Friday, December 4, 2009

Anime goods available -part 4-

They were displaying Gundam figurines at a WonderGoo.

Since Sunrise studios keeps producing new mobile suits, I'm not familiar with all of these.

Some are not satisfied with just watching Gundam anime.

What is different from Haruhi figurines is that people have to try hard to make a good Gundam figurine or plastic model.

The right one is called "Guntank" from the first Gundam series.


I went to see the life-size Gundam in August that was displayed in Odaiba, Tokyo. As a Japanese man I grew up watching many Gundam series. It's not only Otakus that watch Gundam anime, but ordinary boys and men are or were also fans of Gundam. As I told before, the first series of Gundam was aired in '79, so the people who watched it then must be now around 40. So some companies are cashing in on the fact Gundam is accepted by many generations.

For example, one of Japan's three mobile phone companies called DoCoMo aired radio commercials in which Seyuu of Char Aznable and Amuro Ray played roles as brothers. And this year a company released an arcade Gundam game that has a cockpit in which a person can operate a mobile suit. Here is its video.


I think the ones most Japanese people think of as great anime must be Doraemon or Pokemon, but Gundam differs from them in that people remember some lines spoken by Char and Amuro. And the Japanese men under 40 are so familiar with the voice of Toru Furuya (Seyuu of Amuro) that they can easily recognize his voice. It was rare for an anime production company to hire then very young Furuya(he was in his 20s in '79). But I think it is he that made it possible for young Seiyuu to be successful in getting a job today.