hands on Weekly Shonen Jump #18 which just came out. It’s a special edition of the comics magazine aimed at introducing new fans to Naruto. This is part of a larger promotional build up for the new film which will be released in Japan at the end of July. Read more…
Above: Events like this are proof that you don’t have to be a Superman to make the world better!
If you’re a comic book fanboy who is in New Jersey you may want to check out the Superheroes For Hospice event on Saturday, April 24 at the Livingston Mall. The event which will be packed with professional comic book artists and writers will be a benefit for the Saint Barnabas Hospice and Palliative Care Center. Visitors will have a chance to meet and greet, get autographs and purchase comic books and original artwork for a good cause. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 5, 2010 in Comic Books
Above: Gesture drawings by the illustrator Don Low.
I just took a look at a webcomic which almost had it all — slick photoshop coloring, a comic book font and an almost dead on faux anime style. Computers area great tool because with some talent you can make anything look pretty finished, but there’s always a stiff quality to aspiring comic book artists who haven’t taken a life drawing class. The reason is that in life drawing you start off with what are known as gesture drawings. The model warms up by changing poses quickly and the artists have to capture the essence of the model within seconds by drawing just a few lines. What’s brilliant about this technique is that it forces an artist to throw their style away and put all of their energy into representing a pose. Read more…
If you’re lucky enough to be in Japan on April 25th there will be an amazing handshake session with Go Nagai at the Go Nagai Wonderland Museum. The day starts off with a Talk Show which traces the career of Go Nagai and then is followed up with the pre-release of the Soul of Chogokin Mazinger Z GX-45C color comic version collectable shown above and below. The collectable robot will be released in a limited edition of 100 and will set you back 6,800 yen: Read more…
Magazine publishers in the United States could learn some real lessons from the Japanese: The May issue of Young Ace magazine features a nice illustration of Evangelion. Apparently the cover is honoring the recent release of a twelve volume manga collection. However the cool thing is that the issue is packed with other Evangelion goodies including a desk calendar. It’s those little extra things like that which make Japanese printed publications so much more lively than what you see here.
This latest Iron Man 2 trailer looks like a great deal of fun, I really like the campy feel to the entire clip. The film is going to be out in early May and my gut tells me that it’s going to do very well in terms of box office.
The charm of a really good internet meme is that they’re so simple that they make you burst out laughing. Like a good bounty hunter I did my best to track down the owner of Jabba the Cat, but alas after going through tineye.com (no results), Google image search (links to several reposts) and then to various Tumblr blogs I still hit a dead end.
On one hand I’m very impressed that Marvel is going ahead and doing an IPad app — but the pricing of $2 per issue seems a bit high to me. My gut tells me that the way Marvel makes their money is by merchandising and films, so the more kids that can grow up with the Marvel universe characters the more money you’ll make over the long term. I get it that you can’t go from charging something to nothing (currently most books are $4 in print), but honestly most comic books are too short to make the two bucks worth while. Imagine if you will if the cost per eComic was $1 per issue like iTunes songs, or if you had an all you can eat subscription model for $20 a month. But in any case my bet is that we’ll see other comic book publishers follow Marvel shortly (that or new publishers will enter the field).
Too many of us take for granted what they actually do at NASA: Shown in this video are two astronauts training to fly the space shuttle with a modified Gulfstream jet. What’s mind numbing is that a pilot might make over a thousand of these flights just to qualify for a shuttle mission. I also have to admit that watching this behind the scenes video is a bit bittersweet as there isn’t a real replacement for the shuttle.
