Another new anime announcement today emerged from the pages of Shueisha's Ultra Jump magazine, once again via ANN. The magazine's freshly released December issue heralds an upcoming Dogs anime based on Shirow Miwa's action manga, which first ran from 2000 to 2001, and was restarted in 2005 under the title Dogs: Bullets & Carnage. An English version of the manga will start being released by Viz from April 2009.


The manga is set in a future city from Europe which extends far underground. There, "a genetically altered albino gunman, a chain-smoking mercenary, a former assassin, and a katana-wielding orphan ply their deadly trades on the streets and below the surface". Sounds interesting enough, and stylistically it's even more intriguing. The anime, currently in the works at studio David Production, has yet to receive a release date.

Despite narrow-minded individuals (not unlike myself) who fail to see anything interesting in an anime about a restaurant / bakery / ramen shop / gay bartender, another such project was announced today. This time we'll be dealing with an anime adaptation based on Natsume Ono's manga, Ristorante Paradiso, originally published from 2005 to 2006, and followed by a side-story called Gente: Ristorante no Hitobito (Gente: The People of the Restaurant).


A teaser website for next year's RisPara anime is up and running, and below you'll find the original manga's story, as recounted by ANN.

"The manga's story is set in a restaurant in Rome that the heroine Nicoletta visits from the countryside. Her parents divorced when she was young, so her grandparents raised her while her mother tried to remarry. Unfortunately for Nicoletta, her mother abandons her even after remarrying. Nicoletta goes to the restaurant that is now owned by the new husband of Nicoletta's mother, and ends up apprenticing there among a kitchen staff of colorful characters."

A short chibi anime version for the ongoing Toradora! series may be nothing more than wishful thinking on San'plex's part, for the time being. But we won't deny the favorable odds for such a project to be made, one day. Especially not after finding out that the DVD release of Toradora! (set for January 2009 afaik) will include special images with chibi renditions of the anime's characters - Taiga, Minori & co.


If we're to recall the hysterious Shana-tan specials that followed the first Shakugan no Shana anime, it's plain to see how such a chibi mini-series would be a perfect fit for Toradora's tsundere, not to mention it would be a great distraction until the series' presumed second season. The lulz must flow!

How could anyone have ever imagined that those enchanting Japanese idols, whose sole purpose of meaning is to become our short-lived wanking material, would go even lower and engage in prostitution? Right, irony aside, the latest confirmation of this "trend" - if one was ever needed - comes from former gravure idol Minako Komukai, who started making some hawt revelations after she got fired on account of her "various health problems".


While she herself "swears to God" to have never done anything like that (funny she should bring God into discussion), she says: “I saw so many gravure idols doing that, it was like a second job to them; like it was expected of us”... O RLY?

More pictures of Minako's uncompromising chubbyness right after this piece of insight into the idols' shady dealings, raeped reaped from San'plex: (...)

 Continue reading 'Japanese Idols' Second Job: Prostitution'...

Take this with a grain of ichigo pudding powder, but it seems that we can add another anime to the 2009 line-up. A fresh ANN story tonight points at the Letter Bee (Tegami Bachi) manga as a likely candidate for an anime adaptation. This is based on comments made by Shueisha's Jump Square magazine editor-in-chief Masahiko Ibaragi, during a chat on some random Japanese TV show.

The way he put it was that he "thinks" that there will be a Tegami Bachi anime on television in 2009. But whatever he based his belief on, his editorial position lends him a fair bit of credibility. He also noted that the recent Tegami Bachi anime special, which ran for about 30 minutes during the Jump Super Anime Tour events in Japan, will be streamed on the Jumpland website from November 24.


The original Letter Bee manga is about a boy who runs deliveries as a "Letter Bee" messenger throughout a strange fantasy land. So far it was compiled into 5 volumes, and was licensed for North American distribution by Viz Media earlier this year.

At the end of a long list of re-reports, we find this original article from The Straits Times, writing: "five Japanese anime studios are suing people accused of downloading their videos without permission". The angry companies in question are Showgate, Geneon, TV Tokyo, GDH KK (Gonzo's parent company) and Sunrise, and ANN further reveals that the four "heavy downloaders" being sued are all from Singapore.

Apparently, those leechers had it coming for some time, since they had previously received an offer to settle the issue out of court, which - in their infinite wisdom - they rejected. I wonder what imba defence they have planned, if they're so confident they can beat the Japanese studios in court. Perhaps...



