#and I had a singular Ken that never made it out of his box (I thought he was creepy)

[reputayswift]

Tell me your favorite childhood Barbies mine were Pop Sensation Barbie (obvious ode to Britney) and Cali Girl Barbie (she was scented like coconut sunscreen)

[recentanimenews]

Beats and Flow: Discover the Hip Hop Groove in Anime!

When hip hop and rap come to mind, you might think of classic songs, clothing styles, and dances from singers like Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, KRS-One, or Run DMC. What may not be your first thought, though, is anime! However, anime and hip hop have a pretty long-standing relationship, reflecting the popularity and growth of hip hop and rap in Japan over time. Hip hop first appeared in Japan in the 80s, credited to the time Hiroshi Fujiwara spent in the United States before bringing records back with him and becoming the first DJ in Japan. From there, hip hop and rap spread throughout Japan’s music and cultural circles, influencing music, clothing, art, and, of course, anime!

The relationship between the two is not as strange as it might sound, because anime is an audio-visual medium where creators are regularly trying to find new and exciting ways to engage their audiences, or mixing various musical styles with animated styles to find the perfect combination between aesthetics, much like mixing flavors together to find just the right blend for a pleasing bite.

Probably one of the most classic examples of this relationship is the soundtrack to Shinichiro Watanabe’s Samurai Champloo. Champloo followed Cowboy Bebop as an exciting mixture of genres. But where Bebop pushed jazz, Westerns, and sci-fi together, Samurai Champloo mixed hip hop and Edo-era samurai films. Watanabe is quoted as saying: “When I first come up with the idea of what I am going to create, quite often the music appears at the same time. So, with Samurai Champloo it wasn’t that I had the story in mind and then added hip hop to it. When I came up with the character of Mugen I heard hip hop at the same time, and I thought he was going to be a rapper samurai.”

That type of direction in thematics with music helped Watanabe enlist the help of hip hop artists Tsutchie and Force of Nature to create one soundtrack, and late hip hop artist Nujabes to produce two more records for Champloo. While Bebop didn’t lack for action, Champloo’s focus on swordplay and singular combat let various types of musical styles play out over the series, from R&B ballads to banging rhymes and beats. Many fans will still likely remember the beats to the opening and ending of Champloo, helped along by their extremely memorable music tracks and vocal mixture, with the ending song, “Shiki no Uta,” being particularly memorable!

Champloo wouldn’t be the last Watanabe series to mix visual aesthetics with audio tunes, as his next work Space Dandy regularly smashed genres and styles together in its attempts to send Dandy and co. on numerous crazy adventures. mabanua’s “I Want to Know” from episode 5 helped build the relationship established between Dandy and the wayward Adélie, as well as giving viewers a peek into the personality of Dandy beneath all of the bluster (a side that up to that point hadn’t really been explored yet). The soft vocals over the hip hop beat worked to establish the song as memorable, and its use in the episode was a key to making the episode itself shine!

And if you're thinking the name mabanua sounds familiar, you might be following MEGALOBOX! Moving up from guest appearances,��mabanua is in charge of music for the series, the title track “MEGALOBOX” and the “Intermission” track creating an iconic atmospheric sense of identity around the show. They're rough, hard-hitting beats that really connect with the main themes of the series and its gritty take on futuristic boxing and fighting to survive.

  Thematically, hip hop has featured in episode 7, “The Road to Death,” and episode 11, “A Deadmarch,” as important set pieces. Episode 7’s rap from an unnamed kid from the slums plays over the montage of Joe’s rise to popularity as an “everyman” contender, while episode 11’s rap from Sachio serves as the rallying cry for Team Nowhere to overcome their doubts and break free from the control of others over their fates. As MEGALOBOX moves toward its conclusion, it seems likely that hip hop will continue to serve as an important aural factor in setting the scenes! The MEGALOBOX Original Soundtrack, by the way, drops on June 27th and it features a whopping 47 tracks full of musical goodness. Don't miss out on mabanua's latest work!

For many, however, hip hop is more than just music. The somewhat contentious debate over the difference between hip hop and rap usually boils down to a question of culture, and in that regard, hip hop in anime tends to blend into the style of the shows it infuses. As mentioned above, Samurai Champloo’s fluid mixture of styles relies on hip hop music to act as a lynchpin; Space Dandy, a show made up of constant references, pastiches, and homages, similarly selects music appropriate to the animation style and content befitting the episode best.

  But beyond visual aesthetics of animation, sometimes the clothing, grooming, and aesthetic styles of hip hop and rap culture are just as important as the music, such as in Santa Inoue’s Tokyo Tribe series! Although never released in America, Inoue’s hip hop-infused works blend references and parodies of hip hop personas and lifestyle into stories of rival gangs and dramatic action.

