Sci Fi Wire reports that the Japanese have erected a life-size, sixty-foot-tall statue of the classic Japanese robot character Gigantor (known in Japan as "Tetsujin 28-go," ["Iron Man No. 28"]) in the city of Kobe. Gigantor was the manga world's first giant robot, created by manga author Mitsuteru Yokoyama.

The Gigantor cartoon ran in Japan in the 1950s and in the U.S. in the 1960s. In the 1990s, the original series was run again in a colorized version. It features a giant, powerful robot (Gigantor) remote-controlled by a young boy using him to fight for good (and actually, the remote-controlled aspect means Gigantor is not a true robot).

The timing of this statue's creation is somewhat ironic. We are about a month away from the release of the Astro Boy movie, an adaptation of another famous manga and anime robot, this one created by the "god of manga," Osamu Tezuka. As Tezuka expert Frederik Schodt points out in his book The Astro Boy Essays, Yokoyama was "one of Tezuka's greatest rivals, his [Gigantor] character at times nearly eclipsing [Astro Boy] in popularity." Is this some attempt by Gigantor fans to outdo Astro Boy's arrival on the big screen? Probably not. Either way, the statue looks awesome. Why can't we have stuff like this in the States?

Below, we've embedded a video of the statue being created: