Monthly Archives: February 2013

It’s been a couple of years since Monster Attack Team, arguably the best-written tokusatsu magazine currently printed in English (sorry G-Fan!), returned from a long hiatus for its 8th issue. After a handful of delays getting fully relaunched and some … Continue reading →

The trailer for Garo: The One Who Shines in Darkness, the third Garo TV series, should be enough to get any fan of the franchise salivating. This series is a departure from everything that has come before in the franchise … Continue reading →

It’s an exciting time to be an Unofficial Sentai Akibaranger fan. There’s been a lot of controversy about costume changes, and the the cast switch of Shione Sawada replacing Kyoko Hinami as the blue Akibaranger, and this latest behind-the-scenes promo … Continue reading →

It’s difficult to report this without stepping on racial sensitivities, but I’ll do my best: in general, the main actors in Japanese hero shows tend to be ethnically Japanese. Exceptions to this tend to get noticed, such as Robert Scott … Continue reading →

Like a lot of DVDs released by Bandai Visual, the long out-of-print American Super Robot Wars: Original Generation discs are fetching a ludicrous price on the secondary anime market. While the show itself isn’t exactly amazing (it’s based on a … Continue reading →

It is important to take any bit of Akibaranger news with a grain of salt, but the latest issue of Figure Oh displays the main cast sporting slightly different looks: It’s not clear what to make of this: a parody … Continue reading →

So, we still have not seen the Knifehead kaiju yet, but Big Bad Toy Store is listing $63.99 as the MSRP for a pack of all three (Knifehead, Gypsy Danger, and Crimson Typhoon) 6-8″ figures in NECA’s first wave of … Continue reading →

Incubot Productions has made a couple of cool, posable, light-up robot toys that also house USB flash drives. Their Gigantor and Voltron drives are aesthetically pleasing (if a little too fragile to actually cart around) gimmicks, but now they’re going … Continue reading →

When the Japanese home video release of the third Evangelion rebuild movie, titled Evangelion: 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo, hits on April 24, a pretty exciting extra feature will be included: God Warrior Appears in Tokyo, the ten minute live-action … Continue reading →

If you live in Japan, set your DVRs to 1:30 AM April 6 on  BS Asahi, because that’s when Unofficial Sentai Akibaranger, the most amusing deconstruction of Toei’s Super Sentai franchise, returns for its second season. This means that the … Continue reading →

Huh, evidently while gearing up for Kyoryuger, director and action choreographer extraordinaire Koichi Sakamoto found the time to crank out a little sci-fi picture called Travelers: Dimension Police. The plot involves an interdimensional cop (Nao Nagasawa, who was Hurricaneger‘s Nono) … Continue reading →

You can get the original Ultraman series on R1 DVD for pretty cheap. Mill Creek’s release of the 40-episode series is a mere $10.50 on amazon, but I got a copy at my local Borders (remember those?) for only five … Continue reading →

If you live in New Zealand and want an expensive way to confuse a cashier, try paying with Optimus dollars or Megatron bucks! That’s right, the New Zealand mint is now offering, as legal tender, $2 silver coins with either … Continue reading →

First trailer for Ghost in the Shell: Arise, which we now know will be a series of four 50-minute films. Looks like it could be good, or at least worlds ahead of the mangled job of Ghost in the Shell … Continue reading →

The live-action Ultimate Hentai Kamen adaptation now has a trailer. It looks to be starring the live-action Gatchaman‘s Ryu (Ryuhei Suzuki) as the lead and Kamen Rider Fourze‘s Yuki (Fumika Shimizu) as his oft-imperiled love interest. I wonder if this … Continue reading →

Bandai America was present at Toy Fair 2013, so I’ve been keeping my eyes open for new figures that might be relevant to this weblog’s subject matter: namely, Godzilla and Power Rangers (and I guess Ben 10, though that franchise … Continue reading →

With Wonderfest and Toy Fair 2013 on the way, there’s a lot of cool tidbits leaking for the interested figure fanatic. Here are a few things that caught my eye: As mentioned previously, NECA’s first wave of Pacific Rim toys … Continue reading →

Three interesting-looking anime trailers popped up on my radar today, so I figured I’d lump them all into one post. Coming in April is Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. which seems to be a space opera with some robots in … Continue reading →

Newer manga/anime fans in the US may not be aware, but Shonen Jump magazine has been sanitized over the last two decades. Along with violent titles like Fist of the North Star and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure running in the anthology … Continue reading →

For the fortunate Japanese exploitation movie fans in New York, Philadelphia, San Fransisco, and Vancouver, know that a tour of eight relatively obscure Shintoho movies from the 50’s and 60’s will be playing as part of the traveling ‘Into the … Continue reading →

If there’s one subcategory of the daikaiju genre that Americans have really embraced, it’s giant spiders. From Tarantula to Arachnophobia to Giant Spider Invasion to Eight-Legged Freaks to Creepies, the oversized arachnid seems to always have a place on the … Continue reading →

A trailer for the TV drama version of Clamp’s supernatural storekeeper drama xxxHOLiC has been posted, though most of the clip is footage from the anime movie. I like what I’ve seen of the drama’s promotional materials so far (if … Continue reading →

In bizarre Easter egg news, during episode 5 of Zettai Karen Children: Unlimited, the following figures popped up in a pan across the screen: Huh? Are those internet personalities James Rolfe (the Angry Video Game Nerd) and Doug Walker (the … Continue reading →

Along with Ninja Turtles, Avatar, Kung Fu Panda, Power Rangers, and “brand new episodes” of Dragonball GT, the television station Nickelodeon continues to Asianify itself by picking up Digimon Fustion (the official name for 2010’s Digimon Xros Wars TV series, … Continue reading →

In “stuff I never expected because it’s a logistical nightmare” news, Project X Zone, the 3DS strategy game that unites characters from Namco, Sega, and Capcom, is bound for the US this summer. While crossover titles like Namco x Capcom … Continue reading →

Here’s a trailer for Super Hero Wars Z, the follow-up to last year’s Kamen Rider vs. Super Sentai movie Super Hero Wars, only with Space Sheriffs as well this time (the three franchises do have a precedent for crossing over … Continue reading →

The first wave of 6-8″ Pacific Rim action figures from NECA appears to have been leaked, containing the following: -Gypsy Danger (well, you gotta have your protagonist) -Crimson Typhoon -Knifehead Kaiju Honestly, I was hoping for a bit more, considering … Continue reading →

The line between Figma’s (generally) cute girls and Figuarts (generally) transforming heroes aesthetics continues to gradually blur with the announcement of an SH Figuarts of Golden Darkness from Kentaro Yabuki’s alien panty-shot series ToLoveRu. While I’m no fan of ToLoveRu … Continue reading →

Discotek Media has made a couple of announcements on facebook during the past couple days, and while nothing Earth-shattering was mentioned, they may be worth repeating. First, the four Saint Seiya movies, announced last year, have a release date of … Continue reading →

A new English trailer (or English translation of the Japanese trailer) has come out for Earth Defense Force 2025, a game which the Japanese would know as “Earth Defense Force 4”, since it’s missing a couple of  installments in the … Continue reading →