Just sayin’.

The Yomiuri reports that Kyoto Seika University, which has a dedicated manga faculty, has made millions of yen by taking orders for students to develop materials with manga-style illustrations.

The orders come from businesses, governments, and other organizations, who like the illustrations because they’re lively and can convey information with text or visuals as necessary. The students love it because they get professional experience, the university loves it because they get money…all happy times and fun!

We already have a few edu-manga type things out and about, like TOKYOPOP’s OEL SAT prep manga. Maybe someday we’ll start having manga guides to, say, income taxes

The Yomiuri reports on Japanese mystery novelist Jiro Akagawa’s 500th novel being published. Which of his novels is actually the 500th is debatable, though: one critic says it’s the recently-released Draculajo no Butokai (The Ball at Castle Dracula); Akagawa himself says that the novel Mikeneko Homuzu no Sawakai (Calico Cat Holmes’ Tea Party) is actually the 500th.

Either way, holy SHIT that’s a lot of goddamn books. 10-20 a year, according to the Yomiuri’s count. And then there are two other novelists in Japan who have written 432 books. What’s up with these workaholics?

Remember way back when, and a bunch of sites reported on a virus that featured an image from Lucky Star and the words (in Japanese): “Wait a minute. You rascally otaku! should I silence your P2P?” Yes? No? Here.

The guy who made it, 24-year-old Masato Natsukuji, was arrested a while back and has now been charged with the crime. Natsukuji is a graduate student at Osaka Denki Tsuushin Daigaku (Osaka Telecommunications University)…or was, since he’s been suspended indefinitely. His first public hearing is in 18 days at the Kyoto District Court.

It looks like this is the first time that a virus creator has been charged with criminal liability in Japan, according to the Yomiuri.

The next part of the article I’m not 100% sure about, but it sounds like Natsukuji created the virus in response to an escalating flame war on an unnamed message board.

No, seriously, I just got a spam e-mail with “kamaimasen” (literally “it doesn’t trouble me,” the Japanese equivalent of “no problem”) and the following text:

Your maid will be pleased like with no one else before!
Only for real men!

Anyone else spot one of these? Think any otaku would fall for it?

So jerkpop’s ebzero linked me to this article, featuring the 5 Movie Fighting Styles Too Awesome to Actually Exist. And one of them in particular struck me, probably because I’ve been taking a ballroom dance class (and totally not because I lust mightily for Chun-Li, I swear). This takes place at a salsa competition in Korea (yes, Asia seems rather fond of ballroom):

Just thought you might enjoy that.

Star Wars meets traditional Japanese hand cloths? Oh yeah, baby. I want the one with R2D2 and the Hokusai wave and Fujisan. On the other hand, the R2D2 soy sauce bottle is pretty badass too.

Both are available for purchase at Strapya (via TOKYOMANGO).

Too awesome.

Play Second Life? Love The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya? Willing to spend a few hard-earned real-life dollars in order to use Haruhi as your avatar in the game, the better to boost your online self-esteem even as your real-life social skills diminish by the minute? Good news!

This Haruhi avatar was created by Second Lifer Maegen Parvenu, and I can’t find it on her store, I’m guessing it’s in the $200-300 (Linden dollars) range, which is probably like, a dollar or two in the game.

But frankly, Second Life kind of terrifies me, so I refuse to sign up an account to get all the details. There are several Haruhi avatars listed on their marketplace though. If you’re into that sort of thing.

There is absolutely nothing to see here.

Okay, you guys may have figured out by now that I am an entertainment junkie. Anime is my crack cocaine but I’m willing to dabble around with meth (movies) and heroin (TV) and ecstacy (games) and whatnot.

So Entertainment Weekly is a favorite magazine of mine, the only one I actually have a subscription to.

Every once in a while my loyalty is rewarded with a little something extra. In this week’s issue there’s a blurb feature on page 14 called “GAME ON?” which is a few satirical suggestions on what kind of video game adaptation the movie Juno should get (a response to some rumors that a game was in the works, which were apparently due to gamespot reading too much into things).

Anyway, the third game suggestion?

A hentai-style, digitally enhanced Juno defends herself against activists who pelt her with Blan B pills. Bonus Points for: Combo attacks with the help of sidekick boyfriend Paulie Bleeker.

…I dunno about you, but this somehow makes me think of Nanaca Crash. I’d totally buy it.

Also, I tentatively dug around to see if there had been much (or any) anime-style fanart of Juno, and instead I found this, which makes me giggle.