Apparently, mumu has been working on a little project for some time — his interpretation of Gundam RX-121-2A “Advanced Hazel.” Sweet!
Fully articulated and heavily armored, this beauty sports all the usual accessories, including a booster pack, shield, and rifle:
Japanese builder Toshiya has posted another adorable cartoon character, this time from the TV show Kirarin Revolution.
Here’s Na-san, the cat:
Ahhh… Adorable! Who can resist sparkly eyes?
Behold the show’s theme song in all its YouTube glory (and tremble in fear!):
1816 has built a really sleek Mach 5: 
I’ve never said this about a car before, but this is extremely swooshable! The excellent use of slopes in this creation is very sweet. Makes me want to get on the floor and drive it around under the dining room table…
Here’s the whole speedy gallery
Soren Roberts has posted an awesome Zaku mecha from Gundam:
From the chain gun to the pink eye, this beauty is full of fantastic details.
Leave comments on Flickr, or check out the full gallery on NeutronBot.com.
Sanrio (of Hello Kitty fame) recently released a counterpart to pink-hooded bunny My Melody called “Kuromi.” Apparently there’s a TV show centered around My Melody in Japan (official Web site and clip on YouTube — both in Japanese).
Toshiya has built a nice little Kuromi statue, complete with key, black hood, and spiky devil tail:
Yes, that’s a red skull on Kuromi’s hood.
Moko has been updating his minifigs fairly regularly, and I’ve missed a couple, so here’s a nice batch of anime-themed minifigs.
From director Hayao Miyazaki’s film Princess Mononoke, first up we have Ashitaka and San:
And some soldiers from the same film:
Next, a minifig dressed as Gundam:
Finally, a character from Sailer Moon (sorry, I have no knowledge of the show whatsoever):
Without any explanation (other than to celebrate the end of midterms), Moko just posted these:
Weird, just weird. Still, pretty interesting.
Japanese LEGO blogger Hiron has been posting work-in-progress pictures of his MS-09F Domtropen mecha (from one of the Gundam TV series). Hiron has announced that DOM is complete, so I thought I’d post a couple of the pictures he uploaded to his Brickshelf gallery:
Very cool. For those of you who aren’t LEGO builders yourselves, I want to point out a building technique Hiron uses called SNOT, which is an acronym for for Studs Not on Top. You can read all about SNOT on BrickWiki, the open-content LEGO encyclopedia.
Horace Cheng recently sent me an e-mail to tell me he’d built an Exo-Force alternate model called “Van Force” based on some information I’d posted over on Pan-Pacific Bricks. I checked out Horace’s Photobucket and was struck by another mecha he’d built, based on the Japanese animated series Patlabor:
Pretty cool stuff. Horace says he mostly used pieces from two 7712 Supernova sets. Be sure to check out Horace’s Photobucket if you’re interested in seeing good pictures of Van Force as well.
(Hmmm… Second mecha-themed post of the day. So, does this mean I’ll be posting more mecha now? We’ll see. They are pretty cool…)
Black Jack (「ブラックジャック」) is an animated series aired on TV in Japan between 2004 and 2005. The title character is a mysterious doctor with white and black hair. Naturally, after getting her hands on the new Two-Face minifig from the Batman theme, mumu’s wife saw the similarity and made Jack, along with his sidekick, Pinoko:
You can find more info on Black Jack on Anime News Network.
A miniseries on TV in Japan called “Densha Otoko” (“Train Man”) told the story of a geek who helped a woman harrassed by a drunk on the train. As a window into Japanese geek (otaku) culture, it also included snippets of the protagonist’s favorite anime, a fake show called “Getsumen To Heiki Mina” (“Mina the Weapon-Bunny of the Moon”; rabbits live on the moon — didn’t you know?).
Brickshelf user nias has built an adorable Mina, complete with her double-carrot tails (or whatever they are):
Brickshelf user nias recently reorganized some photos, and several things caught my eye (more posts to come).
Here’s Hello Kitty:
So, what’s the deal with Hello Kitty? Brian McVeigh thinks he has the answer in an article titled “How Hello Kitty Commodifies the Cute, Cool and Camp: ‘Consumutopia’ versus ‘Control’ in Japan.” The summary:
Asked about Hello Kitty, respondents judged those interested in this ‘character good’ within a framework of freedom/self-autonomy versus coercion/compulsion. The former is associated with what may be termed ‘consumutopia’ (a counter-presence to mundane reality fueled by late capitalism, pop culture industry, consumerism), while the latter is connected to ‘control’, a critical view of self/collective relations that also comments on Japanese ethno-identity. Hello Kitty also demonstrates the need to focus not just on different tastes within a society, but also on ambiguous and diverse attitudes within the same individual. Such diversity allows Sanrio, Hello Kitty’s maker, to link within one individual different modes of self-presentation, chronologically corresponding to girlhood (‘cute’), female adolescence (‘cool’), and womanhood (‘camp’). Thus, as people mature, appeals to nostalgia encourage a reconnection with the past by buying products united by one leitmotif; same commodity, same individual, different ages/tastes/styles/desires.
ROTFLMAO! Absolutely hilarious, or not. :-/