Let's do a quick word association test: Japanese giant robot shows.
The usual subjects come to mind—Evangelion, Gundam, Mazinger Z and all his god-like brethren. Transformers would only register as an afterthought, it at all.
It's easy to forget that Transformers, though produced by Hasbro, was animated chiefly by Japan's legendary Toei Studio (as a follow up to Voltron, ironically). Japan continued the saga even after the toy line died down in the states with The Headmasters and successive series throughout the mid-90's, many of which still have American fans clamoring for a release. Even the 100% western-produced CG Beast Wars would receive a mad-cap localization and anime sequels overseas that brought a new generation into the fold.
Transfunket is another such effort to take Tranformers back to its country of origin in a way that only the Japanese can—through dojinshi and cosplay.
Held last Sunday at a rusted-out civic center in Asakusabashi, the event crammed over 100 dealers into an area the size of a church basement for an afternoon of human-on-bot excitement. Proceed with caution—the content is not what you'd expect of your typical BotCon. The rare toys and comics were sorely outnumbered by the Etsy-level crafts and slash fiction. If you've ever wanted a Decepticon daruma, or fantasized about Megatron and Starscream grinding gears, then you've come to the right place.
I didn't get an advance ticket so by the time I was let inside all the "good" dojinshi was sold-out. Knockout pairings were apparently in high demand.
The only way to improve Shockwave's design would be to add breasts and thigh-high boots. Bravo!
Crafting anthropomorphic fashion is the most important skill a Transformers fujoshi can possess, next to visualizing slash fiction for heavy machinery. Dig the giant collar for Megatron's shoulder pads.
Michael Bay and Be@rbrick, double branding of two of my least favorite things.
Proof that the fandom hasn't been completely taken over by cross-dressing robots.
Nakashima Naoki is the one artist I would actually buy something from, so naturally he didn't have a booth.
My apologizes to red-blooded western Transfans—you won't share a common bond with a majority of your Japanese compatriots. According to the organizer, the event used to be driven by man-children in awe of giant robots, but recently fujoshi have started calling the shots.
The changeover was inevitable. Transformers is a sausage fest (assuming that the 'bots have interlocking moving parts) and any show with a mostly all-male cast is ripe for fujoshi-sploitation. If anything, the franchise was behind the pop-culture curve before picking up its female fans. All it needs now are MikuMikuDance videos to fully divorce it from the source material and make it another burnt-out meme.
Sorry, looks like I spoke too soon. Autobots inferior, Vocaloids superior.
If Wonder Festival has a fatal flaw, it's being too short. Between the stadium sized dealer's pits and cosplay alleys that snake around the venue, it's a question of either plowing through with a wide net hoping to catch everything that comes by, or hunkering down to dive deeper.
My advice to you is to steal a page from the playbook of the figure connoisseurs all around you, check your shame at the door, and simply be...
There's no room for chaff! No time to stop and admire the second-rate! The following images represent everything excellent enough to warrant pausing in our march for a closer look.
Guitar Dock and Studio Vegas is an all-in-one studio/concert venue/custom shop out in the boonies of Shizuoka that produces functional replicas of anime guitars in their down time.
Vision proves that moe comes in any number of shapes, sizes, and degrees of cellular stability.
It's always time for Silver Age sci-fi when you'reKaibutsuya.
You can rest assured, the blob goo is completely castoffable.
In the mind of Lori Funk JR , ita-Gundams totally make sense, even in the UC timeline.
Cosmos vending machines are a now defunct national treasure that dispensed borderline legal bootleg toys and candies from the late 70's through the 80's. While the kit maker, Denkai Shisei (電改試製) doesn't seem to have a net presence, you can't find plenty of historical footage on Youtube of people fiddling with cranks and cooking up hot eats that are a quarter century past the sell date.
When most figure makers sculpt resin kits for their alien skulls, Dummy Head goes straight to the source and skins the real thing. Just watch out for the leftover pumpkin guts, that stuff will eat right through to the hull.
Jin Koubou invites you to salute the King of Kaiju.
Yuugendou brings us the charming and practical Righty pencil holder...
...as well as an assortment of wearable appendages.
Roswell's sculpts are so good that they make me forget that there was ever a The Thing before or after Carpenter's.
Zoomoth wins the award for Best New Figure Dude with a triple threat of explosive kits (presented here in order of descending threat level) beginning with the Baby Metroid.
The eponymous sorcerer from Fortress of Necros stands poised to once again ravage the countryside! Fortress of Necros was a Cracker Jack box series of toys packed with ramune candy pellets, with the defining difference between it and fellow lunch money thieves Kinkeshi and Bikkuri Man being that they came with a rules card as part of a massive RPG game world.
Biggy Man fans, your day in the sun has come! When your strike zone is as narrow as this, you better believe that every hit is a home run.
Daibadi Production has perfected the art of crafting chunky Famicom cyborgs. The tech developed in creating their Mega Man line does not go wasted here on Samus.
