Author Archive

JAL stewardess uniforms feared hot item on black market

Already engaged in a struggle to emerge from bankruptcy, Japan Air Lines is now engaged in a fight of a different sort: Keeping the stylish outfits of laid-off flight attendants off the black market and out of the hands of uniform fetishists.
A jacket alone can fetch several hundred pounds, while one site is presently advertising [...]


Vintage Japanese industrial expo poster gallery

Check out this sweet gallery of vinyage posters from Japanese industrial expositions from the 1920s-1940s.
(via BoingBoing)


DVD Review – Resident Evil: Degeneration

A decade or so ago, finding anime and other Asian media used to be hard.  Fans had to settle for whatever mediocre dubs made it onto television, mail order from small suppliers like AnimEigo, lurk Usenet for fansub contacts or scrounge for low-quality videotape dubs at fan conventions.  Today, though, one can pick up DVDs [...]


Oh My Goddess! DVD going out of print

The good people at AnimEigo recently announced that their license to produce the classic Oh My Goddess! OVA series expires at the end of February, 2010. In response, they’ve priced their remaining DVD stock at clearance rates. I’m fortunate to have picked up the DVDs myself fairly recently — having had it on [...]


TETSUOOOOO!

For many of my generation whose initial exposure to anime was through imported television series of inconsisten quality, the movie Akira was revolutionary in the artistic brilliance of its animation. Now one man has teamed up with Pittsburg’s ToonSeum to create The Art of Akira Exhibit, whose mission is “To teach the entire world [...]


Flash game semi-repost of the day

We’d mentioned Nanaca Crash, a fun little Flash game featuring characters from the Japanese visual novel Cross Channel, in an earlier incarnation of the site, but since we haven’t reposted it at Yellow Menace yet, here goes.
Incidentally, my current record is 3699.48 meters.


Survivor of both atomic bombings dies at 93

NPR carried the obituary this morning of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only person officially recognized as having survived the atomic bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who died Jan. 4, 2010 at the age of 93. Injured in the Hiroshima attack of Aug. 6, 1945, he returned to his home town of Nagasaki, which was [...]


LEGO link of the day

A model of Howl’s Moving Castle made of LEGO. ‘Nuff said.
(via BoingBoing)


The Epoxies stick with new wave style

So there I was, playing Dance Dance Revolution X, and I find myself grooving on this great New Wave song called “Synthesized” by some band called The Epoxies. And I wonder, how the heck did I miss this band back in the ’80s?


ComicCon cosplay gallery

Here’s a swell gallery of cosplay from the 2009 ComicCon.
(via MeFi)


♪♫ Khaaaaan! ♪♫

The Wrath of Khan, opera style, as done by Robot Chicken. ‘Nuff said.
(via MetaFilter)


Project A-Ko retro review

Project A-ko is one of the most unusual anime offerings of all time. Originally conceived as an episode of the hentai series Cream Lemon, it changed direction during production into a comedy that riffs on any number of anime conventions in general – giant robots, questing aliens, and schoolgirl heroines – and lampoons a number [...]


The Heroic Trio retro-review

We don’t often get an opportunity to compare the US and Asian releases of a Hong Kong flick, but fortunately, we were able to snag an import copy of the all-region Tai Seng DVD of Johnny To’s 1993 The Heroic Trio before it went out of print (and before Miramax acquired the US rights to [...]


Kanto Wanderer review

Editor’s Note: This entry completes our trio of retro reviews, but we hope to have a brand new one of The Host coming your way soon. – Mazinga

The way of the Yakuza is to wear red clothes or white.

Avant-garde Japanese director Seijun Suzuki has earned a reputation for injecting his trademark unconventional style [...]


GenCon 2009 Preview

Summer’s here, and the time is right for grabbing your 20-sided die and indulging in a weekend of frenzied gaming action at GenCon. The massive gaming convention returns to Indianapolis in August. Musashi and I plan to attend and enjoy the con’s many gaming- and anime-related attractions. Here’s a press release giving a preview [...]