Slashdot Mirror
Mice Designed by Famous Anime Artists
Roland writes "Japan Gadgets reports that eminent Japanese animators Masamune Shiro (Ghost in the Shell) and Hajime Katoki (Gundam) have decided to apply their creative design skills to a new line of limited edition optical mice. Due to be released in Japan in late November, each of the two mouse designs will be available in black, silver, and white and come with a special printed insert of an interview with the respective designer." Definitely thinking outside the box... not sure about the ergonomics, but points for aesthetic ;)
Ghost in the Shell
Slashdotted all to Hell
Better mice than Dell
i know how much a lot of you people like their anime, but a /.'ing in less than 6mins? thats determination.
Until someone hardwires a REAL mouse for user input.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
But Masamune Shirow can draw some really nicely curved women, and sweet organic tech, if the link ever gets un-/.'d I'd like to see what he came up with.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Despite looking "hi-tech" (since when did that become a noteworthy style?) these things look like they'll be hell on your hands/wrists/arms. Carpal tunnel syndrome is a very real problem, but unfortunately many people are under the false impression that it is caused by keyboards and not by mice. I'll stick with my old mouse and not leave my health up to the whim of fashion, thank you very much.
But why only the optical version? Optics in mice has yet to develop enough to become sufficient for higher end graphics work (hell, even Logitech is still making "old-fashioned" roller ball mice). Accuracy is important- why are mouse manufacturers neglecting pay attention to such a significant number of potential customers?
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
Oh well. I'll bookmark it and come back in a few days. When is Slashdot going to get a clue and develop an automatic cache of pages it links to before posting the story? That way we could actually see the sites, instead of having to grub around for ad-hoc mirror sites.
Have a look here(not /.ed yet!)
Now I just know there's got to be some Digi Charat fans out there that would love to see a Gema-gema mouse... ^_^
"I hate Cthulhu, Cthulhu hates me, I kill his cultists, He eats worlds for tea"
Obviously you've never tried to handle a scared mouse, those little guys have some nasty sharp teeth..
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
It was slashdotted before there was any comments here. :-(
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
This is the only link on google with some details half way down the page on what looks like this is about. Search for "mouse"
After having looked at cosmogames.com I'd have to say that I'm disapointed. They do look cool, but I imagined them to be covered in some sort of manga-style drawings, and from an ergonomic point of view I think that they are a true disaster (but I don't know, since I haven't tried any).
Are you kidding me? Talk about sell-out.
A simple rule: if it says collectible or limited edition on it, it's guaranteed to be overpriced, and usually crap. ("collector's edition McDonald's Scooby Doo Frosted Mugs"). Have you ever seen a "limited edition" item on HSN that you could turn around and sell for a penny more to anybody who is not an even bigger fool?
Those who pay for slashdot premium should demand their money back on the basis that this was, very clearly, an advertisement.
What's the legal status of the Google cache, then? Surely if they can do it, Slashdot can?
The mice (not /.ed but in Japanese) are very nice, but Y7500 that's circa 40 GBP or $60 US which is a bit steep even for a designer mouse, no?
These mice were limited, after all!
Here I was, hoping the Shirow model would be a little plastic version of Colonol Usanagi... You can guess where the left and right buttons were located...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
It sould be in anime section, so if I filter out anime (I do), I wouldn't see it. This is just a crappy advert, what is it doing on /. anyways?
Teg
Red Leader Standing By!
It would look so much more elegant with a square cord. :)
sig.
i'm intrigued by your comment on accuracy - i do a fair bit of precision work myself, and i specifically moved to optical mice because of their superior accuracy and response! well, that and the fact that my hand fits the intellimouse explorer perfectly, so less carpal tunnel potential ;)
i'd be genuinely interested in finding out exactly which optical mice you've tried, and which ball mice you believe offer greater accuracy.
Shirow's primarily a comics artist, not an animator. As far as I can tell, Black Magic M-66 is the only anime in which his involvement went much beyond allowing one of his manga to be adapted or providing character or concept designs. (See also this biography.) (Ghost in the Shell is Oshii Mamoru's adaptation of (part of) Shirow's manga of the same name.)
Just what I need. A mouse with a grotesquely pumpkin-shaped head with dinner plate eyes, and a tentacle stuffed in the mouse hole.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Most of you aren't raving Manga fans. It said in the slashdot article that an interview with each of these two author's comes with the mouse. If it's DVD or has any type of pictures, it's worth the money to Manga fans. Shirow Masamune is the most reclusive "comics" artist in Japan. There is one known photo of him as "Shirow" and it was published something like ten years ago and is impossible to find. This guy is a hero to the "Otaku", Japanese kids with an obsession for printed manga and anime. "Shirow Masamune" is a pseudonym so getting anything like a live interview would be priceless to them (hell, me).
And here you guys are complaining about ergonomics.
[-)
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
Then let /. point to the google cached version instead of the original one, scripting that should not be too hard.
That should reduce the /. effect by at least the amount of click-jerk reaction !
[Pruneau
Some designs (and designers) are only fit for anime.
At least it's not a Hamtaro mouse...
Is it just me or does one of those look like the HB88? hmmm the Bonsai institute's coffers are running a bit low, copyright/patent infringment suit anyone?
