Topless Robot reports that the lackluster new CGI Astro Boy movie tanked in Japan and sticks the knife in a little deeper:

PERHAPS YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN JAPAN’S MOST BELOVED CHARACTER AND STUCK HIM IN A SHITTY CG MOVIE WITH VIRTUALLY NO REGARD FOR HIS ORIGINAL STORIES, WHICH MOST OF JAPAN KNOWS BY HEART. AND PERHAPS YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE CAST NIC CAGE AS A VOICE ACTOR, BECAUSE THAT’S LIKE HIRING CHARLES MANSON AS A BABYSITTER. NEITHER OF THEM HAVE THE APPROPRIATE SKILL SETS. Seriously, Astro Boy is so popular in Japan that he’s an official citizen — really. So if you make an Astro Boy movie which can’t beat Fast & Furious in Japan, you have failed beyond all measure. Well fucking done, assholes. Well fucking done.

O Japan, you so crazy. Now they are building life size models of the giant robots, Gizmodo reports. This Gigantor stands 60 feet tall and weighs 50 tons. Many more awe-inspiring pics in the link.

We’re hearing that the New York Anime Fest was a big hit. Lance Fensterman, who runs the show, reports:

Saturday was by far the most insanely busy day in the history of the New York Anime Fest. Unbelievable numbers of people. But even with the crowds, we managed to count them all and this year’s attendance including fans, professionals, press, guests/speakers but NOT exhibiting staffers was 21,388! Woot! That’s a 16% increase over last year’s 18,399.That’s an awesome number of otaku roaming the aisles, sitting in panels and dancing all over the Javits Center this weekend.

The fantasy economy is strong!

We haven’t done a scientific blog scan, but this, from one Jack Shippo seemed to be representative:

And packed it was. The amount of attendees for Saturday was nearly triple the amount on Friday from what I could see (My brain hurts from lack of sleep so my estimation skills are weak right now). Compared to Friday though, the con was really fun! The day started with walking around the dealers room jumping from shiny object to shiny object to cheap object to overly priced object I dreamed of having (Yay for A.D.D!) and deciding to waste money or not. This was easy because there was hardly anything that really drew my attention in the dealers room that I could afford, only things I really bought were a gashapon Witch Yuki (Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) figure and a gashapon Yoko Kurama figure (Yu Yu Hakusho). The dealers room was pretty crowded during the day but it wasn’t crowded to the point of not being able to breathe all the time. It did get unbearable in certain areas though, and smelly too….

The strong attendance is despite the show having relatively few vendors and becoming more of a social occasion for con-goers. Next year, the NYAF will be held concurrently with New York Comic-Con, a situation which will doubtless bring new challenges.

As the New York Anime Fest starts on Friday, tonight Del Rey and the NYAF sponsor a kickoff party. Free!

The New York Anime Festival (NYAF) and Del Rey Manga today announced a party taking place from 5:30 to 7:30 PM on Thursday, September 24, 2009 at Dave and Buster’s (234 West 42nd Street) in NYC’s Times Square.  Jointly produced by NYAF and Del Rey Manga, this special event held on the eve of the 2009 New York Anime Festival is both a celebration of this year’s NYAF as well as a celebration of Del Rey Manga’s Fifth Anniversary — and to mark this special occasion, NYAF and Del Rey Manga invite fans and professionals to partake in food, drink, giveaways, and a cake crafted by Baltimore’s famed Charm City Cakes specifically for the NYAF and Del Rey Manga party.
 
Free and open to the public, the NYAF and Del Rey Manga party welcomes NYAF attendees, anime fans, manga readers, industry professionals, and casual New Yorkers interested in the world of Japanese pop culture.  The party will take place in two parts…

(more…)

Very sad news out of Japan as the body of manga-ka Yoshito Usui was found over the weekend. Usui, 51, had left the house on September 11th, telling his family he was going hiking on Mt. Arafune. When he did not return by nightfall, his wife alerted the police. Over the past weekend a body matching Usui’s description was found at the base of a cliff, and family members and dental records ID’d the body. Usui is believed to have fallen off a steep part of the trail.

