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otakuriffic

Four times now, with no luck, I've gone to Osaka's analog for Akihabara, Den-Den Town in search of a Microman Batman figure for my pal, Boneyard. While fruitless and frustrating, there are always gems of local culture that remind me that I'm living abroad, and that Things Here Are Strange, Different, and Weirdly Beautiful.

This time the reminder was in a model/hobbyshop. In one of the shelves, among the custom-painted Gundam models and grotesquely expensive Five Star Stories resin models, were two collage objects -- creations frankensteined together out of other parts. Coming out of two Ma.K Chronicle (Maschinen Krieger (SF3D) -- quasi-WW II mecha) were the sultry forms of Evangelion's Rei Ayanami and Asuka Langley. --Except that their heads were not on their plugsuit or student uniforms, but the overdeveloped bodies of bikini-clad G-Taste gachapon. To top it off, they were holding to-scale baseball bats for the underdog team, the Hanshin Tigers. In one fell otaku-swoop, the artist managed to unselfconsciously get so many subculture zeitgeist points, it stunned me into immobility.

In part I remembered this because of this JeanSnow-linked article on the trouble being experienced by anime creators which may lead to increased outsourcing.

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