Otaku « Robot Claw

Archive for the ‘Otaku’ Category

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

Quintessential Papercraft

Thursday, November 9th, 2023

I bought this when I was back in Japan last June:

It’s a craft kit of the five main characters from the manga/anime Quintessential Quintuplets, a recent favourite of mine. The image is created via layers of paper, a technique called ‘paper tole’ or ‘3D decoupage’.

The kit is assemble by cutting out the pieces and gluing them together (using household paper glue). The laser-cut pieces are made from a type of cardboard so strong it almost feels like plastic. And yet the manufacturing is absolute, and the pieces separate from the flash with only a tiny cut from a craft knife. The fact you don’t need to actually cut out the pieces yourself elevates this above almost every other papercraft I’ve ever done.

Each part of the image is assembled independently in layers, and above you can see how one of the characters – Yotsuba – was created. It’s meticulous but not difficult, although the extremely tiny size of some parts (sub millimeter) led to a couple of tense moments!

Once completed the portraits were fairly thick: each had five or six layers of card. The detail is astonishing: the blue layer under the black was only there to add minute highlights to the weird hair accessories Nino wears. Some of the eyes – which are only a couple of millimeters wide – have two or three colours behind them!

Here’s the six panels prior to final assembly. They look great don’t they?

And here’s a side view of the finished predict once complete. This was actually the most difficult step, especially adding the first two ‘bridges’. I may have muttered a curse or two during this phase…

And here’s the finished product in a dedicated frame I bought at the same time! Isn’t it cute, and doesn’t it look fantastic?

And here’s another two Kristin made.

These kits are wonderful! They’re easy to make and they look fantastic. When we’re next in Japan, I’m sure we’ll be picking up more 🙂

Posted in Art, Crafts, Otaku | 1 Comment »

A Couple Of Riders

Friday, September 29th, 2023

Being so close to having watched all Ultraman, naturally my eye is turning to similar franchises. The obvious pick is Kamen Rider, which has been going for almost as long telling stories of motorcycle-riding suited heroes defending the helpless from powerful enemies.

In Japan last June I eagerly looked forward to the midnightly screenings of the 1970s serial and I loved the recent Shin Kamen Rider film. This series is definitely my sort of thing!

Alas the majority of Kamen Rider has never been released in the west or even translated into English, so it’s currently beyond my ability to fully enjoy. Hopefully one day that will change.

Until then though, I can of course admire it in other ways… such as via plastic model kits! Here’s two I recently built.

This guy – Kamen Rider Double Fangjoker – is apparently from the 20th Kamen Rider series which screened back in 2009-10. The bicolour form is due to two Kamen Riders combining into one, and this specific ‘Fangjoker’ seems to be an ultimate version. Here’s a shot of the character from the show itself:

I bought this kit since it’s striking, and I knew (from experience) that having different colour arms and legs would make the assembly a bit more interesting. That said, being essentially monotone meant the runners weren’t too interesting when I took them from the box:

Assembly was easy; Bandai has perfected the design of their humanoid kits and everything fits together seamlessly. I particularly like the unusual faceted effect on the eyes achieved Dr by combining a textured back, a silver sticker and a transparent layer:

As usual I don’t paint these kits, but this one gave me the rare chance to use one of my fine ‘Gundam markers’ to add a thin black line down the very center. It looks better than I expected:

A couple of weeks later I made the second kit I’d bought:

This is from a 2015 series featuring a main character who is a dead ‘ghost hunter’ trying to collect 15 souls so he can be resurrected and take revenge on the villians that killed him. The story sounds wild and the action scenes look great:

I have a thing for black and gold and once again I bought this kit based solely on the powerful design. It’s much more complex than I knew when I bought it, with the ability to make multiple forms of the rider himself. I went with the default, and not the wacky ‘ghost’ form.

The first thing I noticed when I removed the box contents were not one but two sticker sheets. And even worse, there were loads of stickers. I don’t hate stickers on kits as much as some do, but I prefer them in moderation. But with instructions like this I was concerned:

Happily it wasn’t nearly as difficult as it looked, and the stickers aligned well and – even better – looked great when applied:

This is one stylish character, with orange parts that just pop from the black, and nifty use of transparencies. The black also helps hide what few visible seams/joints it has. It’s a very pretty kit once completed.

These weren’t too expensive for plastic model kits (about $40 each), and I loved making both. As I mentioned Bandai has got their humanoid (which includes many Ultramen as well as Riders) kits down to a fine art, and I’m happy to see them continuing to churn out new characters.

