After the last week Tokyo Game Show the "Otaku Season" is officially over so I decided to post a preview of this otaku documentary   shooted and edited  by our friend Antonio Mariani during the Wonderfestival (the DVD should be out in the next months). It features tons of garage kits, dolls, cosplayers and a (very) short interview with the legendary Danny Choo (and in a couple of scenes you can spot the superstar otaku photographer Julie from Samurai Girl photobook)!

Today One Seg TV Segnity is finally on sale in Akiba ( One Seg refers to terrestrial digital TV broadcasts aimed at mobile devices).  This portable Digital TV has been presented in January by the giant toy maker Takara Tomy Co. during the Toy Forum 2007.
What makes this product special is the fact that this device features a "tsundere voice system". Tsundere (ツンデレ, Tsundere) is a Japanese term for a personality that is initially combative, but becomes loving and emotionally vulnerable. When you first turn on Segnity you will be welcome with a tsun tsun (cold) voice message: 'Gonna watch some TV, huh?'  When the brightness is lowered, a cold voice says, "This is daaark!".
After you use the device more times the voice becomes gradually attached to you and start to be kind and warm and, for example, switching off Segnity prompts the phrase: “What?! Are you really going away?” as if the Segnity is sad that the you are leaving. There are 33 different voice samples and on October 28 will be realeased a software that will let you customize the voices auploading you favourite tsundere anime character voice trought the Mini SD card slot.

There are just few days left to get the chance to win one out of five exclusive Amano Ai autographed photos on Play Asia!!
Ai chan's "Love Potion" DVD has been released in august and we really hope that she will became popular among american and european Japan lovers too!

  Our super otaku photographer and idol Julie (aka Amano Ai) has just finished shooting The Metal Princess Cuo (メタルプリンセス　キュオ): her very first tokusatsu movie. Tokusatsu (特撮, Tokusats) is a Japanese word that literally means "special effects." The term is a contraction of the Japanese phrase "tokushu satsuei" (meaning "special photography") and It is primarily used to refer to live-action Japanese film and television dramas that make use of special effects. The Metal Princess Cuo DVD will be released at the end of the year and we look forward to see Julie wearing her yellow sexy costume!
The director of this new "super heroine" master piece is Takauji Motoharu from the legendary Shin Iizawa's Zen Pictures.


This is a sample video of Gravure Heroine DVD's.

Nightbug has just posted a Super Mario IPS patch called Hatsune negi.
This patch features a mashup of Super Mario last level with Ievan Polka (the song is once again popular among japanese otakus after a NicoNico user posted the Atsune Miku video version made with Vocaloid 2). The song, popular in Finland but previously unknown to the rest of the world, became better-known on the Internet in spring of 2006 because of the flash animation Loituma Girl.


The flash animation of Loituma Girl is taken from the second episode of Bleach anime series  when Orihime is twirling a negi (Welsh onion)...
You can download the IP patch here.


YouTube video rip of the original NicoNico video...

NSFW: Cosplayers vacumbed in a futon plastic bag (vacum bed) is a new fetish spreading among japanese underground. It's a variation of  Rubber fetishism and Total enclosure fetishism (a form of sexual fetishism whereby a person becomes aroused when having entire body enclosed in a certain way).  HPsart just posted a video where a cosplayer of cult anime character Suzumiya Haruhi is vacummbed in a Futon bag...

I love this new Japanese "sentai style" flash game made to promote AXE in Japan that I just found on mixi (even tought I confess that I don't like Axe smell).

I know, I should post aboutmy visit to  the Tokyo Games Show, but you will get everything from the videogame mega blogs and actually I'm more inolved in junk diving in Akiba than shopping for the latset videogames... Anyway, while Ievan Polka, singed by Atsune Miku, is going to be the next Crazy Frog (almost for the Nico Nico community), other Vocaloid 2 videos are getting on...

An artist drawing Miku on his PC (background music is a meadly of Miku videos like this)...

Moe parody of Japanese JR station announces.

Doki Doki Shinpan Forza Motorsport 2 IDOLM@STER 360 DS MASHUP

Few hours ago Mad video posted a new video mashup dedicated to Neon Genesis Evangelion and the legendary otaku jpop idol unit Perfume!

Yesterday more than 15.000 people attended the Akihabara speech of Taro Sato (left in the photo), Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs and possible successor to Prime Minister Abe Shinzo who had announced his plans to resign. Taro is a geek and loves manga so much that after Abe announced resignation shares of several manga publishers have rised significantly since he could be elected as new Prime Minister next 23th september. According to CNN Money,  Broccoli, which runs a string of retail stores catering to gamers and publishes comic books, rocketed 71 percent to close at ¥157. Here is a complete photo reportage of the event.

