Posts Tagged “
Gundam
”Four Anime Robots That Made Me More Human
Welcome back to MangoBot, a biweekly column about Asian futurism by TokyoMango blogger Lisa Katayama. My childhood hero was a purple-haired robot who spends all her free time poking poop with a stick. Like all good Japanese children, my formative years were influenced by manga robot heroes—two-dimensional, two-legged machines that first existed in simple black-and-white on newsprint. These robots quickly evolved from inanimate drawings on paper into animated TV stars, and later spawned franchised products, movies, video games, and major museum exhibits. One even transcended man-machine boundaries to become the first robot, feline, and two-dimensional figure to become an officially recognized global ambassador. Amazing. Here's a quick list of four anime robots that played a huge role in making me into the human I am today. More »
master strategists
The Greatest Space Strategists In Military History
Everybody always gives props to space captains: they're the ones sitting in the chair and commanding a spaceship going head-to-head with their bumpy-headed counterpart on the enemy ship. But one starship doesn't always win a space battle. Sometimes it's the general (or the admiral) sitting in an even bigger chair, who figures out where to send all the dozens, or thousands, of starships into battle like chess pieces. They're the tacticians and the master strategists, and we celebrate them below. More »A T-Shirt to Get You Ready for the 2012 Olympics
With everybody freaking out about this year's Olympic Games, the only thing a future-thinking person can possibly do is focus on the 2012 games — and this "Apocolympics 2012" tee from Terratag is the perfect thing (modeled by a guy from London dance troupe Renegade Dance). UK company Terratag makes a ton of amazing, future-minded designs with a trippy manga sensibility. They've got an entire line of mecha and gundam shirts, including ones with laser eyes. See more cute dancers in more cute robo-future tees, below. More »
future war
Since late last year, the Japanese military has been working on projects aimed at "realizing" Gundam, the mobile armor suit that is both combat exoskeleton and A.I. in several popular anime and manga series. Just yesterday, the Defense Ministry of Techinical Research and Development Institute in Japan rolled out these new tanks, whose high-tech specs don't make it sentient armor exactly but certainly fit the bill of "smart tank." Want to see a strangely incongruous image of one of these tanks crunching its way out of a festive-looking tent in the suburbs?
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Japanese Military Continues Its Quest to Make Gundam Real
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