Posted by Michael Pinto on Jun 28, 2009 in Japanese TV
My guess is that commercial for Fujicolor Super HG has to be from either the late 80s or maybe the early 90s. The spot features the picture perfect looks of Imori Miyuki who started her career in 1986 in the TBS series It’s not fun, this is love (遊びじゃないのよ、この恋は) and is still active today. She has focused on comedy and her latest role was in the series Road to Remarriage (再婚一直線!) where she plays a struggling cartoonist trying to balance life with her proper looking husband and cute child: Read more…
Being a vegetarian I had seconds thoughts before buying this fish shaped snack treat (called Meito Air in Choco), but the strawberry flavor theme intrigued me no end. The faux fish is very similar to a light weight wafer cookie and the guts of the fish had a creamy light filling. Although one side of faux fish was slightly damaged I managed to get a good scan of the flip side: Read more…
At my local Korean food mart I came across these devastatingly sour and sweet candies from Japan called Shigekikkusu (シゲキックス) which are produced by UHA Mikakuto. I picked up two flavors, the first (shown above) was soda flavored and the second was cola flavored (shown below). The candies were small but packed a punch — the outside was coated with a light dusting of super sour dust, after a few seconds this wears off and you can taste the very sweet inside of of jelly like candy. Read more…
Recently I was wandering through a Korean food mart and I came across this very cute package design for Japanese animal crackers: Aside from the captivating colorful characters the first thing that blew me away was that the crackers are actually teaching kids to understand English, not Japanese! I started to suspect that this was something just done for the American market, but the package actually comes from Japan (produced by Ginbis). The back of the box even had a cute mini-dictionary of animal names (my favorite touch are the cartoons of each creature next to the name): Read more…
Every character in the Nendoroid series of action figures always picks up that extra bit of moe that makes you want to take it home and adopt it: And in this case this Usakottsu cyborg bunny looks as cute as can be! Our demon clawed rabbit friend is from the light comedy anime series Tentai Senshi Sunred (天体戦士サンレッド). Usakottsu is available from entertainmentearth.com and sports interchangeable parts including demon claws. Here are the opening titles from Tentai Senshi Sunred although sadly our cyborg bunny friend isn’t in them: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jun 19, 2009 in Animation
Clockwork is a short animated film that stars a cute robot girl named Hina. Being a caffeine addict the idea of robot making a morning brew caught my attention right away, but I have to say that the design of the robot is great and the animator did a great job of picking a refreshing soundtrack for this sweet little short. Here are some wonderful photos of Hina: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jun 19, 2009 in Japanese TV, Tech
I don’t know the exact date of this advert but looking at a primitive cell phone my guess is that it’s from the late 80s. The spot is for KDDI who entered the cel phone business in in 1987 and are still going strong today. The music in the advert is by Yuming (Yumi Matsutoya) who hit her career high point from the late 80s until the early 90s which is why her music seems to dominate the spot.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jun 15, 2009 in Animation
Up until this point I’ve guessed that everybody has seen photos of the full scale Gundam model in Japan which was created for the 30th anniversary of the show. But what I don’t think many folks have seen is a video of this amazing wonder, which gives you a much better feeling for the impressive scale of this wonder. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jun 13, 2009 in Japanese TV
It was only a matter of time until virral video marketing found a way to Japan — in this case this ad campaign is for Fit’s Gum which is manufactured by Lotte. I have to say that the dance music is rather catchy and i like the added touch of the secondary dancers: The first who is a mannequin and the second girl in the dog outfit. By the way you’ll notice the ever so cute Akita Inu doggie in the lower right corner of one of the spots. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jun 11, 2009 in Videogames
I’ve been following the fame of Vocaloid software mascot Miku Hatsune via the dozens of fan videos from Japan for some time now, so it’s cool to see that Sega will be featuring her in an upcoming Sony PSP game. What’s great about the trailer above is that it almost reminds one of a classic old school MGM musical from back in the day, it’s my bet that after this game comes out that it’s only a matter of time until she stars in her own anime series (although she’s made some cameos so far). Read more…
Posted by John Martone on May 28, 2009 in Animation
This video, by the Japanese group of artists Rinpa Eshidan is one of the coolest things I’ve come across this week! Rinpa Eshidan, which is loosely defined as “To bring people together, art crew,” is a collaborative art effort that I am entirely too enamoured with. Focused on making art for the sake of creating, not the sake of preserving, the group has managed to come up with some amazing projects. This one, for example, is a time lapse video of them, in public, painting on the same wall for a week. Using each completed painting as a springboard to the next, the results are mesmerizing to say the least. Here are some photos of them in action: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on May 26, 2009 in Animation
If Pixar did a toilet training video it would look like this! The clip above is from some NHK kids video show in Japan, the subject matter is strictly bathroom humor as you can see. I think the cutest thing about this video are the flying rolls of toilet paper who seem to be playing a bugle.
