With the gunpla boom in decline and TV robot anime losing its luster, in 1985 Bandai began to look for new ways to embrace older fans and early otaku.

With the gunpla boom in decline and TV robot anime losing its luster, in 1985 Bandai began to look for new ways to embrace older fans and early otaku.
Stephen revisits Xardion to talk a bit about its similarities with an earlier Gainax project, Aim for the Top! Gunbuster.
During the video boom of the late ’80s, manga legend Go Nagai was involved in a series of live-action horror compilations and and films.
Long before the creator of Evangelion had the chance to reimagine one of his favorite superhero shows, Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue debuted on home video with an adult, edgy spin to celebrate Kamen Rider’s 20th anniversary.
In the midst of the gunpla boom, Takara slapped some Dougram decals on a van and toured Japanese hobby shops to promote their model kits and encourage kids to create their own mecha model dioramas.
One of the earliest U.S. anime conventions, AnimeCon ’91 was held thirty years ago in San Jose, California. This a Japanese convention report of the event from Gainax’s in-house magazine, G-Press.
The convention that changed anime kicked off on August 22, 1981.
During a particularly rough period for Gainax in the early ’90s, Hiroyuki Yamaga sat down to discuss his plans for a sequel to Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise. Nearly 30 years later it remains unfinished.
At a glance it may seem like the intermingling of Japanese and American horror movie motifs with manga-literate millennial artists is a relatively new phenomenon. And yet, as is often the case, this is not the first time these flavors have mingled.
A quick look through a 30-year-old catalog from garage kit manufacturer Kotobukiya.