Astro Boy
Birth year: 1963
Who he is: A doe-eyed robot with jet engine feet, eyes that double as searchlights, and a nuclear reactor heart, created by manga godfather Osamu Tezuka.
Lessons learned: 1. Robots are smart and good. (Astro Boy had decision-making skills and a heroic conscience built into his circuitry.) 2. International politics: nuclear power is only dangerous if used maliciously, or if there's an accident. 3. Optimism goes a long way even when your world is being ravaged by war.

Doraemon
Birth year: 1969
Who he is: A blue robotic cat from the future that appeared out of accident-prone schoolboy Nobita's desk drawer. Doraemon has a treasure trove of secret weapons in his four-dimensional built-in fanny pack—everything from candy that makes you tell the truth to an ATM machine that recycles used goods for cash. In March, Doraemon was chosen to be the Anime Ambassador of Japan by the Foreign Ministry.
Lessons learned: 1. Don't be afraid of bullies. 2. Travel as much as you can—whether it's through a teleportation door, with propellers on your head, or on a time machine. 3. Just because you look different doesn't mean you can't be best friends.

Arale Norimaki
Birth year: 1980
Who she is: A purple-haired, near-sighted girl robot built by a kooky professor named Norimaki Senbei (seaweed-wrapped rice cracker) to resemble a real 13 year old human girl. She was created by Akira Toriyama, the same genius manga artist who wrote the Dragon Ball series.
Lessons learned: 1. To be fun and spontaneous. 2. To be honest about your compulsions. 3. That you can be female + completely non-sexual + still be the most powerful humanoid in the entire world. 4. How to launch pumpkin cannons and split the earth in half with one punch. 5. The art of the Japanese poop joke. (Even today, my favorite way to pick up my dog's poop is by poking it with a stick and then chucking it into the bushes or a trash can.)

Gundam
Birth year: 1979
Who he is: A cockpit-operated "mobile suit" from a world called UC (Universal Century). Some would argue that Gundam is technically not a robot, but it wouldn't be fair to exclude him from this list because of his importance in global humanoid machine history.
Lessons learned: 1. War is inevitable. 2. Bigger is sometimes better. 3. There are other universes out there, and one day we will all live in outer space.

Astro Boy takes place in futuristic Metro City. A robotics scientist creates Astro Boy to replace his recently passed little boy, but Astro Boy's cold robot love isn't enough for the scientist. He leaves to find a love of his own and ends up in a seedy robot underworld and back where he started, a little older and a lot wiser.

[Animated News and Imagi]

In Transformers, the Megatron toy can transform into a Walther P38 gun, a model popular with the Nazis in World War II. This transformation gives him a giant trigger in his crotch (you can see here in the toy). It allows him to deliver focused energy beam blasts. But if we look at the actual capabilities of the Walther P38, we can see it's a semi-automatic but not really any more powerful than the typical hand gun. Obviously a giant-sized one would deliver more oomph. However, I think we can safely say this isn't the biggest or hardest of the crotch weapons.

Astro Boy deploys a machine gun from his butt. This is his main weapon, aside from super-strength and jet-powered flight. He can gun down bad guys, but the fact that these guns sprout from his ass makes them unwieldy.

The infamous cock and ball gun featured in the psycho-vampire flick from Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, From Dusk Til Dawn, is a gooder. It can slay a vampire from yards away, and it just looks plain cool. It's hard; it has those semi-automatic testicles attached; and it's really everything a good crotch weapon should be. But is it really big enough?

Kekko Kamen uses her pussy as her finishing weapon in the eponymously-titled manga by hentai auteur Go Nagai. She uses the notorious headscissors takedown to mash her crotch into the bad guy's face and get him good. Nobody survives this ninja lady's crotch. Great weapon for close-range combat.

The main character in recent film Teeth is a mutant who has razor-sharp teeth embedded in her vagina. She uses her super-crotch to defeat a rapist and mangle two guys who have treated her horribly but nevertheless want to stick their junk in the toothy place. This is a great surprise weapon, because our heroine looks like a sweet little teenager who goes to church and eats oatmeal. Points on this one for viciousness and power of surprise.

