With Gurren Lagann more or less behind them, the animators from studio Gainax are now working on a few more projects, two of which were mentioned - but not detailed or even named - at their panel from this past weekend's FanimeCon. By now, however, project #1 has already been confirmed by ANN to be a TV anime series based on the supernatural shounen manga Shikabane Hime (Corpse Princess - pictured below), and rumor has it that project #2 is an animated movie based on the shoujo horror manga Ghost Rhapsody.

The Shikabane Hime anime is scheduled to start airing in Japan this autumn, and is being co-produced by Gainax co-founder Hiroyuki Yamaga, and Gurren Lagann producer Yasuhiro Takeda, with character designs by Chikashi Kubota (Tokikake animation director). The original manga, currently spread over 7 volumes, is about Makina Hoshino - an undead girl who hunts down 108 corpses in order to go to heaven (sounds a bit like Soul Eater's 99 souls hunt).

As for Ghost Rhapsody - a project originally announced three years ago, go figure - if the speculation turns out to be correct, this will be one less anime to worry about, as far as we're concerned. We don't take kindly of girlish stuff around here...

We wrote about Megumi's abduction a couple of months ago, when an anime about her life and her parents' struggle was made (you can watch it in full here). But it looks like the issue regarding the North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens in the '70s and '80s is still far from being resolved, as more discrepancies surrounding Megumi's alleged death have appeared, via Mainichi (Cryo backup).

In 2002, North Korea first claimed that Megumi Yokota committed suicide in March 1993, but in August 2004 one of the surviving abductees testified that Megumi was still alive until 1994. As a result, North Korea issued a new statement, claiming that one of their officials had a case of bad memory, and that Megumi in fact killed herself in April 1994. They even provided Japan with the so-called cremated remains of Megumi, but Japan's sloppy DNA testing concluded they did not belong to her.

Now, another contradictory piece of her life's puzzle appeared, as yet another survivng abductee - Fukie Chimura, 52 - told Japanese authorities that Megumi "moved in next door to us in June 1994" (two months after her alleged death), and that she continued to live there for several months. So I guess it's North Korea's turn to come up with some other unlikely death scenario. And launch a few more test missiles into the Sea of Japan...

- The leaked story about Gurren Lagann airing on the Sci Fi channel has finally, officially been confirmed at FanimeCon. The first Gurren Lagann anime season will run on Sci Fi (in English) from July 28 at 11 PM, until late October, at two episodes per week in the "Ani-Monday" block. The English-dub version will also be released on DVD in Q4 2008.

- The first Gundam MS IGLOO 2 trailer was added locally, with a high-res version available on our imouto website TVkon. The first volume of this OVA sequel will be released in Japan in October.

- The Slayers Revolution OP song, "Plenty of Grit" can be heard on Moetron, as aired during a radio show in Japan; lyrics here. The series begins on July 2.

- A new artwork by Miyazaki Hayao has surfaced for Ghibli's upcoming animation film Gake no Ue no Ponyo, whose premiere is set for July 19.

- 4 Washington middle schoolers were disciplined (one of them expelled) for writing 50 names in their own "Death Note" book. Not that we suddenly approve of the whole Death Note nonsense, but punishing someone for merely writing something sounds a lot like communism from where I come from.

For you Negima! fans out there who are looking forward to that Negima! Ala Alba 3-episode OVA announced not long ago, here's some potentially good news. Zepy picked up some reports from a Negima event that took place today in Japan, hinting at the possibility of a Negima! movie, and even a third anime series.

But those may only come to fruition if the upcoming OVA will be pre-ordered in stupendously high amounts: at least 50,000 are needed for a Negima movie to be made considered, and at least 100,000 pre-orders for a third TV series. Currently, there are over nine thousand pre-orders according to the counter on the official website (actually 10,035 as of now), and the first OVA episode is scheduled for release on July 17. So that leaves less than 2 months for another 90,000 pre-orders. Get busy!

- With all the recent happenings, there was no time left to write a full news about this, so I'm briefly squeezing it here: the hyper-ecchi anime Kanokon will no longer be streamed online by Gyao - and Biglobe will only stream it for hard cash - from episode 7 onward, because it's getting too hot. Episode 8 in particular is said to be just way too much! We'll see, definitely.

- Speaking of hawtness, some Japanese schoolgirls are starting to change their short, hawt skirts, with long, ugly (and unrevealing) slacks. Because they have to (Cryo backup). A sad day looms ever so closer...

- Remember that U.S. nuclear carrier that's going to be stationed at Japan's Yokosuka naval base this August - the one that's even getting a manga? Well, guess what: this week it caught fire for several hours (Cryo backup). The Japanese locals must surely be even more "thrilled" now, at the prospect of having a burning nuclear-powered U.S. Navy aicraft carrier parked in their backyard.

- A 4-meter high Gundam statue (Cryo backup) has been erected at a shopping center from Ise, Japan, wishing good luck to the native and reigning Olympic women's marathon champion Mizuki Noguchi, at the upcoming Beijing Olympics.

