1/1 scale fascination

Japan is really a crazy place. The people there more so, in a good way that is. And two really good crazy things that they have is anime and manga. Our Japanese brothers and sisters live and breath anime and manga on a daily basis. As such, anime and manga are a major facet of Japanese culture.

Speaking of breathing and living anime and manga, there has been some really awesome things sprouting around Japan recently and those are actual-sized models of popular anime and manga robots and characters. As a scale modeler, I've developed a fixation for these like the life-sized RX-78-2 Gundam in Shizouka (formerly from Odaiba):

1/1 scale RX-78-2 Gundam

Here's a quick lesson in scaling. If you recall your high school mathematics, scaling is done to represent the proportion of one object to another. You've seen those numbers before in model kit boxes: 1/100, 1/144, 1/60 etc. The number on the left represents  the actual size of the object while the number on the right represents the size of another object compared to the actual one. The lower the number on the right, the bigger the object (or model) is to the actual object. So, a 1/1 scale model is as close as one can get to the size of the actual object.  



Here's more of actual scaled models in Japan:

1/1 scale Evangelion unit 01 bust w/ Evangelion race queens

On your left is a 1/1 scale Evangelion Unit 01 head from the hit mecha anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. This one measures around 30 feet high (making the actual thing around 80 feet high, body and all). The installation depicts the scene where Shinji (the main character) first encounters the unit. It currently reside in an Evangelion theme park on the foot of Mt. Fuji along with a museum built around it.

More Gundam 1/1 scale installations:

1/1 Core Fighter

1/1 Zaku heathawk in the Niigata art museum. People shown to scale.

And more non-Gundam ones like:

Human-sized Rei, Asuka, Eva unit 01 and Astroboy.

Close-up of the life-sized Astroboy statue. Cute ain't he?

and an iconic life-sized Tetsujin-28 statue in Kobe.

So there, now you know what I'm going crazy these days. More to come!