Usui was the creator of Crayon Shin-Chan, an extremely popular manga that sold 25 million copies of its first volume in Japan, and has been translated into dozens of languages and spawned an equally popular cartoon. Often called the “Bart Simpson of Japan”, the strip concerns five-year-old Shin Nohara and his uncensored behavior which drives his parents to tears at times. Usui’s art is in the simpler, more underground style of manga, and while the stories are often crude — one of Shin’s most notorious pranks involves drawing an elephant around his penis — they have universal verve and biting humor that has successfully survived translation — it has many of the same virtues (although the content is very different) as other great darkly humorous kid’s comics like Little Lulu and the work of Toriyama.

Crayon Shin-Chan is currently being published by CMX, and the cartoon aired on Adult Swim for a while (with dialoging by Evan Dorkin, no less!) Although it’s a cult strip here in the US, in some parts of Europe it’s extremely popular — it’s so well-known in Spain that Usui created a special episode where Shin-chan goes to Barcelona.

ANN reports that two more episodes of the strip which Usui finished before his death await publication. New episodes of the anime were also set to air in October, but their timing is being discussed.

The Biggest News Week Ever in Comics ® continues with news that ADV, a leading provider of anime films and, for a while, manga, has been broken up and reassembled as four new companies, three set up by Griffin D. Vance, ADV’s former SVP Business & Legal Affairs, and one of them run by former ADV marketing director Mike Bailiff. (Former ADV staffer Chris Oarr has moved to the new company.)

The story is a hard one to track, as it unfolded yesterday over several anime news sites. ICv2 has the most concise accounting:

Longtime anime producer A.D. Vision, Inc., announced today that it had sold key assets to four companies, which will continue in inter-related businesses. Film library assets and other intellectual property were sold to AEsir Holdings; account servicing and distribution operations were sold to SXION 23 (aka Section 23); Anime Network to Valkyrie Media Partners; and Amusement Park Media (ADV’s production unit) to Seraphim Studios. It appears that all of these new entities were created to house ADV assets and did not exist before the transaction.

ANN has a further breakdown that was updated as new info became available. Among the developments, that the Anime Network, which makes anime available as a streaming internet channel, will continue business as usual.

Robert at Anime Corner talks to Bailiff:

UPDATE: Just got off the phone with Mike Baliff, formerly of ADV Films who is now heading up Sales and Marketing at the new company Section 23 Films. Section 23 has acquired all of ADV’s former licenses and most of the staff (including Chris Oarr, Destiny, Michelle, everyone formerly at ADV that mattered), and is picking up distribution of all former ADV titles, so the DVD’s will remain available and our orders will just be processed and filled by the new company. That means the changeover will be pretty much transparent to you guys. This includes pre-order items in the pipeline but not yet released. They will still be coming out, and the schedule will not change. We’ll be updating our catalog over the next few days to reflect Section 23 as the new distributor of ADV’s (former) titles. I also think it’s worth mentioning that John Ledford is not part of the new company.

And what does ALL this mean? ANN’s Christopher Macdonald has an editorial that basically explains it all. it’s a bit too complicated to paraphrase — much of it goes back to ADV’s deal with the Japanese company Sojitz, a deal which went sour and left ADV without a lot of the films it had licensed and financially hobbled.

The REALLY REALLY short version is that ADV has been broken up, Tim Geithner-style, into a “bad anime distribution company” and several “good anime distribution companies”. The old ADV carries the debts and obligations while the four new companies contain all the good assets and can go forward.

ADV was for a while a fairly large manga publisher, with such lauded and popular titles as Neon Genesis Evangelion: Angelic Days, ARIA, Cromartie High School, Apocalypse Meow, Yotsuba&! and Gunslinger Girl. They had stopped publishing in recent years, and a few of the best licenses were picked up by other publishers, including Yotsuba&! at Yen press.

