Otaku « Robot Claw

Archive for the ‘Otaku’ Category

Over 75 Hours Of Ultraman!

Tuesday, September 15th, 2020

Since the start of summer I’ve been watching a lot of Ultraman. This is because – to my delight – it’s finally all being released on Blu-Ray here in the USA. Naturally, I’ll buy and watch it all!

Return of Ultraman (1971, 51 episodes, 22 hours)

This was the third Ultra series, a followup from Ultraseven which had been such a success Tsuburaya somewhat reluctantly continued the show into a third series. This time a race car driver – Hideki Go – assumes the mantle of Ultraman Jack to save the world from the usual gallery of intergalactic, supernatural and extra dimensional threats.

It mostly follows the style set in the previous two series, with monster-of-the-week stories that are fun for kids but also very watchable by adults. Much of the success is the charm of Go himself, a very earnest hero that never quite manages to regain his humanity after being saved by Jack (when he dies). The show has some dark elements as well – a character is dragged behind a car to death! – as well as a horror ‘series’ of episodes that I bet thrilled Japanese kids in 1971!

I particularly loved the location episodes, which traveled all around Japan and gave me many ideas for future trips! The winter series that had characters running around in waist deep snow were mesmerizing!

Overall I really enjoyed this series. It wasn’t as good as Ultraseven (read my review here), but that’s an incredibly high bar and Return of Ultraman is still a great six-fi show.

Ultraman Ace (1972, 52 episodes, 22 hours)

By this, the fourth Ultra series, Tsuburaya knew they were into a good thing and in Ultraman Ace they began to develop what we know call the Ultra Universe. There had been brief cameos before, but in this series the new Ultra was often joined by his ‘brothers’ (Ultraman, Seven, Jack and Zoffy) and even – in memorable episodes – his father. Together they fought to protect earth from a weekly parade of giant beasts and villains. And they talk! In previous series the Ultras were almost entirely silent but here the talk to each other and its clear there’s a history and society beyond their appearances on Earth.

The series in some ways is a step back from Return of Ultraman. Despite an interesting twist of two hosts for Ace, neither had the charm of any of the previous hosts. And the ‘terrible monsters’ featured in the show we’re at times a bit too bizarre to be credible. Ace however is a dextrous and dangerous Ultra, and the fights were both more acrobatic and violent than the previous years.

Toward the ends it gets a bit too childish and even starts to include blatant promotions for Ultra toys (which had become big sellers in Japan), and I found the end a let down after the great final episodes of previous series. The weakest of the early series that I have watched.

Ultraman X (2015, 22 episodes + movie, 13.5 hours)

Jumping forward forty-three years and we have the 27th Ultra series! Mill Creek is releasing them in an unusual order, but since the different series are only loosely connected it’s not a big problem. I hope they go back and release the 5th through 26th series, especially the one made in Australia in 1992 (Ultraman: Towards the Future)!

I’ve seen quite a lot of recent tokusatsu (‘men in rubber suits’) series and this one adheres fairly well to the formula: lightweight but fun stories with lots of posturing and flashy effects during combat. X is a ‘digital’ Ultraman who lives in (basically) a cellphone and his host fuses not just with him but also with ‘spark dolls’ and monster ‘trading cards’ to form all sorts of variant forms for X. Mid combat upgrades and form changes are common, and this is taken to the extreme in the movie where he fuses with no less than five other Ultras to create a super-version of himself.

Suffice to say it’s absolutely bonkers and I loved every second. It was such a joy to finally be able to watch a subtitled recent Ultra series, but this exceeded my wildest expectations.

The cast is great too. Ultra’s host is an earnest and likeable just-out-of-teenager who works for Earth defense alongside a tsundere young woman of indeterminate age (who naturally I liked) and who is assisted by a stupidly peppy scientist played by a real-life idol that is constantly talking about how cute the Ultras are.

There’s insane levels of product placement and I’m sure the trading cards and swords and spark dolls used in the show are the actual ones you could buy in Japanese toy stores when the show ran. Rather than repulse me it just made me want to go back to Japan and start scooping up all the Ultra merchandise I see. Damn pandemic…

An awesome series. Watch it!

Ultraman Orb (25 episodes + spinoffs, 18 hours)

The 28th Ultra series is a doozy, and after watching I learned it’s one of the most beloved. It tells a mostly self-contained story of an Ultraman (Orb) who lost most of his powers and is stranded on earth with lost memories. His human form – Kurenai Gai – takes up with a sort of amateur X-Files group and usually ends up saving them from the usual rogues gallery.

