From: "Daniel M. Toebbens" <toebbens <at> HMI <dot> DE>
Date: 30 sep 2002
Subject: Re: Drangon Ball Z & Shogi

On Mon, 30 Sep 2002, markyesme2 wrote:

> This does make me think of something.  If people are interested in getting
> kids involved, then a theme-based shogi set would work (i.e. Pokemon or
> DBZ).  Don't know if the Japanese make theme-based shogi sets.  Western
> chess has theme-based (Major League Baseball, Simpsons, LoTR, etc) sets out
> the wazoo!!
>
> What do you guys think of that idea?

Actually, here in Germany they started promoting a Dragonball Z based
western chess just two weeks ago. As tasteless as this is in general, if it
brings kids into playing chess it is ok with me.

Concerning Shogi, I am one of those players which got introduced to the
game via its 'japanese' aspect rather than via its 'chess' aspect (my
anime club had a presentation at a festival of the German-Japanese Society,
the local shogi group was there, too, and one week later I was hooked up on
a whole new kind of drug :-) I think that's the reason why, when thinking
about promoting shogi, I thought about promoting it at the local anime
conventions. For this I'm planing to make a few sets of a Ranma 1/2 based
shogi sets. This show is imho perfect for this purpose for varius resons:
The story is based on fighting, about half of the cast changes all of the
time, lots of regular characters for the different pieces, major
characters constantly play shogi,... And of course it is very popular,
running in German TV and comic shops right now.



Daniel Toebbens