Homemade R2D2 steampunk junkbot

Robert sez, "I found this scrap metal homebuilt steampunk chubby R2D2 in Tokyo's Nakano Broadway. Pretty good welding!"

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

@ ZADAZ, FRANCESCO FONDI

Nakano Broadway is indeed cooler and much more accesible than Akiba. It is also much more family friendly (in my opinion), there’s even shops for grannies and little kids!

Akiba is fantastic, too, in it’s own way.

As for the Mandarake shop in Akiba, yes, it is cool right now when it is stuffed with goodies plucked from all the other Madarake shops, but the main store in Nakano Kicks a*s.
smonkey

Not exactly original.

They crank these things out in thailand (I think that’s where most you see around are from).

Here’s one of many sites dedicated to “custom” metal art from thailand.

http://www.oldsteelart.com/index.php?lay=show&ac=article&Id=53306

(tho the one you guys featured does look better than the one I point out).
akbal7

Does it actually run on steam?
Santa’s Knee

At SMonkey,

I always thought that R2D2 looked suspiciously like a propane tank…

:^)
VagabondAstronomer

…still awaiting those steam-powered X-wing fighters…
jfrancis

I have a length of old lead pipe. I call it my steampunk light saber.
Anonymous

So…. wouldn’t that be a R1D1?
AirPillo

Not all assemblage art counts as steampunk; there’s not a scrap of brass color or leather on this! D:
Zadaz

Nakano Broadway seems to get left off the Western Akiba/Otaku tours, but pound for pound it out-awesome’s most of Akihabara. The little galleries and tiny shops overflowing with unexpected collectibles. One guy had collected dozens of vintage JFK dolls, another blackface dolls, another had a full set of vintage Sesame Street sippy cups adn 70′s American TV show lunchboxes. Everything from NES cartridges to Russian fighter pilot helmets, porno to tin toys. (And of course every Kubrick, Panda-G, Gundam, Robotech, Masked Rider, Evangelion, etc merchandice ever produced.)

And it’s always changing. Finding something awesome isn’t hard there. Finding the same thing twice is a challenge.

It’s what Akihabara was like before it Disneyfied.
Francesco Fondi

@ ZADAZ Nakano better than Akiba?!

You shouldn’t believe to the so called “otaku” experts.
I love Nakano, but the magnitude of Akiba is (still) on a totally diferrent level… just take a look at Mandarake (Nakano’s geek’s temple) new 8 floor building opening in Akiba or to the legendary M’s Entertainment…