Yu Yabuuchi, the creator of the Aqua Age school slice-of-life manga and the Naisho no Tsuborni  “sex education” manga, is starting a shojo manga called Hatsukoi Shinan (Instructions for First Love) in the May issue (on sale on April 4) in Shogakukan’s ChuChu magazine. The story follows a girl named Nao who want to become a sh?jo ...

Tokyopop will publish both Otsu-ichi’s Goth text novel in October and Kendi Oiwa’s one-volume manga adaptation in September. The mystery suspense story follows a high school boy and girl who are obssessed with death as they try to solve a series of murders. Otsu-ichi created the Calling  you novel and manga as well as the The Chronicle...

A review by Douglas of the 2006 Anime series “Tokko”. Video Review - Tokko (You need Quicktime to play this. If you don’t, download HERE) [ Javascript required to view QuickTime movie, please turn it on and refresh this page ] ...

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party* and its coalition partner, the New Komeito Party, are preparing legislation that will make possession of child pornography illegal for the first time in the country. The tentatively planned legislation does not ban so-called “virtual” child pornography — material such as some manga, anime...

The official Japanese website for The Tower of  Druaga: The  Aegis of Uruk. Fantasy anime television series has added a new two-minute promotional video on Monday. (The site automatically plays last year’s promotional video. To see the new video, select the “PV2[NEWS!!]” link at the bottom.) The studio GONZO is animating this ex...

Yukari Ichijo’s Pride Manga will be made into a live-action film that is set to open at the end of January 2009. The story follows two budding opera singers who go from rivals to “best partners.” The film version will star Stephanie, a half-Japanese, half-Armenian-American pop singer, and feature Death Note’s Shusuke Kaneko ...

Nozomi Entertainment, the anime production division of Right Stuff Inc, has announced on Thursday at 2:00 p.m. CST that it has licensed the  Maria  Watches Over Us (Maria-sama ga Miteru) school slice-of-life anime series for North America. The licensed seasons of “MariMite” — the first two 13-episode television series and the 5-epis...

The ComingSoon.net film news website reports that the Twentieth Century Fox  production company has delayed the live-action Dragonball movie’s opening from August 15, 2008 to April 3, 2009. The website notes that The International, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Tropic Thunder and Wild Child are all scheduled to open on August 15 in North Americ...

The Japanese publisher Shueisha has announced that Stan Lee, the co-creator of America’s Spider Man and X-Men from Marvel Comics, and Hiroyuki Takei, The creator of Shaman King, will create a new project together to launch the Jump SQ.II (Jump Square Second) spinoff manga magazine on April 18. The announcement of the as-yet-unnamed project wa...

On Saturday, March 15 and Monday, March 17, France’s Center for International Studies and Research (Centre d’Etudes et Recherches Internationales or CERI), a unit of the prestigious Sciences Po university, will host a two day conference on the different themes, topics, and images that have been addressed in manga in the past sixty years...