- The Gurren Lagann: Guren-hen movie website has launched, bringing along the first trailer that you can also see here on Animekon since a couple of days ago. The animated movie will premiere in Japan on September 6, and may we remind you that the first Gurren Lagann anime series was surprisingly licensed by Bandai, for a DVD debut this July.

- The 07-Ghost manga has been licensed by Go! Comi, who will publish the first volume in January 2009. There are currently six volumes published in Japan, and the manga is still running. Needs more lolis.

- Nui! manga preview posted online in English by Broccoli Books (PDF file). Volume 1 of this schoolgirl-loves-her-plushies (and vice-versa) manga is coming out on June 23, volume 2 in October, and volume 3... who knows.

If, by any chance, you're familiar with the Kurozuka manga, then you're likely to enjoy edo-ass-kicking and sword-fighting stories. And by extention you'll be happy to know that said manga will be adapted into an anime series by Animax. The announcement mentions that the Kurozuka anime will be aired after Ultraviolet: Code 044 - which itself is only set to begin on July 1, so... look for Kurozuka around October, I guess also on July 1. (Update: Fixed the date, based on Giapet's more eloquent report)

Originally published in the Super Jump magazine until 2006, the manga was later compiled into 10 volumes. You can see the covers below, and even further down below you'll find ANN's outline of the storyline.

 (...)

 Continue reading 'Kurozuka Manga Gets Anime'...

It's loli-business as usual here at Animekon as we return from our week-long road trip, with eyes wide feasted on all the blossoming girlies we stalked stumbled upon in select locations around the country. Shikashi... all this "real life" has taken its toll on our sedentary selves, so let's return to the good old virtual world, briefly recapping what went on in our absence.

- The OP and ED songs for the upcoming anime Slayers Revolution will be sung by singer / voice actress Megumi Hayashibara, who will also return as the main lead Lina.

- The Three Kingdoms anime jointly produced in China and Japan (by Beijing Glorious Animation and Future Planet, respectively) will begin airing in June, and will run for 52 episodes, adapting the classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel. Like many other animes / games have done before...

- A 43-year-old otaku from South Carolina was rejected from a manga club meeting at his local library. He was not amused. In fact, he's thinking about suing the library for age discrimination. (I hope we won't become such retards 10-15 years from now)

- Neko Rahmen will be getting a live-action movie called Neko Rahmen Taishou (General Neko Rahmen). The original comedy manga about a cat running a ramen shop was already adapted into an anime - freely available online on Vuze.

- A new Blue Dragon manga will be serialized in the V Jump magazine (starting from May 21), based on the recently started Blue Dragon: Tenkai no Shichi Ryuu anime. By the way, we've just added a trailer for the second anime.

- The Lucky Star manga has sold 1.8 million copies so far, according to the latest report issued by Kadokawa. Even so, the publisher's net losses approached $25 million in the previous fiscal year. Blame the Suzumiya Haruhi / Lucky Star anime pirates. Or Canada.

- Aria the Animation was licensed by Right Stuf and its Nozomi Entertainment production arm, who will release the first DVD box set (13 episodes) on September 30, with Japanese audio and English subtitles. Later on, they also plan to release Aria the Natural, Aria the OVA: Arietta, and finally Aria the Origination.

- The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo, or simply TokiKake) will be screened in American theatres, from June to early September. So far Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle are the cities carrying solid screening dates, but "other theatrical dates will be announced soon".

- Gonzo is streaming the Hennako-chan web-anime on its YouTube channel starting tomorrow, April 25. Based on the calssic black-comedy manga about a girl with psychic powers, the web-anime will consist of six 3-minute episodes coming out every other week, and will also be provided with English (and Chinese) subtitles, via Fujiyama. Update: The first subbed episode is already online. Not bad!

- Viz Media is releasing the first half of the Busou Renkin anime on DVD - in English - on April 29. The 13-episode bundle is packed with all sorts of goodies, and it's priced at $49.98 (roughly $3.8 per episode). The second half of the series will follow later this year.

