Last update - 20:35 GMT (15:35 EST, 12:35 PST)

So the winter anime season kicked-off yesterday, with the jingling sounds of slot machines from Rio: Rainbow Gate! - whose first episode is already streaming with English subtitles via Crunchyroll. I also took the time tonight to pimp its local gallery full of Rio pics and, just for the heck of it, added the anime's trailer from a little while ago. Maybe a bit overkill for this particular title (it's not exactly the most wanted anime out there), but the plan is to keep this up for each new series that's starting this month.



Next up, today brings the debut of Kimi ni Todoke's 2nd season, much to the delight of squealing fangirls. And after a short breather tomorrow, the anime snowstorm will resume in full force starting from January 7 - with titles such as Infinite Stratos, Freezing, Gosick, Mitsudomoe 2 and several others. But no need to spam them all now, as I'll be touching upon each of them, as their premiere draws near.

Quite a few series will be streaming on Crunchyroll, as usual, and so far (...)

 Continue reading 'Checkpoint: Winter Season, Crunchyroll, Aya Hirano'...

Usagi-mimi-mode! Pull those ears below for a plentiful new year's gallery, while I get back to updating all those obsolete release dates from the past couple of months.


2011 - Year of the Rabbit
Oh and if you're following our releases feed, nevermind tonight's spam: there are currently a whole lot of anime and games with a placeholder, generic "2010" release date attached. And since that has just expired, they appear to be freshly released. But - just to make this crystal-clear - some of them may still be upcoming.

Update: Done correcting the dates for the overdue anime and game releases, moving on to the upcoming titles - just as the new January 2011 anime season is about to begin this week. Busy, busy, busy!

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'...

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'...

So you've just landed in Japan, without having bothered to learn the language? Well, the first thing you should know, before setting forth on your loli-stalking and ramen-slurping adventure, are some basic tips for emergency situations - because we all know Japan has plenty of those: earthquakes, missile attacks, hell even alien invasions! Coming to the rescue of just such ignorant foreigners, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is now offering an online "Emergency Manual", through a newly opened "Help Card" website.



Said website ca also be viewed on mobile phones, most naturally, and it provides the main emergency telephone numbers for Japan in general (119 "in the event of fire, illness or injury", and 110 "in the event of crime or accident") and for the Tokyo area in particular, some basic tips in case of earthquakes, and several helpful phrases (in romanized Japanese) to scream and shout in emergency situations.

Girls need not worry about memorizing all those terms, however. When in trouble, (...)

 Continue reading 'A Gaijin's Manual for Emergency Situations'...

The 2010 edition of the Tokyo Game Show - arguably the world's largest gaming expo, with a record attendance of 207,647 people this year (finally breaking the 200,000 mark) - came to an end today, after four days packed full of playful novelties. But since covering everything that was revealed and shown there is next to impossible, for any sole human being, I thought I'd keep things simple and immediately gratifying. In other words, let's just skip to the "booth babes" - or "companions", if you will.



If you only have time for a quick glance at the show's beauties, you can check Dengeki's final selection of booth babes photos, spread over three pages - here, here and here - and of course the show's traditional grand finale, where all the major companies' booth babes gather for one more delightful line-up - pictures (...)

 Continue reading 'Tokyo Game Show 2010 Booth Babes [Update #2]'...

An interesting gallery opened this weekend at the Tokyo Anime Center in Akihabara, called "Osamu Moet Moso". The interesting part being that the works displayed there aren't just some generic drawings of the late Osamu Tezuka's classic characters, but they're exquisite artworks oozing of "moe", thanks to the contribution of such recognizable artists as POP, KEI and Noizi Ito, among others.



The gallery opened on September 18 and will continue throughout October 11, luring visitors and contributing artists with the concept "Fantasize with Tezuka Osamu". Otaku2 already has a coverage of it, complete with photos of some of the works on display there (also ninja'ed below). And - best of all, I'd say - some insightful comments from "moe experts" like Honda Toru, exposing the late "god of manga" Osamu Tezuka as something of a moe artist, himself! Definitely a recommended reading, (...)

 Continue reading 'Osamu Tezuka Gallery, Moe Style'...

AH-Software's family of Vocaloid characters - not to be mingled with Crypton's official and much more popular Vocaloids (Miku, Rin / Len, Luka) - has adopted another loli named Iroha Nekomura. Originally, she is one of 13 "kittyler" characters inspired by Sanrio's flagship mascot Hello Kitty, and drawn by various well-known artists such as POP (Moetan), KEI (Hatsune Miku) or Aoi Nishimata (Shuffle!).



Iroha's illustrator is okama, who unfortunately gave her a new look which is nowhere near as cute as the original. And her Vocaloid voice isn't particularly soothing, either, nor does it match her... like, at all. You can listen to a couple of her tunes over on (...)

 Continue reading 'Iroha, The New Hello Kitty Vocaloid'...

Downloading real-life child porn is obviously not a bright idea, in this day and age; but outright sharing it over a public peer-to-peer network must be over 9000 times more idiotic. That is, unless you happen to be a fan of dropping the soap in the prison showers. Which might just explain why Tomokazu Kurata, a 33-year-old from Okayama, Japan gladly accepted the charges brought against him, of having publicly displayed obscene videos of young girls.



The story, as relayed today by Mainichi Daily News, notes that the tool used by Kurata to expand and share his loli collection was Winny - that dreadful P2P program which had already compromised several anime file-sharers in years past (they never learn...). The proverbial nails to his coffin were two videos that he registered in Winny's cache folder and made available to the general public on July 15.

Of course, these were just the tip of the iceberg, as police found "70,000 to 80,000 (...)

 Continue reading 'Winny File-Sharer Busted Over Child Porn'...