The Codpiece is a character from occasionally bizarre comic Doom Patrol who basically has a cock-shaped crotch weapon that does everything: it shoots fire, it drills, it slaps people around, and it even grows a weird plunger-looking apparatus. Plus, it looks as spiffy as it could possibly be (see image up top). In terms of versatility and firepower, plus sheer audacity, I'd say the Codpiece is a standout.

In the aptly-named Cannon Crotch flash game, you are Cannoncrotch, a hero who fights the Nazis with your crazy firepowering crotch. Not only is this game one of the most intensely-satisfying flash game experiences you'll ever have, it also wins points for not making any bones (heh) about what it's really about. You play this naked xkcd-looking guy who is basically jizzing bullets. Nice. Get your crotch on with this game here.

Robot Jox has a lovely giant robot transformation scene which is clearly a tip of the hat to our pal Megatron's trigger crotch. When one of the big robots is injured, it fights back by opening up its enormous crotchal region, and releasing a massive chainsaw that slowly and hilariously extends into many-toothed, killer erection. See the scene here if you don't believe me. All those spammers should put that clip into their emails if they really want to sell us their expando-pills.

I'm going to have to go with Codpiece as the winner here, since his weapon is so versatile. But the girl in Teeth makes a close second. I hereby declare Codpiece the WINNER OF THE CROTCHIES.

The @Murakami show in Los Angeles had huge numbers of visitors, were you surprised at the large turnout? The line on the final weekend stretched for blocks.

Yes, I was very pleased. It's all thanks to the chief curator Paul, as well as all the others involved. I'm praying that everything goes the same way at Brooklyn too. The expectations of the audience are exploding now, much like in the music industry in the 1970s. In order to meet their expectations, I've got no choice but to keep on running.

You've worked with many medium: sculptures, paintings, animation, the Vuitton purses, etc. What do you enjoy working with the most?

The collaboration I did with Mr. Marc Jacobs was really fun. "Monogrammoflauge," the most recent collaboration, came out of a conversation that I had with Marc Jacobs where I said that I'd like to do something original for the retrospective. The exchange of idea; the process that yields something real in the end. Everything is exciting.

There is a chance to experience an unfamiliar work process when you collaborate with a different industry, and therefore it is extremely exciting. I'm having fun working on my animation right now. That's because I'm excited about the completely new working process of controlling time. Work that takes you into worlds of new media or products. In that moment, as a creator, you are able to experience the pleasure of synapses in your brain linking together in a matter of seconds.

Do you have any specific science fiction influences to your work? Any movies or television shows you grew up watching?

I loved "Galaxy Express 999". When I saw the scene depicting Planet Maetel's collapse, I was moved from the bottom of my heart, and made the decision to work in the field of anime. Also, the amount of influence that the appearance of Star Wars exerted on my generation is tremendous.

I felt sympathetic to the revolution that George Lucas started, and my work has become a re-enactment of that sort of revolution in the art scene.

The S.M.P.ko² piece looks very anime-inspired. Did you draw from any particular project for that?

S.M.P.ko² was a continuation of my figure project, which included Miss ko², Hiropon and My Lonesome Cowboy. All of these characters were thickly wrapped in what I see as particularly Japanese psycho-sexual complexes.

The Tan Tan Bo piece is huge in scale, how did you conceive that piece and finally finish it?

In New Year's of the year that I finished this piece, I was struck with my first spasm of gout. The joint in my toe hurt so much it felt like it had been struck by a hammer, and I truly felt death and the aging of my muscles.

In that moment, I saw the art world's insistence on contextualization as something completely unnecessary, and felt that I needed to make a more honest work that was closer to me, and decided to project myself onto DOB, my imaginary character, and express living pain through him.

The My Lonesome Cowboy and Hiropon pieces stand out as shockingly sexual among your other works. What has been the reaction to them?

