Category Archives: Anime

Macross VF-25 Valkyrie on display in Yokohama

Fan of anime, robots, planes, sci-fi or anything similar? This could be interesting to you. If not, sorry. I will write briefly about this anyway.

Macross (and Gundam) is a staple of Japanese culture. Even if you’re not a fan of it here, you’ve at least heard of it. Anyway, the VF-25 Valkyrie is an iconic transforming fighter jet.

A front view. Intimidating.

On my way to school, I noticed a poster advertising this on display nearby. After school Monday, I made a stop over to check it out to take a few pics and a video for my friend Amit. He’s a fan of Macross.

The Valkyrie was on display as part of a promotion for WOWOW, a subscription television channel. It is currently showing the original “Super Dimension Fortress Macross” (超時空要塞マクロス) show, as well as the movie “Macross: Do You Remember Love?” ((超時空要塞マクロス 愛・おぼえていますか). I didn’t sign up. I just wanted to check out the fighter.

Of course, I thought it’d be nice to share it with everyone else as well. The only disappointing part of this was that, yes, it’s 1/1 scale, but it’s only about half of the vehicle. The rest simply doesn’t exist. =(

I didn’t ask, but some people were allowed to get a picture standing on its right hand here.

 

The left hand. Wish I had taken a pic with someone in it for a sense of scale.

 

Some info about the display and promotion.

 

Gonna go out on a limb here and guess this is Lynn Minmay. I’m not really familiar with the story.

Silence is broken

Since returning from Panama, work has been non-stop busy.  But the month from hell is just about over, so now I may resume posting.  I’ve found motivation once again to really focus on my Japanese classes, so I’ve been focusing more on that when I’m at home.  Oh, and playing Street Fighter IV.

Street Fighter IV has been a blast thus far.  It’s easy to pick up for a few mins (which oftentimes turns into hours).. sort of like most DS games.  Pick up for a few mins, play, put it back down.  Of course, it takes a huge commitment to become really good at the game.  Lots of precision timing and learning to read opponents is required.

Continue reading Silence is broken

Confession

I used to be a self-professed otaku. I was really into anime and was, what one might call, a weeaboo.  Thankfully I got out of that phase of my life, and it was at the right time too.  I stopped paying attention to anime around the time it started to become the mainstream (is it considered mainstream now?) phenomenon it has become.

I watched things like Ranma 1/2 (I even had some of the $30 tape that contained only two episodes), Neon Genesis, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, etc.  I felt that most things around then (late ’90s, early 2000s) was of good quality. But when it became popular and less underground, companies started bringing more and more shows stateside.

It used to be that there were 0 – 5 DVDs released a week.  Now?  I have no clue, but the market is saturated. Whenever I watch a show now that someone recommends, most of the time it’s crap, but people like it because it’s the hip thing. In reality, the quality, I feel, just isn’t there.  It’s sad.  Before, I could trust the localization companies to bring out quality shows I’d enjoy, now it’s rare.