Checkpoint: Air Gear, Yumeiro Patissiere, Akira

The Air Gear manga series is slowly coming to an end, after ten years of serialization in the Weekly Shounen Magazine. Publisher Kodansha is announcing that the manga's creator Oh! Great (Ougure-Ito) is ending the series in 5 more chapters. The final chapter will be either 356 or 357, depending on whether or not they included chapter 352 in the count.




Meanwhile, the Yumeiro Patissiere manga is making a return, following the original series' finale in July 2011. This time, author Natsumi Matsumoto wrote a one-shot story that was published in this week's issue of Shueisha's shoujo magazine Ribon. Tthe manga has inspired a couple of TV anime series in 2009 and 2010, plus a 10-minute anime short.




New details about Akira manga creator Katsuhiro Otomo's recently announced new manga series (his first shounen manga, set in the Meiji period) have been revealed in the Brutus magazine. It will be serialized in the Weekly Shounen Sunday magazine, and Otomo plans to draw it entirely by himself, without assistants. He's been conceiving it for the past four years, taking inspiration from the historical book "Bakumatsu Meiji Hyaku Monogatari" ("One Hundred Stories Set in the Bakumatsu and Meiji Eras").

And speaking of Akira, the live-action film adaptation that was set to be directed by Jaume Collet-Serra will have to wait some more (yet again...). The Orphan director is being tasked with two other movies first: "Here There Be Monsters" (he is currently in negociations for this one) and the Dracula-based movie "Harker", with Russell Crowe.