Tag: manga (Page 2) | RocketNews24

manga

The Love Affair Behind A College Beauty Queen’s Amazing 33kg (73lb) Diet! How Ever Did She Do It?

Mar 2, 2013 by Kay
0

Ahh, the things we do for love … but of course, love takes many forms, sometimes with astonishing results.

Just a month ago, we brought to you the story of the amazing cosplay diet that had the Japanese internet buzzing. Now, there’s another young lady who achieved equally incredible results dieting — motivated by her love for a manga comic, no less. And we have to say our hats were off to her when we learned how she shed off the weight. Read More

Osamu Tezuka’s Three Biggest Works Celebrated in Collector’s Stamp Sets

Mar 2, 2013 by Master Blaster
0

Like collecting comics? Like collecting stamps? If you happen to like both, then just try keeping your hoarding urges in check for this news.

Japan Post will be releasing three sets of stamps honoring the works of manga and anime legend Osamu Tezuka. The sets celebrate 40th, 50th, and 60th anniversaries of three of his biggest successes.

Feb 27, 2013 by Michelle
0

Hand-drawn manga are thrown into our world and interact with everyday objects thanks to the creative work of Lowra, a manga artist from France. Miniature versions of familiar characters from Naruto climb trees and carry chocolates while Lowra’s own original characters swim in popcorn and paint their nails. She even drew characters from Zelda and Super Smash Brothers. See her amazing art after the break!

Feb 16, 2013 by Kay
0

Did you love to draw as a child? If you’re a girl, chances are you went through a phase of being infatuated with drawing pictures of princesses wearing fluffy gowns and diamond tiaras. (Sorry, I wasn’t quite sure what little boys would be crazy about drawing.) Well, for those of you who haven’t quite grown out of that phase, a special little kit that comes free with a recent issue of a popular girls’ comic magazine may make you squeal with delight. In fact, it’s been a hot topic on the Japanese Internet and even has professional manga-ka (comic artists) interested and impressed. The topic of all this attention? It’s the “Super Mighty Comic Artist Set (Super Saikyo Manga-ka Set)” brought to you by the comic magazine Nakayoshi. Read More

The Taste of Lies: Can the Taste of a Man’s Face Betray His Wickedness?

Jan 23, 2013 by Philip Kendall
0

With his private all-you-can-eat snow cone factory long since melted away, RocketNews24‘s Mr. Sato was taking a much-needed break in a comfy chair in the corner of the office. Setting a hot cup of tea down on the table beside him, he pulled up one of his favourite manga comics on his iPad- Jojo no Kimyouna Bouken, or JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure in English – and began to read. Around five minutes in, however, Mr. Sato stopped as he came across a scene in which the character Buccellati licks hero Giorno’s cheek in order to ascertain whether he is telling the truth. Able to taste the salts secreted in a liar’s perspiration, Buccellati was able to tell whether his companions were pulling the wool over his eyes.

Could the taste of a person’s cheek really reveal whether they are telling dirty, horrible fibs? Could this be a secret technique that top criminal investigators employ to help pin down a guilty man? Mr. Sato sidled over to unfortunate coworker Mr. H and asked him to help him test the theory.

Jan 19, 2013 by Philip Kendall
0

Gadget-laden robot cat from the future Doraemon is something a national treasure here in Japan. Since the appearance of the original manga of the same name back in 1969, the subsequent TV series has been watched by multiple generations and is still on the air today. As well as remaining popular with adults and kids alike, the Japanese Foreign Ministry once declared the mechanical time-traveller the country’s official “animé ambassador”, meaning that the earless mechanical cat is sure to be around for a long time to come yet.

Perhaps the thing that people love most about Doraemon, though, is his seemingly bottomless pocket, from which the character produces all manner of gadgets and inventions in order to assist his human pal Nobita. Although the “dokodemo doa” (lit. “anywhere door”) is often given as the answer to the age-old conundrum “Which of Doraemon’s gadgets would you most like to have?”, it doesn’t stop people imagining what else could buried deep down in there.

