Just over 2 years ago the world united to raise support for the families of thousands of Japanese citizens either killed or injured on the east coast of Japan in the Great East Japan Earthquake and its resulting tsunami. To help encourage the recovery of the Tōhoku region the adorable mascot Tōhoku Zunko was born. Much like the more popular vocaloids her design is based around food, specifically a zundamochi which is a sweet crafted in the Tōhoku region that is a mochi with green soybean paste. Famously Hatsune Miku is always associated with a leek and Kagamine Rin with oranges.
On 28th September 2012 a Voiceroid program featuring the voice of Satomi Satō (Ritsu from K-ON!) was released. Its tremendous popularity led to a crowd funding project to be set up for the creation of a Vocaloid voicebank for the mochi-coloured mascot and last Friday it finally reached its target of 5million yen. The company SSS who created the Voiceroid program have announced that the Vocaloid software will be released in late 2013 or early 2014.
Fun Facts about Tōhoku Zunko – Her hobbies are archery and baking cakes.
– In the future she wants to own her own café in Tokyo where she will coat her arrows in green soybean paste (Zunko) and shoot her mochi with them to create the zunkomochi she is based on.
-She is 17 years old and in her second year of high-school.
– Her headband and archery bow are both made of edamame which is a type of soybean
For more information about the Vocaloid phenomena sweeping the planet and more, head over to our Japanese Pop Culture News Centre and also the official Zunko website here.
Hope is lost and only the savage survive. In a world where the roads are paved to nowhere, what choices will you make to stay alive?
Interactive Entertainment and Avalanche Studios surprised everyone at this year’s E3 expo last June, when they announced Mad Max, but it was the good kind of surprised that got the the crowd excited. Releasing on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC, the game will follow (you guessed it) Max himself as he goes through the wasteland, proving that you don’t need to be a hero to change things.
The footage shown was exciting and felt like the old films. The only concern was that the voice actor for Max in the game did not have an Australian accent. However, through an online petition, this has since been rectified and now everyone can be excited for some sick wasteland beat-downs once again.
If that wasn’t enough to get your blood pumping, then you should also know that the game’s developer, Warner Bros. have released the first gameplay trailer for Mad Max. The trailer, titled “Soul of a Man,” shows Max walking through the deserted, sandy wilderness, and beating down some unlucky thugs while a soft female voice narrates the dire situation that the world is in. Honestly, words don’t do the trailer justice, so do yourselves a favour and check it out below.
Mad Max is still a while off being released,so be sure to stay tuned to Capsule Computers over the next few months for all the news on the game as it becomes available.
At the inaugural PAX Australia 2013 event, July 19-21, SteelSeries will be exhibiting their new H-Series of headsets – the 3Hv2, 5Hv3, and 9H – as well as the Limited Edition Siberia v2 Heat Orange Headset.
The latter has been awarded for its unique design and superior sound quality, combining the classic Siberia style with illumination, control, and features including heat orange illumination, superior sound and comfort and noise-cancelling microphone and controls. SteelSeries General Manager & Regional Sales Director in Oceania, Annabelle Woods, said;
Having PAX come to Australia is a huge deal for our gaming community. SteelSeries has globally always been at the forefront of the gaming industry and we are thrilled to now be part of the first PAX Australia.
Booth 2321 is your SteelSeries destination for all three days of the event. Drop by if you are attending and try out the headsets. There’ll also be a chance to win some SteelSeries award-winning gear! Keep it locked to Capsule Computers for our PAX Aus 2013 coverage and be sure to follow SteelSeries on Facebook and Twitter for upcoming promotions and contests.
Warframe has been going strong since it launched and now that the company has gathered over three million users since the title launched, one million more than the amount they had for the last update. To commemorate this milestone, the developers for the title have been working hard on bringing another update to the game, this time it is simply called Update 9 and features a number of new additions and fixes.
The update includes the Nova Warframe, which is the first one designed by the community, a Design Council forum that allows special privileged users to have some influence with how things happen in the game and a chance to see all Warframe news before anyone else. To see what other type of additions and modifications have been made in the latest update, as well as a chance to see this online co-op shooter in action, you can check out the video below or read the full info about the patch here.
