The purple-suited Ali of Del Rey Manga just slapped some Fairy Tail slap-bracelets onto VIZ reps, which makes me giggle. (As do the bracelets. Transported back to my childhood!)

Dallas Middaugh and I just bonded over our locational names (full name is Georgia, if you didn’t know). Moving on, now we’re throwing slap bracelets around…one of the reasons they went with slap bracelets is so that when Ali would throw them around, no one would get hurt, as nearly happened with their last freebie– pins.

The panel consists of Dallas, editor Tricia Narwani, director of acquisitions Mutsumi, and Ali Kokmen. And some very squeaky microphones. ANN just saved the day by turning off the microphones.

First up, Hiro Mashima’s Fairy Tail 1 and 2. Mashima, of course, is well-known for Rave Master but he has, we’re told, matured greatly with Fairy Tail (though Dallas says he’s probably not yet at his peak). The series debuted at #8 on the graphic novel sales list, so good stuff there.

Next up is Natsumi Ando and Miyuki Kobayashi’s Kitchen Princess. The fifth volume also broke into the top 10 bookscan list, a slowly growing “sleeper hit” for Del Rey. Note to self: check it out. Dallas also admitted to having only just started it himself (and to not reading everything Del Rey puts out– only so many hours in the day).

Moving into the new title announcements, due in Spring 2009…Gakuen Prince by Jun Yuzuki, a bishie romantic comedy, apparently it’s doing very well in Japan (PR manager April Flores just made an appearance, hi April!). A prestigious girls-only school starts allowing boys in, but only a very select few…and the “girls are just starving for men. It’s a harem turned into hell.” Sounds fun to me. Right up my alley, even.

Next up is Samurai 7, the manga by Mizutaka Zuhou, due out in April 2009. Based, of course, on Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (and the anime of which

SAYONARA ZETSUBOU SENSEI! MARCH 2009! I’M THERE! YARRR! *flails* On the title, they’ve decided to go ahead and keep the Japanese title, which caused them a battle with the original Japanese publisher (Kodansha), but there is a subtitle: The Power of Negative Thinking. Good stuff!

A final new license, a novel: The Case of the Dragon Slayer, by Boogiepop author Kadano Kouhei, due out in February.

Talk of the upcoming Wolverine manga, which will be shounen and which has some pretty nice character designs– not too manga-ish, but definitely not classic American style either.

Then there’s the X-Men shoujo manga, character designs for Kitty Pryde, and it’s much more classic manga style and very shoujo…actually it reminds me of shoujo manhwa a bit. Apparently Kitty is going to be the first female student at Xavier’s academy. Ice Man is her love interest, and I really like the designs for Night Crawler, Kitty’s first friend (why can’t HE be the love interest? Night Crawler FTW!). And finally, Beast looks like Totoro.

…I’m not even kidding. I can’t take any photos (don’t have my memory card for my real camera and my cam phone *sucks*), but I’m sure they’ll be around soon…but yeah, he looks like a fanged, slightly mean Totoro. With a tie. Maybe Totoro and Ali combined, actually? Hm.

We’re moving into the Q&A: licensing novels is a bit harder than manga because it’s still a bit early in that market. Zetsubou will be coming out about every four months.

An interesting note about Faust: it includes a manga by Yun Kouga that is ONLY available in Faust and nowhere else in English. The title wasn’t mentioned so I’l have to look into it later.

And we’re wrapping up here…so stay tuned for Yen Press, who supposedly has something big for us.

Was just catching up on my Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and caught this little clip:

…Could this be a reference to pop artist showing at the Brooklyn Museum in New York at the moment? (Okay, this episode aired on March 8th, almost a month prior to the exhibit opening, but Murakami has shown in NYC in the past, too…)

Hmm…

Okay, it’s a pretty unscientific manner of gauging popularity, but I dare you to come up with something better. Hashihime has one of those reports about what anime has the most completed threads (=1000 posts) on 2channel, and the winner for winter ‘08 anime so far is Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei by a longshot– 67 to 17 for second-placer True Tears. Yatterman, surprisingly, takes third with 13. Shigofumi and Spice and Wolf round out the top five with 11 and 9, respectively.

Catch the rest of the list here. Make sure you read the added notes (like the fact that Minamike ~Okawari~ is sharing threads with its predecessor, making it hard to gauge). And try to ignore things like the fact that Hatenkou Yuugi accidentally got named Hakuten Yuugi (which is kinda funny; “Hatenkou Yuugi” would = roughly “Unprecedented Games,” “Hakuten Yuugi” would = “Infectious Games.” Like, as in a disease-type infection).

Original source: Hashihime

• Title: Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei
• Studio: SHAFT
• Genre: Dark Comedy

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: If you can call this “story,” it gets ♥♥♥

• Animation: ♥♥♥½
• Characters: ♥♥♥♥
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥♥
• Overall: ♥♥♥♥ (Hang me baby, one more time.)

Thoughts:
Those of you who watched the first season of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, all you need know is that so far, the new season makes even less sense.

For those who skipped over the first season…I recommend watching it before getting into season two because it shifts into its surreal humor a bit more gradually. The second season doesn’t just pick up where season one left off in its weirdness; it takes a great leap forward.

That said, it’s still really funny. In this episode we get the extremely-belated introduction of Hito Nami, a.k.a. “the normal girl.” An introduction to all the previously-introduced characters is provided in the process, as well as some more fun with Kafuka (the optimist) and Komori (the hikikomori). Woot woot.

The OP and ED are good, but not as good as the previous season, and if you really pay attention to them they really feel like a poor man’s version of the first season’s OP/ED– they were trying to replicate the feel and awesomeness without simply duplicating, and I don’t think they succeeded in that.

The animation starts out looking a bit different, but by the end of the episode we’re back to the style we’re used to for this show.

So, there you have it: If you liked the first season of SZS, you’ll like the second season. If you didn’t, you probably won’t. If you haven’t seen any, I recommend the first season before this, but in terms of understanding the characters and setting, you can jump right into the new season…providing you completely ignore the first five or so minutes of the episode. ♥

Just wanted to let you know:

1) I’ve just accepted a new job, and it’s one I think at least a few of you will be excited about when it comes out. I can’t really give more details than that at the moment, but I’m really thrilled about it :D

2) This weekend I’ll be doing a mass of first date posts– including Zoku Sayonara Zetsbou Sensei, whose first ep was just released. ♥

We all knew it was only a matter of time.

The animation isn’t as good as some we’ve seen, but there are some great moments. ;D

Original source: YouTube
Secondary source: SWFBlog

Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei season 2 is now confirmed.

Oh, 2ch, how I love thee! Click here and scroll to the bottom of the post to see a scan (…or photo) from a magazine announcing the second season of Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei, coming in spring of 2008! Or just see it below. (Also, note that that post, while in Japanese, is a thread for netabare, spoilers, so there’s your warning if you wanna try and translate it.)

I saw this a while back on a day I was too busy to do much posting; fortunately kurono k reminded me of it. Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei meets Beating Angel Dokuro-chan. Now, if only there was more beating involved in the video, it’d be epic.

Parodies of the Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei OP will NEVER GET OLD. Ever. Do you hear me? This newest one, courtesy of SWFBlog, features Minoru Shiraishi and related characters (that he’s played or that he interacts with). There’s even a Churuya in there!

As long as we’re on Lucky Star-related videos, here’s a new take Motteke! Sailor Fuku, being ’sung’ by Pokemon. Except that they’re using the ‘poke-sounds’ from the original game, so it’s all 8-bit.