- American manga sales rose in 2007, but at a slower rate than in previous years.

I'm going to rip off our quick-links type of posts from Playkon (hmm, we really should get back to writing there again), and start collecting various anime / manga / whatever stories as "checkpoints". More or less like this...

- Kanojo x Kanojo x Kanojo eroge demo version up for download (288 MB), more mirrors here (try the right-side buttons). For an even quicker impression, you can see some NSFW screenshots, and a marginally safe for work wallpaper. (Update: I've been scrolling through the demo for well over an hour, and there's still no end in sight... But I'm starting to get hungry, from all these food and bento scenes. And various other things. Yummy!)

- On a side-note, eroge developer Windmill has released its CatSystem2 engine for making doujin games, free for personal use. Windmill's next title, Tsunaban - Love Mix is set for release on July 18.

- sola, Koi Kupid manga previews posted online in English by Broccoli Books. There are 9 pages from sola (Volume 1 coming this June), and 12 pages from Koi Cupid (Volume 1 released last month).

- Hanaharu Naruko (author of the Kamichu! manga), will release his first adult manga, "Shoujo Material" in May. Nice wanking material. And this one is also his, by the way. Win!

- Fate/Zero novels return in stores after four months of silence. The four volumes were originally released between December 2006 and December 2007, and their story takes place 10 years before Fate/Stay Night. Not that I care, really - I just like the covers.

All that talk about manga licenses demands - and deserves - to be followed by some real manga news. And by "real", I mean "moe". And by "moe", I mean Moetan. Oh, yes, fellow lolicons, the complete Moetan manga was released in Japan a few days ago, on April 17, and AkibaBlog's unscrupulous author was in the heart of Akihabara to grope the pulse of this flat-chested goodness.

Created by Tetsuya Takahashi, the Moetan manga was originally serialized in the Moetan monthly magazine (bundled with the Gamelabo magazine) last year. And now the entire series seems to have been reunited and released under the title "Moetan - Magical Busters, please save the world!!". You can find not-so-safe-for-work pictures of its covers and content here, here and here. Yummy!

While there's not much to argue about the most important anime announcement made at this past weekend's New York Comic Con, things are a bit different when it comes to the manga announcements made at the event. And that's simply because there were so many of them, with quite a few big titles, too.

I'll turn to ANN again for their extensive coverage, as they offered detailed reports from the panels held by the likes of Del Rey Manga, Yen Press, CMX Manga and Tokyopop. Compiled below is a list with most of the manga titles - and some novels - planned for English release by each company, along with the release dates of the first volume, where available.

Del Rey Manga
- Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei: The Power of Negative Thinking manga (March 2009)
- Gakuen Prince manga (April 2009)
- Samurai 7 manga (Spring 2009)
- The Curse of the Dragon Slayer novel (February 2009)

Yen Press
- The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya manga (October 2008) and novels (April 2009)
- Soul Eater manga (July 29, in the first issue of a new magazine called Yen Plus... or Yen+)
- Higurashi - When They Cry manga (July 29, in Yen Plus)
- Sumomomo Momomo manga (July 29, in Yen Plus)
- Bamboo Blade manga (July 29, in Yen Plus)
- Nabari no Ou manga (July 29, in Yen Plus)
(some of these - notably Higurashi - will not be published in full in Yen Plus, only previewed for several months, but they will all be released individually from May 2009)
- B-Ichi manga

CMX Manga
- Emma side-stories manga (2009)
- Shirley manga (July 2)
- Dorothea manga (April 30)
- Two Flowers of the Dragon manga (May 5)
- The Recipe for Gertrude manga (May 5)
- The Flat Earth Exchange manga (June 25)
- A Girl Who Runs Through Time manga (not directly related to the Tokikake movie)
- Kiichi and the Magic Books manga
- Classical Medley manga
- Astral Project manga
- Suihelibe! manga
- Fire Investigator Nanase manga
- Venus Capriccio manga
- Jihai manga
- Ballad of a Shinigami manga

