Live together with your favorite anime character as your personal hologram assistant.

When Gatebox Lab announced it's ambitious project to design a "Hologram Communication Robot" that captured the experience of living and interacting together with your favorite animated character, otaku all over the world buzzed with anticipation. Beyond accessing your IoT devices to help assist you with daily duties such as turning on the television, checking weather, and looking up information on the web, Gatebox was designed with the goal of having a hologram assistant detect your behaviors and deliver a unique and intimate experience to support its user.

The device uses sensors to detect and remember the presence of the user, welcoming them home after a day at work

After success with their initial batch, Gatebox Lab. has just announced that a new and improved Gatebox will be mass produced and available for pre-order at half of the initial price, as well as talk about an update that will allow users to input their own custom character.

The character is capable of remembering anniversaries and communicating with you from home

The new version features slimmer hardware and a capsule-like vessel to host a floating "futuristic" character

A newly fitted dual microphone and speaker at the top of the device allows for communication from further distance, and upon recognizing the user's face via camera and sensor, the character will smile and greet the user. It can be connected with other household devices via Bluetooth, infra-red, or wireless LAN to access internet information for you or control the television, air condition, and even your bath.

As of now, the only character available is Azuma Hikari, a character "born to give you the greatest welcome home and grow together with you as your ideal bride". She features an update that allows her to commemorate your anniversary and toast with you in celebration, as well as be very active and response in conversation. What has many excited, however, is that it's been announced that in future updates other characters will be available--as well as characters that the user can input on their own. Perhaps you could one day live with your favorite anime character as your personal assistant!

While the initial batch started at 321,840 yen ($2,730 USD), reservation of the new and improved mass produced version are priced at 150,000 yen ($1,339.65 USD), although there is a monthly fee of 1,500 yen ($13.40 USD) that is waived until the end of March 2019. Gatebox can be reserved at the official website (language can be changed at the bottom) with shipping set for after October 2018.