otaku

Giant fembots land in Tokyo's red light district

They're pneumatic in all the right places.

Giant fembots have set up shop in Tokyo and they're drawing both Japanese businessmen and otaku geeks in droves.

Robot Restaurant recently opened in Kabukicho, one of the world's largest tenderloin areas, with a gimmick that combines giant robots with sexy gals.

The establishment is selling out its cheap dinner shows featuring scantily clad ladies riding around on 10-foot-tall female humanoids, also scantily clad. … Read more

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Camera Man!

Wow, check out that guy in the bizarre helmet that looks like a camera. What's the deal?

He's giving his Halloween costume -- Instagram Man -- a very early test run. He's the inventor of the digicam, and an old, film-using SLR has taken its revenge by assimilating him. Don't be a wiseacre, this is art.

If you chose No. 3, you're absolutely right (and we apologize for being a wiseacre).

"Touchy" (see video embedded below) is an art project by Eric Siu -- an MFA graduate of UCLA's Department of Design Media Arts, and a Hong Kong-based new-media artist -- and beneath its playful surface it's actually quite serious.… Read more

iMac robot, faux Steve Jobs snapped in Tokyo

The blogosphere, as you know, is a giant echo chamber. Someone posts something and other sites parrot it like ventriloquist dummies, verbatim or nearly so. But does it matter if the original post is wrong?

Case in point: The pic below surfaced on MIC Gadget recently. It suggests this fellow in a very awesome robot costume, seemingly fashioned out of old iMac parts, appeared in Chongqing, China, along with his mutton-chopped Steve Jobs sidekick striking a Moses pose.

It's been making the rounds recently, with Gizmodo, io9, Cult of Mac, Geekosystem, and Geekologie, among others, hailing the Macbot in China.

The thing is the photo was taken in Tokyo, Japan, not China. If you've ever been to the Tokyo Big Sight convention center, you'll remember its unmistakable inverted pyramids in the background of the photo. … Read more

Otaku band AKB48 morphs into $200M business

What if the vice president of your university were a genius producer who had put together an insanely successful pop group of 90 singers and then approved the creation of identical doll versions of them?

Weird? Not for Kyoto University of Art and Design and Yasushi Akimoto, the Steve Jobs of otaku (supergeeks) in Japan. The school just hosted a hit exhibition of dolls based on the gals in the band he produces, AKB48.

At 90 members, AKB48 is the Guinness-certified world's largest pop band. Its members are all females in their teens and early twenties, and all its bubble-gum singles top the charts on the day of their release.

The music is, shall we say, an aquired taste; it sounds like arcade game tunes drenched in a massive one-part vocal harmony. Yet intense otaku fandom has lifted the hydra-headed, miniskirted band to the highest levels of Japanese acceptability. It's even acting as Japan's unofficial representative in China. … Read more

Fans surprised to learn Japanese pop idol isn't real

Japanese geekdom was reportedly shocked of late to learn that the newest member of AKB48, an all-girl idol band with a rotating roster of fresh teen faces, isn't human.

According to her official profile, Aimi Eguchi is a 16-year-old from Saitama, north of Tokyo. Her looks might have earned her the prominent spot in confectioner Ezaki Glico's ad for Ice no Mi candy balls (see below)--if only she weren't a computer-generated composite.

Eguchi's appearance caused a stir among fanboys, and she even appeared in Japanese magazine Weekly Playboy. But their excitement soured when Glico confirmed she's fake, according to a Channel News Asia report.

Her face was fashioned from the features of six other band members, as you can see in this video.

I'm not a fan of AKB-47 or its 60-odd human members, and I was astounded to see grown men lining up to see them perform at a theater in Akihabara, Tokyo. Still, I have to give credit to Eguchi's creators for the verisimilitude of their work. … Read more

Control these robot cat ears with your brain

How do you know if a girl is interested in you? If she's wearing Necomimi robot cat ears, you'll know right away. Whether you'd be interested in girls who wear cat ears is another matter.

