Category: Otaku

Japan Pickups: Wizardry

January 12, 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. 🙂

Quintessential Papercraft

November 9, 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 🙂

A Couple Of Riders

September 29, 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…

Robot Claw