The move leaves yet another of the founding pioneers of anime in America, John Ledford, in limbo and his original company in the history books and not a thriving business. It’s in many ways similar to Central Park Media and John O’Donnell, which got caught up in the general decline of the DVD business in general and the anime business in particular, especially the 2006 bankruptcy of the Musicland chain.

The official announcement is under the cut.

(more…)

Previously only Tweeted, now blogged, Click through for bigger, even more astounding, photos. Link submitted by Isaac Alexander.

Via PR:

The Japanese manga and animation powerhouses Shogakukan Inc., Shueisha Inc. and Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions Co., Ltd. (Shogakukan & Shueisha Group) announced today their joint acquisition of Kaze S.A.S. (Kaze) and Anime Virtual S.A. (Anime Virtual), two of Europe’s leading distributors and licensees of Japanese animation.  With this acquisition, the group positions itself as a major multi-media force throughout Europe for manga-based Japanese animation and entertainment. Paris-based subsidiary VIZ Media Europe (VME, President, John P. Easum) will helm the group’s Europe activities, with Kaze and Anime Virtual now part of its stable. 

Prior to acquiring Kaze and Anime Virtual, Shogakukan & Shueisha Group managed VME’s European operations through its U.S. based subsidiary VIZ Media, LLC (VMC, President, Hidemi Fukuhara).  

Since the launch of VIZ Media Europe in 2007, Shogakukan & Shueisha Group, in cooperation with VMC and VME has continued to study the European market for opportunities to grow the fan base and to offer a greater range of Japan’s highest quality manga and anime content. Kaze and Anime Virtual were chosen to be the key drivers of this pan-European strategy and the timing is perfect as a rising demand for manga-based animation meets the growth of multi-platform distribution channels.
 
Kaze (President, Cedric Littardi) mainly operates in French speaking territories and Anime Virtual (President, Nicolas Weber-Krebs) operates primarily in German speaking territories.  Their combined core businesses include TV sales, DVD and music distribution, film distribution, consumer products, and new digital distribution and broadcast platforms, as well as manga publishing in French speaking territories.  
This acquisition provides Shogakukan & Shueisha Group with several critical tools:
• Direct DVD publishing and distribution in France and Germany.
• TV broadcast and distribution through various new platforms and technologies.
• Development and licensing of consumer products.
• Direct manga publishing and distribution ability throughout French speaking Europe.
• Innovative brand building across a full spectrum of media, including manga publishing, animation licensing, animation broadcasting, consumer product licensing and new digital platforms. 
 
The new company, which will be wholly owned by Shogakukan & Shueisha Group, will integrate VME, Kaze, Anime Virtual and their subsidiary companies under a unified infrastructure and administration. John P. Easum, has been named President/Gérant of the new company and will head up the group’s European operations. The head office will remain in Paris. Cedric Littardi and Nicolas Weber-Krebs have been appointed managing directors. 

Explains Mr. Easum, “This is a very exciting development for all parties involved in this venture. Kaze and Anime Virtual are proven pioneers and leaders in the distribution of Japanese content. This acquisition benefits Shogakukan & Shueisha Group with Kaze and Anime Virtual’s proven local market expertise, marketing innovation and experienced management.  We will now be in a much better position to support our many partners, while proactively developing the market by bringing a greater variety of content to our fans in a much more effective and timely manner.” 

Mr. Masahiro Oga, President of Shogakukan Inc. adds: “Through this venture, the new company will be able to dedicate itself to serving a growing market for Japanese manga and animation.  By building a closer bridge between Japan and our partners and markets in Europe, we are confident the new company will succeed in delivering more excitement for our fans while growing new markets for Japanese content.” 

