"WWWII Japanese Inspiration?" Topic

I see a lot of ideas and figures for WWWII in Europe, but I was wondering about some ideas for the Pacific. The go-to, I think, would be mecha and power armor for the IJA and IJN.

But what about some other ideas, for both sides?

Have a look at the Dust Australis blog.
dustaustralis.blogspot.com
Lots of fun stuff for the Pacific there.

Stephen Spielberg's 1941.

For the Japanese side, so far rather ignored by Dust miniature games (apparently they have a larger role in other source material), I'd look into IRL experimental/prototype/secret weapons projects. Some examples here:
link

One particularly notes megatanks, biological weapons and of course the death ray.

For Japan:
Ninjas are almost obligatory I think

For occult-flavored settings lost of Japanese folklore to tap into: Oni, Tengu, Ryu, etc

For Lovecraft-occult flavored settings a lot of the Pacific islands are supposed to be near Deep One colonies

The Japanese army actually deployed operational Auto-Gyros off of their own escort carriers(!) during the war, so there's definite potential there.

On the naval side an even larger class of submarine-carrier to carry out surprise attacks on the US mainland.

-Will

Rebel miniatures Titan sci fi minis are great for WWWII Japanese troops.

Ninjas are a definite!

Weaponized Kaiju.

Might be a oxymoron.

Known intended developments were large supertanks.

Kaiju are already weaponized, they're just not too picky on which army they stomp on.

Mecha or power armor is a given. I'd almost make an argument for body armor and chemically-enhanced super-soldiers.

Gear Krieg's setting is pure superscience, and it features the Japanese testing the first nuclear-powered rocket planes. (Sidebar on page 15 of the hardcover Companion rules, page 17 of the PDF)

If you don't mind magic in your Weird War, then you can add all sorts of martial arts masters, ninja, onmyouji demon-summoners and/or exorcists, etc.

link

"Godzillasaurus" a pre-Godzilla helped the Japanese against the US military.

link

Dinosaur Island included both dinosaurs and giant Samurai Robots as well as GIs.

Good luck with the project.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
bunkermeister.blogspot.com

Last year at Gen Con I ran a variant of AE-WWII using the some of the material from the unpublished Dark Reign Pacific Theater Sourcebook.

I collected from other sources and converted much of the special models mentioned in the sourcebook based on descriptions.

The USMC had similar units Tesla Technology inspired units similar to the Army. They also had some supernatural units as well.

The IJA had chemical and biological weapons.

The IJN had radioactive mutant inspired units.

The Black Dragon Society had ninjas, sorcerers and ghosts.

The Australians had a repulsor and forcefield type technology.

Oh and last year I was challenged to make a model based on a comic book called B.A.R. Maid.

All very cool. I always admire you creative types….

@CmdrKiley: Where'd you get the minis for the Black Dragon Society?

@ Lion in the Stars

The first two Ghosts are from Malfaux's plastic line.

The Ninja in the background are some metal Ninja figures I found, not sure who makes them. The one in the foreground is a mod using a Heroclix Hand Ninja where I reposed the arms and added a hand grenade and a Type 100 Submachine gun from TAG.

The Oni at the bottom is an old Grenadier model.

I also had a couple of sorcerers in the works too. Mostly borrowed from Malfaux and Legend of the Five Rings.

Sweet, thank you! Really like that samurai, I need to chase it down. I think I have the metal version of the second ghost. Somewhere.