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Next month Japan Post will issue 10 stamps based on Patlabor, the iconic mecha manga and anime. This comes as the latest installment in their heroes of anime and manga series. We’ve previously covered the launch of Mario, Evangelion and Resident Evil stamps. It seems only Japan has caught on to the fact that the only people who collect stamps are obsessive freaks so you might as well cater to their tastes huh?

[Japan Post]

The classic JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure has gotten the wrong people angry at them, the Muslim community has gone up in arms on the Internet after someone pointed out that one of the villains was reading that looked like their Holy scripture, the Koran.

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JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures Causes uproar in Muslim communities.

Oricon, a famous Japanese statistics company, surveyed 900 citizens from Japan. The question? “If you could turn into a main character of an anime series, who would it be?” The results (besides the more than obvious first place) were kind of unexpected in some places like Doraemon and Nobita, which kind of makes it a dull vote since Nobita is cool only (and only if) he’s around Doraemon. Oh well . . .

Check the list with character illustrations here.

[Japan Probe]

The Japanese website of Shueisha’s Jump Square magazine announced a while ago that tomorrow (or today, depends on your time zone), April 4, 2008, they will publish a one-shot manga created by Masakazu Katsura, one of the masters of manga dramas and highly memorable love triangles (Video Girl Ai, DNA², I’’s) and action master Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball saga, Dr. Slump). I don’t know what to expect, maybe A love triangle between super-powered robot martial artists from the future that protect justice at night? Any way, I think it will be pure awesomeness.

Good news if you can get the magazine! Remember the name, it’s: Jump Square’s Supreme

[ANN]

There is a time, in the middle of your anime life, when you (supposedly) know and fear the genres you once swore you’d never watch again but still you think to yourself the same thing: “I’m more mature right now, maybe I could give the XXXXX anime a chance, even if it’s categorized in one of the genres I hate. . .Harem Anime”. I pondered this some weeks ago and here I am. Still alive. With some ups but huge downs I review the series that caught me and my fascination for pink and long-haired girls. I swear…someday I’ll resist successfully. 

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Rosario + Vampire - An Overall Review -

Pop Japan Travel, the travel agency for otaku by excellence, has announced a Mind Over Manga tour to Japan where besides visiting all the cool little places in Tokyo including an anime studio, aspiring artists get to publish and sell their doujinshi at Comitia, a big convention when it comes to selling doujins.

If qualified (meaning probably that your material doesn’t suck), Pop Japan Travel will translate your doujin, print it, and help you sell it at Comitia, letting you interact with any fans and prospective buyers. Pretty much as close as a foreigner will get to feeling like a mangaka. That is unless you are Fred Gallagher and you have a huge army of fanatics telling you you are.

The price tag on living the dream comes at $2,198 but that’s without printing costs, the dream might have to wait just a little longer for most starving artists.

[Pop Travel Japan]

The final volume of the Trigun Spinoff, Trigun Maximum, was released this past Wednesday, announced a release date of 2009 for the very secretive Trigun theatrical animation project. The series’ director, Satoshi Nishimura, will come back to direct the movie which will feature an exclusive new storyline only described as “Vash vs. Wolfwood”, which obviously calls for a completely new storyline.

Its been a while since we last visited Vash The Stampede’s universe and it will surely be a welcomed addition to the near future along with the new slayers series. It just might offset the barrage of bad anime Hollywood adaptations also set for 2009, but don’t take my word for it.

[ANN]

Here’s a little something Velcor found today, but since he’s on assignment I’ll be the one posting it. Found on IIchan’s crossover board is this pretty damn cool Super Smash Brothers Brawl manga drawn in the famous style of Kohta Hirano, creator of Hellsing, its pretty badass.

Hirano is famous for his overtly dramatic, and quite surreal, poses along with chaos-loving monologues that just ooze out mettle! If this doesn’t pump up your blood for some SSBB or some mad vampire action then you just might be already dead, and not the cool un-dead king. Do you want more Machiavellian Mario? Check out the full doujinshi below.

Lets go, Gentlemen!

Check out these wooden sculptures from Japan’s Wonderfestival, quite an elaborate way to put massive wood back into anime don’t you think? Gamersweb.it has more on these really quite beautiful pieces.

[Gamersweb]

Holy awful franchise choices, batman! Hollywood reporter is… well reporting, on Warner Bros. and Appian Way’s (Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company) plans to take the anime and manga epic Akira to the silver screen.