On november 3rd there will be a Vocaloid 2 "Hatsune Miku" only doujin event held in Tokyo so the Vocaloid 2 mania seems spreading out from the Nico Nico users.


Vocaloid version of Idolm@ster Go My Way song.

                 (more on Akiba Blog)
Few weeks ago, after I found it on sale in Akiba's Laox MusicVox shop, I posted about Vocaloid 2 on my mixi blog.  According to Akiba blog and several other sources seems that this music software has been really succesfull (it's on top spot of Amazon Japan sales ranking) and the first printing is already sold out. Vocaloid is a technology and application software developed by Yamaha that enables users to synthesize authentic-sounding singing by just typing in the melody and the lyrics of a song. Yamaha announced its development in 2003, and in 2004 the first application software product was launched. It was not released as a Yamaha product, but a software package of Vocaloid Singer Libraries developed by third party licensees (Zero-G and Crypton) which included Yamaha's Vocaloid software. Vocaloid 2 singer, just released by Crypton, features the voice of Atsune Miku: a 16 years old virtual Singer (according to her official bio she is 158 cm tall, weights 42 Kg  and loves pop and dance music).
These are official MP3 demo songs: Song 1,  Song 2 and Song 3 or YouTube medley.

In the last two weeks Atsune Miku stormed the japanese otaku and video gamers undeground and many users poster their own music created with Vocaloid 2 on Nico Nico (japanese equivalent of You Tube). It's really impressive how powerfull can be a 100$ software!  Finally anime and videogame fans can have their personal seiyu in their room!
These are some some Nico Nico video reposted on gaijin friendly You Tube:

True my heart: a pure bishoujo song!


Another otaku classic vocaloid mashup!

This doujin masterpiece has been created with Vocaloid 2 and went straight on top of my ipod playlist! I hope Konami will change its mind on doujin culture and produce an official CD of this arrangement!

Today is my birthday so I ordered my birthday cake from Deli-Cake.com and I should receive it in a couple of hours (doki doki)!

Update: I just received an email birthday gift from Austrian Airlines: 25 euros of discount for my next trip!

Sega Race TV is a fun old school racing game that runs on Lindbergh board. Right now the game is still in development but it seems already a pretty solid and fun racing game. It will be release early next year and I really hope this game will bring back back the Sega we loved in the 80s and 90s...

Update: a lots of videos from AM show has been posted on Youtube like Mamorukun ha noroware te shimatta! (GRev), Death Smiles (Cave) + Death Smiles Live, Tekken 6, Basara X, Quest of D: The battle Kingom, Chase HQ 2, Eternal Wheel, Pokemon Battrio, DragonBall  DataCardass game, etc...

Update: Arcade Renaissance.com posted some impressions from the game.
Update: Game Video posted a trailer of the game.


D1GP, from Taito,  is a arcade racing drifting simulator dedicated to the japanese D1 series.  The D1 Grand Prix was the vision of a Japanese car enthusiast and magazine publisher Daijiro Inada, founder of the Japanese auto tuning title, Option Magazine and the Tokyo Auto Salon (our friend, the japanese Idol, Amano Ai appeared as a Race Queen model in the august issue of Option Magazine).




CHASE HQ 2 is the next gen version of the legendary arcade game from the 80s...

NSFW: Last weekend I visited Akiba Fetish World shop where I found the famous Model Train Crush fetish DVD. The coolest part of this shop are the displays: our favourite are the Shibari rope Barbies! In the next days I will post more photos of this unique shop where you can buy fetish DVDs dedicated to Giant Women, girls getting shaved, and baloons play ...

Today we visited the AM show in Makuhari Messe and we spotted the Robo Catcher: a Ufo Catcher (claw vending machine or toy crane machine)  that features a Robo One class robot (Kondo KHR) . It will be distributed in Japanese videogame centers from november. (Thanks to our shitty camera we used a photo from Robowatch). A prototype version of this ufo catcher has been posted back in february.

Update: a YouTube video of Robo Catcher.

Another new arcade game from Taito (owned by Square Enix since 2005) is Eternal Wheel (or "The wheel of Eternity"): a satellite card game developed by Square Enix. Satellite arcade games with touch sesitive panels are really popular in japanese game arcades (one example is Derby Owners Club) but the size and the cost of these machines limited the distribution to Japan (and sometimes Asian game centers). One of the most famous Satellite platform is Sega Chihiro. Eternal Wheel has been programmed on NESYS: a new PC-based Taito Type-X Arcade Board  which is a network-connected arcade machine that features a touch-sensitive panel. I think this release will stop the rumors about Square Enix working on a new hardware console that started spreading last year.
Akihiko Yoshida and  Amano Yoshitaka took care of illustrations and character design so the card will be really succesfull also among trading card fans.
Seems that Square Enix has been pretty busy with the release of  Crysis Core for PSP since Eternal Wheel has not even been listed on their homepage.

