February 5th, 2010
FUNimation’s convention guy Adam Sheehan has been teasing on Twitter about some big promotional video they filmed in the FUNimation office yesterday. The project was originally going to involve Sheehan going onto the roof of the office building, but weather conditions forced them to move the filming indoors. He supplied this photo of their state-of-the-art camera system earlier today, and says more details on the secret project will be revealed earlier next week.
What exactly will the video be about? Well, following the release of their hilarious trailer for the series, FUNimation began writing a series of posts about the Strike Witches “winning the war on pants” on their blog. FUNi Brand Manager Charlene Ingram made a connection to the series by tweeting some pants-related jokes towards Sheehan and his secret project.
Sheehan has indicated that the company would be promoting the upcoming release of Strike Witches at next week’s Katsucon convention, and there is a “FUNimation Promotions” panel scheduled the Saturday evening of the convention. So I’m going to bet that this secret project will somehow involve Katsucon and pants… or the lack of them.
As a strong advocate of the War On Pants movement, you can expect The Anime Almanac to provide round-the-clock coverage of all events next week both prior to and during Katsucon weekend.
Give ‘em hell, ladies!
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February 4th, 2010
Yamila Abraham of Yaoi Press elaborated on a quote she made to About.com this week regarding her yaoi manga being recently rejected by Apple. It turns out that she had enlisted a third party app developer to reformat a 13+ yaoi comic of hers to fit better into the format of the iPhone. They even edited some questionable content in order to ensure it would pass through Apple’s screening process. Even with the changes, Apple rejected the app and cited no reasons for doing so.
The App store has a “mature” rating in place to designate programs rated for users 17 and above, but has a strict “no pornography” policy. I imagine this was the reason for the rejection. While the definition of what could be considered pornographic is strictly up for debate, it is completely understandable why Apple would have to scrutinize any boy’s love content that tries to make its way onto the platform. Yaoi certainly raises some red flags for most normal people.
I don’t condone Apple’s choice of censorship as to what it allows on the iPhone. If I had my druthers, I would allow any mature application onto the platform, especially pornography. But the App Store is what the App Store is.
We’re not talking about some form of media protected by freedom of speech. We’re talking about a gated community that is closely monitor by a major American corporation. And unfortunately, major American corporations are not ready to take on hot guy-on-guy action yet. In fact, most of America isn’t ready for that. So Apple’s call to deny the yaoi app is simply for the sake of protecting its own branding.
And frankly, you can’t blame them for that. Strict policies like that make the iPhone the best consumer device on the market today.
On a separate note, Abraham did bring up a good point in her post that I never thought of before. Amazon actually has an iPhone app that allows you to read Kindle books on that platform. As it currently stands, this app is useless for all the manga available in the Kindle store because the picture is so damn tiny on that small screen. But when that app gets ported to work on the larger iPad, it’s going to be the perfect size for manga viewing.
I imagine that Apple might not like that, as this will be in direct competition with their new e-book initiative, iBooks. I think we will be seeing that Kindle app go away sometime in the near future.
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February 4th, 2010
Measuring in at well over six feet tall, 17-year-old Miharu is one intimidating dude. In fact, his entire high school class is absolutely afraid of him. So when the shy Shinobu accidentally spills milk on his bag of expensive Japanese clothing, she figured that her life was all but done for.
But rather than beating the life out of the girl, Miharu demands that Shinobu works off her debt to him by taking up a part time job at his grandmother’s kimono shop. And as the two work together passing out flyers for the shop, Shinobu begins to realize that Miharu isn’t actually as mean and intimidating as he looks. In fact, he’s actually quite a sweetheart.
Stolen Hearts is the American debut of shojo artist Miku Sakamoto, whose Nadeshiko Club will also be coming out later this year from CMX. While the art might seem like a bit of a turn off, Sakamoto fully redeems herself with one of the sweetest and most heartwarming romantic comedies I’ve ever read in manga form.
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February 3rd, 2010
Scott Pilgrim artist Bryan Lee O’Malley is auctioning off an original Pilgrim art piece on eBay. O’Malley will be donating all proceeds of the auction to Giant Robot, a long running independent Asian American Pop Culture magazine that has facing serious financial struggles lately. The signed sketch is drawn in ink and was used in the fifth volume of the series and on promotional items.
An awesome art piece from an awesome comic going to a cause I think we otaku can fully support. While Giant Robot may not necessarily be all about anime and manga, it most certainly celebrates our sub-culture. Bidding for the 24-hour auction ends at 9:56 EST (6:56 PST) Thursday morning, so act quickly. You can also donate directly to Giant Robot by visiting this site.
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February 2nd, 2010
Kotaku writes a very lengthy and very fascinating article on how an event on the message board 4chan in 2006 gave birth to a very unusual amateur video game called Kawata Shojo, or “Disabled Girls.” The game is a Japanese-style visual novel about, you guessed it, psychically disabled girls.
This article really surprised me because I haven’t stepped foot on 4chan in years. But I was active on the boards in 2006 and I vividly remember the night Damaged Goods began. I found myself fascinated with the poster’s highly detailed narrative. I didn’t believe a word of it, but still, I was hooked on the story. I couldn’t help but to think at the time that this was going to be the American version of Densha Otoko.
Well, it didn’t become the American version of Densha Otoko, and I thought the saga ended shortly thereafter. But apparently it still lives on after all these years in this video game, so be sure to check out the full story over at Kotaku.
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