The Corruption of youth
This is a brief tale of how juicy pictures and slick words can corrupt the youth of America.
For a while I was your run of the mill otaku, I watched anime, read manga and tried to eat sushi. When I reached the tender age of 14 I was given my first Master Grade gunpla (Gundam plastic model) kit and the floodgates opened.
Soon one model turned into several dozen. And for a while this was all that this young otaku did with his time. Go forward 2 years when I was shown my first episode of Mazinger Z. I thought, “Wow, this is a cool show — who cares if it defies most laws of physics?” Mazinger Z soon became Getter Robo, then GoShogun, and Combattler V, the titles just piled up. Then one fateful day I was wandering the Internet when I stumbled upon a website that changed me in ways words could not describe from that day forward. That website was called ToyBoxDX.com.
I was amazed; I spent hours pouring over the pictures of the colorful and amazingly crafted gokins, machinders, and vinyls. After looking through some of the older rumbles I found myself looking through the links section and found another amazing site, called cooljapanesetoys.com.
This site seemed to revolve around one genre of toy collection in particular, those towering goliaths of polyethylene, Jumbo Machinders… my mind was overwhelmed. “Do you mean to tell me that they actually made gigantic figures of super robots, that I could actually own a 2 foot tall Mazinger Z?!?”
I clutched my chest and fell out of my chair…. Yes, my friends, it was this moment that the old gunpla building fresh-faced otaku died and the new hardcore Japanese toy nut was born.
This was a little over 2 years ago, and in this time I’ve purchased a few chogokins, and a couple of gunpla kits, but my main passion was, and still is, the machinder. And so we see how shiny pictures, and tales of hefty gokins can twist and warp the mind of anyone, be it a hardcore middle aged Generation Force Fiver, or a young whippersnapper who up until a few years ago, didn’t even know what Chogokin was.
Well, there’s the end of my first, and hopefully not my last, Rumble.
