A is for... Astro Boy Attacking Ayanami. In Atlantis.

Here is the very first entry in Neill's A-Z of Awesome Japan!

• Astro Boy is a robotic star of manga and anime, created by the great Osamu Tezuka. He's kind of like a robot pinnochio, but with machine guns in his butt. He is awesome.
• Ayanami Rei is a character from Studio Gainax's classic anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, which I am sad to say I've only seen about an hour of, and it was one of the more mind-meltingly confusing hours of my life. But I am going to give it another try, before you all shout at me.
• Ayanami was also the name of a battleship of the Imperial Japanese Navy, which saw extensive deployment in WWII. If you look carefully you can see it's wreck there in the background.
• Atlantis is a legendary sunken island or underwater kingdom. Aquaman comes from there. He is not in this picture.

Today's picture was suggested by the marvellous @teamsmithy on Twitter, although I threw in the Atlantis bit for @pretzelsncheese.

Phew. Did I really say I was going to do one of these every day? What the hell was I thinking? Ah well, only 25 more to go. If you would like to suggest a topic for future letters, you can do so via Facebook, Twitter, or right here in the comments on this blog. And you can of course sponsor me at my JustGiving page - all proceeds to the Japan Earthquake & Tsunami Relief Fund.

EDIT: updated 04/04/11 with a redrawn and hopefully less rubbish version of this picture.