Oh Those Wacky Japanese

[Sionnach Glic]

TOKYO (AFP) - - A Japanese man has admitted to burning down his family home after his mother threw away some of his favourite robot toys from the "Gundam" animation series.

Yoshifumi Takabe, aged 30 and living with his mother, said he had become suicidal after she dumped some of the robots, of which he had enough to fill 300 boxes stacked to the ceiling, the Sports Nippon said Wednesday.

The blaze on August 9 last year completely destroyed their two-storey wooden house in Kasai, Hyogo prefecture, but no one was injured.

"The Gundam figures are like the partners I spend my life with," he reportedly said after pleading guilty at western Kobe's District Court. "I wanted to die with them in a fire if they were to be thrown out."

The Mobile Suit Gundam series, based on an animation TV series which started in the late 1970s, is about space wars fought by gigantic robots.

From here.

[McAvoy]

Not exactly unique to the Japanese. I know of a few people that probably would commit suicide if they couldn't play video games.

But never over action figures...

[Sionnach Glic]

In all fairness, if you've got 300 boxes full of the stuff then it probably represents something a bit more than a passing interest in the show. I know I'd be pissed if someone threw out my 40K stuff or my book collections. Not enough to go burn their house down, but I'd certainly enjoy the thoughts of doing so.

The guys sounds basicaly like the Japanese version of those guys who spend massive amounts of money trying to get first-edition Star Wars action figures.

[McAvoy]

Yep. Thousands of action figures. He said they're his partners too.

I really do not own anything on a subject on that scale. The closest I got is sizable collection of Naval history books around 200 last time I counted.

EDIT: The guy is 30 years old living with Mommy with thousands of action figures. I defnitely do not blame the mother. If i were his father he'd be lucky that kept them that long.

[SolkaTruesilver]

So... he burned the remainer of his action figure at the same time?

[McAvoy]

I don't know.

I liked Gundam as a teenager. Never knew there were that amount of action figures out there for that.

[Sionnach Glic]

It's been going for 30 years. That's about the same time span as Star Wars has been going, and there's a shed-load of toys for that, and it only had (for most of that time) a handful of movies to go on. So I'm not too surprised about it.

[McAvoy]

30 years? Wow.

I have seen the other spin-offs/series in movie stores. Just didn't think it would amount of 300 boxes of action figures...

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Every single Gundam series has had massive amounts of action figures and model kits. 300 boxes is probably not even all of them.

[McAvoy]

Must be an expensive hobby. No wonder he lives with Mom.

[stitch626]

If we go by only model kits, there are well over 2000 different ones currently available. If we include toys and other things... yeah 300 boxes is only scratching the surface.

[shran]

Besides, throwing away those toys was rather wasteful, considering the collection he built up there might be some considerable monetary value in it. Now wonder he's pissed. She could have asked to put the boxes in a shed or something similar or sell off duplicates. I daresay it would've alleviated at least some stress.

[stitch626]

Well, one of the first 1/144 model kits of the Gundam will go for about 1M on some private markets (American ones). Thats unbuilt and unopened of course.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

I've got my own transformer collection. It's decent-sized... but not 300 boxes worth.

[Mark]

If he would have just gotten laid, he would have felt so much better.