At the same time his alien nemesis – Jugglus Juggler (yes you read that correctly) – is making things very difficult for him. A girl is involved, secrets are revealed and powers restored and it all comes to an extremely satisfying conclusion.

As I implied this is a monstrously good Ultra series. The three main characters (Gai, Juggler and Naomi) are all extremely likable and it’s remarkably well written for a tokusatsu merchandise vehicle! The effects – especially the CGI – are even better than in X and every time Orb learns a new form the reveal is magnificent. I loved this show!

Unfortunately the same can not be said for Ultraman Orb Origin Saga which tells the backstory of Gai and Juggler before they came to Earth. It’s not at all bad, but they aren’t yet the characters we loved in Orb and not as interesting.

The two movies though are great, especially Ultra Fight Orb that features some insane centuries-long training in a slow-time room so Orb can gain power to defeat the big bad. An idea stolen from Dragonball of course, but it works well.

Overall Orb is a truly great series, and I’m not surprised they brought Juggler back in the current (2020) Ultra series…

Over 75 hours of Ultraman so far (not including the 70+ hours I’ve watched during the last several years of the first three Ultra series) and I’m still going strong! I’m already six episodes into Ultraman Geed, have Ultraman Ginga arriving in the mail any day now and Ultraman R/B is released next month. Not to mention the new version of Ultra Q that is sitting next to me waiting to be watched, and the ‘coming soon’ second season of the (fantastic) Netflix animated Ultraman series!

I just hope they release it all before physical media dies completely! I can’t wait to have a bookshelf with over a thousand hours of Ultraman…

Posted in Blog, Miscellaneous, Movies, Otaku | Comments Closed

Bag of Stamps (part two)

Saturday, August 29th, 2020

You’ve been waiting all week, and so have I! With no further ado, here are the contents of the dinosaur stamp envelope:

The bag was supposed to contain fifty but had Eighty-two unique stamps (and one double)! In total 13 countries are represented (the number of stamps are listed after): Bulgaria (1), USSR (4), Republic of Congo (5), Hungary (5), Laos (4), Mali (7), Azerbaijan (6), Guyana (9), Romania (6), Tanzania (12), São Tomé (6), Western Sahara (11), Madagascar (6).

The above nine are very large and were issued by the South American country of Guyana in the early 1990s. Apparently they show ‘prehistoric creatures’ that once lived in the country… but isn’t that a koala?!?

Here’s some (presumably?) extinct birds on a series from Laos from 1994. The art on these is very pretty.

And here are seven dinosaur stamps from Mali, from 1984. Curiously most of the art is reused on different-denomination stamps.

One thing every one of these stamps has in common is that they are unused. And yet you’ll notice almost all of them are canceled with postmarks. This is because these are all CTO (cancel-to-order) stamps, which are topical stamps printed for the collectors market. The stamps are canceled (by machine) at the printers and then sold in bulk to resellers as a way to raise revenue for the countries that print them. CTOs like these are apparently much more common in countries without robust postal services, and still exist today.

Researching these I learned that dinosaurs are a very popular theme within stamp collecting with almost 4000 stamps issued across the years by almost every country. The first stamp showing an actual dinosaur was released by China in 1958, and they continue to be popular today with an example being the recent lenticular T-Rex set issued in the USA. I even already had a few myself, that I blogged about a few years ago.

All these stamps – and all the other loose ones that were in the bag or that I already owned – are now in a fancy new binder I bought myself since last weekend. It’s a good way to store them, and there’s loads of empty space left if I ever happen to get my hands on more stamps in the future…

To end this two-part series, I have to say that this bag of stamps that I thought was a risky buy even at $8 ended up being a lot of fun to sort through and research! I hope you enjoyed looking through them with me 🙂

Posted in Blog, Collecting, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Stamps | Comments Closed

Bag of Stamps (part one)

Sunday, August 23rd, 2020

While in a craft store looking for storage items, I came upon this:

150 stamps, 50 of which were guaranteed to be different dinosaur stamps! It was only $8 and I couldn’t resist the dino-temptation so it quickly became mine.

A quick comment on the packaging before I open it. It’s a plastic bag, drawstringed closed and heat-treated to stay closed. A most unusual way to sell stamps I though, and hardly tamper proof. It gave the whole package a distinct air of amateurism… but it was only $8 🙂

Here’s the contents: a yellowing envelope full of dinosaur stamps, and a jumble of other stamps folded up in a thin cardboard flyer advertising other products by the same company. Putting aside the dinovelope, I started by examining the ‘mixed’ stamps.

