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Clear Files

Tuesday, April 16th, 2024

A ubiquitous type of Japanese collectible is the ‘clear file’. A plastic, printed equivalent to the ‘manila folder’ of the west, these are the cheapest example of otaku/anime merchandise and are available seemingly everywhere in Japan.

The most common type is shown above: a piece of printed thin plastic folded and sealed at one end to create a folder that opens diagonally. As with most merchandise in Japan, the manufacturing is top-notch, and they have a great smooth feel in your hands and the print quality is super high.

Over the many years we’ve been traveling to Japan we’ve been accumulating these, and now have almost 100. The above photo shows the variety of sizes we own, with the most common being the two in the top left, which are A4 (the kimono girl) and slightly larger. I’m sure there are many more sizes than those shown above – I’ve seen a few as big as a wall poster! – but easily 75% of ours are A4 size.

A decent selection of ours were ‘free’, such as the two above which were bonuses for buying packs of gum/chocolate at convenience stores. If I’m ever in a ‘konbini’ and they have a clear file offer, I’ll bend over backwards to buy whatever it takes to get the file. And no, I don’t know who the people on the above are either!

We have dozens of clear files showing pretty models, which frequently come free with manga magazines. When they do, it doesn’t raise the price of the magazine, which shows how cheap and disposable these things are.

They are frequently given as bonus items when you purchase games, such as the above that came with a Switch game. More than once I’ve been checking out in a Japanese shop and seen a pile of files behind the counter and seriously considered buying the game just to get one.

Girl models aside, the majority of ours are anime related, but files are available for just about anything it seems. There’s a very good chance I’ve bought you one (or more!) of these over the years, and I know such purchases have included animals (squirrels, owls), trains, food and Japanese scenic photos.

I bought the above at the Cup Noodles store in Yokohama. In fact I almost always buy a clear file when I’m in a souvenir shop since they can be so inexpensive: often only a few dollars.

The above is very clever. While I don’t play the Yu-Gi-Oh card game, I love that they made this file to look like a giant card. I wish they’d make a MtG basic land into a clear file!

Earlier this year at the Osaka Ultraman store I spent enough yen that I got to play a bonus game where I had to shoot a little dart gun at a target board. I won the above pop-art clear file of an alien in the Ultraman universe 🙂

Several years ago when we saw NJPW at Tokyo Dome, the above was a freebie if you signed up for life insurance. I played the dumb foreigner and successfully talked my way into a free one! The signature is a facsimile, and ever since getting this KLS and I have nicknamed this wrestler ‘clear file’.

Clear files are often prizes in Ichiban Kuji lotteries (which probably deserve a post of their own one day), and we have quite a few such as the G prize from a recent Uma Musume Kuji.

The above is a girl from the K-Pop band Twice. Bernard bought me this when we were last in Japan together, and one day when he has long forgotten about it I’ll send it to him for Christmas 🙂

Clear files are also available in gacha machines, and the above are two examples (the right is Shin Godzilla). These machines have evolved over the years, and these days the files they vend are usually A4 size.

If you thought the gacha ones looked impractically small, look at the above! This came in a blind pack with a stick of gum, sold like trading cards. The file is so small it can’t even hold a single cheque (remember them?); what’s this supposed to be used for?!

As far as favourites are concerned I have two. The first is the above Puzzdra file sent to me by Adam’s alliteratively-named sister AC. For a game as popular and long-lasting as Puzzdra there’s a dearth of merchandise and this file is special for that reason.

And no surprises I love the above. I really should get some more Ultraman files…

The most recent one we’ve obtained is the above, which came free with a manga weekly I bought in Japan. I’ve never heard of the series, and the mag was long tossed, but of course this file will remain in our ‘collection’ forever.

