The February issue (on sale on January 10) of Kadokawa Shoten’s Newtype magazine will announce that the R.O.D. Read or Die anime franchise core team of director Koji Masunari, writer Hideyuki Kurata, and character designer Masashi Ishihama will be creating the Uchu show (The Space Show), the tentatively titled epic movie that will open in Japan in 2008. This will be second major work for Besame Mucho the pen name for the team of Masunari, Kurata, and producer Tomonori Ochikoshi.The three worked together to create the Kamichu! manga and anime with character designer Takahiro Chiba The Uch? Show will be the first time that the three individual members of Besame Mucho and Ishihama have worked together since R.O.D.- The T.V.- five years ago. A -1 Pictures Inc, the animation studio created by Sony’s Aniplex in 2005, will animate the project.
The story will begin in the countryside during the summer vacation of fifth grader Natsuki Oyama. Natsuki just moved here in June, and she and four of her schoolmates are about to embark on an adventure together that will take them beyond the fields they call home. According to the producers in their promotion of this work, the story will “surpass Star Wars in its scale.”
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Hirameki International Group, Inc. has announced that it “has decided to bow out of publishing Interactive Visual Novels as of January 2, 2008.” The term “visual novel” is used in Japan to refer to a game genre that tells prose stories through interactive software. The interactiveness is limited compared to other games and usually comes in the form of synchronized graphics and sounds with story branching at selected points of the plot.
Hirameki translated and published visual novels that are played via a DVD player, visual novels that are played via a personal computer, and a DVD-based magazine called Anime Play. Among the titles Hirameki released in English were Ai Yori Aoshi, Phantom of Inferno, and Tea Society of a Witch. The Ai Yori Aoshi game and anime franchises were both based on Kou Fumizuki’s manga of the same name. Phantom of Inferno was created by the Nitroplus company, which also conceived the Demonbane game and later anime spinoff, and is developing the upcoming Blassreiter television anime series with Gonzo.
In addition to its publishing business, Hirameki also opened a retail storefront at its headquarters in the City of Industry, a suburb of Los Angeles, California. As an extension of its earlier mail-order business, the Hirameki Anime Goods store carried Hirameki’s visual novels as well as general anime and game goods from other companies. However, the storefront closed in November after clearing most of its inventory.
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While most Japanese people celebrate New Year’s Day at home, more and more otaku are defying their introverted homebound stereotype by celebrating the holiday together — at a symbolic otaku mecca and a literal holy shrine with an anime tie-in. Tokyo’s public areas are much less crowded during New Year’s holidays as many people take the traditional three-day break (January 1–3) to visit their hometowns. By contrast, many otaku go against the traffic and visit Tokyo during the last three days of the old year because of Comic Market, the dojinshi convention which attracted an estimated 500,000 daily visitors last weekend. Comic Market is held at Tokyo Big Sight, a cavernous convention center on an artificial island in Tokyo Bay. ComiPress posted a listing of the English-language reports of the latest Comic Market, and the Daily Yomiuri newspaper files its own report.
Even before Comic Market officially ended, fans began filtering back to the main part of Tokyo to vist Akihabara or “Akiba,” the most prominent of Tokyo’s so-called “otaku meccas.” There, a car emblazoned with iconography drew even bigger crowds than it usually does on other days. The cars was one of many “itasha” (cars layered with anime and other eye-catching graphics) that have appeared in Akihabara and other popular locales in Japan.
Koji of the Akihabara Channel website reports that over 500 fans celebrated the final moments of 2007 at an Akiba seiyu event held by CIRCUS, the software developer of D.C. -Da Capo- and other adult visual novels. The president of CIRCUS, torro, personally led the gathered throngs outside Gamers’ Akihabara branch in a countdown of the final seconds of 2007. (Gamers is the retail chain owned by Broccoli, the parent company of Broccoli International USA.) CIRCUS had to cancel a planned live concert due to a police warning, but Gamers opened its doors for the first hour of the new year. The Sankei Shimbun paper and the iZa website posted more photos of the event.
Traditionally, many Japanese people visit a local shrine during the first three days of the year to ask for good health and prosperity during the new year. An estimated 130,000 people went instead to Washinomiya, the Tokyo area’s oldest shrine which was further immortalized (in a manner of speaking) by the Lucky Star anime series. Washinomiya’s attendance during the first three days of the year is estimated to have grown almost 50% percent — 40,000 more people — this year because of this series which premiered last April. The anime features Kagami and Tsukasa Hiiragi — twin sister characters who supposedly work at the real-life shrine as miko (shrine maidens). The newsfeed at the livedoor website reports on the crowds who came in the first days of 2008. The livedoor news report includes photographs of the ema wish plaques that fans decorated with Lucky Star characters and even Miku Hatsune, the virtual idol singer that only exists within a voice-synthesis program.