Today during the AM Show in Makuhari Taito showed the upgrade of the arcade version of HALF LIFE 2 (released in Japan last year in june). This upgrade will show up in a couple of days in Japanese Game Centers and features new weapons, new missions and new maps.

According to Hollywood Reporter, commercial director Joseph Kosinski is in final negotiations to develop and direct "Tron" described as "the next chapter" of Disney's 1982 cult movie classic. Sean Bailey is producing via the Live Planet banner, as is Steven Lisberger, who co-wrote and directed the original film. I hope this time they wil really make it! Meantime I will read the Tron Comic from SLG Publishing.

(via Retrothing)  The Video Music was released in 1976 as an attempt to bridge the video gaming and home stereo worlds. It was a crude precursor to the modern visualization functions of mp3 audio utility and Jeff Minter psychedelic mastepieces...

Follie giapponesi: il fetish DVD dei trenini in scala...

Last sunday while hunting for some cool figures in Akiba I discovered a fetish shop devoted to almost any kind of fetish (I should go there again in next few days so I hope to take some photos). One among the most interesting DVDs is Crush by Venus produced by Gagon: a DVD series dedicated to model trains crush fetishists. Seems that the "crush fetish" started in USA. Women would crush insects or worms with their feet, or high heeled shoes, but Japanese switched to otaku products like Model Trains or Die Cast cars...

Today, walking into Shibuya's Tower Records I found this pretty cool Grindouse promotional poster for Toho cinemas in Roppongi Hills.

(via) Microsoft and The japanese company Tmsuk on 7h september announced that the will collaborate and introduce “Microsoft Robotics Studio” in the various robots which are developed by the japanese company in collaboration with Waseda University and Japanese government . This will improve the interoperability between the various robots. All the software for hobbystic and  accademic robots are anyway programmed on Windows platform (and it's a pain to swith for example from Robonova to THR 1) so in this case Microsoft is doing something good trying to create a common platform... (this post has been written on a pure !00% Window free Mac).

MaK Po is a new collaborative project inspired by legendary mecha designer / sculptor Kow Yokoyama (who created Maschinen Krieger ZbV 3000 sci-fi universe in the 80s for the japanese cult magazine Hobby Japan). Actually this year marks the 25th aniversary of Maschinen Krieger. I always felt like garage kits and events like Kaiyodo's Wonfes gave birth to the vinyl toys movement and these Mak Po vinyl toys finally close the loop and connect again the Garage Kit world and the urban toys universe (proving again that the otaku culture is the most influential street culture in the last 15 years).

(via Ping Mag)  Illustrator Ken Taya works as environment artist for  Halo 3 at American game developer Bungie. He happens to be a bilingual Japanese-American Nisei, for ’second generation’. What does it mean to work in a game environment with this mixed cultural background?  Read the complete interview after the jump.

Today italian blogger and comedian Beppe Grillo trought his Blog has organized the world biggest bloggers demo against the illegal situation of the italian parlament. You can read more here.
There is also a really cool online version of the demos that will be held in several italian cities with more than 200.000 people who signed!

RaidGig (the tokyo  shop for fashion conscious gamers since 2001) is now taking pre-orders for the 2007 version of the T-shirt that 12 years ago started the craze for Famicom/ 8bit design (it was s a best seller in shops like kichijoji's "Shop 33", Shibuyas's "Tribute" and Mandary in Nakano). The design has been made by the legendary Quentaro "Ani" Fujimoto member of "Nendo Graphic Squad" since 1993, Graphic designer, 8bit Nintendo Collector and Buddhist (italian readers will read more about him in a the coming issue of GAMERS magazine). Ani is famous for his Famicom Tibetan style tshirts and since than worked on many projects related to videogames and otaku culture. It's courious that the man that created the very first site dedicated to Akiba called www.re-tokyo.com (produced by Fujitsu) in the mid-nineties got a super low profile online right now... but maybe this is part of his legend!

Next week, on 12 september, LAPTOP BATTLE TOKYO will be held at Super Deluxe Club (in Nishi Azabu near Roppongi Hills).
Laptop Battle sees musicians battle it out to remain the last man standing in a contest of quick fire bouts and eliminations. Any style of music can be played and the crowd response influences the judges' decisions.  Each contestant have a few minutes to win over the crowd and convince the judges that they should be the one to go through to the next round.
Sounds cool... I should find my old Amiga 500 (I used 15 years ago to make techno) and partecipate!!

