Archive for June, 2008

The news that Inuyasha (the manga) will at last conclude when its 558th chapter is published in next week’s Shonen Sunday should be a welcome relief for fans of the series. They will hopefully get a definite conclusion unlike the TV series, whose ending made Anime Insider’s list of 10 worst anime endings last October. (Scan after the jump.)

This announcement also means that Viz Media will have at least two more years of business from the franchise – the 34th volume is due to come out July 8th. If the current pace of one volume every three months continues, Volume 56 would come out in January 2014 (assuming they don’t speed its release, like they did with Naruto last year). That would be five years after the projected January 2009 release of volume 56 in Japan. With such a long wait ahead for US fans, I hope scanlations don’t hurt sales of the printed versions too much.
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No anime-equivalent pictures this time, just real life photos.

I just happened to be browsing the Twitter site Summize when I saw Tokyo was a “trending topic” and quickly found out there was a stabbing in the Akihabara district. The incident occurred around lunchtime in central Tokyo when 25-year-old Tomohiro Kato drove a 2-ton rented truck into a crowd of pedestrians, running over three people. He then got out of the vehicle and began to stabbing passersby with a survival knife. Initial reports described Kato as a gang member but those were later found not to be true.
[Coverage: BBC News | NY Times (via AP) | Reuters | CNN | Mainichi (English) | Akibablog (photos) | ize.ne.jp (w/ slideshow) | ANN (w/ updates)]

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Two Funimation related news bits came out today: the first is that two Ouran dub roles have been revealed and the second that Funimation will launch a video podcast on Monday the 9th. Carrie Savage (Karen Ichijo in School Rumble) will voice Momoka Kuragano and Eric Vale (Yuki Sohma in Fruits Basket) has been cast as Toru Suzushima. These are definitely minor characters since Momoka first appears in episode 21 while Toru has a part of the second episode but doesn’t show up again until the school festival episode (#25). Looking at the show’s website, it seems that two more minor voices will unveiled every Friday until their one-hour panel at Anime Expo, where I would expect the main cast to be unveiled. I suck at guessing silhouettes so I’m not going to speculate on one-shot characters.

Regarding Funimation’s new podcast, it is called “The Funimation Update” and will feature original programming hosted by Todd Haberkorn. Todd is a voice actor and ADR director who seems to be doing informal PR work for the company as well, having attended Anime Boston and SakuraCon and planning to hit Anime Vegas as well. The first one will supposedly focus the adaptation of One Piece and Shin-chan as well as the general localization process. I’ll give it a shot when it comes out but I may be distracted by the WWDC keynote announcements that morning.

A Moon Phase comment has said that an anime adaption of the light novel series To Aru Majutsu no Index (A Certain Magical Index) was confirmed in the 16th volume’s promo sleeve, according to ANN. (Moetron’s post about this news has a picture of an in-store display and a link to a MAD opening.)

The basic plot involves Touma Kajimou, a high school boy who possesses a large psychic power called “Imagine Breaker” that can cancel magic but also causes him horrible luck. He finds a Church of England nun, Index, hanging over his railing whose memories have been forcibly replaced by over 100,000 forbidden magic texts of the Church. Look for TAMnI (tam-ni?) to hit Japanese TV screens this October as yet another light novel-to-anime adaptation – spring 2008 anime Spice and Wolf and Wagaya no Oinari-sama originated as light novels.
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This afternoon I finally decided to roll out a new look for the blog – it comes with an extra sidebar as well an option to shove aside both sidebars. (BTW, the theme is called Mandigo.) I’ll try to repopulate the header folder with fresh images but for now, you get the buggy from Pumpkin Scissors. In the meantime, you can suggest topics for me to write about using the Skribit box or update your Gravatar since apparently the comment system now utilizes that feature.

Oh, and for posterity’s sake, here is a screencap of the previous design. It lasted me over 17 months and hopefully I won’t get bored of this one because it took a while for me to find another theme that fit my tastes.