Doraemon

Should you ever doubt that Fujiko Fujio's Doraemon is truly ubiquitous in Japanese pop culture, consider this: Last night at Wrestle Kingdom 10, the biggest event of the year for New Japan Pro Wrestling, the action in the sold-out Tokyo Dome stopped for a few minutes so that everyone's favorite gadget cat from the future could take the stage dressed like a caveman to promote his new movie. His thirty-ninth movie.

One of the weirder new quirks of the gift-giving season over the past few years has been the rise of services that send you a big ol' box of stuff every month. It seems like there's one for almost every kind of geeky interest, from general nerd merch to video games to pro wrestling, and I have to admit that they make for a pretty solid holiday present. If nothing else, there's enough thrown into those monthly boxes that as long as you've picked the right genre, there's probably going to be something in there that your giftee is going to like. The one that I've been most curious about is Japan Crate, a service that loads up a box with Japanese candies and other snacks every month, but despite my fascination with foreign snack foods (and the chance that I'll get some kind of Super Sentai branded potato chips), I've been a little reluctant to spend money without giving it a shot. Fortunately for me, Japan Crate offered to send over a couple of sample boxes, and that was how I ended up sitting down with my girlfriend and eating an entire box of Japanese candy all at once in about an hour.

This week's fun at San Diego's Comic-Con International isn't just about stuff you can buy. I mean, yes, that's kind of the entire point of the convention, but in addition to new and exclusive products, plenty of publishers are offering unique experiences to lure you into their booths, and Viz Media is going the extra mile. In addition to new books like the Hello Kitty 40th Anniversary hardcover and The Art of Princess Mononoke, they're giving attendees the chance to take photos with characters like Doraemon and Hello Kitty. That's right: a photo op with Hello Kitty. If you see me crying with joy on the con floor, that's why. Check out the rest of the exclusives belo

I don't watch much anime, so I have never seen the animated adaptation of Fujiko Fujio's Doraemon manga. That, however, may have to change, especially since CA editor Caleb Goellner just summed it up for me as "a robot cat from the future who travels back in time to be friends with kids and fight the Terminator." That kind of sounds like exactly the sort of thing that I would be into, ev

The city of Tokyo won its bid to host the 2020 Olympics this past fall, leading many people, this site included, to draw the parallel between reality and the post-apocalyptic manga and anime feature film Akira, which took place in the run-up to the 2020 Olympic Games in Neo-Tokyo. The organizers real-life Games in Tokyo have turned to another manga/anime, Doraemon, to help promote the Olympics. Th

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Sentinels, Smurfs and 16-Bit greatness await... after the cut.