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 also a couple more in the link below. Check it out!

Fan-made anime movie posters

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 hopes to make up for it by using similar cost-cutting cgi-based technology that worked so well for other movies like 300 and Sin City.

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 Comiket organizers have beefed up their security to unprecedented levels, in spite of the fact that Kageyama is safely behind bars.

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. Turns out a Japanese game can be just the thing to get kids excited about learning about Japan…

Link to full article here.

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”.

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. You can pick it up off of Amazon.com, though.

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

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, of course. For young folks who have no problem reading their manga on a computer screen, this should be an interesting legal alternative to manga scans.

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 and manga art goodness on display.

The exhibitions will run until November of this year.

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 not necessarily inspire originality).

You can view the first full episode via streaming media here.