Brian Ashcraft

Uh Oh, PlayStation Games Failed to Hit the Million Award in Japan

Sales figures are typically pretty boring! Except for when, they’re interesting. And by interesting, I mean telling. Recently, Sony held the PlayStation Awards in Japan. This is a publicity stunt—and usually a dull one at that—in which Sony gives awards to those domestic studios which sell a certain number of units, such as over a…

The 3DS got a firmware update to improve “overall system stability”, plus minor adjustments to improve the experience.

One Way for Cats To Be Cuter: Make Them Smaller

A Japanese model builder showed off this set of 1/35 scale cats on FG Site. If you build models in that scale, you might be familiar with 1/35 animals that can populate, for example, World War II backdrops, etc. Made from metal, these were sculpted by a pro model maker named Solo and do a…

You Won’t Believe How Dry Nintendo’s January Is

Last month and this month, Nintendo is busy launching the Wii U. And next month? It’s busy not releasing games in Japan. The company’s January schedule, which was recently updated on December 3, is shockingly empty. Here, have a look for yourself: Yikes! That’s pretty freakin’ dry! At the very, very bottom, there’s one Wii…

Elegant Princess Leia Cosplay for a More Civilized Age

It doesn’t matter if you saw the original Star Wars movies when they first hit theaters or caught them much later. Star Wars has been capturing the minds of folks for generations, thanks in big part to memorable characters like Princess Leia. Tough, no nonsense Leia is iconic. And so are the outfits she’s donned,…

Does Call of Duty Camo Work in… Tokyo? Let’s Find Out.

You know in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, when Lt. Price and Cpt. MacMillan wear those “ghillie suits“? The camo outfits look like they’re wearing grass and foliage. Those come in handy while sneaking about the Russian wilderness. They’re less handy when in urban jungle known as Tokyo. Or are they? Japanese site Rocket…

Remember that Microsoft Killer Instinct trademark? Seems it’s been knocked down by a TV show with the same name.

Internet Defends Man Accused of Reading Porn in Public. Things Get Ugly.

“This guy is like totally reading a dirty magazine on the train,” the high school student’s tweet read. Accompanying the tweet was a photo a man, his legs pressed close as he read a magazine. The tweet, and the visible photo of his face set off a flurry of comments online in Japan. This man…

When Tekken Lets Its (Plastic) Hair Down

The latest entry in Kotobukiya’s bishoujo line of cute figures is Emili “Lili” de Rochefort. She joins Julia Chang, Alisa Bosconovich, among others in the bishoujo line. The figurine will be out next April in Japan. If this is your thing, there’s more in the above gallery. TEKKEN美少女 リリ (フィギュア) [Hobby Search] Kotaku East is…

PlayStation exec Shuhei Yoshida is busy playing with his new Wii U. If you have any words of advice, here’s his Twitter

What Headphones Anime Characters Are Wearing

Female characters wearing large headphones is a trope in Japanese anime. The headphones make the characters’ heads look smaller, thus, by anime standards, appear “cuter”. Tropes aside, the headphones are often based on real products. But which ones? In the past few years, on anime sites, music sites, and anime music sites, audiophiles and casual…

Sword Art Online Exists, So They’re Making an Adult Video of It

In Japan, there are tons of adult movies based on video games and anime. A good way to judge the popularity of a game or a cartoon is to see if it’s inspiring blue movie adaptations. Is new anime Sword Art Online popular in Japan? Well, as porn star Hibiki Otsuki has revealed, she is…

Maybe You, Too, Can Get a Job Smelling Farts

Perhaps you don’t have a job. Or maybe you want a new challenge, but you don’t know what you want to do with your life. If you are under 45 years old, you don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you don’t use perfume, and you don’t have nasal problems, there’s a career waiting for you in…

Metal Gear Rising Slices Out Its Own PlayStation 3

There’s a special Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance PS3 to mark the game’s release in Japan. Priced at ¥31,960, the bundle comes with a 250GB PlayStation 3, a special Rising DualShock 3, a download code for a customized PS3 wallpaper, a download code for a limited edition Cyborg Ninja customized in-game suit and a copy of…

Dress as Adam Jensen from Deus Ex in Hitman

Hitman: Absolution lets players don a variety of disguises. And now, one of those outfits is the Deus Ex suit. Because if you want to blend into a crowd, what better way to do that than with a futuristic body suit! The suit not only offers Hitman‘s Agent 47 better protection, and the “Zenith” gun…

Your Homework? Machine Guns.

College is hard! There are all those books to read. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to mix the workload up. Like, with some assault rifles? These images reportedly show a popular class at Nanjing University of Science and Technology in China. The students are studying machine guns and taking them apart to see how they work.…

This Might Be the Last Cosplay You’d Expect from Japan

When you think of Japan and cosplay, you probably imagine ladies dressed in skimpy anime outfits or dudes in Gundam gear. And you’d probably be right! That type of cosplay is prevalent, sure, but it’s not the only game in town—especially with more and more Japanese players totally digging Call of Duty Recently on Japanese…

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII Makes Players Manage Time

Lighting Returns, the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII title, uses a time mechanic. In the game, the world has only 13 days left before it ends. In a recent interview with 4Gamer, game designer Motomu Toriyama went into slightly more detail about the game’s time mechanic. As mentioned above, the time limit in-game is 13 days.…

Little Girl Learns about Trolls, Thanks to the 3DS

There are strange people out there! They’re filled with malice and evil thoughts. And some of them even have 3DS handhelds. Considering how neither the 3DS nor StreetPass are exactly new, it’s somewhat odd that Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japan’s biggest newspapers, would run a story on StreetPass trauma, but it did anyway after one…

Hitler in a Mini-Skirt and Stalin in Hot Pants. Infamous Dictators as Anime Ladies.

Some of the most infamous dictators of the 20th century have now been turned into cute anime characters with not so cute accompanying biographies. The book is Nyotai ka!! Sekai no Dokusaisha Retsuden (にょたいか！！世界の独裁者列伝 or loosely, “In Female Form?! Biographies of World Dictators”), and it features illustrations by various artists, such as Nishieda and Takeshi…