Japanese virtual world anime film aims at Oscar

Are you interested in the virtual world and Japanese anime film? Then, let's check the "Summer Wars". "Summer wars" is a Japanese anime film shown in 2009 summer. As for it, the screening begins in U.S.A. on December 24.





Story...

Kenji is a teenage math prodigy recruited by his secret crush Natsuki for the ultimate summer job – passing himself off as Natsuki’s boyfriend for four days during her grandmother’s 90th birthday celebration. But when Kenji solves a 2,056 digit math riddle sent to his cell phone, he unwittingly breaches the security barricade protecting Oz, a globe-spanning virtual world where millions of people and governments interact through their avatars, handling everything from online shopping and traffic control to national defense and nuclear launch codes. Now a malicious AI program called the Love Machine is hijacking Oz accounts, growing exponentially more powerful and sowing chaos and destruction in its wake...

via GKIDS,tv

See Also:
Summer Wars official North American website

Summer Wars Japanese offisial website

Various elements are included in this movie. 3D Virtual World(like a Second life), Japanese mobile internet, Avatar communication, Nintendo DS, Artificial intelligence, spoofing, Cyber-bullying, scenery of the Japanese country and big family.

This movie mobilized spectators more than one million in Japan and it won in a lot of Awards. In addition, Summer Wars is nominated for this year 's Best Animated Feature Oscar.

If you has iPhone or Android mobile, check this game apps.

http://swkoikoi.indexweb.co.jp/s-wars.ap/ [J]

You can experience the Hanafuda game of "Koi Koi" that appears in the movie.

What's hanafuda? via Wikipedia

サマーウォーズ スタンダード・エディション [Blu-ray]

How to play a FarmVille Japanese ver. "ファームビレッジ(FarmVillage)"

Zynga Japan released its flagship social game "FarmVille" in Japan under the name "ファームビレッジ(FarmVillage)" on December 1. Why is it Village not Ville? According to Zynga Japan general manager Shintaro Yamada's tweet [J], "Because the pronunciation of FarmVille and Building looks like in Japanese".

SoftBank finances Zynga Japan. And FarmVillage was released in SNS "mixi" of the biggest in Japan.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, Zynga Japan CEO Robert Goldberg and mixi CEO Kenji Kasahara
Another photo from Son's tweet

FarmVillage is a social game for mobile. Goldberg said in press conference "Social game for PC is not yet mainstream in Japan".

FarmVillage's top page.

The duck explains the tutorial.

There is not the avatar.

This is my farm. It's considerably different from FarmVille.

The design of farm products are also original. And the duck wears the business suit.

It's necessary to manage the energy. It resembles FrontierVille and CityVille.

The duck wears schoolgirl's uniform!

The area of the farm broadens when you raise the level.

Of course the present for friends function is finished with implementation, too.

FarmVillage looks like the new game which is totally different from the FarmVille and FarmVille iPhone version. The operation has been optimized to the Japanese mobile. This is "only in Japan".

Clear images are here (Zynga Japan's web site)
http://www.zynga.co.jp/service/farmvillage.html

Japan first (World first?) social game magazine "Appli-Style"

On December 2nd, Japan first social game magazine "Appli-Style"[J] has been released. Costs 680 JPY (about 8USD). It's sold at bookstores and convenience stores.

The main contents are japanese social games of mixi, MobageTown Yahoo! Mobage, GREE, and Colopl(Location-based mobile social game) introductions. The most are social games for Japanese mobile.

The volume of contents are almost the same as the console game magazine! And I thought in this way. The movement of open platform in Japan was delayed from foreign countries one year or more. mixi became a social platform in August, 2009.After that, social game magazine is released in this way. What such a lot of social games can play "only in Japanese mobile" is abnormal.

If all of these Japanese social games become multilingual and can play with Facebook or smartphone, revolution will happen for a social game business.

Bungaku flea market

I went to coterie magazine spot sale "Bungaku flea market"[J] the day before yesterday. "Bungaku flea market" is n event of literature literary coterie magazine. A lot of amateur writers were selling a handmade book. It was so fun! Interestingly, there were a lot of iPad, iPhone and Kindle! :) It is the first time to see such a lot of gadgets in the coterie magazine spot sale event! :)

Japanese coterie magazine writers are doing the attempt to make coterie magazine by using Twitter. It's interesting.Moreover, a lot of Japanese coterie magazine writers make works e-book and are selling it.

This might still be movement only of the novel coterie magazine. But, it might be infected with the comic coterie magazine at once.

Visual-Kei portal site "Ame-visu"

アメびじゅ｜ビジュアル系ならAmeba Visual via kwout

Cyber Agent opened Japanese Visual-Kei portal site "Ame-visu"(omit "Ameba Visual").

What is Visual-kei? (via Wiki)

CyberAgent might be known as a developer of AmebaPigg and AmebaPico in foreign countries. But they are originally Internet advertising agencies, and administer the maximum blog portal site "Ameba Blog" in Japan.

You can check Japanese Visual-Kei artist's official blog, photos, news, AmebaPigg avatar and virtual goods in "Ame-visu".

You can change the site to an English by the Google translation. But it is not correct. (Even if anyone uses any kind of translation site, it is impossible to translate Japanese precisely...)

GANBATTE!