Tokyopop
- Vassalord manga (July 2008)
- Silver Diamond manga (July 2008)
- Jyu Oh Sei manga (August 2008)
- Castlevania: Curse of Darkness manga (September 2008)
- Goth manga (September 2008) and novel (October 2008)
- Fate/Stay Night manga (October 2008)
- Kyou Kara Maoh! manga and novels
- Maru-Ma novels
- Gothic & Lolita Bible magazine, volume 2 (June 2008)
- Star Trek: The Next Generation manga
- StarCraft: Frontline manga (August 2008)
- Warcraft: Legends manga (August 2008)
... and another truckload of all-new adventures set in Blizzard's Warcraft and StarCraft universes - 22 in total - set to be published over the next 3 years. Not exactly "genuine manga", but what the hell!

Bandai Entertainment
- Ghost Slayers Ayashi manga (September 2)

Digital Manga Publishing
- Swallowing the Earth manga

Update: Added some stuff... fixed some other stuff... thanks to Giapet's NYCC coverage.

Some 2050 years after the Haruhism wave had long since swept over the otaku world, the Americans finally got their hands on the licenses for the original manga and light novels which spawned the better-known anime Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya). The Japanese publisher Kadokawa Shoten entrusted the manga license to Yen Press, and the novels license to Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (both of them imprints of Hachette Book Group USA, whoever they are).

You can find the press release with all the PR blah-blah on ANN, but suffice to say that Volume 1 of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya manga (priced at $10.99) will be released in October 2008, and that the novels will debut in April 2009 with the first title, from a total of nine volumes. Frankly, though, I'd rather have an update on that Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu 2 anime sequel...

Few animes come even close to Elfen Lied's story (or brutality, or exquisite ecchiness for that matter), and considering that the original manga it's based on was only completed in 2005 - with the anime adaptation airing in 2004 - we can certainly hope we'll see more of it in a sequel. Elfen Lied 2 is, after all, the most yearned-for anime sequel in our current poll.

But that's not what this story is about, unfortunately. The only reason I mentioned it is that the author of Elfen Lied, Rin Okamoto (a.k.a. Lynn Okamoto) has released his (yes it's a "he", despite the misleading name) collection of short stories, titled Flip Flap. More info about it, via AkibaBlog, after this cover pic.

 (...)

 Continue reading 'Elfen Lied Author's Short Stories Released'...

While I am a fan of *certain parts* of the Star Wars universe, personally I didn’t know there was a Japanese manga version of the Star Wars comics. Ah well, live and learn. The next thing I will find out is that both Leia and Luke had another two little (twin) sisters, aged twelve, with pink hair and a big sexual appetite.

While casually browsing ComiPress today, I stumbled upon a link to the StarWars.com site, which is filled with related goodies, a shop, things for kids (attention all pedophiles), info about the movies and about the games that came out. All in all, your usual “I love you, insert_franchise_title_here!”.

I was trying to find some pictures of naked loli Leia, when I found this article, which is basically a comparison between the Marvel Star Wars comics, which I must say, even being a Marvel fan in my early days, sucks so much ass that it cannot hold that much shit inside, and the subsequent manga. Well… what can I say, the differences are so insane, that they hurt.

From the very beginning of my devouring_manga_and_anime times, I understood one thing: Japanese people are crazy. They have a certain passion that us, the humble people from Europe/America/Other crappy places do not have, and they also have a way to put it into images. Every manga, from mecha to fucking yaoi, unleashes that passion. Hell, the only things that made me cry in my entire life were the end of Elfen Lied (yes, I was insanely drunk), Irya no Sora Ufo no Natsu (God damn it, one hell of a show), Saikano, and various other anime, not necessarily drama bullshit. Oh yes, and the time that I strangled one of my cats, that was also sad.

Well, the same thing happens (no, not the crying routine), when comparing the Marvel Star Wars comics with their Japanese counterparts. The latter are much more… sophisticated, with the level of attention to detail being OVER NINE THOUSAND high. Just check the article for yourself, and you’ll understand what I mean. Plus, Leia looks much much better in the manga version. But that’s just normal.