…I need a Wii.

Anyway, since I’ve been a bit absent the last couple of days and my weekend looks absolutely insane, I thought I’d put together a big ol’ round-up of recent news. HERE WE GO!

Anime:
- VIZ has announced that Buso Renkin season 1 will be released in a box set on April 29th; the 3-disc set will have the first 13 episodes (of 26) and will cost you $49.98.
- A trailer is up for the upcoming fall series Kurogane no Line Barrels at the official website.
- Another trailer, this time for Bones’ Bounen no Xamdou, is up.

Manga:
- Go!Comi had lunch with You Higuri (creator of Gakuen Heaven and Gorgeous Carat) and reports back that she is probably going to return to finish her historical fiction series Cantarella about the sordid affairs of the Borgia clan, particularly Cesare. Fans of the series, which hasn’t been worked on in some time, will no doubt be thrilled!
- In weirder news, for copyright reasons, the queen of cute manga– Di Gi Charat/Pita Ten/Kamichama Karin creator Koge-Donbo –has changed her name to Koge-Donbo*. Insert various Prince/artist-formerly-known-as jokes here.

Cons:
- An item I didn’t play up enough at New York Comic Con: the creators of Vampire Hunter D, i.e. writer Hideyuki Kikuchi (who wrote all of the Vampire Hunter D stuff, plus Demon City Shinjuku, Darkside Blues, etc) and artist of the new manga iteration, Saiko Takaki, are going to be DMP’s guests at Anime Expo.
- Meanwhile Otakon has scored Madhouse studio founder Masao Maruyama as a guest.

Huh, that wasn’t as long as I thought it’d be.

Of all the announcements I might have expected on NYCC weekend from Anime Expo, this was not one of them:

The Emmy Award winning and popular stop-motion animation sketch comedy show, Robot Chicken, which airs on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim is slated to appear at this year’s Anime Expo® 2008 held from July 3-6, 2008 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, CA. More information can be found on the website www.anime-expo.org.

Cameron Baity, writer/voice actor Mike Fasolo, director/editor Chris McKay, puppet fabricator Jeanette Moffat, and co-head writer Tom Root will all be in attendance at the con. Why an anime con? Well, why not?

In addition, exclusive anime/manga related Robot Chicken skits will be played along side other original Anime Expo® programming during the I-Show at the convention and at official Anime Expo® 2008 convention hotels on the official AX Dark Channels.

I kinda wish Seth Green was coming though. I mean, I’ve liked him since the first Austin Powers flick oh god that was over 10 years ago.

So VIZ Media is scheduled to have an invite-only event at New York Comic Con– I’m already on the list, but today they issued a press release announcing the general contents: they’ll be introducing Stan Lee and ULTIMO, Stan’s project with Shaman King mangaka Hiroyuki Takei, whose first issue (a special standalone 32-page prologue titled Jump Sq. II) hits Japan the same day as the event– April 18th.

VIZ Media will host a special press event at the 2008 New York Comic-Con on April 18th, the very day the SQ.II ULTIMO issue goes on sale in Japan. The event, attended by Stan Lee, Takanori Asada (Editor, Jump SQ.), and SHONEN JUMP Editor-in-Chief Marc Weidenbaum, will highlight the collaboration and shed further light on the development of ULTIMO and the partnership with Hiroyuki Takei, as well as announce exciting news not yet shared regarding this title.

So technically speaking, VIZ hasn’t said that they’re licensing it, but odds are good that the “exciting news” involves the English release, presumably in Shonen Jump. There’s also some talk of the story of ULTIMO:

The ULTIMO story: High above Farmless City, citizens are stunned by the sudden appearance of two floating figures. Are they human boys, monolithic robots, or something much more strange? As the battle ensues between them, destruction and devastation falls on the hapless city. One figure is Vice, and seems to be as evil as his name implies. The other is Ultimo, intent on trying to stop Vice from wreaking more havoc. But who are Vice and Ultimo really? Where did they come from? A new mystery begins with the fate of the world possibly hanging in the balance!

…Yeah, I don’t know where that title came from.

Anyway! Anime Expo has announced a new guest of honor and the second main event concert ticket, Jyukai.

Jyukai is probably best known by anime fans for performing the ED theme to Fate/Stay Night, “Anata ga Ita Mori.” They also did the OP for Ah! My Goddess: Flights of Fancy, the ED theme for Buso Renkin, and the OP for Mamoru Oshii’s movie Shin - Onna Tachigui Retsuden. Good stuff! Their official site is here if you wanna check ‘em out.

I got an e-mail from a friend staffing Fanime Con who tells me that I can offically post this confirmed information (and he forwarded me Fanime’s staff notes, so it’s pretty official): Fanime Con will be hosting a vast number of guests from Gainax this year! No specific names have been mentioned, but at least 15 seiyuu and designers and other staffers will be on hand– mostly revolving around Gurren Lagann, naturally. I’d put good money on one of the guests being regular Fanime guest Hiroyuki Yamaga, a Gainax co-founder and director of Wings of Honneamise and Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi.

