Currently, anyone in Japan is free to dress as their favorite characters. But it might not stay free for them to do so. The Japanese government is proposing big copyright law changes for those who make money from cosplaying—and possibly, even for those who don’t. As writer and translator Matt Alt points out, the Japanese…
Students at Tanabe Technical High School in Wakayama, Japan have spent over four years making a DeLorean replica out of 2-millimeter-thick aluminum. The monument is located in front of the school, and four times a day during the week, it slowly spins around as the Back to the Future theme song plays, with the okay…
Last year at the Fancy Frontier manga and anime expo in Taipei, a Taiwanese cosplayer got in trouble with the law for exposing herself in the cosplay area near the event hall while photographers snapped photos. She was arrested for violating the country’s Act on Offenses Against Sexual Morality. Note: This article contains content some…
Hajime Tabata, director of Final Fantasy XV, left Square Enix in 2018 after founding its Luminous Productions studio earlier that year. Now Tabata, who established his own studio called JP Games, is back and working on a virtual travel experience for a Japanese airline. Yoimuri News reports that last August, All Nippon Airways created a…
Debuting in November 1997, Yukiru Sugisaki’s manga D.N.Angel will draw to a close in the March issue of Monthly Asuka The manga tells the story of a schoolboy who transforms into a phantom thief whenever he has romantic feelings about his crush. An anime adaptation was broadcasted on Japanese TV in 2003, and a PlayStation…
In the Tenjin area of Fukuoka, Japan, warnings about the novel coronavirus pandemic look like something out of Evangelion. Pointed out by writer and translator Jim Rion, the warnings, which are from Fukuoka Prefecture, remind people that there is a state of emergency and to wear masks, wash their hands, and social distance. If you’ve…
In his three decades at Nintendo, Takaya Imamura worked on some of the company’s most iconic games, including F-Zero, Star Fox, and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. He also designed Tingle, and for that, we will be forever grateful. Today, on his Facebook page, Imamura uploaded a selfie taken outside Nintendo’s Kyoto headquarters and…
Tomonobu Itagaki made his name creating Dead or Alive and designing Ninja Gaiden games. After leaving Koei Tecmo, he founded Valhalla Game Studios, releasing Devil’s Third. Now, he’s back with a new company. Itagaki was interviewed for a larger Bloomberg piece on the Xbox in Japan. He was, of course, one of the first Japanese…
This week, a bootleg Pokémon game called Pocket Trainer DX was finally pulled from the Google Play store. It featured Pokémon characters and art, and for a totally unofficial app, it didn’t look too shabby. The Korean language game, created by one Fanya Game Ltd, was released on January 6 and featured art from the…
To mark One Piece reaching 1,000 chapters, there was YouTube live-stream earlier this week with the staff at the Weekly Jump offices. The editor of One Piece showed his smartphone screen. On it, viewers could see his browsing history. Oh dear. Most of it was rather pedestrian—Yahoo! Japan, One Piece sites, etc.—but one entry was for a…
Super Nintendo World, the Mario and friends themed area at Universal Studios Japan, was scheduled to open next month on February 4. However, due to the state of emergency declared in Osaka, it will not. This is not the first time the park was delayed. It was originally slated for a summer 2020 opening, but…
Last November, Capcom suffered a cyberattack. As previously reported, the group claiming responsibility for the attack said they downloaded around 1TB of data, containing things like employee’s visa records, customer bank details, and internal Capcom information. At that time, Capcom confirmed that the personal information of nine people had been compromised in the attack. Today,…
Akira certainly did predict the 2020 Tokyo Olympics 19 years ahead. The manga—created by Katsuhiko Otomo (above)—and ensuing anime are set against the backdrop of the impending 2020 Tokyo Olympics. It also appears that one panel in the manga refers to measures for combating a contagious disease. As pointed out on the popular Japanese gaming…
Back in July 1997, Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece began serialization in Weekly Shonen Jump. Now, twenty years later, it has become the biggest-selling manga series ever. Last summer, it was announced that One Piece was entering its final arc, which should take four or five years to wrap up, and this month the manga reached…
Koei Tecmo announced it’s filing charges with Kanagawa police against a suspect for allegedly selling an unlicensed DVD filled with naked Dead or Alive characters. According to the game maker, the suspect allegedly recorded footage of characters from Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation that had been illicitly modded. The footage was compiled onto a DVD…
Now that the PlayStation 5 is out, Sony is turning its attention to its new console. In Japan, that means almost all its attention, leaving only the standard slim Jet Black 500GB PlayStation 4 as part of the old-gen line-up. As IT Media and Game Watch Impress report, Sony ceased manufacturing of the PlayStation 4…
Goodness. In what sounds like a dare, McDonald’s China is offering a Spam burger with crumbled cookies. As pointed out by Daniel Ahmad on Twitter, the burger will go on sale in China starting December 21 and will apparently be limited to 400,000 Spam Oreo sandwiches Do note that the fine print does mention the…
Daisuke Ichihara, who helmed the successful Monster Hunter World expansion, has left Osaka-based game maker Capcom. As of this September, 6.6 million copies of Iceborne have been sold worldwide, surpassing Street Fighter II on the NES and making it Capcom’s sixth-biggest seller ever. Previously, Ichihara directed Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate. He had worked in the…
It’s the holiday season. People in Japan are obviously shopping for presents, and no doubt the Nintendo Switch will be a popular gift item. However, it might be a good idea to check those Switch units before gifting them. Nintendo announced that customers in Japan are reporting the error code 2162-0002, preventing them from completing…
At one time, SNK made what was considered the Roll Royce of video game consoles. As a kid, I remember thinking that the Neo-Geo was the most amazing game hardware I had ever seen. And now earlier today, the company announced that it making a new game machine. SNK posted the following tweet. It reads, “In…
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