As Friday March 20 is a National Holiday no shipping will be done and we will not be able to respond to enqiurys until Monday March 23th. Business will of course resume as usually on March 23.

Welcome to our small report on the 8th annual Tokyo International Anime Fair being held at the Tokyo Big Sight from March 18 to 22st. Sponsered by the city of Tokyo it was started to promote internationally the Japanese Anime Industory and it’s products.  Not much in toys but for those into anime it had a few interesting things.

All pictures were take on the first day. Not much in  the suprise announcement catagory but many of the animes that are scheduled to start airing in April were being highly pushed.

Of the many new anime’s series scheduled to start soon the second series of the “Fullmetal Alchemist” series  was expected to be featured  but there booth was not as empatically as was expected. Still with the Alphonse’s  big armor being shown it was hard to miss it.

In comparison to  Full Metal Alchemist the Gurren Lagann series which will be releasing the second of the movie series soon in Japan was being pushed highly.  As you can see in the picture a Yoko cosplayer was handing out plastic bags to everyone that had the Team Gurren logo printed on it.  The fully painted Bandai Ichiban Kuji Gurren Lagann Version items were probably being  shown for the first time.  They are scheduled to be released in June.

A new Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers) anime movie was announced for a 2009 release by Tohoku Shinsya.

Satalight one of the major companies involved with Macross Frontier  had a large booth featuring both Macross fronntier and the new Kawamori produced anime “Basquash” that will feature characters playing basketball while riding mecha’s. Sponsered by Nike the swoosh can be seen everywhere in the series.  Some of the picture below may look like they were taken at a Foot Locker but the Nike sneakers  on display willl be the same type used by the characters were on display.

 As for the Macross Items on display most have been seen before. The Ichiban Kuji Macross Frontier item that are scheduled to be released at the end of the month were on display. The new items that were seen was a VF-1S White Leather Jacket and the 1/60 Itasya type decal set that was shown by Yamato for the first time.

For some reason Beagle who sometimes skips major hobby events always finds the time to get a booth  at the  Anime Fair. They were here again this year with a early sample of the 1/10 Fuke Ride Armor.  At the present it is scheduled for a a fall 09 release.

All the major power of the industory were of course there showing off their new shows or in some cases old shows. A short glimpes at some of what they had in store. 

Finally Good Smile Company made a appearance with some new figures that were revealed for the first time. The large 1/6 Yoko from Gurren Lagann were one of the figures that were seen for the first time. A Nendoroid Sebastian from Kurosituji was also being shown but no pictures were being allowed.

Miyazawa Mokei the biggest toy distributer in Japan has a business show every year in Spring and Autumn.  All pictures were taken at the Spring 09 version held on March 10th. 

Takara Tomy Items: The new toys for the coming soon Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen were on display.

Yamato: The soon to be released 1/60 VF-11B and 1/24 AV-98 Ingram were both on display.

New Line Items: The popular Black Lagoon Revy Resin figure that will be re-released was on display.

Atelier Sai:

Aizu Project:

Kurushima Seisakujyo

Kaiyodo Revoltech: The new Haruhi Revoltech line was shown but none of the new Revottech series that’s slated to be released in May was shown.

Good Smile Company / Max Factory 

Medicos Entertainment: The domestically popular JoJo’s Bizare Adventure action figure line was being highly pushed.  

Organic:

Alter

Bandai

Taki Corperation

Clayz

CM’s

Wave

Kotobukiya

Kaitendo

Daiki Kogyo

Medicom Toys

Orchid Seed

Others

This is only a blog post we do not have any in stock, we had to win just like everybody else.

Last year Yamato introduced their Weathering Special line at Winter Wonder Festival 2008 with a 1/48 scale Roy Focker Valkyrie. The Roy Weathering when it was first released sold for a pretty penny on Japanese and international auction sites, but since then it has been reissued twice bringing the price down about even with the Low Visibility Valkyrie.

ShoPro and Yamato offered a special prize Hikaru VF-1s Super & Strike Weathering Special for the Macross Chronicles campaign. Only 250 were made available and if more than 250 entries were submitted the stock would be awarded via lottery. Lucky for us we actually won one.

If you are wondering where is the Weathering slip cover well……………. there isn’t one. Shipped in a regular box containing the standard Yamamto VF-1s and Super & Strike Parts boxes with a few stickers slapped on them indicating these are Weathered. Comparison shots against a standard Super & Strike parts.

Comparison shots against a Hikaru VF-1a, oh and if you think I’ll be transforming this baby don’t hold your breath. Enjoy if you have any question leave them in the comment section.

Adrian A. Lozano

First we are sorry but due to the changes in the exchange market the shipping fees for the Macross replacment parts will be raised.

To check out the new shipping fee list plese click on the link provided below.

http://www.over-drive-inc.com/macross_parts/

Next most of the parts for the requsts sent from January 20 to February 17 have arrived. We will start contacting the people who sent in requests during that period starting on Monday. A few people who have been contacted are still pending but those should arive soon. If you are not contacted by Tuesday please contact us after first checking your spam box .  

Please note this excludes the people that have been contacted with the
information that their requests that have been turned down