Photo from LA Weekly Blog This past weekend was the Power Morphicon, the fan convention for Power Ranger enthusiasts…be they fans of the original series Mighty Morphin Power Rangers or any of the numerous spinoff series that are still actually on television. Growing up, I was ADDICTED to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, watching it every single day and tirelessly wanting more. Yeah, I was obsessed. The show, which was originally based on a Jap...

Wow. Just wow. Yoshifumi Takashe, a 30-year old guy living with his mother in Kasai, Hyogo prefecture, burned down the house they shared after his mom threw out some boxes of Gundam robot action figures. Takashe is quoted in this article as saying, “The Gundam figures are like the partners I spend my life with,” he reportedly said after pleading guilty at western Kobe’s District Court. “I wanted to die with them in a fi...

I’ve been thinking of topics to write about and well a few people mentioned to cover the various fashion  styles that are popular in Japan. So I thought since it was suggested why not. The fist style I am writing about is “Harajuku”. From what I can gather, Harujuku style is a collective of vaious fashion styles from the area around Harujuku train Station in Tokyo. The fashion which makes up the Harujuku style is always changi...

This is a pretty smart ad campaign. As this article from the Escapist says, an ad campaign in Japan for the upcoming video game Fallout: New Vegas portrays some gamers expressing their outrage over the conventions and repetitiveness of most role playing games nowadays. Some of the signs say things like the following: Translated by Andriasang, one sign reads: “What’s the point of playing again if there’s no change to the story.&...

The World Cosplay Summit took place this weekend in Nagoya, Japan, and Italy emerged victorious. By that, I mean the grand prize winners were Luca Buzzi and Giancarlo di Pierro, who dressed up as Link and Ganondorf of the Legend of Zelda games. According to this recap from Anime News Network, the Italians beat out representatives from 15 countries and did so in front of about 15,000 summit attendees. That’s a lot of costumes. The article a...

Just the other day I remember my friend posting a blog of someone making fun of bad cosplayers, by comparing them to really Really good cosplays. Unfortunately I can’t find that link… But today while doing random google searches for Japanese news I came across this… Asahi Shimbun I found this particularly interesting as in the blog making fun of bad cosplayers…. they were all non-asian.. and all the good cosplayers were as...

I read this article over at the New York Times website, thought it warranted sharing. Among other issues, the article concerns the Nintendo DS and how it is significantly more popular among the older crowd in Japan than in the United States. That is, the author mentions hardly ever spotting anyone older than “about 20″ playing a DS in public, which he contrasts with the abundance of 20-30 something year old people playing the handhel...

Right at this very moment, comic book/movie/game/tv show/cult/pop culture obsessors are converging in San Diego, California, for the yearly Comic-Con convention. Once there, everyone will stand in lines to see panels for all types of things, such as upcoming films like TRON: LEGACY and SALT and SCOTT PILGRIM and THE GREEN LANTERN and so on. Unfortunately, I won’t be attending the convention, much to my disappointment…I haven’...

Anime Expo is the best time of year to dress up in your favorite anime cosplay and Not have people wonder what is wrong with you…. because everyone else is doing it. But have you ever wondered what it is like from the inside? Many of us have friends on staff… but what about the dealers hall? Can you imagine it before setup? completely empty? Or after? when the isles are clogged with now-old flyers, boxes, disassembled displays, and o...

I came across this article on a “fanboy” blog highlighting some of Nintendo‘s biggest mistakes over the years….and we’re talking BIG, like passing on the Playstation, the Virtual Boy console, and, of course, the Game Boy Printer. I don’t want to ruin the post by including the pictures here, so click the link above and read the article over on the real site. It’s worth it. This list is pretty amusing, and...

Interesting piece of history here for you (from cracked.com): Originally, Nintendo was a playing card company. Among the licenses they held was Popeye the Sailor, which was owned by King Features. In 1981, Nintendo made one of those cheap pocket games  starring Popeye, and planned to release a more elaborate one for the arcades. A first-time designer named Shigeru Miyamoto was assigned to the project and began sketching game concepts involving t...

A haunting and beautiful depiction of true love. It’s carved out of styrofoam, made by Kordian Lewandowski, and it’s called “Game Over”. a2a_config.linkname="Mario and Peach Sculpture"; a2a_config.linkurl="http://kawaiikakkoiisugoi.com/?p=2890"; a2a.init("page");

Open your eyes, and you will see, your eyes are open. Awesome first lines of the song for an awesome game. A game that gives you three wishes and tells you to follow your heart! Run for the stars and rainbows! And, little factoid for you, this song is actually the most-played song on unicorn iPods. So, you learn something every day. UNICORN ATTACK!!!!!!! a2a_config.linkname="Robot Unicorn Attack!"; a2a_config.linkurl="http://kawaiikakkoiisugo...

Several outlets are reporting that Nintendo‘s announcement last week about its plans to release the Nintendo 3DS in the near future may have come out a bit prematurely. Apparently, the Japanese press had some inside information about the planned release, so Nintendo felt obligated to make the announcement as it did (overnight in a press release) so as to try and avoid allowing the press and rumor mills to break the story. The Escapist repo...

bow down to your leader Famitsu, the Japanese gaming magazine, recently conducted a thorough investigation of its own archives in order to rank video game consoles to see which is the “best”. According to this write up from the folks at 1Up, the results of Famitsu’s internal evaluation found that the Playstation 3 has the best game library. In the article, 1up provides a nice easy summary of how Famitsu made up this ranking: Acc...