And Inoue’s manga and anime are just the tip of the iceberg in his hip hop empire; his brand of clothing, Santastic!, draws heavily from hip hop stylings, and he’s even helped create album art for numerous records. In a somewhat obscure note, his art was featured in an episode of ABC’s old home remodeling show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition! And in 2014, Tokyo Tribes was adapted into a live-action rap musical, if you’re interested in checking out some manga to anime to live action hip hop gangster action!

Not to be left out, Devilman Crybaby features its own intriguing hip hop mixture. While the show is an updated retelling of Go Nagai’s classic tragedy action series, one of the more compelling changes to the series was the introduction of rap to Wamu’s gang. Between scenes featuring Akira, Ryo, and Miki, these freestyle rap segments featured the talents of Ken 390 and Young Dais, with beatboxer AFRA, serving as a type of narration of events and issues going on in the series, particularly things happening to everyday people behind the scenes.

Of note is that all three of these performers have been involved with anime and hip hop in the past: Ken 390 performed on the single for Cyborg 009 Call of Justice, Young Dais has a starring role in Tokyo Tribes live action film, and AFRA is the beatboxing Shinpachi from Samurai Champloo!

As time goes on, there will likely be many more hip hop and anime collaborations to come; Lotus Juice’s iconic mixes from the Persona series have found their way into their animated counterparts, and the reciprocal nature of hip hop and anime’s cultural growth and exchanges are sure to continue as both expand and evolve with the times. Afro Samurai already paved the way for Western hip hop artists to work with anime production, with the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA producing the music for the mash-up anime and movie series, so there’s no telling where the future of hip hop and anime collaborative pairings could go!

Have any favorite hip hop and rap songs from your favorite anime? Or know of any other hip hop influenced anime? Let us know in the comments!

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Nicole is a features and a social video script writer for Crunchyroll. Known to profess her love of otome games over at her blog, Figuratively Speaking. When she has the time, she also streams some games. Follow her on Twitter: @ellyberries 

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[itsworn]

Shelby’s Original Venice Crew Revives History.

The Original Venice Crew refers to a small group of fabricators, race car drivers, and builders who set out to change the automotive world. They won championships, the 24 hours of Le Mans, and they made their leaders name synonymous with greatness. They were Carroll Shelby’s original employees at his first race shop, which operated in Venice, California from 1962 to 1967. Among Shelby’s first workers was a team of talented drivers including Ken Miles and Bob Bondurant, famous aerodynamicist Peter Brock, designer of the Cobra Daytona, and world-class race car fabricator Phil Remington. Apprenticing underneath these greats were 17 and 18-year-old mechanics who had a background in performance and racing. The cars they built would become legendary and are worth millions today. One of those cars was the 1965 Ford Mustang G.T. 350 Competition Model.

This is car No. 98i, one of the two prototype cars that the OVC built at Peter Brock’s BRE shop in Las Vegas.

When Ford Motor Company partnered with Shelby American in 1964 to work on the Ford GT40 Le Mans program, they sent the new Mustang to be transformed into a race car because Lee Iacocca wanted it to have a performance reputation; Carroll Shelby at the time believed that the Mustangs was a secretary’s car. The V8 equipped K-code mustangs, sat parked at Shelby’s shop at Venice nose to tail, but many did not want to work on them. Housed in the same building were Ford GT40s, Cobras, Daytonas, and the new King Cobra, the plain white Mustangs looked pedestrian by comparison. “Some said why are we working on Mustangs when we have 427 Cobras?” Jim Marietta, Shelby mechanic (1964-1965), recalls in a recent interview.

No matter, Ford and Shelby had big plans for the seemingly plain ponycars. The Mustangs would be perfected in road racing competition. Shelby put together a race team, led by project manager Chuck Cantwell who drove the car alongside test drivers Miles and Bondurant. Marietta and Peter Bryant were assigned as mechanics, and Ted Sutton was the crew chief.

This is a period picture of 5R002, note the primer on the rear fender that Marietta flared when he was 17.

The car they worked on was called the G.T. 350 Competition, car number 5R002 or “002”. It was fitted with plexiglass side and rear windows. Brock designed a rear window that was curved on both sides with a slot at the top for air to escape, and rear fenders that were hand flared. The test drivers developed the car on-track at Riverside and Willow Springs International Raceways in California, and they reported back to Cantwell on improvements that needed to be made. Every trip to the track led to new changes, and as Marietta says, the car was constantly changing from week to week.

Car number 5R002 was entirely handmade, and its development occurred over months, even while Shelby American transitioned to a new location at 7501 West Imperial Highway near Los Angeles International Airport. Miles and Bondurant gave feedback to Cantwell, he told the young mechanics what changes needed to be made, and they set out how to implement those modifications. Marietta was tasked with flaring the fenders and coming up with a way to make the windows go up and down.

