Various reports spotted on the Japanese blogosquid are revealing that the Bakemonogatari light novels will be adapted into an anime. A pretty obvious play on words, the title Bakemonogatari is formed from "bakemono" and "monogatari", loosely translating it to Monster Story. But as you can see in the image below, it's not just about monsters. There be dragons schoolgirls, too! Oh, and ex-vampires.

If that's not enough to pique your interest, know that the Bakemonogatari supernatural comedy novels were signed by NisiOisiN (writer of the xxxHOLiC and Death Note spinoff novels), who is rumored to be a pen name of Death Note creator Tsugumi Ohba. Here's a bit more about the novels, ripped straight off Giapet:

"The novel is actually a two-volume series of five short stories that apparently feature a lot of otaku in-jokes, although of a more classic nature than, say, Lucky Star's constant Haruhi references. The general plot is that a nice guy meets a tsundere, hinjinks ensue, etc, but with a few twists... he's apparently an ex-vampire, for example."

- Gonzo is streaming the Hennako-chan web-anime on its YouTube channel starting tomorrow, April 25. Based on the calssic black-comedy manga about a girl with psychic powers, the web-anime will consist of six 3-minute episodes coming out every other week, and will also be provided with English (and Chinese) subtitles, via Fujiyama. Update: The first subbed episode is already online. Not bad!

- Viz Media is releasing the first half of the Busou Renkin anime on DVD - in English - on April 29. The 13-episode bundle is packed with all sorts of goodies, and it's priced at $49.98 (roughly $3.8 per episode). The second half of the series will follow later this year.

- American manga sales rose in 2007, but at a slower rate than in previous years.

I kind of ignored missed this a couple of days ago, when it was mentioned on Giapet. But catching up with AnimeSuki's venerable topic tonight, I stumbled upon it again. So here it is: the Ga-rei manga will be adaptated into an anime, titled Ga-rei -Zero-. This is a shounen / action / comedy / romance / drama / horror / supernatural manga which, in Giapet's words, goes something like this:

"Ga-Rei is based on the "non-stop after school demon action" manga by Hajime Segawa (...). A high school freshman can see ghosts and demons as a normal course of his life, and he eventually meets a girl named Kagura who has the ability to summon a demon-eater (a "ga-rei"). Which obviously means they have to go hunt down the demons. Right?"

According to the initial report from Moon Phase, Kyoto Animation registered the domain www.ga-rei.jp (nothing there yet), so assumingly they'll produce the anime, while Asread (Shuffle!, Minami-ke: Okawari) will animate it. The manga has five volumes so far, and the sixth one is scheduled for release... oh, in just a couple of days, in fact, on April 26. Below are all the covers.

Update: Publisher Kadokawa Shoten now offers a free online sample of the Ga-rei manga.

In the latest issue of Famitsu, SEGA announced World Destruction as a new "apocalypse impending" RPG for the Nintendo DS, and at the same time an anime based on the game. Both of them should appear this summer, and the anime in particular is pinned down for a July 2008 premiere.

Over on DS Fanboy, World Destruction is briefly described as "a traditional RPG with turn-based combat and giant bosses filling up both of the system's screens". The game's developer is Image Epoch (maker of Luminous Arc, another fantasy game series for the DS), and a full-page ad in the magazine links the official website to WD.sega.jp (nothing to see there so far). More scans are available on GoNintendo, who also say that the project reunites three Xenogears staffers: Masato Kato on scenario, Kunihiko Tanaka on character designs and Yasunori Mitsuda on sound. Somehow, though, I can't drag myself to get excited about it... all these eroge demos I tried today must have worn me out.

Update: ANN writes that the World Destruction anime will be produced (animated, actually) by Production I.G, and gives a brief outline of the game's story: "The game centers on a youth named Kirie Irunisu who secretly possesses the power to destroy the world. He is forced to join a party that aims not to save the world, but to eradicate it and start anew." The game also has a main heroine named Morute Ashera, who will play a bigger role in the anime version. Good to hear.