Oh, and I actually use these things! In fact this post was motivated by me replacing a very worn out one I use for school with a new one (above) taken from our collection 🙂

Posted in Art, Collecting, Miscellaneous, Otaku | Comments Closed

My Collection: PlayStation Vita

Sunday, March 17th, 2024

Sony released the Vita in Japan in 2011, and about a year later in the USA. It wasn’t an immediate success, with consumers mostly preferring the cheaper cost and larger game library of the 3DS. I didn’t get mine until 2014, by which time it had already stalled commercially.

It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with the system, and to this day it remains my favourite of all the Sony consoles. The beautiful OLED screen was ahead of its time, and the ergonomics of the device made it a joy to play even for long periods.

Foremost for me were the games. By this time the Vita had been abandoned by most western developers, and in particular the big-name AAA games were nonexistent on the device. It had become an enthusiasts machine, with a notable abundance of Japanese RPGs, visual novels and quirky indie games. As a big fan of JRPGs I went all-in, and the Vita become my foremost handheld for many years.

The vita was a cartridge based system, and the carts are very similar in size to Switch cartridges. There was no region lock, so you could buy games from any country and they worked fine.

The Vita supported trophies as well – which I enjoyed at the time – and had a robust digital store with lots of available software. It was the first handheld with a seamless online experience which worked well, and certain games were even better with online features.

The screen looks much better than these photos suggest: very bright and high resolution with ink-dark blacks. It was leagues better than the 3DS and to this day remains the best screen on any handheld (excluding phones and the OLED Switch). Even now when I fired it up after five years for a quick play I was very impressed with the screen quality.

In total – including digital games – I have 90 games for the system. Many are shown above, but I also have several collectors editions:

And promos (thanks to AW for these):

Notable games include two Vanillaware games, not the least of which – Dragon’s Crown – is one of my favourite games of all time:

The Vita was also the home of the Toukiden series, which in my opinion is the closest a clone has come to actually beating Monster Hunter. My save files for these three games exceed 500 hours in total:

I’ve also got an abundance of strange ‘girl games’ like these:

I have virtually no memory of even playing some of the above, and the Vita had loads of similar titles. Most are action or RPG games featuring a cast of cute anime girls. Often the gameplay took a backseat to the graphics, and the games were fun enough but hardly memorable.

As mentioned the Vita was regionless, but the majority of good games got a US release, so I didn’t buy too many Japanese games. Notable among my small collection is the Berserk ‘musou’ game which is exceptional and has extremely impressive bullet-hell-like boss fights, which is strange indeed for a 3rd person action game!

I have one Vita game that I never opened. I had already bought and played the game digitally, so when I bought the box set I never bothered opening it.

I also bought the above memory stick when it became clear the systems life was nearing its end. This was late in 2018, and the last game I purchased was in January 2019 during a trip to Japan.

By then the Vita was essentially a retired system. In March 2019 Sony announced they had stopped making the system, and support of the online store was cut back in early 2021. No successor was announced, and with the end of the Vita Sony left the handheld market for good.

While a few of my games are worth more than I paid, on the whole it’s not a system with a great deal of value and I have no plans to sell my collection. I own many great games I’d love to replay, and one day I hope to do just that!

Posted in Collecting, Games, Otaku | Comments Closed

Chocolate Stickers

Sunday, January 21st, 2024

Back in 1977 a Japanese candy company called Lotte begun releasing wafer snacks with packed-in stickers (called Bikkuriman). They were immediately popular, but in 1985 with the release of a series of comedic stickers depicting a war between angels and devils (Akuma vs Tenshi) the wafers became a phenomenon.

The above is an artbook I bought in Japan (with a fancy holo cover to make it look like a sticker) and some example art of the first series released in 1985. These stickers are very collectible these days, and I’ve seen very rare ones in stores for thousands of dollars!

I’ve read that the official series of angels vs devils stickers ended some years ago, but Lotte wafers with stickers are still available and I’ve been buying them since we first went to Japan over 20 years ago. The above is a photo of one purchased on the recent trip, showing how the sticker is just packed right next to the wafer. These cost about $1 each, which is pretty good for a tasty wafer and a metallic sticker!

