Emmy Rossum has joined the cast of 20th Century Fox’s live-action adaptation of the popular manga Dragon Ball.
“Heroes” actress Eriko Tamura, who plays Mai, and newcomer Joon Park (upcoming Speed Race), who plays bad boy Yamcha, are also coming aboard the film.
Rossum, who starred in Poseidon, The Phantom of the Opera and The Day After Tomorrow, joins a cast that includes Justin Chatwin, James Marster and Jamie Chung.
The sci-fi adventure is being directed by James Wong. Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer) is producing.
Mexican newspaper El Norte reports that 20th Century Fox will film 85% of the Dragon Ball movie in Durango, Mexico under the direction of James Wong.
The production, expected to film in 2008, plans to use the Mexiquillo Forest, Marley Ranch, Hacienda la Providencia, La Joya Ranch, Laguna Seca de Santiaguillo and a forum from a Convention Center in the Culture Institute.
“Durango meets the needs in hotels, personnel, services like transportation, equipment, stunts, restaurants. This movie will provide the city with 750 jobs and an important flow of money,” said Susana Elósegui Cross (Turism & Cinematography Director of Durango).
The sets will be constructed this month and shooting will begin in January and last through March. However, the movie cannot filmed completely in Durango, so they will move to Estado De México for some shots at Nevado de Toluca (an important volcano).
Durango was chosen by Ariel Shaw, the special FX director.
The Yakushiji Ryoko no Kaiki Jikenbo (The Strange Case Files of Ryoko Yakushiji) novel series from Yoshiki Tanaka (Legend of the galactic Heroes, Sohryuden - Legend of the Dragon Kings, The Heroic Legend of Arslan)
will be animated for television broadcast next year. The announcement was made in conjunction with the December 12 release of the latest novel in the series, Iyobi ni Go-Yojin. Vampire Princess Miyu creator Narumi Kakinouchi
draws the novels’ illustrations and the manga version, although the character designer and other staffers of the anime version have not been announced yet.
The novels and manga revolve around Ryoko Yakushiji, a 27-year-old multilingual investigator that graduated from Tokyo University’s elite Department of Law, and the bizarre cases she faces while working for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. Yakushiji not only has to deal with supernatural beings in her line of work, but also her rival Yukiko Muromachi, another equally talented and beautiful police investigator. Tanaka has written eight novels, and Kakinouchi has drawn eight manga volumes since she started serializing the work in Kodansha’s Monthly Magazine Z.
The February issue (on sale December 26) of Vogue Nippon, the Japanese counterpart to the American women’s fashion magazine Vogue, will include a DVD supplement with the first episode of the Kaikai & Kiki anime from artist Takashi Murakami , (The current January issue is pictured at right.) Murakami popularized Superflat, the style of modern art influenced by Japanese manga and anime. The Kaikai & Kiki space fantasy anime is one of the pieces unveiled at the Murakami exhibit in the Museum of contemporary art in Los Angeles. Vogue Nippon’s DVD will include a special version of “Tane o Maita yo” (”The Seeds Have Been Sown”), the first of four planned episodes for the project.
The Brooklyn Museum in New York City announced that it will host the Murakami exhibition next year, followed by the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain.
The Japanese blogs Akiba Soken and Akiba blog report that two “mobile suit” cosplay bars, which are named Federation Forces and Zeon after the main factions in the Gundam robot anime franchise, will open in the Akihabara otaku district of Tokyo in the middle of December. According to the posted “Help Wanted” ads, the bars are looking for female staffers dressed in the style of characters from the first Gundam, Zeta Gundam, and Gundam ZZ series of the Universal Century timeline. The bar’s description on moetan.info says that it will serve cocktails in the image of Gundam’s mobile suit robots, as well as dishes tied to the character and mecha in the series.
Akiba S?ken notes that the bars seem reminiscent of the Gundam Café, the first Gundam-themed restaurant. Before the restaurant closed with the rest of the Bandai Museum in 2006, it served drinks like a Haro cocktail (two red cherries on a non-alcoholic green drink in a globe-shaped burgundy glass) and dishes like a multi-layered shortcake shaped like the A Bao A Qu asteroid fortress and a mint chocolate cheesecake called Kira’s tear.
The New York Anime festival was held in the Jacob Javitts Center in New York City, from December 7th to the 9th. It was a rather small convention, and did not fill even half of the center, but what it did have was impressive.Walking in, the first thing that would catch your eye was the statue of the Serras Angel, which probably stood at about 13 feet tall. It was placed outside the Magic TCG tournament, and served as a fantastic place to meet up with your friends or otherwise impress the attendees. (I did not actually attend the Magic Tournament, but congrats to whoever won.)
