NIPPON-ICHIGO

How did I ever live not knowing that this man existed?

As I attempt to immerse myself in more independent short animation, things like this continually restore my love for the art. Restooore!

I can’t stop watching this now…

See also:

Japan has brought one of my dreams to life!

I don't remember Triceratops looking this silly

Augmented reality dinosaurs! That’s cool as hell! I was a big ol’ dinosaur fanatic when I was younger (to the point where I wanted to go into paleontology—yeah, that big), but unfortunately I’ve never so much as seen dinosaur bones. Visiting this would at least somewhat make up for it. OR, with that camera pressed to my face, it could just feel as silly as my audio-guided Egypt museum trip (not that it wasn’t awesome).

This will be going down in Chiba, Japan in a museum exhibit including well over 200 different species. I hope the dinos render at 1:1 scale. I would have eaten it all up as a child. If you’re in Chiba, take your kids!

Mmm, Japan just can’t get enough of gigantic reptiles.

We have another life-sized robot replica on its way—the first ever Giant Robot from the early days of anime.

GIGANTOR THE GIANT ROBOT

Tetsujin 28-go, or Gigantor, will be nearly 60 feet, standing forever in the midst of Wakamatsu Park in Kobe. Apparently it’ll be unveiled in my birth month. What an awesome present! No, actually, this is much better regarded as an awesome homage to Mitsuteru Yokoyama. I can only hope to get something so awesome after I die.

yay

Read more about it/watch videos here.

At least, realer now than it was before.

oh my god

Now that we’ve realized the dream, we can relish in what is a statue of Pure Awesome smack in the middle of Odaiba, Tokyo’s Shiokaze Park. It was built to scale in honor of Mobile Suit Gundam’s 30th anniversary.

In a matter of time they’ll have made the thing fully functional – THEN we’ll be seeing a new era of… actually, that would be slightly terrifying. (I’ve never particularly been a fan of Gundam – I think the robots could be more sleek – but I know awesome when I see it.)

You can see more awe-inspiring pics here.