Anime
No, this is not about auto-otakus who love JDM machinery like me, but cars of real Japanese otakus in Tokyo.
The otaku car festival featured many many cars all dressed up with anime/manga figures and stickers. Highlights are a Ferrari F430 spider, Lancia Stratos and a BMW M5.
I was looking through the photo gallery and did not really find any interesting JDM cars for the auto-otakus, except for some skylines in the background.
However I did notice these two Toyota Corolla Levins AE101:
Toyota Corolla Levin AE101 #1 front view
Toyota Corolla Levin AE101 #1 side view
Toyota Corolla Levin AE101 #2 front view
Toyota Corolla Levin AE101 #2 side view
I do not particularly like the way these two AE101s are painted/stickered/etc. but actually I was thinking something like: damn shame of the nice silvertops in those cars... I would certainly know a much better use for those! Does that mean I'm no longer an anime-otaku but rather more an auto-otaku?? ;)
Today it's exactly 9 years since Initial D Second Stage aired on Fuji TV! It made me think about that I read some time ago that Initial D Extra Stage 2 was coming soon. I totally forgot about it!! I went to the site of Avex Mode and saw it is for sale on 5th of december! :)
So, I dug a bit deeper and found out that it was announced to be aired on 3rd of october already. So that means I've missed it!!
At least I got the trailer from the Avex Mode website:
Small spoiler: it features Mako and Sayuki again (and the Nissan Sil80), just like in the first Extra Stage, who will be racing a Black Altezza (probably a RS200). As you can see in the image above the video Iketani features this special and my best guess is that he goofs up again! This all should take place around the time that Takumi and Project D take on the Todou Juku racing school, so Mako and Sayuki should have improved their skills. ;)
A lot better to see the original flv than the resized versions on Youtube and Streetfire. ;)
Hachiroku.com.au posted that a new Initial D game called Extreme Stage is coming soon.
Hachiroku.com.au posted the youtube trailer:
You can see the trailer in more detail here:
http://www.initiald-ps3.com/movie/promo01.html
I took some screenshots:
Look at the detail in the hand, the gearknob and steering wheel!
And here how much detail there is in the dash! It is just about the same as I had in my Trueno (mine was LHD, so mirrored dash) and it iluminates just a tiny bit more than on full illumination.
And here you can see how much detail there is in the drift scenes!
As you can see it is much more detailed than the previous games (they show them to compare), especially the road and inboard graphics. The question is of course if this the actual quality, or if it is only the intro of the game... I suspect it is the latter... Otherwise it would have been a great tool for the animators of the Anime series!
If I would have owned a PS3 I would definitely buy it! Unfortunately I don't own one and I probably won't buy one in the near future... :(
According to Anime News Network the designer of the new Nissan GT-R is inspired by Gundam. All the boxy parts and big vents are definetly Mobile suit like, but the first question which sprung in mind was "Which mobile suit from Gundam is the new Skyline GT-R?". :P
I don't think the first RX-78 was the actual inspiration... That would be a typical Mazda thing. ;)
This...
inspired this???