It was so positive you'd be surprised. I feel that the fact that I was able to make my debut in America is thanks to those pieces.

Has there ever been any talk of adopting any of your pieces of art into film or tv projects?

I'm already working on one right now. It's an animation called "Kaikai & Kiki." Two episodes of the animation are now on display at Brooklyn Museum as part of the exhibit. I'm also working on a live action movie.

What artists do you enjoy?

Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, Hayao Miyazaki.

Where do you do most of your work?

I work at both Kaikai Kiki's office and studio in Japan, and at our office and studio in Queens.

Has anything changed in the show from Los Angeles to Brooklyn? Will anything be different?

There is a new episode of the Kaikai & Kiki animation, new designs in the Louis Vuitton shop, and some new wallpaper and floor paper, created especially for the Brooklyn space.

Main image is:

727-727, 2006
Acrylic on canvas mounted on board
3000 x 4500 x 70 mm (3 panels)
Courtesy Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
©2006 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

We already featured a promo reel for this Animatrix-style tie-in with The Dark Knight, but this trailer gives more of a feel for the range of styles in the finished product. We'll be seeing six different visions of the Bat here, but it looks like they mesh pretty well, partly thanks to consistent voice talent across all the films. [HD trailer at Yahoo Movies]

Just leave a comment on this post, and we'll be using a random number generator to pick out two winners. We'll cover the shipping, and you do the watching. Please limit yourself to just one entry, otherwise you'll be unfairly stacking the pack. If we find out you've been leaving more than one comment, we'll pull your plug faster than you can say "Neo." We'll select two different winners on this Wednesday, April 9th, so comment away, cross your fingers, and good luck!

Update! We have our two winners: DWolvin and Angryride were selected at random by a non-sentient random number generator. Make sure you contact us with your full name and mailing address so we can send your DVDs along.

Humans may have crushed the neosapien rebellion, but many of the bioengineered slaves continue to foment insurrection on the planets they were bred to live on. Meanwhile, the exosquad team, part of an elite military unit, works on keeping humans safe from all threats, neosapien and otherwise. Obviously influenced by popular anime import Robotech, Exosquad is surprisingly engaging and well-written, with characters who confront the darkness of war and death — as well as the coolness of giant robot suits.

Today's lunchtime distraction is definitely the free first season of Exosquad on Hulu. Watch it. (Thanks, Dan!)

If we had the time, we might torture you again with another caption contest... but more than one a week might be a bit too taxing on the funnybone. So, if you want to win, please just let us know in the comments below. Please note that you need to live in or extremely close to New York City to take advantage of these, so enter only if you really plan on using these tickets.

We'll be providing a list of the winners to the organizers of the event, and they'll have your name on a list and you'll be good to go. Please note that we'll select the first five comments from folks in the NYC area who want to see the movie. For the rest of you, set your Netflix for Tuesday, March 11th, and enjoy.

You Are (Not) Alone, which was released in the US under the much less interesting title of Evangelion The New Movie: Preface, doesn't just retell the story familiar to fans of the original '90s series; the new quartet of movies updates the original story to make it more understandable for non-fans, and leads to a fourth movie that will contain an all-new conclusion to the series. The second movie, Division , trailed at the end of the first movie, is due to debut in Japan later this year.

Tokyo Anime Fair announces winners [Variety]

The film is a Matrix-meets-cyborgs story featuring incredible animation, tons of bullets, lots of John Woo signature slow-motion, and even some cyborg doves. It's arguably, in this blogger's opinion, superior to the original Appleseed, and is at its best when things devolve into pure bullets and octane action. Thankfully, the multi-layered story is cerebral fodder as well as eye candy, so you won't get bored while you watch another clip of armor-piercing bullets get emptied into mindless robo-slaves.