Continuing coverage of all things Miyazaki at THE BEAT, let’s look at the opening weekend in the United States for PONYO.

The picture finished ninth this weekend at the box office, with $3.5 million weekend gross on 927 screens, for a per-screen average of $3,782. It was fourth among new films opening last weekend, finishing behind DISTRICT 9 ($37 m on 3049 screens), THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE ($19.2 m on 2988 screens) and THE GOODS ($6.9 m on 1838 screens).

This makes it already the third-highest grossing Miyazaki movie in the US. According to Box Office Mojo, it’s only $1.2 m behind HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE, with SPIRITED AWAY at #1 with $10 m.

It probably goes without saying this is the most screens ever for a Miyazaki movie. SPIRITED AWAY was on 714 screens, a far cry from the paltry 129 for PRINCESS MONONOKE. I remember having to drive over an hour up to Philadelphia to see MONONOKE and that was the closest it came and I think only lasted 2 weeks in the theater.

As for critical acclaim, it’s currently at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, wth 79 positive reviews and 5 negative. (What’s wrong with those people?)

I saw it Friday afternoon and was thoroughly entertained, although perhaps not as much as some of the more “adult” previous works in the Miyazaki canon. Certainly a hearty review for anyone with kids the age of the characters in the movie.

Posted by mark coale

Posted by Mark Coale

During our high-powered breakfast (maybe brunch by the time Ace and FMB got there), The Beat requested that I try and write more for the site. So, here’s the first article about the non-SDCC portion of my travels recently.

I had always planned on only doing one day of San Diego, but for a while, wasn’t sure what to do for the weekend before coming back to the muggy Mid-Atlantic states. There were many possibilities: baseball games, futbol matches, even going to see Monument Valley. The deal was sealed when I found out that the legendary Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki was going to be in Berkeley doing a Q&A in conjunction with receiving an award from Cal’s Center for Japanese Studies.

When I told friends at the Con that I was only staying for a day (plus Preview Night), most were dumbfounded that I would make the trip for so brief a trip. But when I said that I was going to see Miyazaki, almost everyone immediately said, “Oh, that’s understandable” or “I wish I could go.” One unnamed Eisner winner said they were jealous and wondered how they could pull strings to maybe meet Miyazaki while he was briefly at the Con Friday.

It was certainly worth the trip. I haven’t watched his SDCC panel with Pixar’s John Lassiter, but I presume it didn’t have the coziness of his Berkeley talk. It was not in a small room, but a 1000-seat auditorium on a college campus likely beats trying to watch a cramped and sweaty panel in Room 20 or Hall H at the Con. And there was thankfully no one dressed as Ashitaka or Kiki. The closest we got was a number of people carrying Totoros in with them to the talk.

It’s always interesting to go to a panel where a translator is involved, because often, Miyazaki would make a joke and about a quarter of the room would laugh and the rest of us would have to wait for the translation to understand what was so funny. And Miyazaki made plenty of jokes during his 90 or so minutes on stage.

Miyazaki, prompted by moderator Roland Kelts, talked in a mostly-playful manner about some of the elements most associated with his films, such as nature vs technology and the use of female protagonists. He expressed dismay for how disasters are seen as “evil,” even though they are just part of nature and often have a cleansing aspect to them.

When asked about good and bad characters, Miyazaki said he often doesn’t have true villains in his pictures, since he did not like to make his animators draw evil people.

There was also discussion about Studio Ghibli’s animation practices and Miyazaki’s desire to continue making traditional animation films done with cels and not CGI, even though it was like “being in a raft in a sea full of speed boats.”

The Q&A session, both the moderator’s inquiries and the audience question portion, quickly sped by and Miyazaki was soon off the stage and a very satisfied audience poured out of the building, with a lot less pushing and shoving than one probably found in San Diego.

Considering this was likely a once-in-a-lifetime event (how often does Miyazaki appear in public in the US, now, if ever), it was certainly worth skipping out on SDCC.

