They may not look it but The Powerpuff Girls turn 20 this year, and in celebration Cartoon Network has commissioned original tribute art from some of illustration’s brightest new talent.

The animation was one of the many classic shows that made Cartoon Network such essential kids viewing at the turn of the century, taking the knowing nature of shows like The Simpsons and updating it with an ultra-colourful spin informed by the worlds of TV anime and post-pop art design.

Giving us the adventures of female superheroes long before Wonder Woman hit the big screen, the original show gave us the adventures of Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup until 2005, along with a movie from 2002 and even a Japanese anime adaption when the original went off the air.

Cartoon Network rebooted the show a few years ago, this time adding a new Powerpuff Girl called Bliss (the one with the blue hair in Tototatatu’s lovely piece highlighted). The new series is still on the air, and brings back beloved side characters like Professor Utonium and monkey supervillain Mojo Jojo.

We spoke to the artists tapped for the pieces on their wild and varied interpretations of the gang, along with looking into how much the original show has inspired them as artists.

Tototatatu aka Seo Young Kwon is one of our favourite Korean creators, and the Seoul-based artist is already known for hit character work herself, having created the very cute and very popular in South Korea Siru the Dessert, a living, breathing rice cake of sorts.

“The Powerpuff Girls are actually kindergarten students, but I wanted to express them as teenage girls,” she tells us. “I also wanted to express the way the Girls protect their city and fly over it so high.

“I love The Powerpuff Girls. It’s a really cool animation, and the characters are so powerful and lovely,” she continues. “I think that my drawing has been influenced by European, Japanese, and Korean comics rather than American cartoons in style, but I think the show still had a view of the world that I shared and I really enjoyed seeing female characters like this.”

Brooklyn-based artist Natali Koromoto Martinez did this wicked rendition of the Girls as a rock group, something that reminds us of recent revamps in comics of superheroes like Marvel’s Spider-Gwen Stacy and DC’s Batgirl as musicians or lovers of the alternative scene (when they’re not kicking criminal ass, that is).

“Cartoon Network DM’d me to say they were fans of my work,” Natali tells us when asked about how the commission came about. “They asked me for a Powerpuff Girls piece in my style for the 20 year anniversary of the show. So of course, I was on board, and all I knew was that I wanted to draw them hanging out in their room doing things that they like to do.

“I was an immediate fan when they first came out,” she confirms. “I loved the unique look of the cartoon and the villains were fun. I also identified with and appreciated the personalities of each of the three girls, especially Buttercup.

“The show stood out because it had girls as the stars and it had its own look to the illustrations so that was inspiring to see take shape. It went with the Riot Grrl and Girl Power movements of the time, so it was cool to see a popular children’s show support that.”

David Perillo’s piece was showcased as part of the Cartoon Network’s anniversary pieces on Instagram, but was actually commissioned by gods of collectible pop culture art Mondo.

“The idea was to capture the spirit, look and feel of show (for Mondo); and also include as many of the characters as I could.

“The Powerpuff Girls really influenced me as an artist; it has a very vintage mid-century modern vibe that I’ve always felt a connection too.

“The colour palettes and characters were also fantastic, like a modern day twist on classic Hanna Barbera cartoons.”

Celebrate 20 years of The Powerpuff Girls with these super-duper tributes was originally published in The Far East on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Originally published off-Medium in 2019, a look at how ‘yung’ illustrators around the world are in love with a 1980s Japan they’ve never experienced.

With London paying host to a major new manga exhibition at the British Museum, along with seasons dedicated to manga legends such as Urasawa Naoki and live-action adaptations of Japanese cult faves, there’s never been a better time to celebrate the cool aesthetics of Japan as we head into 2020.

It was 18 years ago when French house duo Daft Punk confounded expectations by releasing the comeback single of One More Time.

A world away from their previously down and dirty dance music, the pop-house number also came with a new look for the act, eschewing the strange lo-fi energy of previous collaborator Michel Gondry for a music video that was essentially an anime episode condensed down to five minutes.

Created by Tokyo’s revered Toei Animation under the supervision of manga and animation legend Leiji Matsumoto, the video would go on to be the opener of 2003’s Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, an anime musical that served as visual accompaniment to Discovery, the classic Daft Punk album from a few years prior.

The space opera stylings of Matsumoto that had defined Saturday morning TV for kids growing up in late 70s Japan proved to be a perfect match for the retro grooves of the album, and Interstella 5555’s mix of colour and psych led to the look of 2000s hip hop getting a distinctly Japanese flavour. Pharrell album portraits got that fun Bathing Ape (BAPE) touch straight from Tokyo; art megastar Kaws got his first break designing for the BAPE spin-off record label, while Takashi Murakami was putting psychedelic teddy bears — not apes — all over the Kanye West discography.

Cute suddenly had swagger, as long as it came from Japan. But in terms of dance music, only Daft Punk seemed to want to decorate the dancefloor with an anime aesthetic. With hip hop keeping all the Japanese illustrators for itself, and Gorillaz taking over the world with their own cartoon band, there seemed to be nowhere else for Interstella 5555’s influence to grow. Contemporary talents became an entry point for any outsiders curious about the Japanese art world, and while an anime influence did colour their portfolios, that retro, joyous universe created by Matsumoto for a whole new audience seemed to disappear from view.

