About four months ago I had the good fortune to attend one of the huge animation expos that are held in Seoul. These exhibits are freakin' huge as animation is a key industry in South Korea now! Anyway, I don't really want to focus on the ins and outs of that biz because ultimately it's just biz, but, there were some cool things on show.
First up we have artistic interpretations of Taekwon V in ceramics!! How's this for odd-- a group of South Korean artists are challenged to rework Taekwon V. Have a look at some of the stuff- I put an offer on one of the Professors for 250,000Korean Won ($250.00 approx) but was rejected for being too low- oh well. The big and chunky one meter tall Taekwon was clay over wire and they were asking 3,000,000
Korean Won (about $3000 USD).
Just so you understand- Taekwon V was the Super Robot for the Koreans designed and created by Koreans. He has more meaning to Koreans than just being a copy because he kind of represents the Koreans telling the Japanese to `_____ off!'. It was only 23 years before Taekwon V that the Japanese were the cruel conquerors/colonizers of the Koreas. Taekwon V is also different in that he uses Tae Kwon Do.
He was reinvented a few times and is rumored to be reappearing very soon. (Interestingly Last night on `Boom-Boom' which is a Korean made animation history TV show they had a 10 best ever animated movies and series list...guess what came in at number 1? Amazingly it was Space Cruiser `Yamato' ! )
Sonokong- Sonokong have tie ups with Bandai and Takara and as you can see, they still make mightgain and Brave stuff and even....Ninja Turtle stuff!!! I think they've just bought the licence for the radish character from Takara- Yeah, the giant radish will look nice in our robot collections NOT!