Today’s must read: BODY WORLD’s Dash Shaw joins the Comics Comics blog and in his first outing examinesGroundwork of Evangelion: 1.0 , a sketchbook for an upcoming anime. He finds it a treasure trove of semiotic information:

They’re marked with little notes that I don’t understand. All of the Japanese I once knew is gone, and I don’t know filmmaking vocabulary anyway. Unlike comics, which have a widely-known “insider” language (“these bubbly shaped frames around the words mean the character is thinking- is that cool with everybody?” “yeah, okay”) this is a totally foreign “insider” language used by the people at the studio to communicate to each-other. They weren’t drawn to be published for a wide audience; but here they are, published, and I could go into Kinokuniya in NYC and buy a copy. Awesome.

We’d heard rumors that Warren Ellis would be at San Diego, turns out he’s there to host the presentation of Marvel’s new anime Iron Man and Wolverine.
UPDATE: on his blog, the notoriously con-shy Ellis wrote:

Okay, the word got out a while ago, and I’m being drowned in emails tonight, so let’s get this done. By the power of contractual obligation, I am appearing at the San Diego Comic-Con 2009 under the exclusive aegis of Sony, Madhouse and Marvel Anime. I am in San Diego for something less than 36 hours. This is my only appearance at San Diego. Here’s the press release.

PR Below:

Marvel Entertainment Inc., has partnered with renowned Japanese animation studio Madhouse (Paprika, Tokyo Godfathers) to create four all new anime versions of classic Marvel Super Heroes. Get an exciting first glimpse of two of the planned four series at this year’s Comic-Con International, the country’s leading comics and popular arts convention. The Marvel Animation Panel will be held on Friday, July 24, and will include an exclusive first look at official teaser trailers for two of these new series, hosted by writer and multiple-Eagle Award winner Warren Ellis, who will appear to discuss writing the all new adventures of these re-imagined Super Heroes.

These Marvel Anime TV series are being created as a way of merging the beloved Marvel Super Heroes of western culture with the bold animation tradition of Japan. The resulting product will be four visually groundbreaking anime series featuring popular Super Heroes redesigned and repurposed as emerging from the fabric of Japanese culture. The series is expected to begin appearing on the Animax channel in Japan in spring of 2010.

The Marvel Animation Panel with run from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. on Friday, July 24, at the San Diego Convention Center. An autograph signing with Ellis will follow the panel at Marvel’s Comic-Con booth #2429.

(more…)

FREE cool things! FREE!
VIZ Media is offering the popular anime HONEY AND CLOVER on iTunes and until August 31, 2009 it’s a free download. Plus, every purchase of the complete first season of HONEY AND CLOVER will include a free, bonus episode download.

Based on the popular manga series created by Chica Umino (with over 5 million copies sold), HONEY AND CLOVER is a romantic comedy about a group of art school students who try to find their way through college. But when an innocent and talented 19-year-old girl enters their lives, things get a lot more complicated as love triangles result.

The HONEY AND CLOVER manga series was created by Chica Umino and has sold more than 5,300,000 copies in Japan. In 2003, the series won the 27th Kodansha Manga Award, Japan’s most prestigious comics award. The series was also adapted into an anime series in 2005 and finally into a live action film in 2006.

As we write, Anime Expo ‘09 is taking place at the LA Convention Center (not Anaheim as we stupidly wrote) which is right next door to the Staples Center, which is where…something is going to happen next week. Or as Diamond’s Kuo Yu LIang twittered:

#AX09 all the networks are here at Staples Ctr covering Michael Jackson funeral, confused by the cosplayers

We’re guessing MJ would have approved!

Photo via Deb Aoki, whose blog and Twitter we recommend following for up to the minute coverage.

§ Wired interviews Christopher Handley’s lawyer, Eric Chase, who explains what he was up against.