The above shows some recent stickers in the original series depicting ‘angels’ and ‘devils’. The art is stylized, comedic and colourful, and the metallic or holographic effects on the stickers immediately draws the eye. I know had I lived in Japan as a youth I would absolutely have been collecting these!

The most famous sticker was the super rare one in the 1985 series called ‘Super Zeus’, and the above is a version of him from a commemorative series of ‘ink style’ art from a few years ago.

In 2013 as the popularity of the original story began to fade, Lotte began releasing licensed stickers, and that continues to this day. The above is a Star Wars one from the sealed box I purchased back in June. You can read about it here. I would love to get the stickers from the second Star Wars series (the prequels), but alas have never seen a single one for sale.

The decades-long popularity of these stickers led to many competitors, and collectively they’re known as ‘chocolate seals’ in Japan. They’re always small, square, and usually have bright colours and a metallic or holographic effect. The biggest producer these days seems to be Bandai, and you can see examples of unopened packs and various licensed stickers above.

I used to just stick the stickers, and they’ve graced many postcards over the years (check old ones I’ve sent you and you’ll probably find one). But ‘choco seals’ are serious collectibles in Japan, and there’s a mini-industry around them including guide books, sleeves, albums to store them in and even protective lucite cases like this magnetic one I bought on the recent trip:

I’ll never ‘collect’ these, but I love the Star Wars ones and ever since getting them my eyes have opened a little wider towards these stickers. And then in the last couple of years this happened:

Bandai started releasing Ultraman ones! The above is a box of series two, and I hope to complete the set since I’ve already opened many packs even before buying the full box.

Sadly I missed out on series one (it released early in the pandemic) and although series three is apparently out I never saw any for sale these past few trips (which is doubly mysterious since shops were still selling series two).

The stickers are wonderful! Not only colorful and metallic, some are also etched and have reflective holographic effects (like stars) on them. I’ve got many doubles as well: if you want one on a postcard leave a comment.

The oldest ‘choco seal’ I own is coincidentally also from Ultraman, was acquired during one of our Japan trips almost 20 years ago, and depicts a kaiju from Ultraman Dyna. How it survived all these years without ever being stuck I’ll never know, but now it will live in my (not a) collection forever 🙂

Posted in Art, Collecting, Otaku | 1 Comment »

Japan Pickups: Gamebooks

Tuesday, January 16th, 2024

As always I was on the hunt for books for my gamebook collection during the recent trip, and I’ve become better at finding them in the various collectors and used book shops I visit. I bought some interesting items this trip!

The above are the standard gamebook finds. Only one original Fighting Fantasy book is fewer than the last few times I was in Japan, but my collection of Japanese versions is becoming quite complete now and it’s not easy finding ones I don’t already have!

The middle book is the Japanese imprint of volume one of Cretan Chronicles and the rightmost is the Japanese version of the Maelstrom RPG written by a gamebook author and released to the same market in the 1980s.

To my great surprise – and happiness – I also found a brand new copy of the first box set of FF reprints from 2020. As I understand this was only available via a Japanese crowdfunding campaign and I assumed I’d never get a set. Now I have one! I already owned the second and third box sets, and the fourth is out in a few months. I’ll look for that one on future trips 🙂

Amazingly, after my great surprise finding a single issue back in June, I found thirty-one issues of Japanese Warlock magazine. This was not an impulse buy – both weight and cost were considerable – and I deliberated for a few days. Lunacy won out though, and they’re now in my house!

I now have about half of the 63-issue run of this magazine. This is a collection that merits more attention, and I’ll probably feature it in a future blog post one day.

The above were a surprise since I didn’t even know they existed. They’re AD&D modules based on FF books! Eight were printed in english (and they’re quite expensive now!) but the numbering on these Japanese ones (the above are 1, 6 and 7) don’t match the english versions and it’s hard to find information about them online.

