The Unreal

March 30th, 2025

Here’s a photo of me a man, which looks like it was taken using iOS portrait mode in a Sydney hotel room a couple of years ago. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a strong image, which gives little away.

Who is this man, and why has he inspired so many artists over the years? Let’s find out…

Here he is reinterpreted in black and red pen, a style we used for our postcard contest two years hence. The theme then was horror: would this guy have fit the category?

A depiction in the style of a legendary sword & sorcery artist. A powerful physique reveals itself, yet hidden by robes typical of a mage.

This is the famous image of him painted by Van Gogh. Is he a monk? A penitent?

Here he is drawn by an iconic 1980s portrait artist. Perhaps he’s a performer, or a pop idol?

He also inspired a commercial landscape painter, who used light to illuminate his darkness. Could he be a holy man?

He’s even made his way into anime, in this still from an upcoming production. But what is the genre?

And then there’s the famous version of him done by the grandmaster of biomechanical art. Could this be the purest glimpse into this man’s nature? Is he a monster? A beast?

Even sculptors have been influenced by his appearance, such as the felt creation above, or even…

…this whimsical balloon-art depiction.

Who is this man? Why has he inspired so many creators? What’s his story?

Some of you have may know already, but he is indeed the immortal sorceror from the best-selling fantasy series The Wizard’s Quest. Bold Brogar the warrior thought he was just saving Princess Mayumi from a band of goblins, but in time he learns the kidnapping was a decoy and his true quest was to save the world from the evil machinations of Azrukel Soulbinder.

Perhaps you’ve read it. Perhaps you even saw the film? Here’s one of the behind the scenes outtakes shot during filming:

Of course that shows Azrukel’s actor (who shall remain nameless), and you can see he apparently doesn’t share the villainy of his character by the way he’s making his cast mates chuckle.

The leads were all smiles on the convention circuit when promoting the film but dark rumours followed the cast about goings-on on set, many of which made their way into the various scandal magazines:

Only the director of the film knows the truth, and he’s not saying anything:

Evilness aside, Azrukel is a charismatic enough fellow that he has a wild fanbase, as the images on this post attest. Indeed, he’s probably reached the same heights of fame as Darth Vader or Voldemort. And just like them he’s been heavily merchandised as well, such as in action figure form:

I don’t own one myself, but I’d love to. However I’m trying to find a carded copy, which are fabulously rare:

If you’ve got one you want to sell, please let me know 😉

(The only ‘real’ image in this post was the first one. Everything else – including the character names – was the creation of AI.)

Posted in AI, Art, Blog, People | 2 Comments »

Seen In NYC Too

March 18th, 2025

Egg & Bacon on toast. The rare example of me eating eggs 🙂

It was parade day, which means these guys selling green stuff were everywhere. I’ve never been to a city with as many street vendors as NYC, and their absence was very noticeable during Covid.

We only glimpsed a bit of the parade since crowds were massive. Even the (ultimately unrealized) threat of rain didn’t keep people away. We spent the day shopping!

We didn’t buy that.

Or that.

The view from the roof of our hotel. The bar up there was closed so we had to peep out the door to the outdoor seating, but the view of the Empire State Building was great! The hotel is Japanese by the way, and has a tatami room. Maybe we’ll stay there one day.

Posted in NYC | Comments Closed

Seen In NYC

March 16th, 2025

We’re in NYC doing the usual. Here’s some random photos of a few things we saw today.

This truck was driving around evangelizing via obnoxiously loud speakers. I wonder how many people were swayed but it’s less-than-convincing message?

‘Our’ old hotel is too expensive now so we chose a new one, and when we arrived we upgraded into a better room which is large and very comfy. I think this is ‘our’ new NYC hotel from now on 🙂

A dog in a cart. Do you think he likes wearing the rubber booties?

KLS eating a veggie burger.

