Archive for August, 2008

“What if” anime movie posters

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008

Check out these cool-looking (but unfortunately, fake) movie posters made by fans imagining what the movie posters would look like for their favorite as yet unmade anime series.
Above is my favorite of the bunch, based on the Evangelion anime TV series. It’s so good you’d have to look twice to find out it isn’t legit.
There [...]

Voltron flick a “go”… again

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

You see, you just can’t keep a good universe-saving, interlocking, lion themed giant flying robot with badass laser-powered sword down.
After being dumped by Fox-based film production outfit New Regency Pictures, the live- action adaptation of the beloved anime series was recently picked up by Relativity Media.
The new outfit will rely on a smaller budget, but [...]

Potential Comiket bomber arrested

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

Hiroyuki Kageyama, an unemployed 20 year old man from Kakogawa City in Japan, was arrested for making online threats against Comic Market (also known as Comiket) doujinshi convention.
Kageyama posted the threat on popular online message board 2channel, stating that he was going to toss a grenade at the convetion site.
In repsonse to the threat, the [...]

My kids learned about Japan through Pokemon

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

For a parent, there’s a lot to complain about when it comes to your kids’ Pokemon addiction. It’s tough on the wallet, it distracts form schoolwork, etc. etc. But here’s a touching little story about a family trip to Japan that got really good thanks to that everpresent Pikachu and his adorable little critter friends. [...]

Freaky anime-eye contacts

Saturday, August 16th, 2008

And now, the latest in the long and seemingly inexhaustible series of “only in Japan” stories is this one about a new line of commercially available contact lenses that are designed to give the impression of huge irises, just like in anime and manga.
I guess one man’s “kawaii” is another man’s “eeew”.

500 Essential Anime Movies

Friday, August 15th, 2008

Anime expert Helen McCarthy has written a new book about, as stated in the title, 500 essential anime movies. Her well-researched articles are aside to be an enjoyable read, but will stand up to academic uses as well.
The book’s out now in the UK and will be out in the US in a few weeks. [...]

Top Ten anime on TV

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

Well, here are the latest top ten anime TV series rankings, care of the good people from animebb.org:
10. Shugo Chara!
9. Oha Colosseum
8. Blue Dragon Tenkai no Shichiryu
7. Soreike! Anpanman
6. Keroro Gunso
5. Naruto Shippu-den
4. Pokemon Diamond
3. Doraemon
2. Crayon Shin-chan
1. Death Note

Online manga rentals

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

The folks at Digital Manga Inc. have built a reputation as innovative, out of the box thinkers willing to take a risk on their products. Emanga.com, their latest project, is no different. Basically, you read sample pages for free, or pay for a limited rent, or pay bigger for unlimited reading. All over the internet, [...]

Manga and Anime Art Exhibition in London

Saturday, August 9th, 2008

If you’re around London or if you know any anime or manga fans from around that area, tell them to check out the exhibitions at St. John’s Wood Library and the Westminster Reference Library. There will be talks, traditional Japanese music and dance, a little bit of origami, and a whole lot of anima [...]

Toei + Disney = RoboDz

Friday, August 8th, 2008

It’s no secret that Disney has been heavily influenced by Japanese animation and vice versa. So it’s utterly fascinating to see the the results of a more obvious kind of mutual influence: the joint animation project.
Case in point: RoboDz, a computer-animated story of three robots defending the Earth from alien invasion (apparently joint projects do [...]