A Japanese group called Neurowear has been promoting this high-tech headband, which consists of a pair of motorized, fuzzy feline ears and a brain wave sensor.

The ears feature in Japan's otaku subcultures centered on anime and manga fandom. They're seen in catgirl outfits worn by cosplay enthusiasts.

It's easy to find cat-ear headbands in Japan, but Neurowear has taken them a step beyond. The Necomimi forehead brain wave sensor makes the ears stand up when the wearer concentrates. They turn down in response to a relaxed state.

In the rather ridiculous PR video below, the ears stand up when a woman passes a man who catches her eye. Meanwhile, guys have also been trying Necomimi, as seen in the vid here, shot at a recent demo in Tokyo. … Read more

The 404 656: Where we vote yes on virtual girlfriends (podcast)

It's not too late to enter the JetBlue All You Can Jet Giveaway! You only have until 12 p.m. PDT to tweet out this message:

Follow @the404 and RT this for a chance to win 1 of 2 #AllYouCanJet @JetBlue passes. Rules: http://bit.ly/dodRKs #AYCJ

Don't forget that you have to be at least 18 years old and a resident of the United States to enter. We'll tweet a congratulatory message at 3 p.m. EDT today to announce the winners. Good luck!

Apple's yearly iPod and iTunes event goes down tomorrow and we've got plenty of predictions (and dreams) for what Apple will show off. We'll likely see a "Retina display" and a forward-facing camera come to the iPod Touch devices, but Wilson's hoping for a revamped Apple TV that could bring iOS 4, an A4 chip, 1080p playback, 16GB of storage, and a $99 "impulse" price tag.

Check out our Crave poll, submit your own predictions, and don't forget to check back with us tomorrow for official news!

This summer, a hot-springs resort in Atami, Japan, became a vacation destination for men who just can't stand being single. For almost two months, the resort offered players of the dating sim Love Plus Plus a physical location to bring their virtual girlfriends.

Once there, the players visited romantic locations and took pictures next to black-and-white markers on the ground that acted as triggers for the corresponding augmented-reality smartphone app. In real life, it looks like the men posed by themselves, but the app inserted a picture of their virtual girlfriends to simulate companionship. As the only single dude on the show, it's apparently my job to investigate this matter in greater detail, so see you in Japan!

What's with everyone just throwing away animals? First there was the security camera clip of a British woman trashing a cat, and now LiveLinks just posted a video of a young girl chucking puppy after adorable puppy into a river! Luckily, we can rely on the vigilante justice of 4Chan's /b/ thread to come to the rescue in both cases.

The infamous message board is on the hunt to reveal the identity of said puppy-chucker, and they've already narrowed down the location of the river to a city in Croatia; they even found two potential Facebook profiles that match her description, although it could be anyone. She's around 5 feet 7 inches tall, blond, and Caucasian...nevertheless, we're confident that they'll bring the culprit to justice. Just don't hurt us!

Again, there's only one hour left to add us on Twitter (add Jeff, Wilson, and Justin while you're at it) and tweet out the bolded message up there for your chance to win one of two All You Can Jet prizes, courtesy of JetBlue! Good luck to everyone entering. We can't wait to see where you go!

Episode 656 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Anime keyboards bring out your inner otaku

These pimped-out Japanese keys take the "bored" out of keyboards.

Why should the tactile tools we touch all day be blandly beige, boring black, or washed-out white? Japanese content producer E-Junex recently came to the rescue of aesthetically challenged input devices with two keyboards sporting anime-style gals.

They're perhaps not as pleasurable to stroke as Kazuharu Sakura's luxurious leather keyboard, but they're certainly more practical.

The doe-eyed maidens are a staple in Japanese manga (comics) and anime. They're also plastered over virtually every surface of Akihabara, Tokyo's electronics and otaku goods hub.

E-Junex … Read more