Sadly, the above video contains a few boring interviews, saying things like "Most of Batman's adventures take place at night." But the animation itself is great. The direct-to-DVD Batman anime is similar to The Animatrix, the DVD which tied in with Matrix sequels. Warners is also working on a version called Termination in tandem with Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins. The segments are written by Josh Olson, David Goyer, Brian Azzarello, Greg Rucka, Jordan Goldberg, and Alan Burnett, and will each have their own distinctive look. Just think of it as an animated version of Batman: Black and White except you know, with color.

In fact, it would really be worthwhile to see DC just hand over the reins to anime directors like Satoshi Kon, to see what they could do with characters ranging from Green Lantern to Captain Marvel. In fact, maybe the entire Justice League film that's been put on hold could be saved, just by making a big-budget anime version. As excited as we are about Darwyn Cooke's The New Frontier DVD, it's still a very Western style of animation. Bring on the anime heroes.

Murakami seems determined to remind us that cartoony characters aren't innocent. His massive sculptures Disney-esque characters include a sculpture of a woman with enormous breasts squirting streams of milk from fist-sized nipples and a man who looks like Cloud from Final Fantasy shooting a swirling plume of jizz into the heavens. But you'll also find Murakami's tamer t-shirt designs, wallpapers, animation (including a Kanye West video), and the Louis Vuitton bags he designed. One massive wall contains a stunning piece called Tan Tan Bo Puking (pictured up top), which features the dying moments of a bizarre Japanime god as he voids his stomach and bowels during death.

However, what really caught our eye was his Second Mission Project ko2 Advanced (Human Type) piece. It consists of three different sculptures, each one of a female mecha in the stages of transforming from a humanoid into a fighter jet. It's nearly life-sized and contains a ton of stunning detail. If there's any way you can get to this exhibit I'd highly recommend it, even if it's for this piece alone. Watch Murakami discuss it in the video below, and you can check out the other parts of his video tour here.

The MOCA didn't allow photography, but that didn't stop some people (including us) from sneaking a few camera phone photos, which you can see in the gallery above along with some NSFW images. You can also check out Eric Nakamura's Flickr set, which documents almost the entire exhibit. Just as a bit of a tip, though... the museums sell the book/catalog of the exhibit for $65, and it's tempting to walk home with it while you try to digest all the art you've just seen. However, you can snag it for only $40 at Amazon, with free shipping. If you can't make it, or the exhibit won't be traveling anywhere near you, it's the next best thing.

Top image is Tan Tan Bo Puking - a.k.a. Gero Tan, 2002 ©2002 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Apollo's Song was originally serialized in a weekly comic magazine back in 1970. This was during the transition phase of Tezuka's career—his production company had just tanked, and he was skeptical of the anime industry, which insisted on censoring his work. It was the same year that he wrote Alabaster, a story about a homicidal, partly invisible ex-athlete intent on destroying all the beauty in the world.

For Tezuka, science fiction was never a goal; it was the medium through which he chose to explore complex, often taboo issues of his time, like love and hate and promiscuous sex. By addressing these issues via animated fictional characters living in a surreal future, he avoided controversy and criticism in the real world.

Apollo's Song is a coming-of-age story that starts in the present and warps back and forth into the past and future. The ambiguous protagonist is a boy named Shogo, who learned to despise the idea of love during a childhood mired in his mom's promiscuous affairs with his many papas. He hates it so much that he obsessively murders any living thing showing even the slightest hint of passion. These killing sprees land him in a mental hospital, where a mysterious doctor puts him through electroshock therapy and transports him into different roles, each in extreme imagined environments—an island where dozens of zoo animals procreate, an isolated house in the mountains, and Nazi Germany. Through his adventures, Shogo finally learns to love. Hypnosis takes him to his final destination—Tokyo in the year 2030, where super-humanoid clones called Synthians rule a cold, heartless world. There, Shogo is caught between two tasks he's been ordered to perform—to kill the Synthian queen, but also to teach her how to love.

