Nakaguru Bank

Morning, troops! Please, stand easy. I’d just like to introduce you all to these gentlemen from the Nakaguru Bank. A far-sighted financial institution that is about to take a seat on GlobeLink’s adventure ride through the golden gateway of digital synergy.

In a brief synopsis to this one, Nakaguru is a Japanese bank and GlobeLink’s psychotic, Gestapo-esque CEO Gus Hedges is tasked with ‘selling’ them the station with view to procuring investment. Obviously he fails due to being a shouting arsehole anyway, but there is a scene where he walks in on the bloke from Bridget Jones and the bloke from Ballykissangel editing archive footage of the Pearl Harbour bombings which possibly seals the non-deal. In amongst this, poor old downtrodden stress ball George has been mugged, had a car crash and been arrested on his way into work. Poor George.

So, Japanese banks it is. Of which there are many to choose from. I based mine on an older iteration of this one’s logo. More that it had some form of malleable shape to work with (the sphere in this case). The rest of them seemed to be content with just a load of Japanese characters. Which always look great but aren’t particularly exciting to play with. Yes, I’ve just admitted that I find a sphere exciting. The first thing that sprung into my head was HSBC and their red hexagons and triangles affair, but they’re based in China slash Hong Kong, so no dice.

Anyway, I do always find the kanji humorous when Westerners use them. Because it’s usually embarrassingly bad. A stream of fake-tanned Essex lads with ‘egg fried rice’ and ‘four lighters for a pound’ tattooed across the backs of their necks. With that in mind, I leave it up to you as to what it says in the middle. Fuck it. No I won’t. It says ‘donkey’. So if you have any Japanese friends, prepare for some funny looks.

A collector’s item in this episode – a brief appearance from Lieutenant Gorman from Aliens. What are the odds?!