Chase says he recommended the plea agreement to his client because he didn’t think he could convince a jury to acquit him once they’d seen the images in question. The lawyer declined to describe the details. “If they can imagine it, they drew it,” he says. “Use your imagination. It was there.”

The case began in 2006, when customs officials intercepted and opened a package from Japan addressed to Handley. Seven books of manga inside contained cartoon drawings of minors engaged in sexually explicit acts. One book included depictions of bestiality, according to stipulations in Handley’s plea deal.

(Note: This confirms that it was Customs, not the Post Office, which opened the package,)

§ Manga expert Matt Thorn clarifies some of the language from his previous posts. There is no “literal gag order.” Also, Thorn, who lives in Japan, is attempting to find out what are the actual manga involved in the case, as that really seems to be the crux of the matter. Some descriptions of the material make it sound like out-and-out hentai type porn; others sound like yaoi/lolicon, where the characters may appear younger than they are.

And two from:

§ Brigid Alverson. FINDER, a gangster manga by Ayano Yamane, has been “indexed” in Germany, where it’s published by Tokyopop’s German arm. This means it’s been deemed “harmful to minors,” but apparently that has something to do with minors being able to buy it, unchecked. In the US, FINDER was published by BeBeautiful.

§ AND, Yamila Abraham on Yaoi Press reports that her printer refused to print a yaoi-themed coloring book calling the images “disturbing.”

“Because of the nudity of this file we are unable to print this for you. The order before this one should not have been printed but did slide by without us looking through the entire book.”

It doesn’t pay for us to throw tantrums over things like this. However, I feel they’ve made a mistake. The coloring book is 16+. There are side views of nude characters, but naughty bits are not visible. There are no sex scenes, but some images are suggestive that sex is coming. It didn’t even cross my mind that a printer might not agree to print it. I called and told them that the characters are all male. I think they might think the characters are female and we’re showing bare breasts.

The images can be seen in the link, so judge for yourself.

A key piece of Manga/Anime history slides into the sunset, as ICv2 reports that Central Park Media has filed Chapter 7. Many will remember CPM as one of the trailblazers of the anime (Patlabor, Uetna, Grave of the Fireflies) and manga fields, with manga titles like Record of Lodoss War and Slayers, as well as being an early adapter of the boys love genre with the Be Beautiful imprint. Things began to go bad in one of the early manga slumps, however, and after the manga/anime supporting retailer Musicland went bankrupt in 2006. There was talk of a comeback, but it never really made much of an impact and now the company has filed the bankruptcy of no return. (Chapter 11 and 13 bankruptcies allow for reorganization, but Chapter 7 means the company is completely disbanded.)

According to ICv2, CPM reports assets of $126,282 vs. secured liabilities of $908,173 and unsecured liabilities of $277,531. It’s a sad end for a company that did much to promote the rise of Japanese entertainment in the US.

Every once in a while, a video crosses your path that changes how you view the world and makes you question the fundamentals of what you thought was true. Such a video is the above trailer for a 12-part CGI adaptation of the manga known, in the US, as APOCALYPSE MEOW, formerly published by ADV. In the rest of the world, it is known as CAT SHIT ONE. If you are not familiar with the series, we BEG YOU, just watch the video. The less you know going in, the better, but perhaps we can entice you with the phrase “Waltz with Bashir meets Kung Fu Panda.”

Have you watched it? Good! Now, it turns out that this trailer is not really a trailer, merely a teaser to raise funding for this PROPOSED series.

Please, to all of you reading this…this is crucial! If there is one cause which must unite the world — rich, poor, man, woman, black, white, Canadian — it is not global warming, not economic recovery, not eradicating rogue nation states. No, it is GETTING THIS CARTOON MADE! Please, please, please! Give, give, give until it bleeds …we’ve GOT to make this happen! We will be setting up a lemonade stand to raise money when the weather is a little nicer, and we implore everyone reading this to do the same. Together, we can make the world a better place, a place where cats kill bunnies in CGI slo mo.

