Otaku Crave

Otaku Crave TV - Episode 03

This is episode 03 of Otaku Crave TV. Enjoy and please comment.

Otaku Crave TV - Episode Three (You need Quicktime to play this. If you don’t, download HERE)

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Video Review: Giant Robo (1992-1998)

A review by Douglas of the 1992-1998 Anime OVA “Giant Robo”.

Video Review - Giant Robo (You need Quicktime to play this. If you don’t, download HERE)

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Two Gurren Lagann Movies Confirmed

Members of the Japanese animation studio Gainax held a “What’s a Gainax, and a Day in the Life at Gainax” panel at FanimeCon in California on Friday to describe their ongoing work, and confirmed that they are working on two Gurren Lagann films. The studio had previously indicated that the first movie, Gekij?-ban Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann: Guren-hen (Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann the Movie: Crimson Chapter), would not cover the entire story.

Bandai Entertainment Acquires Stranger

The North American anime distributor Bandai Entertainment has announced its acquisition of Sword of Stranger (Stranger - Mukoh Hadan), the latest theatrical film from the acclaimed animation studio BONES (Fullmetal Alchemist, RahXephon, Soul Eater) at FanimeCon Friday. The film will be released theatrically on July 18, and standard DVD and Blu-ray Disc releases are planned for this samurai film. Stranger’s director Masahiro Ando will be attending this year’s Anime Expo. Bandai Entertainment representative Robert Napton also confirmed the Bandai Namco Holdings announcement that Bandai Visual USA will be folded into Bandai Entertainment, although the Honneamise label will be retained.

Satoshi Kon to Visit New York For Film Screenings

From June 27 to July 1, New York City’s Film Society of Lincoln Center will be screening the films of “vanguard anime director” Satoshi Kon, who will come to New York for the program. His full-length works include Paprika which was recently named the 100 best movies ever made by the Japanese edition of Newsweek magazine, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers and Perfect Blue. Kon’s next project, Yume-miru Kikai (”The Dreaming Machine”) is currently in production at Madhouse Studios. He calls it a “future folklore story” aimed at children. The director has previously visited the United States in 2003 for New York’s Big Apple Anime Festival and last year for a film program at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

Group Plans Buyout of Australian Anime Firm’s Parent

Bandai Visual USA to be Liquidated by September

Bandai Namco Holdings has announced on Friday that it will combine its two video/audio content subsidiaries in America — Bandai Entertainment and Bandai Visual USA — on July 1 and liquidate Bandai Visual USA. The company’s announcement still lists Tatsunori Konno as the head of Bandai Visual USA, even though he moved back to Japan this month. As of the end of April, there were officially only two employees of Bandai Visual USA. The liquidation of Bandai Visual USA is expect to be completed by the end of September.

Bandai Visual USA was established on January 5, 2005 with an emphasis on collectors’ editions of Bandai Visual titles from Japan. It met with heavy resistance to its prices which were similar to those in Japan, but far above those in the rest of the North American anime market. It has US$4 million in capital and, as of last December 31 (the end of its last accounting period), US$2.983 million in total assets. During the accounting period that ended last December, it sold US$1.151 million worth of goods, but lost US$595,000 before taxes.

Otakon To Feature Death Note, Inuyasha’s Yamaguchi

The Otakon convention has announced that Kappei Yamaguchi, one of anime’s most renowned and experienced voice actors, will be a guest of honor at this year’s convention. Roles of his that are most familiar to American fans include the title character in Inuyasha, Usopp in One Piece, and L in Death Note. Yamaguchi’s voice has also been heard in dozens of other anime movies and series of the last twenty years, such as Captain Tsubasa, Devil Hunter Yohko, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Here is Greenwood, Paradise Kiss, and The Twelve Kingdoms. Outside anime, he is the Japanese voice actor for Kyle in South Park and for Bugs Bunny. Otakon 2008 will once again be held at the Baltimore Convention Center in Maryland during the weekend of August 8-10.

Fanfare Signs with Book Distributor Atlas

Fanfare, the United Kingdom-based manga publisher whose titles include many of the works of Jiro Taniguchi and other authors in the alternative “nouvelle manga” movement, has signed an agreement to outsource distribution of its titles in the American bookstore market with AtlasBooks Distribution. Previously, Fanfare’s titles were distributed to specialty comic shops by Diamond Distributors, and to general bookstores by Biblio. Atlas will also handle the books originally published in Spanish by Fanfare’s partner company Ponent Mon.

Some of the books on the company’s release calendar for the rest of 2008 include Jiro Taniguchi’s award-winning Quest for the Missing Girl and Distant Neighbourhood, as well as Kan Takahama’s Awabi. Fanfare is also the publisher of Taniguchi’s The Ice Wanderer, which has been nominated for a 2008 Eisner Award in the Best U.S. Edition of International Material - Japan category.

Jojo’s Anime, Manga Sales Halted Due to Islamic Images

The Japanese publisher Shueisha and the anime production company A.P.P.P. have halted shipments of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure anime and manga after online Islamic protesters objected to imagery in the anime that they deemed offensive. In particular, a scene in the sixth anime episode (”The Mist of Vengeance”) depicts the main villain, Dio, vowing to kill the main character J?tar? Kuj? while looking at pages of the Qur’an, the main religious text of Islam.

The original scene in the manga’s Part 3 (”Stardust Crusaders,” pictured at right) has unintelligible scrawls in the book. However, the animators put reproductions of pages from the Ar-Ra’d (The Thunder) chapter of the Qur’an in the corresponding scene in their version. The Kyodo News agency cited Sheikh Abdul Hamid Al-Atrash, chairman of the Fatwa Committee at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, as saying, “The scene depicts Muslims as terrorists.”

Shueisha posted a Japanese statement about the issue and a English letter to the “Muslim audience of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” on Thursday. In both documents, Shueisha and A.P.P.P. explained that the anime staffers added Arabic text to the book to indicate the scene’s apparent location in the Arabic world. However, the same staffers were illiterate in Arabic and did not realize that they chose pages from the Qur’an. The two companies acknowledged that they were also unaware of the issue until recently, and emphasized that manga author did not know that the anime staffers added pages from the Qur’an. The Japanese statement asserted that the story’s setting is fantasy, and is not intended to depict Islam or Muslims. Both documents offer the companies’ “sincere apology to Muslims for the incidents.”

The companies said that they are reviewing the entire anime series and the original manga for any other potentially offensive scenes. They specifically noted that both versions depicted “buildings that look like mosques” in fight scenes. After halting shipments of the anime and manga to ensure both versions “will no longer contain these improper scenes,” the companies also said that they “will not make new copies without correcting these problems.” The manga began serialization in 1987, and the original anime video at the center of the controversy was first released in 2001.

In 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 editorial cartoons with images of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, including one with a bomb as his turban. The resulting protests led to riots and more than 100 deaths in countries across the Middle East and elsewhere.

Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses novel, was found murdered by an unknown person in 1991 after Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for the death of Rushdie over this book in 1989. A manga called Allah-kun was published in 1969, but has not been republished in over a decade. It is no longer listed in almost any Japanese bookseller.