Canned Dogs

I couldn’t find anything interesting today so I’m posting about the wonderful Kodansha 32nd manga awards! So basically Kodansha’s panel of judges has decided on the winners and they will be holding the awards ceremony on the 20th of June where each of the winners get 1 million yen (US$10,000).

Best children’s manga
Shugochara by Peach Pit
Currently running in Nakayoshi (Kodansha)

Best shounen manga
Saikyou! Toritsu aoizaka koukou yakyuubu by Tanaka Motoyuki
Currently running in Shounen Sunday (Shogakukan)

Best shoujo manga
Kimi ni Todoke by Shiina Karuho
Currently running in Bessatsu Margaret (Shueisha)

Best general manga
Moyashimon by Ishikawa Masayuki
Currently running in Evening (Kodansha)

Here’s a quick history on the Kodansha manga awards though for those who aren’t familiar with what they do. The awards were created to award the best manga that was produced each year.

Which is why of all the awards given out in the past 32 years, over 80% of the awards have gone to manga published by Kodansha.

The other publisher that had received the most number of awards next to Kodansha is Shueisha, who got about 8% of all the awards in past 32 years. And none of the manga in Shueisha’s most popular magazine Shounen Jump has ever won a single award. (Shounen Jump manga doesn’t even get nominated anymore)

On the other hand, Shogakukan’s manga awards that has been going for 53 years usually gives awards for Shounen Sunday and Shounen Jump, but has never ever given an award for manga running in Shounen Magazine, Kodansha’s most popular magazine.

But for the first time in the history of the Shogakukan manga awards this year, Shogakukan gave a manga award to a manga from Kodansha’s Shounen Magazine, which is why a Shounen Sunday manga also received an award for the first time in the history of Kodansha’s manga awards. And the reason for this sudden change is because… Shounen Magazine and Shounen Sunday had a collaboration project.

Japanese blog 12 year old Tiyu has a more detailed analysis of all these awards stuff.

Niconico douga has announced today that they are starting a new video service called spike niconico channel which will be for games that are being distributed by spike in Japan. It currently has trailers games such as Bioshock and Tomb Raider, and they hope to expand to have gameplay videos and interviews.

Now I’m sure it’s completely unrelated but on the same day, niconico has started deleting tons of gameplay videos of Nintendo-owned games due to “requests from the copyright holder” such as the videos of people playing modified versions of Mario and Pokemon, and the videos of fully automatic Mario which had been pretty popular, and especially the recent one of the gumi kyoku. (it’s still up on youtube)

As a result of the deletions, the total number of videos viewed across all videos in niconico douga has dropped by 20 million views today.

I don’t know if it’s just Nintendo or if they’re planning to eventually remove all gameplay videos from the site, but this sucks.

It looks like arresting anime encoders that distributed Code Geass worked because Code Geass’s rating are finally going past the 2% barrier again after spending two weeks at the bottom!

Percentages in the brackets are last week’s viewership ratings.

17.6%(14.4%) 05/11 18:30-19:00 CX Sazae-san
13.5%(10.0%) 05/11 18:00-18:30 CX Chibimaruko-chan
8.9%(12.4%) 05/09 19:30-19:54 EX Crayon Shin-chan
8.7%(5.9%) 05/11 9:30-10:00 CX One Piece
8.5%(6.1%) 05/11 9:00-9:30 CX Gegege no Kitarou
8.1%(11.0%) 05/09 19:00-19:30 EX Doraemon
8.0%(7.2%) 05/05 19:00-20:00 NTV Yatterman
7.2%(–.-%) 05/08 19:00-19:59 TX Pocket Monsters DP
6.3%(–.-%) 05/08 19:59-20:54 TX NARUTO Shippuden Special
5.1%(5.0%) 05/11 8:30-9:00 EX Yes! Precure 5 GoGo!
——————————-
4.8%(4.7%) 05/10 9:00-9:30 TX BLUE DRAGON
4.7%(4.5%) 05/10 10:00-10:30 TX Keroro Gunso
4.6%(3.2%) 05/08 24:45-25:15 CX Toshokan sensou
4.5%(4.6%) 05/10 11:20-11:45 EX Atashinchi
4.5%(4.1%) 05/10 8:30-9:00 TX Oha coliseum
3.7%(4.2%) 05/08 18:00-18:30 TX Gintama
3.5%(4.1%) 05/11 7:00-7:30 EX Kyouryuu King
3.4%(3.9%) 05/10 9:30-10:00 TX Shugochara
3.4%(2.6%) 05/11 9:30-10:00 TX Onegai my Melody kirara
3.1%(–.-%) 05/07 19:26-19:55 TX BLEACH
3.1%(2.5%) 05/11 10:00-10:30 TX Zettai karen children
2.7%(3.0%) 05/09 18:00-18:30 TX Kirarin Revolution
2.7%(2.6%) 05/08 25:25-25:55 TBS xxxHOLiC
2.7%(2.4%) 05/09 25:23-25:53 TX Golgo13
2.6%(3.0%) 05/06 24:59-25:29 NTV RD​ Sennou chosashitsu
2.6%(2.0%) 05/08 25:55-26:25 TBS ToLOVEru
2.5%(2.6%) 05/05 18:00-18:30 TX Soul Eater
2.4%(1.8%) 05/11 17:00-17:30 TBS Code Geass R2
2.2%(2.3%) 05/06 25:29-25:59 NTV Top Secret
2.0%(2.5%) 05/11 6:30-7:00 EX Hatarakids My Ham gumi
2.0%(1.9%) 05/09 25:55-26:25 TBS Macross FRONTIER
1.9%(3.1%) 05/11 8:30-9:00 TX Net ghost PIPOPA
1.9%(2.9%) 05/09 16:30-17:00 NTV Soreike! Anpanman
1.8%(2.0%) 05/08 17:30-18:00 TX Prince of Tennis (repeat)
1.7%(1.4%) 05/05 17:30-18:00 TX BLEACH Best Selection (repeat)
1.6%(1.3%) 05/09 26:25-26:55 TBS Itazura na Kiss
1.0%(1.8%) 05/11 25:30-26:00 TX Nabari no ou
1.0%(0.8%) 05/08 26:15-26:45 TX Soul Eater Late show