Jim Marietta shows off a hand-flared fender, the same job that he had on the Mustangs when he was 17.

“My job was to cut the plexiglass and fit them to the window frames”, says Marietta. “I came up with the idea for straps to pull up the windows. I was also one of the first guys to flare a rear fender. In the picture of 002 coming back to the shop after testing at Riverside, the grey stripe was primer. My method was to use a muffler gun to cut the piece out, then use a rose bud [torch] and a body spoon to flare the fenders. It was a crude method—a hot rodder’s way of doing it”.

Ford also developed an independent rear suspension to make the car handle even better. Marietta became the mechanic for the IRS. He worked underneath Ford Engineer Bud Ellis who came from Detroit each week to work on the suspension. Marietta recalls Ellis giving tasks as he left on Thursdays- things like figure out a way to work on the IRS alignment.

Although the Mustangs were changing in performance, they were still plain white cars, and the job of making them unique was left to Brock. He made new part designs to the body that would aid in its aerodynamics. One of those aids was a new front fascia design that directed airflow to radiators and coolers. He also came up with the paint scheme that became iconic- the blue stripes.

Here is car number 004 of the continuation run, ready for its transformation into a 1965 G.T.350 Competition model.

The G.T. 350 got its stripes because Brock idealized Briggs Cunningham and his iconic Le Mans cars when he was younger. “The American colors in Le Mans in 1963 were white with blue stripes. I emulated that,” says Brock. Ford asked Brock if he could make the Mustang look like a race car. Brock told the Ford executives, “We’ll we can do these new aerodynamic body parts  for X amount [of money] or we can do these stripes”. He says Ford choose not to do the new parts because of cost, and they were initially skeptical about the stripes because they thought no one would want to drive around in a car that looked like a skunk. Ford eventually agreed, so the white Mustangs got blue stripes.

Shelby’s team massaged and modified the G.T.350 Competition “into the B production killer that it became”, says Brock. The G.T. 350 Competition became the national Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) B-production champion in dominating fashion, winning in 1965, ‘66, and ’67. Car 5R002 won the 1965 Championship with Jerry Titus behind the wheel.

“Some of the knowledge and techniques that were used in developing the race car filtered down to the production street cars”, says Marietta. Initially, only one G.T.350 model was planned for sale: the G.T. 350S, which was a street model that had “bolt-ons, intake manifolds, Cobra aluminum oil pan, removed rear seats. In addition, the quarter panel vents were replaced with windows, and for a while—override bars (traction bars), which then went to underbars” says Marietta.

The OVC has Ford’s 1963 technical schematics for the Independent Rear Suspension.

The Competition was not meant for sale. Marietta explained, “the first R’s were just for Shelby, but then he decided to sell them as copies of 002 for customers. They were for sale for everyday people, and it sold for $5,595.”

The Competition model dropped all creature comforts for the singular focus of going faster around a race track. It had no interior, glove box, radio, heater, or any personal amenities. “Anything that had any significant weight was removed,” says Marietta. However, the IRS never made it to the production cars due to costs.

In total, 562 G.T. 350’s were sold, with 506 being the 1965 G.T. 350S models, while only 36 G.T. 350 Competition models were made. There was a 37th G.T. 350 Competition model that was made, but Shelby gave it to the parts department as a gift. The G.T. 350 Competitions were only sold in 1965, with some carryovers being sold as 1966 models.

Over the years, the Competition model became known as the G.T. 350R. It took on that moniker in the ‘70s as shorthand, long after the car was out of production.

Continuation Car 001 is equipped with Ford’s 1963 prototype IRS rear suspension.

Decades passed, and the old crew disbanded. Shelby enthusiast Bob Shaw started organizing annual reunions to celebrate the original Shelby employees. For twenty years, he has held these events that brought together the old staff to reminisce on the cars they built and the championships that they won. A few years ago, Marietta pitched the idea of building another Mustang as a way to revive the camaraderie that existed among the workers.

Jim Marietta led the team, and Tim Sutton and Peter Brock joined. They sourced two 1965 K-code cars and started building them in Brock’s shop, Brock Racing Enterprises (BRE) in Las Vegas. Their plan was to make two more Competition models just like 002. The rules for the cars were that anything from the original prototype could be used, regardless if it made it on to production versions. However, it had to be something that was planned or tested on the original 1964 prototype car. This is the fortunate technicality that allows the independent rear suspension and Peter Brock’s body modifications to be included.

This car is equipped with Peter Brock’s modified fiberglass front bumper that was designed for the original prototype.