[Thanks to Isaacada for the link!]

We hear that while Japanese directing sensation Takashi Miike was at NYCC to promote the premiere of YATTERMAN, all he could do was tell everyone within ear shot how he’d like to do a live-action version of AFRO SAMURAI, the cult anime about a wandering samurai in a savage retro-future. I guess you could say he was stumping for the job.

What do you think, fans? Could Miike get this right?

Look, we’re as baffled by the whole “Gothic Lolita” movement as anyone, and a New York Times profile is usually a sign something has jumped the shark:

The Lolitas are here and in full bloom. Theirs is a world in which the childhood fantasy of Alice in Wonderland seems to collide full force with the Addams Family. Its myriad influences include Victorian children’s wear, the French Rococo period, goth-inspired darkness and Japanese anime. Many Lolitas make their own clothes or have them specially commissioned.

However, a letter to Jezebel by an actual Goth Lolita may shed some light:

We certainly do not do this for the attention of men. In fact, the fashion frequently alienates them. Frequently, female sexuality is portrayed in a way that is palatable and accessible to men, and anything outside of that is intimidating. Something so unabashedly female is ultimately kind of scary—in fact, I consider it to be pretty confrontational. Dressing this way takes a certain kind of ownership of one’s own sexuality that wearing expected or regular things just does not. It doesn’t take a lot of moxie to put on a pencil skirt and flats. It’s not, as some commentors have suggested, some sort of appeal to men’s expectation that women should be childlike, or an attempt to pander to pedophiles. Pedophiles like little girls. They don’t like grown women who happen to like dresses with cakes on them. I’ve never been hit on by a pedophile while in Lolita. We don’t get into it because it is some sort of misplaced pedo complex or anything, and the objective isn’t simply to emulate little girls, despite the name Lolita.

While we were in Baltimore, the Manga Set were at New York Anime Fest. Reports are everywhere on the web. Brigid, predictably, has a fine roundup. Yen Press announced several new titles, and Del Rey announced a deal with Cartoon Network:

Joining Bakugan in their new Cartoon Network comics is Ben 10 Alien Force. Similar to their Bakugan roll-out, a Ben 10 full color ani-manga will debut in April 2009, followed by an original black and white manga story in Fall 2009.

Again, good to see more kid-friendly comics coming out in 2009 — but I had to wonder why Cartoon Network opted to work with Del Rey Manga on this project instead of partnering with their fellow Time-Warner partner CMX Manga or DC Comics. There’s probably a simple answer to this, but this was a topic that came up as a few of us in the audience compared notes afterwards.

We even got some text messages about this news, but Del Rey would seem, on the face of it, to be in much better position to produce ORIGINAL manga than CMX is, so it may be that simple.

[Photo taken from and ©2008 digitalvillain’s Flickr stream.]

The New York Anime Fest kicks off today, and we haven’t given this NEARLY the kind of buildup we should have, but it should be a lot of fun. The move from December has definitely given it a better slot, but more conflicts with other shows (like Balitmore Comic-Con and Yaoi Con.)

But this is still a big show. Major guests include Yoshitaka Amano (above), goth Lolita clothing designers Baby, The Stars Shine Bright, horror novelist Hideyuki Kikuchi, voice actress Rie Tanaka, and many more who you can see here.

There are parties. There are panels. Contests! …and all kinds of tie-in events. Oh, and concerts. If we weren’t going to Baltimore, we’d be there.

..and God Len at Japanator has the obit…

Cartoon Network has sadly broke the news that as of today, the 20th of September, Toonami will end all scheduled programming, and die. This, in actuality, isn’t so sad seeing as the only anime to appear on this block currently is Naruto. What is sad is that this once great weekday block, which used to hold all of our favorite anime (at that time) was shoved into a Saturday evening retirement home to live out the rest of its life to entertain drunks, and grounded children.

…and a video tribute.