In that vein, Yahoo! Japan recently announced the winner of its 2012-2013 Adults Only Doraemon Contest, in which contestants were asked to come up with an invention that they’d like to pull out of Doraemon’s pocket and use in real life, with the top prize being awarded to 50-year-old Rieko Honjou for her “Pee Baton”.

Jan 17, 2013 by Steven
0

When Japanese TV personality and model Aki Higashihara blogs, bad things happen.

Higashihara’s blog has been dubbed ”Death Blog” by the Japanese internet, a reference to Death Note, a popular manga about a supernatural notebook that possess the power to kill whoever’s name is written in it. Similar to the fictional “Death Note”, internet legend has it that whatever Higashihara writes about in her “Death Blog” is destined to meet an unfortunate fate.

For example, in 2010, Higashihara blogged about her visit to a famous shrine in Kamakura, mentioning: “I wanted to eat ginko nuts!” Two months later, a 1000-year-old sacred ginko tree located in the shrine was completely uprooted and severely damaged.

In 2012, she wrote a post about the hardships of raising children, saying: “My kids were fast asleep at 8:30 tonight. This is completely unrelated, but it makes me feel a little better when I think that even pandas neglect their kids.” The next day, the first baby giant panda to be born in Japan in 24 years was found dead — at 8:30 am.

Still not convinced? On January 16, 2013, All Nippon Airways (ANA) grounded 17 of its Boeing 787 Dreamliner planes for inspection after one had to make an emergency landing due to smoke suddenly appearing in the cockpit. Japan Airlines similarly grounded their Dreamliner fleet following the incident.

You’ll never guess what Aki Higashihara blogged about last month.

Jan 14, 2013 by Philip Kendall
0

And here we were thinking that our sugar-coated pastries came from Krispy Kreme and Mr. Donut. According to this promotional video for Japanese comic Tenshi no Doroppu (or Angel’s Drop as it is subtitled), however, cookies, cakes and doughnuts are not made but “born” by young ladies who are periodically overwhelmed by the power of pastry and let rip with a tide of sweets large enough to feed an entire truckload of hungry teenagers.

Potentially NSFW pics and a full intro video after the jump.

Jan 6, 2013 by Master Blaster
0

Fantasy’s a wonderful thing. With a little imagination things can be exactly the way you want it to be. Perhaps that’s why movies, animation, literature and more are so timelessly popular. They show us life the way it will never be.

The list makers over at Otome Sugoren who teach us that everything can boil down to 9 items, like party manners, otaku relationships, and inter-gender video game etiquette have compiled the nine characters from anime and manga that women wish they could be with in real life.

Now, I like me some whimsy as much as the next guy, but I’m left dumbfounded by the thought process that went into some of these choices.

Jan 5, 2013 by Michelle
0

With the myriad of cosplay costumes available in Japan, first-time cosplayers must be overwhelmed with all the choices. Luckily, Cospa, a major cosplay costume company in Japan, has narrowed down the choices, releasing the 2012 costume sales rankings. Coming in at number one is everyone’s favorite vocaloid, Hatsune Miku.

Check out the rest of the top ten cosplay costumes of the year:

Dec 17, 2012 by Philip Kendall
0

Despite being famed for its robot dogs, futuristic toilets and for being home to Akihabara “Electric Town”, Japan is at times slower than other countries to warm to new electronic devices and worldwide trends.

Just two years ago, hardly any of my Japanese friends used Facebook, instead preferring Japanese social networking service Mixi or to keep their private life off the Internet altogether. When I showed them my iPhone (and let it be known that I was fairly late to the smartphone party), many of my workmates would shrug the device off as over-complicated and mutter about how their current mobile phones – now known as garakē (after the “Galapagos syndrome” due to their exclusivity to and being unable to perform well outside of Japan) – being more than enough for them. Today, Facebook and Twitter are the same life-consuming creatures in Japan that they are everywhere else in the world, and people are accessing them from their iOS or Android powered smartphones wherever you look.

