Since the explosion of the fair in the streets of Lucca (before it was inside an indoor sports arena, then with some pavilions added out of it) we have a palace dedicated to Japan stuff. It is called Japan Palace and this is the queue to enter in it!

Thanks to organisation I had a staff pass so I could enter quickly. Inside, on courtyards and two storeys, various stands related to Japan in various ways. Here a view at the 9 o’clock in the morning, at the opening. After It was almost impossible to walk.

A well known vendor specialised in kwai dresses.

More traditional stuff, but with a sexy touch. Japanese people love Italy, Italians love Japan.

Kokeshi. They are very cute.

Traditional Japanese curtains but with cats instead of humans.

Japanese sexuality is more complex than Italian and Occidental ones. They seem as perverts to us.

However these paintings are very beautiful. Next year we will have something different for this place because of overcrowding. Maybe there will be even a Japan district…

Obvious presence in the fair for something related to Go Nagai creations. This year there was the preview of a new line of models available in newspaper kiosks. They are in metal, previously painted and almost 14 centimetres high.

More detailed these plastic models. I like the flying fists a lot. I don’t know well the Mazinger with bat wings, more modern and demoniac versions of the old classics.

Gashapons are an easy and cheap gadget that you could find in the fair. Here some of Go Nagai’s giant robots. I wonder about all the female ones variations. I have to watch more anime and read more manga to know better…

The Lucca C&G report will follow the next year with 93 more photos!

This year we had two Romics. It is the main comics fair in Rome. It is always nice to walk around huge piles of comics and gadgets. Together with Andrea (Ganesha Games) we came here for a full day (10.00-19.00), watching stands and buying stuff. We met some people too, and we had interesting chats with a medieval style fencer and with a games vendor. It is a 4 days long fair, but I visited it the first day because I will be very busy for work in the weekend. Moreover the fair is pretty overcrowded the other days.

A blast from the past: once upon a time comics fairs were populated mainly by middle age people.

Nowadays this kind of fairs are full of young people with costumes. And half naked young girls with exhibitionism symptoms.

I like so much this world of cosplayers, a touch of colour in life, comics and animes in the real world.

A big organised group is the 501th Legion, local imperial forces inspired by Star Wars.

The usual Nintendo stand with young girls as hostess.

Among comics a huge presence is for gadgets and statuettes. These are very nice!

A choice of pillow-cases for lone people pillow to hug during the night.

More gadgets and another kind of pillow among them: the pizza pillow!

The food choice in the fair were good but we opted even for a more exotic flavour as these Japanese sweets.

Really a beautiful day, the time fled away smoothly and we had fun.

I’m a comic reader before I could reader: I watched only images at that age. Another Romics edition in my city. A big business because from this year we will have a spring and an autumn edition. And this time the organisers thought to add more trains for the location, the same nowhere place among ex-swamps.

I understand why I came all the times to this kind of fairs. It is not only comics or sparse game stands, it is principally about girls. Here you can watch lots of young and very beautiful females in their best age. Half-naked females with imaginative dresses. Exhibitionism is the rule. It is called cosplay… Sometimes the situation is really embarrassing. Among girls that practically wears bikinis with some fabric variously added, one of them with one D size bra on put herself on all fours on a car to show better her boobs to a crowd of males.

As I always say, this is a place where to show your costume, and your corpse. Everyone take photos of everyone, it is an infinite play of images based on fantasy worlds better than crude and monotone reality. Mine was a really fast trip, I stayed only 5 hours inside the fair on the 4 days duration. So I didn’t take lots of photos. You can find more on Flickr.

This time among cosplayers I noted more male and female homosexuals than usual. Some famous drag queens played to this costume thing too.

More sex talking. This Japanese statuette impress me. Only 110 euro to have a sex slave on a bookshelf of yours.

Something more polite and childish. My partner in the trip while is buying a Spiderman nice puppet.

In the very old times you cannot find a Gundam model, they were a chimera. Now the usual wall of models, everyone with their price tag made by post-its.

Another fair view. Some gadgets around and the upper entry of one of the 3 pavilions used for Romics.