As can be seen here, every expense was spared keeping the stamps in pristine condition, and quite a few were folded like this one. I started separating them and sorting them.

As you saw the packaging says (in small print at the bottom) that some of the 100 ‘mixed’ stamps may be duplicates, and in truth I expected most of them to be. I was quite surprised as I sorted them all to find the number of duplicates to be small. I was also happy to see a lot of international stamps, and became quite distracted as I sorted, closely examining each stamp as I picked it out of the pile.

There’s all the ‘mixed’ stamps! In total, there are 121 unique stamps, and a further 29 doubles (of 18 stamps). So for starters the package contained not 100, but 150 stamps! (Can you see the doubles I missed in the above photo?)

Those are the largest and smallest stamps, with the Anguilla one being about 2 by 1.5 inches. I’m not sure this is remotely important, but I always note stamp size since I’m always thinking about sticking them on postcards 🙂

Here I have separated out all the international stamps. There’s 30 in total with no duplicates, from the following 22 countries: Cuba, Sweden, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Romania, Poland, Luxembourg, Spain, The Netherlands, England, India, Hungary, Germany, North Korea, Austria, Russia, Tanzania, Anguilla, Laos, Rhodesia, Western Sahara and Manama.

A few of these raised an eyebrow, so I did some research and learned a few interesting facts!

Rhodesia, as you know, is no longer a country. So that’s a stamp (and in fact my only stamp from a no-longer-extant country. It’s in wretched condition, but it’s over 50 years old as well.

The DPRK stamp is from North Korea. This may seem unusual but North Korea issues an extraordinary amount of stamps: more even than South Korea! The stamps are mostly propaganda (including some infamous ones depicting war with the USA) but there are a lot of animal and topical stamps as well. The main reason is to make money selling them to stamp collectors.

The Manama and Western Sahara stamps are what are called ‘Cinderella’ stamps, which are those issued by non-postal authorities. Manama is part of UAE today, but in the 60s was little more than a desert oasis that issued ‘stamps’ to sell to collectors despite not even having a postal service. Western Sahara is the same, although they have some more claim to sovereignty since they are a disputed region of Morocco. But still, their stamps are not usable for postage. (The North Korea and Anguilla stamps are arguably Cinderellas as well.)

The things you learn from stamps!

The most common ‘theme’ was unsurprisingly US flags, since the USA always has one in circulation. I like the series at the bottom, which showcase famous sights with the flag. The 4c in the middle is very pretty!

Flags aside Christmas stamps were common, with eight in total from 3 countries. The UK one – though folded and damaged – was printed with flashy gold ink and is very pretty.

America issues a lot of attractive stamps today, but looking at this group it’s clearly been the case for a long time. The wireframe science stamp is a favourite, and I’d love to put those Frankenstein stamps on some postcards!

This guy stood out for obvious reasons. So many words and it doesn’t even mention the cost of the stamp itself! It’s a 4c stamp issued in 1991 when postage increase from 21c to 25c. Ugly as hell, but curious (since 4c stamps existed then and still do today).

Now I’m sure most of these stamps are common trash to a serious collector, but for someone with no ‘collection’ (such as myself) it’s a good selection and absolutely worth $8 in my opinion. Based on the mixed stamps alone, I was happy with his stamp bag.

But what about the 50 unique dinosaur stamps? Alas this entry has been too long already; let’s save the contents of that enticing yellow dinovelope for next weekend! (And no, I haven’t opened it yet so I’m waiting too!)

See you then 🙂

Posted in Blog, Collecting, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Stamps | 1 Comment »

Postcard Sorting

Sunday, August 16th, 2020

About a year ago I started thinking seriously of sorting my postcards. I’d been storing them completely unsorted in a plastic tub, and while I wanted a better solution I had a feeling the job would be a difficult one.

Then in January while in Oz/Japan I bought some postcard storage albums. Interestingly none of these were intended for my own use (they were gifts) but when I used one to sort some of mums postcards I became impressed by how great it was to have them all viewable at a glance, and knew them I’d certainly get around to it sooner or later.

Fast forward through the pandemic, and a couple of weeks ago I helped JAF sort her postcards into a binder using postcard sleeves. They looked wonderful and at that moment I knew I’d found my solution. Within a week I’d bought binders and ordered sleeves enough for over 1000 cards, and these past few days I sorted and sleeved them all.

