Tokyo Restaurants Offer Limited Evangelion Menu Items
On the menus: LCL drink, Eva Honey Toast, squid-ink Sachiel Pasta
The Cure Maid Café in Tokyo's Akihabara otaku shopping district is updating and reviving its Eva Cafe menu until May 18 to mark the April 25 DVD release of the Evangelion: 1.0 You Are [Not] Alone film in Japan. One of the restored menu items is the LCL Drink (pictured at right): orange juice served in a bonus Puka-Puka Rei-chan tumbler glass. It serves Sachiel Pasta (squid-ink pasta with a cheese angel head and a cherry tomato, pictured below) and a Dialogue and Character Name Cheesecake (cake with random dialogue lines and character names written on top). It also offers an Asuka cocktail (orange juice with pomegranate syrup) and a Rei cocktail (grapefruit juice with Blue Hawaii syrup).
The Pasela chain of Japanese restauants is offering a partly different Evangelion menu until May 25. For the Eva Honey Toast, the cafe takes its house specialty (a stack of honey-soaked toast, pictured below) and tops it with a crucified Lilith angel and NERV logo. It also offers Sachiel Pasta, Misato's Curry Ramen, and a pitcher of draft beer with the bonus Rei tumbler glass. The Akihabara branch of the chain replaces Eva Honey Toast with White Wing Honey Toast and adds "dessert of Zaruel."
I have always wanted to know what Lilith really tastes like.
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ANN
Bandai Reissues of Macross Valkyries to be Imported to USA
Remake of classic Takatoku toys to be distributed by North America's Toynami
North America's Toynami announced that it will distribute Valkyrie robot toys that the Japanese company Bandai had based on Takatoku's classic Macross toy line. The defunct Takatoku company developed the first transformable toys for Studio Nue's Super Dimension Fortress Macross space war series (1982-1983). Takatoku's 1/55-scale VF-1 Valkyrie fighter toy were eventually remolded and recolored as the Jetfire toy for The Transformers line.
Toynami will start its Valkyrie toy release with the VF-1S (pictured above) and VF-1J (pictured below) variants this summer, and continue with the VF-1A variant with detachable Super packs this fall. These first releases will be sold under The Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love? name. Macross: Do You Remember Love? was the 1984 theatrical film adaptation of the first Macross series.
Toynami plans to release more toys from the first Macross series under the Robotech brand in 2009. The North American distributor Harmony Gold USA partially released the first Macross series on home video in 1984, before rewriting and editing the series with two other series to compile the Robotech project in 1985.
Toynami was founded in 2000 after Harmony Gold USA asked for compensation on the toy imports for the animated Macross Plus sequel by Toynami's predecessor, Toycom. The issue grew into a larger dispute with two lawsuits and led to the recent impasse in Macross releases outside Japan. Before importing the upcoming Valkyrie toy line, Toynami produced its own line of 1/55-scale toys as well as lower-priced 1/100-scale toys. Both of these in-house Toynami designs had less die-cast metal than the Takatoku toys.
Yamato Toys, the former Japanese partner of Toycom, produced a recent 1/48-scale line of VF-1 Valkyrie toys. This June, it will start a 1/60-scale line (pictured at right) that matches the scale of the toys from the other Macross projects in Japan. Both Yamato toy lines use less die-cast metal than Takatoku's toys of the 1980s, but are more faithful to the original mechanical designs.
Bandai is reissuing the Macross toys in Japan to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the first Macross series and the 2008 launch of the Macross Frontier television series.
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ANN
Newsweek Japan Lists Kon's Paprika Among 100 Best Films
Mag's critics include surreal anime with Lawrence of Arabia, Godfather, Star Wars
The Japanese edition of Newsweek magazine lists Satoshi Kon's Paprika anime in its 100 Best Films list. The magazine's critics selected their top films for the expanded Golden Week issue (April 30/May 7 issue). Only a few titles produced in Japan, such as Paprika, Letter from Iwo Jima, and Tampopo, were included in the list.
Other titles on the list from the 1960s and 1970s include Lawrence of Arabia, Godfather, American Graffiti, All the President's Men, Star Wars, and Apocalypse Now. From the 1980s and 1990s, the Newsweek Japan critics listed E.T., Stand by Me, Out of Africa, The Last Emperor, Gung Ho, Sex, Lies, and Videotapes, Dances with Wolves, Silence of the Lambs, JFK, Magnolia, and Being John Malkovich. The list also included more recent titles such as Monsoon Wedding, City of God, Whale Rider, Finding Nemo, 21 Grams, and American Splendor.
While movie critic David Ansen did not list Paprika and the French/Iranian animated film Persepolis in his 2007 top-ten list for the American edition of Newsweek, he did include them in his ten runner-up films.
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ANN