Updated #2: More production / staff details were posted on the AnimeSuki forum, along with the scan of an article about the anime, which is co-produced by Sega and Geneon.

I'm going to rip off our quick-links type of posts from Playkon (hmm, we really should get back to writing there again), and start collecting various anime / manga / whatever stories as "checkpoints". More or less like this...

- Kanojo x Kanojo x Kanojo eroge demo version up for download (288 MB), more mirrors here (try the right-side buttons). For an even quicker impression, you can see some NSFW screenshots, and a marginally safe for work wallpaper. (Update: I've been scrolling through the demo for well over an hour, and there's still no end in sight... But I'm starting to get hungry, from all these food and bento scenes. And various other things. Yummy!)

- On a side-note, eroge developer Windmill has released its CatSystem2 engine for making doujin games, free for personal use. Windmill's next title, Tsunaban - Love Mix is set for release on July 18.

- sola, Koi Kupid manga previews posted online in English by Broccoli Books. There are 9 pages from sola (Volume 1 coming this June), and 12 pages from Koi Cupid (Volume 1 released last month).

- Hanaharu Naruko (author of the Kamichu! manga), will release his first adult manga, "Shoujo Material" in May. Nice wanking material. And this one is also his, by the way. Win!

- Fate/Zero novels return in stores after four months of silence. The four volumes were originally released between December 2006 and December 2007, and their story takes place 10 years before Fate/Stay Night. Not that I care, really - I just like the covers.

The two Kill Bill movies directed by Quentin Tarantino will soon be re-released together, with some added story in between them, presented in the form of another anime sequence. So says lead actress Uma Thurman, according to MTV Movies Blog (via ANN), who further speculated that this second anime short will focus on Bill's character. The first one was about Lucy Liu's character, O-Ren Ishii, if you recall...

"Right now [Tarantino] is putting the two films together with an intermission with an added anime sequence he had already written", she said of the ongoing saga of Beatrix Kiddo. "So additional stories are in there, in animation."

MTV's assumption that this new animation will be about Bill is based on something Tarantino said about two years ago, that he wanted to make two more anime shorts: one about the origin of The Bride, and the other about Bill. In this week's article, however, Uma Thurman says it pretty loud and pretty clear - "It has nothing to do with me. It has to do with another character. You'll have to see". I'm sure we will...

Reading this story on ANN last night, about an American otaku girl gone missing in Japan, was very much like reading about our own delusional plans: get one-way tickets to Japan, burn all our IDs once we get there, and just... perish, all because of a bureaucratic misunderstanding. However, there is but one tiny detail that sets this here story apart: a suicide note.

"21-year-old Skye Lynn Budnick, a student at Central Connecticut State University and member of the university's anime club, has disappeared after traveling to Japan on a one-way ticket that she bought without informing her family. She left the United States on April 1 and was last seen on April 7 at an inn in Noboribetsu, a city on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido.

(...) Several days after she disappeared, her family logged into her email account and found her travel itinerary and a suicide note that she composed, but did not send."

Maybe her internets failed just before sending the mail... Maybe she was inspired to take the trip after watching too much Genshiken 2... We may never know. Though if you do know something about her, by some remarcable twist of fate, there's a phone number at the end of ANN's story that you can call, along with a picture of her. Naturally, we're not posting it here, since she's not a loli.

It's no surprise that Nintendo has become the most valued "business to consumer" brand in Japan, but to see an aging anime studio like Ghibli, and a Western studio like Disney following right behind... I'm telling you, something is rotten in the state of a thousand lolicons per square kilometer. That is, if you're willing to trust a study called "Brand Japan 2008" conducted by NiikeiBP Consulting (via Nausicaa.net, via Giapet).

One year ago, all these brands ranked below #5, and in particular Ghibli's leap through time - from #12 to #2 - is quite impressive... if not dubious. Especially since it practically swapped places with Google almighty, which stumbled from #2 last year, down to #11. That's even lower than Yahoo!, for crying out loud! Something is definitely rotten in Japan...

