The Tokyo International Anime Fair is dead, long live Anime Contents Expo! The latter will apparently be the anime expo to keep an eye out for, starting from next year, as top anime companies have decided to boycott good ol' Tokyo 'Anime Fair and host this new event instead, during the same period as TAF (March 26-27).



Organizers of Anime Contents Expo 2011 (ACE) include Aniplex, Animate, Kadokawa Shoten, King Records, Geneon, Frontier Works, Marvelous Entertainment and Media Factory. According to the new event's executive committee, the reason for their "uprising" is Tokyo's recently passed amendment to its Youth Healthy Development Ordinance, which expands the list of "harmful" anime and manga that can't be sold or rented to people under the age of 18 - among other nasty provisions. (...)

 Continue reading 'Anime Contents Expo vs. Tokyo Anime Fair'...

Funny I should start today's checkpoint with something titled "Dog Days", what with all the snow piling up outside. But there you have it...


Dog Day Afternoon Evening
The upcoming TV anime series Dog Days will begin airing in Japan from April 2011, according to tonight's first Moon Phase Diary entry. This project was briefly revealed earlier this month, as a new concept coming from manga artist Masaki Tsuzuki - best known for the Lyrical Nanoha A's and StrikerS manga adaptations and a couple of other Nanoha spin-offs. Studio Seven Arcs is animating, as they did for the Nanoha series (doh!), Sekirei, Asura Cryin' and a few others. The official website is still not online, though.

Fresh off the 'tubes we have a new trailer for Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa - the second Macross F anime film that's opening in Japanese theaters (...)

 Continue reading 'Checkpoint: Dog Days, Macross F2, Panty & Stocking'...

Last update - Dec 27, 19:35 GMT (14:35 EST, 11:35 PST)

Say hello to the new "Checkpoint"! It's a moniker that I've been using in the past for totally random, and totally sporadic news round-ups. But, from now on, I'll try putting it to better use, and turn it into a daily collection of tiny news bits and breaking stories. Well, more or less daily - I'll see how demanding they become.

The reason for this is that I often used to skip perfectly juicy stories altogether, when I couldn't find the time (or mood) to write about them in detail. This way, at least, it should be easier to keep track of all the important news. And then some! So, for starters...



- A Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi TV anime series adaptation was announced a few days ago, based on this autumn's eroge colloquially known as HoshiKaka. Begins in April 2011. And from a fresh Getchu update tonight, we have the above wallpaper'ish picture with its female cast.

- A new Freezing trailer just came out tonight on Media Factory's YouTube channel, but you can watch it locally just as well. The anime's debut is set for January 8, 2011.

- MangaGamer has announced that its (English) release of Da Capo II is now available (...)

 Continue reading 'Checkpoint: HoshiKaka, Freezing, Da Capo 2'...

A very merry Christmas is what I wish you all jolly (and occasionally derranged) people out there! Along with this, and another Christmas gallery update today, I'd like to take this time to share some thoughts that I've been having last night. Umm, no, not those kinds of thoughts!



As I was waiting for the effects of excessive coffee drinking to fade, one wishful thinking led to another, and I soon found myself scribbling down ideas at the light of a decade-old cell phone. Ideas that should soon translate into a much more interactive website, as it shily opens up to user contributions.

This is something that I've been pondering pretty much since Animekon came to be, (...)

 Continue reading 'Christmas Wishes... And Solid Plans'...

Christmas miracles and other such seasonal clichés aside - yep, Animekon is back! And so is TVkon and a couple more websites from our network, by the way. More story-telling to follow, after some other urgent stuff here... As you may or may not have noticed, the website's been offline since early November, after a most dreadful "termination without notice" of our previous server's link to the world wide webs.



Getting a full backup turned out to be the easy part, despite my worst fears. But then came the nasty part, once I began my hunt for a new - and this time dedicated - server. My first choice was a certain French company whose customer support turned out to be so despicable, that they left me waiting on my order for over two weeks, without bothering to mention that "oh, by the way, we don't accept clients or payments from your country". In fact, they still haven't given me any kind of reply to my inquiries, up to this day. Merci beaucoup! Putain...

Since that was getting me nowhere, I eventually turned to option number two: (...)

 Continue reading 'Just in Time for Christmas'...