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mangobot

The Original Speed Racer

Welcome to MangoBot, a column about Asian futurism by TokyoMango blogger Lisa Katayama. Way before Speed Racer became fodder for one of the season's most highly anticipated blockbusters, it was a simple 60s-style Japanese cartoon. The original Speed Racer was a TV anime series called Mach GoGoGo, aired on Fuji TV—one of Japan's major television networks—in 1967 and 1968. Like many other sources of entertainment in Japan at the time, Go's determination and the superior technology of Mach 5 were symbolic of the country's rapid post-war recovery and the determination that drove it. While you're waiting to head to your multiplex to watch the Hollywood version tonight, let me take you back in time and show you a glimpse of the original. More »

Feature

9:00 AM on Fri May 9 2008
By LISA KATAYAMA
2,752 views, 29 comments

Latest by SayAhh: Speed Racer, or Meteoro if you grew up in South America, was one of the must-see Saturday morning cartoons when I was little, as was Mazinger Z, AKA Tranzor Z. This was WAY before Transformers came out, though. If NBC more »

mangobot

Meet the Man Who Predicted Japan's Humanoid Robot Craze

Welcome back to MangoBot, a biweekly column about Asian futurism by TokyoMango blogger Lisa Katayama. In the spring of 1988, Japanese publisher Kodansha released a revealing English-language book titled Inside the Robot Kingdom: Japan, Mechatronics, and the Coming Robotopia. The book predicted a new era when humanoid robots would dominate Japanese society in the same way that industrial robots were then dominating behind-the-scenes manufacturing in the country. It was a topic that nobody in the Western world knew much about at all. The author, Frederik L. Schodt, was a freelance interpreter from Washington, DC who lived in Japan as a kid and traveled extensively between the Japan and the US—often as a private interpreter for Tezuka Osamu, the God of manga (Japanese comic books). And he predicted a social trend that was nearly beyond comprehension in the 1980s. More »

Feature

9:00 AM on Fri Apr 25 2008
By LISA KATAYAMA
1,521 views, 14 comments

Latest by Channing: @saketini99: Personally, my take on it was that flexiverse was touting the awesome of Japan therefore he was spouting "Nipponese." Nippon being the more nationalistic flavor of Nihon since they're both written the same way (日本). I really thought that more »

mangobot

Japan Gears Up to Become a Full-On Robot Nation

Welcome back to MangoBot, a biweekly column about Asian futurism. If you've noticed an unusually large number of utilitarian humanoids hailing from Japan in the last few years, then you probably won't be surprised to hear about the country's official robot initiative. Right now, Japan is in the midst of executing a grand plan to make robots an integrated part of everyday life. To compensate for the shortage of young workers willing to do menial tasks, the Japan Robot Association, the government, and several technology institutions drafted a formal plan to create a society in which robots live side by side with humans by the year 2010. Since 2010 is just a couple years away, I called up a roboticist at the forefront of this movement to find out how it's going. More »

Feature

9:00 AM on Fri Apr 4 2008
By LISA KATAYAMA
4,407 views, 36 comments

Latest by Klebert L. Hall: @FunkyJ: That site is... misleading. For one thing, the data are several years old. For another, the UK is down to 25 frigates - I don't know what the heck the site is counting as 'naval vessels', but the US certainly more »

mangobot

Will A Videogame Help Me Reverse My Aging Process?

I've been trying to figure out ways that I can defy age. I'm turning 30 this year, which means I will have a harder time remembering things, filtering information, and staying in shape. Since I'm not Ray Kurzweil and I can't afford plastic surgery, I'm banking on Brain Age 2, Nintendo's cognitive training software, to keep me away from wrinkles and Alzheimer's. Every day before I go to bed, I do a round of math problems (they give me the numbers; I have to find the sign that will make sense out of them), I play a song a virtual piano with my stylus (yesterday it was The Blue Bells of Scotland), and I count the change from my imaginary purchase. The primary goal is to beat yesterday's me—if I can do that on a fairly consistent basis, maybe that means I'm reversing the aging process, at least cognitively. More »

Feature

9:00 AM on Fri Mar 21 2008
By LISA KATAYAMA
1,429 views, 18 comments

Latest by Cantonkid: I found that my gf was actually better at Brain Age than I was. She was able to reduce her brain age to the lowest score in just under a month, where as I did not even come close...she is more »

mangobot

Korean Movie Explores Human Emotions From a Cyborg Perspective

Welcome to MangoBot, a biweekly column about Asian futurism by TokyoMango blogger Lisa Katayama. If you've ever questioned whether you're really an alien or a cyborg, well, you're not alone. Young-goon, the protagonist featured in acclaimed director Park Chan-wook's latest film, I'm a Cyborg But That's OK, is sent to a mental hospital after she tries to wire herself into a machine she's building at a radio factory. More »

