Paper Fighting Robots

[Mulboyne]

Kami-robo are robot fighters made from paper, measuring about 15 to 20 centimeters tall. They have joints at the shoulders, hips, elbows, knees, wrists and ankles, which enable them to move freely and smoothly. They are designed to fight.

Kami-Robo Expo 2005 is open 10:am - 9:00pm, April 1-25, in the Parco Museum on the seventh floor of Shibuya Parco Part 3 (http://www.parco-art.com)

[GuyJean]

Kami-robo are robot fighters made from paper, measuring about 15 to 20 centimeters tall.

I love it!.. Check out the fight video:
http://www.kami-robo.com/en/fight/040530_4/01.html

The two fighters exchange a firm handshake,
and the fight begins.

Hilarious! I have to see this..

GJ

[Taro Toporific]

Saaaaa....Mr Yasui is playing with paper dolls and is looking to fill an auditorium with doll fight fans. The pseudo-sacred venue for the martial arts, Korakuen Hall will have a "Max League Kami-Robo Entertainment Show" Wed. August 3rd, 6-8pm. The paper edition of the Tokyo Notice Board (July 15 issue, pg 17)reported that the Kami-Robo Expo 2005 attracted 15,000 visiters. Due to this success, Yasui-san is now going to have the Kami-Robo League Rumble in Korakuen.

KAMI-ROBO
.... all of us must have been swept up in the magical world of make-believe while playing alone. We were a special character in a situation known only to us. At the age of 10, Tomohiro Yasui began constructing robots out of paper to give form to his fantasy arena of wrestling robot fighters. Twenty years have passed, and he continues to enjoy and explore this solitary sphere of make-believe.
His kami-robo look so animated and lifelike one might assume Yasui's dreamland is a reflection of reality....Wrapped up in our own dreamland, perhaps we all can construct such vivid simulations. Maybe such games help us to unconsciously figure out what kind of people we want to be and what is most important in life.

Check out the KAMI-ROBO LEAGUE ORGANIZATIONAL CHART

[Mulboyne]

WaiWai: Cardboard robots wrestle into the hearts of fanatical fans
They have all the moves, like back drops, leaping elbows and slamming into the ropes and fight out in an arena that looks just like Korakuen Hall, home of Japanese professional wrestling. But the combatants pulling off moves just as orchestrated as the real grapplers aren't the real thing -- in fact, they're only made of cardboard, according to Shukan Taishu (9/12)...more...

[Mulboyne]

Telegraph: Men will be boys - and women will despair

Most of the viewers at the ICA's Kami-Robo exhibition are early-twentysomething males whose eyes roam covetously over the serried ranks of Kami-Robo as they must once have ogled Transformers and Power Rangers piled high in department stores. A few are accompanied by girlfriends, whom one suspects will never be looked at with quite such an intense expression of awe and acquisitive desire. Their own eyes are glazed with boredom...Kami-Robo are a toy collection that has become a life's work, a spectacle hovering on the border between comedy and tragedy. Yasui has spent 20 years, boy and man, fighting with stick figures, giving them personalities, tracking their defeats and victories, devising retirement occupations for those too battle-scarred to go on, creating generational conflicts between old and new models, and generally immersing himself in a make-believe world that, in a different time and place from 1980s Japan, would have seen him incarcerated in the nearest asylum...more...