Side-G will be made of colonies celebrating the many different facets of Gundam fandom.
Mobile Suit Gundam’s whole premise is examining how society would change if mankind began living in the stars. The latest Gundam project from Bandai Namco also wants to take humanity somewhere new: into a Gundam metaverse.
As part of the Gundam Conference festivities this week, Bandai Namco provided details on its vision for a virtual venue for fans of the sprawling giant robot franchise. The virtual space, called Side-G, will be made up of “Colonies” focusing on different aspects of Gundam media, with Colonies for anime, video games, music, and Gunpla (Gundam plastic models), as well as areas where fans, using personalized avatars (like in the concept art above), can interact with one another.
The anime, gaming, and music Colonies all have pretty obvious applications, serving as hubs for things such as video previews, e-sports events, and virtual concerts. Where things get really interesting, though, are with Side-G’s plan to integrate Gunpla building and video games. Bandai Namco says users will be able to use a camera to transfer data from Gunpla kits they’ve built in the real world into Side-G, then send them out to battle with other mobile suits.
▼ Definitely a smarter idea than smashing your actual Gunpla into each other to see which is tougher.
Side-G is expected to have its first trial runs this autumn, and to be fully operational sometime in 2025.
What happens when you take the meat out of meat buns?
Japan is becoming more aware of the plant-based lifestyle, like the plant-based “Komeda Is □” cafe, and recently our Japanese-language reporter Takashi Harada made an interesting discovery at his local supermarket by Japanese confectionary company Imuraya: vegan nikuman, or meat buns, made with soy meat.
▼ Even the picture on the package looks like a non-plant-based nikuman.
This “soy meat man” has been manufactured since July 2020, and when it first came out, it was pretty popular but since it contained eggs, it wasn’t considered vegan. Recently, though, they renewed their recipe so that it no longer includes any animal products.
▼ Slowly but surely, vegan options like this are growing in number.
A pair of soy meat buns cost Takashi 278 yen (US$2.25). It’s a bit expensive for a typical nikuman, which typically costs 130 yen a pop, but it wasn’t a large enough difference for him to complain. He zapped it in the microwave, then cut it in half to examine its insides.
▼ Would you be able to tell this is plant-based?
It could have fooled him! To Takashi, this looked convincingly like a meat-based nikuman. It didn’t even smell overwhelmingly like soy, further confusing his senses.
▼ This isn’t the normal way to eat it, by the way; it’s just for science.
Spoiler: it turned out to be the best-tasting soy meat Takashi had ever tried. The texture was just like a normal meat-based nikuman (typically filled with pork). Umami-filled ingredients like bamboo shoots and shiitake mushroom helped convince him even more.
▼ “Tastes just like meat!!”
The only thing missing was the typical juiciness of meat, but it wasn’t enough for him to downgrade its deliciousness. And when he considered the fact that it had zero cholesterol, he thought that from a health perspective, this could be a regular snack in his rotation.
▼ But did it pass Takashi’s other important taste test?
He still had one thing to test: would it pair well with a popular nikuman dipping sauce made of vinegar and soy sauce from his hometown of Fukuoka?
▼ Step one: drown in vinegar soy sauce.
He swiftly prepared the sauce and gave the soy meat man a nice, long dip. To his pleasant surprise, it was delectable! He gave it a perfect score.
▼ Here’s one more closeup of the soy meat to convince you even more.
All in all, Takashi thinks everyone should give this soy meat bun a try, especially if you want to incorporate more plant-based foods into your diet for health reasons. It tastes a lot better than some soy meat products on the market, and it pairs well with everything that nikuman is supposed to pair with. And to chase it down, you can have an apple pie ice cream bar from the same company!
The perfect game to teach kids about numbers and Ummoism.
The “shedding” genre of card games, such as Crazy Eights, has long been enjoyed by people of all ages for its simple gameplay and flexible rules. And it was half a century ago that the most marketable variation of these games emerged in the form of UNO, which itself has undergone several makeovers, with Mario Kart and McDonald’s versions.