Fast forward almost two decades later though, when an offbeat music genre is born and a brand new generation emerges with their own visual take on Japanese pop culture.

City pop is the name of the scene, as brought to you by the children of Interstella 5555.

French touch gets Japanese

2010, the year when Daft Punk made their first foray into hip hop production by collaborating with Pharrell Williams outfit N.E.R.D.

It was also the year vaporwave began to get the attention of the internet, a multimedia movement encompassing glitch art and the kind of music you hear when holding on the phone for a doctor’s appointment.

From the get-go the vaporwave aesthetic was one inspired by a unique imagining of 1980s Japan, with artists incorporating the Japanese language within their artwork and titles, alongside grainy VHS-grade images from the era. Numerous theories abound on this particular fetish of what was then a very Western phenomenon, mainly falling in the anti-capitalist vein by arguing it’s one mid-recession culture’s tongue-in-cheek worshiping of Japan’s peak, pre-1992 crash economy. Back then, this was the country which could afford to get David Bowie to make a TV commercial with entirely new music, making for a 1980s artefact which is as vaporwave as things can get.

The Japanese obsession at work would become most evident when vaporwave spawned the subgenre of ‘future funk’ circa 2012. Where vaporwave is the slow druggy sound of an economic comedown, future funk is the soundtrack of a culture at its party-time peak.

In a lo-fi take on the sample tapestry of Daft Punk’s Discovery, the genre merges 90s French house with faded samples of 80s Japanese ‘city pop’ across albums usually released on the medium of cassette. Maintaining a certain scratchy quality is crucial in this scene.

It may sound like a weird mix, but it’s one that’s seen future funk not only topple vaporwave as the internet’s most beloved musical niche, but also spread out into the nightlife scene where Daft Punk originally made their name during the rave years.

Acts like Korea’s Night Tempo roar in trade on Bandcamp with their tape-only releases, while America’s Yung Bae (above) is taking on nationwide tours and festival sets. Future funk is something you can actually dance to, much like the city pop music genre that got 1980s Japanese pop charts grooving.

An aspirational mix of yacht rock, boogie and funk, the long-dead genre has managed to gain a cult following on the same level of vaporwave and future funk thanks to suddenly viral hits like Mariya Takeuchi’s 1984 song Plastic Love, and a co-opting of the genre by today’s K-pop and J-pop idols.

City pop aficionados Night Tempo and Bae are currently future funk’s figureheads, but their anime-aping record sleeves reveal each artist’s true age and influence. They and their peers were children who didn’t necessarily grow up listening to city pop or watching those Matsumoto classics like Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999, being instead raised on the sound and vision of Interstella 5555’s homage to Japanese pop culture.

Future funk record sleeves are a distillation of the cutesiness and colour of anime, and of the style and glamour of city pop album art: figures of women dominate the artwork of the genre, glittering like anime heroines but resembling models and idols more than actual superhumans. They’re drawn in a cute fashion, or kawaii style, to use the Japanese word, suiting the sparkliness of the music but in a more hi-fi, less lo-fi way.

Yung Bae’s 2014 Bae LP arguably set the bar, coming with artwork from the American designer Andrew Walker. Since then, the scene has commissioned more and more illustrators to decorate their sleeves, young talents usually based outside of Japan but heavily immersed in the island nation’s pervasive zeitgeist.

So prevalent is the style now, it even has its own dedicated hashtag on Instagram: City Pop, previously a domain of crate digging music geeks. The style also has various other names across East Asia: ‘beyond kawaii’ and ’80s fancy’ in Japan, or ‘kawaii girl’ in Chinese, terminology for an illustration movement propelled in fact by music trends, and one which has been recently celebrated in an exciting new Tokyo art project.

The Menmeiz Movement

Two leading city pop-art illustrators include Namu 13 (Lee Yoon Hwan) and Shiho So, both talents who have made their name illustrating tapes and LPs for Night Tempo, and both of whom have been featured in the recent Menmeiz pop-up in Tokyo, as organised by art guru Saho Maeta.

The Menmeiz pop-up is planned to be the first in a cross-country series aiming to bridge the divide between Japan and its neighbouring countries through the soft power of kawaii, retro-infused art.

“Although 70 years have passed since the end of the Second World War, the political situation between Japan and Korea is not good at all,” Saho tells me by email. “However, young people interact all the time across borders through their shared appreciation for Japanese anime and Korean pop idols.”

“Menmeiz was created to spread kawaii across borders, and make young people connect around the world,” she continues. “The name actually comes from internet slang; menmeiz is a Chinese word meaning ‘kawaii girl’; the origin of the word is the Japanese expression moe, which refers to a strong affection for anime and manga characters.”

Moe can be seen across the works of Shiho (above) and Namu, which Saho sees as indebted to classic anime like Sailor Moon and the works of Rumi Takahashi (Ranma ½). While Shiho was born in Yokohama, Japan, she grew up Taiwanese; Namu meanwhile is Korean, exemplifying the cross-cultural force Saho is hoping to represent.

“In my point of view, kawaii culture is a way of life in Japan,” Shiho tells me in an email discussion with Saho. “Commercials, design and mascot character are all in a cute style, and this is one reason why I came to Japan to work in illustration.”

