We here in Romania are proud (and some of us, not so proud) of having some of the best hackers in the entire world. Why? I don’t really know, must be the environment, the sunny breeze, cheap booze, and massive porn downloads. The fact is that, once every few years, some 9 years old kid decides to hack into NASA, or Pentagon, or whatever gay self-defense (read “institutes meant to take over the world”) organizations they might have. And what do American officials do? The smart thing, for once. They don’t throw the kid in jail, nor rape him, they just... offer him a job. Because obviously, he knows what he’s doing.

Following a similar trend, Tokyo Anime Center dude Masakazu Kubo, submitted a paperwork regarding Japan’s anime industry, its ups and downs, where they went wrong and how to improve it. Amongst others, Kubo-kun mentions about the “amateur” translators responsible for subbing and uploading illegal English version of certain anime series onto the internet. His solution? You guessed it right, hire the fucking bastards. Hire their asses so they will be too busy behind a desk, wanking on naked legal lolis, to actually fansub something.

Animenation scoop.

Having a nice chat with the folks at ICv2, ADV announced that its future anime releases will count on the support of Blu-Ray - and that this translation will happen very soon, possibly starting this spring. As for the titles involved, ADV wants to prioritize their newly purchased licenses, as in the series currently running or the ones planned for airing in the near (and hopefully safe) future.

Seems like the good old anime titles that actually hold a meaning and are worthy of high definition quality, are ignored. Again. Go go money-hungry marketing!

It must be a big difference between watching anime piled up in your armchair, with loads of popcorn/drugs/booze/boobs at your side (depending on one’s preference), casually staring like an idiot in your monitor, and following a certain series on television. Come to think of it, it is. While you can manipulate your own, personal, collection, watch it any time of the day or night, giving it a pause to go take a huge dump or to refill that sad-looking, empty glass of beer, on TV, you are bound by a certain schedule. Which you will have to respect, if you ever want to see a show from top to bottom. Plus, let’s not forget about the imminent censorship, that plagues official distributions like women plague a man’s free time.

Probably that’s why the girls at Comcast, a huge cable TV operator in the United States, decided to close down AZN Television (a tiny little channel that broadcasted stuff like Tsukuyomi “I’m the hottest loli there is” Moonphase, Last Exile, Kakurenbo, plus a variety of live-action adaptations), due to the small revenues it generated. Started in 2005, AZN attracted around 14 million viewers, which, according to their owners, was not nearly enough to sustain the financial losses. With the last 15 employees waiting for Comcast to offer them other suitable jobs inside the company, AZN Television will go down the drain on April, 9th.

CNN scoop.

I can't believe that even a perfectly sane *cough* show like Genshiken 2 was censored on TV. But it was, and that makes me a sad panda. I will certainly not make the same mistake as I did by starting to watch Kojikan, not knowing that it was brutally censored in the TV version, so I'll just sit back and wait for the more private DVD release. As confirmed by Heisei Democracy today, the second DVD volume of Genshiken 2 shows the uncensored kissing scene at the end of episode four, and it's said to be "one of the most graphic kisses I’ve seen in something that isn’t an eroanime". The only turndown is that it's shared by Ohno and Tanaka, instead of Ohno and some other random chick - preferably Ogiue.

A new trailer showing footage from Code Geass 2 has surfaced from some Japanese DVD Magazine II. But while I'm still trying to scoop it out of the interwebs, here are some spoilerific pictures taken from it, via The-O. Just click the strip below to see them all:


They also posted a few details about the story of season 2, along with remarks about some of these screenshots: "it has been approximately a year since the events of season 1 with no sign of Zero. Several new characters are said to appear including Rollo, a new boy in the school (...). In the scene with Kallen dressed in a bunny suit, it is rumored that Kallen may be working in a casino where the king is staying". As was announced earlier, Code Geass 2 will start airing in April 2008. Now, let's see about that trailer...

Update: Here you go, the Code Geass 2 trailer is now up locally.

Yet another drool-inducing manga is on the speculative verge of being adapted into an anime series: Sekirei, an ecchi manga boasting oversized female busts (and a relatively flat-chested loli), with the typical loser-male type character on the side. Returning to its daily roundup of novelties and rumours, Heisei Democracy links to an earlier Moon Phase newsbit which speculates that a Sekirei anime will be produced by ARMS - the animation studio behind Genshiken 2 and Ikkitousen Dragon Destiny. And Elfen Lied, I should add.

