Shorties:

• Blah blah blah Yaoi Con. If you’re interested in it, odds are good you’ve already seen YaoiSuki’s phenomenal coverage of it, so I won’t bother rehashing.
• Hey look– Japan Town San Francisco is revamping, including the building of a Jpop culture center. I’ll have to check that out when it’s done…
• European investors like Japanese love hotels. Who knew?
• Let’s see, I already talked about Lucky Star being licensed. For those of you silly enough to take me seriously, I was annoyed that it happened on a weekend when I wasn’t around to scoop, not because of the license itself. Duh.
• Apparently the gala event for Takashi Murakami’s exhibit at the LA Museum of Contemporary Art was a little star-studded.
• Tsundere GPS device. What the fuck.
• Are we done with Hare Hare Yukai now that even the virtual idols are doing it?
• HOLY SHIT LIVE ACTION AKIRA. Well, maybe. Possibly. We’re thinking about it.
• Remember Dale’s interview with Oreskaband at Anime Expo? No? That’s because animeOnline died before we could post it. (Wait, did we get it through? I don’t remember.) Anyway, the band is going to be in a movie.
• Vertical has Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack. It’s my fave Tezuka series, second to Unico, so HUZZAH!
• VIZ is all like, “look at all of our live-action manga adaptations! LOOK AT THEM! WE SO COOL!” Apparently they hoped we’d forget that everyone’s been expecting all of these for ages, except maybe Love*Com.
• Gong+Blinkx=more legal anime online. And stuff.
• A couple of new series: the sci-fi/greek mythology dark-lookin’ show Mnemosyne, plus an anime based on the character books Zenryoku Usagi. Also, BIOHAZARD CG anime.

At Length:

Ghost Hunt licensed: I love this show– solid characters, interesting stories, and any and all potential romance/personal drama is subtle and mostly not addressed. Also, AMAZING soundtrack by Masuda Toshio, who also did the soundtrack for Mushishi, FYI. Mmmm.

FUNimation vs Atari re: Dragon Ball Z games. I’m intrigued that no one has released the “why” for FUNimation’s move (which was to announce their intent to sever Atari’s rights to the games due to unknown infractions). Apparently DBZ is one of the floundering Atari’s few successful franchises– I wonder if FUNi is just hoping to jump ship before it sinks, or ir something significant really did go down?

B2B anime info portal: So Japanese companies are trying to get more information about their series to both North American and European countries. Given the recent hubbub with U.S. anime companies– e.g. FUNi, ADV, and Geneon’s layoffs and scalebacks –I think it’s a good idea for anime companies to get a better sense of what’s out there and what to license. While the “snag every single anime possible” tactic has its bonuses, I can’t think it’s the best method out there.

…Whew. That should keep you guys busy for a few minutes. Did I skip anything big?

Japanator has a fun weekly feature called the Tuesday Otaku Debate, where fans pick a side and do battle to the death in the comments. This week’s debate is a pair of anime/game composers, Toshio Masuda and Hitoshi Sakimoto.

Why am I posting about it? Because I’m officially campaigning for a Masuda win– preferably by a landslide. Masuda-sensei composed two soundtracks that have enriched my life personally: Mushishi and Ghost Hunt. The former is probably better known than the latter, but both are really fantastic CDs, and they’re not his only well-known works: see also Jubei-chan and Jubei-chan 2, Hand Maid May, Puni Puni Poemi, Mahoromatic, and even Naruto.

No disrespect meant for Sakimoto, whose work on games like Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII, along with the music for the anime Romeo x Juliet, is solid and respectable. But I find Masuda’s music stays with me much more firmly.

If you’re interested in other (non-Yoko Kanno) anime composers, I’d recommend Michiru Oshima, who did the fantastic OSTs for Fullmetal Alchemist, and Kouji Ishii, who (along with Yasukasu Tabei) created the incredibly amazing Hellsing soundtrack.