“By using certain colours close to Japanese comics and a lot of pink, my future funk/vaporwave-like paintings matched easily with the Menmeiz mission,” Namu (below) writes from Seoul. “My art though is generally of a retro mood, as I am greatly influenced by the culture of Japan’s Showa period.”

“Since there are many city pop singers that I want to draw in the future, I hope I can continue my work with Night Tempo.”

Both Shiho and Namu make a perfect match with this music style, and other illustrators are following in their tracks: Mizu Cat for example, or Billie Snippet, the illustrator behind Yung Bae’s latest releases. There are also a large number of city pop-artists who are drawing for Instagram instead of records or cassette tapes, some of whom were also featured in the inaugural Menmeiz event and who we’ve listed below.

Their work ranges across cutesy anime to moodier city pop or neon-spiked vaporwave homages, while the countries they come from include Russia, the Philippines and the US. Japan probably came into their life via the impressive Netflix library of classic Japanese series such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, or from future funk videos online made up of anime clips.

Such influence is more than a one-way street, though, with an effect being felt in Japan’s own illustration and music scenes.

Full-circle kawaii

F*Kaori is a Saitama-based illustrator who caught my eye with art for acts making the city pop of today that is J-pop, and not the vaporwave future funk as you’d expect.

The artist’s cover for Punipunidenki’s release MIRAI addiction is littered with familiar iconography: the Roman bust seen across more surreal vaporwave output, the ‘city skyline by night’ future funk motif, a kawaii girl sitting front and centre. Her cover for a recent Neco Asobi release recalls a city pop aesthetic, meanwhile.

The music though is pop; not the city pop of old, but 21st century Japanese pop in all its cute eccentricity. There are a few retro elements, but in all these musicians are more interested in following the visual vanguard set by Especia, an ahead-of-their-time act who in 2013 were known as vaporwave’s first girl group.

“It’s a very interesting phenomenon,” F*Kaori says when remarking about J-pop’s trend towards odd, retro visuals. “It somehow feels both nostalgic and new. That’s the feeling I got when I first discovered vaporwave.”

According to the artist, the Western appropriation of Japanese culture that led to vaporwave seems to be feeding back into a Japanese culture that’s already been pivoting towards 1980s nostalgia.

“80s nostalgia in Japanese illustration has been around for almost a decade, and I never expected the popularity of this style to last so long,” the artist admits before explaining her thoughts on the style’s enduring popularity.

“In my opinion, it has a dreamy, fairy tale glamorousness to it. It’s the opposite of real.

“It reflects a desire to be immersed in a glam and kawaii world, to never leave a 1980s-based dream.”

I ask F*Kaori why this desire is so strong, and her answer is simple.

“Because reality is painful,” she writes.

The glamour and dreaminess F*Kaori speaks of is why the city pop art-style is more than just repackaged retro. Where future funk arguably trades in pure nostalgia, layering vocals over upbeat rhythms, its branding and look is a more inventive endeavour.

Illustrators around the world are creating a richly textured rendering of a past world that probably never existed, one as joyous and exotic as the one the heroes of Interstella 5555 are taken from, made to become slaves on our humdrum and perhaps painful little planet.

City Pop Art illustrators to follow on Instagram:

• Moe Mag Mag
• Namu 13 aka Tree 13
• Shiho So
• Menmeiz
• Mizu Cat
• Billie Snippet
• Youngjin Hwang (Amusement 01)
• NSN
• Stephanie Priscilla
• Anastasia Azhimova
• Mika (Legion Trash Art)
• Ana Aleksov
• Annicelric
• B.Araki (Hexcetera)
• Matilde Kitteh
• Maruki
• Mitsume (3 Eyes Takahashi)
• Jane Mai
• Crisalys
• Natalí Koromoto Martínez
• F*Kaori
• Magtira Paolo
• Taniesha Kadiri (Melty Chan)

Interstella 5555, Vaporwave + Future Funk: Night Tempo artists talk Japanese aesthetics of cuteness… was originally published in The Far East on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Doctor lands at the Great Wall and beyond in a sumptuous promo launch for the Chinese market — originally published off-Medium in 2019.

Anyone watching the recent eleventh series of BBC sci-fi show Doctor Who will know we now have a female Doctor, as portrayed by Jodie Whittaker (actually, even anyone not watching the UK classic will be aware of this by now, unless they’ve been living under a rock on planet Skaro for the last 12 months).

This female-friendly change in personnel has also extended to the production talent behind the camera, and in that same spirit BBC Studios has called on the efforts of a female artist to illustrate the Doctor’s most daring adventure yet — breaking the Chinese market.

Originally from Shenzhen, China but now based in New York, Feifei Ruan is a freelance illustrator and MFA alumni of the School of Visual Arts. With a background in book covers, editorial, murals and more, and a client base made up of the likes of Penguin and The Jim Henson Co, Feifei is a great choice even when you don’t consider her Chinese heritage.

Her mission for the Doctor was simple — to create a series of illustrations featuring the TARDIS and different Chinese cities. The illustrations would be part of a huge new launch for Doctor Who on the Chinese market to celebrate the latest series, with each image designed to resonate with various Chinese locations and work across multiple platforms.