I’ve kept every single card ever received, with the earliest being from SMC back in mid 1994. They’re now all sorted chronologically (as best I can) by sender and for the ones sent by me I’ve sorted by country as well.

This process has allowed me to catalogue the collection. In total I’ve got over 850 postcards, about 530 of which I’d sent myself (or KLS did), and about 330 of which was sent to us by someone else – probably one of you!

Unsurprisingly the most cards are from Oz: over 300 in total (220 of which I sent myself). These past few years I’ve sent KLS at least one per day during my trips and I’m sure I’ll continue to do this whenever I can visit again. With so much from one country you may expect repetition but there’s surprisingly few cards represented more than once.

From within the USA there’s cards from many states with the most represented (outside of NY) being CA, FL and HA. There’s lots of cards from Japan, the UK and Ireland and a handful from countries including France, Germany, Canada, Spain, Italy, New Zealand, Korea, China and other exotic locales. (Incidentally I’m not including Postcrossing cards in any of this; I’ve got over 220 but they’re still loose in a box!)

These cards are overloaded with memories. When I first started sending postcards to myself (over a decade ago) I didn’t write much – the goal was the card, not the message. But these days I write a lot and over time the cards have become ‘trip diaries’. Reading them brings back all the memories from the various vacations we’ve taken over the years.

That’s an example card from 2017, written in a Kyoto hotel room after a day trip to Nara to see the deer. I was well into using stickers on cards and the simple description of our day contains details that would have certainly been lost had I not written them down.

There’s an example of a card I sent from Scotland. The card itself is amazing – metallic and shiny – but the message on the back is sublime in its mundanity, and when we read it today we had a good chuckle remembering the (true) event. I daresay there’s no chance we would have remembered this had I not written it on the card in that Inverness B&B! (Incidentally I bought two packs of candy and got a second sticker that I put on another card. Who did I send that to?)

When I travel alone the messages (sent to KLS) are more introspective and I have noticed I have a tendency to dedicate entire cards to moments, as you can see in the example above (and yes, that’s a Ganesh watercolour I painted). I never run out of stuff to write, and in fact last Oz trip I sent an average of two cards a day. Sometimes when unusual or notable things happen I make a note on my phone so I remember to write it on a postcard 🙂

Here’s a similar example from my last stay in Japan:

Each of these cards is a little time capsule and having them all easily readable like they are now is something I should have done years ago. If you’ve got your own collection (and I know many of you do) then I suggest getting them out of a shoebox and sleeving them yourself. Yes it’s a little bit of an investment up front (the supplies cost me under $100) but it’s absolutely worth it!

Oh and send me some postcards! I’ve received almost none in 2020 due to you-know-what but just because you’re at home doesn’t mean you can’t send me a funny/interesting message on a card. I’ve still got empty sleeves: give me some cards to fill them!

Posted in Art, Blog, Collecting, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Postcards, Retro, Time | Comments Closed

The LEGO Treehouse

Monday, July 20th, 2020

I got this for my birthday (Thanks J & J!) and about a month ago started to build it:

It’s a massive kit, with 3000+ pieces and a 428 page manual with 894 assembly steps.

I like to build these things slowly, a few hours at a time, and this kit was well suited to that. The first part I finished was the trunk:

Note the little touches like the swing and birdhouse. The engineering that went into the LEGO pieces wrapping around the trunk with the studs facing out is very clever, and the whole thing is rock-solid strong to support the weight of the rest of the structure.

Next came the three ‘houses’:

These were the most fun to build due to the incredible detail inside. Here’s closeups of one of the bedrooms and the bathroom:

Next came the (detachable) roofs and some detail at ground level:

It’s a little obscured in the photo but the winding staircase from the ground up to the treehouse level is extraordinary. See also the ‘suspended’ walkway that wraps around the trunk connecting two of the houses.

Here’s a detail of the table at ground level:

The final step was to add the canopy:

The leaves are made of recycled plants; a preview of LEGO of the future perhaps (since they want to move away from plastic). The set comes with summer and fall leaf colours, and can be changed with the seasons:

This is an amazing kit. The engineering is first-class, it’s great fun to build and it looks incredible on display. This is the sort of kit that would have kept Bernard and I busy for months as kids, and I dare say there’s a lot of younglings enjoying the hell out of this today!

If you like LEGO and have some cash needing to be spent, you can’t go wrong with this one 🙂

Posted in Models, Otaku, Toys | 1 Comment »

Robot Claw