~no matter where you go, there you are.
which is really odd seeing as mostly on /. people don't read the article before commenting...
:)
I guess the keyword here is "anime". Nerdiness in all its glory.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I mean, come on. Look at the way they're dressed.
When I first saw the title of the article, my first thought was that it had to do with genetic engineering.
Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.
I don't know about that. The first has no sense of symmetry at all. It looks like it was designed after some of those anime starships with all the projecting rods and growths out the front. And the second is all boxy and strange looking.
:)
And the price is just.. nasty. I could see someone who is into these two artists getting them for collectors items, but for normal usage? Aesthetics aside the odd shapes would be a killer on the hand.
I'd wager those two should stick with Anime, cause they're much better at that.
Kalen D'arrie
...would inevitably end up looking like Hamtaro.
Which is why my first impulse upon reading this headline was "Who the hell cares!?"
At least they both have scroll wheels. I bought a Logitech scroll mouse for my Mac at work out of my own pocket because the buttonless mouse sucked so bad.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Have you not heard of RoboRats? http://www.techtv.com/news/scitech/story/0,24195,3 397528,00.html
A simple rule: if it says collectible or limited edition
on it, it's guaranteed to be overpriced, and usually crap... IN AMERICA
You overlook that other countries do not need to abuse those terms
like we do in the US. Much of the time (in the Japanese Anime
merchandise market) buyers are used to a character or product brand
being used all over the place. The "Scooby-Doo" mugs would not be
considered collectible, precisely because nobody would conceive of
not having mugs, pens, posterboards, lunchboxes, T-shirts, etc...
without the characters plastered all over the place as standard promotion.
In that environment, an extra effort is often made for higher quality
or some form of intrinsic value to be added to a "limited edition" product
to insure that it is set apart from the standard deluge of promotional
items. This becomes even more applicable in an area where the promotion
is taken outside the normal area of expertise of the company, character, or
creator.
Often the most important part of a slashdotted article are its pictures. (Pictures of homemade roller coasters, case mods, explosions, et hoc genus omne.) Google doesn't cache pictures.
-- Nerds on toast in the new millenium
Note that the link does not have any affiliation attached to it...mouse over it and see. I just grabbed the first link to this pointing device I saw on Google. Yeah these buggers cost more than the Fry's $5 Special but I'm cool with that. Worth every penny.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
You overlook that other countries do not need to abuse those terms like we do in the US
I think the UK has decided to follow the US. I mean limited edition packaging for breakfast cereal and fizzy drinks. And then basing a whole marketing campaign around the fact.
I don't know what's worse. The blatant cynicism of the manufacturers, or the stupidity of the people who fall for it.
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
If you're going to be patronizing, you might as well get your facts straight.
First of all, "Shirow" is how his name is romanized on every Japanese product I've ever seen. While it would be more technically correct to spell it, "Shiro" to avoid confusing people into believing his name is a 3-mora word instead of a 2-mora word, it is the spelling that he himself gives for his pseudonym.
Second, "otaku" was in fact coined to refer to obsessed fanboys in Japan. It refers to obsessed fanboys regardless of obsession, but most Americans who use the term are familiar with anime and manga fans. The tongue-in-cheek expose known as "Otaku no Video" also charts gun otaku, porn otaku, and model-building otaku as well as containing a semi-racist overdubbing of an American anime fan in Japan to be nutcase who claimed God told him to come to Japan and obsess over anime. In Japan and to a much greater extent in America, the insulting word is worn like a badge of pride, much like the words "geek" or "fundamentalist."
Third, your etymology of the word is completely wrong. "Otaku," is a word which literally means a household -- specifically someone else's household. You never refer to you're own house/family unit with that word. As such, it is a polite and neutral though slightly archaic term to greet a stranger with. Since fanboys are lacking in social graces usually, they didn't make much of a point of remember other people's names and had a bad habit of referring to everyone as "otaku." This earned them the name "otaku-zoku", or "otaku-people(/race/tribe)." It has since then been shortened to just "otaku," and use of the word "otaku" as a polite greeting has fallen out of common parlance, much like the word "gay" is rarely used in English to refer to a happy person or event. This was exacerbated by a series of child murders in the 80s by an otaku which gave adult obsession with manga and anime the kind of bad stigma that has continued to this day.
Fourth, those ergonomics do in fact suck. <g>
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The mice are the M.A.P.P. product line, being produced by Elecom; their website has pictures of the two mice. The M-MAPP1SM is Shirow Masamune's design; the M-MAPP1KH is Katoki Hajime's design. You can find the page with the pictures of the mice here; unfortunately, the page is entirely in Japanese. The Babelfish translation of the page is not particularly helpful, with repeated references to 'chestnut thornback tar' (and talking about Katoki's work on 'movement soldier cancer/gun dam 0083', 'movement soldier V cancer/gun dam' and 'new movement game description cancer/gun dam W' -- automated Japanese-to-English translation has some way to go yet for more than the bare gist of a document), although you do discover that the mice are USB devices, but come with a USB-to-PS/2 convertor to allow them to be used as PS/2 mice, driver software on floppy and CD (WinXP/98/2000/ME as USB, WinXP/98/95/2000/ME/NT4SP3 as PS/2), and come in black, silver, and white.