Breakfast Links: Akihabara, Rentometer & Flying Car
Apparently there’s a new craze sweeping Tokyo - kegadoru or Injured Idols (via tokyomango). Girls wearing surgical coats or maid outfits are totally out at the Akihabara maid cafes, now you have to be sporting eye-patches and bandages! This one’s a little … odd, to me. One cosplayer describes the confusing appeal:
One guy into the injured woman look told me that the reason he likes it is because he loves the idea of seeing a thin woman’s body wrapped in bandages because it looked kind of like bondage and made him want to protect her from harm.
I mean… equating bondage to protecting from harm? That’s gotta be a first…
Moving on to something a little more mundane - if you’re wondering how you’re doing with your rent a new site, rentometer comes to the rescue. It lets you type in your address and your rent and lets you know if where you are on the rent scale in your neighborhood. I guess it looks at other people who have tried to find out how their doing. I wonder how often it expires older rents. It’s a pretty simple and nicely designed site, there’s no option for rent browsing, though, which is kind of lame but it looks like they’ll be posting rental listings there soon as well. Anyhow, I’m a hair under the median rent in my hood. Rock on.
Living in NYC and not having a penthouse with roof access, my ability to have a flying car is a bit hampered. “But, Felix!” you say, “There are no flying cars!” Ah, ho ho ho, my young padawan, that’s where you are mistaken. BBC is telling us that the fabulously named M 200G is about to go into production! That’s right, Moller International is going to sell these guys for $90k and that’s just the prep for the main event the 200 better M400, which will look like the batmobile and can climb to 6000 ft and go up to 400 miles per hour! Yeah, we’ll believe that when we see it.
Bonus Link: Remember the Vatican Airlines we talked about yesterday? Turns out they make all their pilgrims dump all the holy water they were trying to bring back to their ailing friends! “Instead, dozens of plastic containers in the shape of the Madonna were left at security, while one man decided to drink all of his.” That’s gotta be tough PR to spin…
August 31st, 2007 at 10:10 am
According to their website, Moller says they are going to start non tethered free flights, but they have to be over water(they will attach flotation devices to the car… swimies anyone?). If they survive this, they will be able to test it out with no other safety requirements other than whatever is on the car.
August 31st, 2007 at 10:56 am
you have obviously not seen this flying car already on the market.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0ENHPsEpZk
do your homework son!
August 31st, 2007 at 11:15 am
Hopefully they’ll survive, I feel the need to go 400 mph.
Heh, I see! I think I saw David Blaine in that video… I wish it hit a bright light and popped, that’d have been an awesome end.
August 31st, 2007 at 11:37 am
The injured girl fetish has been common in anime for a long time. Cosplay cafes have most of the gimmicks covered. So, I’m actually surprised it took this so long to become a fad.
I’ve seen cosplayers like this at least the last couple of times I visited Japan.
Also, the Evangelion series from 12 years ago (BTW, the remake opens today in Japanese theatres) has a character that was rendered, with bandages and eyepatch, into PVC figures by several companies over the years.
August 31st, 2007 at 3:12 pm
I mean, I like bandages as much as the next guy - you know, on beat up guys, it adds to their toughness. I find this one, just wierd - usually even if I don’t dig something I can sorta understand why someone might, this one, not really. Maybe if I go to Japan and see this all for real, I’ll understand.
I forgot there was an Evangelion remake. Wonder if it’ll make it to these shores - on tv or the silver screen.