Friday Night News
It's here! It's here! It's finally here! Today is the day and Project: A-Kon 2K has begun! A-Kon sure looks like it'll be a blast this year, with an art show, cos-play, and numerous other strange and wonderful things; I'm envious of those who made the pilgrimage out to Texas for this year's con. Great guests like Takada Akemi, Kugayama Rikako, and Bijoki Junction are scheduled to be there. If you're wondering who the heck these people are, then you're probably not alone. Takada was the character designer for series like Kimagure Orange Road and Mobile Police Patlabor, while Kugayama and Bijoki are both famous dojinshi artists. Hopefully some good news will come out of A-kon this year. With all the delays of late, some good news would be nice.
Speaking of Takada Akemi, if you ever wanted to own some of her artwork, now is your chance. In an effort to help out earthquake survivors, she is auctioning off two pieces of her work at http://www.coolbid.com.tw/. The proceeds will be donated to TZU CHI Foundation’s Project Hope, a reconstruction plan for the September 21st Earthquake survivors. You can get some rare artwork and help people at the same time. You can't beat that can you?
While we're hoping and waiting for info to surface from A-kon, and realizing we probably can't afford the Akemi's art, why not take a look at some information we have now. Nightjar is currently hard at work on the DVD menu layouts for a couple of upcoming Pioneer releases, including Sol Bianca Vol 2 and Trigun Vol 3. While Pioneer dropped the ball with the openings and closings on the first couple of Trigun discs, it looks like we'll be able to look forward to the original ops and ends as extras on the upcoming disc, and hopefully future volumes too. In the original openings, short pieces of footage from the appropriate episode were used to customize the accompanying sequences, whereas Pioneer simply used the op from the first episode for all subsequent episodes.
Don't want to wait for the third volume of Trigun to be finished? Then you can put that overactive imagination to good use and make up your own adventures for your favorite Trigun characters; Wolfwood and Vash figures are both scheduled for domestic release. Yashuhiro Nightow, the creator of Trigun, has made an agreement with Kaiyodo to make his own toyline. Under the name of Toy Tribe, about 6 more Trigun figures will be coming to an Earth near you.
Revolutionary Girl Utena's creator, Chiho Saito, has gone to Fanboy! Why? To make a variant cover for Tomoko Taniguchi's Spellbound, a manga created especially for Tomoko's foreign fans. The story is about Ami, a street smart witch, whose magic seems to get her into more trouble than it's worth. Making matters worse, her love spell won't work on the dreamy Hiro, the boy she'd like to make her own. Take a peek at our previous story on the series, Fanboy Announces New Manga, Spellbound, for a couple of shots from the manga, as well as the full press release on the variant cover here.
In related news, at the LA Comic and Sci-Fi con a full-length screening of the Utena movie will be shown. It seems like a good time for magic girls, be they witches or just plain magical.
Have you ever seen an awful translation and said, "Hey, that was bad. I should do something about it!" Well, the Friends of CLAMP are boycotting Mixx for exactly that reason. They're trying to prevent the release of CLAMP's Clover by Mixx / TOKYOPOP. The founder of Friends of CLAMP said that due to the poor quality of the job done on the Card-Captor Sakura manga, they wish for Mixx to be denied the right to publish this new manga by Kodansha, who currently holds the rights. They urge you to buy the original manga and download the translations from the internet. The only problem I see is that if we boycott every company that does a bad translation, then we'll be downloading everything off the internet.
Well, hopefully with the increased popularity of manga and anime, companies will spend more money and effort on putting together better translations.
That's about all for today, but before we wrap things up, here's one little extra for all the Ranma fans out there. Viz has some free Ranma 1/2 cursors for use on your websites and desktops. If you would like to take a look, stop by www.viz.com and check 'em out.
Once again, a big thanks goes out to Moridin for keeping track of all the latest goings on in the wonderful world of anime. You're a superstar! **Moridin turns into a panda and holds up a sign that reads "I'm just a panda"**
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