Posted by Michael Pinto on May 22, 2009 in Japanese TV
This vintage Japanese commercial for Parliament Lights looks to be from the late 80s — in fact it feels so cliched that it almost seems like a parody ad from Saturday Night Live. This ad also interesting for me to look at this because cigarette commercials were banned in the United States in 1965, so even seeing a spot for smokes is somewhat surreal in any language.
In a previous article where I explored Japanese pop singers who sound like robots I mentioned Aira Mitsuki having a strangely trashed sound which has little to do with poor quality Youtube sound:
Posted by Michael Pinto on May 15, 2009 in Japanese TV
As part of my obsession with Japanese comedian Ken Shimura I came across this clever comedy skit from 1984. In 1974 Shimura joined the Drifters who started life a rock band and comedy group in 1964 (think old school variety show routines). They had a very popular show on TBS from 1969 until 1985 which was called Hachijidayo, Zen’inshugo! (It’s 8 p.m., Everyone Together!”). The humor in the show pretty low brow by Japanese standards, although what I like about watching it is that you don’t need to speak Japanese to get the jokes which in this case can be very visual. One friend of mine once derided Shimura as “the Benny Hill of Japan” but as someone interested in animation I rather appreciate visual comedy, so to me Ken is a treasure.
Posted by Michael Pinto on May 9, 2009 in Japanese TV
I’m not 100% sure what show this is, but I know for certain that it’s a segment from a young child’s educational TV show which is produced by NHK in Japan. When I first started watching this I just assumed that I was in for two minutes of the cat being taunted by the singer in the video, but the addition of cat and mouse cosplay actors made me laugh right away.
Posted by Michael Pinto on May 4, 2009 in Japanese TV
I kid you not — Samurai Sentai Shinkenger is the 33rd Super Sentai Series created by Toei to sell an never ending tide of toys! Since the 70s the Kamen Rider formula hasn’t changed much, but why mess with success? In fact not only has this series done well in Japan but there are still American kids buying Power Ranger toys years after that series came here in 1993 (which looks quite primitive to the special effects in Samurai Sentai Shinkenger). Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 29, 2009 in Animation, Tech
If you’re any sort of anime fanboy (or fangurl) you’re going to want to sign up for Nico Nico Douga which is almost like a Japanese version of YouTube (in fact the first version of Nico Nico Douga used YouTube as a source). However most fans get turned off as you need to register to see any videos and the entire interface is in Japanese (although there are Spanish and German interfaces available if you know those languages). The other nice thing about the site is that it encourages users to post high quality video.
To make it easy to get started I put together the first three steps to get you to he right spot. This is where you click on the homepage: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 28, 2009 in Animation
I was quite pleasantly surprised that the above robot design was created by Disney! Earlier this year Disney cracked the Japanese market with a show called Fireball which was designed to appeal to a Japanese audience (with some help from Toei who did all of the heavy lifting). The main character is a robot-girl named Hatsune Miki who also goes by “Drossel” is a mech-girl — shown above is a figurine based on her character (which can be pre-order from National Console Support). Sadly Fireball didn’t do too great because a second season isn’t in the works, but here’s a bit of video to give you a taste: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 28, 2009 in Videogames
It’s funny the world of arcade video games seems to be so stagnant that it’s amazing to see what’s going on in Japan where they seem to be having much more fun. A good case in point is the Sega Storm-G ride which will spin the rider a full 360 degrees — the game emulates a bobsled ride on steroids. The first ones will be installed at Sega Joypolis in Tokyo. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 24, 2009 in Japanese TV
This is a cute segment from a Japanese TV show which shows off how to get up, make breakfast and get dressed for work in five minutes. Although it’s somewhat telling that the segment is eight and a half minutes long…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 22, 2009 in Videogames
Interactive fiction does quite well in Japan and one the more successful studios is Key which has created Kanon, Air and Clannad — all of which have made the transition from games into anime series. Shown here is a behind the scenes tour of their studio, what’s really cool is that each workstation is surrounded by various otaku goodies. Currently the next game coming out from Key will be Rewrite: Read more…