The two cars were stripped and sent out for media blasting. They came back bare, and the crew reprised their old roles as fabricators. Brock worked on implementing his front bumper design. A mold was made from an original G.T. 350’s front fascia, and a plug was made that had air ducts and a molded bumper that were angled to allowed airflow to be directed to the radiator and oil coolers. “Sutton drew out and hand fabricated the rear brake ducts. He started with chalk, drawing on Brock’s shop floor,” says Marietta. “He also helped fit the rear window, among other tasks. He is a master fabricator.” Likewise, Marietta took on his old job of cutting plexiglass and fitting them to the side window frames. He made the pull-up straps that he designed 50 years earlier and cut and hand formed the rear fenders, only this time with modern tools—no muffler gun.

A 289 block that is bored and stroked to 331 cubic inches was lowered into the car’s engine bay. “The engine puts out 450 horsepower on an engine dyno,” says Marietta. It’s mated to an aluminum-alloy Toploader transmission.

One slight change that might not be apparent is the rear window—it is more of a correction than a modification. The production windows were not built exactly to Brock’s specifications. They had a hump that was never in the design. The hump killed the aerodynamics of the window, preventing it from creating a low-pressure area that sucked air out of the car. Now, under Brock’s discerning eye, he could make sure that the windows were made exactly the way that he intended them to be 50 years ago.

Through the rear window, you can see Ted Sutton’s rear brake duct that he designed with chalk on Peter Brock’s shop floor.

Other members joined in on the homecoming builds, “The plenum and gas guard were handmade by one of the original Venice Shelby employees”, says Marietta.

The sister cars were identical twins except for the rear suspension. One car ran a 9-inch rear end, while the other ran a recreation of the Ford-developed IRS. The original 1963 Ford blueprints for the IRS were found, and original suspension parts were donated to help the team construct the elusive suspension.

The cars were painted in Wimbledon White with two blue stripes running over the top of the car’s body. Both Mustangs wear number 98 in a blue roundel that harkens back to the car that started it all 50 years before: the legendary 5R002 that Ken Miles drove to victory in Green Valley and the car that Jerry Titus drove to the 1965 SCCA championship. The lowercase “i” identifies which car is equipped with the IRS.

The gas guard and engine plenum are made by the same OVC team member who fabricated these parts on the original cars.

Once the OVC unveiled the new Competition models to the public, they were flooded with invitations to show the cars at prestigious events like Monterey’s Carmel by the Sea Concours and The Quail, and events as far away as Lillehammer, Norway to lead the 4th  of July parade before traveling to France to drive a lap around Le Mans. At every location, people asked the same question that they asked Shelby when they saw the original Competition car, “Can I have one, and how much?”

The OVC crew had no plans for selling the cars, but after so much demand, they looked into what it would take to build the car as a limited production run. Marietta applied to Ford Motor Company to have the cars be officially licensed. He received approval at an in-person meeting with Ford executives on the condition that he meets their demanding standards and requirements. After Ford’s approval, he approached Shelby American and got their consent as well. Shelby American asked where they would be built; Marietta had a few locations in mind, but Neil Cummings, Co-Chairman of Shelby American, offered the warehouse portion of their Gardena, California location as the home of OVC’s Mustangs.

The 331 cu in stroker makes 450rwhp.

Today, original 1965 K-code mustangs are transformed into continuation 1965 G.T. 350 Competition models. The old crew still works on each car, fabricating parts and flaring fenders; however, they are now the masters teaching new young apprentices, fabricators, mechanics and welders. They teach them in the car fabrication methods that they used back in 1964 and ’65.

Only 36 Continuation 1965 G.T.350 Competition cars will be built. They are selling at $250,000 and can be equipped with either a solid rear axle or the IRS.

Despite the small run of cars, it looks like the fun will not stop anytime soon. When we visited OVC’s shop, two gleaming Cobras were rolled in. Marietta explained, “these are Superformace cars that the OVC crew are going to finish, installing the 427 engine and transmissions. It’s a new option that Superformance is offering its customers”. How fitting, being that Ted Sutton was the first person to stuff a 427 into a Cobra—Carrol Shelby even signed a picture saying “Thanks for the 1st 427!” It looks like the guys at OVC will be busy for a while.

Jim Marietta holds an original component from the actual 1963 Ford-developed Independent Rear Suspension.

In the Gardena shop is an actual 1965 G.T.350 Mustang hood with light patina.

The OVC G.T. 350 car number 002 is mounted to a car rotisserie to be stripped before being sent out for media blasting.

These are original transmissions ready to be rebuilt.

Here is one of the first limited-production Superformance Cobras that OVC will install 427 engines into.

Carroll Shelby thanks Ted Sutton “for the 1st 427” Cobra.

Hanging on the wall is a picture of Ted Sutton installing the first 427 engine into a Cobra.

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