Jemapur - Maledict Car (Dir. Kosai Sekine)
Tokyo gets mirror-tweaked to kaleidoscopic effect in Jemapur's "Maledict Car" video directed by Kosai Sekine (produced by W+K Tokyo Lab). Sekine's previous work includes the quirky "Right Place," which won the best short film award at Cannes in 2006.
Mexican tattoo artist Dr Lakra is known for drawing macabre designs on found objects and images. During a visit to Japan last year, he inked hardcore tattoos on some fine antique ukiyo-e woodblock prints purchased at used bookstores. Some of these works were included in the "Goth" exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art in March, but a few of the more provocative tattooed shunga prints were refused because they offended museum officials.
Untitled (Hiroshima Tomonohira Take-Emon)
Untitled
Untitled (Yokohama doll)
Untitled (Shunga IV)
[Images: Kate MacGarry]
Smooth nylon shrimp (Heterocarpus laevigatus) inhabiting the dark depths of the Pacific employ a brilliant method of defense. When threatened with attack, the creature spits a cloud of bioluminescent blue fluid from its mouth, temporarily blinding its predator and allowing escape.
This rarely seen footage of the smooth nylon shrimp's defense mechanism in action was shot at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium.
See also:
- Video: Tremoctopus defense mechanism
- Video: Three bioluminescent sea creatures
These ferociously awesome custom rides were spotted in a parking lot near Tokyo.
Check out photographer ch.knuckles' Flickr photoset for more.
[Via: Bouncing Red Ball]
See also:
- Extreme Japanese custom vans
- Japanese custom scooters
- Dekotora photo galleries
- Itasha: Pimped rides, otaku style
A well-choreographed troupe of synchronized (and anonymized) high divers splash it up for Denki Groove in the new "Fake It!" video. Directed by Hideyuki Tanaka.
[Link: Denki Groove - Fake It!]
More:
- Denki Groove videos
- Video: Mononoke Dance
"A Dream To Have In Heaven" (Tengoku De Miru Yume - 天国でみる夢) by Maki Sasaki is a surreal non-narrative one-shot manga published in the November 1967 issue of the now-defunct Garo, an alternative manga monthly magazine that peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
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The Tokyo-based Groovisions motion graphic design crew has created a stylishly animated educational video for the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), which highlights some of the issues surrounding the future of food in Japan.
In the video, Groovisions use their hallmark playful-yet-ordered sim-like virtual landscape to illustrate a host of food-related challenges facing Japan. Issues include Japan's 40% food self-sufficiency rate (the lowest of any major industrialized nation), the declining agricultural industry, and the impact of world population growth and environmental changes on the global food supply.
The video also suggests that the Western-style diet of meat, fat and oil, which has partially replaced Japan's traditional diet of rice, fish and vegetables, has contributed to a variety of health problems and reduced demand for domestically grown produce. The food situation is exacerbated by other demographic factors such as the aging farming population and the abandonment of agricultural land. To reverse these trends, MAFF encourages consumers to make sustainable food choices and urges the industry to produce safe, properly labeled food.
The video (w/ English subtitles) was posted on the official MAFF YouTube channel, which was created last month.
[Link: Ensuring the Future of Food (Tip: watch the high-quality version)]
Recycle artist Masataka Koike creates realistic-looking marine life sculptures from used wooden chopsticks. This octopus, which took eight months to complete, is made of 2,000 chopsticks.
Flickr user modern_fred's Japanese movie monster scan collection includes a few vintage illustrations detailing the innards of Godzilla and other famous kaiju.
Godzilla
This anatomical sketch of Godzilla reveals a relatively small brain, giant lungs that allow underwater breathing, leg muscles that can support 20,000 tons of body weight, and a "uranium sack" and "nuclear reaction sack" that produce radioactive fire-breath and energize the body.
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Jiger reveals her inner self
According to this anatomical drawing, Jiger has a pair of horns that can shoot missiles made of hardened saliva and one that fires a deadly magnetium (?) beam.
Jiger (uploaded by Paulkaiju)
Other characteristics include extremely powerful suction cups covering the entire body, an organ that enables Jiger to spit jets of seawater at 300 kilometers per hour, a stomach that can melt iron ore, and a tail that functions as an ovipositor.
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Mothra larva
This anatomical sketch of Mothra in larval form shows a robust jaw, an enormous stomach, an elongated silk-producing organ, a row of breathing orifices on either side of the body, countless cilia on the bottom surface, and a rudimentary nervous system consisting of a cerebral ganglion and a network of nerve ganglia distributed across the body.
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Guiron -- a peek inside the belly of the beast
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Anguirus
This anatomical diagram of Anguirus shows eyes that can detect infrared light, a pair of sub-brains that control the forelegs and rear legs, highly developed rear leg muscles, and a heavily spiked rear carapace.
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This illustration of "Flaming Monster Gamera" (from An Anatomical Guide to Monsters) reveals eyes that can see in the dark, arms strong enough to lift and throw a 50-ton boat, and "fire sacks" that let Gamera shoot flames from his hands.
Gamera
The illustration also shows a series of sack-like organs for storing lava, oil, coal and uranium (like Godzilla), as well as balloon-like organs in the legs that can blast air through the bottoms of the feet.
[Link: modern_fred's kaiju eiga photoset]
Related: Kaiju art collection