NYC is always full of social commentary and activism, both organized and underground. We saw two groups protesting today but I couldn’t work out either cause (members of each were holding unfamiliar flags). And there’s a lot of material like the above posted all around as well. Last time we were here we saw a lot of Teslas, including cybertrucks . We saw none today.

Tomorrow is the St Patrick’s Day parade. Will we go and watch? That depends on the rain…

Posted in Blog, NYC | Comments Closed

From The Past

March 13th, 2025

We spent a few hours at the antique postcard shop last weekend and amongst a haul of ~200 cards I bought this one:

It’s a lovely bird card, probably 40+ years old, and it would have gone into my ‘generic animal’ stash for future Postcrossing use. While I make a concerted effort to not buy used cards, this time I missed this one. Here’s what is written on the back:

A message from Elfriede to Ruth, written July 27 1989. It’s typed and not stamped, and this with the lack of address shows it must have been mailed in an envelope. It’s a nice message, if a little terse, but reading between the lines we see these women were very familiar.

I love the last line, an evocative glimpse of life in Berlin in those days: In Berlin is all the same with the wall and I think so long I live it will not be other.

Only 105 days later, The Wall was torn down. I wonder what Elfriede thought on that day, and whether she wrote a followup to Ruth?

And as for the postscript on the side, a Grünfinken is a greenfinch. Not exactly a canary, but not dissimilar, which explains her choice of card 🙂

Posted in Animals, Postcards, Time | Comments Closed

Ultraman Cards

March 9th, 2025

I bought this in Japan:

It’s a box of the initial set of the new Ultraman card game! Even single packs of this was difficult to find in Tokyo, and I only saw boxes for sale in Nagoya. It wasn’t very expensive; about $30 for a sealed box of 20 packs.

At the time I hadn’t seen the English language cards for sale in the US, but in the last month or so packs of both the original set and the first expansion turned up at a local comic store. I bought every pack I saw, and opened them all.

The cards aren’t particularly attractive, and the first set in particular is heavy on images taken directly from the TV shows. It only features Ultras taken from the last couple of decades (no Showa era Ultras at all) which is ok, but I wish it was more art-based and less photographic.

The cards themselves are well manufactured, made of thick stock with a premium feel compared to other TCGs. The chase cards are beautiful, with the ones I pulled having metallic effects, rainbow foiling and embossing. But they’re spectacularly rare, and in about 40 packs (including all my Japanese ones) I only got one (of 40) ‘AP’ cards, and no SP, SSSP, UR or ExP cards!

I don’t know how to actually play the game, since I’ve failed to find any of the starter decks for sale here in the USA! Almost no retailers have them, and sellers online ask silly money. Hopefully I’ll get them one day and see if the game is fun 🙂

As I said this is a brand new TCG launched recently (with some fanfare) by Bandai. It’s a little surprising since Bandai have so many other TCGs on the market including Battle Spirits, which recently released these two Ultraman expansions:

There have been several Ultraman expansions for Battle Spirits over the years, with these two being the most recent, with the blue one in particular only being released last December. Kristin got me a box of each for my birthday.

The red expansion box came with a single card box topper promo pack (which I haven’t opened) and the set contains 69 cards in four levels of rarity. With 20 6-card packs, how much of the full set could I get?

I can’t play this game, and the cards are very wordy and entirely Japanese but they’re so pretty! This is the level of design the official Ultraman game needs in my opinion.

All the cards (even the commons) are embossed, foiled and plastic coated making them all feel like thin credit cards. And these packs are significantly less expensive that Magic packs, which asks the question why is the quality of Magic cards not at this level?

The blue expansion box included a box-topper and a promo for the new Ultraman TCG, which I found amusing. This set has 75 different cards once again in four levels of rarity.

The cards are the same high standard as the other set, and the rare cards just as spectacular:

I’ve only opened a few packs of each, and will probably finish opening the over the next few months. Even though I can’t play it, I like these cards much more than the official TCG, and I wish it were these ones that had been translated into English 🙂

Posted in Collecting, Games, Otaku, Trading Cards | Comments Closed

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