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Japanese pop star Anna Amemiya is fast becoming a household name in her homeland, where sexually suggestive photos have made her an almost overnight Internet sensation. Most of her portfolio consists either of casual, goofing-off shots, to glamour model/pin-up photos that have appeared on various racy websites.

Sounds relatively normal so far…except for the HUGE anime head roughly 2x the size of her own.

Reportedly constructed entirely from papier-mâché, Amemiya’s mug makes up roughly 1/3 of her body and is cartoonishly freaky. It’s also added to the novelty of her stage/dance gigs, from which she regularly posts photos and songs. Continue reading “Daily Anime-Rant: Real-Life, Japanese Erotic Model Has Big-Ass Anime Head…For No Reason At All” »

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Via Beat Down Boogie, Mario Warfare manages to successfully combine the worlds of Mario Bros., and of all things that decade old Christian Bale movie Equilibrium (the one with all the gun-dancing). It makes for a pretty solid, professional looking preview.

What you’ve got in the end is a far less-pudgy Mario and Luigi, a Yakuza-ed Yoshi doing Bale’s gun-kata martial arts moves, and a lot of random characters from Super Mario Bros. 2 forming the last thing standing between Bowser and complete annihilation. Continue reading “Daily Online Series: ‘Mario Warfare’ Combines Best of Both Worlds” »

Amongst the performers at this year’s Nerdathon concert (sort of a Nerdapalooza Jr, held at Comic-Con each year), El Gun Legro is receiving perhaps the most attention. And somewhat deservedly, according to several eyewitnesses who took to their blogs to vote him the unofficial nerdiest (and nuttiest).

According to nerdreactor, there’s a lot to credit for this: not only is he a capable rap artist, but he is also pretty…strange. Continue reading “Daily Nerdcore: Rapper El Gun Legro Really Likes Kung Fu, Might Be A Little Crazy” »

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One thing I’ve learned from watching “Dakimura Skydive” is that Nervli aka Melonpan simultaneously takes anime both more and less seriously than any other anime fan out there. One need only see his other youtube videos, which often involve a lot of sexually suggestive anime-related bits, to find that out.

If you’ve never heard of them,“Dakimakura” are body-length pillows, usually with sexually suggestive anime girls on them, to be used sort of as most would a blow-up doll/rest cushion-in-one. Continue reading “Daily Anime: Dude Skydives with Anime Chick Pillow” »

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The Soul Eater phenom is barely a decade old, but already seems to have earned ranking in the hearts of anime/manga fans around the world on par with Macross Saga and Captain Harlock. Nerdcore Rapper KadeshFlow is proof of that, paying tribute to the story of hot witches and emo boys in training at the Death Weapon Meister Academy:

“which stands as a defense against the forces of evil which would plunge the world into chaos and drag humanity to the very depths of fear and madness.”

It’s also a great introduction to Kadesh’s rapid-fire technique of rhyming, which is kind of like the opposite of Richie Branson (even though the two have actually teamed up before on “Bleach Rap,” which was part of Branson’s OtakuTuesdays series. Continue reading “Daily Nerdcore: KadeshFlow Pays Tribute to the Strange World of Soul Eater” »

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If you’re into chiptunes at all, Nullsleep aka Jeremiah Johnson is ranked highly on your playlist. One of the original NYC-based Chiptunes artists, the guy’s been at it for years, creating some of the strangest, genre-bending, songs ever.

Mixing together primitive 8-bit (think Atari 2600/Commodore) beats and melodies and rhythms that sound oddly at home with one another, Johnson’s got a penchant for the most random and obscure of the old school games — and most effectively, the most random of old school 8-bit sounds.  Continue reading “Daily Soundcloud: NullSleep’s Anarchic Chiptune Jams Are The Stuff of Legend” »

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Richie Branson is officially a workaholic. The man just finished his first nationwide tour (alongside MC Chris, often with somewhat unexpected results) and has released yet another single, crafted in honor of  a big-ass and freakish looking bad dude from the anime series YuYu Hakusho.

The freaky-muscled alien-looking guy in question here is Toguro, presumably Elder Toguro (thanks YuYu wiki), in demon mode. It’s a fitting tribute to one of the genre’s biggest baddies.

