From Ningin: As part of my ongoing series chronicling the downfall of the human race via cute Japanese robots I present to you a little walking Japanese robot playing soccer (or football if you’re a normal person) that is also being controlled via an iPhone. That’s right. An iPhone. More »

Most of us know what a ninja is, or at least we think we do from growing up watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and old kung-fu movies. But how and where did they come from? Did someone roll out of bed and just decide to be a ninja one day? Did someone go to a school with classes like Shruiken Throwing 101? All jokes aside, many of us don’t know much about the origins of these shadowy spies and assassins. That’s where this article comes in. More »

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From Ningin: Rie Fu is a bilingual Japanese pop artist who experienced an increase in popularity after her song, Life is Like A Boat, was featured as an ending theme to the anime Bleach. More »

From Girlybubble: We’ve all envisioned Lady Gaga as an anime character thanks to the Markus Klinko and Indrani photoshoot, but how would she fair as a chibi anime character? The word “chibi” in Japanese typically means a cute “small child” or “short person.” Brazilian artist Joapa transformed our anime eyes-lovin’ Lady Gaga into chibi Anime drawings. Looking at these drawings makes me wish there was an actual anime series featuring Lady Gaga. More »

From Wirebot:

Translation be hard time for people.

There is no denying that most of the gaming gold brought to the United States is shipped over here from different countries, but no one country gives us more to ogle about than the Land of the Rising Sun. Japan keeps packing our gullets full of their delicious gaming gravy and I myself can’t help but to come back for more. But like most foods, those yummy morsels pass through many a hand before they are properly processed and packed, and a lot can go wrong along the way, specifically in terms of translation from Japanese to English. Here are some games that didn’t quite get it right when they made the hop over the Pacific. More »

Greetings, all! I’m here to offer you the latest news and my thoughts on J-Pop, and to a lesser extent, anime. I thought I’d introduce myself with a brief speculation on what it means to be a Japanophile (or, in the vernacular, “Weaboo” or “Wapanese”). Now, not all of you may consider yourselves such, outright; but for some crazy reason, I suspect I’m not the only one. More »

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While I would totally go out with Princess Peach (provided all the parts are really there, and they must be because those Mario Brothers have been after her for years), I find this story to be quite disturbing. More »

From Wirebot:

Nowhere, nonexistent actually. At least not in the form we see today. This is why Wirebot is celebrating our new sister site that just recently launched called Rekuru; a place dedicated to everything that is Japanese! To do this, we have some awesome posts lined up for you More »

If you thought giant robots were something only out of japanese anime, think again. Meet Giant Torayan. Sculpted by Kenji Yanobe, this giant robo-baby was recently spotted in Tokyo’s Roppongi district during an art festival. Besides scoring super brownie points with otakus everywhere, the robot is capable of singing, dancing (although I’d hardly call swinging your arms dancing unless you’re me at my high school prom), and of course – breathing fire. I’ve included a video below for you to check out, as a picture of a robot breathing fire isn’t half as good as a video of a robot breathing fire. More »

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