AltJapan

Legodzilla

I don't know how I missed this 2008 exhibition featuring Shibuya rendered in gloriously blocky Lego bricks -- right down to the cops hassling some dude next to Hachiko -- but it is positively crying out to be stomped by this insane Lego Mechagodzilla I stumbled across the other day:

Shift Perfectly!!

A prototype of the beautifully conceived, fully transforming, and totally expensive (nearly $500) resin-cast portrayal of the "Maneuver-Blade" from the anime Viper's Creed. Designed by series director Shinji Aramaki, the delicate, origami-like design is probably something only the legends at Studio Halfeye could have pulled off in three dimensions. They're transforming toy masters, famed in otaku circles for "cracking the code" of robot designs thought to be impossible to pull off in real life, like Getta Robo. 

Mushi Mecha

Check out this incredible mushi (bug) mecha that was profiled on the Japanese TV show "Nanikore Chin Hakkei" last night. Stills from the segment here (the control box in particular is great) or click here for a link to a blog featuring photos of it being assembled for the shoot (which took several trucks, a crane, and seven hours.)

Designed and built by an Ibaraki man in his garage over the course of eleven years, the "Kabutom RX-03" looks like a prop from a Power Rangers spin-off but is an actual working vehicle. Why build it? Because owning an eleven meter long, fifteen ton robot beetle makes you a mack daddy -- in Japan or anywhere else.

Shaped like a kabuto-mushi (rhinocerous beetle, a favorite design of Japanese toymakers and, uh, candymakers), it can be remote controlled or piloted from the cockpit (visible on the left side), and is capable of carrying passengers inside its shell. Alas it more "shuffles" than walks -- the legs pull it along the ground, while the weight is supported by wheels. But hey -- not bad for something created for the love of it in a garage. Passion like this represents the best part of Japanese otaku culture.

Update! Link to the original video segment here.

Slangin' the Caine

Toxicology report: Controlled substance procured from an "underground toy club" in Koenji. Lab analysis of the contents revealed awesomeness.

One Word: Plastics

It is websites like this one that make me realize how pathetic my own model-building skills are. (Above, a "Trad 11" from the 1982 anime series Xabungle. The same modeler's custom ping pong ball Death Star II is a classic.) 

Sparked by the success of Bandai's "Gun-Pla" (Gundam plastic models), a craze for building and customizing super-realistic sci-fi model kits swept Japan in the early Eighties. (The hysteria put even Pokemon to shame: in one famous incident, several kids were injured in a riot to get their hands on the latest Gundam kits in a department store.) I myself spent many an hour drooling over the hyper-customized specimens that graced the pages of magazines like Hobby Japan. Glad to see more than a few old-timers have kept at it.

A totally random collection of some other amazing kitbuilders' sites:

Nostalgia

Revenge of the Nostalgic Kits

Maschinen and Panzer Kampf Wagen

Altengerace

Plamo Seisaku Nikki

Powered Armor Competition (Thanks, Ray!)

Buddy Hell

 

I distinctly remember the first time I felt a pang of embarrassment for my fellow Americans. I was in sixth grade. The Transformers fad was in full swing. Toy store shelves were lined with intricate robot creations from the country of Japan. And the best my countrymen could come up with to compete was "Chargertron."

Just as the DEVO-esque theme song proclaimed, they really were robots "like we'd never seen." They looked less like titanic robot warriors than they did kitchen implements (if Ron Popeil piloted a giant robot, I suspect it'd look like Chargertron.) And topping it all off, they featured two of the most apathetic names ever bestowed upon fictional characters: "Protagatron" and "Antagatron." It's right around this time, I suspect, that I first started thinking about moving to Tokyo.

Even the most robot-crazed of my pals didn't ask for these toys for Christmas. I guess that makes the Chargertrons the long-lost relatives of Kore Ja Nai Robo, the "hit" 2001 series of wooden figurines designed to commemorate those special times your parents brought back the wrong robot toy for you as a kid. Then again, why can't I get that damn jingle out of my head? "Switch on, Chargertron..."

Selections From the Alt Vault

 

Stardate: December 2008. Somewhere in the suburbs of Washington DC. Pawing through the detritus of a childhood gloriously misspent poring over the catalogs of import toy stores, I stumble across buried treasure in my parents' basement: "Battcom" toys! I'd completely forgotten about the existence of these things, let alone the fact that I owned them. The discovery stirs hazy recollections of my pals and I ordering them from the late, lamented "Pony Toy Go-Round" back in junior high.

Merry Xmachinders

 

A late Christmas surprise from the Kennedy Center in Washington DC! A juicy high-def video walkthrough of the Jumbo Machinder display from the February Japan: Culture + Hyperculture exhibition, heretofore only seen in Bigfoot-sighting-like, blurry photos on this blog. 

Shot ten months previously, for some reason it only made it online a few days ago. Forgive any mistakes/stumbles/general idiocy, as I was ambushed by the cameraman and forced to sing a savage tale of polyethylene history at the spur of the moment. It's available for free download from iTunes, split into two parts. Check it out here along with the interviews with architect Tadao Ando, musicians Mayawa Denki, toy artist Shin Tanaka, and more!

Papa ga Katte Kita

Just in time for the holiday season, this amazing collection of Seventies-vintage toy commercials advises alcoholic salarymen to curry favor with their children the Japanese way: by bribing them with Jumbo Machinders. The scenes of drunken commiseration over toys in smoky izakaya are disturbingly reminiscent of my evenings anytime Patrick is in town. My favorite moment has to be the dude transforming himself into Great Mazinger as he pees against a brick wall.

Dangard Devolution

Jumbo Machinder collector "Nekrodave" (who also contributed imagery to Yokai Attack!) found these specimens of Dangard Ace around the world. The original Japanese version is at top left. Witness Dangard's de-resolution as it was successively bootlegged in  Italy (top middle), Peru (top right) and Argentina (bottom row). Aside from the official version, which came out in 1978, it's nearly impossible to date when these came out. One would assume the late Seventies and early Eighties.

By the time Dangard hit South America, he'd obviously seen better days, but it's still amazing to see the penetration of anime characters into the farthest reaches of the globe decades before the "Japan Cool" phenomenon.