- The girlish fantasy light novel series Hakushaku to Yousei (Count and Fairy) will also become a manga, after an anime adaptation was announced back in February. The manga will begin at the end of August in the The Margaret magazine.

- In some random Mainichi news, Japan's loli-Princess Aiko was seen visiting a park in Tokyo (backup) on Monday, on her first school excursion. Meanwhile, a police officer from Fukuoka was arrested (backup) for involvement in child prostitution. "I was told she was 18 years old", he told investigators. Lol 18.

- The Luminous Arc 2 lolis have received a highly academic classification, based on the size of their brain boobs. In Akiba, where else! Still, some of the characters are missing from this hastily researched study, so I advise you to check them all on the official website - or better yet in our Luminous Arc 2 gallery, if you'd rather skip the gay ones. This DS game was released in Japan last week, by the way.


Update: Added a Bleach movie event trailer, promoting the upcoming screening of Bleach: Memories of Nobody in the US for two nights, on June 11 and 12.

I've been meaning to write about this eroge called Himawari, after reading Zepy's review this week - especially since, unlike him, an "adventure game about living with loli aliens" would definitely be "my kind of thing". Not to be confused with the totally-unrelated homonymous anime, the game Himawari was created by the doujin group Blank Note and released in late 2007 for the very modest price of 1000 yen (not even $10). But despite its apparent cheapness, the game has been selling out like hot keeki, leaving behind it a long trail of excited fans and sticky tissues in Japan, so...

... so here's the reason / perfect excuse for me writing this post: according to a comment Zepy received today, somebody out there has "been translating the game for the past couple of months", all by himself. He also says he'll have the game fully translated by August or September. Well, ganbatte!

You'll find some low-res screenshots in our Himawari gallery, to see if it's worth holding your breath for this translation.

- Soul Eater will get two anime specials, airing in Japan in a couple of weeks: "Clip! Clap!" on May 28, and "Ninki Bakuhatsu! Soul Eater Oitsuke! Oikose! Saki made Misemasu!" on June 1.

- Giapet has word from this weekend's internets-challenged Anime Central convention that ADV has cancelled their panel entirely, and apparently Viz didn't show up, either. So FUNimation pretty much ruled the show.

- Tales of Vesperia, the awesome-looking RPG known to be in development for the Xbox 360, was temporarily confirmed for PS3, as well... Until, that is, Namco Bandai fixed their bureaucratic blunder.

- "A most comprehensive comparison of the differences between Lucky Star's Tsukasa, as drawn by each animator of the series, as well as Haruhi's characters" can be thoroughly analyzed, via Sankaku Complex. Cool stuff, if only I wasn't so tired for playing "spot the difference" at this hour.

My epic lazyness has finally succumbed under the frustration of not being able to group news, images and trailers around games, like we're already doing with animes (call me a control freak). So after sacrificing a day with coding and nerve-wrecking database linking, we can joyfully welcome you to our new "Games" section here on Animekon. We'll be using it to better organize our wanking highly professional editorial and visual materials, be it gaming news, gaming trailers, or - more and more often - eroge images.

We hope you'll find it useful (and bug-less), and should you need more info about a particular game - such as release dates, producers, official website etc. - odds are you'll find them on VNDB (Visual Novel Database). There's an automatic link to them included on each of our game pages, unless the game in question isn't a visual novel / adventure / eroge / galge of some sort, and as a result can't be found on VNDB. Or in other words, the title is too mainstream (think Final Fantasy), in which case... just fucking Google it.

Now, back to our usual program.

How many kids on your block own a game console? Less than 20% if you live in a third'ish-world country? Over 50% if you're among the more privileged Earthlings? Well then, imagine a whole country where over 95% of kids (fifth-year elementary school kids, to be more precise) have at least one game console of their own. Welcome... to the land of Japan!

This utopic figure came up from a survey released by the National Congress of Parents and Teachers Associations of Japan (PTA), according to Mainichi (here's a backup of the soon-to-disappear report). The survey, called "Attitude Survey on Children and the Media" revealed a 2% increase from last year (when "only" about 93% of kids had a console), and a similar trend was observed among high-schoolers, almost 91% of them enjoying the same playful status.

Genre wise, action games seem to be the most popular ones (30.9%), followed closely by RPGs (28.4%). And, not surprisingly, adult games with sexual content are also played by elementary school kids, even though only 2.5% of them would admit it. There are a few more mobile- and TV-related stats in the report, if you're curious.

Aside from going over the 4 new eroge released today, HD continues with his regular daily ero-news, among which lies a highly tempting link to the first Little Busters! EX trailer. The devs from Key (Kanon, Air, Clannad) stuffed over 3 minutes of visual goodness in it, and since none of it qualifies as hentai, we're fearlessly adding the trailer here on Animekon - along with more clear captures from it in our eroge gallery.