But now, an entirely new game has been created that goes beyond the world as we know it, and explores the mysterious realms of the extraterrestrial paranormal. UFO — pronounced “Oofoh” — is a shedding card game created by Cyberdyne, a retro sci-fi art dealer who’s also responsible for the annual Tokyo International Shark Film Festival.
This is not an official version of UNO, but since only the design and name “UNO” is under copyright, UFO is free to adopt the exact same gameplay for their own use. So, UFO uses appropriately saucer-shaped cards while retaining most of the same rules and patterns of the famous game, making it easy to pick up and play.
First, there are 76 number cards that have pictures of alien life forms or associated people and places on them. All the classics are there, such as little green men, reptilians, Flatwoods monsters, and even the Kofu alien of Japanese lore.
▼ A video explaining the Kofu UFO incident
Then, there are three types of special cards, each based on a U.F.O. from the past. A George Adamski U.F.O. will reverse the order of play, a Billy Meyer U.F.O. skips the next player’s turn, and a cigar-shaped U.F.O. will cause the next player to abduct two cards from the pile.
Finally, four wild cards are also in play. An Area 51 or Bermuda Triangle card will allow the player to change the color however they like, as will a cattle mutilation or abduction card with the additional effect of the next player picking up four cards.
And of course, it wouldn’t be an alien-themed game without a few hidden secrets along the way. Some promotional images for UFO include a mysterious Flying Shark card with a question mark value. Cyberdyne also said that they are developing different games that can be played with this card, such as Alien 51 and MIBJ (Men In Black Jack), both of which are variations of the counting game Black Jack.
In the end, however, you can always fall back on the class rules of UNO when playing UFO, except that once a player is on their last card, they must shout “Oofo!” That rule is simply non-negotiable.
UFO is scheduled to go on sale for the first time at the spring iteration of Game Market 2022 at Big Sight on 23 and 24 April. For those who can’t make it to the event, Cyberdyne has also launched a crowdfunding campaign on the Japanese site Campfire until early May.
Standard UFO decks can be purchased for 1,800 yen (U$15), but for 2,500 yen ($20) decks will come in a special Top Secret film can for added protection and plausible deniability. In addition, those who believe in the project enough to pledge 4,500 yen ($36) will receive the game in a film can as well as an adorable plastic figure of a cow being abducted by a U.F.O., which would make the perfect centerpiece for any formal dinner engagement.
You may, however, choose not to play UFO, and write it off as some kooky theory or people’s imaginations run wild. If so, remember that it doesn’t matter, because no matter where you are and what you do, the game is out there…
New topping can be had with vegan or meat-based roux.
There’s a lot to love about CoCo Ichibanya, Japan’s favorite chain of curry rice restaurants. One of the best, though, is the huge variety of toppings they offer, with dozens of tasty and filling options to choose from.
That doesn’t mean CoCo Ichi is out of ideas, though, and this month they added a brand-new offering to their menu: vegan hamburger steak.
Since March 1, CoCo Ichi has been serving soybean-based meat hamburger steaks, or daizu meat hamburg, if you’re ordering in Japanese. They can be ordered with any kind of roux, but the chain especially recommends them for customers getting CoCo Ichi’s vegetraian curry, which is made with no animal-based ingredients, so that’s what we ordered.
We also added a regular hamburger steak side order, so that we could compare the soy meat to its original inspiration. In the above photo, the soy meat hamburger steak is the one on the left, and while you can tell the difference if you’re looking at them side by side, the soy meat is still pretty tasty-looking, and the visual gap was even smaller when looking at the cross sections.
▼ Soy meat hamburger steak (left) and regular meat (right)
For example, this mouth-watering morsel…
…is, in fact, the soy meat.
Taste-testing was handled by our Japanese-language reporter Takashi Harada, who started off with a bite of each hamburger steak by themselves. In terms of texture, the two are remarkably close, as even the soy meat has the proper density and weight to it. However, it doesn’t match the real meat in terms of juiciness, and the difference was big enough that Takashi noticed it right away.