Like Branson’s ode to Mobile Suit Gundam and his Continue reading “Daily Nerdcore: Branson Doesn’t Miss a Beat, Drops Tribute to Classic Anime ‘YuYu Hakusho’” »

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It was back in July when we reported that BioWare and Production I.G. — a Japan-based anime company that gave us Ghost in the Shell back in the mid-nineties — had dropped some of the first footage from the Mass Effect anime, Mass Effect: Paragon Lost. Needless to say most of anime/ME fandom collectively pissed themselves, psyched for what could only be an incredibly exciting project. No half-assed Michael Bay-ish adaptation (yet), but an anime version made by an amazing studio.

According to Kotaku, however, the movie may now be doomed to production hell: as the peeps at BioWare have defaulted on their payment, and thus I.G. has been forced to cancel the contract. Could this really be as bad as it sounds — that we’ll never actually get to even see the project happen? NOOOOO. Continue reading “Daily Anime: Is BioWare’s Mass Effect Anime Dead?” »

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A human who advocates exterminating the entire human race, Ashe 3.0‘s hyperkinetic blend of  DJing, dubstep, hip-hop and nerdcore (with some chiptunes thrown in for good measure) would be a kick-ass soundtrack for the apocalypse.

The fact that Mr. 3.0 manages to blend all of the above on nearly every track he’s made makes it all the more entertaining, again reiterating the theory that sometimes music is often best when its erratic, jarring, and impossible to categorize.(aka best for those who are suffering from intense ADHD).

Ashe anounces himself as Continue reading “Daily Soundcloud: Ashe 3.0 Decimates With His Chaotic Brand of Nerdcore” »

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Masaki Kitamura, a 42-year-old director of animation perhaps best known for his work on classic anime series like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Mobile Suit Gundam and Wolf’s Rain, has been arrested for making a massacre threat in the city of Osaka.

According to police officials, Kitamura threatened to run over pedestrians and “stab whoever I can with a knife before committing suicide.”

Why, exactly, Kitamura would make this threat is one thing…why he’d post his threat on the Osaka City government website is something we don’t know. Continue reading “Daily Anime: ‘Mobile Suit”/”Yu-Gi-Oh!” Animator Arrested for Allegedly Making Massacre Threat” »

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While we all know it’s going to be hard to top Gilbert Gottfried’s reading from 50 Shades of Grey, MC CoolWhip’s own fireside reading is, in its own way, pretty amazing. Via Nerdcore Now, it’s fairly straight and to-the-point, almost understated…maybe it’s that which makes it work so well.

That and the fact that Cool Whip wears a bathrobe, too-short boxers, smokes a pipe and reads it in this tone somewhere between matter-of-fact and Masterpiece Theater, albeit without the British accent/classiness.

Luckily for us his Continue reading “Daily Nerdcore: MC Cool Whip to Read Live From “50 Shades of Grey” Tonight” »

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What might be one of the most immortal battles to ever go down, Richard Hom’s “Mass Effect 3 Versus Girlfriend” contains a bunch of lines that guys would love to use on their girlfriends, and also as their epitaphs – “Make me a sandwich,” “Playing Mass Effect 3 was more fun than hanging out with you,” “Son of a –” or other things guys say (often prematurely), “I’m about to extract.”

And thus how it goes with our hero, who must overcome a battle of enormously difficult proportions by somehow Continue reading “Daily Online Series: Why Your Girlfriend Doesn’t Want You Playing ‘Mass Effect 3′” »

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While the government continues to insist that the notion of chemtrails are simply the stuff of conspiracy theories and really non-poisonous ‘contrails’, Korean music artist Skull dedicates a large part of his life to attending concerts, conventions, and maintaining on online presence supporting the opposite view.

In case you weren’t familiar with the movement, Chemtrails are artificial clouds of poisonous chemicals usually left by crop dusters and sky-writers, but which Skull believes are more prevalent than many would lead us to believe.

Musically, Skull pretty much Continue reading “Reggae Artist SKULL Fights ‘Chemtrails’ Conspiracy in “Cry Die” Music Video” »

After 12 stressful years of maximum capacity-sized crowds and forced relocations, Japan Expo is officially moving from Europe to America. Does this mean Anime Expo – U.S.’ reigning king convention of all things anime/manga-related (and a bit troubled by financial woes as of late) — has met its match?

There’s a few reasons this might be a possibility.