Feature

9:00 AM on Fri Mar 7 2008
By LISA KATAYAMA
2,196 views, 19 comments

mangobot

Human Music Machine Cornelius Deciphers His Alternate Reality Videos

Welcome to MangoBot, a biweekly column about Asian futurism by TokyoMango blogger Lisa Katayama. Keigo Oyamada, aka Cornelius, is a sound artist best known for his perfectly timed synchronization of beats, robot noises, and trippy music videos showing everything from spinning cows to lips that grow exponentially to little kids with butterflies. He's teamed up with video director Koichiro Tsujikawa and CG artist Munechika Inudo (think Dead or Alive 3) to create some intricately detailed videos that could only come from the finest futurist brains in Japan. Keep reading for two iconic music videos from his latest album, Sensuous, and a translation of the live commentary he gave me at his Tokyo studio last week. More »

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9:00 AM on Fri Feb 22 2008
By LISA KATAYAMA
1,063 views, 4 comments

Latest by dubqnp: Cornelius makes some great music & videos. I liked how he mentioned Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go) - I remember seeing that when i was a teen. more »

mangobot

I Was Programmed by Tetris to be a Better Person

At a young age, my brain was hijacked by the game of Tetris. Now it helps me navigate through life. When I was in the sixth grade, my friend Chiyo and I used to play this addictive puzzle game—developed in 1985 by a Russian engineer—for hours on end with a single 100 yen coin at an arcade in Tokyo. We probably should have been doing homework or at least pretending to, but instead, there we were, every day after school, sitting side by side executing crazy maneuvers with our joysticks. The mantras that I repeated in my head while playing the game at max speed as a pre-teen are totally in sync with some basic tenets of Asian philosophy. More »

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9:00 AM on Fri Feb 8 2008
By LISA KATAYAMA
5,588 views, 23 comments

Latest by n/a: @zenpoet: HA! With guns for eyes, Lisa could blast new spaces for those damn L-shaped chunks.....oh wait, that might not work..... more »

mangobot

Japan's Wackiest Inventor Saves the World With Super Viagra

Yoshihiro NakaMats, 79, is Japan's most prolific - and bizarre - inventor. He claims to have 3,350 patents (Thomas Edison only had 1,093), and that several of them are for the floppy disk. "Everyone knows about the floppy disk," he says. "But I also invented the fax machine, automatic pachinko, and the taxi meter." While running for mayor of Tokyo last spring, he announced that he possessed three secret tools that would save the world from mass destruction: a device capable of turning North Korean missiles around in mid-air, a love potion more effective than Viagra that would reverse the declining birth rate, and a new water-to-fuel technology that fights global warming. The weird thing is that he could be telling the truth. More »

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9:00 AM on Fri Jan 25 2008
By LISA KATAYAMA
3,693 views, 26 comments

Latest by ThatGuyOverThere: @blueharv: "Nakamats probably has something insane up his sleeve that doesn't require energy to obtain energy." Unpossible! Maybe you meant "doesn't require an additional input of energy to obtain energy," in which case, maybe he does, but unlikely. However more »

mangobot

Can Clones Learn To Love? Japan's Manga God Breaks Taboos to Answer

Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989), creator of Astro Boy and over 700 manga series, is often called the God of Comics or the Disney of the East. But neither title acknowledges the mark he's left on science fiction. If you don't know who he is, then you should get to know him — now. For decades, Tezuka's works weren't accessible to the non-Japanese-reading public. NBC aired over half of the Astro Boy anime series in the sixties, but the original manga wasn't published in English until 2002. At last, a handful of publishers is actively translating and releasing some of Tezuka's lesser known titles into English. One of the best is Apollo's Song, published in English for the first time a few months ago by Vertical Inc. Its an elegant, compact representation of Tezuka's scifi genius — and a milestone in Japanese free expression due to its frank depiction of sexuality in a postapocalyptic world. More »

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9:05 AM on Fri Jan 11 2008
By LISA KATAYAMA
2,448 views, 6 comments

Latest by Kissyfur66: Wow this is a great tip, storm took out my Directv. Out of movies time to start reading agian. more »