The inner lives of animals, reproduction, twisted sexuality, reincarnation, and the inevitable war between humans and their creations—clones and robots—are themes that arise repeatedly in Tezuka's manga. Even today, a lot of Japanese people don't talk that openly about love and sex. Manga is often a prime medium for understanding these issues—sex ed is often taught in comic strips, and almost every male magazine has pornographic graphic novels tacked into its end pages.

Nearly 20 years after his death and over half a century past his heyday, only twelve of Tezuka's titles have been published in English. But with the Asian Art Museum's recent exhibit on Tezuka and other titles being worked on by publishers like Vertical and Viz, we should be seeing a greater rollout in the years to come. If you're going to start somewhere with Tezuka's science fiction works, Apollo is the place to go.

The series - English alternate title "Coil - A Circle of Children" - was awarded an Excellence Prize by a jury in last year's Japan Media Arts Festival, and had the newspaper Mainichi Shimbun suggesting that it would impact future development on future VR technology. A surprising reception for a kids' show, perhaps, but this was the first TV series from Mitsuo Iso, who's previously worked on well-known anime Gundam 0080 and Ghost In The Shell.

The series hasn't been licensed for Western audiences yet, but given the success of the show in its home country, it's only a matter of time. Start watching now before everyone knows about it. Search for "Denno Coil" on YouTube and you'll get several episodes worth.

Dennō Coil [Anime News Network]

This sequel is much darker than the original Appleseed movie, and has borrowed plot elements from The Matrix, Ghost in the Shell (another property from cyberpunk manga artist Masamune Shirow) and the Terminator series. Where the original film dealt with the unrest between humans and genetically engineered bioroids, this film expands that idea with a techno-organic virus that has the ability to infect human bodies and wants to destroy all mankind. A subplot deals with the main heroine Deunan taking on a new partner, a bioroid clone of her android colleague and lover, Briareos.

There's a lot of slow-motion in this film, and the robotic doves play an interesting part in the film. Since those are John Woo's signature tools, was that his idea, or something you came up with?

In the beginning we shot a 40 second "test" video, and we included some of those action sequences with the doves flying in it. I obviously respect John and see him as an inspiration, and in the beginning I was nervous about how he would react to those scenes, especially the ones with all the bullet casings hitting the ground.

He was a very good sport about it. And the doves, we decided to make those robots because we wanted them to figure into the plot and not just be a prop or simply something onscreen. So we made that adjustment and it fit in perfectly.

How did this story develop?

The story is actually much closer to the original manga than the first film. The world that it takes place in is closer to the world in the first film, but our story in this one is much closer to the original comics.

Our budget on this film was triple the original, and that was because we wanted to explore emotions in CGI characters a lot more, to see how an animated character could express emotion. We also spent three times the amount of time working on this in order to do that.

We really wanted to improve as an anime and move things to the next level, not just make something look "cool." We shot real actors throughout the script and used them as a model for our CGI characters.

Did you take the actors out to locations?

No, that was all done on a studio stage using traditional motion capture techniques. That process took about a month, and we would film the actors with props and weapons that are used in the film, but it was all on a stage.

Is it true that some of the costumes worn by the characters were designed by Prada? How did that come about?

Yes, the owner and designer Miuccia Prada saw the original film and she really loved it, but she said the costumes in it looked terrible. When she found out we were doing a sequel she offered to design the clothes for it, and in some of the scenes you can even see the textures in the materials and it looks amazing.

Are there plans to continue this series using the same team?

Yes, we are starting work on the next film, and we have a plan to make a live-action version of Appleseed as well. That's just in the planning stages, but that's our next step.

Was the original artist, Shirow Masamune, involved in the production at all?

He got involved in terms of the script, and he gave us some notes. He was also involved in the designs of the mecha and the world in the movie. It's been one of the rare times that he's been involved in the production of the movies made from his properties.

What should we take away from this production as a sequel?

We really concentrated on the characters in the movie and making them as realistic as we could in terms of expressions and emotions. We were able to improve the acting in all areas, and we really wanted to focus on how they act throughout the story.

