He is called the God of Manga because he not only wrote some of the most iconic Manga of all time, including Astro Boy, but he basically invented the system of Manga and Anime creation and marketing in use to this day. Earlier this month Google opened up an online version of the Tezuka Osamu Manga Museum with a huge number of exhibits and displays for those of us who can’t get to western Japan and see the real thing. If you are a fan of Manga and Anime, you want to check this one out. Expect to spend some time there, because there is a lot to see and read. You could always follow your visit by getting some of the original Manga and reading it, even a lot o the older stuff is still available.
We get The Amazing Spider-Man 2 on the big screen this week, with all that excellent spidey action and banter we have come to expect. He gets a couple of super villains to defeat this time around, and begins to suspect they have something in common. This 5th venture into the Spiderman franchise looks like it is going to be quite the fun ride. Bad Johnson is a comedic fantasy in which a mans penis leaves his body and takes on human form. As you might expect, that one is in limited release. In even more limited release is Protector 2, original title Tom Yum Goong 2, another elephant training martial arts series from Thailand. Thai martial arts are a bit different than the Chinese and Japanese forms we are all familiar with, and this film stars Tony Jaa of Ong-Bak fame. His parents are elephant trainers, which explains why the animals are in so many of his films.
It has been a bit since I featured the Tokyo Dance Trooper, Danny Choo, in this blog, so I figure it is time to do it again. He still has the moves, the attitude, and the armor! He still gets my vote as the best choice for this project. And then, just because you don’t feel like a guy dancing down the street in full Storm Trooper armor isn’t Nerd Enough for you, see what he does when he gets his hands on a series of dolls, and starts building their robotic control interfaces into them. Be sure to check out smartdoll.jp to get all the details. Unless you really want ALL the details about how Danny used 3D printing to create a Rapid Prototyping Environment which allowed him to create the dolls based on his anime/manga in the first place, which gave him the baseline physical model he started building his robots on. If you feel the need for that level of detail, you will find it here.
I can’t imagine anyone who doesn’t appreciate Ghost In The Shell when they meet this unique cyberpunk universe, so instead of ranting about how excellent the series is this time I thought I should just share a few of the recent shorts from GITS: Arise. The first one from The Borderless Project is called Foreseeing 2027, the second is Memory, and the third is Color. There are a few more in this set, all encouraged by Katsuyuki Motohiro, the main director of Psycho-Pass, which owes its existence to the influence of this show.
Going to be in Washington, D.C. in May? Then you might want to attend the second annual The Future Is Here Festival at the Smithsonian on May 16th, 17th and 18th. Some of the speakers will include Patrick Stewart, Brian Greene, Adam Steltzner, George Takei, Stewart Brand, Sara Seager, Kim Stanley Robinson, David Brin, and The Mythbusters… and that’s just on one day! At the higher ticket levels the event also includes priority seating on Saturday night for the national premiere of X-Men: Days of Future Past at the National Museum of American History, and Patrick will be taking questions from the audience afterwards.
One of my favorite fantasy series is Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files, where Harry Dresden is the only person listed in the Chicago Yellow Pages under the profession Wizard, and is a special consultant to the Chicago PD. This is an amazingly good blend of gritty noir detective story and combat sorcery, with an entire cast of characters you would want to have with you in a tight spot… or as far from you as inhumanly possible. There are 16 books in the series so far, 15 novels and a collection of short stories, and a TV series that ran for one season on Sci-Fi (it wasn’t Syfy yet). Oh, yeah, two of the Graphics Novels were original Harry Dresden stories not published in Novel form, kicking us up a few books, and James Marsters reads all the audiobook versions but one. Start yourself off with Storm Front; bet you can’t read just one!