The Sekirei artworks we're adding today in our gallery should be reason enough for you to look forward to this anime - whenever it will become a reality.

 (...)

 Continue reading 'Sekirei Anime Rumoured'...

Not the inevitable Genshiken sequel, mind you (not yet...), but another spin-off series. You know, like Kujibiki Unbalance - that fictional anime-in-anime that the characters from Genshiken were watching and discussing, which was eventually made into a full-fledged TV series that aired in late 2006.

This time, however, rumour has it that the Ramen Angel Pretty Menma fictional PC game from the second season of Genshiken will also be adapted into a real TV anime. And that's about it, for now. As Anime Nation kindly reminds us, Ramen Angel Pretty Menma was already adapted as a real PC game and manga (among others), so the idea of an anime adaptation doesn't sound too far-fetched at all.

And it goes to show that, after all, Jack Thompson was right all along. Media Entertainment is seemingly teaching our kids how to be violent, be it movies, anime, or video games. Mostly video games. After all that fuss about some kid going rampage with a shotgun or something, murdering tons of students and teachers in his own school (after probably playing 12 hour straight of that useless crap we call Gay Grand Theft Auto), now it’s time for anime murders to come on stage. And I’m not pointing out towards the whole School Days/Higurashi incidents, when little girls decided it would be a nice thing to chop their fathers to pieces with Viking battleaxes.

In Indonesia, probably the second country in the world when it comes to the number of whores on square centimeter, a kid benevolently killed himself by strangling, imitating a character from Naruto. Good Job! More than that, seeing a good opportunity to gain some election points, a member of the Indonesian Parliament started to throw shit towards the national broadcasting system, accusing it to be too permissive. To summarize his words, it went something like: “Arrrrgh, ban the Naruto, kkplx!!111!”.

We here totally agree with that. Ban Naruto, it’s a load of infected bullcrap.

ANN scoop, thx.

Since our last revision a couple of weeks ago, several new anime titles have popped up here and there, so another fugitive round-up is now in order. Once again, I'm not going to trouble myself you with pointless details, partly because they're not available yet (and partly due to my epic lazyness). Given the lack of excitement these titles seem to inspire, a brief list should be more than enough. Behold.

- Cobra remake - based on the ancient Cobra: The Space Pirate anime from 1982, the remake will consist of a TV series and an OVA, both animated by Magic Bus. To be ignored.

- Crystal Blaze - revealed by songwriter and vocalist Yuriko Mori (Karin, Zero no Tsukaima, Inuyasha, Rocket Girls) on her blog, it will have an adult-oriented story set in New York. Begins in April.

- Itazura na Kiss - based on the classic romantic-school-comedy-shoujo manga from the 1990s, which was never finished due to the author's sudden and unplanned-for death. Begins in April (website).

- Kaiba - a sci-fi love story from Masaaki Yuasa, the director of Mind Game and co-creator of Cat Soup (two of the most insane, sick and pure-WTF animes ever), from the equally psychotic animation studio Madhouse. Begins in April (website).

- Maria-sama ga Miteru season 4 - announced last summer, but now confirmed to be a TV series, rather than an OVA. Begins... whenever (website).

- Naruto movie 5 - or the second Naruto Shippuden movie, if you will; it's not like we give a flying dildo about it, anyway. Premieres this summer (website).

- The Uchuu Show (The Space Show) - a way-too-ambitious animated movie being created by the "Besame Mucho" team, who previously worked on the Kamichu! manga and anime, and now claim that this new story will "surpass Star Wars in its scale". And I'm 24 cm long. Begins in 2008.

Update: Maria Holic - freshly rumoured to make the jump from [romantic comedy] manga to anime, in January 2009.

Browsing through the latest titled added on AniDB, my eyes flickered with lust and froze over a certain OVA called School Days: Valentine Days, which I shamefully admit I had no idea about, until now. And my guess is neither did many of you. So, digging through the web-dirt, I touched down upon the official website - only to find a wall of kanji waiting to crit me, along with three tiny little pictures which I won't even bother posting here.

If you want more of it, what I can tell you is that Valentine Days is a single-episode OVA bundled with the limited edition of School Days LxH (a PS2 game released this week in Japan). What I can't tell you... or shouldn't... but still will, is that School Days: Valentine Days is already up for download on various torrent trackers. Happy hunting!