Via: ○今週のテレビアニメ視聴率○その347

Zakzak reports that the increasing oil prices recently are starting to hurt the 30 billion yen gachagacha/gashapon industry as rising costs for the production of the plastic containers to keep the gashapon in are starting to thin their profits.

Even the biggest gashapon maker Bandai who has about 65% market share has changed the 65mm containers that they’ve always used to 50mm containers since April this year so as to save costs.

Yujin which is under the other major gashapon maker Takara Tomy who owns 35% market share is also considering switching from their usual containers that use a combination of both soft and hard plastics to using containers made of only soft plastics to save in costs.

The gashapon market had been expanding at every year hitting a peak of 33.5 billion yen in 2005, but shrank to 30.5 billion yen in 2006, and with the problems of increasing oil prices also adding to the problem, gashapon makers have no choice but find ways to cut costs.

The release date for Fate/Tiger Colosseum Upper has been announced along with the contents of the limited edition set MEGAMORI BOX. They’ve also revealed that Irisviel will be playable in the game, and at this rate I guess Iskander and moe moe Waver Velvet will be appearing in the game too.

Also the limited edition set will contain tarot cards from 23 different illustrators including ex-SNK illustrator Shinkirou, master of Charlie Sheen faces. Together in the set is a binder book for the tarot cards, a 72 page settings book, a drama CD, and a special DVD.

That’s almost enough extras in the limited edition set for people to buy the set for the extras and ignore the actual game!

Eroge brand Abogado Powers has updated their site revealing their first game Sukusuku mizugi as their first comeback title for release in July. They’ve also announced that they’ll be releasing two other games. The first game looks incredibly… generic.

I was going to write about pixy but a quick google says that Heisei Democracy already wrote something about it so I don’t have to do anything! Though, I wouldn’t be too surprised if pixy was dying even if p2p and piracy weren’t prevalent…

Takara Tomy has announced that they’ll be releasing a Tetsudou musume game for the DS where you play as a magazine reporter who travels around Japan to interview girls working in the Train industry. Tetsudou musume was a semi-popular line of figures made based on girls in train worker uniforms.

The Haruhi website just updated, taking away Haruhi from the front page and replacing her with Nagato. Also the staff has been partially announced, and it looks like Ishihara Tatsuya is the director again with Takemoto Yasuhiro as assistant.

The Kyoto police have arrested 3 men on suspect of having shared anime on the Japanese p2p program Share. I originally ignored this piece of news thinking it was another one of those arrests that don’t really have anything to do with the actual p2p sharing that’s going on, but…

The three guys arrested were apparently 92JeyRfcya, YS2YSUOe1cLtf, and YnXmHqtxqS, popular anime encoders that have encoded huge amounts of anime for p2p for a long time. So… basically, there aren’t going to be many people that will dare to encode anime for release on p2p anymore.

The future of Japanese animation is saved! (?)

Falcom has updated their site today announcing that Zwei II will be released in the summer this year and has released several screenshots of the game. But man, the game is in 3D! Not that I have anything against 3D, but I wish they’d continue Zwei in those awesome 2D graphics.