Japanese Park Sculptures = Win

It’s been kinda quiet around here recently, huh? Unfortunately my life has been rather busy lately and as such, I haven’t had much time to sit down and put together some decent-sized articles for the blog (I’m currently trying to finish up a review for Mega Shark verses Giant Octopus, which should be up before too long). I did come across this little tidbit of awesomeness on the Japanator website which I thought I’d mention here.

It seems that the Japanese have been on a recent kick to produce “life-sized” statues of popular giant anime robots; the first is a 59-foot tall recreation of the popular robot from Mobile Suit Gundam which will stand in Tokyo’s Shiokaze Park for a two-month period starting in July.

Much cooler (I think, anyway) is the proposed Tetsujin 28 statue, which is planned as a permanent fixture of Wakamatsu Park in Kobe as a way to commemorate the achievements of manga creator, Mitsuteru Yokoyama. You can actually check out pictures of statue’s various stages of construction on the official website. Very, very neat. I wish we did stuff like this in North America. Don’t tell me that a series of 1:1 scale statues of various Ray Harryhausen monsters adorning public parks wouldn’t be more interesting than the usual fare of historical figures on horseback.

The Last Guardian (a.k.a. “Project Trico”) Screenshots

It seems that the video game Project Trio that I reported on not too long ago has been given its official title, The Last Guardian. There’s still nothing new in the way of details about the actual gameplay or plot, but Kotaku.com has a bunch of recently-released screenshots to peruse. You can check them out here.

One detail of interest that I didn’t notice in the teaser trailer when I watched it (but can be clearly seen in these new pictures): the cat/griffin thing seems to riddled with arrows. What could that be all about, I wonder? Given that this is a Japanese game, I can’t help but suspect that the creature might have a tragic end waiting for him at the story’s completion...

Dragons and Bears

There are a couple of upcoming animated movies with giant monster content heading to theaters, although just not anytime soon. First up is Dreamworks’ next 3D feature called How to Train Your Dragon, an adaptation of a children’s novel by author Cressida Cowell. The plot involves a teenaged viking named Hiccup who meets and befriends an injured dragon... which would be less of a problem if Hiccup didn’t live in a village of warriors whose predominant occupation involved battling said monsters. Apparently there have been some concerns from fans of the books that the film is taking some unwanted liberties with the story, such as adding new characters and changing the original plot. I’m sure more of this will come to light when the movie gets closer to its release date of March 2010.

Twitch.com and I09.com both posted a brief news tidbit about an upcoming Danish animated film project, due out in 2011, called The Great Bear. According to the synopsis posted on both sites, the story is about an 11-year old boy named Jonathan, who laments having his younger sister Sophie joining him on his vacation to visit his grandfather. Things get worse when Sophie is spirited away by an ancient, gigantic bear which leaves Jonathan no alternative but to enter the vast forest where the creature live (along with other mythical beasts) in an attempt to rescue her. 

Monsters vs Aliens vs Television

Despite mixed reviews, Dreamworks’ Monsters vs Aliens turned out to be a decent performer in the box office arena (almost 200 million domestically as of this writing, according to Box Office Mojo.com), so it’s no big surprise that the studio has green lit a television pilot for Nickelodeon to air next year. I’d imagine that the expensive celebrity voice talent won’t be used, however. One can only guess what the plot will involve, but it would be nice if the series cooked up some new 50’s B-movie inspired opponents for the characters to face off against. Is an episode featuring a giant mantis too much to ask for? Just sayin’... 

Source: Hollywood Reporter.com

Project Trico

Here’s a teaser trailer for an upcoming video game by the same folks responsible for ICO and Shadow of the Colossus (two great PS2 games, BTW). There’s not much to go on in terms of what the game is exactly about, but I suspect that it might be an exploration-style adventure in the vein of ICO. The giant baby griffin will probably act as a support character that helps the player reach otherwise unaccessible areas. Nonetheless, color me interested!  

I tried (unsuccessfully) embedding both a YouTube and Gametrailers.com video with the original version of this post, but the picture of the former kept getting cut off (I’ve noticed this issue with Blogger ever since YouTube switched over to a widescreen format) and the latter had some sort of HTML code problem and wouldn’t post at all. 

Here’s the link to the Gametrailers.com site: Project Trico

And you can view it here in HD: Project Trico on YouTube

More Free Games

Here are a couple of free online games I discovered recently; nothing deep, but good if you need to get rid of a couple of minutes (click on each title to go to said game).

Monster Evolution

Run around and eat hapless stickmen, uh- people in order to change into larger and more versatile forms. Each transformation gives the player a couple of different choices with regards to what kind of monster they can become next. 

Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar

A fun but incredibly short game with the aesthetic of a bad 80’s cartoon.. and I mean that in a good way. Needs a longer sequel. ROOOOOOAR!

Proto-Clover, Comics and Punk Music

Even if you were lukewarm on the Cloverfield movie, this gallery of developmental artwork concerning the film’s monstrous antagonist- courtesy of the movie’s concept designer, Neville Page- is still pretty interesting nonetheless. It seems like the creature was always intended to be a weirdly-jointed, spindly-armed critter, but it’s neat to see some of the earlier versions of its evolution.

Neville Page’s Cloverfield monster gallery

Meanwhile, over in my email’s inbox, I received some promotional material for an upcoming comic book called Robot-13 from Blacklist Studios. The concept is wonderfully nifty: an amnesiac robot with a floating skull for a head goes on a journey of self-discovery while indulging in its relentless compulsion to battle giant monsters that threaten humanity. Sold! 

The Robot 13 MySpace page, along with some additional sample pages from the book, can be found here.

Finally, some random web surfing over the weekend unearthed this bizarre but entertaining music video for the song “Ninja High Schooool” by the band Peelander-Z (with help from Kaiju Big Battel).