“The first image (above) was released to promote Doctor Who’s activity around the Taobao Maker Festival in Hangzhou, a four-day festival celebrating China’s young entrepreneurs,” Feifei tells us over the TARDIS telephone; sorry, over email.

Feifei’s remaining illustrations were then released at Shanghai Comic Con last autumn, but managed to find acclaim with Whovians around the world thanks to tweets from BBC Studios. But how did the project come about, and what inspired the artist to have the TARDIS spacecraft materialise in such sumptuous, classical-looking landscapes?

Feifei, who’s favourite Doctor is Matt Smith, says it was no stroll by the lake. “It wasn’t easy when I first started playing with the TARDIS,” she reveals. “It has so many tags — police box, time machine, spacecraft etc. After some crazy sketches and some back-and-forth with the BBC Studios Creative team, we decided in the end to keep it as simple as possible — the TARDIS as a character enjoys its journey in China.”

Simple is best then, and indeed it’s made for a series of wonderful looking illustrations featuring perhaps the most iconic symbol of the show. While Feifei didn’t grow up with the show she still recognises the cultural significance of the big blue police box, and is especially a fan of the warm, futuristic feel of Jodie’s model.

“I hope these images make sense to Doctor Who fans,” Feifei says, “and seem intriguing to people who haven’t watched the show.” The last part is key — Doctor Who isn’t as big a show in China as it is in the UK and the States (or even in neighbouring countries like South Korea). In the show itself, the Doctor hasn’t visited China since 1964, way back during the First Doctor’s run(!)

The character is long overdue a visit, then — but where in the giant land of the Middle Kingdom should Doctor №13 land her ship? While the locations and colour palettes were decided by BBC Studios Creative based on the activity around the campaign and the overall brand look and feel, Feifei had ultimate control over the elements of each picture.

“The selected locations are all either iconic or historic landmarks from the famous cities of China,” Feifei explains. “Each city has its own culture and history which I pay homage to in my illustrations. For instance, while working on the Wuhan piece (below), I used the poems and the original murals in the Yellow Crane Tower as reference. The TARDIS looks towards the tower, like a poet of sorts.”

“I used lots of photo references, but when it comes to colouring, it’s more about rules and feelings. I tried to give each image a unique colour scheme based on the cultural differences while also following the colour palettes to match the Doctor Who branding. As you can guess it was both fun and challenging.”

The effort has paid off though, with both a new audience and hardcore fans of the show.

“Since the images were released on social media there’ve been many people contacting me for posters, which makes me happy,” Feifei says. “It would be lovely if people can bring them home one day.”

Here’s hoping the TARDIS brings us a few copies as prints, too. Until then, make sure to follow Feifei on Instagram and Behance, and enjoy the rest of her Doctor Who illustrations below.

Feifei Ruan’s Doctor Who promo art shows the TARDIS in classical Chinese landscapes was originally published in The Far East on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The book cover master for Haruki Murakami on branding the Dark Knight and opening up his Batcave of sketches and Bat-Manga for a very special exhibition. Originally published off-Medium in 2019.

Do you remember the first time you saw the Bat? For me it was in a London library sometime in the early 1990s, when I picked up a book that featured the Batman on the trail of a chainsaw killer.

While I have never been able to find that book again — to the point I even wonder if it’s just a false memory from my youth — it was a suitably moody introduction to the stark world of the Dark Knight, and one that saw me follow Bruce Wayne’s adventures across the neon-choked vision of Batman Forever to the Art Deco artistry of the classic Batman Animated Series.

The artistry which Batman has inspired for his eighty years in existence has not only been responsible for groundbreaking cartoons and comic books, but also manga, computer games, prints and even inspired vinyl sleeves. There have been great covers for books of the non-graphic novel variety, too, like various Taschen anthologies and ephemera-related collections with jackets designed by the one and only Chip Kidd.

Chip is known for a variety of landmarks in the design world, ranging from the Jurassic Park logo to Haruki Murakami’s most famous book covers. He’s also celebrated in comic book circles as one of Batman’s greatest fans and collectors, to the extent gems from his private collection are now on show for a new exhibition being held by the Society of Illustrators (SI).

Illustrating Batman: Eighty Years of Comics and Pop Culture will present original artwork from over 50 of the most accomplished and recognisable artists to work on Batman, including Frank Miller, Jim Lee, Brian Bolland, Paul Pope and Hellboy’s Mike Mignola. Parts of the show include donations by Chip of various sketch covers and the wild manga art of Jiro Kuwata’s 1960s Batman series.

“As a kid I grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia in the late ’60s and early ‘70s,” Chip tells me by email about his own discovery of the Bat, watching the classic Adam West Batman TV series. “Local cable television out of Philly was just coming into its own when it came to kids’ after-school programming, and it was amazing, so many Japanese imports: Ultra-Man, Astro-Boy, Gigantor, Johnny Sacko, Prince Planet, Marine Boy, and especially 8th-Man, an obscure show but one which has a particular relevance to me (as you’ll see).

“All of these shows were from the early-to-mid 1960s and I adored them, alongside Batman (of course), the Green Hornet, the Flintstones and everything else there was to see at the time.

“But the significance of 8th-Man — which I would only come to understand much later — was that he was drawn and co-created by Jiro Kuwata, who would then go on to draw the Japanese version of Batman comics in 1966 and 1967.

