Edit: This post has been altered per the wishes of the moderator of the community that was its source. She provided an alternate source that also confirmed the information.

So! The last we heard of Central Park Media was that they were considering suing Japanese BL publisher Libre. See, way back when, CPM licensed a whole bunch of popular yaoi titles from Biblos for their Be Beautiful line. Biblos later went bankrupt and was replaced by Libre, who now says that CPM’s licenses are invalid because they weren’t renegotiated, as all the other BL publishers did. CPM says they paid up-front for the licenses and that they’re still valid. Libre posted an announcement on their website denouncing CPM’s releases as being illegal, and some fans and retailers started boycotting CPM’s books (or at least the ones in question).

One of these licenses is the popular Finders series by Ayano Amane. According to the editor blog and comments from a Libre editor, who says in comment #481 that a plan to release the Finder series in English– even though CPM has released it in English, but it is (for the moment) out of print and very, very hard to find –is in the works. In #484, the editor says that a specific plan is in progress but that the details haven’t been finalized.

It’s not surprising to me that it took them this long to find a publisher willing to take on the Viewfinder manga. It seems to me that the manga companies generally aren’t especially hostile to each other, and whoever takes it on could wind up a target of a lawsuit from CPM– if CPM ever even gets around to suing Libre. And yes, it’s a VERY different situation from when, say, Bandai Entertainment snagged the Gurren Lagann rights or even manga license rescues from ADV; in those cases we can assume that the original contracts were voided, whereas in this case the validity of the contract is in question.

We’re already speculating on what publisher it could be; 801 Media (with their recent hints at a major license that could get them in trouble) seems the most obvious choice.

I believe it was Michael Gombos who told me that MPD Psycho v4 had the largest parental advisory sticker ever in the history of manga in the US. But my copy had a bigger sticker than this one shown on Amazon.

So, one of the things I love about Oregon (besides the fact that Portland has the highest number of strip clubs per capita of any city in the country, including Vegas) is the fact that we have some of the broadest interpretations of “freedom of speech” of any state in the union. (As a result, I’ve always wondered why so many anime and manga companies are situated in Texas instead of Oregon.)

However, I didn’t know that back in July, a law was passed that was supposed to forbid the sale of any sexually explicit material to a minor if the material was meant to “satisfy a sexual desire.” However, apparently local bookshops and publishers found the law to be too broad, however, and feel that it criminalizes titles that would otherwise be acceptable. For example, the law could be interpreted such that any book that contained information about sex, like a textbook, might be illegal to sell to minors.

The manga-related news is that Dark Horse has joined the group of stores and pubs suing the state over the law. A few other plaintiffs include Powell’s (remember them?), the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and interestingly, Planned Parenthood.

(P.S. Link via Journalist.)

…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.

The official Code Geass website now has an announcement about the leak of six minutes of Code Geass R2’s third episode. They claim that the leak was NOT from a Sunrise employee but an accident from when they were testing an online broadcasting service– the Bandai Channel. (Which makes rumors of an arrest a little…odd. Cover up or mistake?)

Anyway, they apologize for all the confusion and difficulty (and delay of legitimate online airing, which they’re hoping will cut down on the illegal downloading). And the most important info: the third episode will air on April 20th as planned.

According to Japan Probe, men in Japan are sick and tired of being falsely accused of groping women and extorted (and numerous examples of this have occurred for years, in spite of the creation of the women-only carriage some time ago).

A number of men have requested that a men-only carriage be created by various train companies, but judging from Japan Probe’s report, the outlook isn’t too good.

“We get a lot of requests for them and take note of these, but we have no plans regarding carriages exclusively for men at this time,” a spokesman for the East Japan Railway Co. (JR East) says.

Keio Electric Railway Co., which back in 2000 became Japan’s first railroad to introduce women’s only carriages, also has no current arrangements in place to correct the gender imbalance on its routes.

ICv2 has a report from Pokemon USA, the company that– you guessed it! –owns Pokemon, regarding the results of their recent anti-piracy tactics. And no, we’re not talking about fansubbed episodes of the anime, we’re talking counterfeited cards from the TCG.

The company has seized (and estroyed) over 47 million cards worldwide, namely in China, Thailand, Singapore, Poland, Italy, the Czech Republic, and Australia. They’ve also raided stores in New York that were selling the fake cards. Who knew that the Pokemon TCG was such a cut-throat business?

According to Anime on DVD, BOST TV– the ugly middle child in GONZO’s release of Tower of Druaga and BLASSREITER –has given up on making people who didn’t sign up early pay for the episode and is now offering the episode for free to everyone who signs up. (Those who already used points to buy the episode will have them refunded.)

Their free offering includes a streaming 640×360 copy of the episode– higher res and smoother looking than YouTube, and way less choppy playback than Crunchyroll –and DRM-free downloadable versions for iPod and PSP. BOST’s iPod and PSP versions are slightly higher-res than Crunchyroll’s, though of course BOST doesn’t have the high-res downloadable CR does.

So now there’s even less reason to download fansub versions (Druaga now has three such releases, which have been downloaded over 6,000 times)– the BOST streaming version is pretty decent quality.

So, about twelve hours ago a subbed version of Tower of Druaga appeared on the Internets. First off, I want to say: don’t be the kind of douche who downloads something that’s being freely (or nearly-freely) given through other means. Seriously, $0.01 gets you a perfectly acceptable permanent DRM-free copy PLUS iPod and PSP versions.

I was kind of curious as to how many people would download it though, so I kept a watch on the data on some sub sites and now, about 12 hours after it went online, nearly 2500 people have downloaded it. Now, maybe some of them just didn’t get the message that GONZO was offering a legit sub release already (I already ran into one fellow who had no clue), but all of them? I don’t think so.

Of course, by comparison, the 51st episode of Hayate no Gotoku (which went up only 20 minutes before the Druaga ep) has seen about 13,000 downloads between its two versions, and the first ep of Code Geass R2 has been downloaded over 15,000 times in the ~8ish hours subbed versions have been available.

Of course, it’s hard to judge even roughly how many people would have downloaded a Druaga fansub if there was no legit version available, but the evidence certainly suggests that making it available legally, affordably, and conveniently cuts down on the sub-viewing quite a bit. And again, some portion of that 2500 is probably simply unaware that a legal version is out there. Good signs! Though I still say people who download the fansub and intentionally ignore the legal subs are douches.

So, it’s been just over 24 hours since the first episode of Tower of DRUAGA ~the Aegis of URUK~ hit the Internets, and on YouTube alone it’s been viewed over 22,000 times. Back on Crunchyroll, I don’t know how many times it’s been viewed or downloaded, but the top donor for the hQ episode is one “The_Onigiri” who paid $50 for the episode.

Meanwhile, the first episode of BLASSREITER is out. It appears to be accessible at YouTube, Crunchyroll, and BOSTTV with the same specs as Druaga (which you can see here), so there you go. I expect to get to a first date of it today (it’s currently downloading; I paid $15 for the HQ download).