Does it hurt yet? Well let me put some salt on that wound, they plan two make 2 movies out of the franchise. Ruairi Robinson is directing the film and no he hasn’t directed anything you probably saw. The adaptation is being written by Gary Whitta and he has already made such adapting decisions like renaming Neo Tokyo for New Manhattan, a city destroyed 20 years ago and rebuilt by Japanese money. New Manhattan, while you let that one sink in let me tell you the tentative release season is summer 2009 for the first movie.

You know, when you think about it, its the perfect time for a project like this, Tetsuo is angsty, filled with issues, heartbroken and mad with power, the only way the emo crowd wont jump on this is if they finally got the courage to off themselves. But anyway, with the Dragon Ball movie well underway I’m not feeling particularly bad about this one, the lesser of two evils I guess. I’m just wondering if we’ll get a giant CGI manbaby or not.

[Hollywood Reporter]

A new RPG is set to release for the PS2 and Wii. Said game is called Baroque and it’s based on the manga of the same name. I’m not to sure what it’s about, but it seems it centers around people with wings, blood, psychotic breaks, odd ball characters and is all-round f**ked up really. It certainly wouldn’t be the first manga to be f**ked up. Half of them are. That’s what makes them so charming. Check out the trailer.

Baroque was originally developed for the Sega Saturn and then remade for the PlayStation. Baroque is very low key title, but it has a following. I doubt the PS2 and Wii versions of the game will be big sellers, but there is a crowd out there who are definitely looking forward to this game. There’s no word on if this game will release outside of the US, but given Atlus are behind the development and publishing of Baroque - it’s doubtful Europe or Australia will see this game. Seeing as Australia are still waiting for Trauma center: Second opinion and it’s sequel has no European release date despite releasing in the US last year.

Baroque is set to release on March 18 for the PS2 and Wii.

[Jeux-France]

A Chinese forum recently obtained some leaked shots from the Blood: The Last Vampire movie set. These images are all of high quality leading us to believe that they were perhaps meant for future magazine or online publication. Overall the film is looking quite good and looking at Giana Jun in full Saya attire is giving me hopes for this film. You should proceed with caution though as the photos may provide spoilers to the plot of the movie.

[QxWar / Via ANN]

Kanta Ishida, writer for the Yomiuri Shimbun (newspaper) in Japan, analyzes different theories and tries to nail, ar at least approach, the first manga in history. Over at the Suntory Museum in Japan, more than 100,000 people went to see the Choju-Jinbutsu-Giga Emaki (”Scrolls of Cartoons of Birds, Animals, and People”  exhibition. Many visitors came after hearing a theory that these scrolls from the 12th and 13th centuries are the first examples of manga. Nevertheless, mangaka Seiki Hosokibara found another scroll, the Shigisan Engi Emaki, as the first manga innuendo in history.

Ishida argues that “there is no connection between the traditions of Choju Giga (the scrolls above mentioned) and contemporary manga, including the domestic works we are familiar with in our daily lives and the foreign works that have increased with the growing number of manga fans worldwide.” He suggests that the scrolls sould be treated as a different section of Japanese painted art, and not to be mixed with the first traditional manga, like Astroboy.

This is a nice attempt on finding and giving answers to a lot of questions left in the old times. What could be next? Finding out that Vikings roaming through the 7 seas, making contact with the Americas before the Spanish colonization? That’s crazy-talk! 

[ANN]

A new member joins the cast of the Dragon Ball live action movie. Jamie Chung has been cast to play Chi Chi (Known as Milk in Latin America), Goku’s girlfriend and later wife. Miss Chung brings a ray of world class acting to the cast as her career has been filled with challenging roles in very highbrow shows such as The Real World: San Diego, which saw her debut to the acting world and that one episode of Days of our Lives where she once had a minor role. More recently you may have seen her in the masterful movie I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry playing the very demanding role of “Hooters Girl“.

There is no doubt this spells quality acting for the Dragon Ball movie and it is no surprise this project has been compared to the Hindenburg zeppelin and the Titanic, both shining achievements of human kind.

[Hollywood Reporter]

Amazon Japan, in its never ending quest to attract the Otaku crowd comissioned this Amazon-branded Cardbo to Yotsuba&! and Azumanga creator Kiyohiko Azuma. The Cardboard Robot figure is only 2200 Yen, about $20USD and will most likely enjoy a very limited run. Its still a freaking cool homage to two things everyone loves, Amazon boxes and Yotsuba&!

[Amazon / Via Boing Boing]

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