F-ZeroOne

I think its spite. The British, for no sane reason, have a deeply held belief that the weather must conform to the traditional four-seasons format - i.e. spring has showers, summer is hot and perfect for playing test matches [1], autumn is bracing and filled with bright primary colours, and winter will be ideal for making snowmen. Every year, the weather refuses to conform to belief, and thus incurs the wrath of the public...

[1] A form of cricket which can last for three days and still end in a draw. No, really...

We British will do whatever takes the longest, costs the most and makes the least sense...

Glad to hear you're okay, Mappy. Incidentally, if a 55,000 ton radioactive monster knocks on the door...

...er...

...not much you can do about it.

I feel I should explain, by the way, for those MWers who live in Tornado Alley and can't walk down the street for a newspaper without being picked up and thrown into the next state... Mappy and me are English, and for the English, the weather is a subject of a national obsession second only to the subject of tea. This is despite the fact that, compared to just about every other country on the planet, on a scale starting with hurricanes, we don't actually have any weather...

And Guppy, who says my wife would ever know - "Those old things, I've had them in storage for 10 years, just decided to take them out and play with them after watching the Star Wars DVDs" .

Just hope she doesn't read this thread .

Graham

Graham, have you tried the "these are not the toys you're looking for" trick?

How far?!!

There is apparently a 1/60 vinyl Python kit:

http://www.comet-miniatures.com/special.php?spo=31&

I'm also pretty sure that a Python was part of the "Cloth Gear" toy-line, along with an Ingram - these were Bandai toys with an "inner" frame to which plastic armour pieces were attached.

Mappy doesn't believe in Gojira - he doesn't think that a 55,000 ton radioactive monster can be "cute".

I believe that finding a giant footprint where his flat used to be will convince him otherwise...

I was lucky enough to score a nearly perfect Bandai Ingram battery-operated toy a few weeks ago. I like it, though I'm still wondering whether to apply the decals - it looks a little plain without them. Also, compared to modern toys, its about as poseable as a brick, but it has a certain presence about it...

how much you pay for it?

8,000 yen, plus shipping - I felt that was a reasonable amount (it even had the original batteries!). They don't appear to be all that common; I've only ever seen one missing some of its parts in Tokyo.

I also liked the manga; I wish Viz would re-consider publishing it. Its just seems to be Patlabors fate in life, that it seems to be rather ignored by the Western anime fan community (other than the movies).

"The next greatest misfortune to losing a battle is to gain such a victory as this."

- Sir Arthur Wellesley, The Duke of Wellington, commenting on the aftermath of Waterloo.

but this has nothing to do with that.  I'm annoyed. I just learned that to date I've slept through 2 earthquakes and 1 typhoon! I'm English, I want my doom and gloom

Want help keeping awake?

Well, Tokyo is hit by devestating natural disasters or fires so often (on a geological timescale) that the residents used to call them "flowers of Edo". The Great Kanto Earthquake in the 1920s pretty much flattened the entire city. They get one like every 80 years or so.

Yes, that means they're rather overdue... One geologist has called Tokyo "the city waiting to die"...!

And thats of course forgetting the rogue ESP experiments, cross-dimensional tears in space/time, military prototypes going berserk, cat-girl invasions, mecha invasions, demon beast invasions, and, of course, the English...

Patlabor is my second favourite anime series (after Urusei Yatsura).

The bandai MG kits are pretty good, but theres one thing that niggles me if you're not into painting - the visors are moulded in clear plastic, not green. Ingrams just don't look right with clear visors... 

If you're good with a Sharpie that's not too much of a problem, I was able to put a nice blue tint on mine.

Knives and my fingers don't mix...

I was lucky enough to score a nearly perfect Bandai Ingram battery-operated toy a few weeks ago. I like it, though I'm still wondering whether to apply the decals - it looks a little plain without them. Also, compared to modern toys, its about as poseable as a brick, but it has a certain presence about it...

All I will say is give Macross 7 a chance. It suffers from a very slow lead in, rather poor space battle scenes, and is at least ten episodes too long, but there is a rather under-rated series lurking under there. Honest.

Patlabor is my second favourite anime series (after Urusei Yatsura).

The bandai MG kits are pretty good, but theres one thing that niggles me if you're not into painting - the visors are moulded in clear plastic, not green. Ingrams just don't look right with clear visors...

Almost certainly the Korean bootleg Gundam Mark. II. Basically a super-sized Bandai High Compact Model from the 80s.

..And I noticed the following:

-A *LOT* of the Destroids and the Regult Officer's pod look a lot like/are Battlemechs in a different realm

Er... theres a reason for that (where do you think FASA got the designs from in the first place?)

"Skull leader, that new Zentraedi that crushed Skull Two is still behind us! Can't we go any faster?!"

<Skull leader thinks>

"Hmm... landing gear up = more speed?"

Is that the Sawanoya in Nezu?  I spent two weeks there back in 97 during Xmas.  That was my first trip to Japan.  Nice place.

It's now become a regular haunt of mine. And there's an izakaya down a back street litterally around the corner that I found where I am now famous for my rendition of Hotel California!

Mappy - thats it, you've finally fried my brain!

Thats the one - very nice place indeed!

sleddogg83 - thanks for the corrected link, I thought there was something odd about it when I entered it...

