TRANSFORMERS JAPANESE COLLECTION

New release: The complete Transformers Japanese Collection will see its first US release on June 13th via Shout! Factory. From the press release: "In 1984 the world was introduced to a unique line of transforming toys designed by Japanese toymaker Takara. Originally created as independent action figures, the characters were repackaged as The Transformers by American toy powerhouse Hasbro, who created a comprehensive backstory of valiant Autobots and treacherous Decepticons. The franchise was an instant success, launching popular comic books and a daily animated series that spanned four stunning seasons and a theatrical motion picture. Original toy creators Takara teamed up with Toei Animation, took the events of the show’s first three seasons and launched their own series, steering the heroic adventures of the Autobots — known as Cybertrons in Japan — in a completely new and surprising direction. Finally, for the very first time in North America, those three Japanese creations — Headmasters, Super-God Masterforce and Victory — can be seen in one deluxe DVD box set!" 13 discs with bonus art galleries. More info at Shout! Factory and Amazon. 

SUPER SENTAI EVENT

Shout! Factory is hosting a Super Sentai event this weekend! Tune in to their streaming channel to see classic Japanese sci-fi/monster action on their website, complete with commentary and round table discussions with tokusatsu experts. This is a great way to find out how the whole Power Rangers phenomenon began in Japan. There is also a flash sale on all tokusatsu DVD box sets and fans can save up to 50%! More info at Shout! Factory. 

ULTRAMAN 50TH TOYS

Bandai and S.H. Figures celebrated the 50th anniversary of Japan's iconic hero, Ultraman, in a really cool set of detailed toys. Not only did they pay close attention to costuming and articulation, but they even added miniature buildings so fans could stage their own kaiju battles. Cue stop-motion enthusiasts! Here is a badass animation spotlighting the set. Enjoy! More toy info at Amazon. 

SPIDER-MAN JAPAN

Spider-Man holds a special place in the hearts of fans of live-action Japanese classics (tokusatsu). Supaidaman was Spidey on Turbo! The series even included a giant robot, which appeared in Ernie Cline' awesome Ready Player One. I sure hope Steven Spielberg will be able to license all the cool references in the novel for his current movie adaptation. Here's the intro to the Japanese show. Enjoy!

FRANK MILLER

It's hard to imagine what path my life might have taken if I hadn't been exposed to the work of writer/artist Frank Miller in the 1980s. During his creative explosion Miller redefined Daredevil as a dramatic Noir saga with Japanese-influenced Ninja and panel design. He also wrote an epic Samurai sci-fi adventure called Ronin, inspired by the work of Moebius and Goseki Kojima. Fans also included Kevin Eastman, who went on to co-create the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My deep interests in Japan (I lived there in '85 and then between '88-'91) and in the comic arts were really fueled during those bus rides back to boarding school from Moondance Comics in Brattleboro, Vermont. Tucked under the arch in Harmony Parking lot back in the day, Moondance was my oasis and steady supplier of glossy bliss. I never knew when issues were coming out, so every Saturday I signed up for the "Bratt-trip," hoping to follow up on Miller's cliffhangers. I have so many vivid memories of reading his comics on the bus back to school. We weren't allowed TV back then, and these comic characters really came to life and inhabited my imagination for years. Each episode in his stories was incredibly dynamic and thrilling. And by the time I got back to school, I was already thrown into great suspense and eager for the next installment. These were the days before binge-consumption, when we could keep stories alive and vital for months and months. The death of Elektra and the first chapter of Ronin are forever imprinted in my inner landscape. My mind can replay the images in total, as if I had watched Miller's stories up on the film screen, rather than as a series of panels on paper. He was a genius! Of course, his Batman book, The Dark Knight Returns, was yet another masterpiece, and it changed the direction of Batman for all time. Miller is currently publishing a new installment in his growing series of Dark Knight sagas. I got to meet Frank Miller twice. The first time was rather rushed, but it was at the height of my Miller-mania. He stopped by Mort Walker's Cartoon Art Museum when in was in Port Chester (a cool castle location!), and he spoke to a small audience about his various projects. I had some copies of his books to sign, but Brian Walker whisked him out of the room at the end. It all worked out well, though. Brian and I eventually became friends and I wrote the Conversations series book about his dad, Mort. And I met Frank Miller again at the first MoCCA festival in NYC. Although I spent most of my time there with Patrick McDonnell (Mutts), I also had a drawing made by Klaus Janson, which both he and Miller signed. I've recently been looking back at Miller's Daredevil and Ronin covers and letting my mind sift through the memories. I have so much to thank him for! Below: some iconic images from Daredevil, Ronin, and Wolverine (art), and Frank Miller talking about his work in 1987. Enjoy!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Happy New Year from Jason at Atari Days! I hope you got to hang out with all your favorite monsters today. Enjoy the holiday weekend!

