Article: Otaku Culture
Coverage that is on the fringe, all things Otaku. Otaku means Maniac – and these articles focus on things we are crazy about.
Macross and its fandom has continued to thrive all over this great United States, with the premier homegrown convention bringing the deculture to sunny California once again. This year, I was determined to get my Valkyrie-loving keister on jet plane and fly out to the west coast to finally experience this highly praised event first hand. As I entered the doors of the Torrance Cultural Arts Center for my first Macross World Con, I was surrounded by friends and fellow fans all brimming with love and passion for this classic anime series.
Arranged along the left side of the Ken Miller auditorium were dozens of Macross merchandise displays with goods grouped into various themes. First up was an impressive spread of music CDs!
WARNING: video contains adult language. Viewer’s Discretion is Advised
You may not know the name “Tsuyoshi Nonaka” but you know his work. He did the mechanical design for Mazinkaiser SKL, Shin Mazinger Shōgeki! Z-Hen and DICE among other things. Oh, he’s also done work on some small series as Transformers, Super Sentai and Power Rangers. A lot of his work was credited to PLEX, the design studio he was a part of.
http://www.collectiondx.com/toy_design/tsuyoshi_nonaka
http://www.collectiondx.com/toy_design/plex
I’ve been seeing his hame around as guest of honor at various California conventions and wondered what the deal was. Turns out he’s moved from Japan to the US to be head of “PLEX International Design, US division” for Bandai America. This means, as of 2011 – Tsuyoshi Nonaka has been designing toys for lines such as Power Rangers, Ben 10 and more.
Now I know why those Ben 10 toys look so great.
The story of General Products is one that doesn’t need repeating, but here’s the short version anyway. Toshio Okada dropped out of school and started a business making garage kits in addition to opening a science fiction specialty store, taking the name from Larry Niven’s Known Space series of novels. This store was the first of its kind in Japan. He recruited people like Yasuhiro Takeda from the university science fiction club, many of whom had worked together on animating the opening video for the third Japanese SF Convention in Osaka, aka DAICON III.
These people went on to found Gainax Studios.
I’m fascinated with this period of time in Japan. It’s the point at which the fans who had grown up on anime began to make their own, and General Products and its daughter company DAICON Film were at the heart of it.
Recently, I picked up an old General Products catalog from 1984, which I thought of translating and posting. The waxing romantic about GP will come when I post about it for real, but for now this is just a little bit of a taste. Anyway I quickly abandoned the idea of completely translating it, as I don’t have the time, the experience with using editing software, and frankly, I’m too lazy. I will be posting full scans of the catalog though, and translating a couple of passages. In the mean time, I spent my night translating the store map, so I thought I’d post that. Be forewarned though, the editing probably got sloppier as the night went on. Also, it’s a two page spread, and I’m not about to take the catalog apart, so the pages aren’t joined together as nicely as I would have liked. Oh well.
There are some translation notes I’d talk about, but I’m going to bed for now.
For my birthday this year I decided I wanted to make a trip up to a flea market that I hadn’t been to in a few years. This is a great flea market because it is nothing but antique dealers and people selling their junk. There are no stalls selling bootleg purses, no Avon dealers – Just old junk.
I spy my first find just minutes into my trip. Sitting on a table is a Styrofoam tray with a complete Gobots Puzzler set. I ask how much for the Gobots.
“$100” he says. “It’s unused”
“Woah, that’s way out of my range” I said. “Even with the outer box, that’s too much”
He says he has the box, and the instructions. Still, I feel that at $100 I would be insulting him with what I would be willing to pay. We’re just too far off. I tell him that I just got here and need to walk around.
He then asks “What’s the price you won’t walk away from?”
There’s another comic store in town that I have mixed feelings about. Technically it’s a better store, but the owner is an asshole. I’ve actually been kicked out of his store for being a regular patron of another store. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth to go in there. But the sad fact is that it’s a better-stocked store, and my kids like it more.
We were killing time one day and my youngest son asked to go to the comic store that had the “Pringles”. This shop had a little snack area by the register and he just loved the fact that he can look at comics and get Pringles. Who am I to say no?
This store has a fair amount of toys, but most of them are crap. DC and Marvel hero toys, with some Spawn toys mixed in for good measure. Typically nothing I am interested in. But today, something on the counter caught my eye.
I’ve been going to my local comic store for about 20 years. While I don’t collect comics anymore, I like to stop in and say hello from time to time. Being a comic store, they also get toys and games from time to time.
It was during one recent visit that the owner, George, called me in back to see a lot of toys he had picked up recently. They were Japanese toys.