However…
…CoCo Ichi’s soy meat hamburger steak has a curry rice topping, which means you’re not going to be eating it by itself. The curry roux made the juiciness gap between the soy and regular meat a non-issue, and when he had the full team of rice, roux, and topping all in the same spoonful, the collaborative mixture of flavors made the soy hamburger pretty close to indistinguishable from the standard meat one.
“Honestly, if I went to CoCo Ichi and they told me that all they had was the soy version, I’d be OK with that,” says Takashi, and we can’t help but wonder if he’d be even more ready for a repeat meal if he’d remembered to use the special CoCo Ichi curry spoon.
The Sanrio character is the latest star of Cross Shinjuku Vision!
Shinjuku’s got a new famous landmark, and that’s Cross Shinjuku Vision, a digital, 3-D billboard right outside of Shinjuku Station. The ad space, which spans three stories of the Cross Shinjuku building outside the East Exit, has recently received international attention for the amazing Nike Air Max Sneakers ad that it ran last Saturday, but the billboard has been around for a while now and has advertised all kinds of things. Naturally, it even has a mascot: a giant 3-D cat!
But the latest talk of the town is not the Cross Shinjuku Cat but a different animal altogether…Sanrio’s cute little yellow dog,Pompompurin!
The golden retriever with his trademark beret and round butt is here to make your visit to Shinjuku a little cuter. His new 3-D video is currently playing on the Cross Shinjuku Vision billboard now until April 10, though it first appeared on Pompompurin’s offical Twitter (@purin_sanrio) on March 27.
In it, Pompompurin’s fat little butt appears through a hole in the ceiling of a yellow room.
Getting through the hole is a bit of a struggle, but he makes it out along with a few little bubbles that have characters on them that spell “Pompompurin”, though his efforts almost cause him to fall off the edge, butt-first. As he collects himself, he says, “I’m a dog, but I’m here!” (the trademark hashtag of the video). He then bows in greeting as he says, “I’m Purin. Nice to meet you!”–nearly losing his beret in the process–and gives the viewer a little wink. “Everyone, smile! Hehe.”
The end is the best part. Pompompurin turns around, says, “Look! Look!”, and does a backflip where he lands on his belly, and we’re left with a glorious 3-D view of his adorably round butt and his trademark asterisk-shaped…you know.
The video proved highly popular among Japanese netizens, who have liked and retweeted the video nearly 200,000 times with comments such as:
“Purin, why are you so cute?!”
“Wow, the most cutting-edge Pom! So cute! Fantastic!”
“What what what….too cute!!”
“Thanks for showing us your butt so many times! So cute!”
“This is definitely entirely too cute.”
The ad is partially in celebration of Pompompurin’s birthday on April 16, and partially in support of Pompompurin’s bid in Sanrio’sannual character popularity poll, which opens for voting on April 8. The video is too adorable not to stop and watch, so if you find yourself on the east side of Shinjuku Station, you’ll definitely want to check it out!
Mama always said life is like a capsule of bug food.
Normally, when taking a turn of the capsule toy machine, people are filled with the hope of getting a certain item among the random selection offered. However, this time it seems our reporter K. Masami has found one that instills people with quite the opposite feeling: the dread of getting a certain item.
This particular capsule machine is tucked away in the souvenir shop at the ruins of the former imperial palace, Heijo Palace, in Nara Prefecture. It’s also run by Bugs Farm, the company that released an interesting and surprisingly tasty water bug alcoholic drink not too long ago.
Unlike other gachapon machines, this one gives no clue as to what’s inside other than “over eight types of edible insect products.” It also boasts being “environmentally friendly,” “high in protein,” and “great for punishment games.”
Masami was not very familiar with insect food, but knew it was her duty to take a spin at this capsule machine and put in her 500 yen (US$4) coin. However, after the first two tries nothing came out, and she had to ask for a refund from the store staff. It was as if the machine was trying to tell her something.
