Raccoons (well, tanuki, but close enough for our purposes) are… interesting creatures in Japanese folklore. They’re tricksters fond of getting drunk, and while Japanese mythology makes no mention of rocket launchers, Rocket lines up enough with tradition that somebody decided to pay tribute to him the only way the Japanese know how. By turning him into a robot.
To be fair, this isn’t nearly as creepy as the robotic Dick they rolled out to promote A Scanner Darkly. But on the other hand, only the head moves, and it reminds us less of the loveable robotic limb thief we know from the movie and more like a malevolent Teddy Ruxpin. That doesn’t mean we don’t desperately want one to have in our house, just that we feel deeply conflicted about how creepy it’s going to look when it suddenly comes to life and starts angrily answering questions in Japanese.
Via io9