“If you get a chance to see any of the 8th-Man cartoons (above), please do; they are little masterpieces of design that were clearly done with no budget but with tremendous ingenuity.”

Kidd would stumble across an incomplete collection of Kuwata’s so-called Bat-Manga on a trip to Japan before releasing the strips for an edited collection over ten years back; DC Comics, home of the Batman since 1939, more recently released a comprehensive collection across three paperback volumes which are well worth a read.

The Kidd-Japan connection had always been a strong one before the Kuwata books, though; besides his love of 8th-Man and company as a child, the designer would soon conquer the market in his book designs for English translations of Japanese literature and manga.

This has continued to this day alongside his work for novels and non-fiction from the west, and it’s fascinating to see how his style switches when working between the two. Take a look at Chip’s cover for Gengoroh Tagame’s manga novel My Brother’s Husband for example, which puts the art front and centre, and separates the type out in white letters on red bands — very simple and matter-of-fact, and rather Japanese in style.

Out of his countless covers over the man’s thirty-odd years in design (1,500 and counting for books, more when you include his ones for comics), there is one common motif, no matter the source country, and that’s of half-hidden faces, so that one eye catches the reader’s eye when looking at his jackets. It’s striking enough to remind you of a certain Gotham vigilante who disguises half his face and often has white orbs for eyes. A subconscious influence on Kidd, perhaps?

“Yes, eyes!” Chip writes when I point out this ocular motif of his. “It’s such a cop-out, I admit, but it works so well. ‘Eyes are the window to the soul,’ as the quote goes, and as a graphic they connect directly with the viewer. And the connection, if you do it right, is emotional, which is key.

“The challenge as with all designs,” he continues, “is to figure out how to do it in a way that feels fresh and unique. With the the new Spider-Man #1 variant cover I did (below) for example, I had to make sure I wasn’t stepping too hard on Alex Ross’s cover for Marvels #4. Hopefully I pulled it off, as his depicts the left eye (hyper-realistically), with a reflection of what Spidey is seeing, whereas mine depicts the right eye (in a spray-paint abstraction), with its ‘pupil’ as the spider logo itself.

“The inspiration came from the storyline by J. J. Abrams and Henry Abrams; it is intended to suggest the passing the mantle of the wall-crawler from one generation to the next.”

Chip’s mention of comic book legend Alex Ross brings me back to the Batman and his dedicated exhibition at the SI’s Museum of Illustration in New York (coincidentally, the city Peter Parker calls home.) Art by Ross like the below counts among the most popular pieces of the show.

“The times that I’ve been at the gallery, I’ve seen that people also really respond to the Jiro Kuwata art (probably because they didn’t know it existed, and it’s so amazing to see), along with the ‘Black and White’ cover drawings that I’ve collected over the years.

“Everything else too: Frank Miller’s work, Frank Quitely’s astonishing hyper-detailed pencil art for the entire issue of Batman and Robin #2, and all the work by the indie creators that I’ve commissioned over the years: Chris Ware (below), Dan Clowes, Charles Burns, David Mazzucchelli. The scope of all the work on display, over time and sensibility, is unprecedented.”

“I think the most fascinating thing for audiences has been how the character evolved over time, decade by decade. I have never seen a comic book art show that covers this astonishing range of work in one place. It goes from 1942 to the present, and it really hits all the many, many bases: every significant era of Batman in actual pen-and-ink, and that is really saying something.”

Chip himself has played a part in this rich history through his design work, having created an array of logos for Batman and other DC heroes over the years, adding his own mark to Frank Miller’s All-Star Batman and Robin The Boy Wonder, Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman and the epic Final Crisis. He was also behind the 2000 redesign of the Batman titles trade paperback dress, along with merging the Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman emblems into one nifty logo for the 2003 Trinity series.

“I have been thrilled to do this work, and hope to do more,” says Chip when I ask how it felt to add his own touch to the heroes of his youth, heroes who, I point out, are like designers themselves. After all, didn’t Batman create his own emblem? And how about the on-brand stars and stripes of Wonder Woman’s original uniform..?

“Well, this is a very meta-question,” Chip responds, “because these fictional characters didn’t design anything; their various creators did (obviously). And yet inevitably part of the storylines is that Batman created his own costume, Superman’s Earth-Mother sewed his (with super-needles?), while Wonder Woman’s was forged by her mother and the Amazons.

“Regardless, we are talking about branding here, and over time these have become some of the most iconic (and profitable, very important to note) symbols and branding systems of our time.

“I’d like to think that what makes them so resonant,” Chip concludes, “is not only that they look cool, but most importantly what they stand for: tremendous power coupled with the pledge to SERVE mankind, not to RULE it.”

Illustrating Batman: Eighty Years of Comics and Pop Culture is on show at The Society of Illustrators/Museum of Illustration in New York, having begun in June and finishing October 12, 2019.

Design hero Chip Kidd on Batman’s brand power over 80 years of comics, manga and illustration was originally published in The Far East on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For those interested in electronic Japanese music from the 1980s until now, check out Girl in the Shell — A Look at Japanese Cyberpop, my new article for Neon Dystopia which features these amazing six tracks from both the Japanese mainstream and slipstream-

• Tentenko — Kuruma /くるま by テンテンコ
• BiS — STUPiG / STUPiG by 新生アイドル研究会
• MOMOIRO CLOVER Z — Neo STARGATE/ Neo STARGATE by ももいろクローバーZ
• Syoko — Erewhon (from the Soil EP aka 未来の記憶)
• Neo-Plant by Koharu Kisaragi + Ryuichi Sakamoto (如月小春 + 坂本龍一)
• SFX + Alternative 3 by Haroumi Hosono ( 細野晴臣 With Friends Of Earth)

-Giacomo Lee

Japanese Cyberpunk Music was originally published in The Far East on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

EurAsia’s hottest tech hub comes to Seoul on October 20, 2014

On Monday seven early-stage startups gathered at D.Camp in Seoul to pitch their ideas to Slush, one of Eurasia’s hottest tech hubs. One winner, Bridge Mobile, left with a free ticket to Slush’s main event coming up in November in Helsinki, Finland.

Martin Talvari, the Chief Strategy Officer at Slush, had flown into Korea that afternoon to hear the pitches. Martin joined two local leaders in Seoul’s startup space, Nathan Millard and Seokwon Yang, in judging the competition. Nathan Millard is global director at beSUCCESS, the leading source for news on Korean tech startups. Seokwon Yang works on outreach and operations at D.Camp’s Banks Foundation for Young Entrepreneurs.

Martin prefaced the startups’ presentations by saying the winner would be chosen based on fit.

“We’re not here to choose the best startup. We’re here to choose the startup that’s the best fit for Slush,” he said.

Only early-stage startups were invited to pitch. They had to have been in operation for less than three years and received less than $3 million in funding. Each startup had three minutes to present, followed by a short question and answer session from the judges.

The seven startups, in the order they presented, were:

Bookpalm, a mobile app to share and talk about books

Bridge Mobile, which lets you make free calls from your mobile device

RX Cycle, an indoor cycling startup

Design Culture Society, a crowdsourcing platform for industrial design blueprints

Accelerating Engineering Education, which designed a robotic device that makes learning computer science hands-on and fun

Send Anywhere, a direct P2P file sharing service that works across all platforms and devices

Famy, an app that lets you quickly and easily locate family members

After a short break, Martin Talvari of Slush announced that Bridge Mobile won the pitch contest and would be traveling to Slush’s main event next month in Helsinki.

Bridge Mobile makes making free calls incredibly simple. They’ve made an app, BridgeCall, that eliminates the extra steps users go through to call with other VOIP services like Skype. The app is integrated into Android’s built-in calling app. No logins, no clicking on a separate app. Everything’s automatic.

In just 100 days since its launch BridgeCall amassed over 1.5 million users. It’s available now for Android users in Korea, the US, and Southeast Asia.

Next, Bridge Mobile has its sights on Europe and South America. Meeting with key influencers and investors at Slush in Helsinki will provide a critical jumping off point for BridgeCall to enter the European market.

Among the other contestants, Send Anywhere also had an impressive presentation and product. Send Anywhere provides “simple, unlimited, instant file transferring.” It’s a direct transfer between any two devices that works across platforms. They’ve cut out the middleman (read: cloud). Sending files directly between devices – and not through the cloud – is faster and more secure, and works for large files.

In May, Send Anywhere raised $1 million in seed money, and they have the numbers to back that up so far, with 1.2 million downloads and 500,000 active monthly users. Even though they will not move on to the next round with Slush, I am confident we’ll see more of them in the near future.

Korean startups sometimes catch a bad rep for being hyper-localized for the Korean market, to the point where they’re not relevant outside of Korea. I saw some of this in the pitches on Monday. Bookpalm, for example, does more or less what Goodreads does, just tailored for Koreans.

Famy, another startup at Slush in Seoul, found a smart way to adapt its localized product abroad. Their original app, available only in Korea, featured cutesy animations and other “very Korean” design markers. They’ve since released their app in other markets, like China, and in the process they refitted the same core service with new design elements and languages that match their destination market.

Slush in Seoul concluded with an informal networking session in D.Camp’s modern Gangnam office.

Next month, the team at Bridge Mobile will fly to Helsinki where they’ll have to make their final pitch to Slush. In Helsinki, international investors, executives, and media outlets will meet select European and Asian startups at Slush’s headquarters.

While the team at Bridge Mobile celebrates winning their pitch on Monday and prepares for Helsinki, the rest of the Seoul startup scene has its eyes set on the Startup Nations Summit, coming to D.Camp from November 23–25. Stay tuned.

Slush in Seoul was originally published in The Far East on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

An ode to the best bar in Uiseong, Korea

By Karl Schutz

The 7/11 is my favorite bar in town.

It has the best beer, for the best price. And after last weekend I’d say it has the best company too.

I’ll be honest, there’s not much competition. I’m living in Uiseong, Korea – a small garlic town in the Korean countryside, home to just three bars.

The local bars aren’t really bars, or at least not in the traditional sense. None of them have a bar: There’s no physical counter where bartenders serve drinks. Instead, you walk in and sit at one of several enclosed booths, where you and your party may drink undisturbed.