There's another new (to Americans) episode of Life on Mars on Tuesday at 9 PM on BBC America. A bomb scare leads the cops in 1973 to believe the IRA is mounting a new bombing campaign in England.

Also on Tuesday at 9, PBS has a new NOVA (check local listings.) "Missing in MiG Alley" narrates the first ever jet war, as American and Russian pilots faced off over North Korea in the 1950s. The battles pitted the American F-86 Sabre against the Russian MiG-15, and some downed pilots disappeared without any trace. Archival footage and "dramatic reconstructions" put you in the cockpit.

More PBS science porn: Wired Science has a new episode on Wednesday at 9 (again, check local listings.) The Wired gang explores a "space junkyard," shows how researchers are using human perception to digitize books, and interviews DNA pimp Craig Venter.

And "level five" of Rise of the Videogame talks about the development of emotional and intimate dimensions in gaming. In other words, teledildonics. That's Wednesday at 8 on the Discovery Channel.

Thursday's Smallville is a rerun of the one where the three "meteor freak" girls want to use Clark's super-cousin for their own bad-girl aims.

Friday on Starz, there's a new documentary: Anime: Drawing A Revolution. As you'd expect, it's a look at the rise of Japanese animation and how it's affected live-action movies like The Matrix. Early buzz says it's worth watching.

Sunday night, Fox is showing Spider-Man 2, on the off chance you don't already have the special-edition DVD with the three extra hours of Peter Parker unmasking himself to random strangers.

And that's it for this week. It's a slow week, but not because of the life-sucking effects of the writers' strike. This is just the normal holiday TV blahs. Next week will undoubtedly be worse.

Appleseed started as a manga (comic book) and has been adapted into several Japanese TV miniseries as well as a feature film that came to the West in 2004 under the title Appleseed. Ex-Machina, coming is produced by John Woo, who is famous for his brilliant Hong Kong actioners like Hard Boiled, as well as stateside movies like Mission Impossible 3, Face/Off, and more. He's a master of action, and the Appleseed universe will be right up his alley.

What will thrill audiences about Appleseed is that it combines human emotional entanglements with its freaky post-human futurescape, making it work as a drama and an SF thriller. When Gaia's experimental new Bioroid Tereus comes on the scene, he looks just like the pre-cyborg Briarios and — in one of those DNA-as-destiny plots — he falls for Deunan the same way his DNA twin Briarios has. Love triangle plus genetic engineering! I'm there.

Exclusive Appleseed Clip [IGN]

Famous names: Leiji Matsumoto, Billy West, Toshio Matsuda, Noburo Ishigura

Crunchy goodness: 2

Spinoffs/Sequels/Copycats: A couple of 1990s sequels, including Yamato 2520. Plus a live-action U.S. remake has been rumored for years.

Elevator pitch: It's Yellow Submarine — in space!

The shit: Desslok, the evil ruler of the Gamilons, is the sexiest villain in the universe, bar none. For one thing, he's bright blue with orange hair. In his finest moment, he surrounds the Yamato with space mines and then dares its captain to fire the Yamato's super-powerful wave-motion gun. "I've been most anxious to see what this great weapon of yours can do," he purrs in his creamy alto tones. "So fire the gun!"

Starblazers/ Yamato Wave Motion Web Page

Famous names: Katsuhiro Ôtomo

Crunchy goodness: 4

Sight you'll never unsee: A teddy bear that mutates slowly into an atomic monster, managing to combine ultra-cuteness with ultra-horror in a visual paradox that will have you freaked out for days afterwards.

Design breakthrough: One of the first anime flicks to make a critical splash in the United States, Akira taught US audiences that animation could be very grown-up. It influenced a generation of animators who were enchanted by Akira's gorgeous, disturbing images of war and post-apocalyptic future cities.

The shit: Akira's soundtrack is packed with haunting mashups of techno and traditional Japanese music, creating a post-apocalyptic atmosphere tinged with myth.

Interrogation Report: Akira (Movie Review)