Today I want to introduce a japanese online shop held by a friend. What I like of this shop is that it gives the nearest Akihabara feeeling when I'm not in Japan: the game selection is great and here I can buy arcade games and Akibakei goods at reasonable prices (I hate  online shops that sell common games like NEOGEO  Fatal Fury Special AES  with a markup of 400/500% of akiba street price)...

Today I was reading the new issue of the japanese magazine RC SPORTS and I found the very first RC model produced in the world: Radicon Bus. This toy has been produced in Japan during the mid 50s. Anyway Google told me that this bus pretty famous among toys collectors... Cool thing that in Japan the word "radicon" is still used as the equivalent of "RC".

After releasing the Blu Ray disc  "All Star Yakyuken Battle" (for Playstation 3) back in december, Gbtp is going to release a new PSP UMD Video Baseball Janken type game. It's basically a variation of "Paper Scissors Stone" game where "Glove" wins over a "ball",  a "bat" wins over a "glove" and a "ball" wins over a "bat".  Thge game is rated over 15. Actually this could be a good game to train for the 2007 World Rock Paper Scissors Championships that will be held in Toront in october. Anyway after this release Sony will state that UMD VIDEO format is alive and kicking and that UMD VIDEO is dominating the portable video media market...

(via  Yukan Fuji) The Gundam IP Phone headset (annunced at the beginning of july) is finally on sale in japanese shops. It comes in two versions: GUNDAM (RX-78-2) version and ZAKU (MS-06S) version.  The software GUI is pretty cool (it puts you in the cockpit of the mobile suit while making ip phone calls and it makes you feel like it's UC0083 again!) the only downside is that it only comes for Windows. Before ordering you need only to choose Zion or the Confederation...

The latest game from Muv Luv series has been released in Japan 2 days ago and went straight to number one post of the  bishoujo games sales chart (Danny Choo Amazon's Bestselling Eroge).
Yesterday Akiba blog posted a  complete report of the release day in Akiba. Someone has called this just another fan disk, but when you get a love comedy AVG, a simulation game, a visual novel, a mini radio drama, and a bonus DVD Video track I think we got a proper release that will extend the Muv Luv universe even more! We are still waiting our sample copy but, as far as we know, our friends at âge Soft has created another bishoujo masterpiece!
If you wanna take a peek to the game, Guncannon, has poste a preliminary report on his blog.

Samurai Girl photobook from Julie (aka Amano Ai) is nearly sold out on Amazon.com 
Seems that the success of Ai chan new Idol DVD is pushing a lot of idol fans to buy her
photobook too. We hope that sooner or later Julie will produce Amano Ai DVD cause it would be really cool to watch an idol DVD  shooted in places like the toys room or geisen featured in these photos instead of exotic places like Bali or Hawaii...
 

We love Julie's psychedelic otaku World. She is our Alice in Otaku Wonderland!

Frog Port is a new japanese retrogames online shop that has opened today! It's the first reasonable priced shop of this kind (almost if compared to some crazy Ebay bids) and there are a lot of masterpieces to discover (but of course not everything comes cheap especially for products imported to Japan from USA)!  Even if you are not an online shopper browsing trought Frog Port pages will introduce to many obscure retrogame treasures...

Today  Cesa posted the guidelines for bloggers who want to post the widget (ブログパーツ) of Tokyo Game Show 2007. The html code can be found on the official TGS page and is avaible in two versions: 200 x 200 pixel and 180 x 180 pixel. Bloggers will be able to win a free pass for TGS  (on general admission days). Deadline for application is september 12th but seems that airplane tickets for foreigner bloggers will not be provided by Cesa.

Today we found some links to japanese media coverage of Ai Chan first DVD Release:

Ascii.jp: “逆輸入アイドル”天野あいは、ちょっぴりMな電脳系!?

Sponichi: 天野あい　逆輸入アイドルが初ＤＶＤ

Akiba Keizai Shinbun: 「オタクアイドル」天野あいさん、秋葉原でDVD発売記念イベント


Exciter Magazine featured one page deciated to Amano Ai DVD and Julie art photos.
There are other magazines and newspaper who coeverd the event but I can't find out all the names... damn, I should study more kanji!
Anyway I'm pretty impressed by Ai Chan because she is getting a lot of coverage without the support of a big media company. I think her really cool artworks  are helping being noticed by magazine editors and journalists.