The folks at MyAnimeList have translated an article in which the president of Kadokawa, Fukuda Tadashi, says that “it’s sad” to see anime get removed from YouTube due to complaints from copyright owners, because it helps spread the anime goodness (and sell character goods).

Now, if I remember correctly, Kadokawa has had some dealings with JASRAC, which has put serious pressure on YouTube to remove infringing content, not to mention demanding (and getting) the removal of 30,000 YouTube vids back in October ‘06, including a bunch of Haruhi videos. *cough* (Note: Kadokawa is not listed as one of the organizations directly involved in the request, but some of the groups include The Association of Japanese Animations and the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan, Inc., which are bound to have some Kadokawa connections.)

On the other hand, Kadokawa now has a deal with YouTube in which Kadokawa establishes its own “channel” and provides its own content, so I guess they’re not in much of a position to diss YouTube at the moment.

Blah blah blah, Bandai Visual USA + sola, $49.99/disc, three episodes per disc, June 10th, no dubs, etc.

Does anyone else think BVU is really moving to the (relative) mainstream of anime? I mean, look at their past titles: Patlabor, Gunbuster, Demon Prince Enma, Wings of Rean, Super Robot Wars, MS Gundam IGLOO, SOS! Tokyo Metro Explorers, Galaxy Angel– all space, mech, sci-fi, adventury, kinda “big” series.

And now look at their most recent license: Harukanaru Toki no Naka de, Shigofumi, True Tears, sola. The first two have some adventure and stuff, but none of these are “big” titles (yes, I know sola was voted top anime of ‘07 on Yahoo! Japan, but I just can’t take that very seriously), and True Tears in particular is an absolute slice-of-life romancey thing. I guess what I’m trying to say is, all of these recent licenses are of moe shows, which is so different from what BVU has done in the past.

Now, True Tears and Shigofumi were both produced by Bandai Visual Japan. But sola is not– which may make it the FIRST title ever to be released by BVU that is not related to Bandai Japan in some way. The closest would be HaruToki, which was only distributed by Bandai Japan. But everything else Bandai Visual USA has was either produced by Bandai Visual or by one of its subsidiaries like Freedom was done by Sunrise and Super Robot Wars is based on games made by Banpresto.

Well, we’ll see if this means anything. Just thought I’d point it out for you industry-watchers. :)

After I got a comment from DiGiKerot, I went and poked around some more sites– specifically the Japanese wikpedia entry for sola –and they list Bandai Visual (Japan) as one of the production companies. The English sites just haven’t caught up to it yet (and it’s not mentioned on the official Japanese site either). So, so much for that! Sorry for the red herring. ;)

J.J. Abrams’ new flick Cloverfield has a manga, according to Newsarama. It’s titled Cloverfield: Kishin and was published online by Kadokawa. It’s drawn by Yoshiki Togawa, who is best known on the English-language Internets for…Cloverfield: Kishin. (He has done some manga in Square’s Gangan manga anthologies, including one called Jigokuezu Karma in 2004 and another called Shishimaru in 2001.)

It’s written by David Baranoff, Matthew Pitss, and Nicole Phillips, and yet the manga is in Japanese. You can read it for free on Kadokawa’s site here (click the button in the top-left that says “open” in the background).

Original source: Kadokawa Shoten
Secondary source: Newsarama

SaiAni is currently reporting that Newtype - a popular Japanese monthly anime magazine - is establishing its own anime channel.

According to the report, Kadokawa Shoten, the publisher of Newtype (the Japanese one), announced the establishment of the Newtype Channel today in Japan. It isn’t a linear TV station, however, but a web-based one. A single episode of an anime costs ¥105, about 86 cents USD (are you listening, American anime distributors?). A splash site is already up, and it features Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu, so I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the show will be among its introductory titles.

So now the only question is: can people NOT in Japan buy episodes, too?