Ok, now that F-Zero one has everyone panicing, let me point out, I'm living here. If you want to come to visit then it's a damn site cheaper! I worked out that you can come here for 10 days on a budget of 1000 pounds sterling (including flights, accommodation and food but not anime spending.) This is if your flying out of England through my mate's travel agent and staying at the recommended ryokan.

The president of this company (and an aquaintance) owns a travel agency. Being a piking job master, I've suggested I help with the travel agency since I've been all over Japan and I've got contacts all over the shop in the travel industry. He sounded quite interested and told me to get a presentation together that I can pitch to the staff and the head of the travel agency. I can hear F-Zero One laughing like a maniac right now as he knows how bad I am at presentations, but if I can get this then I'm going to set up anime tours for anime fans. Will have to make specialised "Mecha fan" and "Fanboi" tours.

Edit: white drew carey: you don't know the half of it. Mappy has an extraordinary ability to get to know nice girls like this...

F-Zero One: You know it took me several (very shameless) years to acquire that skill! It's the only one I have which is of any vague use and I'm bloody well going to use it!

If you can speak basic Japanese you can get out of the big cities, away from the high prices and go to some village in the mountains and chill out with the locals. I'm planning to do that for a weekend in a couple of months. When I have the money and the time off...

My apologies if I panicked anyone - Japans reputation for being expensive is probably a result of thes 80s boom years. I was trying to imply that its not exactly "cheap" as people usually define the word, but it doesn't have to be very expensive either - especially if you cultivate contacts over there, as Mappy has done, and who very generously allowed me to take advantage of the hospitality they gave him.

Mappy - sorry to disappoint you, but there already are specialised tours. Of course, if you need some advice on how to get into the back offices of the Studio Ghibli Museum, I'm your man (you'll need a limited edition Kiki portrait and a dodgy credit card, though...!).

Still, a specialist mecha fan tour... hmm... ("...and this is Tokyo Tower, destroyed in Mecha Death Gun Machines I, II, II + and Zeta... ")

As for presentations, all I can say is...

"CHEERI-O!" (sorry, everyone - very private joke shared between me, Mappy, a nice American exchange student and a class of Japanese schoolgirls... )

Knowing some Japanese can be a great help - its not strictly speaking necessary, I've done Japan twice without being able to speak a word - but having certain people around who can is a big help, even if they insist on involving you in the great Hello! Kitty conspiracy...

Those are pretty sweet. Also, I checked out the translated version of the trailer. Two things pleased me greatly. One, Hideaki Anno is listed in Planning/Supervising. While he doesn't do the edgy stuff he used to(he much happier now I hear), this is a relief to me. Secondly, Kohei Tanaka returns for the score. Here's hoping.

Well, theres some hope. I still have some optimism, but the initial character designs are a bit foreboding. The redesigned Buster machine could work; once I got over the shock I felt it had at least some potential...

No anime images, but all the toys you could want here:

http://www.toyboxdx.com/data/takatoku2/ima...nav_credits.gif

400 Quid? as in pounds sterling?

Man that's alot

So much for my ventures towards the land of unlimited anime the Rising Sun

Although Japans reputation for being expensive is slightly exagerrated (you don't have to sprinkle gold on your coffee, after all... ), I think it is safe to say that if you're worried about economy measures, you should perhaps be thinking of going somewhere else...

hey mappy!

rikiryou: She has a lovely personality as well, ask F Zero One. The food there is ok but you don't get much as it's a cafe and not a restaurant.

FZeroOne: I did tell you but only after you got back. When you say "Getting along with" does that include gratuous amounts of slobbering? As there was plenty of that. And she didn't tell me she was in a bikini as I have another male friend to testify, she only sent me a message on my phone asking me to go there as she had a bag of Hello Kitty stuff waiting for me

I've only met her once, but yes, she does seem to be a very nice girl. Your opinion may or may not be affected by what she wears to work...

Mecha pilots don't slobber, we suffer weeks of angst and indeciveness before being shot down, getting captured, being interrogated, having to explain about this whole "where-human-babies-come-from" thing, and then blasting our way out in the enemys hot prototype with their equally hot ace-pilot-turned-defector.

The slobbering is reserved for those unfortunates in the Roy Fokker Memorial Mecha Pilots Hospital...

Ah, Hello Kitty... I should have known...

Edit: white drew carey: you don't know the half of it. Mappy has an extraordinary ability to get to know nice girls like this...

I watched the first season of Spaced a couple weeks ago, so now I really want to see Shaun of the Dead.

There is a three disc Collectors Edition of Spaced due out in the UK shortly:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B...2480229-2079647

Season Two is more of the same, only even better!

Keeping up my habit of my favourite bits of various things I watch being the things that aren't actually in them (er... its like this... for example, my favourite episode of Kimagure Orange Road is the "Giant Monster Jingoro Attacks" one, which is a summer special parody, not really part of the "proper" series), the scene I liked the best from Shaun of the Dead is the "The Man Who Would Be Shaun" segment. Nick Frost does an uncanny Sean Connery...

Oh, and cricket bats. Its about time someone made a film featuring this most lethal of all melee weapons...!

I want a Cornetto.