Word: robots
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There are, in this world, some rather loopy people. Not dangerously loopy. Just pleasantly idiosyncratic folks, whose enthusiasm for something high-tech occupies a little more brain space than the normal person would dedicate to, say, a metal-plated canine robot. Because Japan is the source for so much of this addictive technology, it's not surprising that these fetishists view the country as the mecca of techno-cool. Fittingly, Japan is also the birthplace of the word otaku, an almost untranslatable phrase that describes a person whose fascination with something has reached, well, loopy proportions. Below, meet five American...
There's the doctor from the East Coast and the businessman from Fresno. But no one is more of a die-hard fan of die-cast robots than Eric Nakamura, the Los Angeles publisher of Giant Robot magazine. Since he started collecting the solid-metal toys when he was a child back in the 1970s, Nakamura has been hooked by the Japanese gadgets that inspired such latter-day playthings as the Transformers and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. "They are more than just toys, you know," says the 31-year-old, a tad defensively. "They are little pieces...
Even back when he was a kid at Clover Avenue Elementary School in West L.A., Nakamura knew the die-cast robots were more than mere toys. One of only a few Asian kids at his school, he morphed from shy geek to totally tubular dude when he showed up to show-and-tell with his techno-toys. "The other kids were playing with their little G.I. Joes," he recalls. "And then I appear with a robot that could shoot missiles or transform into something else. It blew them away...
...point, the protagonist is chased across the screen by a funny-looking monster; at another, somebody asks him about his personal hero while he is dressed as Hugh Hefner. And throughout, the film’s often eccentric questioners—a large robot, a philosophizing guitarist, a strait-jacketed kook and a pillow-clutching man walking through the streets in baggy pajamas, among others—succeed in stimulating the viewer with their odd appearances...
...ringmaster for a Teletubbies-styled kiddie show and dreams of-what else-world domination. Some of the elements in his towering, Gothic seaside castle reflect a vibrant visual imagination, most notably a sprawling floor that proves to be composed of giant jigsaw puzzle pieces. Others, such as the robot minions whose limbs consist of nothing but thumbs, smack of watered-down Tim Burton...