Medicom Toy is one of the cooler Japanese hobby companies which has an beautiful series of super realistically rendered figurines known as Real Action Heroes. This series is based upon well known licensed media properties and in the past they’ve put out figures for everything from Dragonball Z to Indian Jones. And they have just branched into Star Wars — shown above is the Real Action Heroes #494 Star Wars R2-D2 and shown below is the Real Action Heroes #493 Star Wars C-3PO: Read more…
So many times fans only think of manga as being focused on either romance or supernatural martial arts, but that’s not always the case: For example the manga series Worst (ワースト) by Hiroshi Takahashi shows the world of Japanese biker gangs — a genre which is quite under appreciated abroad. This limited edition figurine does a amazing job of capturing all of nice little details of Japanese biker culture which is portrayed in the manga series. Worst is very popular in Japan, in fact you can a wide range of merchandise based on the manga from gang rings to sun glasses. Read more…
Shown above is the trailer for The Expendables. When you start to see too many stars associated with a film my immediate fear is the Poseidon Adventure effect which has all of the talent being washed away from the screen. Although being a fanboy at heart I’m already predisposed to rooting for any film that has Sylvester Stallone, Jet Li, Mickey Rourke and Forest Whitaker playing for the same team. Although my better sense is the trailer doesn’t seem promising, but I’ll give Stallone a chance… Read more…
A museum in honor of Fujiko F. Fujio (pen name for Hiroshi Fujimoto) is set to open in Japan on September 3, 2011. Hiroshi Fujimoto was half of the duo known as Fujiko Fujio who created the Doraemon manga which is one of the most popular franchises in Japan — although sadly the robotic blue cat has never quite caught on in America. Fujimoto passed away in 1996, and as a tribute to his fans his widow helped bring the museum to life as a “way of giving back”. In addition to the many interactive exhibits the museum will include Fujimoto’s drawing table, his personal beret and his pipe. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 31, 2010 in Science, Tech
This story touched my heart: One of the side benefits of NASA is the amazing images that that the Hubble Space Telescope has produced over the years — however many of these glimpses of the furthest corners of the universe are off limits to the blind. So according to this story reachers at NASA worked with braille experts to create a representation of the Carina Nebula. What I love about the project is that the embossed photo isn’t a literal representation but instead is filled with different symbols which give information on the formation of the nebula itself. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 31, 2010 in Animation
I was filled with horror looking at the above sneak peak poster from the Captain Harlock computer graphics film that Toei has planned for 2012. Clearly Toei has learned little from the horrible AstroBoy film that came out last year. I’ve some some amazing anime that’s been done in 3D, but very rarely have I seen a studio be able to pull off translating a 2D character into 3D. The first problem I noticed with this harlock poster is that while the clothing is just right, there’s something not quite working about the face and the hair. The result is that Harlock starts to look like Howard Stern with too much makeup on: Read more…
I am blown away by the quality of this virtual Lego Klingon Bird of Prey by Kevin J. Walter. This virtual model features 274,350 parts, would be 516 centimeters long and was rendered with the help of Eric Albrecht. This staggering project took more than two years to complete: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 30, 2010 in Japanese TV
This Nescafe spot starring Mariah Carey is from the year 2000. I half suspect that Carey didn’t go to Japan to do the spot because it seems to be shot against green screen. The give away is her awkward interaction with her co-star who I believe is Japanese comedian Sanma Akashiya: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 29, 2010 in Star Trek
You can spend so much time and cash on cosplay, but at the $10 each these Starfleet badges are the best way to pass yourself as an Enterprise crew member on a low budget! Each badge includes a pin back so you can wear them — and then just make sure that you have a colored t-shirt handy and black jeans for the full effect. Shown above is the command division badge replica, and below are the badges for the science division, engineering division and medical division: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 29, 2010 in Japanese TV
This very strange Kirin Green Tea ad from 2003 features Nanako Matsushima (松嶋菜々子). Apparently the young lad is getting his romantic advice from a manga, so our fashion model hero knocks him to the floor and then gives him tea tips with the help of her panda puppet. The entire sequence is very strange to say the least, and yet making it even odder is that we never see the panda puppet or the tea in the establishing shot with Nanako: Read more…
As much as it’s loved by kids everywhere I’ve got to say that Ben 10 has never really won me over, there’s something very generic feeling about the show to me. However recently while wondering around my hood in Brooklyn I came across an amazing set of eight capsule Ben 10 toys that blew me away. I tend not to expect much from American gashapon when put next to what the Japanese produce — however the level of detail on this collection of monsters and robots was quite good: Read more…