Once you go down the stairs, you’re immediately in the dealer’s room. This is a fantastic and evil system-there is no way to avoid the constant temptation when the first thing you see when you enter are tables upon tables of anime merchandise. The dealer’s room was large and well organized as well, and had everything you could have wanted had you taken the time to look.
Walking around the main hallway of the convention, you could observe several things. There was a “maid café” at one location, but it seemed to be nothing more than a roped off area with tables to eat at. I did not see any maids actually serving customers. Directly across from that, there was a large paining of Voltron on the ground, presumably to be sold. And when I say large, I mean about 10 by 6 feet.
The meat of any convention, of course, is the panels, screenings and events. All of the anime screenings were dubbed. This could potentially be a problem for some, but most of the con-goers didn’t seem to mind, and the more popular screenings practically filled their rooms. The panels were, in my mind, the best part of the convention, and featured such things as “Anime Outtakes,” a panel showing outtakes from various anime dubs as well as showing mistakes from other work the dubbers do. The anime match game was another popular one, in which two contestants selected from the audience tried to match the answers of such famous voice actors as Peter Fernandez, who voiced Speed Racer, and other actors within the anime industry. The most popular panel I attended was “Uncle Yo, the Otaku Comedian,” who made jokes and references to almost every anime I could think of. If you ever have the chance to see him at a convention, I would suggest you take every opportunity to do so.
The last thing I saw before the long drive back was the Unicorn Table concert. This band performed the opening theme for Jinki:Extend (Fly Away) as well as promotional songs for School Rumble. The line for the concert stretched almost outside the con, and it filled the entire Tokyopop stage auditorium. It was not a true auditorium, simply a mass of chairs placed in a large room with a stage, but it served its purpose. The concert started a bit late, but we were all treated to a group of cosplayers running up and down the aisles and jumping up and down while we waited. Kudos to the robot dancing Gundam.
The concert itself suffered a bit from the plague of anime convention concerts-bad acoustics. Something tells me that large square rooms are not the best places to hold these things. However, it was still quite enjoyable, and I found myself wishing I had bought their CD as they played through their first three songs. The singer, Salia, spoke in Japanese, but I caught one of the titles as “Sweet Dream.” Most of their music was typical Jpop, full of upbeat melodies with a hint of techno to it.
Halfway through, Salia dismissed her band and began a few songs with only a DJ. These songs were a bit less invigorating, but nonetheless fun. There were a few problems with the mic as she began a song by herself, but were fixed quickly.
Near the end, a raffle was held, auctioning off a band T-shirt, a video of the band, and a small bag that Salia had apparently made herself. Once the winners had taken their prizes, we were treated to one last song before the night was over.
I hope the New York Anime Festival returns next year, as the location was good, and it was the first con I’ve attended that actually had an acceptable food court within the convention center. (Chicken parmesan for lunch, at an anime convention? Unbelievable.) If any of you have a chance to go in the future, I would definitely recommend it.
Here is a funny collection of Japanese wake up pranks. It’s what the future of American TV should be. Douglas gives it two Otaku thumbs up. Please comment.
On Friday, December 7, Judge Gu Hoe-geun of the Seoul Central District Court ruled against the Korean media production company Fantom Entertainment in a lawsuit that asserted a music video plagiarized from Square Enix’s Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children computer-graphics anime movie. Square Enix filed the lawsuit earlier in the year over the music video for Korean artist Ivy’s song, “Temptation Sonata.”
The judge found that “80%” of the music video was based on the “storyline, setting, characters, their styles of dress, and their demeanors” on Advent Children and the original Final Fantasy VII game. In particular, the music video plagiarized the scene in Advent Children of the fight between the characters Tifa and Loz. Judge Gu fined Fantom, which manages Ivy, 10 million won (about US$10,900) and issued separate fines of 6 million won (US$6,500) each to Lee Han-woo, the director of the company, and Hung Jeong-ho, the director of the music video.
Udon Entertainment, which held the final industry panel of this year’s New York Anime Festival, announced that it will be publishing Onimusha: Twilight of Desire and a manga adaptation of Capcom’s Devil Kings (Sengoku Basara) video game in North America. Udon also plans to launch three new original comic series based in the Street Fighter universe, and will be translating and releasing artbooks for the videogames Okami, Megaman Zero and Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams, as well as the Darkstalkers Graphic File book.
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