She reminds me of a cool hentai

Last night’s Shinchan was awesome.

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Sir Alexander reviews Anzu: The Shards of Memory for Anime On DVD and notices the extra dickness thickness of the new books.  Woot!

Side note: we started including ads in the back of the trades because our new printer requires page counts to be divisable by 16.  That makes for a lot of blank paper when the book itself is only, say, 209 pages…

Side note 2: yes, the sentences in the Japanese version do actually cut off mid-way often.  They just like to write like that… @_@

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I didn’t bother to look at the Todd Goldman brouhaha earlier because I was burned out on this sort of thing by Olney-gate, and unless the slighted artists banded together to pursue some legal recourse, nothing was going to change.  But Chris Mautner’s post on the Newsarama Blog has the best darn title ever.  Now who’s going to step up and be the Joe Rogan of webcomics?  WAR!

(Note: Right now it might be Dirk Deppey.  Which is natural, since suspiciously odious legal threats is something TCJ is painfully familiar with…)

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From the news release that everyone is already talking about, Viz will be releasing 12 volumes of Naruto within a span of 4 months.  Speeding up the release schedule of a hot property isn’t always a good thing (see Matrix 2 and 3), and there’s something to be said about the value of anticipation.  But in this case, I think parents across America will just have to figure in an extra $15 into their monthly expenses, lest they face the wrath of their plastic-sword-swinging little Narutos at home.

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Not sure why I missed it the first time, but MangaBlog offers some insightful observations about the state of anime and manga, based on ICv2′s new Anime/Manga buyers guide.  Brigid Alverson notes that despite being top-heavy, manga seems to have avoided the consolidation that anime is experiencing, and remains diverse in the number of titles and genres.

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Otaku favorite camel toe mascot Moe-tan will apparently be getting an anime.

I’m not sure what scares me more… the thought that more people outside of Japan may be exposed to the titular mascot, or that more people in Japan will be exposed to her special brand of saccharine-laced “Engrish” instruction.

Now, please excuse me while I clear out some space on my DVD shelf next to the eventual spot for my Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z collection…

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Lastly, according to Anime News Service (no permalink), Takami Akai, a director at Gainax, resigned his position after he insulted posters at Japanese mega-BBS 2chan… in his own diary.

Yeah, it’s not sinking in for me either.