Well, that’s interesting– ICv2 reports that 4kids has licensed the tokusatsu series Kamen Rider Ryuki (to be called Kamen Rider Dragon Knight), the 12th series in the Kamen Rider franchise, which has been running in Japan since the ’70s.

It looks like the show will be Americanized a la Power Rangers (i.e. they’ll just redub the action stuff but have American actors do the rest of the scenes), with the American version of hero Shinji Kido becoming Kit Taylor. A shot has been offered but the actors in it haven’t been named. Apparently the plot of this particular Kamen Rider iteration is that Kit is one of 13 people to find an Advent Card, giving him Kamen Rider powers– but there can be only ONE Kamen Rider…cue a battle to become The One Rider…TO RULE THEM ALL.

Posted by gia in Dramas, Licenses, News, Western News • Comments (2)

No, seriously, look: first, there were those Mangaka Association awards I posted about before. Then…

- The 32nd Kodansha Manga Awards, with Moyashimon taking the top prize (best general manga), among other familiar names (Shugo Chara! Woot!)

- The 12th Annual Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize, with ¥2 million going to…Moyashimon! Hmm. I’m detecting a pattern here.

Right then, moving on to the rest of the news…

Anime:
- The sequel to MS Gundam IGLOO will be an OVA, says Moon Phase. Shown above.

- This is only barely anime-related anymore, but 4kids isn’t doing too well and I thought you should know. And yeah, I know a couple of you are snickering in the back row there.

- Anime on DVD thinks it knows FUNimation’s next licensing announcement. I’m convinced!

Movies:
- TokyoGraph is on a roll; they’ve confirmed a sequel film to the manga-to-live-action-movie Crows Zero. The sequel will be directed by the original’s helmer Takashi Miike, and Shun Oguri returns as the lead, Genji Takaya.

- TG also reports that Jin Akanishi, a member of the popular boy band KAT-TUN, is taking on his first voice acting role…as Speed in the Japanese dub of the new Speed Racer flick. Hmm.

Conventions:
- Girls rule, boys drool! Alafista reports that women outnumber men at the enormous Comiket doujinshi events, 57% to 43%. There are a lot of other interesting tidbits of info in the article, such as the fact that 71% of the doujinshika are women, and the average attendee is 2-3 years younger than the average circle member.

- FanimeCon is not only running a charity auction this year, they’ll also match all donations. Sweet!

Posted by gia in Features, Roundups • Comments (1)

Oh, man, how often to I get to bring up 4kids twice in a day anymore?

Mostly no longer a player in the anime world, ICv2 reports that they’ve picked up the new season of YuGiOh, which is airing in Japan this April. And they’re going to start airing it in the US this fall.

That’s pretty damn quick. This may even mean that it’ll start airing in the US not far behind the DVD releases in Japan (I can’t find any actual dates for the DVDs). There’s even a tiny chance it’ll air BEFORE DVDs start being released, depending on what kind of delay Toei does.

Damn you, 4Kids, for impressing me!

Oh yeah, stuff besides that whole “manga is over” thing happened at ICv2. According to Myriad Issues reports that there was much discussion of fansubs, with more and more people jumping onto the Sevakis bandwagon of proactive replacement of fansubs rather than lawsuits (Rob will back me up that I’ve been saying the same thing for a year! Ah, to be Justin Sevakis).

Rich Johnson of Yen Press apparently came out and said that manga scanlations help book sales instead of hurting them– I’m guessing a significant portion of this is due to the fact that your average manga is half the price or less than your average DVD and usually contains more actual content.

Or so says Al Kahn, whose credibility is shot by the fact that he works for 4kids, which…isn’t a manga company. Regardless, Kahn was at the ICv2 conference here in NYC today (no, I didn’t to go; yes, I’m mad) and reportedly declared that “manga is over.” He meant in Japan, apparently.

He apparently got into a bit of a debate about it with Rich Johnson, of the *cough* newly-established U.S. manga publisher Yen Press. And then Gen Fukunaga of FUNimation apparently tried to declare a cease-fire that lasted the rest of the panel, unfortunately for spectators!

So what do you guys think? Manga sales ARE down in Japan. Is it all over?

Posted by gia in Gossip, JP News, Manga, News • Comments (9)