Don’t worry; my to-do list includes a whole bunch of articles. So let’s get started with the catch-up first!

Anime:
- I’m trying to include more “interesting read” articles these days, and here’s one: a Gundam Wing retrospective.

- Dot Anime is now officially streaming the first episode of Super Robot Wars OG Divine Wars.

- Off in Japan, two of the Tales OVAs– Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Fantasia — are being released in Blu-Ray box sets.

- In case you didn’t believe me, I just got a press release confirming that FUNi has licensed Save Me! Lollipop.

Manga:
- Debbie at manga.about.com spots DMP’s new Speed Racer website.

- The Yomiuri has an article on manga that focus on traditional Japanese theater forms Noh and Kabuki.

- German yaoi publisher Fire Angels is planning on publishing in English– specifically, they’ll be releasing an English translated version of K-A-E 29th Secret. I’ve heard tell that yaoi is even bigger in Germany than in the US, and/or that their OEL market is huge, so this should be interesting to watch.

- Alafista has the winners of this year’s Japan Mangaka Association Award, which includes Monster creator Naoki Urasawa as grand prize winner for 20th Century Boys and 21st Century Boys. The other winner of the grand prize is Hiroko Minami for Hina-chan no Nichijo. Make sure you check out alafista’s article, which includes the Excellence Awards and special awards.

Movies:
- And if you hate yourself and want to be miserable, check out the first official Dragon Ball Z movie promo pic.

- This is only vaguely tangentially related to anime, but a Witchblade movie is in the works.

- Yes, Speed Racer isn’t doing as well as people had hoped, but at the #2 spot, it’s not completely floundering either.

Misc:
- AkibaBlog reports on various Miku Hatsune itasha (car decor).

- What Japan Thinks informs us of the cutest corporate mascots in Japan, and Japan picks the toucan over the viking kitty. WTF?

- Oh, here, this might explain it: Sankaku Complex discussing the decline in both IQ and lust suffered by Japan’s youth.

A new press release surfaced today announcing that Crunchyroll has struck a deal with THINK Corporation (who, btw, is behind the Neko Rahmen anime), to showcase its “Anime Innovation Tokyo” content. (Anime Innovation Tokyo is a project set up between THINK and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to nurture young creators.)

The launch will include several videos and digital channel dedicated to Anime Innovation Tokyo’s content…The “Anime Innovation Tokyo” digital channel will be seeded with a variety of trailers and clips from its extensive portfolio of titles, as well as feature several social networking elements, including polls, discussion boards, group membership, and more.

Good stuff!

I kind of like “DigiDistro” as a shortened form of “Digital Distribution.” What do you think?

Anyway, GDH/GONZO issued another press release today announcing that they’re going to adapt the 90s dark comedy Hennako-chan, about a weird kid (”hen” => weird, “ko” => child, or can also be used to girl-ify a name, a la “Kyonko,” so the name could literally be “Weirdgirl-chan” or “Weird kid-chan”) into an anime consisting of six 3-minute episodes.

The series is going to be released online on GONZO’s YouTube channel, and it’ll also be offered with both English and Chinese subtitles simultaneously with the Japanese release, via YouTube and a service created by a company called Fujiyama that offers multilingual subtitle software.

Without saying anything about why the downtime happened, Crunchyroll has announced that Tower of Druaga episode 1 is back on their site, both the streaming and downloadable versions. Once again, you can see details on Druaga and BLASSREITER’s availability online at the bottom of my first date with Druaga.