They’re impressively designed with lots of nice art, and they make me want to try and get one of the English versions….

The last – and by far weirdest – item I found was this gamebook based on the 1980s horror film House. As you can see it was called Goblin in Japan, probably because there was a famous Japanese fantasy-horror film called House already.

This book is super strange. I though the Back To The Future gamebook I bought on a previous trip was weird but of all the films to based a book on why on earth was this one chosen?

It seems like a fully featured book with hundreds of entries, but it’s also very puzzle heavy, possibly in lieu of a normal combat system. Art is stills from the film. I’ve seen the film somewhat recently so I may have to get the translator and give this one a play through just to try and understand what the story could be?

Incidentally the publisher is the same that released the video game licensed gamebooks in Japan, including the two Wizardry ones I showed in the last post. And yet this is from a different series. As you can see it’s number 4 in the series. What were the others? Unfortunately finding info online about these is almost impossible, so for now I can only wonder.

Posted in Books, Collecting, Gamebooks, Otaku, Retro | Comments Closed

Japan Pickups: Wizardry

Friday, January 12th, 2024

My Wizardry game collection ever-increases, and with the acquisition of the above three on this recent trip there’s now only two games in the series I don’t own. While neither seem especially rare or expensive, the fact remains I’ve never seen a copy of either in years of looking so the search continues!

I was very happy to find the above on this recent trip: a beautiful boxed copy of Proving Grounds Of The Mad Overlord for the MSX2! Note that the original (1987) price was 9800 Yen – about $65 – which was about two or three times more expensive than a computer game cost in the west in those days.

The game is on a cartridge, and from what I read only works on expanded versions of Japanese MSX computers. I daresay there’s not many of them left working, so there’s no question I’ll ever be able to play this. The box contains all sorts of goodies, but notably the miniature metal dragon statue that was originally included is missing.

The above are three hints guides for various Wizardry games. I found these in Osaka which was good because at about $15 each they were considerably less expensive than they would have been in Tokyo.

As with others I’ve previously shown here, the guides are beautiful books, packed with art and maps and lots of colour. It’s clear the authors of these books loved the games!

This small hardcover book is an oddity! Titled Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Wizardry it seems to be a sort of lore book of items and equipment from the first six games. Almost every entry also features a nice piece of line art. It seems to have very limited (if any) use as an actual game guide, but could perhaps serve as a RPG manual of sorts. While I love it, it’s hard to see why this was even published!

Speaking of RPG manuals, the above was an exciting pickup for me: it’s the monster manual for the original Wizardry RPG from the 1980s. It’s a small-sized paperback with a lovely cover by Jun Suemi, and I dearly wish I could read it since the machine-translations suggest it’s very lore-heavy on the monsters from the games.

As you know I also collect gamebooks, so I was extremely happy to find the above two for sale. Both are from the Futabasha Famicom Gamebook Series and are based on the first and third Wizardry games.

These are very traditional one-player gamebooks in the Fighting Fantasy mold featuring manga-style art and what appears to be a complex system based on the size of the adventure sheet! There’s almost 80 (!) books in this gamebook series including two other Wizardry ones; I wonder if I’ll ever find them?

Lets end with a story about ‘one that got away’. The above pic was taken in Osaka a few weeks ago, and shows me holding one of my holy grails: one of the two Jun Suemi Wizardry artbooks. This is the older and more expensive of the two, and the sticker price on this used book was about $170.

Normally I would have thrown my money at the cashier but I had already bought the book on Amazon a month earlier. The amazon order – coming from Japan – was to arrive while we were away but never did. A followup with the seller led to a refund, and no book. So I held one of my grails in my hand and didn’t buy it, and still don’t own it. 🙂

Posted in Books, Collecting, Gamebooks, Games, Otaku, Retro | Comments Closed

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