MAZINGER Z

Adapted from Go Nagai's super-robot manga, Mazinger Z blasted onto television screens in 1972 to battle the evil forces of Dr. Hell. The original series lasted two years, but Mazinger continues to spawn sequels today! Even though I was a fan of first-wave anime like Astro Boy and Gigantor, it wasn't until I read Ernie Cline's Ready Player One that the floodgates opened and put other giant robot heroes (and many other treasures from 70s/80s pop culture) on my radar. Below: Anime opening and various cool images from Mazinger manga. Enjoy!

BEEP GAME SOUND MOVIE

New release: Beep: A Documentary History of Game Sound. My history with gaming is probably a bit unusual. I was twelve when the Atari 2600 came out and I'll never forget when I first spotted that woodgrain console on display in a local department store. My dad and I had just moved away from our roots on the east coast- in the middle of the school year (again)- and I found myself suddenly isolated on the rainy streets of Washington's Olympic peninsula. The Atari fascinated me. I loved the look of the graphics, which were totally cutting edge at the time. My imagination was ignited by Berzerker killer robots and WWI biplane dogfights. And I loved the sound! Those beeps and burbles were the soundtrack to a new era. We never got the game system, by the way. We were so poor, we relied on my dad to gather food as a scuba diver. Yes, we ate amazing fresh seafood and salads everyday, but no Atari. I then went off to boarding school, college, and eventually moved to Japan. My interest in music deepened over the years as both a musician and a collector. My tastes were diverse, but there was an attraction to avant-garde experimentation and electronics, especially in the days of Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra. I eventually did win a remix competition for Yoko Ono. I think those early Atari sounds had something to do with the development of my internal cultural landscape. Now we can all revisit that era of innovation and learn about video game design development through this cool new film: Beep: A Documentary History of Game Sound. Continues below.

From Amazon: "No longer just the 'ugly stepchild' of the games industry, Beep traces the history of game sound from the Victorian penny arcades through pinball and to today's massive industry of soundtracks and live music. With clips from over 80 interviews with game composers, sound designers, voice actors and audio directors from around the world, Beep is the definitive documentary on game sound. This Blu-Ray features a full, extended director's cut of Beep -- 1 hour and 52 minutes! -- plus it contains three specials, totalling nearly 1.5 hours, including 'Beep: Big in Japan,' 'How to get into game audio' and 'Ryu Umemoto Tribute.' Blu-ray and DVD editions available on Amazon here. There is also a Kindle book, Beep: Documenting the History of Game Sound. From Amazon: The Beep Book is transcripts of interviews with over 100 game audio professionals from a range of areas of game sound's history. The majority of the interviews were conducted as part of the Beep documentary film project by director and author Karen Collins. These are supplemented by interviews done for Video Game Music Online by Chris Greening. The book is 410,000 words in length- a huge volume of material spanning decades of video game and pinball audio history. Interviews include artists such as Marty O'Donnell (Halo), George "The Fat Man" Sanger (7th Guest), Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy), Yoko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts), and many, many more. The interviews aim to explore the changing nature of game audio over time. Interviews are with people from all over the world, including Japan, USA, Canada & Europe, and took place from October 2014 to July 2016. They cover a range of expertise and experience levels, and include composers, sound designers, voice actors and directors, record labels, conductor, orchestrators, chip musicians, hardware and software creators, and more. If you're at all interested in game sound, or its history, we think you'll find something of interest here. Many of the interviews have been or will be released as video content on our website, so feel free to preview some of them. Having them in a single book form means you've got them all in one place in a searchable, quotable format. If you've seen our Kickstarter campaign, you've seen the print books as two separate volumes. The e-book combines those two books into one easily searchable document." Learn more about this neat project: Beep movie website, interview with director Karen Collins. Enjoy!

