Kotaku East

Korean Calendar Doodles Make the Days Fly By

Why just look at your calendar when you can draw on it? That’s what Ruliweb community member “Zaku” does. Zaku doodles on his calendars to mark when he has “work” (출근) and when he has “overtime” (야근). Days that aren’t colored in are days off. From the looks of it, he works overtime on the…

Japanese Town Gets Official Lupin The Third License Plates

Well, this might be the best Japanese town then, no? Starting April 1 (this is no joke!), the city of Sakura in Chiba, Japan is issuing 3,000 limited edition Lupin the Third motorcycle license plates. According to the city’s official site, the image of Lupin is from the first anime series. Lupin the Third‘s creator…

If You Skip the Madoka Magica Vita Game, You Won’t Be Missing Much

Madoka Magica is one of the best anime of the past decade. It deconstructs the magical girl genre and builds an emotional narrative filled with memorable characters. Unfortunately, the new Vita game, Madoka Magica: The Battle Pentagram, does little more than ride on the anime’s coattails. Good – A Consistent Voice Where The Battle Pentagram…

Inside One of the World’s Biggest Game Companies

Nexon, perhaps best known for Maple Story, was founded in South Korea. Its headquarters is now in Tokyo, however. We are not going to look in its headquarters. Instead, let’s have a look in its new South Korean digs. As pointed out by Han Kyung and GameFocus (via tipster Sang), Nexon moved into this office…

Super Sonico‘s Theme Song Sounds a Bit Familiar

This morning as I sat on my exercise bike—peddling madly while watching the new anime Super Sonico—I was struck by the sudden realization that I had heard part of the anime’s theme song somewhere before: in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The opening song from the first episode of the anime (the second episode uses…

Man Paralyzed After Playing an Arcade Game

Two months ago, a 29 year-old man visited a game center in Foshan, China, while waiting to get his phone fixed. To pass the time, he tried a boxing arcade game. Three days later, he woke up, unable to speak or move his body. According to Shenzhen Satellite Television, the man, given the alias “A.…

Japan’s Latest Photo Trend: Hair Smiles

Forget duck face. And sparrow face. The latest photo trend to hit the streets of Tokyo’s Shibuya is to look down when someone snaps a pic. Kinda defeats the purpose of taking photos, no? The latest photo trend to hit the “gal” (ギャル or gyaru) subculture was recently covered by Japanese television and has become…

Sasuga Minami, the kid’s show host with bad words on her costume, has issued an apology Minami said the language on the outfit was “not on purpose,” adding that she didn’t know or recognize what was written. “I am truly sorry,” Minami wrote, adding, “The onus for this is entirely on me.”

Can Huawei’s Android Console Play PS3 Games? Chinese Media Think So

Last week during the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Huawei, Chinese hardware maker and subject of international security concerns, showed off their newest toy — the Huawei TRON. According to the Chinese media, the TRON can supposedly play PS3 games. PS3 games that have been set for the Huawei TRON. The Ouya-esque Android-based…

Chinese Fans React to Japanese Anime Character’s New Haircut

Chibi Maruko-chan, one of Japan’s longest-running animated shows, has had a slight change recently. The titular character, Maruko-Chan, got a haircut, and Chinese fans are having a field day. That’s right, Chinese fans, in China, are reacting to a Japanese anime character getting a haircut. In the recent-ish 936th episode of Chibi Maruko-Chan, Maruko-Chan changed…

Is Japanese Society Ready for These Adults? Are You?

Brace yourself Japan! You have some new, fully fledged members of society with truly outrageous fashion. Today is Coming of Age Day (成人の日 or Seijin no Hi) in Japan. It is for all of the country’s youth who turned 20 years old in the past year. They are now officially adults and fully-fledged members of…

Not Everyone Is Thrilled with This Sailor Moon Parody

Last month, Korean pop group Sistar transformed into “Sailor Star” for a commercial to promote online Korean shopping site 11st. Some aren’t happy about that! Online in neighboring Japan, online commenters wondered if the online shopping site got permission to use the Sailor Moon imagery. “I thought [Korea] hated Japan?” wrote one commenter on 2ch,…

Crack Down on Chinese Government Corruption… With a Flash Game

The People’s Daily, the de facto mouthpiece of the Chinese communist party, has recently put a flash game on their site. This particular flash game, despite its cartoony nature, depicts a particularly sensitive subject matter in the People’s Republic—fighting government corruption. Ever since the new leader of the Chinese communist party came to power in…

One of Japan’s Oldest (and Most Hardcore) Gamers Passed Away

On January 11, famed actress Keiko Awaji passed away in a Tokyo hospital from esophageal cancer, reports Nikkan Sports. She was 80 years old. And she loved JRPGs. Awaji has acted in over 160 feature films, including Akira Kurosawa’s 1949 classic Stray Dog. Later in life, she became well-known online as a hardcore gamer—so much…

Oh God, They Are Making Another Tekken Movie [Update]

You remember the last one, don’t you? A movie so bad that the games’ lead developer actually apologized. If you haven’t wiped that from your brain, there’s apparently another live-action Tekken happening. According to Cinema Today, actor Kane Kosugi (Godzilla: Final Wars, DOA: Dead or Alive) announced that he’s starring in an upcoming Tekken film…

Hong Kong Candy Commercial Is “Surprisingly” Sexual

I bet you’ve never seen a commercial like this one for Hong Kong’s Rio Burgundy Grape Mints. Can’t get enough of these grape mints? Well, here’s almost forty seconds of outtakes. Enjoy! Rio Mints HK [YouTube] To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft Kotaku East is…

Your Complete Winter 2014 Anime Guide

With the end of the year, we have come to the end of the fall season and are beginning the winter one But with 47 new anime in the pipeline, how do you know which ones to watch? Check out the trailers and brief blurbs about each to see which of them catches your interest.…

You Got Your Magical Girls in my Earth Defense Force!

Recently, Japan saw the release of a new Madoka Magica video game on the Vita. As I was playing, I decided to look around for other Madoka games—and the fan-game Homura Combat really caught my eye. When it comes down to it, Homura Combat is similar in concept to the Earth Defense Force series: You…

Dude Clears Zelda: Ocarina of Time With…His Feet

For a while now, gamer Wakou has been playing video games with his feet. Today, let’s watch him play through The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. This is a small sample of a twenty-five minute foot playthrough on NicoNico. There are actually, twenty parts of the playthough, with each clip running about thirty minutes.…

Log Horizon’s First Half Goes from Cliché to Captivating

From the creator of last year’s Maoyu—an anime among the best last year had to offer—Log Horizon is an anime that takes the idea of being trapped in an MMO and uses it to explore the implications of such a setting on the people involved and the world they are forced to inhabit. It’s unfortunate…