Phew, that's one less rumor to worry about not being entirely true. Everything that was reported last month turns out to be 100% accurate, as studio Gonzo is now confirmed to be working on a TV anime series based on Ritz Kobayashi's mahjong manga Saki. And the official website set aside at the time is now also open for clicking business. Granted, there's not much clicking to be done there yet.



The Saki anime will begin in 2009, and ANN has plenty of cast & staff details translated, for those of you interested. No point in copy-pasting them here, though, since no particular name from the production staff strikes me as notable. The mahjong playing lolis, on the other hand, do.

What started out as a leaked news from some random market research survey, will probably end with a new anime being added to next year's line-up. The report points to Satoko Kiyuzuki's 4-koma manga GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class as getting an anime adaptation, to be developed by studio AIC (Anime International Company) and directed by Hiroaki Sakurai (Di Gi Charat).



The GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class manga began in 2004 as a slice-of-life high-school art-class thingie, and is still ongoing, with 2 volumes apparently compiled to date. Five freshman lolis make out make up the cast of said manga, and their seiyuu correspondants are already known. Allegedly.

Kisaragi: Haruka Tomatsu (Kannagi's Nagi, To Love Ru's Lala)
Noda-Miki: Ai Tokunaga (Kiddy Grade's Viola)
Tomokane: Miyuki Sawashiro (Utawarerumono's Aruru, Ex Machina's Hitomi)
Namiko-san: Yui Horie (Manabi Straight's Manami, Higurashi's Hanyuu)
Kyouju: Kaori Nazuka (Eureka Seven's Eureka, Innocent Venus's Sana)

Meanwhile, Yen Press is toilering on their English translation of the GA manga, whose first localized volume should be released in April 2009.

If there's one 2007 anime that I should go commit seppuku in shame for not having seen it yet, that would have to be Dennou Coil. I'm a real sucker for good sci-fi stories (as opposed to mindless mecha pew-pew), and from the sound of it, this is precisely what the doctor - and various awarding committees - would order. Umm... yeah, this too.



Following a pretty impressive string of awards, including the rough Japanese equivalent of a Hugo Award (namely the Seiun Award from the 46th Japan SF Convention), this week Dennou Coil claimed another resounding victory - as the co-winner of the 29th Nihon SF Taishou Awards, from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of Japan (website). And if you're still not impressed, ANN lists even more previous awards.

If this show won't strike me as "made of win", I don't know what will.

Now that he's done bashing Japan's prime-minister Taro Aso, veteran director Hayao Miyazaki is... nope, still not retiring. The old man's latest apparition of some mediatic interest took place at the end of November, when he gave a speech to the production staff at Studio Ghibli. A speech that was curiously titled "How Do We (Ghibli) Get over the Severe World", though presumably without focusing too much on the current world economic crisis (that would've been a major waste of time).



The topic at hand, from what Nausicaa.net reports, was Ghibli's future animation projects. Over the next 3 years, Miyazaki said the studio will begin 2 new feature-length anime films "by young staff members". But whether that means young directors, or just young animators, is not quite clear yet.

Judging by earlier newsbits and interviews, it would appear that Ghibli staffer Kishimoto (nicknamed Nayo) is working with studio co-founder Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday) on one of the studio's upcoming films.

Also, old Miyazaki's much-criticized son, Goro Miyazaki is also said to be cooking up something. Hopefully something better than his last directoral work on Tales from Earthsea (Ged Senki), for which he was named "worst director of 2006". Too bad for wasting such a superb OST on that movie (Aoi Teshima for the win).

Nevermind what BokuKimi stands for... or, if you really must know, it's Boku no Hatsukoi wo Kimi ni Sasagu (I'll Give You My First Love) - some lovu-lovu manga by Kotomi Aoki. The real eye-catcher of this story is Mao Inoue, a very cute Japanese actress (and former U-15 idol) who has been chosen to play the main loli character in an upcoming live-action movie adaptation of said lovu-lovu manga, that's coming out in autumn 2009.

"Inoue will play a girl named Mayu Taneda who experiences first love with a boy named Takuma Kakinouchi. However, Takuma tries to hide from Mayu the possibility that his heart will stop functioning at any moment after he turns 20."

The only reason I bored you with this generic romance / drama plot is that the BokuKimi manga won the best shoujo category in the 53rd annual Shogakukan Manga Awards, so surely it's not that generic after all. Not to mention that the manga is actually a spinoff of Aoki's earlier incest manga, Boku wa Imouto ni Koi wo Suru (animated as an OVA in 2005). Speaking of incest manga / anime, I'd sure love to see a Koi Kaze live-action movie...

"Big" being a highly, highly relative term, at this point. As you probably noticed, blu-ray anime releases were still somewhat of a rarity throughout 2008. But even so, according to a survey picked up by ANN, anime titles accounted for 64% of all Blu-ray Disc sales in Japan during September. By that time, their local BD market had grown by more than 350% since the beginning of 2008. When compared with the DVD market for the same period, the report points out that the Blu-ray Disc market was 0.9% the size of the DVD market in January, and grew to 3.8% of the DVD market in September.



This steady increase was due in no small part to anime titles such as Code Geass R2, 5cm per Second, Gundam 00 and Macross F. The latter, in fact, sold more copies on Blu-ray, than on DVD. And as a general trend, anime releases topped the Blu-ray sales charts during the year, at times even completely monopolizing them.

By the end of the year, the market is expected to amass about 700 titles and 5 billion yen (US$50 million) in sales. Still, the best is yet to come in 2009...

I slack around for just a few days, and the anime announcements start pouring in like crazy; oh, joy! So anyway, yet another newly revealed anime that's set to begin in April 2009 is Hana Sakeru Seishounen - based on a girly manga by Natsumi Itsuki from... way too long ago... '80s, '90s stuff. The anime is planned as a 3 "kuru" (39 episode) TV series, and it's currently in the works at Studio Pierrot - of Naruto and Bleach fame.



ANN is kind enough to share the manga's story with us: "The story focuses on Kajika Louisa Kugami Burnsworth, the product of a Caribbean encounter between the international magnate Harry Burnsworth and a Japanese woman 14 years old". 14 years old?... Oh, sorry, 14 years ago! And what kind of a screwed up name is Kajika Louisa Kugami Burnsworth?! You'd have to have some massive issues, to name your little girl like that.

The plot thickens when Kajika - who has been living in Japan as a middle school girl (...)

 Continue reading 'Hana Sakeru Seishounen Manga Gets Anime'...

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'...