Even the capsules are completely blacked out, adding to the mystery of what’s inside. We’ve seen before that the foods produced by Bugs Farm really run the gamut, from normal-looking noodles made with flour that includes ground up crickets to whole scorpions as is. So, as Masami stared at her dark orb, she was more preoccupied with the things she didn’t want to be inside rather than anything she could have possibly wanted.
She gave the capsule a shake and it made a strange clicking rattle. This made her imagination run wild with what was bouncing around in the plastic ball. However, she figured that they wouldn’t put a whole roasted tarantula in a capsule machine…would they?
After opening the ball, she was somewhat relieved to find a normal-looking package inside. Since the label was in English, the words “Premium Crickets, Spicy BBQ flavor” didn’t immediately catch her eye.
When she opened the bag, a distinct BBQ aroma came out. It smelled pretty much like a normal bag of chips or nuts, but looked unmistakably like a bunch of crickets. These weren’t just any crickets, however. They were Premium Crickets.
Was there a cricket inspector somewhere, judging the crickets and ensuring only the premium ones ended up in this bag?
That was a mystery for another day. It was time to munch on some bugs now, but not before taking a swig of liquid courage first.
It turned out they weren’t bad at all! They really weren’t very spicy and had a very strong, tangy BBQ taste with some bitter notes that went really well with Masami’s beer. It felt a lot like eating a bag of dried shrimp, and even her cat was drawn to it.
It’s a really good product for someone getting into edible insect food for the first time. It also made her wonder whether she got one of the lucky capsules or whether there was something even better inside that machine.
The only way to be sure would have been to take several spins of the knob, but this might be the only capsule machine where it’s easy to resist the urge to spend more than one coin.
Because no matter what time it is, it’s always time for Dragon Quest, right?
There have been a lot of Dragon Quest games over the years. The series got started back in 1986 and served as the spark that truly ignited Japanese gamers’ love for the RPG genre, and the steady stream of ensuing sequels is now up to Dragon Quest XI, which came out in 2017.
As a long-time fan of the series, Japanese Twitter user @DQaka_pupupusun owns all of the mainline Dragon Quest games. The problem with a collection of such envious size, though, is finding a way to display it.
@DQaka_pupupusun, though, has found a brilliant, and beautiful, solution: use the games’ boxes to make a Dragon Quest clock in his living room.
Actually, it was @DQaka_pupupusun’s son, who’s currently in the third grade, who came up with this clever idea. Like most elementary school kids in Japan, his summer vacation homework included having to do some sort of self-selected hands-on learning project, and he decided he wanted to make this Dragon Quest clock. Figuring the design and building phases would require math and woodworking skills, @DQaka_pupupusun said OK, and the father and son got to work.
You might have noticed, though, that there are two blank slots in the above photo of the clock. That’s because @DQaka_pupupusun still plays the games, and so whichever ones are currently in use will be missing from the clock until he pops the cartridge or disc back out of the system and replaces the package.
But with the highest-numbered game in the series so far being Dragon Quest XI, how does @DQaka_pupupusun’s son account for 12 o’clock? By giving that spot to the two Dragon Quest Heroes spinoff games, i.e. Dragon Quest Heroes I and II.
Twitter users have been quick to express their admiration and jealousy, leaving comments like:
“Pure artistic vision on display.” “You son is a genius.” “I totally want a clock like this.” “I wanna do something like this with the Final Fantasy games, but I’d need to somehow make space for Hope [from FF XIII] and Noctis [FF XV].” “It’s cool that you have the original releases! But I’m guessing you have the Ultimate Hits reissue for Dragon Quest VII, right?”
▼ Nope, he’s got the now-rare original version of VII too.
@DQaka_pupupusun says he’s happy to see his son’s idea bringing joy to so many people, and he plans to pass all the compliments on to the kid. Tell him “Awesome idea!” from us too, @DQaka_pupupusun, and we’re looking forward to an updated photo after the now-in-development Dragon Quest XII comes out.
