This gigantic steel robot (18m/60ft high and weighing some 50tons) is a symbol of the city of Kobe's recovery after the earthquake of 1995. It came straight off the pages of a manga comic by Yokoyama Mitsuteru (Kobe 1934-2004), the first example of the mecha genre published in the 1950s-1960s. Since 2009, it has been standing on a pedestrian square of a characteristic Japanese suburb (railway station, buildings, shopping mall), where it attracts crowds of manga fans and tourists.