Also known as Little Busters! Ecstasy, this ecchi'fied version of last year's best-selling pseudo-eroge will be released on July 25. The game introduces a new heroine named Tokido Saya, adds new playable scenarios for two of the former supporting female characters (Sasami and Kanata), along with some new CG, mini-games and "a really big extra" hidden in the game. Oh, and adult content to all heroines.

P.S. Gief anime, already!

The end of this month will be a most joyous time for eroge fans, with plenty of new titles lined up for release. One of them is The Devil on G-string (G-senjou no Maou), a very hawt looking drama / mystery / romance visual novel coming on May 29 from developer Akabei Soft2, upon which I happened to stumble today. Seeing all the visual goodness offered on its website, I couldn't resist the temptation to grab it all (except for the NSFW bits) and share it here.

For starters, you can see the game's female characters and various high-res screenshots in our eroge gallery. Yeah, I know, it's kind of messy in there - what with no grouping around games - we really should add a "Games" section one of these days... But anyway, we also added three Devil on G-string trailers - here, here and here - and they're perfectly safe for watching at work, or in other non-private locations. Enjoy!

P.S. There also appears to be two demo versions in the official website's Download section, but sadly I couldn't manage to get any of them running (same nasty error). If anyone has any tips for my trembling hands, by all means, do share.

Not that there was any doubt about it, but the Naruto gaming franchise drags on, with the announcement of Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2 for the Nintendo DS (based on the second game in the franchise, Naruto RPG 2: Chidori vs. Rasengan). Like its predecessor, the sequel will be a role-playing game developed by Tomy Corporation and published stateside by D3 Publishing, promising to feature "an all-new original storyline, a huge roster of playable characters, an improved combat system and for the first time, exciting Wi-Fi battles".

The release date is currently set for September 2008, and below are some more details about it, complemented by the first batch of screenshots.

"Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2 is set to give players a portable outlet for their inner ninja this fall. A deep, original storyline will allow players to access 30 major characters from the series, from standards such as Naruto and Sakura to unlikely allies like the weapons-based Tenten. The improved and intuitive battle system will make it easy for even the newest fighters to get into the combat, using the DS Touch Screen to unleash devastating melee and jutsu attacks on any opponent foolish enough to get in their way. The new Squad Leader and Ninja Tag systems provide even more squad-building options, while the Wi-Fi multiplayer feature offers aspiring ninja the chance to take on challengers from around the world."

- This Monday, May 12, ADV Films and LDMS (their new publishing partner in the UK) will release the following three anime DVDs: Utawarerumono volume 5: The Beast Within, 009-1 volume 3 (the final DVD), and The Wallflower Lesson 1: My Fair Bishonen (the first DVD from a 6-part series).

- The Majodou eroge has reached Gold status, and is on track for its May 30 release. The game's website was enriched with two new screenshots, a new ero-event animation, and the third Majodou trailer. Need I put a NSFW warning?

- On the subject of eroge, HD also warns that "Lilith Soft affiliate brand Pixy is in danger of financial collapse within the year, and that other major brands may soon follow".

- And there's some more ero-news today on HD, topped by the not-so-fresh announcement of a Shoujo Sect OVA (based on a hit yuri eromanga), whose first volume will be released by MS Pictures on July 25.

Update: The Bandai Entertainment website is going through a complete redesign, and they even have a blog now. All they're missing are some actualy news on it.

- New info on Suzumiya Haruhi 2 should be revealed in the July issue of the Newtype magazine (out in June), Zepy hears. This is starting to get irritating. Well, at least the Haruhi website changed its age-old front page, prompting the disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, and the appearance Yuki Nagato. Yum! Director Tatsuya Ishihara and assistant director Yasuhiro Takemoto are returning, Giapet notes.


- Archaic Smile is the next manga to be released by Evangelion manga artist and character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (and his mangaka wife Mako Takaha). It will be a two-installment manga serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's Comic Charge magazine this month, and the story is described as a "warm, comforting romantic comedy" revolving around a couple and a... umm... Buddha statue.

- A manga based on Luminous Arc 2 Will - the Nintendo DS game which Atlus will be releasing in Japan this May 15 - has launched in the Comic Dragon Age magazine.

- 3 more file-sharers were busted in Japan for illegally spreading anime, this time via the peer-to-peer program Share (Winny's clearly-unsecure successor). Zepy points out that these were "popular anime encoders that have encoded huge amounts of anime for p2p for a long time", so there might be a shortage of raw episodes for a while, if others will be scared shitless by these arrests.

- Shin Chan free full episode streaming on IGN. Be warned, there be English dub!

- Zwei II screenshots posted on Falcom's website, along with word that the game is coming out this summer. In 3D, huh?...

Update: A Flash-animated adaptation of the Inu-Gaisha manga started to be published online, ANN reports. The manga's author, Kenji Sonishi is better known for his Neko Rahmen manga, which was also made into a web-anime, and soon a live-action movie.