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Katsuhiro Otomo Unveils Short Peace Film Teaser

Short Peace, the omnibus of four shorts by Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira, Memories, Steamboy) and other leading anime creators, will open in Japan on July 20. The official website began streaming a teaser trailer.

Short Peace is an omnibus project assembling “top creators at the leading edge of Japanese animation, exploring possible future avenues of expression.” Short Peace is also the title of a collection of Otomo’s manga shorts that was first published in the 1970s. Yasumasa Tsuchiya is producing the shorts at Sunrise.

“Combustible” already debuted in a preview screening in Japan last April, and the Annecy Film Festival in France presented both “Combustible” and “Tsukumo” last June. “Combustible” also played at the Platform International Animation Festival in Los Angeles in October. The short won the Grand Prize in the Animation division of the 16th Japan Media Arts Festival Awards and the Noburou Oofuji Award in the 67th Annual Mainichi Film Awards.

The four shorts are:

“Combustible” (“Hi-no-youjin”)
Screenplay, Director: Katsuhiro Otomo
Character Design, Visual Concept: Hidekazu Ohara
Music: Makoto Kubota

“Tsukumo”
Screenplay, Director: Shuhei Morita (Kakurenbo, Freedom)
Original Story Concept, Conceptual Design: Keisuke Kishi

“Gambo”
Director: Hiroaki Ando (Five Numbers!)
Original Story Concept, Screenplay, Creative Director: Katsuhito Ishii (Redline, Funky Forest: The First Contact, Taste of Tea)
Character Design: Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (Evangelion, .hack, Summer Wars)

“Buki yo Saraba”
Original Story: Katsuhiro Otomo
Screenplay, Director: Hajime Katoki (mechanical designs in Gundam franchise, Super Robot Wars)
Character Design: Tatsuyuki Tanaka (Tojin Kit)

Hello Kitty shop opens in Vienna~♪

The first official Hello Kitty shop in Austria opened Thursday at a shopping mall in Vienna, with many goods available exclusively at the Viennese outlet.

Hello Kitty, a character brand of Sanrio Co., is popular in Europe particularly among women and children, and shop manager Thomas Gottsbacher said that “there are even people from Germany coming all the way here” to purchase specialties.

When the shop doors opened at 9 a.m., the first customers were already waiting outside.

 

New Kabuki Za theater completed~♪

A ceremony was held Tuesday to celebrate the completion of the reconstructed Kabuki Za theater and an adjacent office building called Kabuki-za Tower in the Higashiginza district of central Tokyo.

Those present at the event on the top floor of the 29-story Kabuki-za Tower included Sakata Tojuro, a Kabuki actor who has been recognized by the government as a living national treasure, and officials of Kabuki producer Shochiku Co.

Kabuki Theater in Edo piriod

The first show for a general audience will be put on at the new theater on April 2.

The theater first opened in 1889, after which it was badly damaged by the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake and the firebombing during World War II.

It was closed in 2010 due to the aging of its structure. The exterior and the layout of audience seats remain the same but the facility has been made more barrier-free for the disabled.

Kabuki Renjishi

It can accommodate about 1,800 viewers.
Source:Kyodo

‘Glass Mask’ manga gets gag anime

Suzue Miuchi（美内すずえ）’s Glass Mask (ガラスの仮面/Glass no Kamen) manga is getting a gag anime adaptation starting this April.
Image © Suzue Miuchi/Hakusensha 2013 © 2013 Glass no Kamen Desu ga Production Committee

DLE Inc. (Thermae Romae, Himitsu Kessha Taka no Tsume Neo) is producing the Glass no Kamen Desu ga (It’s Glass Mask But) television anime series.

Image © Suzue Miuchi/Hakusensha 2013 © 2013 Glass no Kamen Desu ga Production Committee

The anime will re-imagine the story with the characters Maya Kitajima and her rival Ayumi Himekawa being “yankee” (delinquent) girls who both aspire to be the leader of the “Crimson Goddess” gang. The series of three-minute shorts will air on BS12 on Sundays starting on April 7. The show will have a total of 17 episodes. Mainichi Shimbun’s Mantan Web is currently hosting character designs for the show. Read the rest of this entry »

Megan Fox x Ninja Turtles

Actress Megan Fox has been cast in the new “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie, according to filmmaker Michael Bay, who directed the actress in two Transformers films.
Megan Fox megan

The two appear to have resolved their differences after Fox compared Bay to Hitler in a magazine interview. The actress was replaced by British model and actress Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in the third Transformer film after making the comment.

Ninja Turtles are a fictional team of four teenage anthropomorphic turtles, who were trained by their anthropomorphic rat sensei in the art of ninjutsu and named after four Renaissance artists.

From their home in the storm sewers of New York City, they battle petty criminals, evil overlords and alien invaders, all while remaining isolated from society-at-large.

Ninja Hattori-kun Anime’s Indian Remake to Air in Japan

The India-produced Ninja Hattori-kun animated television series remake will premiere in Japan on May 13.

The remake had been slated to premiere in Japan last summer. The original Ninja Hattori-kun anime debuted in India in 2006, and the remake premiered on the Nick India channel in May 2012.

The 26-episode series was produced by Shinei Animation, a wholly owned subsidiary of TV Asahi, and Reliance MediaWorks, a major Indian production company. It was pitched to Asian broadcasters last year. The project is the first new animated program in nearly 25 years for Ninja Hattori-kun, the comedy action manga/anime franchise from Doraemon co-creator Motoo Abiko or “Fujiko Fujio (A).”

Snow Miku Festival~♪

The official Hatsune Miku channel on YouTube presented the second part of the Snow Miku Report 2013 on Friday.
The video features various Vocaloid exhibits from the 64th annual Sapporo Snow Festival, including an art and merchandise gallery, a Hatsune Miku playground, workshops, game demos and a graffiti wall. The video also features an interview with the artist Chiho, who was featured in the art gallery.