First is the sheer diversity JE offers; unlike the Anime Expo (or most of the other conventions here), Japan Expo doesn’t limit its focus to merely one or two categories. Brand-new video games are demoed before they’re even finished in their homeland; Manga’s top publishing houses, like Naoki Urasawa, preview new comics; the biggest and most popular of the J-Pop groups throw live concerts (all- girl band Momoiro Clover Z performed there a couple years ago);  Continue reading “Daily Anime: Japan Expo Coming to America; Could it Be A Threat to Other Anime/Manga Conventions?” »

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Jesse Dangerously, Adam WarRock, Mikal kHill and Tribe One are uniting for a nation-wide, nerdcore tour, which will carry the aptly nerdy moniker of ‘ The NOFRIENDS 2012 tour’.

And as the tour name suggests, Top 40 rappers most nerdcore musicians ain’t (at least not yet). Thus the quartet have decided to put together their own compilation/mash-up album called Fun Razor, with each artist rapping over the others’ beats and exchanging songs. While it’s a labor of musical love, the quartet is also doing this to cover their touring expenses. Continue reading “Daily Nerdcore: Adam WarRock, Jesse Dangerously, Mikal kHill and Tribe One Embark On Nationwide “NO FRIENDS” Tour” »

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For what feels like centuries (even though it’s actually been just under a century), The Big Bang Theory has pretty much become the go-to for how the universe started — as accepted by Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and pretty much every other cosmologist/theoretical physicist who ever lived (with the famous exception of Albert Einstein).

This week, however, physicists at the University of Melbourne have proposed a brand new theory: that the universe exploded/expanded not from one tiny and extremely compressed, infinitesimal point — but rather from a hot steamy liquid bath of formless energy, which gradually crystallized and formed the 4-dimensional universe our pale blue dot currently inhabits. According to Space.com, ‘think of it as analogous to ice’ or “A Big Chill.” Continue reading “Daily Rant: Could The Big Bang (As We Know It) Be a Big Lie?” »

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The notion of a manga cafe (also known as “kissa”) probably won’t come across as all that groundbreaking, even to Americans. They’re basically the equivalent of a U.S. comic book shop, except they offer tons more cool stuff and aren’t on the verge of extinction. They started being built in the 1970s, when comics first got popular as serialized in magazines like Young and later Animedia.

Over the past few years however, the manga cafes are offering what we will probably never see: as manga in print form continues to skyrocket, over here comics are dying a slow death at the hands of the online digital comic revolution. According to EnvironmentalGraffiti, however, Japanese manga cafes offer a whole lotta stuff those comic book stores over here don’t. Continue reading “Daily Anime: Introducing Manga Cafes, Your Home Away From Home” »

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By now the story of Karen Klein is synonymous with images of a poor middle aged woman being bullied and tormented by students on a bus. Now Klein will be taking some of that money and using it for a great cause.

When a Toronto-based man decided to start a fund in hopes of being able to send Klein on a much-deserved vacation, donations from around the world poured in totaling nearly $700,000. Nearly 4 months later, Klein has decided to invest $100,000 of that to start “The No Bully Tour”, accompanied by Miss Teen USA Logan West (who has been a huge proponent of anti-bullying legislation,having been bullied herself). Continue reading “Daily Deed: Bullied Bus Monitor Fights Back With Her Own Charity” »

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As you’ve heard by now, Nintendo Power, one of the longest-running gamer mags in history, is ending its print run and will now maintain a strictly online presence. When it debuted 1988, featuring Super Mario Bros. 2 on the cover, NP was immediately the sh*t — featuring tips, codes, and huge maps that would fold out and basically show you how to beat a game. Sucks that it’s going to that big printed gaming magazine graveyard in the sky.

Fortunately there’s Mega Ran, nerdcore guru and just the guy to perform the magazine’s eulogy, courtesy of beats and melodies from RC Pro Am, one of the oldest NES games. Continue reading “Daily Nerdcore: Mega Ran Mourns the Official Death of Nintendo Power” »

I’m a sucker for a good name, especially if it indirectly or even accidentally references Megatron’s mutation into Galvatron at the hands of Unicron in the Transformers universe. Calvertron‘s especially good at taking often hackneyed/sui generis and perhaps even overplayed genres of music like electronica and dubstep and making them into something new, improved, and generally just kick-ass.

His collaboration with Meleefresh on “8BitDreamz” is exactly what should make half-assed dubstep artists scared — it takes the genre and transforms (see how I did that?) it into something rather kick-ass, incorporating chiptune-flavored melodies with a drone fembot voice and erratic, and chaotic, dubstep. Continue reading “Daily Soundcloud: Calvertron Wants You As His Minions” »