Hey there, everybody! I’m Frank Inglese and welcome to the first CC Comic Zone! Obviously you have no idea what CC Comic Zone is yet so here we go: Basically each week I will be talking about different aspects of Comics, Mangas, Graphic Novels and pretty much everything that is drawn. I’ll go through what I feel works in a Comic and also what I feel does NOT work. This week I’ll be talking about the “Relatable Protagonist” and why I think that it’s one of the most well-used element in illustrated media.
“Just a slob like on of us…”
A “relatable Protagonist” is an odd one to define because relatable has such a large spectrum; the main character could be smart, he/she could be an idiot, he/she could be rich, he/she could be poor and no matter what he or she IS there’s always a guarantee that they will relate to someone who is reading the Comic. We’ve had so many protagonists over time that are just lovable dorks that remind us of ourselves, the number 1 example is Peter Parker/Spiderman, he’s a bookworm and science geek turned superhero yet he retains his teenage angst, smart-arse attitude and lightning-fast quips. He’s like one of us and that’s why we love him.
Western Comics are full of characters who were once normal people and it’s what gets us hooked in. I think that if there were to be a main character who was already great, who already had the power, the money, the ladies/men, and the attitude we really wouldn’t like them as much, we definitely wouldn’t be able to relate to them so it makes for a bad first impression and they always say that first impressions last. I feel like that’s why Spiderman is loved by a vast majority of Pop Culture lovers, even if he’s not your favourite he’s still very much up there on the list.
A web-slinger needs some good friends ya’ know?
Even a lot of these more violent Comics, Graphic Novels and Manga have characters that are, or were once, just normal people turned evil or at least turned bad. One such Comic that comes to mind is The Strange Talents of Luther Strode which, if you don’t know what that is, is about a young boy who just constantly gets bullied, he’s lived a fairly hard life, he pretty much has just the one friend and he spent a lot of his childhood watching his Father beat his Mother yet when he’s introduced in the first chapter he is a well-spoken, kind, young man. That right there is a good start.
He then orders a book through a magazine that is said to make anyone substantially stronger both mentally and physically, well, Luther buys this book and after a couple days of reading and meditation he becomes this incredible human being who is agile, strong, smart, the whole deal BUT that is where the trouble starts. I’m not going to give too much away but the coming events force Luther to use his new “talents” to become a monster like no other. By the end of the series audiences would have seen Luther rip apart many, many people in the most brutal way but I guarantee nobody who had read the Comic would have hated Mr. Strode and I believe that is because of his initial introduction as an all around nice guy and the type of person we could see ourselves being.
This LAN party went so wrong so quickly…
Scott Pilgrim is another great example of a killer main character. He’s so naive and so lazy and is just all round…US. He has his friends, he has his annoying family, he has his gay room-mate, his story is fairly mundane until he falls in love with a girl that he THINKS he saw in his dreams but it turns out she’s a little more than just his “dream girl”. That’s where the story gets weird and wacky but every reaction, every decision, every choice is one that, had we been in that situation, we would have done the same.
A perfect example in Scott Pilgrim is, now if you havn’t read all the books just be warned this is a very slight spoiler, during one of the last Volumes it turns out that one of Scott’s friends, Steven, is gay. Now although scott as just fought 6 evil ex boyfriends (and one girlfriend) for the sake of his love Ramona he is still utterly shocked by this because although he’s going on these wild adventures into the world of fight-dating he is still a normal guy living in a normal world that, yes, would be taken back by something like finding out one of your friends is gay. It’s so simple but it just works.
A normal reaction to a normal situation.
In end I think we all read Comics because we want to escape into the world of the Comics, it’s the same reason people who are lost in love watch romantic movies it’s to escape into a world that you will enjoy and it’s through the relatable main characters that you can easily do that. It’s this element that also makes games where you can make your own character so popular, it’s because it almost forces you to be that character, it’s also the same element that drives you to tell your friends about the Comic your reading because you know they’re like you and if the character is like you and you are like them it’s only natural to want to connect. It’s that simple, it’s that easy,and it works.
