Japan Pulse

Transform your baby into a superhero

Bandai have just announced the release of a new range of cosplay baby romper suits featuring characters from tokusatsu and anime series such as Kamen Rider, Doraemon, Ultraman and Dragon Ball. The rompers come hot on the heels of a similar range of hoods and bibs released last summer and are extremely affordable at only ¥1,575 each. The characters chosen are designed to appeal to an older generation who remember these classic series with fondness and want to transform their tots into Super Sentai.

Given the popularity of cosplay in Japan, it’s not surprising that parents would want their kids to get in on the action. Take these Naruto babies and Death Note toddlers, for example. As well as anime, video game characters costumes are also a source of inspiration. Foreign fans of Japanese video games have handmade some awesome baby costumes such as this knitted Katamari Damacy suit or this Link baby costume for lovers of Zelda.

Naturally, many parents turn to the classics – Disney costumes and cute bear hoods – when dressing up their tikes, but what about those looking for slightly hipper threads?  Hip hop gear is definitely on trend at Baboo Wear’s online shop, where parents can stock up on kid-size baseball caps and New Skool romper suits with a motif that makes your kid look like it owns a fat pair of headphones.

The Bandai romper suits hit the stores later this month. Baby henshin!

New man? Otomen's main character is in touch with his feminine side

You’ve probably seen them, preening  in front of station mirrors in public, teasing their hair until it looks just so. Or maybe you’ve seen the beauty products available to them, including foundation and eyebrow tweezers.

No, not the gals; we’re taking about the much hyped new breed of man known as soshokukei (herbivorous). According to the talking heads and pop psychiatrists, the herbivore is more interested in his appearance, less interested in his career and increasingly passive with girls. The phrase was coined by writer Megumi Ushikubo back in 2007 and has caught on so much that some men now proudly describe themselves as herbivores without feeling any social shame. Typical herbivore pastimes include such things as cooking, clothes shopping and eating sweets, and naturally the older generation of carnivorous skirt-chasing careerists are appalled by this new tribe, seeing them as lazy and unwilling to take on the responsibilities of an adult man.

This year a popular TV series was launched depicting just such a man in crisis with his public identity and private desires. “Otomen” tells the story of Asuka Masamune. Adept at judo and karate he appears to be the toughest guy in high school, but behind closed doors he loves sewing and romantic manga. The manga that inspired the TV series was extremely popular, showing perhaps that the character struck a chord, albeit with the young girls at which the drama was aimed.

Continue reading about changing gender roles →

Though we’ve not yet quite seen nanomachines building islands out in Tokyo Bay, William Gibson, author of “Idoru,” must have be feeling pretty smug last month when the news hit the Internet that a young Japanese man had married his virtual girlfriend.

But the prophecy of “Idoru,” which envisions a love affair between a rock star and a virtual celebrity, has not yet quite been fulfilled. The important difference being that the virtual character of Nene, created for the dating game Love Plus, is circumscribed by the bounds of her programming while the Idoru of Gibson’s novel enjoys free will.

That being said, Konami’s DS dating game Love Plus contained characters that were so life-like  some women complained their husband’s were neglecting them in favor of spending time with their virtual partners. Indeed, Sal 9000, the groom in the recent cyber wedding, felt compelled to broadcast his relationship to the Web. Though many have suggested that the marriage was simply a playful form of theatre rather than a serious gesture, it seemed that Western media were more tempted to ascribe deeper meaning to the event.

Continue reading about virtual love in 2009 →

Doutor Cheburashka original coffee set

From Dec. 3 visitors to Doutor coffee shop can get their mitts on limited-edition Cheburashka items unavailable elsewhere. Each week the free gift changes: in the first week free stickers are available, from Dec. 10 you can receive a clear A5 file and from the Dec. 17 customers get two free postcards. Stocks are limited so visitors to the store best get there early.

In addition you can buy a Cheburashka mug for ¥630, a Cheburashka original coffee set including mug, bag of drip coffee and tote bag for ¥1,800 and a 200-gram bag of premium mild blend coffee for ¥850.

It should be no surprise that despite being a Russian character, Cheburashka has connected with the Japanese and in early last month, a Japanese anime version of Cheburashka debuted on Japanese TV. Small childlike  (chibi) characters with large heads such as Rilakkuma or Hello Kitty are extremely popular in Japan, so diminutive Cheburashka with his cute voice and giant bonce ticks all the right boxes for entry into Japan’s kawaii (cute) hall of fame.

Continue reading about the Cheburashka boom →

Free manga browsing at a convenience store

In a recent interview with Monocle Magazine, Japanamerica author and pop culture stalwart Roland Kelts was asked about Meiji University’s plans for a manga library. “When you make a Rock and Roll museum, it means that Rock and Roll is dead,” he said. “And when you build a manga museum, to some extent it means that there is an end in sight.”

Perhaps in its present form, yes. Kelts doesn’t believe that manga are going away, but domestic sales are down, with print media competing with – and frequently losing to – digital platforms on cell phones and the Internet. Don’t worry, he explains, manga are just in the process of adapting to the new landscape. Downloadable manga for your cell phone are but one example.

Continue reading about evolving forms of manga →

Manga has long been viewed as a throwaway art form

Though former Prime Minister Taro Aso’s ambitious plan for a national media arts center to promote manga and anime has been scrapped by the incumbent government, fans of the art form will welcome the news that the Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library of Manga and Subcultures opened at Meiji University in Ochanomizu last weekend. The library is a forerunner of a much more ambitious project to house the world’s largest manga collection, which is slated to open in 2014 as part of the university’s School of Japanese Global Studies course. Visitors to the library can browse an impressive collection that includes rare series from the 1960s. (Read all about the library in The Japan Times.)

While there are many commercial manga kissaten (coffee shops for reading manga) in Japan with extensive manga collections, public libraries shy away from comprehensive collections of comic books. My own local library in Chuo Ward, despite being rather large, only has a disappointingly slim number of Osamu Tezuka classics. Before the Yonezawa Library opened in Tokyo, the only other decent public collection available was in Kyoto at the Kyoto International Manga Museum, which opened three years ago.

Continue reading about archived manga →

Danny Choo in his element

Out on Amazon today is a very funky book titled “Otacool Worldwide Otaku Rooms.” The project, organized by self-confessed otaku Danny Choo is for the moment only published in Japan by Kotobukiya. Otaku around the globe responded to Choo’s call to submit images of themselves posing alongside their precious figurine collections in their homes and the best of these images were put together for the book.

Continue reading about "Otacool" →

USB sticks and mouses transform into 'giant' robots

To coincide with the release of “Transformers Revenge” on DVD Dec. 18, Takara Tomy are launching this nifty Device Label range on Oct. 24. Characters Jaguar and Tigatron transform into USB sticks while Grimlock and Dinosaurer each transform into a mouse. Though it’s not likely to strike awe into the hearts of boys and men, the tagline could easily be “Robots in Disguise as Mouses” (yes, according to Oxford Dictionary, that is the plural for a computer mouse).

Transformer toys were originally created in Japan in the ’70s by Takara under a different product name. Hasbro partnered with Takara and hired American writers to provide the toys with a back story and the Transformers name. The original Transformers TV series made in 1984 was a cross-over project between America and Japan with the storyline and dubbing done in the States and the animation produced in Japan. Since then a huge number of sequels and spinoff shows have followed, some of which were exclusively made in Japan. While Hasbro produces Transformers toys in the States, Takara Tomy makes Transformers for the Japanese market and the two companies collaborate on storylines for the show.

Read more about Transformers →