Aside from the Bandai merger, their new license announced for Sword of the Stranger, and the mildly- Bandai-related announcement of a second Gurren Lagann movie, the company still had more in store for their FanimeCon 2008 panel yesterday. ANN has a full report on it, with all sorts of release dates and details for their upcoming animes - some previously known, some new. Below is but a very, very condensed summary:

- Code Geass - first DVD on August 5, whole season by January 2009
- Lucky Star - second volume in July
- Ghost Slayers Ayashi - first 10 episodes on September 9
- Toward the Terra - first volume (10 episodes) on July 15
- Mai-Otome Zwei - first OVA episode in October
- The Girl Who... meh, Tokikake - theatrical release from June, DVD on November 10
- Gundam Seed Destiny - first OVA episode on June 17
- Rocket Girls - all 12 episodes on October 7
- Gurren Lagann - three volumes (9 episodes each) in July, August and September
- Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence - on DVD and Blu-ray (with new dub) this autumn
- Sword of the Stranger - theatrical release from July 18, DVD and Blu-ray "TBA"

In the meantime, the Bandai website keeps on churning out "secret messages" in its source code, if anyone is still interested in that hax-guessing game. Getting kind of boring...

Whoa, where did that come from? I may be easily surprised at this hour (6 AM with no sleep around here), but this sure is unexpected: among various other updates posted on the website of the Comic Gum magazine (it being the home of the Ikkitousen manga), a new hybrid fighting / adventure game was announced for the PSP handheld console! It's called Ikkitousen: Eloquent Fist, and it should be released on October 2.

HD promptly covered these updates, informing us that the game will feature 15 Ikkitousen heroines, and that its limited edition comes packaged with an "oyako donburi" figure - aptly described as Goei and Hakufu, in bikinis, in a bowl. Spank the image below to see the first screenshots from this Ikkitousen PSP game.


Comic Gun's update also unveils a new "key visual" for the Ikkitousen 3: Great Guardians anime series featuring Ryuubi, Kanu, Chouhi, Koumei, and Chouun (all characters from Seito Gakuen), as well as some screenshots from the first two episodes of Great Guardians. Some of those ecchi screens were previously posted on HD at a higher quality, so I suggest you go drool there instead.

I don't want to cause any confusion over this, since I'm not aware of any official connection between Bandai and the Gurren Lagann movie(s) as of yet (though odds are they will eventually license it), so I removed everything about Gurren Lagann from our previous report on Bandai's merger and new license, and placed it below. So....

Giapet put up a quick twitter update from Fanime just an hour ago, saying that the Gurren Lagann movie will actually be two-fold: "There will be two gurren lagann movies. The movies seem to be a retelling with some new footage and some reused as well."

And in other Gurren Lagann news, that story about Gurren Lagann airing on the Sci Fi channel starting from July 28 turned out to be leaked ahead of plan, and not exactly final. The deal hasn't actually been finalized yet, and they're "working very hard to meet an extremely tight deadline to get it ready for TV broadcast (...). If everything goes as planned, there will be two brand new episodes of Gurren Lagann every Monday".

By the way, the first 6 episodes of Gurren Lagann are being premiered at FanimeCon.

Update: ANN confirms that there will be two Gurren Lagann movies coming from Gainax.

The FanimeCon 2008 anime convention has kicked off, and with it comes some fresh news about Bandai's much speculated new license. But first, let's quickly relay that the group's two American subsidiaries - Bandai Entertainment and Bandai Visual USA - will be merging on July 1, and as a result Bandai Visual will be liquidated before the end of September.

On to the license, then. Contrary to the various titles speculated over the past few days (including School Days and Gunbuster 2, among others), the real winner is... the anime movie Sword of the Stranger, according to Anime UK News. Officially known as Stranger: Mukou Hadan, this is studio Bones' self-proclaimed "greatest animated historical drama", and it aired last autumn in Japan, so it's a fairly fresh production.

Update: ANN confirms the Sword of the Stranger license, adding that the film will be released theatrically on July 18, and that standard DVD and Blu-ray releases are also planned.

Update #2: Split this post in two, moved everything about Gurren Lagann here.

And to show how much we approve of that anti-lolicon petition, here, have a juicy load of eroge hawtness, freshly harvested from the website of Natsuzora Kanata - one of the many eroge released this weekend in Japan, and the one which I found to be the most appealing.

You'll find wallpapers and pics captured from trailers in our gallery, and we also added five Natsuzora Kanata trailers locally. The first one is a generic trailer, the next three are focusing on each of the game's main female characters - Chihaya, Yuiko and Sasara - and finally there's the opening trailer. For more provocative and less safe for work samples, check the official website's gallery and, best of all, the Natsuzora Kanata demo version from the top of their downloads page. Below is just a brief story adapted from VNDB:

The protagonist, Souta is a boy who visits his aunt's house from a small island. She runs a hotel and he starts working part-time there. One day, he meets a girl, Chihaya, at the coffee shop. They become friends soon and gradually fall in love... However, this is just a beginning of a tragedy: when he meets Chihaya again later, she doesn't remember him...