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Starting February 5, the Sci Fi Channel will run a two-hour anime block in the United States on Tuesdays. The channel already runs a two-hour “Ani-Monday” block on Mondays, and will continue to do so into February. (Ani-Monday is currently running Tactics and Noein, except for a February 4 preemption for a Ninja Scroll showing.) Like the Ani-Monday block, the new Tuesday block will begin at 11:00 p.m. (10:00 p.m. Central). On February 27 at 3:00 a.m., the channel will also air The Guyver, the controversial 1991 American live-action remake of Yoshiki Takaya’s Bio-Booster Armor Guyver Manga.
In a separate development, the Starz Edge channel will move its “Animidnight” anime airings to Monday evenings (Tuesday mornings) at midnight, which will directly conflict with the Ani-Monday showings on the Sci Fi Channel. Starz Edge will show the last four episodes of Desert Punk on January 28 and February 4, four episodes of Hellsing Ultimate on February 11 and 18, and two episodes of Black Lagoon on February 25. Starz Edge is owned by Starz, LLC, he same company that also owns the licensor (Manga Entertainment) of almost all of Sci Fi Channel’s anime offerings.
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Episode Synopsis: In this episode of our podcast series, we review the animated film Paprika, discuss anime series that we believe should have sequels, chat about our friends at anime-planet, and of course, mindless drivel at the end. Enjoy.
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Shinji Ohara’s Nij?-Mens? no Musume crime manga will be adapted into an anime series that will premiere on Japan’s Fuji T.V. in April. The Hontsuna book retailer pre-announced the anime when it posted the front cover of the February issue (on sale on January 5) of Media Factory’s monthly Comic Flapper seinen magazine. Ohara’s manga is loosely based on the Kaijin Nij?-Mens? (The Fiend with 20 Faces) novels by the famed suspense and detective novelist, Ranpo Edogawa.
Ohara’s Nij?-Mens? no Musume manga centers around the adventures of Chiko, a female thief. Despite the manga’s title, which literally translates as “The Daughter of 20-Faces,” Chiko is not actually related to the criminal lead character of Edogawa’s Kaijin Nij?-Mens? novels. However, the Kaijin Nij?-Mens? character and another Edogawa creation, the detective Kogoro Akechi, do appear in Ohara’s manga. The first Nij?-Mens? no Musume manga ended in 2007 after five years and eight volumes, but Ohara started a new manga called Nij?-Mens? no Musume: Utsushiyo Yoru in the November issue (released in October) of Monthly Comic Flapper.
The anime series will be the latest in a long series of fictional works inspired by Edogawa’s Kaijin Nij?-Mens? novels. The female manga quartet CLAMP created their own crime manga, Man of Many Faces (20-Mens? ni Onegai!!), which featured a young boy as a spiritual successor to the original Kaijin Nij?-Mens? character. A spinoff novel by playwright So Kitamura is itself being adapted into a December 2008 live-action film by director Shimako Sato and Asian superstars Takeshi Kaneshrio, Takako Matsu, nd Toru Nakamura. “Conan Edogawa,” the main character’s pseudonym in the Detective Conan manga series, was coined after Ranpo Edogawa and the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle.
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Spokesperson Kazuo Tohmatsu of the Sanrio fashion design company company announced on Friday that the company will begin selling Hello Kitty T-shirts, bags, watches, and other items for young men in Japan next month. The items will then be sold in the rest of Asia as well as in the United States. According to the Associated Press, the iconic mouth-less cat will be given a “more rugged, cool look to appeal to men in their teens and early 20s” for the first time. The venture began with a limited collaboration with men’s clothing designers in the fashion-conscious Tokyo neighborhood of Harujuku this year.
Tohmatsu adds, “Young men these days grew up with character goods. That generation feels no embarrassment about wearing Hello Kitty.”
Hello Kitty has had several anime adaptations over the years, and veteran Japanese voice actress Megumi Hayashibara (Ranma 1/2’s Female Ranma, Evangelion’s Rei) has played the feline lead in almost all of them. ADV Films eleased English-dubbed versions of some of the videos. Hello Kitty’s stablemate Cinnamon (Cinnamoroll in English) just launched his own anime movie last week.
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The Japanese publisher Hobby Japan has released the AIKa R-16 Turning Mission manga in a Special Panties Version which bundles a pair of “AIKa’s panties.” Aikra Suzuki wrote the manga, and Noriyasu Yamauchi, the character designer of the original Agent Aika and AIKa R-16: Virgin Mission anime videos, illustrated it. The panty-less version of the manga shipped on December 28 for 670 yen (about US$5.94), while the Special Panties Version shipped on the same day for 1,575 yen (about US$13.96). Central Park Media has picked up the North American licenses for both the original anime and the AIKa R-16 anime. Neither company has announced any plans to release the related manga.
Meanwhile, the Hong Kong version of Volume 1 of Towa Oshima’s Dosei Recipe Manga comes with a single package of “dousei brand condoms” — which is actually a lapel pin in a condom package. The local publisher Jade Dynasty released this particular version for a HK$40 (about US$5.00) list price. Due to Hong Kong’s strict Obscene Articles Tribunal, it is unlikely that a real condom would ever be packaged with manga in that city. Comics One has been releasing Oshima’s High School Girls Manga, but no North American company has announced plans to release D?sei Recipe.
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