Einstein Enigma allows players to challenge their brain in a playful, motivating way. The player has to solve more than 100 tricky levels. The basic principle of the game is to rotate six different colored wheels to match the different colour templates of each level. The degree of difficulty is increasing step by step, more and more elements including coloured wheels, cogwheels and more appear level by level. Einstein Enigma is inspired by the famous Enigma rotor cipher machine, which is also based on rotating wheels. The character of revered physicist Albert Einstein assists players in-game, guiding them through a tutorial. All levels and graphics of the game were individually designed with high levels of creativity, making this truly unique brain puzzle game a blast to play.
The game is available on the App Store and Amazon, with Google Play availability to be added later.
CAPCOM has unveiled the first trailer for the latest release in the Street Fighter series, Ultra Street Fighter IV. It will indeed be another updated re-release, rather than a brand new title.
Ultra Street Fighter IV will contain 5 new characters (the fifth will be a newcomer to the series), new battlegrounds, rebalanced gameplay, new modes and features. The four characters that we do know are featured in the trailer: Poison, Elena, Hugo and Rolento.
Click on image to see if it in full size.
Those of you who already own Super Street Fighter IV will be able to buy the update for US$14.99, while a retail copy containing all current DLC will be available for US$39.99.
Click on image to see in full size.
The refreshed fighter will be available in early 2014 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. Check out the debut trailer below.
Street Fighter characters were recently part of the awesome crossover title, Project X Zone for the 3DS.
Kaiju. Since Godzilla first ran rampant, these terrors have destroyed countless onscreen cities. Humanity fights back with bullets, planes, tanks and anything else that goes boom. But what if we fought them on even ground…or ocean? What if Transformers decided to give Godzilla the ‘ol what for?Therein lies Pacific Rim. Just in case the action packed trailers haven’t quite piqued your interest in this grand-slam showdown between monster and machine, here are five reasons why you should watch Warner Bros & Legendary Pictures‘ Pacific Rim.
That’s not a chest cannon…
1Australi-owned Although we’re the country down under it seems like we really came out on top. The Australian Jaegar, Striker Eureka, is both the fastest and most deadly robot in the movie and it’s got a Kaiju kill count that out does every other country. This is great because Australia doesn’t often get the spotlight when it comes to movie that involve the entire world being in peril! Where was the Australian superhero in The Avengers? No where to be seen because he wasn’t invited, poor Australia, well poor Australia no more because in Pacific Rim when the going gets tough the tough calls us Aussies. Disregard the actors who played the Aussie pilots, they did their best but I suggest adding subtitles for the next screening because “Bludy ‘ell Mayte” they were a little hard to understand.
Someone’s gotta do the Charlie Work
2 Dayman: Researcher of the Kaiju Though the Jeagers steal the show, what with their epic combat and apocalypse cancelling status, everyone needs a little backup. Heading the science team and bringing humour into the ongoing destruction is Charlie Day. Doctor, Kaiju otaku and risk taker, he is more central to the plot than it would originally seem, whether people want him to be or not. Naturally he finds himself in perilous situations and learns that it’s not always sunny in Hong Kong. Paired with a straight man mathematician, this duo proceeds to argue, scream and deal their way to the greatest fictional scientific discoveries of this generation.
We’re going to need a bigger museum
3 Fresh Kaiju Now we all know what happens when a giant creature attacks a city. Buildings are crushed, bullets are deflected, occasionally damsels are carried to the top of the Empire State Building. But what happens afterwards? The credits don’t always roll when the monster goes down. The results are messy to say the least. The colossal remains are procured by black market dealers, who wheel and deal “miracle cures” and sell chunks of Kaiju to the highest bidder. A roaring trade, crews are on the scene fast and in a few days the Kaiju is in pieces. Areas decide to adopt a skeleton decor once they realise its difficult to move a 50 tonne femur off of the street. Religions spawn, viewing the Kaiju as God’s anger at poor old planet Earth. Others adopt a less…Revelationy approach and instead make quirky game shows and a line of action figures. Who said the results had to be all bad? Ok…most of it is bad.
