Jeez, not another one! There's only been like nine thousand Saint Seiya anime adaptations in the last few decades; yet for some reason, somebody saw fit to plan another one for next year. An OVA, to be more precise, based on the Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas - Meiou Shinwa prequel manga that's been serialized since 2006.



This new Saint Seiya OVA is being announced in the Weekly Shonen Champion magazine, with a spring 2009 release date attached, and from what ANN writes...

"The mythical action manga's story is set in the middle of the 18th century, 243 years before the first Saint Seiya storyline. Artist Teshirogi focuses The Lost Canvas - Meiou Shinwa on the friendship of Tenma and Alone - the previous incarnations of the characters Pegasus Seiya and Hades who would become mortal enemies in the original Saint Seiya. The manga and the upcoming anime also includes Sasha, the earlier incarnation of Athena."

That's one more title we can add to our release list, for next spring's anime season. Originally a gag manga published since 2002 - and still ongoing - in the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, Mainichi Kaasan is set to become an anime series starting from April 2009. The announcement comes via ANN from the popular newspaper's website (popular for its spicy sex stories, if anything), but with no animation studio named yet.



Mainichi Kaasan (Daily / Everyday Mom) is a slice-of-life gag manga by Rieko Saibara, who describes random funny stuff about herself and her two kids. Aside from the various awards it received, the manga also got some media loving when the author got into a dispute with the school attended by her eldest son, after calling 5 school children as "the 5 class dummies".

Anyway, the manga was compiled into 5 volumes so far, although the fifth one has yet to be released, this December 13.

In a reverse kind of "manga gets anime" announcement, animation studio Bones (Eureka Seven, Fullmetal Alchemist... 2) revealed that their ongoing WTF-sci-fi anime series Xam'd: Lost Memories (Bounen no Xamdou) will be getting a manga adaptation. The manga - titled Bounen no Xam'd: Junreisha no Compass - will be published in Kadokawa Shoten's Ace Assault magazine, starting from this December 9.



The anime's distribution model is pretty WTF in itself, as well. Instead of regular TV broadcasting, Sony is pumping Xam'd through its PlayStation Network for the PlayStation 3 and PSP consoles. At the rate it is going, the final episode should be out in February 2009. As for what the hell it's all about, here's the official synopsis: (...)

 Continue reading 'Xam'd: Lost Memories Anime Gets Manga'...

Katanagatari, hmm? Sounds a bit like Bakemonogatari; and by no small coincidence. Both of these light novels were originally authored by NisiOisiN - the palindromic writer of the xxxHOLiC: Another Holic Landolt-Ring Aerosol, and Death Note: Another Note spinoff novels - and by now both of them are set to be animated. The anime series Katanagatari is the latest to be green-lit, according to a brief announcement printed on the cover of the same author's "Maniwagatari" novel. I'm beginning to see a pattern here...



Another obvious play on words, the title Katanagatari is formed from "katana" and "gatari", loosely translating it to Swords Clash. Or perhaps "katana" and "monogatari" - Katana Story? Either way, swords and martial arts are very much a part of this light novel series, whose 12 volumes were published by Kodansha in 2007. The story, courtesy of ANN, goes like this:

"The 12-volume historical epic centers on Shichika Yasuri, the seventh generational head of the Kyotou-ryuu school of martial arts in medieval Japan. He and his older sister Nanami live on an isolated island, until a military advisor named Togame tells him of the final 12 swords forged by a legendary swordsmith. At Togame's bidding, Shichika embarks on a journey to find all 12 of the swords."

No other details about the Katanagatari anime are know at this point in space and time.

Just a few days after word spread out about a new anime series called Eden of the East, Production I.G stepped in with a press release, to clear things up. For one thing, we didn't know at the time if this was an original anime project, or just an adaptation based on "a pretty damn old manga series" from 1989, by Sugiura Hinako. Well, now we do, and we're most pleased with the outcome: Eden of the East will be an original anime, with a script written by director Kenji Kamiyama about "a story of youth set in a very near-future Japan".



We also didn't know what the story would be about, in case of an original project. But Production I.G cleared that up, too, along with confirming the two staff members named so far: director Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Seirei no Moribito), and character designer Chika Umino (Honey and Clover manga). You'll find the story below, and a placeholder website is also up with an intriguing picture. (...)

 Continue reading 'Eden of the East Details, From Production I.G'...

Holy ecstasy! Not only will we get an Utawarerumono OVA next year, perhaps even an ero-OVA - much to the delight of everyone who vigorously enjoyed the earlier (non-ero) fantasy anime series from 2006. But a PSP version of the original eroge by Aquaplus that spawned this lovely franchise is also coming in 2009, along with a portable ToHeart 2 also for the PSP, set to include "the long awaited Sasara Kusugawa route". How f...furry great is that!



According to reports from the recent Aquaplus Live Festa 2008, the game company itself is animating the OVA through its multimedia studio, under the direction of Kenichirou Katsura (ToHeart2, Comic Party: Revolution character designer), and with help from animation studio Chaos Project.

The Utawarerumono OVA is planned as a 3-volume anime, with the first volume set for release on DVD and Blu-ray on June 5, 2009. Best of all, with no TV version, no TV ethics and no TV worries in mind, they are promising that the OVA "won't be covering things up with steam or avoiding interesting angles; it'll be a more mature work". (...)

 Continue reading 'Utawarerumono OVA, PSP Game, Trailer'...

Spank while the loli is hot, I believe the saying goes. Well, it doesn't take a loliconnaisseur genius to see that Nagi is the hottest loli around right now, just by drooling at the massive amounts of fanart invading the nets. And this, despite the fact that her anime Kannagi still has some episodes left to go, until the grand finale right after Christmas. As we await for that, we selected over 200 of the finest (and safest for work) pictures of Nagi in our gallery - culminating, I'd say, with this exquisite wallpaper sampled below.



Looking ahead to January 2009, the post-holiday hangover - oh and the new anime season - won't be the only thing on our minds. Odds are we'll be promoting one of the Strike Witches lolis to the rank of "loli of the month", which is why we're now asking you to pick one whose pantsu you would enjoy sniffing the most. For that, please poke around our new top, aptly titled "Best Strike Witches loli" (and if you can't find your flying loli of choice there, just leave a comment here).

But most importantly, we'll also start looking at the candidates for Best Lolicon Anime of 2008, for our soon-to-be-traditional award. By the way, what do you say - was 2008 a good year for lolicon anime fans?

Another couple of months went by since the previous "act" of Yoshiura Yasuhiro's ongoing sci-fi animation work Eve no Jikan (Time of Eve), so it's now time for act03: KOJI&RINA. This new episode is streaming for free on Yahoo! Japan (in Japan only, and for one week only, not one month as previously announced), and also starting tomorrow from 5 PM (PST) over on Crunchyroll, with English subtitles.



Act01 debuted on August 1, with act02 following precisely two months later. Following this freight train of thought, one might assume that act04 will be out in eary February... however that is not the case anymore. As announced on the official website, the release of act04 is being postponed until April 2009, "in order to maintain the quality of the "Time of Eve" series". Well, if that's what it takes to get more visual orgasms from Yoshiura-kun, so be it!

The guy, may we remind you, is the same director to whom we owe another couple of sublime animation shorts: Mizu no Kotoba (Aquatic Language) from 2002, and Pale Cocoon from 2005, among others. If you haven't seen Pale Cocoon in particular, I strongly urge you get hold of it!