Snow Miku’s first Festival Report included a time-lapse video of the construction of the Hatsune Miku snow sculpture. USA Animate has made Snow Miku merchandise available for fans in the United States over its online store.

Monster Hunter 4 Game’s 3rd Promo Video~♪

CAPCOM posted a new trailer to its official YouTube channel on Wednesday for its upcoming Nintendo 3DS exclusive game, Monster Hunter 4. The trailer features gameplay and cut-scene clips, as well as close-ups of outfit and weapon designs.

Monster Hunter 4 will be directed by Kaname Fujioka and produced by Ryozo Tsujimoto of the previous Monster Hunter games. Gameplay will support up to four players. Manga creator Hiro Mashima (Fairy Tail) designed original full-body outfits as well as a weapon for the game. Nintendo initially announced that the game would be released in March, but it has been delayed and is now slated for release this summer. CAPCOM has yet to assign a release date.

New York International Children’s Film Festival　X Mamoru Hosoda

The New York International Children’s Film Festival (NYCIFF) revealed on Tuesday that it will host director Mamoru Hosoda（細田守/Wolf Children, Summer Wars, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) for two Q&A sessions after the screening of Wolf Children on Saturday, March 9 at 4:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.

Wolf Children

The film is also screening during the festival on March 10 at 10:30 a.m. and March 24 at 4:30 p.m. The film’s story covers 13 years and begins with a 19-year-old college student named Hana who encounters and falls in “fairy tale-like” love with a “wolf man.” After marrying the wolf man, Hana gives birth and raises two wolf children — an older sister named Yuki (“snow”) who was born on a snowy day, and a younger brother named Ame (“rain”) who was born on a rainy day. When the wolf man suddenly dies, Hana decides to move to a rural town far removed from the city.

Mamoru Hosoda（細田守)

Perfume’s special website- Create your own comics

Popular pop group Perfume opened a special website where users can create their own comics featuring the band members and their new single “Mirai no Museum.

The song’s music video centersaround a character named “Shōnen P-ta” and Perfume — reimagined as three humanoid robots from the future. On the website, users write their own lines into four panels of the comic for P-ta and the three Perfumemembers. For the fifth panel, the computer will automatically analyze the data put into the text boxes to create the last scene, using real footage of the girls from the music video. Users can also login into their Facebook or Twitter accounts to see data previously submitted by other users..

Perfume’s new single will arrive in Japan on February 27 as the theme song to the latest Doraemon film, Doraemon: Nobita no Himitsu Dōgu Museum. The single will then arrive in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and China on March 9, with the original lyrics translated into Chinese.

Doraemon’s Secret Gadget Cafe Opens

To celebrate the 55th anniversary of founding of the company, TV Asahiturned its “Cafe Chez Madu” in the first-floor atrium of its headquarters into “Doraemon’s Secret Gadget Cafe.” The cafe opened to the public on Friday and will be in service for a limited time to tie-in with the March 9 opening of the new movie EigaDoraemon: Nobita no Himitsu Dōgu Museum (Doraemon: Nobita’s Secret Gadget Museum).

Like its movie counterpart, the cafe has been entirely transformed into a museum, from the Dokodemo Door (Anywwhere Door) at the entrance, to the tables and chairs. Fans of the show will find all sorts of replicas of well-known Doraemon gadgets, such as the Small Light, a lamp that shrinks objects to small sizes.

The cafe’s food menu provides adult and child-sized portions, such as the “4D Pocket Sandwich,” with ham in the shape of a Dokodemo Door and a cheese Bamboocopter for 600 yen (about US$6.50), a chicken sandwich with Doraemon’s bell motif, and a 4-cheese “Dora-gratin” with brown rice. For dessert, customers can enjoy “French Toast de Ankipan” based on Doraemon’s Memory Bread for 900 yen (US$9.70). As for drinks, customers can order lattes decorated with Doraemon characters, flavored milk, and set of smoothies — one Doraemon smoothie made with bananas, or an orange-colored Dorami-chan smoothie made with pineapple and mango.

http://mantan-web.jp/gallery/2013/02/01/20130201dog00m200024000c/003.html

Akihabara Maid Café Opening Branch in Los Angeles

The Japanese maid café chain MaiDreamin (めいどりーみん) announced that it will open a branch in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles in Summer 2013. Branches are also being considered in New York City and Boston.

The restaurant will hold auditions for employees out of the Los Angeles area.

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Blythe fashion dolls for charity auction

 

Hankyu department store began exhibiting about 100 fashion dolls of the U.S.-originated brand Blythe at its Umeda flagship store in Osaka.

The one-of-a-kind dolls, wearing autumn and winter collections from fashion tenants at the department store, will be auctioned for charity through next Tuesday with the bidding starting at 10,000 yen, store officials said.

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Gundam Santa

The life-size Gundam statue is being decorated with holiday lights.

A “Gundam Santa” presentation will run from December 25 to Christmas Day.

The decorations include a Gundam Santa riding a White Base sled being driven by Zakrello reindeer, as well as the A Baoa Qu fortress transformed into an upside-down Christmas tree.

Gundam Cafe to Open at Tokyo Station

Bandai announced that it will open a third Gundam Cafe in Tokyo in Tokyo on December 20.

The branch at the main Tokyo Station’s First Avenue area will serve some of the same menu items as those at Akihabara and Odaiba, including Jaburo Coffee and Haro Latte Milk.

The 50-odd food and drink choices, the 26-seat cafe at Tokyo Station will offer about 15 different goods, such as petit glasses and silcone rubber coasters in a limited red variant to complement the red-brick exterior of Tokyo Station. Read the rest of this entry »