In Uiseong, there’s three of these “bars.” They’re classic Korean-style bars, or “alcohol houses” (sul-jib in Korean). Each has its own kitschy appeal. One’s called “Viking Bar” and features images of pirates and miscellaneous pirate trinkets. (Yes, it’s called “Viking Bar” but is pirate-themed.)

The second bar’s a Japanese-style izakaya named “Sumo.” It’s where you go if you want sake.

The last bar’s name translates to “diary” (ilgi-jang). Its ‘thing’ is that it plays the same hour-long set of Korean drama trailers, on repeat, on a big screen projector in the middle of the bar.

The custom at Korean-style bars is to order a pitcher of cheap Korean beer and a large platter of food (anju). Maybe a bottle of soju too (Korean sake). If you go to the bar after dinner and don’t feel like eating, like I usually do, you still have to order food.

If you don’t want to order food, and you don’t want to drink pitchers of cheap Korean beer, then you go to 7/11.

7/11 has this great deal where you can get four tall boys of quality beer for ₩10,000, so about ten bucks. Ten bucks for four good beers. We’re talking Heineken, Asahi, Sapporo, Guinness. Beats a pitcher of Cass (“Cass tastes like ass”) and a platter of greasy anju any day.

Last weekend my friend Matt and I made our way to the 7/11 to take advantage of my favorite bar’s great deal. Bought two Asahis and two Sapporros. Ten bucks well spent.

We were sitting and talking in front of the 7/11 – on the 7/11 “patio” (did I mention my favorite bar has patio seating?) – when an older man came over with his dog and said hello. The man looked about 65 and had a “West Point Dad” t-shirt on.

Having older Koreans come up and say hi is not an uncommon thing in Uiseong. Matt and I are two of just a handful of foreigners in this small, rural town, so it’s normal for locals to acknowledge us somehow, whether it be a quick hello, or a long stare.

We ended up striking up a conversation with the “West Point Dad,” who turned out not to be a West Point dad (“I’m a West Point Uncle”) but a great guy nonetheless. He’d spent some time in the States on business trips and to see family over the years.

Our (little bit of) Korean impressed him, and he asked how we learned the language. Matt said he’d learned Japanese and Chinese, so picking up Korean from there wasn’t too bad. I told him I’d studied abroad in Seoul two years ago, and also studied a little Japanese in college.

“Nihongo-ga dekimasu-ka?” The older man broke out some Japanese of his own.

Two older harabojis (Korean word meaning “grandpa” used to describe older men) rolled up to observe the curious scene: two foreigners talking with a Korean man outside a 7/11, in Japanese. We invited them to sit with us.

One of the harabojis had a fascinating backstory. He had served in the Korean foreign service for 41 years and spoke Korean, English, Chinese, and Japanese. He’d lived all over Europe. He had gotten a graduate degree in Economics from the University of Manchester in the UK. Later, in the 1990s, he worked at the Korean embassy in Germany and Rome. (It’s unclear what role he served at those embassies, but it sounded like he was the ambassador.)

The “West Point Dad” guy and the older haraboji both lived in Seoul, not Uiseong, and were only in town for that night. The four of us talked about Korea and the U.S., foreign teachers in Korea, and the Fulbright program. And we laughed about how funny it was that we were all meeting here, in Uiseong, on a Friday night outside the local 7/11.

I exchanged phone numbers with the “West Point Dad” – he’s going to be back in Uiseong again and wants to take Matt and I out to dinner.

I asked the older haraboji if he’ll be back again.

“I don’t think I will be,” he said.

It was to be a once-in-a-lifetime event. Even as I write this now, the story of last Friday night has a surreal quality about it. The only thing I have to remember our night is the one photo I took on my phone of Matt and the haraboji. Well, that – and this story.

And that’s why the 7/11’s my favorite bar in town. You go for the beer, but stay for the stories.

A 7/11 Story was originally published in The Far East on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

However, inserting KakaoTalk into this discussion is tremendously useful. Unlike KakaoTalk, Uber doesn’t claim to be a social network service. Although you are asked to create a “mini” profile, that profile is never linked to other Uber users within its system. KakaoTalk fundamentally bridges this distinction. By doing so, it helps to instill far more “trust” into the system of Uber.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Uber’s present “5-star” scale doesn’t serve some of the these concerns of “trust.”

But what Uber can’t do that KakaoTalk (should do in this new venture) can is to allow KakaoTalk users to share both positive or negative taxi experiences and ratings within their private social-network of strong-tie relationships of family and friends. In effect, If your sister or digitally inclined mother experiences a horrible taxi-cab ride, and delivers a 1-star rating via her app, you’re generally more likely to believe the rating, and avoid the driver; than had you read the rating from a complete stranger. Multiple this over your entire network of KakaoTalk family and friends, and suddenly “KakaoTaxi” becomes a trustworthy system of recommendations or warnings of good or bad taxi drivers from people whom you trust. Uber would probably have a very difficult time replicating this in Korea.

KakaoTalk-Taxi: What Uber Can’t Accomplish was originally published in The Far East on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Uber Korea Isn’t Part of the Sharing Economy

I hate to distract from the uproar by the expat community on the news that Uber in Korea is being banned. But, I have a “philosophical” annoyance that I would like to address. I keep hearing it over-and-over. Can we acknowledge that Uber isn’t meaningfully part of what anyone would understand of a “sharing-economy” in South Korea, or anywhere else for that matter.

