TBS News is reporting that the town used as a model for the setting of Ponyo, Tomo no Ura, has managed to stop the destruction of part of the now world-famous bay. It seems that Hiroshima prefecture wanted to build a bridge across the bay and fill in a portion of the waterfront to create land for a parking lot and other amenities. Leaving the not-so-subtle irony of burying Ponyo’s bay for the sake of parking aside, the residents of Tomo no Ura were angry enough about the environmental destruction and associated eyesore that they sued the prefecture to stop the project. The court handed down a decision in favor of Tomo no Ura, so it looks like the bay will remain as pictured by Miyazaki for the foreseeable future.
Miyazaki said during a public appearance that he was pleased with the court’s decision.
In case you’d missed the news, today was the official unveiling of Tokyo’s 1:1 scale Gundam model. Which is to say an 18 meter (59 foot) tall statue of an old-school Model RX-78-2 covered with lights and mist generators. In addition to marking the 30th anniversary of the Gundam franchise, it will also serve to plug Tokyo’s bid for the 2016 Olympic Summer Games and an effort to increase greenery in the Tokyo area. Though the steel-framed fiberglass-and-plastic statue isn’t going to be doing much combat, its head does move and it’s pretty much the most awesome tribute to the original giant robot series possible. Well, short of starting a war in space, anyway.
For the next couple months the statue will be on display in Shiokaze Park in the Odaiba area of Tokyo, a popular recreational destination known for, among other things, the iconic Fuji TV building (often seen in anime), the Rainbow Bridge (Odaiba is an island), and one of the world’s largest ferris wheels. After that, it will be going to an as-yet undecided location elsewhere. It will no doubt become a pilgrimage destination for the truly devoted fan.
Sony has just started a buzz-generating campaign for a product that appears to be the mutant spawn of a Walkman and an Aibo (Sony’s now-discontinued robot dog).
The palm-sized, pill-shaped Rolly is a portable music device that will “dance” to the tunes it’s playing by flapping little round “arms” on its ends, rolling to and fro, and flashing various colored lights.
The device measures 6.5cm (2.5″) in diameter, 10.4cm (4″) long, weighs in at about 300g (2/3 lb) and contains 1GB of flash memory, a battery, hardware to analyze the tunes so it can dance along with them, and the motors to make it go. Music-wise, there’s a speaker on each end under the moving wings, and it will play MP3, ATRAC, and AAC (!) files. Data is transferred to it via built-in Bluetooth wireless.
Interestingly, it has no display, but Sony claims the interface is intuitive with a minimum of buttons. When it’s on a table, volume is adjusted by rotating it around in a circle. Alternately, if you hold it in one hand, it will only use the top speaker; twisting the top ring will switch songs, while the bottom ring will adjust volume.
Sony is apparently aiming for some of the same hobbyist crowd as the Aibo–its dance moves can be left to the device, automatically generated by their software running on a PC, or the user can manually program dance moves. There will, of course, be an online place for owners to share their dance programs.
It’s scheduled to go on sale in Japan on the 29th of this month for around 40,000 yen (about US$350). How many people will be willing to pay that much for a lively little pill remains to be seen, but I don’t get the feeling it’ll be outselling any iPods this holiday season. Then again, the Japanese have been known to go wild over some pretty wacky products, so who knows.