Anyway, here are the top 10 brands, from the total of 40. And yes, it's no mistake, Nintendo owns twice in the top 5!

1. Nintendo
2. Studio Ghibli
3. Disney
4. Sony
5. Nintendo DS
6. Nissin
7. Toyota
8. Sharp
9. Yahoo!
10. Panasonic

I'm surprised there's no sign of 2ch in that list. Probably because they were only asking people who actually get out of the house...

All that talk about manga licenses demands - and deserves - to be followed by some real manga news. And by "real", I mean "moe". And by "moe", I mean Moetan. Oh, yes, fellow lolicons, the complete Moetan manga was released in Japan a few days ago, on April 17, and AkibaBlog's unscrupulous author was in the heart of Akihabara to grope the pulse of this flat-chested goodness.

Created by Tetsuya Takahashi, the Moetan manga was originally serialized in the Moetan monthly magazine (bundled with the Gamelabo magazine) last year. And now the entire series seems to have been reunited and released under the title "Moetan - Magical Busters, please save the world!!". You can find not-so-safe-for-work pictures of its covers and content here, here and here. Yummy!

While there's not much to argue about the most important anime announcement made at this past weekend's New York Comic Con, things are a bit different when it comes to the manga announcements made at the event. And that's simply because there were so many of them, with quite a few big titles, too.

I'll turn to ANN again for their extensive coverage, as they offered detailed reports from the panels held by the likes of Del Rey Manga, Yen Press, CMX Manga and Tokyopop. Compiled below is a list with most of the manga titles - and some novels - planned for English release by each company, along with the release dates of the first volume, where available.

Del Rey Manga
- Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei: The Power of Negative Thinking manga (March 2009)
- Gakuen Prince manga (April 2009)
- Samurai 7 manga (Spring 2009)
- The Curse of the Dragon Slayer novel (February 2009)

Yen Press
- The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya manga (October 2008) and novels (April 2009)
- Soul Eater manga (July 29, in the first issue of a new magazine called Yen Plus... or Yen+)
- Higurashi - When They Cry manga (July 29, in Yen Plus)
- Sumomomo Momomo manga (July 29, in Yen Plus)
- Bamboo Blade manga (July 29, in Yen Plus)
- Nabari no Ou manga (July 29, in Yen Plus)
(some of these - notably Higurashi - will not be published in full in Yen Plus, only previewed for several months, but they will all be released individually from May 2009)
- B-Ichi manga

CMX Manga
- Emma side-stories manga (2009)
- Shirley manga (July 2)
- Dorothea manga (April 30)
- Two Flowers of the Dragon manga (May 5)
- The Recipe for Gertrude manga (May 5)
- The Flat Earth Exchange manga (June 25)
- A Girl Who Runs Through Time manga (not directly related to the Tokikake movie)
- Kiichi and the Magic Books manga
- Classical Medley manga
- Astral Project manga
- Suihelibe! manga
- Fire Investigator Nanase manga
- Venus Capriccio manga
- Jihai manga
- Ballad of a Shinigami manga

Tokyopop
- Vassalord manga (July 2008)
- Silver Diamond manga (July 2008)
- Jyu Oh Sei manga (August 2008)
- Castlevania: Curse of Darkness manga (September 2008)
- Goth manga (September 2008) and novel (October 2008)
- Fate/Stay Night manga (October 2008)
- Kyou Kara Maoh! manga and novels
- Maru-Ma novels
- Gothic & Lolita Bible magazine, volume 2 (June 2008)
- Star Trek: The Next Generation manga
- StarCraft: Frontline manga (August 2008)
- Warcraft: Legends manga (August 2008)
... and another truckload of all-new adventures set in Blizzard's Warcraft and StarCraft universes - 22 in total - set to be published over the next 3 years. Not exactly "genuine manga", but what the hell!

Bandai Entertainment
- Ghost Slayers Ayashi manga (September 2)

Digital Manga Publishing
- Swallowing the Earth manga

Update: Added some stuff... fixed some other stuff... thanks to Giapet's NYCC coverage.