The sharing-economy is a genuine movement to broker between either non-ownable resources and consumers, or between asymmetric consumption and the “sharability” of resources. In other words, it’s one way of letting people share things. “Share” is the operative word here. In no respect would I look at Uber Korea and say that this is a sharing service. So, when Calvin Kang of Uber Seoul insisted that “Seoul is in danger of remaining trapped in the past and getting left behind by the global “sharing economy” movement.,” I sort of chuckled.

Ultimately, if one were to concentrate the very definition of “sharing” as it applies to the urban economy, there are probably two prerequisites that need to be met to differentiate it from simply “renting” or “leasing” as is commonly done in a market economy : One, resources should be idle or simply have excess capacity; two, those resources should be deployed **post** a private or public capacity. In other words, actual resources are in-all-sense-of-the-word “idle,” and are not part of the larger economy.

When Uber Korea brokers between existent limousine and taxi drivers as a transactional middle-man, this isn’t sharing. This is creating opportunities within the market and addressing information asymmetries in the taxi business (which is one area where I do see potential).But it’s not sharing and its not part of the “sharing-economy.” It’s just part making taxi drivers more efficient. So Calvin Kang can probably stop saying that it is.

If you look at other areas of Korea’s “sharing-economy,” you can see other native Korean platforms that blur the line between sharing on the one hand; and simply creating more business in a conventional manner on the other.

For instance, kozaza.com is a wonderful space where individuals can look for unique listings of traditional Korean housing, single rooms, and some great Gangnam duplex spaces. If you live in a 4-bedroom home, and you’ve found that there is a single-room that’s effectively idle, and therefore list this room on Kozaza.com, you’re part of the sharing-economy, in that you’re marketing idle space for rent — post private consumption and use.

However, if you have a business, where you place your entire house up for rent throughout the year in conjunction with a new app or online platform, since this is a house that generates additional rental-income for you, then you’re simply a landlord with a penchant for new media technologies and who is probably seeking a stable supply of tenants throughout the year. This is effectively what Uber Korea does, and it’s not “sharing” in any co-operative meaning as it pertains to economy.

I think this is a difference worth noting.

Uber Korea Isn’t Part of the Sharing Economy was originally published in The Far East on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Have you wondered why some people learn a language better than others? I’ve had a long time to think about this subject, because I’ve spent most of my adult life using my second language — English. When I moved to the U.S 16 years ago, I spoke very little English. After many trials and errors I began to realize some essential knowledge that applied to acquiring English that no one had taught me. And then I realized that the same principle applied to learning Japanese, while teaching Japanese to Americans. Here are 6 tips for learning Japanese:

1. Let go of your fear of being embarrassed

I think this is the most important aspect of learning any language — let go of your fear of being embarrassed.

When we’re trying to speak a language we don’t know very well, it is natural to be self-conscious. We want to pronounce words correctly while appearing intelligible. But being concerned about these things won’t help you improve the language. You’re going to make mistakes and possibly going to embarrass yourself. The sooner you accept that, the faster you’ll become fluent.

And here is a good news: No one cares about your mistakes as much as you do. So don’t worry about it and move on.

2. Speak clearly and loudly

Japanese people speak to each other as if they were whispering or mumbling. But if you spoke in this matter with your beginner’s Japanese, they can’t understand you.

Believe it or not, sometimes it is a simple matter of speaking loudly, clearly, and slowly that will help a person understand you. This is related to the first point — Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. So when people don’t understand you, here is what I want you to do: First, repeat exactly what you just said, but do so more clearly and loudly. Then, if the person still does not understand you, try a different word or a sentence.

3. Practice it every day

Learning a language is very much like learning to play a musical instrument. It’s better to practice it 15 minutes every day than 1 hour once a week. Learning a language takes discipline, commitment, and willingness to do the same thing over and over again until you master it.

4. Develop a good sense of hearing

Having a good sense of hearing is imperative to learning a new language, because it requires you to distinguish subtle nuances in sound. I believe that being a musician has helped me learn new languages over the years.

So how does one develop a good sense of hearing? For starters, turn down the volume when listening to music or watching TV. Listening to loud sounds can damage your ears, and it has long term consequences.

5. Learn Japanese from a person of the same sex

This is very important if you want to learn casual/informal Japanese, because Japanese men and women speak quite different when speaking casually (We speak polite forms similarly).

Over the years I’ve met many American men who speak Japanese like Japanese women, because they learned it from their Japanese ex-girlfriends or female friends. As you can imagine this is not the most attractive thing.

6. Find a person who wants to understand you

How well someone understands you has partly to do with how well you speak the language, and partly to do with how much they want to understand you. You probably already know this, because it’s the same thing even when two people speak the same language.

In my first year in America when I spoke little English, people who understood me the best were those who were interested in what I was trying to say and who cared enough to make that effort. Whenever we’re having a conversation, it’s a two-way street.

I hope you’ll find a Japanese person who is willing to spend his/her time and energy to understand you. This is probably the fastest way for you to learn Japanese.

If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world. ~Ludwig Wittgenstein

6 Tips For Learning Japanese was originally published in The Far East on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.