Assembling these kits and reading about the characters makes me want to watch the shows even more. Will they ever be translated? I hope so…

Posted in Miscellaneous, Models, Otaku | Comments Closed

28 Hours Of Gridman!

Tuesday, September 19th, 2023

In 1993 Tsubaraya, makers of Ultraman, released a show called ‘Lightning Superman Gridman’, also called ‘Gridman The Hyper Agent’, that I’ll here refer to simply as Gridman. Over the last few years I’ve watched the entire series, as well as a couple of truly extraordinary spinoffs. It’s time to discuss this mysterious show…

Gridman The Hyper Agent (1993, 39 episodes, 16.3 hours)

This series was created to capitalize on the popularity amongst children of home computers, and tells a story of a group of youngsters that – with the help of a mysterious being called Gridman – battle evil viruses in the ‘computer world’. It’s a bit like ‘Tron with kids’ except the humans never actually go into the computer world. Since it’s a Tsubaraya tokusatsu production, there is of course a battle in every episode between men in suits; in this case the hero Gridman and a ‘virus’ which is (of course) a giant kaiju monster. Humorously, these creatures are created by a being known as ‘Khan Digifer’, who manifests the monsters using the anger and frustration of an eternally (sort of) bullied almost-friend of the hero kids:

These are our heroes that work with Gridman to defeat him:

These days the computers on the show are hilariously dated, although it was fun to see such things as people playing games on PC-88 machines. The fight scenes are interesting since they’re always on the same set and therefore get creative with the kaiju suits to spice things up. But ultimately there’s a disconnect between the real-world and computer-world segments, and Gridman himself seems to take a back seat to the main story toward the end. I enjoyed it as a glimpse into early 1990s Japan since there’s so much on-location filming, but it doesn’t hold a candle to a good Ultraman series.

SSSS.Gridman (2018, 12 episodes, 6 hours)

To everyone’s amazement, in 2017 Tsubaraya announced an anime sequel to Gridman! Or was it a sequel…? The show was SSSS.Gridman, and it took the anime world by storm when it screened in 2018, becoming one of the most popular series of the year. The story is based around an amnesiac boy named Yuta, who discovers Gridman (yes the same one from the 1993 show) on an old computer. Gridman tells him he has a mission to complete, and thus begins a rollercoaster of events as Yuta fights to save his town from Kaiju, all the while trying to work out the many mysteries going on around him.

This show is incredible. It’s one of the best anime series ever made, and a shockingly good retelling of the Gridman story from a different perspective. What are the kaiju? Why does no-one remember their attacks or even the people killed by them? Who is Akane, the frustrated girl who creates the Kaiju for a mysterious villian on her computer? And who are Gridman’s friends who eventually turn up to help Yuta?

The visuals are bright and colorful, and the battle scenes use tokusatsu motion capture methods which gives them Ultra-DNA. The show is a love letter to Gridman via Evangelion (which itself was a love letter to Ultraman…) and countless other giant robot series, and it’s so meticulously scripted and directed that when you get to the very last shot – one of the very best final shots of any anime – you immediately want more. I can’t recommend this enough.

SSSS.Dynazenon (2021, 12 episodes, 6 hours)

After the success of SSSS.Gridman, a sequel was inevitable, and when it came in 2021 it took the series in a new and unexpected direction. Nothing from the first series returned: here we had all-new characters, all-new heroes, all-new villians and all-new kaiju. Was this even Gridman?

The story tells of a young man, Yomogi, who is recruited by a mysterious man named Gauma to help fight off a kaiju attack. Gauma does this by summoning a giant robot named Dynazenon, which can split into several independent vehicles, each piloted by Yomogi and his (new) friends. They fight the ‘Kaiju Eugenicists’ for the sake of the world itself, but as the show progresses we learn that each pilot -and Gauma – has personal struggles of their own that make the conflict even more difficult…

This is another triumph of a series, with even more over the top action and characters. The transformation scenes of Dynazenon in particular are incredible, and if you’ve ever watched any giant robot anime from the 70s or 80s you’ll be laughing out loud at how good they are. At the same time the characters are charming and their struggles resonate even after the show has ended. This is not a happy-go-lucky story of kids saving the world, perhaps unsurprising since they attend Neon Genesis high school. The mystery quota of this series is high as well – including the links to Gridman – and you’ll be guessing at what will happen until the very end. Another highly recommended series.

And that would be that, except for the fact that SSSS.Gridman and SSSS.Dynazenon were followed up by a theatrically released film called Gridman Universe, which was released in Japan this past March. As is often the case, this has been slow leaving Japan, and with releases in other Asian countries still a month away who knows when it will make its way to the US?

Suffice to say as soon as I can I’ll be watching this, since I want to know more about the links between Gridman and Dynazenon, but more importantly I want to see these characters again, even if just for one last time. Both these anime series are amongst my favourites ever, and I think if you give them a chance you may love them too.

Posted in Movies, Otaku, TV | Comments Closed

Robot Claw