Link Factory had a goofy Inugami Family lotto setup. Instead of a ticket, you try your luck by plucking a drowned leg out of a lake.
Saber's sweet ride should turn heads as a pinnacle of post-modern art: A full-scale replica of a figure of a bike that doesn't actually appear in the source material? Talk about the copy surpassing the original.
That's all the figures we got for this season! Join us again soon for the obligatory cosplay roundup.
Wonder Festival is Japan's largest and semi-annual garage kit market sponsored by Osaka-based figure giant Kaiyodo (the geniuses behind Revoltech, to say the least).
Naturally we don't go there for the limited-edition toys or salacious sculpts. No, the ever-morphing market and unpredictable nature of the crowd alone is well worth the price of admission.
This year’s pamphlet followed the 3/11 zeitgeist and featured its mascots sewing sequins and hot-gluing ceremonial rocks onto a catfish. You see, folklore holds catfish as the harbingers of quakes whose appetite for destruction can only be pacified with the stone of their patron god, Kaname, because... well, it beats me, but the folks at Pink Tentacle are elbow-deep in this stuff if you’ve got a hankerin’ for knowledge.
The rhinestones were presumably added to get more gyaru into noodling this season.
General Observations
-It goes without saying that the Madoka crew made the biggest showing of the day, with the scale tipped inordinately in favor of Mami over Miki. It also provided a loophole for a bumper crop of guys aching to dress up like girls without being transvestites. The crossplay scene is always split between guys letting it all shamelessly hang out and the more conservative full-bodysuit zentai, though they both seem to have been driven out of the woodwork in droves this year. Perhaps the recent otoko no ko trend is blossoming into a full blown boom?
-On the indy side of things, Vocaloid and Toho (or at, least things I can identify as Toho) were pushed out of the pit to make room for the girls of Black Rock Shooter, not surprising considering that the eponymous character is essentially a Player 2 palette swap of Hatsune Miku, complete with an exposed midriff, jet black hair, and firearms instead of leeks.
-The heat and recent double catastrophe didn’t do much to dispel attendees, though there was an obvious disparity in independent booths with a massive gap in the middle of the indy hall.
Enough talk, have at the photos!
Madoka Cosplay
Hey kid, you wanna I give you my grief seed?
QB is the new Pedo Bear it would seem.
Best Homura of the day, hands down.
It's totally not cross dressing if it's cosplay. Too bad the sweat was making their makeup run.
Tiger & Bunny Cosplay
Tiger adopts Ika Musume, who looks to be someone's actual kid. It's times like this where we ask ourselves as a nation, "Where were the parents!?"
Crossplayers like this will make you into a fujoshi whether you like it or not.
Both women and men had to paint on Tiger's facial hair.
Blue Rose goes semi-Ganguro.
Lethally Awesome Cosplay
Acguy with functioning grabby hands and scanball cyclops eye. Notice the little dude riding in the chest!
Tomino and Anno take their shitty garage band from their mom's basement to the streets.
PINCHER HOLD! Pretty tame finishing move as far as perverts go.
Third string Chojin hamming it up.
This respectable lady is like a Masamune Shirow character come to life but I'm drawing a blank. Any ideas?
Captain Harlock doing his own damn thang.
How the mighty have fallen! Long-term and clinically obsessive readers will recognize this gent as the champion of the Famicon underground series from 2010's Famimode.
Creamy Mami is the one magical girl who never sells out, snitches, or goes out of style. Pre-transformation even!
Cosplayers Just Hanging Out
"How many cosplayers does it take to fasten a Kamen Rider helmet...?"
For the first time in his life, Wild Tiger is asked for his autograph.
Pictures of Guys Taking Pictures
And this was the size of the crowd before she started masturbating on the concrete.
Broken ankles are a small price to pay for the money shot.
Wearing a schoolgirl uniform to a convention is like cutting your wrists in shark-infested waters.
This print coming soon to a museum of modern art near you.
Guy taking a picture of us taking a picture of him taking a picture of us taking a picture of him taking a picture of us taking a picture of him taking a picture of us taking a picture of him..
Obama in his natural element, surrounded by whores and the pigs who buy them.
Which is stupider: Black Rock curry or the fact it sold out?
Moshzilla.
Z-movie magazine Trash-Up!! recently staged a Frankenstein Monster- Sanda VS Gaira (AKA War of the Gargantuans) revival at their Bakuon Movie Fest. Here's hoping that Frankenstein VS Baragon is next.
Zombie head sculpts are the only thing keeping a moe-crazed nation sane.
"Ghost of Godzilla" could be retro-fitted to an anti-anti nuclear parable, as in THE SKIN WILL MELT FROM YOUR BONES WITHOUT AIR CONDITIONING THIS SUMMER you goddamn hippies.
Bush goes Over the Top and takes us home.
That's all of the productivity-sapping gruel we have to serve up until the Comiket season, which is coming up on us sooner than I like to think about. Full Wonder Festival 2011 album here
Our far more ambitions coverage of Wonder Festival 2010 (Summer) can be found here: Figures Cosplay