E-books, on the other hand, just aren’t taking off. I’ve shown my Kindle e-reader to friends and colleagues for years now, but each time it has been met with raised eyebrows and the same simple response: “But I like going to bookshops.” While the smartphone has gradually found its place in the hearts of the Japanese people, when it comes to literature, the vast majority of readers still much prefer a physical, paper copy.

In a piece written for Niconico News by journalist and publisher Jun Yamada, however, we learn that there is one genre that has found a home on Japan’s e-readers, to the degree that, Yamada argues, Japan’s e-book market could be in danger of becoming little more than an outlet for cheap, trashy or sexual content, with genuine literature as we know it hardly getting a look-in.

Dec 6, 2012 by Steven
0

Big-budget live-action remakes of anime and manga are tricky business. One one hand, you’ve got to please the fans, who you know will be sitting in the theater with pen and paper scrutinizing every scene. But you also have to make money, which often means watering down the source material to make it digestible for regular movie-goers. As a result, live-action remakes are usually denounced by fans (and critics), but still manage to turn a profit in the box office.

This is why we love DragonBall Z: Saiyan Saga, a live-action non-profit Dragon Ball Z trailer made by fans not because they want to make a buck, but because they love the series so damn much.

The 5 minute 44 second trailer was finally released on YouTube yesterday after months of production, and looks absolutely amazing. Check it out below!

Dec 3, 2012 by Philip Kendall
0

Dragon Quest fan? Hungry? Have a few spare minutes? You’re in luck, my friend!

Thanks to the culinary creatives over at Japanese website Bistro Animeshi, we’re about to bring you the first of what we hope will be many recipes for character and anime-themed food! That’s right, over the past few years we’ve tendered to your loins, tickled your funny-bones and now we’re aiming to tantalize your tonsils.

If it’s in the Ghibli movies, we’ll help you recreate it! If you once saw One Piece‘s Luffy shove it down his neck, we’re on it. From the tasty to the downright weird, we’re here to help you cook up your anime dreams.

Welcome… to Rocket Food!

Dec 1, 2012 by Steven
0

Characters with weapons in place of body parts is an idea that’s been explored many times across different forms of media. Ash from Evil Dead had a chainsaw for a hand, Barret from Final Fantasy VII had a minigun for an arm, Edward Scissorhands had scissor…hands…

But never before has the anatomy arsenal trope been done like Zetsurin!, a new manga series about Keisuke, a young man with a long barrel revolver for a penis.

Nov 23, 2012 by Steven
0

As the popularity of Japanese anime has spread around the world, many foreign artists have paid tribute to the genre by drawing characters from popular anime series in the style of their own country’s animation.

Sometime this turns out really cool, like the cast of One Piece reimagined Disney-style. But for art styles that aren’t as easily adaptable as Disney, such cultural crossovers can get a little bizarre.

Nov 23, 2012 by Steven
0

I remember reading the first few chapters of One Piece and being surprised to see a giant sea serpent that looked suspiciously similar to the moray eels Flotsam and Jetsam from Disney’s The Little Mermaid.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought so, and apparently that wasn’t the last time a Disney “rip off” appeared in the series.

Nov 22, 2012 by Steven
0

Microsoft Japan is getting serious about their anthropomorphic operating systems.

Until recently, these characters, also known as OS-tans, were nothing more than unofficial fan-made creations. However, as we saw last month with the popularity of the Windows 8 DSP edition, Microsoft has begun to embrace their anime mascots, perhaps realizing their marketing potential among the otaku, or nerd, demographic. And now, for the first time ever, Microsoft will be delving into the belly of the beast and running a booth at Japan’s largest comic book convention, Comic Market.