…I need a Wii.

Anyway, since I’ve been a bit absent the last couple of days and my weekend looks absolutely insane, I thought I’d put together a big ol’ round-up of recent news. HERE WE GO!

Anime:
- VIZ has announced that Buso Renkin season 1 will be released in a box set on April 29th; the 3-disc set will have the first 13 episodes (of 26) and will cost you $49.98.
- A trailer is up for the upcoming fall series Kurogane no Line Barrels at the official website.
- Another trailer, this time for Bones’ Bounen no Xamdou, is up.

Manga:
- Go!Comi had lunch with You Higuri (creator of Gakuen Heaven and Gorgeous Carat) and reports back that she is probably going to return to finish her historical fiction series Cantarella about the sordid affairs of the Borgia clan, particularly Cesare. Fans of the series, which hasn’t been worked on in some time, will no doubt be thrilled!
- In weirder news, for copyright reasons, the queen of cute manga– Di Gi Charat/Pita Ten/Kamichama Karin creator Koge-Donbo –has changed her name to Koge-Donbo*. Insert various Prince/artist-formerly-known-as jokes here.

Cons:
- An item I didn’t play up enough at New York Comic Con: the creators of Vampire Hunter D, i.e. writer Hideyuki Kikuchi (who wrote all of the Vampire Hunter D stuff, plus Demon City Shinjuku, Darkside Blues, etc) and artist of the new manga iteration, Saiko Takaki, are going to be DMP’s guests at Anime Expo.
- Meanwhile Otakon has scored Madhouse studio founder Masao Maruyama as a guest.

Huh, that wasn’t as long as I thought it’d be.

The Harry Potter news site HPANA (Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator), though it’s not so automatic anymore has posted its own little April Fools prank courtesy of Peeves (the mischievous poltergeist from the books, if you didn’t know).

Interesting choice: they’re suggesting that a Harry Potter anime featuring designs by Akira Toriyama will be made and aired on ABC Family to start in 2012.

Now, there are things I would change. First off, why Akira Toriyama when mangaka Koge Donbo (of Di Gi Charat/Pita Ten fame) has actual Harry Potter fanart on a website, including character illustrations? (Yes, it’s legit; I assume some non-anime-fans who like HP haven’t seen them yet.) Also…to air in 2012? Who would announce an anime not due to hit TVs for FOUR YEARS?

That said, I can kinda imagine Toriyama doing art for Harry Potter and it makes me gag.

Posted by gia in Misc • Comments (2)

So it turns out that tomorrow’s Bandai Visual USA panel has been cancelled, which means I have no panels to cover, which means I’ll probably spend most of the day hanging around in the dealer’s room, acting as a booth babe for KumoriCon.

In the meantime, here are the primary highlights from the panels I covered:

• TOKYOPOP has put Kino no Tabi on hold indefinitely and they blame themselves, but didn’t detail the reasons.
• TOKYOPOP.com v2.5 is due in the next few weeks.
• Bandai Entertainment DOES have the rights to season 2 of Code Geass (not surprising, but nice to know). The DVDs of season 1 will also feature many of the bonus stuff that came with the Japanese discs, including sketch booklets and stuff.
• This was sorta already known, but TWO versions of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time/Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo are going to be sent to theaters: a digital dubbed version to theaters that can handle those, and a subbed 35mm version. So what appears in your city (if anything) will vary depending on what your theater takes. The dub will premiere at NYCC in April.
• Dark Horse’s CLAMP project may be a candidate for a movie, although it’s still unclear whether that’s a possibility for one of the seven movies that Universal makes on its own or whether they might try to self-finance, but it’s still an exciting possibility, to use Carl Horn’s words.
• DH’s Domo-kun doll is also coming available soon, including exclusive colors at San Diego Comic Con (yellow) and for Newberry (green).
• FUNimation is still pushing Operation Anime, their anime club connection program.
• Info on Ouran High School Host Club should hit this summer and will be released uncut.
• Koge Donbo is too busy working on Kamichama Karin Chu! to do a second volume of Broccoli’s Kon Kon Kokon. Sad charats!
• VIZ Media and Antarctic Press both mysteriously no-showed. (I have an e-mail out to VIZ asking what’s up and who I might ask some questions.)

I’ll be dropping by the dot anime booth to see if any BVU folks are around to chat with for a bit, since they didn’t have a panel, so I’ll let you know if I glean anything interesting from that– and I’ll check in with Sheehan regarding One Piece on Cartoon Network. Now, the swagpost…

Closeups (but not of the doujinshi ♥) and a couple of cosplay shots (including another L-in-disguise) after the jump! Continue Reading »

Posted by gia in Con Reports, Features • Comments (6)