In other suing news, Japanese studio Toei Animation and American company World Events Productions (WEP) have unearthed their decade-old war hatchet, starting a new lawsuit for the various rights linked to the Voltron / Golion franchise. This latest dispute involves the abandoned live-action Voltron movie, which New Regency no longer plans to produce, due to the legal complications that arose earlier this year. Obviously, WEP is pretty pissed about losing the live-action movie deal, and is now trying to hold Toei responsible... Objection!

Given the supposedly troubled state of Japan's peculiar entertainment industry, I've been under the impression that Japanese eroge makers can barely make ends meet, let alone live a life of luxury. Boy, was I awfully wrong! As a stark contradiction to my assumption, the president of eroge maker Age-soft owns - bloody owns - a Lamborghini, and had the nerve (some may call it divine inspiration) to pimp it with pictures of hawt 2D chicks. And since all good things come in three, he also has two other itasha to show off.

And show-off he does. As reported by an Italian blog (via AnimeNation), said president exhibited his Lamborghini Gallardo, BMW M5 and Lancia Stratos during an itasha event in Tokyo's Odaiba district earlier this month. The otaku crowds drooled. And took pictures - more of those below.

 (...)

 Continue reading 'Eroge Boss Shows Off Lamborghini Itasha'...

The fact that handicapped lolis don't say no is quite well known and thoroughly tested (or so I heard), so why not have an eroge full of them? It's this perfectly sane idea that may have inspired the concept behind Katawa Shoujo, an eroge which literally translates as Disablity Girls. And the reason we're mentioning it is that it's being developed straight in English, by a group of 4channers reunited as Four Leaf Studios.


The game's website was launched over the weekend, and with it came some fresh visual samples and more details about the game itself, and how it came to be. Long story short, some dude posted this image from a doujin by Raita of doujin circle Zettai Shoujo on 4chan, detailing character art for a dating sim he dubbed "Katawa Shoujo". This sparked a hypothetical debate about how such a game should be made, and by summer 2007 there were enough ideas and enough interest for an actual fan-made project to take off. Too bad there's no touch-down in sight, yet.

And not only that, but a spin-off game in the style of Type-Moon's Melty Blood fighting game is also being considered - more or less seriously - under the title Crippled/Heart. A tentative opening movie can be seen on YouTube, and there's also a tiny gameplay clip from Katawa Shoujo, by the way. Still, with no decent wanking material at hand, you might as well kill some time reading the game's description below, as presented by Four Leaf. (...)

 Continue reading 'Katawa Shoujo, Doujin Eroge In English'...

Due to lack of other decent stories today, we'll point you to Zepy, who in turn points us to Crypton's blog. So if you're in the mood for some synthetized loli songs, you can listen there to some new audio samples for the company's next Vocaloid2 package, "CV03" (not featuring Yokune Ruko). The samples are themed around the song "Amazing Grace", which, I must say, sounds more boring than ever in this pseudo-squaked formula. Nevermind that it's a damn boring song to begin with.


But seriously, when the hell are they going to expose the third Vocaloid loli? It's almost December and we should know it by then, if the previous two - Miku and Rin - were anything to go by.

Browsing through some alternative anime news sources tonight, I noticed several worthy stories that we missed at the time. And since - amazingly - we seem to be up-to-date with everything else this week (and I have too much time on my hands), let's backtrack a bit...

- First off, shame on us for missing the juicy rumour about a new Shakugan no Shana anime. Though still unconfirmed, a 3rd season featuring the tsundere loli Shana is said to be quite likely, according to what was said at Dengeki Bunko's Fall Festival. Sure hope so!

- The gag comedy light novels Project MP will be getting a TV anime adaptation scheduled for 2009, along with a manga serialized in Shueisha's Ultra Jump magazine starting this autumn. Pictured below are the light novels' 2 volumes published so far.


- Tetsuan Birdy Decode: 02 is the new title announced for the anime series' 2nd season, which was at some point titled Tetsuwan Birdy Decode: D. Begins in January 2009.

- And finally, 0verflow - makers of the game that spawned the controversial bad-ending School Days anime series - are now working on another game sequel, called Cross Days. This announcement is also quite old, but nevertheless worth catching up with, in the hopes of one day seeing a Cross Days anime... and more nice boats. Website here, early game details on San'Plex. Night'oh.