Mad about Football

Then again, the Japanese may just be mad.

World Cup fever has led to the following silliness on Japanese television (in order of increasing incredulity provoked):

• Countless tarento with magnetic models of football pitches, sliding around magnetic likenesses of Japan's "star" players to represent possible formations.


• The highlights of the Japan-Croatia and Japan-Brazil matches. Before they happened. Simulated by the tarento playing Winning Eleven against each other. Needless to say, in their "simulations", Japan won both matches. Also needless to say, Japan did not and will not win either.


• The international robotic World Cup (or some such), in which teams of 30 cm tall robots play football. Awesome! Needless to say, a technical university from Osaka beat a German university rather handily in the finals.

The only thing missing was a match between two anime all-stars teams. Can you imagine, Gundams, Evas, and Patlabors one one side, Kenshin, Hokuto no Ken, and Howl on the other. Sugei!