Chuosha has announced that a manga version of Gonzo’s Tower of DRUAGA ~the Aegis of URUK~ is being developed. It was originally going to run in Kadokawa’s Ace Assault shounen mangabon, but it’s apparently been moved to Comptiq (home of Lucky Star).

The manga will begin in the July issue of the magazine (on sale June 10th), and it will be created by Makoto2, who did the art for the Rental Magika manga (pictured), as well as Tales of Destiny’s manga and 4koma.

Remember that Kadokawa channel on YouTube I mentioned a day or so ago? Kadokawa is now using it to stream the entirety of Mamoru-kun ni Megami no Shukufuku wo! for a brief time.

…And, as the subject line suggests, I still don’t want to watch the show. Huh. I wish I’d known they were showing Mushi-Uta previously though.

(Via Anime Banzai.)

Odex: Some of you may remember a (longish) while back that Odex’s attempt to sue PacNet for the right to get user information to go along with the IP addresses of anime downloaders was stalled when a judge determined that Odex, being a licensor instead of a copyright owner, could not sue. Odex then added six Japanese companies (Gonzo, Kadokawa, Showgate, Sunrise, TV Tokyo, and Yomiuri) to the suit and PacNet has now agreed to give up the names. Odex continues to be reviled, and PacNet and Justice Woo Bih Li are no longer heroes of the anime community. If Odex sues all the downloaders and gets money from them, they could be up $9 million. Blech.
Source: TorrentFreak

ADV: ANN has an update on ADV’s title removal, including MORE titles that have been removed from the website. They also stumbled upon what was supposed to be an unpublished article on ICv2 (thanks, Google) that talked of financial problems between ADV and ARM Corp., a subsidiary of Japan Contents Investment (JCI), which has also invested in ADV. The article, according to ICv2 CEO Milton Griepp, is not correct as it’s currently written, though it’s possible that ADV’s issues will turn out to be related– which is, of course, something no one knows for sure just now. ADV has still not commented officially, but ANN also notes that various anime retailers say they have NOT received any cancellation notices for these titles from ADV.
Source: ANN

Bandai Visual USA: Those prices are still crazy. Just thought I’d let you know.

Man, I jump on a plane to California and what does FUNimation go and do? They put the ENTIRE anime of Black Blood Brothers on their website as download-to-own files for $1.99 an ep (it’s a 12-ep series).

And then Kadokawa teams up with Google/YouTube, announcing that they will set up an official YouTube site where they’ll share videos from Japanese artist. No word on exactly what sorts of videos we’ll see, but they’ll be selling their own ad space on the site and sharing revenues with the artists.

Should be interesting to see what they come up with, eh?

I’m crazy busy for the weekend, and what do you do? You go and license Lucky Star and outsource production to Bandai Entertainment, or at least so sayeth Japanator. I’m going to go cry on a bishounen’s shoulder now.

According to anime!anime!, it looks like Kadokawa’s Digix group is working overtime to get about 150,000 Haruhi and Lucky Star files removed from YouTube.

Just thought you’d like to know, it’s not just American companies, eh? As far as I can tell there’s no comment on fansubs, so it looks like they’re probably targeting just YouTube Japan - though of course, for Haruhi, Bandai Entertainment would presumably be the company who would do the yelling at YouTube for subs.