“It’s a bit hard commenting publicly on this, but the most popular comics on the mobile are adult-oriented ones for women” said Yusuke Nakabashi, a media consultant at Nomura research. It’s true, a growing number of Japanese women are getting their freaky boy love manga in their phones.

The New York times profiles the rise of the mobile phone as a manga reading platform in Japan, where last year mobile manga sales grew 43%. Out of the whole mobile manga market 70% are females in their 20’s and, you guessed it, most are using them to buy Yaoi. Apparently girls are more open to indulge in their boy love fantasies when they cant be seen buying or reading the stuff.

However, this can be a mighty useful tool for prospecting dates. Forget reading her text messages while she’s in the restroom, checkout her manga reader for yaoi. If you find some you might want to reconsider meeting that athletic and trendy friend she keeps mentioning. You know how she says you need some male bonding? Yeah, she’s speaking literally.

[The New York Times]

As if we weren’t under heavy siege by Hollywood, a new production company by the name of Cerenzie-Peters Productions is looking to invest in getting more videogame and “asian manga books” into the silver screen. In fact, they’ve already raised $200 million dollars in capital with which they plan to go shopping for juicy franchises. This does not bode well.

Furthermore, the company only plans to spend $20 – $30 million per movie which means 2 things: First, that we’ll get 8 or 10 of these films. EIGHT OR TEN! Second, that this movies will have a humorously tiny budget, so the end result is bound to to look cheap.

So lets recap, we’ve got Dragon Ball Evolution coming out soon, then there’s the Akira project, Cowboy Beebop with Keanu Reeves, James Cameron’s Alita, and that Ghost in the Shell project as well. That’s 5 movies that already have us teeming with rage. Now we’re getting double that.

Brace yourselves, friends, cuz its about to get ugly…er.

EDIT: Woa! I messed up my movie names, although Keanu in GITS would be hilarious. I’d cast him as a Tachikoma.

[ANN]

Economic hard times are everywhere, even for those with a dream job. In a recent interview with Shomu Shirogane, a voice actor manager from Japan, he reveals that out of the approximately 1600 voice actors in Japan, 80% cannot make ends meet simply with their voice acting gigs so they take on part time jobs to pay the bills. Only about 5% can actually make a living solely from voice acting, the other 5% are actors or idols as well as voice actors.

A harsh reality, but an interesting scenario, were the guy delivering food to your door or that voice at the call center may very well be your favorite character’s voice.

[ANN]

A bittersweet day for Anime. TV-Tokyo, by far one of the most important sources of anime in Japan, has entered into an agreement with Crunchyroll to stream English subtitled episodes of Naruto (as well as 4 more series) one hour after they air in Japan.

Great! The sweet taste of victory is followed by the nasty aftertaste of yet more freaking Naruto in our lives. Let us celebrate anyhow, this is an agreement that opens up the door to a bright future, even if it means more Naruto for now.

[ANN]

In a move to cut costs GDH, Gonzo’s parent company, said today that it will cut Gonzo’s output of new shows from 8 to 4 in 2009. In addition it will do some production budgeting that might save it some 2 million dollars. Business as usual you’d say but this is Gonzo we’re talking about. The proverbial hit or miss company in anime. If when making 8 shows it managed just a good one each season the odds aren’t looking too bright for Gonzo come next year.

Then again, they could probably make those 4 series all spinoffs of Rosario + Vampire and Strike Witches in which case they’d be rolling in money by 2010. There’s no business like the fanservice business!

[ANN]

Japanese image boards have been buzzing with excitement lately as some documents from studio BONES (guys behind FMA, Darker than Black, Ouran, Soul Eater) got leaked into the internet revealing that the studio is working on a second Full Metal Alchemist series as well as a sequel to Darker than Black. These are very exciting news for fans of either series although speculation on how the hell they will milk FMA after the movie ending is driving everyone insane.

Honestly I’m more excited about the continuation to Darker than Black, it has a deeper plot, music by Yoko Kanno and a talking cat. You cant top Yoko Kanno and a talking cat, its simple impossible.

Thanks Shiku!

As controversial as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is he’s always been very supportive of Japanese pop culture and exporting it to the world (alledgedly as a means of world domination). An ouspoken Manga fan, Prime Minister Abe is now proposing a Foreign Manga Award that would be given to the top manga creators outside Japan. Mr. Abe has wants this award to be the ”Nobel Prize of Manga”, something I’m sure Alfred Nobel would be very proud of.

Also, anyone else think this will eventually be awarded to Doujinshi artists, furry included and webcomic artists (read: Fred from Megatokyo)? Or will anybody dare and say Manwa?

[ANN]

Even though i have seen it, 3 years ago to be exact, Viz is airing the first Naruto movie in America, with first reports months ago of it being only in major cities and a select few other cities, over 160 different theaters have decided to show it, which is impressive, and shows that maybe American culture is finally deciding to accept anime and other quirky Japanese items. Now I’m not going to tell you to go see the movie, no, in fact, i don’t really like Naruto, and i absolutely loathe the English dub, but the movie, was definitely a good one, if you like Naruto is a good one to watch, but if you like action like i like my…er, well we’ll let you think of something clever for that.

If you want my opinion:

Movie: Pretty damn awesome for Naruto (believe it! ugh)

[ANN]

Geneon, what can i say? Thanks is not enough, what did they do you ask? Well, think about this for a second… Black Lagoon, would you think that it would even stand a chance in America? With all the different translated scenes with the Japanese/English crossovers, there would be a lot of confusion with that, but Geneon has taken on that challenge full force after deciding to bring it stateside, with the launch of the new website www.Blacklagooncompany.com we can expect to see some action sometime soon, who knows, maybe some exec at Adult Swim could pick it up? If that happened, i would definitely watch it.

[TheOtaku]

Microsoft has announced that their on line media server XBox Live, will start distributing ADV produced, and released anime, saying that ADV is the largest distributor (legal) in America. No word on when this one will start, it will also start alongside Warner Brothers movies, and various Television shows, and Internet clips from totalvid.com

[ANN]