Sumida PatLabor

So, we went to Sumida city to tour the giant robot Ingram factory. It can be reached by either the Tokyo Skytree station (Tobu Railway), or the Kinshicho station (East Japan Railway Company). Either way, it's about a 10 minute walk.

We booked a session for two, which cost 4,400 yen (£20'ish pounds/ $28'ish dollars).

When we arrived, we find that price is to just stand in the hangar, and look at the Ingram. We had to pay more to wear the gloves that make the hands of the AVX-S30 INGRAM move. To sit in the cockpit while wearing the gloves cost extra.

Susan using the gloves to make the fingers on the robot's hand move. 

 

It's Japan, so you get to wear two pairs of gloves to control the robot. One pair disposable, the other pair with all the electronics to control the robots hands. 

All very hygienic, and sensible.

Susan passed on the additional cost to sit in the cockpit, but I had to have a go. Here's my head sticking out of the cockpit. 

A montage of shots I took of the interior of the very cramped cockpit.

It was a fun experience, but the pricing was a mess. The basic entrance fee covers the cost to reserve a seat to the lab. When you enter you're given a security pass to wear, and then the staff provide assistance to take pictures. I assumed we would get to keep the security pass. But, when we finished our tour we had to hand our passes back, or, pay to take one home.

This hidden extra cost, and other upselling coloured the experience.

My understanding, is that the cost of the full experience, which was unclear, but might have included moving the arms, while sitting in the cockpit, was priced at 15,000 yen (£70'ish pounds/ $95'ish dollars) 30,000 yen (£150'ish pounds/ $190'ish dollars). 

I got this wrong, because I paid our entrance fee.

When Susan read the above she correct me about prices, as she  paid for all the extras, hence the strike through's. The Ingram PatLabor Laboratory is run by MOVeLOT Inc. and I'm not surprised that they've just announced they're closing down the site at the end of the year. All the upcharges can't have helped sell the experience. 

Anyway, catch you all on the bounce.

Inagi Mechanical City

The Inagi Scopedog is also the site of the Mechanical City shop with two mecha statues from Gundam outside, underscoring its name. But, before we go inside the shop, at the foot of the Scopedog was this board. 

 

One side of the board had info on the show, and the upcoming new movie. All very exciting for us fans of VOTOMS. The other-side had a poster with a link that led us to a secondhand store.

More on that later.

 

The Scopedog statue is life sized, these Gundam mecha are not, as they're meant to stand around 18 meters tall, while the Scopedog is 3.5 meters.

Gundam was created by Yoshiyuki Tomino, while VOTOMS was the work of Ryosuke Takahashi.

 

 

The connection between the two shows is Kunio Okawara. He designed the mecha for both shows Below, close-ups of the Zaku and Gundam.

 

The Mechanical City shop sells T-shirts, other mecha related merchandise, and coffee. The place is  a veritable cornucopia of mecha memorabilia.

 

 

The walls and tables are full, chock-a-block with posters and artwork from VOTOMS, Gundam, and other mecha shows.

 

 

 And at the back of the coffee shop area, are more posters, artwork, and mecha toys.

 

 

Anyway, as we sat drinking our coffee, Susan discovered a link in the picture of the board I mentioned above, which led us to where a secondhand store sold mecha, and other stuff. Other stuff ranging from cameras to audio and everything in-between.

This is where I scored my Yamato 1/12th Strong Bacchus Scopedog. 

 

Yeah that's me, close-up of the struggle to carry my stash.

That's all for now. Another post to come showing close-ups of all the shiny later. Catch you on the bounce.

Inagi Scopedog

The Scopedog statue is from Armored Trooper VOTOMS (Japanese: 装甲騎兵ボトムズ; Romanji: Sōkō Kihei Botomuzu), stands outside the JR East, Inagi Nagasuma Eki (East Japan Railway Company Station). 

I took a lot of photos, and when I say I took some photos, I mean I took a whole bunch.

 

I started by walking around the monument.

Then I moved in close to capture the details.

Lots of gribbly details for super detailing a model.

If anyone wants higher resolution pics, let me know.  

The Scopedog is the quintessential 'real robot' of mecha anime. Justifying the existence of humanoid tanks assumes that they can be made to move like humans. Trading off a tanks height for the ability to change posture and maximize use of terrain for cover.

Those assumptions are doing a lot of work to justify their existence.   

If, and the word 'if' is important, one can accept the existence of mecha on the battlefield, then arguably the Scopedog is the largest one could realistically see. The size of the suits will give infantry enough armour to protect them from blast damage, and allow them to carry point defence systems against RPGs and UAVs,.

I argue that mecha suits will allow infantry to survive future battlefields.

I call this sort of mecha, combat armour. Unlike power armour, which is worn, combat armour is driven, or ridden by the operator. Another way to think about them is to see them as Mobile Infantry from Starship Troopers.

Anyway, that's all for now. Catch you on the bounce. 

Back from Japan

Me resisting temptation after Susan found this hobby shop.

Susan took me to a physics conference in Japan, where she was presenting a paper, afterwards we traveled around the country. We had a fab time, and we both came back with goodies. We were lucky to find a bunch of stuff in Tokyo.  

 

Most of our stash of goodies are in per the picture above, except for a couple of 1/60th scale Zwerg kits I picked up too. They were cheaper than the 1/48th toy Zwergs I found.

 

Susan picked up a Dirty Pair Yuri figurine, and a 1/24th Brutishdog, piloted by Fiyana a character from Armored Trooper VOTOMS. 

I found a lot of other tempting items, but not being made of money, and not wanting to expand into other sizes of Scopedogs, I passed on this tempting bad boy.

However, I found a 1/12th scale Strong Bacchus Scopedog at a price that was a steal, which turned out to be so because it had a broken ankle, but I can fix that.

Here with my old secondhand Scopedog I acquired years ago.

I  also picked up a couple of T-shirts along the way too.

That's all for now. Catch you on the bounce.

Small Stumble

Just when I thought I was crossing the finishing line, I stumbled when I was marking out where to drill the holes for the secondary guns. Doh!

What with other stuff in life, friends and family deaths, knocking me back, it wasn't until this weekend I had the urge to work on the model.

As you can see, thanks to Keith Falk, I've changed the tread castings out. 

I've reworked the nose, just waiting for it to harden properly before I file it to shape.

It looks a bit tatty, but you can see the extra bulk I added to enlarge the rear half of the casement ready for the secondary battery barrels.

Ho hum, despite all the hassle, I've really enjoyed working on this project. Below is a picture of my models pasted with the shots I have of the Martian Metal original.

The angle-dangle skews the shape of the original Ogre, but it's the best I've got.

Catch you all on the bounce. 

Heavy Gear Hunter Prop

A couple more new pictures of the full sized Hunter prop appeared on Facebook. Low res, but, myself, Susan, and Jason Frazier we managed to clean and upscale the images with Photoshop and upscalers.

The first new picture.

And the second new picture, taken from a different angle, was burnt out and this is the best I could do to punch it up.

Then, as an experiment, I took the old triple montage shot from before, and split it into three separate pictures. 

Tweaking each shot to bring out the details.

Then Jason Frazier sent me one of the pictures that he had improved using AI, seen below, which extended the dynamic range of the shot.

 

And finally, I ran this last one through an upscaler, which made it much better than it looked before. 

So, I hope all the Heavy Gear fans enjoy these.