Two seasons of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei down, another one to follow? Could be... After all, volume 13 of the ongoing Zetsubou manga was released just a few days ago in Japan, and it doesn't look like its author, Kouji Kumeta is running dry on the lulz. As reported on Akibablog, among the stories from volume 13 is also one featuring a Haruhi look-alike, called Harubin Suzumiya. And boy, is she deformed... But that's to be expected, I guess, considering this character is of Chinese copy-pasted origin.

More importantly, though, the Obi strip slapped onto the latest manga volume hints at a third anime season for Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, "if the DVD sells well". And I have no reason to think otherwise. So get ready for more Haruhistic references in the next anime.

Speaking of which, what the world needs right now... is not another Suzumiya doujinshi. Now it's a "womanized Koizumi", as if the Kyonko mania wasn't enough.


All this Haruhism has left me in dispair!

- The Death Note-based live-action movie L change the WorLd will be screened at this year's New York Asian Film Festival, during June 20 - July 6. And so will another couple of dozen films, none of which I ever heard about, I think, maybe.

- And the first Death Note live-action movie itself will be screened once again (after this week's screening event), at the AnimeNEXT 2008 convention, between June 20-22.

- Vexille will also be screened stateside soon... real soon... on May 29 "soon", in Washington, D.C., thanks to the Japan Information and Culture Center of the Embassy of Japan and DC Anime Club. Just in case you missed its dubious online "release", or this past Tuesday's DVD release from FUNimation.

- Speaking of live-action stuff, have some more scans with the Dragonball movie actors. Hawt Chi Chi and loli-faced Bulma included.

- Suzumiya Haruhi pirated on a Russian Belarusian chocolate waffle called "Yulechka". Not quite loli-on-a-stick, but close - and presumably yummy - enough.

- Namco Bandai chokes on $250,000 compensation bill, after baby chokes on a perfectly legal sized 40mm gashapon toy. Parents asked for $1.7 million. *cough*

- The four-panel comedy manga Ganbare! Memeko-chan will be getting a Flash anime, at some point in web-space and time.

- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure anime and manga shipments halted, after "online Islamic protesters objected to imagery in the anime that they deemed offensive". Lawl, the anime has only been out for like... 15 years. Muslims really need to get that politically-correct carrot out of their stiff ass.

- 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.

- The two-decade old Here is Greenwood manga (Koko wa Green Wood) will be adapted into a live-action TV drama series starting this July, as announced on its website. There was also a Greenwood OVA, but that was like 15 years ago, no way we saw it.

- Remember that "Clannad malware" creator? As it turns out, he was sentenced to two years in prison. And that's basically just for "violating Clannad's copyrights and defaming another student", not for actually creating the malware and hiding it within some Clannad images - which, apparently, is perfectly legal in Japan.

- A 2.5-meter tall figure of a boy "ejaculating in lasso-like form", created by anime-influenced pop "artist" Takashi Murakami, was sold for over $15 million at an auction in New York. There's a lot of sick people in this world...

- One year ago, the visual novel game Narcissu: Side 2nd was released in Japan by stage nana, and a fan translation immediately began. Today, encubed offers a little teaser released by one of the guys working on it - direct download links here and here. Unsubbed trailer below.

- Bleach the Movie: Memories of Nobody will be screened in the US by VIZ Media and NCM Fathom, much like they're doing with the Death Note live-action movie next week. Except that the Bleach anime movie (dubbed in English) will be in theatres on June 11 and 12.

- The Death Note manga was given the Eagle Award by the comic fans of the United Kingdom. The tasteless majority of them, anyway.

Update: The first full-color picture for the upcoming Dragonball live-action movie popped up, if you thought the pseudo-colored scan was too icky.

And a card game, I should add. As reported on ANN, game developer Level-5 (Dragon Quest VIII, Rogue Galaxy) has just announced that Inazuma Eleven - their upcoming game for the Nintendo DS blending role-playing with... *gasp*... soccer - will be adapted into a manga, an anime, and a card game. Granted, the manga and anime adaptations were known to be coming since last year.

Although the game itself is only slated for release in Japan on August 22, the manga will already start tomorrow, May 15, in the CoroCoro Comic magazine. ANN adds that "OLM is planning the anime version as a 2D-animated project with the stadiums rendered in 3D computer graphics", and that's the last thing we'll likely have to say about it. Sports animes aren't exactly our soft spot.

- The first picture for the upcoming Dragonball live-action movie popped up on various fansites. It's just a promotional photo scanned from the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, showing Justin Chatwin as Goku, so... nothing to see here, move along. The movie's delayed premiere in set for March 2009 in Japan, and April 3 in the US.

- In other manga-to-live-action news, the Crows Zero movie adaptation will be getting a sequel, "set about 8 months after the first movie".

- Super Robot Wars: OG - Divine Wars episode 1 is now streaming on Bandai's dot-anime.us website - "available in the United States and Canada only". Ah well, no loss.

- By the way, English dubbing sucks ass? Then go dub it yourself. In a maid cafe, no less!

- The 32nd Annual Manga Awards were announced this Monday by Japanese publisher Kodansha. "The winners are all comedies, but of decidedly different styles: a magical girl comedy, a baseball comedy, a high school slice-of-life comedy, and a medical comedy". Because amputations and vasectomies are so bloody funny!

- Speaking of which, the 37th Japan Mangaka Association Awards and the 12th Annual Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize were also announced over the weekend.

- 3 new manga titles will begin serialization in the Weekly Shonen magazine, from the makers of Suzuka, Inugami and Samurai Deeper Kyo.

- Japanese youth: IQ and lust in decline?... IQ? Most probably. Lust? I doubt it. And to prove it, there's another crapload of ero-news on HD; and again.

- 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.

Say, how would you feel about having a nuclear-powered U.S. Navy aicraft carrier parked in your backyard? Not too peachy, eh? Now imagine how the nuclear-phobic Japanese citizens residing near the Yokosuka naval base must be feeling about the imminent arrival of USS George Washington in their town, this August... So what does Uncle Sam do to ease their minds? He puts out a propagandistic manga, go figure!

In an alleged attempt to explain its mission to Japanese youngsters, the U.S. Navy has printed a manga about life aboard the 'Washington aircraft carrier, titled "CVN-73" (like the ship's hull number). The story itself is not new, but now Stars and Stripes (via ANN) reports that the 200-page manga is ready for distribution, as 30,000 copies have already been printed by Commander U.S. Naval Forces Japan (CNFJ).

"We're not trying to lie or state false facts. We're simply putting several key aspects of the George Washington in a format that is widely accepted in Japan", [CNFJ spokesman] Waterman said.

Sure, sure, neither was Bill Clinton trying to lie or state false facts about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Anyway, politics aside... yaaay, free manga! More about it below.

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 Continue reading 'U.S. Navy Manga Set To Invade Japan'...

ICv2 brings word tonight that American publisher Dark Horse Comics has licensed the Clover manga, which they will (re-)release in January 2009. Yes, it's not exactly the first time it's being released in North America (Tokyopop did it in 2001-2002), but Dark Horse is going for a different format: they will pack the entire Clover manga series (four volumes) in a 512-page omnibus edition with 32 pages of color, priced at $19.95.

The story is set in a dark, dystopian future, where a totalitarian government tries to control a breed of children gifted with special powers, known as "Clovers". The Clover manga was originally created by CLAMP and published by Kodansha in Japan between 1997-1999. Talk about late licenses...