Well, that’s what the Mainichi reports: in an anime, a blog, and a picture book with the theme “LOVE OUR PLANET,” Gackt’s dog Ener– a long-coat chihuahua –will be the main character. I’m not making this up. The project is known as Ener’s Big Adventure and the official website is online here.

So take THAT, Paris Hilton and Tinkerbell!

…Okay, yeah, Doraemon is a more kid-friendly “anime ambassador“, not to mention he’s one of the longest-running anime characters ever. But c’mon, Kamina already conquered the UK with the cunning use of flags, so wouldn’t he be a great ambassador?

Okay, okay, fine, so he’d probably wind up beating up some high-ranking official. It’d probably be amusing for the world at large!

An article in the Guardian reports that a new law banning the possession of child pornography is being drafted by the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, but that many groups may be mad about it– because it exempts manga and animation. The legislators say they’d like to ban it, but that it’s hard:

“We would like the revised law to cover manga, but it is extremely difficult,” Yuka Saito of Unicef’s Japan office told the Guardian.

“We keep encountering arguments about freedom of expression, but if the US and other countries can ban that kind of material, why does Japan continue to tolerate it?”

However…

Manga belonging to the popular “lolicon” - Japanese slang for Lolita complex - genre are likely to escape the ban, as MPs are concerned that outlawing them could infringe on freedom of expression and drive men who use them as an outlet for their sexual urges to commit more serious offences.

I’m inclined to agree with this assessment. A rant follows regarding America’s drawn child pornography laws which I’ve probably written up before…

Read the rest of this entry »

Just caught word that another bill to regulate internet content in Japan, including manga/art of minors, is going to be submitted to the Diet.

…In 2010. Way to rush things, Japan!

The Japanese government has issued a formal request to the U.S. government to assist in clamping down on downloads of media owned by Japanese companies (e.g. anime), according to anime!anime!.

In the request they note that asking us to stop hasn’t yielded much by way of results, and that an international lawsuit would probably be cost-prohibitive.

Now, anime companies in the U.S. have generally tolerated fansubs of unlicensed materials unless requested otherwise (i.e. Romeo x Juliet) as a semi-necessary evil. I’d always more or less figured that Japanese companies felt more or less the same– though Gonzo’s stunt with RxJ seems to imply otherwise, since there is still no word of a U.S. release for the series.

I mention this because I’m kind of inclined to see this move as yet another attempt by the Japanese government to take control of anime and manga as it becomes sort of the country’s “official” cultural export. So, did the government go over the heads of the Japanese production companies? Or are they in on it? Hmm…

I’ve been workin’ on the railroad non-anime type work today (I do have to, y’know, make money to pay my rent and whatnot), hence why it’s been so quiet here in spite of the MASSIVE amounts of news. So, here we go:

• Yasuo Fukuda is now Japan’s Prime Minister. He offered a Cabinet position to Taro Aso, who said something like “screw you bitchezzz I resign!” instead. So much for the “otaku Prime Minister,” eh?
• The makers of the School Days game are going to host a special screening of the anime adaptation’s finale, according to Canned Dogs, which would be cool except that people can only get in if they have an unopened copy of either the School Days or Summer Days game. Which is kind of retarded.
• The first promo image for the live-action Blood: The Last Vampire movie is now online, if not terrilby exciting. Twitch also has word of Asian Oscar contenders.
• Last but not least…well, no, it’s probably least. But anyway, TokyoGraph reports that UVERworld (who you probably recognize from Bleach soundtracks, and/or Blood+ and/or Terra E) is going to do the theme song for the new live-action TV adaptation of Moyoco Anno’s manga Hataraki Man.

I’ve got a commentary post I’m about to do, but I’ve also got more work and a meetup tonight, so sorry if you miss me ;o

So over the weekend I was busy finishing and posting the fall preview, making and tweaking the new layout (you like?), not to mention being dragged off on a spontaneous Seattle trip, attending a family picnic, and doing other unrelated work.

Anyway, my point is that I didn’t get to go through my RSS feeds and Google Alerts pretty much all weekend, and I am FINALLY getting through them all. So here’s the catchup.

For those of you who are actually interested in the politics of the thing, Reuters has profiles of various potential candidates for Japanese Prime Minister.

As cool as it might be to talk about having an otaku Prime Minister, Taro Aso actually doesn’t sound like a great choice by my standards (and it has nothing to do with the idea that government interference in anime/manga could be bad, i swear): he’s a bit of a traditionalist and supports the male-only tradition of Japan’s emperor-hood. Also:

“He appeals to fellow fans of “manga” comics, but has stirred controversy with verbal blunders.”
>> verbal blunders
>> verbal blunders
>> verbal blunders

…Hmmm…

The other possible candidates include finance minister Sadazaku Tanigaki, who wants to raise taxes; former “shadow foreign minister” Yasuo Fukuda, who could have been successor to Koizumi instead of Abe had he not dropped out; conservative foreign minister Nobutaka Machimura, and…Junichiro Koizumi!?

Yes, this article says there’s been talk of the Lionheart himself coming back and challenging, but it reads more like wishful thinking on the part of voters. Of the options listed, Fukuda seems the most promising to me, with talk of working on friendship between Asian countries…but I don’t know the first thing about Japanese politics. It’ll be interesting to watch, whatever happens.

The subject line is only true if the probably-pending Prime Minister is an anime and manga nut who has already displayed his desire to make use of the popular media to improve Japan’s image– and make money –worldwide.

Nonetheless, the Wall Street Journal reports that following the announcement of Shinzo Abe’s resignation, shares of Japanese companies that create and sell anime and manga or other nerd-related stuff (the WSJ actually uses the word “otaku!”) went up– such as Broccoli, which went up 71% (which still only left it at a whopping ¥157). GDH (Gonzo) went up only 8.2% but that brings it to ¥51,400. For you economics geeks, the overall stock market actually went down about 0.5%.

One investor actually referred to these companies as “Aso-related shares” and said that if he does become Prime Minister, the companies may jump up to another 10%. Man, I wish I could invest in the Japanese stock market.

Taro Aso, Japan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and a self-confessed manga addict, may be seeing a REBERU APPU soon. According to Japan Probe, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is going to resign, presumably due to an expected defeat in the matter of assisting the U.S. navally in Afghanistan, or something.

But obviously the more important part is this: Japan Probe also states that Taro Aso is the person most likely to become Prime Minister after Shinzo Abe. So those of you who don’t like the Japanese government using anime and manga as a major culture export? Get used to it, I guess…