Wealthy Geek Pays $20 Million to Wear Cartoon Helmet in Outer Space

Daisuke Enomoto (aka Dice-K) will soon become the fourth space tourist of all time, paying $20 Million to the extra-terrestrial travel agency Space Adventures for the privilege of spending ten fun-filled days in the International Space Station. Enomoto dreams not only of gazing down at the earth from the heavens, but to do so decked out in the costume of Char Aznable, his favorite character from the popular anime series Gundam. Enomoto is already entertaining bids from Japanese companies to build him a working red space suit based on the blond-haired, blue-eyed Char Aznable, whose name is derived from Charles Aznavour, but who is better known in the anime universe as The Red Comet.

While wearing his cartoon helmet and space epaulets, Enomoto will also be trying to convince the various ETs he encounters that he is friend, not foe. So the costume had better be good. Here is Enomoto's SETI at home page. Don't you wish you had $20 million to follow your dreams, too? Article here.

UPDATE: Listener Nick send us Char's theme song, Hori Kouichiro's Char ga Kuru (MP3)

Comments

[LUKEY]

The cool thing about this cartoon is that there are no aliens in Gundam. It's a story about overpopulation and Char has the answer. Destroy everyone on earth with asteroids.Lets just hope this guy has run out of money.....or has some left, depending on your point of view.

[Boaz]

Absolutely true. Not all anime are about aliens and magic and big eyes cute girls cosplay.

As a Gundam fan, it's an honor to see our Red Comet in space so soon in the civilian space travel era but we have to admit the Red Comet uniform is dorky (the space suit is a pink-redish space suit that's not too different from modern ones except much thinner) -- even character designer Yaz said if he knew the Gundam anime was planned to be realistic instead of the old Super Robot shows he would have designed the uniform different.