Operation Jaeger Drop
4 Robots and Monsters
Monsters are cool. Robots are cool. That’s about it actually…no? You want more? Fine! Monster movies are so incredibly cheesy, to the point where if you invited me over to your house to watch an old Kaiju film I will respectfully decline your offer and follow that was an incredibly disrespectful rant about why old monster movies suck, well, Pacific Rim is for the lactose intolerant because there’s no cheese in this film. It’s straight up action, it’s straight up tensions, it’s straight up to the top of my favourite movies list. there was never a real lull in the movie, whenever the earth was silent it was because there was some sort of fight going on within the characters. Let me also say the monsters were well designed and the actually story, which I’m not going to tell you about, will take you by surprise. Big time.
The man behind it all
5 It’s a del Toro Guillermo Del Toro films are never bad, let’s be entirely honest, and this one is no different. He likes big, he likes crazy and he flippin’ loves monsters! It’s not just that he loves doing these sorts of movies it’s the fact that he’s good at making them that counts and, much like Hellboy did, this movie will make fans extremely happy. He’s somehow brought the epic Kaiju action of yesteryear into the present. He’s a master of the screen and he’s a master of the epic. Simple as that.
Special mention also has to go to the names in Pacific Rim. We’ve got Gipsy Danger, Striker Eureka, Crimson Typhoon and that’s just a few of the Jeager. Kaiju are throwing Knifehead, Raiju and Scunner just to name a few.
Fans clamoured for it; they bombarded NetherRealm and Ed Boon’s Twitter, took to the forums and boards, overwhelmed polls, and now they can cease, for their quest to get Martian Manhunter playable in Injustice: Gods Among Us is complete. Ed Boon made the announcement during EVO 2013 this past weekend, also revealing a gameplay trailer of the green Martian in action.
That trailer can be viewed embedded at the bottom of this article. J’onn J’onzz finally makes the transition from a background element in the Watchtower arena to fully playable fighter (literally…choose him on that level, and he will disappear from the background). Those who watch the video will also notice a new Green Lantern skin – that of architect John Stewart. Coming with a new voice-over, the skin’s inclusion does not mean, however, that we will be seeing all new construct abilities relating to his very different background to Hal Jordan. Sigh…I bet that’ll turn into another reason for people to complain…
So rejoice fans! A great game is still getting better. A release date has not been confirmed as of yet, but stay tuned within the coming days and we’re sure we’ll have more to share as we update this article.
The Australian Anime distributor, Madman, made a few big announcements this weekend at AVCon 2013 which is Adelaide’s very own Anime convention so it’s no surprise that we got some cool news from it much like every other year.
The first, and possibly biggest announcement, was made during the Madman National Cosplay Competition Championship. The announcement was that the next movie to hit Reel Anime 2013 will be none other than Ghost In the Shell: Arise. Considering Funimation just announced that they will be releasing Ghost In The Shell: Arise it’s safe to say that we won’t have any dub by the time it is screened for Reel Anime 2013 but we will definitely have the subbed version by then. It’s also safe to assume that we will only be seeing Border 1: Ghost Pain seeing as it’s the first of four 50-minute features in the Ghost In The Shell: Arise series.
It was also announced that the hit series’ Attack On Titan and Code:Breaker will both be streamed for free by Madman on the Madman Screening Room in the near future. There have been no dates or plans for a home video releases as of yet but we can expect something like that within the next year or so. The last bit of information to be announced is that the movie Grave Of The Fireflies, a classic from Studio Ghibli dating back to 1988, will be released on both Blu-Ray and DVD at some point in the immediate future.
Once again we’ve gotten some great news from Madman and I guarantee we’ll continue seeing their great releases in the coming weeks and months. keep an eye on the site for any and all new information and news to be released. Don’t forget to hit up our comments section below and let your voice be heard.