I have to show even some comics, otherwise you could think that there weren’t comics in a comic fair. Here my partner while is buying from the author a comic that I don’t like at all about a fat panda… Instead I bought a Belgian/French school comic about airplanes in the WWII. I have got a better style of life…

The next appointment for comics is in autumn here in Rome and a month after there will be the Lucca madness. Instead, wargaming speaking, the next appointment is Hellana, this Sunday. I will be present with Ferrum et Gloria.

What is an action figure? Only some resin parts, glued and painted…

Well, the result is not so simple, these are works of art.

In this post I collected the best of sexy action figures that I saw at the fair. I am a male, so I fell in love with weapons and girls…

The next action figures are less sexy. Because this is porn, sold as an item for anoraks. I don’t think that something like this can easily find a place on all desks or bookshelves. And inside a comic fair? Well, if some manga series support male homosexuality, if Fifty Shades of Grey has sold 60 million copies worldwide and females think about it as literature, maybe these statuettes are not so strange here. So these sculptures are not things for perverts, are only a matter of healthy sex urge. Only some resin parts, glued and painted, do you remember?

Heroic samurai robots are made in Go Nagai. The sad thing is that he revise in perpetuity his fictional world cast and sometimes he don’t end the series, so you cannot understand the full story. Maybe because there isn’t a real story but only an accumulation of stories based on stock characters.

Mazinger (Majingā) family. Sometimes almost the same names for slightly different characters and stories. I don’t care so much about this, because I remember when I was a child watching these cartoons. Amazing!

An UFO Robot Grendizer diorama. Very dynamic. The tag is not an abstract number, it is the cost in euros.

UFO Robot Grendizer with some its flight modules. This was chronologically the first giant robot on television in Italy. At that times it was a revolution in children entertainment. Grendizer gadgets were a must have. I increased my social status among other children because I owned a Grendizer official t-shirt.

A version of the Mazinger robot. Those bat or hellish wings gives a great touch to the character.

A photo of our Samurai Robots Battle Royale scenario. Andrea is selling some t-shirts with the cover of the rules. Ask him for sizes and price.

A drink with Go Nagai’s robots customised cans: giant robots for some sort of exotic beverage… Don’t drink them for your safety, just collect them…

Modelling world is not all about mecha. There are other things. These that I show you are a view on a fine model art that you could find in the fair.

Last photo on which kind of prices you can find for these little pieces of art.

Someone think that Lucca Games is a fair for gadgets, boardgames or videogames, but there is a large attention to miniatures and modelling, you have to look better to realise it.

Here we have a heir of Blood Bowl: another ruleset, different miniatures, but the same result. I like this playing field, it has a a refined taste, with the square subdivision only suggested on the ground.

I like original ideas. These ones are skeletons on a tracker, but with a baywatch theme! Great!

Huh, the Doctor is in the fair. Old Black Tree miniatures brought to life in the painters section of the fair. They passed all the time painting. The next time I have to bring a miniature with me for them, just to have something well painted to remind the fair. This year there was a Sandokan miniature as miniature of the event, but I didn’t buy it, maybe because I don’t have plans for a pirate set. I’m stupid, I could buy it and have it painted just at the desk in front of Ganesha Games stand…

Cosimo Auricchio is the sculptor of TB Line miniatures. He is a free lance, a real artist, which sometimes sculpt even in 28mm format. Here you can see this skeleton pirate. Great miniature and great painter who highlighted the piece.

Cosimo sold dummies for sculptors, but there were others. I have not expectation on my skills as sculptor so I didn’t buy them. Narciso instead wants to try.

Inside Lucca Games there is Grogg, a coontest about modelling and painting. Here some examples of the historical type.

Do you want a bust of Thor? Every house must own its Thor bust. It is only 800 euros, limited production I suppose. Not so discreet.

WOG is the new incarnation of WOW. From the sense of wonder to an insult. Now Ares Games produce these aircraft for the popular game that was Wings of War, because Nexus Games went bankrupt. New production, some new fighters and bombers, a lot of bombers.

Preproduction models from China, that bomb us with cheap plastic toys.

Yamato in space. Huge ship, more than a simple model, it is big as a small torpedo…

Pikachu in a human form, as Japanese puppets imitate human forms. A play of mirrors…

Saint Seiya are puffs. I like only the temple in this scene, but a lot of people like these gold puppets more.