Every time Tokyo Game Show rolls around, we’re always reminded of how much Japan’s culture and entertainment industry has shaped and affected our lives. The video-game industry is the most obvious example of this, sure, but our childhoods were almost handcrafted by Japanese pop culture, whether we knew it then or not.
Voltron, for instance, wasn’t an American cartoon and wasn’t actually called “Voltron.” The show is, in fact, an amalgamation of two different super robot anime from the early-eighties: Beast King GoLion and Armored Fleet Dairugger XV. Character names like “Akira Kogane” and “Takashi Shirogane” were westernized into “Commander Keith” and “Lance,” and many plot devices were also changed to make the series appear less violent than it actually was. Zarkon’s soldiers, for example, were referred to as robots instead of living creatures in order to mitigate the weight and implications of their deaths at the hands of the Voltron Force.
Continue reading Japanese hardware sales, September 5 – 11: Childhood mindfreak edition
Japanese hardware sales, September 5 – 11: Childhood mindfreak edition originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 18 Sep 2011 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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