I’m about to melt into a puddle of excitement. ♥ (The image in this article is the top image from Gainax’s website, btw.)

Man, it’s a hell of a day for interviews out there. Here are three I’ve come across lately:

TokyoGraph has a translated interview with Visual Kei’er Miyavi, in which he talks about his new album “This Iz The Japanese Kabuki Rock.” Apparently he was particularly focused on expressing pride as a Japanese person, using traditional Japanese drums, the shamisen, and even geta sandals as a tapping noise on one track. The CD also apparently contains what Miyavi says is his “first erotic entry.” Rawr! I’ve heard some clips on Miyavi’s official website and the CD sounds badass.

Meanwhile Japanator’s Dale North had a chat with Nirgilis while they were at Anime Matsuri in Houston. The members talk about their history and influences, and apparently one of them admits to being an otaku; two of them mention a bunch of favorites (Keroro Gunso, Evangelion, Death Note, Gunbuster, Ichigo Marshmallow, Crayon Shin-chan…).

Now, the third interview isn’t music-related, it’s con-related: ActiveAnime talked to the founder of Zuiichi, a new kind of anime event taking place in Vancouver, WA (near Portland, OR) on August 3rd.

I’ll foreword this by noting that I have friends who run Portland’s KumoriCon, and that I believe this new event Zuiichi is being run by former K-con staffers, so maybe I’m biased, but…$150 to spend a weekend watching a handful of anime and a lot of Serenity and Firefly?

Now, there are some neat aspects to this “elite” event, which is supposed to be more about fandom than anime specifically (hence all the Whedon stuff). It actually takes place at a theater called Cinetopia, so they actually have full-on theater screens to show stuff, which is neat. And they do have a couple of relatively unique events: a sake tasting, for example, and a “pocky marshmallow roast.”

But the rest looks like pretty standard far, and the only guest so far is…PDX Browncoats, the Portland Firefly fanclub. $150 is a lot of money for that. (They also have a $60 ticket that features entry to one movie and a dinner of some kind.) I’ll be in town that weekend, but I don’t know if I’ll go.

One of the things that I remember that first told me of just how big San Diego Comic Con is that it runs its own shuttle throughout various spots in San Diego, free for con attendees to get to the con location.

Well, Anime Expo just announced that it, too, will have shuttles from its hotels to the Los Angeles Convention Center, which has got to be one of the first perks I’ve heard of the location (which fans decry as being in a rough part of town with relatively little dining and housing).

If that headline sounds familiar, it’s because VIZ attended MIPTV in Cannes, France last year as well. This year, though, ICv2 says that they’re primarily presenting two shoujo series: Kilari (also known as Kirarin Revolution and Nana, as opposed to last year’s Bleach/Mar/Honey and Clover/Death Note blitz.

Also being shown this year are Monster– huzzah! Bring it to the US already! –and three already out in the US; Bleach, Blue Dragon, and Buso Renkin. Lest you think it’s a new license, although Monster is unreleased officially in North America, it has been shopped around by VIZ before. Why does VIZ have such an awesome series and refuse to give it to us? I have no idea. Maybe we’ve been too naughty.

Alright, alright, GodLen has crowed triumphantly over having posted about this first, even though I decided not to post about it when I first came across it a couple of days ago. And I see quite a few people getting all “ZOMG ADULT CON = HENTAI CON!” about it.

So, let me point out why I didn’t post about it. On the official website for the con it states: This limited registration event will feature academic, professional, and industry-related events. I dunno about you, but to me that kind of implies that “the only hentai-related panels we might have will deconstruct why people like 2D porn and/or how the adult anime industry works.” Now, both of those sound like interesting panels to me, but neither is a porn-showing panel per se.

But yes, Providence Anime Conference is running a convention October 3-5. I may go if I can, but I get the feeling it’s more 21+ so that events that might not appeal to the main audience of congoers (squeeing teens) can happen, not so that they can show porn 24/7. But hey, I could be wrong.

The Scotsman brings word of Scotland’s second-ever anime convention, Auchinawa 2008 (I’m assuming that it’s pronounced similar to Okinawa), has managed to sell out in only 9 days. Now, the official website says it’s 300 people, while the Scotsman article says 600– I’m inclined to believe the con’s site. That’s a pretty small con, but still, a 9-day sellout’s pretty good for a second-year con, especially one not starting until November! Clearly they’ll need to grow some more.

The article focuses mostly on the cosplay aspect, but from the con’s website it looks like there’ll be other events to be had as well. Hopefully they’ll work things out with UK-based anime and manga companies– which would now include VIZ Media and Starz Entertainment, who are going to release a bunch of popular titles to the UK and Ireland. Hmm!