While some think that the Potty Mouth Batman variant may be the trigger to a new comics witch hunt, it’s more likely that THIS kind of thing will be more alarming if someone wants to make a big meal of things.

Anybody who doubts the rapidly growing influence of Japan’s erotic cultural imports in the U.S. only has to spend a little time playing with a Hello Kitty vibrator while reading a fan-created pornographic Pokemon comic — or visit a “maid café” (now available near Los Angeles and Canada) where the waitresses all dress in costume — to realize it’s not just a fringe subculture anymore.

There is a good argument to be made, based on those characters alone, that we are all “turning Japanese” as the ’80s song goes — especially sexually.

That’s Brian Alexander at MSNBC. Brigid has some needed perspective:

You know that any mainstream-news story that leads with the Hello Kitty vibrator is going to be bad news, and this MSNBC column by Brian Alexander does not disappoint. Did I miss the moment when maid cafes became mainstream in the U.S.? Maybe Boston is just behind the times. I don’t have all day to take apart the fallacies in this article, but let me point out one obvious howler [snip]

To be honest, we long thought that the anime/manga menace might become some pol’s election year crusade, but since we have actual serious problems to deal with, and the national elections seem to have become entirely personality-driven, unless it turns out Obama once dressed as Kenshiro for Halloween, or Sarah Palin bought a complete run of …But, I’m Your Teacher for her kids, this is unlikely to come up.

We’re not entirely sure what that means, either, but the New York Anime Festival is coming up FAST — at the end of the month Sept. 26-28 at the Javits Center. Lots of news is rolling out, and we’ll try to keep up. One of the guests of honor is the Goth Lolita fashion house known as Baby, The Stars Shine Bright, and apparently, you can have tea with them if you have the scratch:

The New York Anime Festival (NYAF) today announced designers from Baby, The Stars Shine Bright — Japan’s premier Lolita fashion brand — will conclude their time at the New York Anime Festival with dinner and a cup of tea with 20 fans at a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. A ticket to the Baby, The Stars Shine Bright Tea Party is priced at $125 and includes a salad, entrée, dessert, and tea with Baby, The Stars Shine Bright designers Miho Satoh and Masumi Kanoh.

(more…)

Okay, here is one celebrity we can get excited about — or more accurately, his king yellowtail stew.

The New York Anime Festival (NYAF) today announced Chef Masaharu Morimoto — star of Iron Chef and Iron Chef America — will attend its 2008 event as a Guest of Honor. The New York Anime Festival, an anime, manga, and Japanese pop culture convention from the creators of New York Comic Con, takes place September 26th through the 28th at the Jacob Javits Center in New York, NY. Chef Morimoto will attend NYAF’s first day, conducting a question-and-answer session with fans from 4 to 5 PM and a book signing from 5 to 6 PM. Festival attendees are then invited to visit Chef Morimoto’s eponymous restaurant — Morimoto — from 7 to 9 PM on the last day of the New York Anime Festival for NYAF’s Official After Party. Morimoto Restaurant is located at 88 10th Avenue in Manhattan. The New York Anime Festival’s After Party will take place in Morimoto’s downstairs bar and is open to all NYAF attendees, exhibitors, professionals, and press.

“All of us here at the New York Anime Festival are honored to have Chef Morimoto join us this year,” NYAF Show Manager Lance Fensterman said. “Masaharu Morimoto has done more to expose America to Japanese cooking than perhaps any other chef in the last decade, and we are eager to give him a platform in America’s biggest city to celebrate his accomplishments and open a few more hearts, minds, and bellies to Japanese cuisine.”

Chef Morimoto joins NYAF’s previously-announced Guests of Honor: illustrator Yoshitaka Amano, author Hideyuki Kikuchi, voice actress Rie Tanaka, and fashion designer Baby, The Stars Shine Bright. Tickets to the New York Anime Festival are available now at newyorkanimefestival.com.