Itasha

I went to COMIKE about a month ago, along with about 500 thousand others, and it always amazes me just how massive this amateur comic market is. I've been four or five times now and the manga on offer this time were the usual piles of comic-porn. Naked manga honeys assaulted and exalted by a mass of sweaty otaku. This shocked, and to be honest kind of titillated me the first time I went, but it now seems boring, and a little sad. It never seems to change. The same drawing styles. The same themes. The same cum-covered girls fighting off the same invisible, censored, phallic-somethings. And it is still mostly young women drawing and buying this stuff—which is the one thing that does still raise my eye-brows.

But in the car park this summer were a group of otaku I hadn't seem before. Standing proudly beside their cars these guys reminded me of rev-heads back home in the 1970s, who declared their machismo by airbrushing naked-chicks on their muscle-cars. The modern Japanese approach however is to splash hot-anime-babes across the bonnet to display just how much "moe" you feel.

Now moe (a key term for otaku, and pronounced "mo-ay", like Moet champagne ), is kind of a hard concept to grasp. But basically, imagine that you seriously have the hots for a girl — probably a young teen girl — and that you are literally burning up inside to express your passion. Only, that passion is coupled with the somewhat awkward, slightly embarrassing, knowledge, that the object of your budding love is... a cartoon character. And that's moe.

These otaku say that living this kind of life is somewhat painful (no kidding), so these cars have been dubbed "Itasha". "Ita"= pain and "sha"= car. It used to mean "Italian car", but they've made it their own.

Walking around the carpark the one word I kept overhearing as people looked on at these chariots of moe was "mottainai!" (what a waste!) And seeing the Mercedes with the rather cheap looking decals stuck to it, I have to agree.

p.s: roll your mouse over the image on the right....."moe!"

Yokai Mania! Arcade Attack!

I've been rather busy over the past few weeks rolling out the websites for both Yokai Attack! and Arcade Mania! But both are finished now and getting good feedback.



The launch party for Arcade Mania! will be at Cafe Pause in Ikebukuro on the 27th September. So if you are in Tokyo make sure you come. The author, Brian Ashcraft, has put the invite up on Kotaku, with a link to my site! Nice of him to call me a "wizard". I expect the job offers to start rolling in!

Yokai Attack! site
Arcade Mania! site

Kaitei Shonen Marine

I am currently editing a book on Japanese pop-culture, and keep stumbling across stuff that dredges up memories from my childhood. Which is odd considering I grew up in Australia.

The latest flashback is to a time I could swim-like-a-fish, using a special oxygen rich chewing gum to help me breathe; and how, with the help of my trusty white dolphin sidekick, I would fight off underwater baddies… I seriously used to dream of being Marine Boy.

I had totally forgotten about this cartoon, and it continues to amaze me how many of the shows I used to watch as kid were from Japan. I sometimes wonder if loving these cartoons when I was young is one of the reasons I am in Tokyo now. I am by no means an anime otaku compared to some people I know, but in the list of my favorite cartoons, there are a lot of anime. Kimba the White Lion, Kum Kum, Battle of the Planets, Speed Racer, Astro Boy, and now the recently remembered Marine Boy, were all big parts of my childhood TV-time. But it was not until I was an adult that I learnt they were Japanese.

I’m not sure why, but somehow I kind of feel I missed out on something. Maybe it’s because I see all these otaku—starting with those about ten years younger than me—who loved anime and manga so much they were inspired to learn Japanese; and I envy them a little. Perhaps in my teens if I had know Battle of the Planets came from Japan, I may have become obsessed with the place earlier. But then I wonder if my eight-year old nephew, who knows Pokemon, Dragon Ball-Z and Naruto are from Japan, will still be into anime when he is older. Or whether he will be like me, and will simply be reminded of them one day.

Yoda Attack

There's been a bit of a buzz the past few days over Facebook refusing to give a Japanese woman an account because her family name a Jedi to the same it is.

Blogs everywhere have picked up the story and even Lucasfilm posted it on their official blog.

But just who is the Facebook Yoda?

Well I am pleased to say that she is none other than Hiroko Yoda one of the authors of Yokai Attack! Which ironically enough now has a Facebook group.

So join up and rub shoulders with a Jedi.

Shoko Attack!

Anyone who watches as much Japanese TV as I do is bound to know who Shoko-tan is. She seems to be everywhere at the moment, on countless celebrity panel shows, or performing songs from her new album, or ensuring people have good manners in ads for the Promise finance company. She also has an extremely popular blog.

On one of those many TV shows she appears in, I saw that as a kid she was really keen on Yokai manga. So when I met her the other day (for an upcoming book project I will tell you about eventually) I just had to give her a copy of Yokai Attack! She seemed pretty pleased with it and even exclaimed that it would be good practice for her English.

Here's hoping she puts it on her blog!

JSG Canon Rock

I know simply posting links to YouTube vids is a lazy way to blog, but hey...

Virtual Tokyo

I was searching Google Maps today to find how to get to a restaurant for a friend's birthday (can't believe he's 50!), when I noticed that Google has just launched the Street View of Tokyo. It is pretty impressive. I mean this is a damn big city! And they seem to have pretty much covered the whole place. They even have the building I live in on there, and I live in a back street of a fairly sleepy part of town.

I'm not totally sure I feel about it yet. Part of me is going "Cool! Check this street out... over here! We can totally see how to get to that restaurant!" while the rest of me is going "Um, well. Yeah, so. What about privacy and, um, the enjoyment of not actually knowing what a place looks like before you go there? You know, the joy of discovery... in the real world!"

Hopefully these two sides of me will eventually work out their differences. Until then here is where I would take any of you the first time you come visit.Walk around if you like... or save it until you can really do it.

Devilman

Not posting much these days... so thought I'd test out blogger's mobile blogging function. Maybe that will inspire me to blog more. I can email from my mobile while sitting on the train... or in the office like I am now. I just read the Devilman manga, it's pretty wacky!

Yokai Attack!

So, what’s my excuse this time? For not posting in 3 months. Well, yokai actually. The little buggers attacked me. Kept me stuck at home for months. In the dark. Chained to my computer. And when I tried to get away? They crashed my hard drive, and I lost 3 months work. That didn’t please them at all! Made me do all the work over again. In 5 days! Not nice.

But I got them back. Used purple for the endpapers of this book. They don’t like purple you see, so they’re trapped. I hope.

Yokai Attack! Designed by me, written by these nice folks.

Buy it!

Atarashi blog

Yet again I've been somewhat slack in posting. I'd like to blame it on the rather serious hard drive crash I had recently which forced me to work like a robot until I had redone the 3 months work I lost (yes I know "backup"). But really, even if that hadn't happened I probably wouldn't have posted. I have been a very busy boy.

I am however, back. And as you may've noticed I've moved this blog over to blogger.com. I hope you like the new 3 column layout.