In the wild, mouse at the ready, hunting down links
I had trouble translating the katakana for the name when it was first announced. Was it Eucrante? Euklante? Euclante?
I only recently discovered the name is a reference to Eukrante/Eucrante, one of the Nereids, the sea nymphs of Greek mythology. (Ianeira is another one of them.)
It’s not every day one learns something about ancient Greek mythology from a Japanese action figure.
Posted in Busou Shinki, Pix, Toys.
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– Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Garo is described as a tokusatsu show for adults who grew up watching tokusatsu shows but despite adult overtones, nudity and horror, it’s still ultimately as formulaic as the rest of tokusatsu. It’s frustrating because with better writing and more ambition, the series could have been something really special. For all its faults, I do believe it will go down as a landmark series in tokusatsu history since it debuted at a time when the Kamen Rider franchise is being aimed at an ever-younger audience.
Bandai has exploited the Garo series to the maximum with a large array of merchandise at multiple price points. The flagship line is the Equip and Prop series which bundles a highly-detailed figure with a prop from the show. Unsurprisingly, the first volume in the series featured the titular character.
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– Tuesday, June 5, 2007
It should be clear by now that I’m not a fan of the Transformers movie designs. I had the opportunity to get the Takara Tomy version of the Leader-class Optimus Prime figure last week and just couldn’t find any motivation to buy it despite being a fan of the character.
I am looking forward to the Real Gear subline, though. These are Transformers with gadgets for alt modes and like Microchange figures of old, they are meant to be 1:1 scale. The robot modes are more traditional Transformers designs and they look like really fun toys.
In fact, they’re so cool I wasn’t surprised to see a photo of the toys in the paper today:
(There’s a better quality JPEG image here.)
A close-up of the text:
“Japan’s toy maker Tomy employee” is clunky and it’s odd Takara Tomy was referred to first as Tomy and then Takara.
Nitpicking aside, it’s nice to see Transformers get some mainstream media coverage. I am disappointed we haven’t seen any good articles covering the franchise’s history, though.
Posted in Toys, Transformers.
Comments Off on So cool that they made the paper
– Monday, June 4, 2007
All that Jazz.
Or at least, the G1, World’s Smallest Transformers, Binaltech and the movie versions of the character.
Protoform Optimus Prime in traditional colours.
A fan-repaint. A valiant effort but the colours are the least of the toy’s problems.
Movie about toys, for toys.
Transformers fans will see the movie. The truly hardcore Transformers fans will apparently take their toys to see the movie.
Michael Bay, your Optimus Prime sucks.
Oh wait, sorry.
Posted in Web.
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– Sunday, June 3, 2007
A photo of Takara’s Action Hero Pro Ryukendo in basic form.
Action figures are thus named because of the joints which allow them to be placed in various poses. With enough articulation points, however, you can also convey emotion through body language.
(Some figures go even further with swappable heads that display specific emotions.)
The Action Hero Pro figure has a whopping 40 points of articulation including some which are seemingly there to enable very specific poses. I doubt the orz pose seen above was one of the poses the designers planned for the figure but it can pull it off as well as many others.
Comments Off on Emotion figures
– Saturday, June 2, 2007