SUPER SENTAI DAIRANGER

If you enjoy shows about masked heroes battling villains dressed in rubber monster suits, check out this big weekend streaming event at Shout Factory. They are running a free marathon of Super Sentai Dairanger, the series that inspired the Power Rangers, hosted by Tokusatsu expert August Ragone. Watch on-line here. Looking for the DVDs? Shout Factory is having a flash sale through Sunday. Enjoy!

TOMITA R.I.P.

Japanese composer Isao Tomita, known internationally as Tomita, passed away on May 5th. Tomita's career took off in 1966 when he began to score some of the early classic animated films. He continued to work on soundtracks over the decades, but his most famous work was as one of the great pioneers of analog synthesizer music. Perhaps his most famous records here in the west were a number of electronic adaptations of classical works and space music in the 1970s and 1980s. Below: a selection of album art and music clip Tomita's Planets. Enjoy!

ULTRAMAN ART

Cool illustrations on the radar today by Toshio Okazaki! These depictions of various monsters and characters from Ultraman originally appeared in the 1971 book, The Return of Ultraman. You can check out more images over at Pink Tentacle. Enjoy!

WALKMAN AD

Sony super Walkman ad from 1983.

SUPER ROBOT RED BARON

JAPAN CROSS SECTIONS

Living in Japan was amazing on so many levels. Up in the north country I found a warm community and a kind host family who made me feel like one of their own. I taught English in the Morioka area for about four years overall. There is a great sense of design in Japan, which you can see in the way everything is manufactured and presented. This extends to the how spaces are set up, as well. I often felt conscious of moving through environments that were groomed with loving affection. On a more personal level, I also enjoyed how safe and friendly it felt to live in that society. I've never understood or related to the way men particularly behave in the US, which I often see as pretty aggressive and competitive. It was a relief to be in a place where kindness was the cultural norm. It was also great to soak up traditional and modern culture. My curiosity to seek out interesting books and music flourished, and my inner landscape was forever defined by festival dances, koto and shakuhachi, kabuki, and artists like Ryuichi Sakamoto. I enjoyed spending weekends traveling around with friends, playing guitar, and searching shops for treasures. One neat discovery was finding a series of books that showed cross sections of classic tv/movie monsters. Ultraman was the reigning king of kids books when I was there, so it was pretty common to find cool stuff devoted to the many kaiju developed for Eiji Tsubaraiya's classic series. Cross section illustrations were traditionally printed in black and red and they included cool little details around each subject to identify various scientific details- what a fun way to engage curious kids about their favorite kaiju! Here are few samples (Toho's Godzilla and Gamera appear last). Enjoy! 

SUPER SENTAI EVENT

Shout Factory is hosting a fun live-streaming marathon on their site today of Japanese live-action classic, Super Sentai Zyuranger. "Join Shout! Factory TV on Saturday, January 23rd at 9 AM (PST) for the Super Sentai Spectacular streaming event! See where the worldwide phenomenon Power Rangers began with a three-hour live stream hosted by Tokusatsu expert August Ragone featuring episodes of Super Sentai Zyuranger, the original Japanese series that inspired the franchise." Fans can find other fun stuff streaming on Shout Factory such as Ultraman, Ultra Q, Danguard Ace, Thunderbirds, and Mystery Science 3000. Enjoy!